Wasteland Wrap-up #58

New Year, new problems; an audio recording of my most recent book talk; an account of a nuclear test detonation; Strange Things and sad lumberjacks; and a truly weird report from 1957...

It’s a New Year! So much promise! Maybe it won’t be like 2025! Maybe it’ll be wonderful! Maybe it’ll be… oh, crap. Well, here we are again, in another week of chaos and uncertainty! The chaos year is dead, long live the chaos year. I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think it’s going to get dramatically better anytime soon. If I were a betting man (and I am not), I would be betting on the level of chaos essentially doubling every year of this presidency. But hey, I’d love to be wrong.

A poster pasted onto a post office box in the 14th arrondissement: “Capitalism — a serious problem for the planet.”

And yet… somehow we have to talk about other things, as well? And do work? And watch films? This is the part that I think most representations of “crisis” in film, fiction, etc. get wrong. That you have to just keep on doing the daily work. You have to go to the market. You have deadlines. You have little things that feel rather insignificant but still need to get done. You require entertainment and diversion.

Because what can one do, anyway? Even if you’re someone who attends protests, there’s only so many of those. Even if you’re calling your Congresspeoples, there’s still a lot of time to fill. I’m not saying these things aren’t worthwhile. I’m just saying the obvious, which is that they feel inadequate to the task.

A near-authentic representation of what living in France is like. It is missing wine and cheese, however. From a sign at our local Monoprix, which is somewhat like a Target in the USA.

Well. I don’t have any answers about the world at large. I do, however, have some thoughts on Harry Truman and his role in early nuclear policy, because I wrote a book on that (what a smooth transition). And I gave a talk on it a few weeks ago at Sciences Po. The audio recording of the talk is available here on SoundCloud, or you can listen to it (or download it) below as an MP3 file:

I am not sure if there was a video recording or not — I will see. Because there are slides that went along with it, and it might not be obvious what I’m referring to without it.

What the title slide is supposed to look like. A pretty good approximation of the book cover, if I do say so myself!

If you do want to have the slides available while you listen, you can download them as a PDF here. Note that the gradients on the title slide didn’t quite export correctly (sigh), but anyway, it should be pretty straightforward other than that, although many of the slides are designed to be synced to audio.

I anticipate giving more talks about the book in the new year, so I’ll make sure at least one of those has the slides recorded with synced audio.

And here is your silly Lyndon photo of the week — illustrating the accuracy of an unusual sign we saw (which I imagine is meant to mean “curb your dog,” i.e., don’t let him urinate on the buildings or whatever). Lyndon is obviously only “tolerating” this photo.

Oh, and in case you missed it, my post on Doomsday Machines this week was a relatively quick one (a bit of editing, but not much writing or research for me), but worth checking out if you haven’t already. While poking through some reports looking for information about something totally different, I stumbled across this rather amazing first-hand account of a nuclear test from the 1950s. I found it a totally gripping read, and felt like it was worth sharing:

Here’s a brief excerpt:

At H minus twenty minutes I heard a background voice over the loud-speaker say to someone near the microphone, “It’s hooked up now, Boy!” Then the loudspeaker spoke to us: “This is Dragnet. In one minute it will be H minus fifteen minutes, and so on, with a time tone every minute thereafter.”

Pete said, “This is the tape. The machine is committed.”

Two men were still asleep, at least ostensibly. Seasoned troops. Most of us were inclined to laugh at anything as time ran down. I gestured out toward the thing in the dark and said “Poof!” throwing my hands wide. Everyone laughed.

The time tones were coming every minute and with each one the tension went up a notch. At H minus eight minutes I stopped taking notes. I didn’t want to clutter up the subjectivity of the experience.

At H minus five minutes we turned around on the benches without waiting for the order to do so and covered our eyes. I removed my glasses and held them firmly by the temple piece in my right fist. I buried my eyes is my left elbow and pressed my left arm tight against my face with my right fist. It was dark and lonely in there. I began to tremble.

My stomach muscles knotted up. Then the tenseness spread to my chest muscles. I became irritated at myself and made a definite effort to relax, which relieved the muscular strain but did little to reduce my mind’s tension. I imagined running away, then thought of how trivial would be the increase in distance that I could add by running for the short remaining time, since a twelve mile distance already separated us from the device.

“H minus one minute.”

I pressed my arm tighter against my face.

“H minus thirty seconds.”

The awful, marching inexorability of the thing came over me. Zero time was speeding toward me like a car you cannot dodge.

“H minus twenty seconds. . . H-minus ten seconds. . . five, four, three. . . (I scrunched my eyes shut and pulled my arm in on them). . . two, one, zero.”

What will next week bring, for Doomsday Machines or for the world? Well, we’ll see…! I’ve been reading a wonderfully terrible bit of Survivalist/Prepper fiction from the 1980s and might be able to write it up by next Friday, if the rest of the world doesn’t go to hell…