A nuclear physicist at Illinois State University is tackling some uncomfortable truths about the global stockpile of nuclear weapons.
Physics professor Matt Caplan seeks to raise awareness about the threat of nuclear war with a public seminar series called “Twelve Thousand Bombs,” so named for the total number of nuclear weapons worldwide—enough to destroy the globe eight times over.
The series kicked off Feb. 6 with a screening of Smriti Keshari’s “The Bomb” at the Normal Theater, with Keshari on hand for a Q&A after the screening. The hourlong arthouse film, set to a pulsating electronic score by The Acid, premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2016 and is being repackaged for screenings on college campuses.
Caplan intentionally opened the series with the film to ignite the public to “feel something” before diving into a list of prestigious speakers who will visit ISU periodically through April. MIT scientist Natalie Montoya will visit ISU later this month to discuss full-scale nuclear war simulations. Additional speakers include experts in arms control and the consequences of weapons testing in rural New Mexico.
“The Bomb” begins with stunning images of military parades—demonstrating the pageantry behind nuclear weapons in ways unseen on American soil.
“It is intended to show to the world we have these, and therefore are to be taken seriously,” Caplan said in an interview.
Nine countries have nuclear weapons. The United States and Russia hold the largest share of the world’s 12,000 bombs, with additional stockpiles in the United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. The United States is the only country in the world to have used nuclear bombs as weapons of war on another country, with the 1945 bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II.
“The United States has a very complex and nuanced relationship with its nuclear weapons,” Caplan said. “We think in the United States that nuclear weapons are these normal things and it’s really not. It’s these few powers that are trying to extort the rest of the planet into behaving the way that they want.”
Rather than a literal threat, nuclear stockpiles pose an existential and psychological threat, and are primarily an assertion of power.
“The way the military often talks about nuclear weapons is they say we use nuclear weapons every day, because nuclear weapons exist to then deter nuclear attacks from other nations,” Caplan said.
Caplan draws a comparison to the debate on gun ownership, in which some Americans believe the best way to protect oneself from guns is to have one. That approach becomes very volatile very quickly when dealing with weapons of mass destruction.
“There’s this Cold War mentality of a full-scale nuclear exchange — and that would be with Russia,” Caplan said. “Russia is the only other power on par with the U.S. There’s a kind of escalation that happens where one country invades another, and then threatens another country for offering military aid to the invaded country. Then there are strange movements of nuclear weapons as a signal. This kind of saber rattling is exactly what we see happening in real time right now.”
Duck and cover
Caplan places the severity of the threat of nuclear war on par with other trepidatious moments such as the Cuban Missile Crisis — and it is a major reason why he created the “Twelve Thousand Bombs” series. Public service campaigns of the 1950s like “duck and cover” and tutorials for making family bomb shelters seem silly today. And while such messaging was intended to reassure people, it often stoked fear and paranoia about nuclear war.
“Some of it is very similar to climate messaging,” Caplan said, “where it’s presented as an individual moral failing rather than a systemic and structural issue. If we accept that nuclear weapons must exist, at some level, are we admitting to ourselves that their use is inevitable?”
As a nuclear physicist, Caplan admits fascination with the science and ingenuity that goes into making atom bombs. Still, the American public’s lack of knowledge and preparation, and perceived ambivalence to the threat of nuclear war gives him pause. Steps toward disarming — and discouraging countries such as Iran from pursuing nuclear programs—will not come from ducking and covering, he said, but rather placing collective pressure on legislators and world leaders. Such action is seen abroad in multi-country consortiums pushing for disarmament.
A side effect of such action, Caplan hopes, would be for Congress to acknowledge the harm caused by nuclear test programs.
“The legacy of testing is one of the most harmful things that came out of the Cold War,” he said. One example is the indigenous people of New Mexico exposed to radioactive fallout following the Trinity Project, which developed the United States’ first atom bomb.
“’Oppenheimer’ was seen by half the country, and it doesn’t highlight the harm that was done to U.S. citizens by tests on U.S. soil,” Caplan said. “The United States is one of the most nuked nations in the world because of the history of testing. Hundreds of thousands of people have suffered cancer as a result of this fallout. Those are civilian casualties. If I can put a spotlight on this, then that’s a success.”
The “Twelve Thousand Bombs” seminar series continues at 5 p.m. Feb. 27 at the Center for Visual Arts, 401 S. School St., with “Designing Doomsday: The Considerations and Calculations Underpinning Nuclear War Simulations,” featuring Natalie Montoya, a scientist from MIT’s Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy. The series is free, with the full schedule listed online.
