Calgary, February 2020
According to that theory, the universe started 14 billion years ago by a huge explosion which formed the cosmos as we see it now. Scientists are speculating how the universe will end, but a more relevant question is: Will a man-made Big Bang end the existence of life on Earth? Lots of people asked that question and came up with depressing answers. For example, British author Nevil Shute, in his book On the Beach, published in 1957, describes the world in the year 1964, one year after a global thermonuclear war. The protagonist of the novel, Commander Dwight Towers, is a captain of a U.S. nuclear submarine USS Scorpion, and at the beginning of the war he is ordered to submerge and sail towards the Philippines. As the days go by, he begins to lose communication with all of the U.S. naval bases; the only connection he can get is with Melbourne, Australia. He then discovers that the ocean is covered by a strange fog that is extremely radioactive. With no orders from his superiors, he sails to Melbourne to find out what is happening. There, he learns there was a global thermonuclear war which lasted only one month but created radioactive fallout that killed all life on the northern hemisphere. This radioactivity is slowly moving south, the cities of northern Australia like Darwin are already dead. The only humans still alive are the people who live in the southern part of Australia. That means that Captain Towers’s family is dead, just like everybody in the northern hemisphere. The radioactive cloud continues moving south and the remaining population know that they have no more than half a year to live. The Australian government distributes suicide pills to give people the option to avoid the suffering of a slow death by radiation poisoning.
The novel then introduces new characters and describes how they cope with the situation. Captain Towers develops a close relationship with a young woman, Moira Davidson, but they do not have sex because the Captain refuses to accept that his family is dead. He pretends they are waiting for him and wants to be faithful to his wife. Moira Davidson passes the time by heavy drinking and partying. Another character, the wife of an Australian Navy officer, pretends that everything is OK and plants her garden to enjoy it in the next year. When the end is near and there is no more than one or two weeks of life left, most of the characters commit suicide, and Captain Towers decides to sink the submarine, containing the whole crew, outside Australian territorial waters. The novel ends with Moira Davidson, already very sick, standing on the beach, observing the submarine disappearing behind the horizon, and when there is nothing more to see, she takes the suicide pill.
This fictitious apocalyptic vision of Nevil Shute almost became reality on 27 of October 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis (16 – 28 October 1962). On that day the Cuban Crisis was almost at an end, the Soviet navy did not challenge the U.S. blockade of Cuba and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev promised to remove the Russian missiles from Cuba in exchange for the Americans doing the same in Turkey. Everything seemed to be under control, but the Americans did not know that a Soviet submarine, B-59, was operating near Cuba. What was crucial was that they did not know that this submarine had a nuclear-armed torpedo. To make the situation even worse, the submarine was submerged for several days, could not maintain communication with Moscow, and did not know that the crisis was resolved. The conditions on board the vessel were terrible. The air-conditioning failed, the temperature inside the craft rose to over 60 degrees, the air was saturated with CO2, and the crew was exhausted.
When an American destroyer discovered the submarine, they decided to force it to surface. They used small depth charges designed not to do any damage, just to signal that a vessel was located. However, the exhausted Soviet crew concluded there was a war raging on the surface, and that they were under attack. The Captain decided to fire the nuclear torpedo against the American aircraft carrier USS Randolph, and his second in command agreed with him. Normally, that would be enough to authorise the use of a nuclear weapon. Fortunately for the world, there was a third officer of higher rank on board, Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov, who disagreed with the captain and the torpedo was not fired. The submarine surfaced and awaited orders from Moscow.
It is easy to imagine what would have happened if the torpedo had been fired. The USS Randolph would have been decimated, the Americans would have concluded that the attack came from Cuba and would retaliate. The Russians would interpret it as an unprovoked attack on Cuba and would also retaliate, and the world as we knew it would cease to exist.
