Reading this
1955 pamphlet on nuclear testing, it occurs to me that, for all the significance of nuclear explosions, for as fundamentally important as they were to the politics and history of the
twentieth century, for as fundamentally important as they will be to the politics and history of the twenty-
first century, for as often as they appear in the
news and in fiction, I've never actually
seen a nuclear explosion.
Probably, hopefully, I will
never see a nuclear explosion. I don't want there to
be nuclear explosions, in any capacity. For as much as they have reshaped the history of humanity and the world, for as much as they will shape our future, at least let them do so silently, invisibly. Let our world be defined by the weight of their absence.
And yet, on a simple, short-sighted, primitive level, I really wish that I could safely see one.