Welcome to DOOMSDAY MACHINES
Post-apocalyptic Road Trips, End of the World-building, and Interesting Times
Welcome to Doomsday Machines, a Substack newsletter/blog about the post-apocalyptic imagination in fact and fiction.
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Doomsday Machines will have a weekly post in one of the following categories, each of which are designated as separate sub-newsletters:
Post-Apocalyptic Road Trips: Discussions of self-consciously fictional media (novels, films, games, etc.) portraying post-apocalyptic worlds, analyzed for their themes, tropes, and historical context.
Interesting Times: Profiles and analysis of historical documents, events, plans, and so on, relating to apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic conditions, which are not self-consciously fictional (however “imaginary” or “unreal” they may be). For example, discussions of US government nuclear war plans, or nuclear war survival plans.
End of the World-Building: Posts related to the development of the Oregon Road ‘83 post-apocalyptic video game, ranging from things that are very strictly in the category of “game design,” as well as things that are really about creating a coherent conception of the underlying world of the game.
Doominations: Conversations between me and various smart, interesting people I’ve met over the years who generally think about some aspects of the end of the world for a living. You know, as one does. (Paid subscribers will receive access to the audio — and video, when available — of the unabridged conversations as a bonus podcast.)
There will also be Mutually Assured Distractions (brief posts on interesting imagery — post-apocalyptic Pinterest) sprinkled in along with these regular sections.
If all of that becomes too overwhelming, you can turn on or off your subscriptions to any one part of the blog by going to the newsletters page. But I think you should give them all a try first, even if you suspect some parts might be more interesting to you than others — they’re all part of a coherent whole.
Who am I?
I’m Alex Wellerstein, and I’ll be writing most of the posts here, and editing/curating any guest posts. I’m a historian of nuclear weapons with a PhD in the History of Science.
I am a professor in the Science and Technology Studies program at the Stevens Institute of Technology, an engineering school in Hoboken, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from Manhattan. I teach courses on the history of science, among other topics of interest to me.
I am the author of Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 2021), and have written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Harper’s Magazine, among other popular and scholarly venues.
I’m also a computer programmer with experience in graphic design, web development, and database design. I’m the creator of the NUKEMAP. I’m working on a number of other digital projects right now, including a post-apocalyptic video game and an open-source nuclear war simulator. All of which will have their places on Doomsday Machines, and the work on which is what inspired me to create it.
I’m also in the process of writing my second book (on Harry Truman and nuclear weapons), set to come out in summer 2025 from HarperCollins.
You can read more about me on my personal webpage, if you want.
Why do this at all?
This started out as a vague idea about making a development blog (devblog) for the post-apocalyptic video game I have been working on for several years (Oregon Road ‘83). But as I started sketching out the kinds of topics that could be covered by such a thing, I realized I had a lot more to say that any mere devblog really justified, and that the very idea of writing up a bunch of relatively small pieces of this sort really jazzed me up. I was talking my ideas over with Andy Adams, and he mentioned Substack as a possibility. I thought that sounded like something worth exploring, and here we are.
I have another blog, Restricted Data: A Nuclear History Blog, which I’ve kept going (less over time) since 2011. I’m still planning on posting things there, occasionally, but the genre of that blog is quite different from what I’m imagining this one to be, and over time the posts I’ve written on there have tended to be much longer, more ruminative, more “serious history,” and so on. Which is good and fine. But I think I’ve felt weighed down by it over time. Doomsday Machines feels like an excuse to “reinvent” my online writing, collaborate with some interesting people (and students), and the whole thing has me energized and excited.
Why “Doomsday Machines”?
Coming up with a good name for something like this proved quite difficult. There are a lot of possible names out there. I asked a lot of people for suggestions, and got some good ones, but nothing that clicked. I realized that I wanted something that was immediately legible, was simple and easy to remember, was a twist on an already-familiar phrase, and encompassed the wide variety of content that I wanted to write about — not just nukes, not just fiction, not just history, but “all of the above.”
So when Doomsday Machines popped into my head while on a long car trip, it immediately grabbed me. It checked all of the boxes above.
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A singular “Doomsday Machine” is already an interesting idea, à la Dr. Strangelove and Herman Kahn: an end-of-the-world invention, a gigantic bomb, or even just an evocative term for the entire apparatus that is required to make nuclear war a credible, realistic possibility.
But making it plural gave it that little twist, and provokes so many immediate questions! What machines are we talking about? Are we talking about the nuclear weapons themselves? The nuclear arsenals of the world? The states and the weapons complexes which produce them? The scientists, the technicians, the soldiers, or the politicians whose efforts make them real?
