Nuclear Tourism

Abstract

This essay describes a new post‐war pilgrim—the nuclear tourist who visits the sites where the first nuclear bombs were created and tested. Some such pilgrims are history enthusiasts, some are impelled by diffusely patriotic impulses, and others go to protest nuclear weapons. All go to “imagine the real”—or at least their insufficient version of it. The 50th anniversary of the first nuclear test drew thousands of these nuclear tourists to New Mexico where contesting narratives of commemoration mingled and clashed. The article explores ways in which the testing grounds in New Mexico are comparable with other sites of disaster because they resist “proper” notions of reverence.

Acknowledgements

Some passages of this article first appeared in the Livermore Independent, 22 September, 1999.

Notes

Tourists can also drive Ukrainian tanks and armored personnel carriers, paying extra to fire the cannon, and can fly Su‐27 fighter‐bombers. Ukraine, which has opened 15 military bases to foreign tourists, hopes to attract 1,000 visitors a month, using their fees to boost its military budget. Russia also sells flights in fighter jets while China markets sessions firing machine guns and anti‐aircraft guns to foreign tourists.

I have argued elsewhere that nuclear weapons are sublime in the sense that the 18th century philosopher Edmund Burke used that word. For Burke an object was sublime when it excited an awe and wonder that was tinged with terror. Drawing on Burke’s notion of the sublime, the historian of technology David Nye has argued that, if we once sought the sublime in such wonders of the natural world as Niagara Falls, in the age of industry and science we have increasingly looked for the sublime in such technological marvels as the launching of the space shuttle and above‐ground nuclear testing (Gusterson 1999, pp. 61–66; Gusterson 1996; Nye 1994).

Although Teller, who is widely rumored to be the inspiration for Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove character, is often given the moniker “Father of the H‐Bomb,” reality was more complicated: the key breakthrough in the design process was really made by Teller’s Los Alamos colleague, Stanislaw Ulam, who was collaborating with Teller (Rhodes 1995; Broad 1992; Blumberg & Panos 1990).

Although it is often assumed that the name “Trinity” is a transparent reference from Christian theology, Oppenheimer, who chose the name, later wrote, “Why I chose the name is not clear, but I know what thoughts were on my mind. There is a poem of John Donne, written just before his death, which I know and love. From it a quotation:

As West and East

In all flatt maps—and I am one—are one

So death doth touch the Resurrection.”

Rhodes suggests, following through the theme of resurrection, that Oppenheimer saw the bomb as a “weapon of death that might also end war and redeem mankind” (Rhodes 1988, pp. 571–72).