The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists needs a history lesson

Some actual atomic scientists on their governing board might help

I would like to acknowledge my friend of five decades, Bob Compton, for his inspiration on this topic. Our conversation earlier this week occurred at an opportune time to inform this column. Thanks, “Bad Bob.”

This week I came across a piece in the Wall Street Journal, “Ukraine War Moves ‘Doomsday Clock’ 10 Seconds Closer to Midnight.” The article contained hyperbolic claims from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that the world is now closer to annihilation than at anytime since the invention of the “Doomsday Clock” at the dawn of the nuclear age, in the 1940s.

According to the BAS, we currently find ourselves closer than ever to the brink of extinction due to the situation in Ukraine, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, future pandemics and climate change.

Well allow me to retort.

All of this is completely nonsensical. It makes little sense from any reasonable perspective: scientific, social or otherwise. But it especially makes no sense from a historical perspective.

I was having a difficult time understanding why the BAS would issue such an absurd statement until I went to their website and discovered that the organization has strayed far from its early roots. The BAS, plainly stated, has gone to seed. There are no atomic scientists among the governing board. The board members are, in fact, a hodgepodge of corporate business types, journalists and environmental activists.

Ex-California Governor Jerry Brown is the Executive Chair. That, right there, tells you most of what you need to know in evaluating the sensational hype.

This BAS claim, which implies that we are now closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever, is based on scant evidence. It's the epitome of “the sky is falling” and it flies in the face of history. The situation in Ukraine is, indeed, very serious. But we've been in serious situations vis-à-vis nuclear conflict before. The entire Cold War, for instance, was dangerous - and lasted for decades.

Last spring I wrote about my view of the eventual end game in Ukraine not long after the war began. In The Goodbye Look, I made the case that Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, is far more likely to be ousted in a coup than to be allowed to start a nuclear war. I still maintain, fear-mongering by the BAS aside, that his ouster is the likely outcome of the current conflict.

The BAS is using the “Doomsday Clock” to push a comprehensive anti-nuclear narrative. And while people like Jerry Brown and those of his ilk have a near infinite capacity for ignoring facts inconvenient to whatever anecdotes they are hawking, I'm hoping that you do not.

In that spirit, let's review some relevant history from the 20^th Century and discern from it what we may.

We've been much closer to nuclear war before. In fact we've been involved in one. WWII ended when we forced Japan, the last warring member of the Axis alliance, to surrender, by dropping a Uranium gun-trigger bomb over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and a Plutonium implosion bomb over Nagasaki three days later. One can't get much closer to nuclear war than actually watching the mushroom cloud grow in the rear-view mirror of a B-29 Superfortress.

But in a gesture of generosity to the BAS, let's take dropping two atomic bombs on Japan off the table and just limit discussion to events which occurred during the Cold War, generally taken to have begun with various conflicts between NATO and the Warsaw Pact after WWII and lasting until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991.

During the Cold War, the United States and it's allies engaged the Communist Bloc in a series of proxy wars across the world: the Berlin Blockade, the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, among many others. The race to the moon in the 1960's was an extension of this conflict which took place in space. All of these conflicts involved belligerents with large, potent nuclear arsenals.

These were decades of dangerous times. But perhaps the most dangerous moment of the Cold War occurred in the Caribbean sea near the end of October 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, where Soviet diesel-electric submarine B-59, which was equipped with a nuclear torpedo, was being depth-charged by pursuing American ships. The depth charges were of low explosive power and intended only to force the submarine to surface. But the situation was nonetheless extremely tense.

Conditions onboard the B-59 were grim. The submarine had not been in contact with Moscow for the better part of a week. While being pursued they'd run too deep to monitor radio traffic. The sub's batteries were extremely low. It was hot and the sub was filled with foul air. The crew had no idea if a war had broken out or not. All they knew is that they were being pursued by American surface ships and that depth-charges were going off around them.

The senior officers on B-59 had to decide what to do sans any guidance from Moscow. The captain of the submarine, Valentin Grigoryevich Savitsky, was convinced that war had broken out and wanted to launch the nuclear torpedo. The political officer, Ivan Semyonovich, agreed with Savitsky. But there happened, by fate, to be a third senior officer on the B-59 - detachment commander Vasily Arkhipov.

Protocol required that all three senior officers on the B-59 consent before the “special weapon” could be deployed. Arkhipov refused to consent to the launch. He convinced Savitsky, with some effort, to stand down. The B-59 eventually surfaced and was ordered to return to Moscow.

Vasily Arkhipov might just be the man who saved the world. Imagine being on a submarine at great depth to avoid detection, deep in enemy territory. It's hot and the air is foul. You are being hunted by enemy ships. Two out of three senior officers believe that WWIII has broken out and want to launch the submarine's nuclear weapon. You are the lone holdout.

That's the situation faced by Vasily Arkhipov on October 27, 1962. I don’t think it’s any exaggeration at all to consider him a hero for refusing to start WWIII.

Arkhipov had no knowledge of this, but our paths nearly crossed. While he was trying to talk us all out of Armageddon, I was about 200 miles away in south Florida, six years old and in first grade, hiding under my desk in duck and cover drills. I'm really, really glad that Mr. Arkhipov held his ground.

Now I don't know about you, but but that seems like a pretty close call to me. And it certainly seems closer than what we are dealing with right now. Ukraine is humiliating Russian forces and the futility in their conflict in Ukraine is becoming plain for all to see. Propaganda aside, I don't think that Putin can last much longer.

It's gotten so bad for Russia that Ukraine has the distinction of being the only country to ever win a major naval engagement without a Navy. And though Putin has done about the best job possible of surrounding himself with loyal sycophants, I think that the gig will be up before he has a chance to deploy a nuke.

At least I sure hope so.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, arranging and playing music. His writing on Substack, “Howlin' at the Moon in ii-V-I” may be found at martinhackworth.substack.com. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth