FRENCHMAN FLAT

When the U.S. “rehearsed global suicide” in the desert.

Spanning nearly 100 years, starting before physicist Leo Szilard’s 1933 vision of a split nucleus, this history by documentary filmmaker Else covers the A-bomb’s invention, use, testing, and extravagant stockpiling—while saluting the frighteningly limited, stalwart number of people who strove to assure our survival by disarmament and treaties. Code-named “Priscilla,” a 1957 37-kiloton test on the Frenchman Flat—“deep in the badlands of Nevada”—provides the thread for this tale of planetary-scale risk-taking. “With its smashed aircraft hangars, rusting blast doors, and pigpens,” Else observes, the test site “resembles a silent, sun-bleached boneyard from the movie Planet of the Apes.” Nothing lands like the story’s central irony: Nuclear caches threatened civilization in order to save it, betting on deterrence via “parity of terror” or “demonic circularity.” In the hot-potato partnership between science and politics, staggering spending and stringent secrecy prevail, while environmental and human costs are unreckoned or elided. Else’s writing is detailed but never dry. Vivid metaphors give the narrative propulsive force: A steel safe, alone amid test rubble, is “a squat cookie jar from Hell”; nuclear bomb-making physics is “the espresso of science: an essence concentrated under pressure”; unscathed Hiroshima was “a china shop awaiting the bull.” Jaw-dropping statistics shake readers: Before 1963, “We had blown the equivalent of 29,000 Hiroshima bombs into the air”; “In the 1950s the US shot off one nuclear explosion in the atmosphere on average every three weeks, occasionally two in the same day.” The author evenhandedly reports the moral and ethical questions about the bomb and the start of the arms race, acknowledging doubts that tests were even scientifically or militarily justified as data producers. Colloquial expression, compelling description, first-person reporting, and direct address help rivet the reader. Present-day relevance makes this message urgent. As treaties end, and the U.S. begins an extended nuclear upgrade, writes Else, “a visit to Frenchman Flat should be a requirement for holding public office in America.”

An important account of nuclear hubris and its incompletely tallied costs.