"It worked."
— What J. Robert Oppenheimer actually said, according to his brother
"Now we're all sons-of-bitches."
— Ken Bainbridge, test director of the first atomic explosion
"My god, what have we done?"
— Robert Lewis, co-pilot of the Enola Gay, upon first seeing the mushroom cloud rising over Hiroshima
"The arms race is a race between nuclear weapons and ourselves."
— Einsteins Monsters, "Introduction"
"Every thinking person fears nuclear war and every technological nation plans for it. Everyone knows it's madness, and every country has an excuse."
"But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud
For man's been endowed with a mushroom shaped cloud.
And we know for certain that some lucky day
Someone will set the spark off
And we will all be blown away."
For man's been endowed with a mushroom shaped cloud.
And we know for certain that some lucky day
Someone will set the spark off
And we will all be blown away."
— "Merry Little Minuet" by Sheldon Harnick
"The world is set on a major collision course with disaster, and it's going to strike probably around the end of the century or just after. We may very well see, if it goes to nuclear war in the Northern hemisphere which is likely, that hemisphere made virtually uninhabitable for some time. Well a lot of people say, well you know this is the end of the world — I don't believe this is so. And I think that Australia will have a much better chance than most other places of coming through successfully. But, we will in such a situation clearly be like the one lifeboat from the big liner that is sunk and it's full, and all around in the water are many, many people trying to clamber on board and if you let them you all sink. You've got to just batter them off, keep them away, and look after your own survival. The only way in which we can protect ourselves I believe, is by having not machine guns and rifles, but the most sophisticated scientific weapons that we can devise. And I put nuclear weapons in that too, and anything else which will enable one man to hold off a hundred."
— Sir Philip Baxter advocating an Australian nuclear weapons program.
The Narrator: Man and woman, boy and girl, the survivors prepared to defend their homeland, to drive the invaders back into the sea with wooden rifles, bows and arrows, bamboo spears. But the end, when it came, was to be from the sky. Irresistible... unimaginable... mushroom-shaped.
"Now listen, Mike. Listen carefully. I'm going to pronounce a few words. They're harmless words. Just a bunch of letters scrambled together. But their meaning is very important. Try to understand what they mean. "Manhattan Project, Los Alamos, Trinity."
— Lt. Pat Murphy, Kiss Me Deadly
"The water in this plant is a lot more than 'essential to the war effort,' Lieutenant. Your people are creating a monster, right here, in this building! Do you understand?"
— Astrid Bjørnstad, Battlefield V
O where will you go in the blinding flash?
O what will you do in the rain of ash?
O what will you say to the rain of ash?
O nothing after the blinding flash…
Nothing after the blinding flash…
Nothing after the blinding flash…
O what will you do in the rain of ash?
O what will you say to the rain of ash?
O nothing after the blinding flash…
Nothing after the blinding flash…
Nothing after the blinding flash…
