Ok, That’s Far Enough Towards Nuclear War

Put your nukes down everybody and back away slowly.

Photo by Gabriel Dalton on Unsplash.

In the year 2023 — an enlightened Age of Information launched by a computer game called “Oregon Trail” in 1971 — everyone knows about the Manhattan Project.

But that wasn’t always the case.

The Manhattan Project was led by the United States with the participation of the United Kingdom and Canada and its purpose was to develop nuclear weapons before the Nazis could. The project resulted in the world’s first nuclear bombs, two of which were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Before 1945, the Manhattan Project was top-secret — highly classified. Not only were those working on the project sworn to secrecy, but many also didn’t even know the purpose of their work until after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Thousands of scientists, engineers, and support staff from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada worked on the project, as well as many contractors and facilitators across the United States.

The secrecy around the project is understandable, from a national security standpoint and a human one. How many of those thousands, knowing the truth, could have gone through with it?