Eighty Years on the Edge

Thank you for your series of articles on nuclear warfare.

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I was especially moved by the essays on Japanese internment and Kurt Vonnegut, but all of them led me to wonder why we humans seem so incapable of learning from the past.

Noah Hawley was correct to note that our current age is rife with innovations that are technically sweet but have rarely been subjected to the question Just because we can, should we? I wonder what Vonnegut would say if he were alive today.

Ellen Vliet Cohen

One question is not answered in The Atlantic's August issue: What can really be done to rid the world of nuclear weapons?

Perhaps it is time that this topic reentered public discussion.

My proposal is that the 186 countries that don't have nuclear weapons assemble and draft an ultimatum to the countries that do, stating that unless the nuclear-armed states get rid of their weapons, they, the nonnuclear-armed states, will band together to conduct the research and development necessary for each of them to have their own weapons. That's it. Risky? Yes. But is it riskier than the present situation? Perhaps not. Ross Andersen, in “The New Arms Race,” predicts that the nuclear club may double under existing conditions. Staying on the present course assures us of only one thing: that we will eventually, by intention, misjudgment, human or technological error, or just plain bad luck accomplish our mutual assured destruction. The ultimatum risks nothing more than that.

Red Slider Sacramento, Calif.

How can I describe the feeling I had when I turned to “The Light of a Man-Made Star” and saw the photographs from Michael Light’s 100 Suns? First among them is a photograph of the Hood test, to which I, as a small child, was exposed. My father, a mineral exploration geologist interested in uranium, had brought my brother, mother, and me to Nevada that summer.