Madam, I'm Adam

 

Madam, I’m Adam

 

Most people are familiar with palindrones.

 

Broadly defined, they are defined as a sentence that reads the same front to back, or vice versa. The sentence listed above is the most familiar, but there are others.

 https://wordsmarts.com/palindromes/

However, the purpose of this article is not to discuss the quirks of the English language.

Its purpose is to discuss the atomic bomb, which means the title actually should be “Madam, I’m Atom.

I’m in the process of finishing a book titles “The Devil Reached Toward the Sky’, and it discusses the development of the atomic bomb that was developed by the Manhattan Project. The book itself is 50 pages, but a large portion of the book consists of quotes by the various parties involved – including the survivors of the bombs that were dropped on Japan. As a result, you can safely skim through a lot of it, and still get the basics of the story.

There are plenty of pictures, as well as a few maps.

In addition, there are 5 pages of acknowledgements, 30 pages of notes, and 30 pages devoted to indexing, which would confirm the fact that this is a well reserved boo.

The Manhattan Project involved thousands of people scattered through the country, but the primary production facilities were in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Los Alamos in New Mexico, and Hanford Washington.

Oak Ridge produced enriched uranium, Hanford produced plutonium, and Los Alamos produced the bomb itself.

 The project cost $2 billion in 1945 dollars, or about $30 billion in todays.

If you don’t want to spend a lot of time reading the book, watching the movie “Oppenheimer” provides a shorter summary, but you would have to sit through if for 3 hours to see the whole thing.

Towards the end of the book is a discussion of the morality of the project, as well as it’s necessitated. In the then, though, decision to drop the bomb actually saved both American and Japanese lives.

There are two factors that define the legacy of the bomb.

1)    The project created some terrifying environmental problems. Even today, the production facility in Harford is considered most polluted site in the country.

2)   The project eventually led to the arms race. The link below lists the various types of weapons. 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

Today, there are 13,805 in various counties around the world, but 90% of them are owned by Russia and the United States.

Treaties between Russian and the United States have reduced the number of weapons from their peak in the 1960’s, when Mutual Assured Destruction was thought to be a deterrent.

The weapons that were dropped on Japan had an explosive capacity of 20,000 tons of TNT, roughly equivalent to 15 megatons, or 15 kilotons.

The Nike missiles held in the United States range for 2 kilotons to 40 kilotons.

 Eventually, the participants in the Manhattan Project came to the conclusion that the awesome power of the atom could be used for peaceful purposes.

The United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by the U.S. Congress to foster and control the  peacetime development of atomic science and technology. President Harry S. Truman signed the McMahon/Atomic Energy Act on August 1, 1946, transferring the control of atomic energy from military to civilian hands, effective on January 1, 1947.This shift gave the members of the AEC complete control of the plants, laboratories, equipment, and personnel assembled during the war to produce the atomic bomb.

An increasing number of critics during the 1960s charged that the AEC's regulations were insufficiently rigorous in several important areas, including radiation protection standards, nuclear reactor safety, plant siting, and environmental protection.

By 1974, the AEC's regulatory programs had come under such strong attack that the U.S. Congress decided to abolish the AEC. The AEC was abolished by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, which assigned its functions to two new agencies: the Energy Research and Development Administration and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. On August 4, 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed into law the Department of Energy Organization Act, which created the Department of Energy. The new agency assumed the responsibilities of the Federal Energy Administration (FEA), the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), the Federal Power Commission (FPC), and various other federal agencies.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Atomic_Energy_Commission

(An interesting sidenote is that when Rick Perry was appointed to lead the Department of Energy in 2017, he was unaware of the fact that the department was involved in nuclear weapons.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Perry

Eventually, countries around world started to build nuclear power plants.

Ironically, Russia was the first country to use nuclear energy – in 1951.

Nuclear power plants operate in 31 countries and generate about a tenth of the world's electricity. Most are in Europe, North America and East Asia. The United States is the largest producer of nuclear power, while France has the largest share of electricity generated by nuclear power, at about 65%.

The largest nuclear power plant in America is located in a state that could also be a leader in solar energy – Arizona. California produces the most energy from solar sources. Arizona is third, right behind North Carolina.

Some countries operated nuclear reactors in the past but have no operating nuclear power plants at present. Among them, Italy closed all of its nuclear stations by 1990 and nuclear power has since been discontinued because of the 1987 referendums. Lithuania closed its nuclear station at 2009 because it was of the dangerous RBMK reactor type. Kazakhstan phased out nuclear power in 1999 but is planning to reintroduce it possibly by 2035 under referendum. Germany operated nuclear plants since 1960 until the completion of its phaseout policy in 2023. Austria (Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant) and the Philippines (Bataan Nuclear Power Plant) never started to use their first nuclear plants that were completely built.

Sweden and Belgium originally had phase-out policies however they have now moved away from their original plans. The Philippines relaunched their nuclear program on February 28, 2022 and may try to operate the 1984 mothballed Bataan Plant.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country

 Although nuclear energy is considered to be very same, there have been a few instances where things went wrong. The most prominent examples are Three Mile Island in 1979, and Chernobyl in 1986.

“Midnight in Chernobyl “goes into more details on the causes of the catastrophe.

Conditions have improved since 1986 so that, as of today, you can buy vodka produced in the area near the site.