Or could it refer it to the popular imagery (including Dr. Strangelove) that has shaped how we think about these weapons and threats over the decades? What about the creators of the novels, films, songs, paintings, or games that shape our understanding of possible Doomsdays? What about the consumers of such media?
Or are we all Doomsday Machines, to one degree or another? Are we not all, in our own little ways, contributing towards an endless march towards extinction, in the same way that our individual lives all march towards death?
Could be, could be! In short, the name seemed to encompass everything this newsletter was going to be about.
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The only reservation I had was that the late Daniel Ellsberg, who I knew, had published The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner in 2017. Was it too close of an association? I decided it is not, as the titles are different-enough when taken as a whole that I don’t think anyone will get confused that they’re the same “product,” and the term “Doomsday Machine” is sufficiently “generic” that dozens of books carry it in their title.
But if you are confused, let me be clear that this site is not the same thing as Dan’s book, at all. They both take their cue from Dr. Strangelove and Herman Kahn, and they both involve discussions of nuclear weapons and nuclear war, but Dan’s book is mostly a memoir of his own (fascinating and important) experiences, and this is going to be a cornucopia of topics. If you find this blog interesting, you would also find Dan’s book interesting and worth a read, but they are not connected in any way.
What is your subscription model? Do I have to pay? What do I get if I do pay?
Assuming no major and unanticipated change in circumstances, the main content of the site will always be provided free and without any paywall.
Paid subscriptions are available, however, as a means for people to give some “extra support” to this site and its contributors.
Paid subscribers will also get access to two “paid-only” things:
The full podcast audio (and video, when available) of any interviews that are part of the Doominations conversation series.
Access to Wellerstein’s Weekly Wasteland Wrap-up, a very informal newsletter of miscellaneous thoughts, ideas, updates, news, links, images, media, whatever, that I came across that week and thought was interesting-enough to share with other people. Think of it as as a throwback to what blogging used to be in its early days.
The monthly paid subscription rate is the lowest that Substack allows me to set it to, and I’ve set the annual rate to 50% of that. If you are dying to see the paid content and would find it to be a financial burden, just get in touch with me.
There is also an additional tier, called the Interesting Times Gang, where people can give more money for an annual subscription, just to be extra supportive.1 These generous souls will get all of the above plus a special and unique (physical) thank-you gifts once per year.
There is absolutely no expectation that people will become paid subscribers, and no pressure to do so. The above extras are offered up as a means of a “thank you” for supporting the site, and are not offered up as “products” that you will be “buying” (and the higher expectations of quality that might come with that approach — though I am a perfectionist and a workaholic, so they won’t be slapped together). Think of them as an attempt to balance out my own aversion to reading or writing paywalled content, with my desire to feel like anyone who did want to pay for content ought to get something for it.
Money from paid subscriptions will be used to offset any development costs (like the software subscription needed for recording and transcribing conversations and the costs incurred in acquiring obscure and out of print media), and, hopefully, to allow me to compensate people who write for the project for their contributions.2
If you’re not a subscriber, you can subscribe using the button below.
And remember that the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret! So if you end up enjoying it, make sure to tell the world, eh!?
“Interesting Times Gang” is an homage to Iain M. Banks’ sci-fi novel Excession, where it applies to a group of hyper-intelligent machine intelligences who are part an informal, secret group that keeps an eye out for civilization-scale threats. I have always wanted to use it for something, and this seemed appropriate.
This is a labor of love and I suspect it is not likely to make any actual profit. I am assuming that anyone who writes for me is similarly willing to volunteer their time to the project because they think it is interesting, fun, and maybe important. If you are interested in writing something for Doomsday Machines, you can get in touch, but the odds are very low I will take you up on it unless you’re someone I already know personally, because I don’t like the idea of exploiting strangers. If you have ideas for something that somebody else should write, by all means, send them as e-mails, comments, what have you!
In describing what his blog will include, Wellerstein writes, "Conversations between me and various smart, interesting people I’ve met over the years who generally think about some aspects of the end of the world for a living."
First, I would love to see the nuclear weapons community establish an online discussion forum for this purpose. The public would benefit greatly from being able to find all the nuclear weapons experts and leading activists all in one place. Perhaps one of your future articles might explore this possibility?
Second, we might address the subject of experts, those who do intellectual work for a living, particularly in regards to nuclear weapons.
For the sake of this discussion we might divide problems in to two broad categories, 1) those problems that can be solved with realistic and reasonable conventional thinking, and 2) those that can't.
When a problem can be solved with realistic and reasonable conventional thinking experts are very useful because they have the most information on a subject. The experts have studied their topic in great depth, and so it's logical for us to look to them for solutions.