There is a bitter irony to the whole terrifying episode. When the submarine returned to Soviet Union, the crew was disgraced as cowards for surrendering to the enemy. Only in 2002, when the documents were declassified, retired Commander Vadim Pavlovich Orlov, a participant in the events, held a press conference revealing what had happened. Since then Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov is known as “The man who saved the world.” 1
The Cuban Missile Crisis was not the only occasion when the world came to the brink of nuclear disaster. Between 1960 and 1983 there were at least nine events which could have initiated a nuclear war between the USA and Soviet Union. All of those events were caused by silly mistakes, equipment malfunctioning, wrong information, or misunderstanding of the situation. None were initiated by the heads of the opposing powers, that is by the president of the USA or by the premier of the Soviet Union. That is the worst part of it, that war could have started by accident. For example, in 1960 there was an alarm generated by the U.S radar station in Greenland, showing dozens of Soviet missiles flying towards the USA. Fortunately, at that time the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev was visiting New York. The U.S military concluded, correctly, that the Russians would not start a war while their Head of State was in enemy territory, and decided, again correctly, that it must be a false alarm. A later investigation found that the radar had mistaken the moon rising over Norway as Soviet missiles.
In 1983, Soviet satellite operators at the Serpukhov-15 bunker near Moscow received a warning that a US Minuteman nuclear missile had been launched. Later, four more missiles were detected. Soviet policy back then called for an all-out retaliatory strike and knowing this, the commanding officer of the bunker Stanislav Petrov, decided not to inform his superiors. "All I had to do was to reach for the phone; to raise the direct line to our top commanders, but I couldn't move," he recalled of the incident. He reasoned that if the US were to strike the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons, they would send hundreds of missiles, not just five. After twenty-three nerve-wracking minutes of waiting, Petrov's theory that it was a false alarm was confirmed. It was later discovered that a Soviet satellite had mistaken sunlight reflecting off the top of clouds as missiles.
How are we doing now, in 2020? Not that great, according to the symbolic device called “Doomsday Clock,” which indicates how close we are to the man-made nuclear Big Bang. The clock was created in 1947 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a non-profit organization concerning science and global security issues, and is reset in January of every year. Midnight on that clock represents a global catastrophe, and the clock’s hands indicate how close we are to that midnight. In 1947 it was set to seven minutes; the furthest away from midnight was seventeen minutes in 1991, when the “Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty” between USA and USSR was signed, shortly before the Soviet Union dissolved. Now, in 2020, the clock indicates one minute and forty seconds, the closest ever to midnight. The statement issued by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists explains why:
“In the nuclear realm, national leaders have ended or undermined several major arms control treaties and negotiations during the last year, creating an environment conducive to a renewed nuclear arms race, to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and to lowered barriers to nuclear war. Political conflicts regarding nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea remain unresolved and are, if anything, worsening. US-Russia cooperation on arms control and disarmament is all but nonexistent.”
It is not an encouraging statement, but it correctly describes the political situation the world is currently experiencing. Will it improve or will it get worse? Nobody knows.
Going back to the novel. Let us suppose that Captain Towers is less a strict, by-the-book Naval commander and more of a man with imagination. He knows that the radioactive half-life of Cobalt is five years. We know now that the nuclear winter created by the all-out war as described in the book would last about ten years. That means that after 10 years, at least parts of the Earth would be habitable again. Captain Towers also knows that the United States has various scientific stations in Antarctica; McMurdo, for example. That station has a harbor and an airport and is permanently occupied by a staff of two-hundred fifty (in winter) to one thousand (in summer), mostly young men. The Captain can presume that the radioactivity has not yet reached Antarctica and a quick call to the station can confirm that. He also knows that out of his crew of one hundred twenty-seven, eleven officers are essential for operating the submarine. That allows him to transport over a hundred people anywhere in the world.
Taking all that into account, Captain Towers arranges an interview with the Australian Prime Minister and makes a following suggestion:
“Sir, I know that shortly we all will die from radiation poisoning, but I can see a way to save some, to enable the continuation of mankind on Earth. Antarctica is still free from radioactivity, and there is a large US scientific station with a crew of about two hundred fifty young men. I can transport over a hundred women there and in ten years, when the Earth will be habitable again, the survivors and their children can return. Would you like me to do that?”
The Prime Minister will likely agree, and the expedition will take place. Will it work? Will a hundred women and two hundred fifty men be able to live in peace for ten years, in a hostile climate with no laws and no police, or will it all end up in an orgy of violence which no one will survive? I do not know, but I certainly would like to know how Nevil Shute might respond to such an ending of his novel.