 It’s called Atomic vodka, and it has had GLOWING reviews.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49251471

 It’s up to you if you want to read the book, but if you like history as much as I do, I think that you will enjoy it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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what might have been

 

World War II resulted in an estimated 70 to 85 million fatalities, making it the deadliest conflict in human history. This number represents roughly 3% of the global population at the time. The majority of these deaths were civilians, with estimates ranging from 50 to 56 million, while military deaths are estimated between 21 and 25 million. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

Although most Americans are familiar with the cause of the war in Europe, less understand is WHY Japan became an aggressor in the war.

The link below (from the History channel) provides more answers, and some of them go back nearly 50 years:

 https://www.history.com/articles/why-did-japan-attack-pearl-harbor

There are a number of factors that led to the wars in both hemispheres, but a complete analysis of all of them would necessitate an article that could easily require at least 200 pages (with lots of notes) – which is why it is a project for another time.

In brief, though, here are a few of the factors that contributed to the wars:

Henry Ford – author of “The American Jew”

Eugenics – a course of study that first started in 1893

The treaty of Versailles

The League of Nations – although a total of 63 nations joined the league between 1920 and 1946, the United States was not one of them

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_the_League_of_Nations

 Neville Chamberlain (“peace in our time”)

The burning of the Reichstag on February 27, 1933

The appointment of Adolf Hitler as chancellor on January 30, 1933 (he became president by decree in August of 1934)

The Bank of International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_for_International_Settlements

If all of the factors listed above had been handled differently, it is entirely possible that WWII would not have occurred at all.

 Although a full analysis of all of the times listed above would be an interesting exercise, a more meaningful use of your times is to look at where we are today.

For starters, read the definition of a narcissistic personality.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/conditions/narcissistic-personality-disorder

You’ll quickly realize that Donald Trump “checks all the boxes”

The nest step is to look at the 14 characteristics of fascism:

https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/fasci14chars.html

Again, Trump “checks all of the boxes”

The political news that we all get becomes more disturbing by the day, since we are rapidly becoming very similar to the German of the 1930’s. The link below provides more details:

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2025/04/lets-pretend-that-we-are-germany-of.html

I recently finished reading a book titled “The School that Escaped the Nazis “, written by Deborah Cadbury.

In brief, it is the story of brave German woman named Anna Essinger who successfully moved her school in Berlin to England as the Nazis gained more power in Germany. If you are interested in reading the book, I have listed some of the relevant pages and topics below

Page 1 – the ghettos in Poland in 1942

Page 5 – Anna Essinger’s awakening

Page 13 – the rally in Anna’s home town of Ulm in November of 1932 – Hitler was greeted with large enthusiastic crowds, some of whom believe that Hitler was sent by God (does this remind you of the Trump rallies in his first term?)

Page 15 – the burning of the Reichstag

Page 17 – the establishment of the first concentration camp in Dachau (which has a striking resemblance to Alligator Alcatraz in Florida)

Page 23 – the role of the Quakers

Page 28 – the opening of the new school in England

Page 34 – the burning of Jewish books on July 15, 1933

Page 37 – the capitulation to Hitler (much like the Republican party of today)

Page 57 – the established of Bunce Court

Page 66- the Nuremburg Laws

Page 70 – the rise of Nazi ideas

Page 82 – the rise of the Gestapo

Page 95 – the establishment of the SS

Page 99 – the alliance with Mussolini

Page 106 – the Munich Agreement of 1938 and Kristallnacht

 Miss Cadbury does an excellent job of covering the atrocities of the Nazi era, but she also provides more depth to how the survivors of those atrocities were able to return to lives that most of us would call “normal”.

 Although I am opposed to almost all of Trump’s ideas, the one that infuriates me the most is the role of ICE. Like the Gestapo, officials of ICE have been kidnapping innocent people from a variety of places, often without due process.

The disgusting bill that was just rammed through congress on July 4 increased funding for ICE to $175 billion, which is more than the military budget of every country in the world except for Russia and the United States. As of today, there are roughly 20,000 people employed by ICE, but there are plans to hire 10,000 more. The Gestapo employed 32,000 people. In 1934, the population of Germany was 79,000 people, which meant that the Gestapo terrorized roughly half of the population of Germany.

The architect of Trump’s immigration policies is his deputy chief of staff, a truly evil man named Stephen Miller. Not surprisingly, Miller owns stock in Palintar, the data processing firm started by Peter Thiel in 2003.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir_Technologies

The company has been criticized for its role in expanding government surveillance using artificial intelligence and facial recognition software. Former employees and critics say the company's contracts under the second Trump Administration, which enable deportations and the aggregation of sensitive data on Americans across administrative agencies, are problematic. Since Stephen Miller owns somewhere between $100,00 and $250,000 in Palintar stock, he benefits financially whenever someone is deported 

 

I wrote an article about Miller in April of 2019. If you read it again, you will have noticed that he bears a striking resemblance to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister.

 https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-nazi-in-white-houe.html

So, where do we go from here?

So far, the courts have been able to rein in some of Trump’s excesses, but congress has been unable to exert much control due to the fact that both parts of congress are controlled by the Republican Party. Since their grip on power is extremely thin, the 2026 midterms have become very important. That also explains why Texas and a few other states are thinking about modifying legislative maps now instead of 2030 – and it also is why Gavin Newsome and other Democratic governors are fighting back.

For now, all the rest of us can do is to stay informed, stay calm, and protest whenever we can. Just as importantly, try to focus on something besides politics as much as you can so that you don’t go completely crazy.