When a problem can't be solved with realistic and reasonable conventional thinking, the experts are at a disadvantage, because they typically aren't in a position to publicly explore those ideas beyond what's considered realistic and reasonable. Publicly exploring ideas considered unrealistic and unreasonable can put the expert's most valuable business asset, their professional reputation, at risk. Being branded a crackpot can end an expert's career.
What we see in the case of nuclear weapons is a consistent failure of realistic and reasonable conventional thinking to meet this threat for 75 years. The technical, diplomatic, military, academic experts keep writing their books and articles, and leading activists keep organizing and protesting, all in a realistic and reasonable professional manner. And none of it ever works.
Point being, if a conversation on nuclear weapons is limited to those who do this intellectual work for a living, such a conversation seems doomed from the start to be limited to that set of ideas which have consistently failed to meet the nuclear weapons threat for 75 years.
There may be no solution to the nuclear threat. Perhaps we doomed, and nothing can be done. That could be the reality.
But if we are going to keep fighting to escape that fate it seems rational to turn our attention away from that which has never worked. We may need to explore ideas which have been judged to be unrealistic and unreasonable. A conversation containing only professionals may not be in a position to do that.
We might consider this structural challenge to nuclear weapons solutions.
1) The experts have the most information, but their careers may require them to limit their analysis to realistic and reasonable ideas which have never worked.
2) Amateurs are free to explore in any direction, but even if they were to come up with some good ideas, they don't have the badges of authority needed to be heard.
Conclusion: If a solution to nuclear weapons lies in the realm of ideas generally considered to be unrealistic and unreasonable, nobody at any level is in a position to sell those ideas.
Dr. Wellerstein, here's an idea that I hope you'll find relevant to your Doomsday Machines blog.
What exactly is the Doomsday Machine that threatens this civilization? The answer to that question seems remarkably simple. Violent men. Or to put it more precisely, we might define the Doomsday Machine threat as being the marriage between violent men and an accelerating knowledge explosion.
To illustrate, imagine that all the nukes were to magically vanish, perhaps say, abducted by aliens in an attempt to save us from ourselves. What would happen next is that violent men would immediately turn their attention to obtaining other mass chaos tools. And before you know it, we'd be right back where we are now. Point being, it's not really the destructive weapons which threaten us, but those who would use them. And that's violent men.
Once the Doomsday Machine threat is properly understood, the next obvious thought to pop in to our minds is likely to be, ok then, so let's get rid of the violent men. Sounds good of course, but there's one little problem. No society anywhere in the world in all of human history has figured out how to keep the many peaceful men while ridding itself of the minority of violent men. No religion, ideology, philosophy, political structure or system of law or anything else has ever liberated a human society from the threat presented by violent men.
Upon recognizing this long history we find ourselves confronting a very inconvenient reality.
1) To have any men is to have violent men.
2) To have violent men in the 21st century is to be traveling a road towards civilization collapse.
EVIDENCE: There is no credible reason to believe we can keep nuclear weapons around forever and they will never be used. And.... We have exactly no clue of how to get rid of these weapons. The nuclear weapons threat is more dangerous today than it was on the day I was born in 1952 at the dawn of the nuclear weapons era. We aren't making progress, we're going backwards, ever deeper in to the threat.
Here's another way to understand the Doomsday Machine problem. We insist on developing revolutionary technologies, but stubbornly reject doing the kind of revolutionary thinking that revolutionary technologies require.
If we were willing to crawl out of this dead end conceptual box, what might such revolutionary thinking look like?
In a world without male humans, there would be no violent men. Unspeakable suffering would be lifted off the backs of the innocent at every level of society all over the world. Vast new resources no longer needed for managing male violence would become available for reinvestment in life affirming projects like health care and education.
A world without men would still experience real problems, including some violence. But the scale of violence would be so radically reduced that it might be reasonable to claim that something very close to the long dreamed of world peace had finally be realized.
World peace by whatever means are necessary, or world destruction. These are our options. Pick one from the above list.
The above proposal is EXTREMELY unpopular because the modern world is clinging to a child like fantasy that we can continue to give violent men ever more powerful tools without limit and that somehow things will turn out ok. We want the vast powers the knowledge explosion offers us, but we don't wish to pay for them. We want everything to change, while also staying the same as it's always been. And if we keep this kind of insane brain dead thinking going, there is no future for this civilization.
A longer and more detailed presentation of this argument can be found in print here:
https://www.tannytalk.com/s/peace
Some of those articles have been converted in to video presentations here:
https://hippytoons.com/p/world-peace-table-of-contents
If there is to be escape from the Doomsday Machine, that escape will start in understanding what the Doomsday Machine actually is.
To any reader who made it this far, thanks for listening!