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The Nuclear Age: Humanity That Stole the Sun
In the winter of 1938, a uranium atom split in two in a Berlin laboratory. What Hahn and Strassmann observed, and what the exiled Meitner and Frisch understood, was the true nature of the force that makes stars shine. Following Einstein's letter, E=mc², and the premonitions the scientists felt, this is the opening of the nuclear century.
- 01 Stealing the Sun ― The Day the Atomic Door Opened In the winter of 1938, a uranium atom split in two in a Berlin laboratory. What Hahn and Strassmann observed, and what the exiled Meitner and Frisch understood, was the true nature of the force that makes stars shine. Following Einstein's letter, E=mc², and the premonitions the scientists felt, this is the opening of the nuclear century.
- 02 The Devil of the Desert ― The Manhattan Project In the wilderness of New Mexico, a town that appeared on no map was born. General Groves and Oppenheimer, minds gathered from around the world, and the Trinity test of July 16, 1945. Following the elation and the dread the scientists felt the moment the first man-made fire lit up the desert—this is the story of the Manhattan Project.
- 03 The Flash of August — Hiroshima and Nagasaki In August 1945, atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki — the first time humanity experienced a single bomb taking an entire city. Estimates of the death toll vary, and views on whether the bombings were justified remain divided. Episode 3 quietly traces what happened that summer, with respect for the survivors and the dead.
- 04 The Balance of Terror — A Peace Secured by Annihilation The Soviet Union catches up to a United States that had monopolized the atomic bomb. Before long, both nations obtain the hydrogen bomb — far surpassing the atomic bomb — and pile up enough warheads to destroy each other many times over. Episode 4 depicts the Cold War arms race, in which the strange logic of 'mutual assured destruction' — preventing war by securing each side's own ruin — came to cover the world.
- 05 Thirteen Days ― The Autumn the World Almost Ended In October 1962, the Soviet Union shipped nuclear missiles to Cuba. A naval blockade, a shot-down reconnaissance plane, and one officer who held back a launch beneath the waves ― this is a fact-based account of the thirteen days when humanity came closest to nuclear war, traced through the brinkmanship of Kennedy and Khrushchev.
- 06 The Spreading Spark ― The Nuclear Club and the Contradiction of the NPT After the US and the USSR came Britain, France, and China, then India and Pakistan. The number of nuclear-armed states grew one after another. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), born to halt this spread, came to hold a contradiction of its own ― the inequality of dividing the world into 'haves' and 'have-nots.' A neutral tracing of the history of the spreading spark.
- 07 The Invisible Rain — The Sea Where Ashes of Death Fell, and a World Awakened On March 1, 1954, one of the most powerful hydrogen bombs in human history detonated at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. The white ash that rained down quietly contaminated the crew of a fishing boat far away, and lands across the world. A story of the price of an invisible rain, and of the people who rose up against it.
- 08 Negotiating to Reduce — How to Let Go of Seventy Thousand Warheads The United States and the Soviet Union, who had known only how to build more, sat down for the first time at a table to reduce their nuclear arms. From SALT to START, and to the INF Treaty that erased an entire category of weapon. We look at the long road of disarmament that advanced with the end of the Cold War, and at the vast arsenal that still remains.
- 09 A Peace Beyond Control — The Age of Proliferation and Terror Even after the Cold War ended, the nuclear threat did not vanish. If anything, the outline of power grew blurred and harder to see. North Korea's nuclear development, the Iranian nuclear question, a black market in nuclear technology said to have been built by a single scientist, and the fear of nuclear terror. In chapter nine we trace, neutrally and within the bounds of public fact and reporting, the proliferation risk that spread quietly after the Cold War.
- 10 Is a World Without Nuclear Weapons a Dream? — Between Abolition and Deterrence Since the door of the atom was opened, humanity has lived with this fire for nearly eighty years. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted in 2017 and entered into force in 2021; the voices of the survivors behind it; and the two ways of thinking -- nuclear deterrence and nuclear abolition -- that still do not meet. In this final chapter we look fairly at the future of nuclear weapons and the choices of humanity, taking neither side.