The great inventor Nikola Tesla said, "Science is but a perversion of itself unless it has as its ultimate goal the betterment of humanity." Did he know about the first nuclear power created the year before he died? I wonder how he might have felt about the atomic bomb. On a still dark morning July 16, 1945, the Northern New Mexico landscape flashed white with the detonation of the first atomic bomb (Calloway 1). Did Tesla turn over in his grave or did he applaud?.
Over 105,000 people were instantly vaporized or killed by the two atomic explosions in Japan and another 94,000 people were injured (The Manhattan Engineer District 10). Were those events a great evil to be tolerated? Science may have perverted itself into an abomination by allowing weapons of mass destruction to be created through its studies. People were burned alive, scarred for life, mutilated beyond recognition, and poisoned afterwards by radioactive fallout. Sheer madness. What kind of science would even think of such a thing to mercilessly harm so many people? Are atomic power plants any better? I wonder what poisons are being bled into our biosphere, the Earth. It could be that our oceans are being polluted by the discharge of toxic cooling water, or that the estuaries near the power plants are being warmed beyond their ability to adapt. The cycle of life in our oceans could be permanently altered. There is also the possibility that the people working in these power plants have undergone a change in their DNA structure that may radically alter the generations that come after them. So much for the betterment of humanity. Is there any proof that nuclear power is cheaper and cleaner than the alternatives? There is also a radioactive residue that we have to deal with. Where do we put that? What is science doing about it?.
That's actually a really good question: "What is science doing about it?" What has science done about it? It could be that the over 105,000 people killed in the world's first nuclear war saved the lives of millions of others.
