Last week, after playing around with Western efforts to stop
its nuclear bomb development program for several years, North
Korea announced that it has an atomic bomb. Iran is engaged
in elaborate diplomatic games with the West to gain time to
develop its bomb before the West can force it to halt
development. Most analysts view an Iranian bomb as a very
serious threat, given Iran's enthusiastic support of extreme
Islamist positions including the free use of terror through
its control of Hizbullah in Lebanon.
This summer will be the 60th anniversary of the first and
second — and so far the only — nuclear explosions
used in wartime. On 27 Tammuz 5705 (August 6, 1945) the
United States dropped a five-ton atomic weapon on the
Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later it dropped
another similar weapon on Nagasaki.
The destruction was enormous. Some 90,000 were killed, and
around 50,000 were injured out of a total population of 250-
300,000. Survivors suffered from the lingering effects of
exposure to radiation, though it does seem stretching things
to call deaths in recent years a result of the bomb when the
people have lived beyond the normal life expectancy for all
Japanese of those years. Nonetheless the death and
destruction was certainly beyond anything previously wrought
by man.
American leaders maintain that the bombs saved many lives on
both sides since they shortened the war. There is no doubt
that had America invaded Japan, the latter's 2 million man
army would likely have both suffered and inflicted many more
deaths than the 160,000 who died from the two bombs.
Now the American press has reported that the United States
has also started developing new nuclear weapons that will be
sturdier and more reliable and last longer than existing
weapons, since the average age of the US's bombs is now 20
years, and none is less than 12 years old. Their expected
life span was only 15 years.
Now it seems likely that America's new effort will only
encourage those who want to develop their own bombs for "self-
defense" against the aggressive Americans. Is that the best
that science can do?
In the almost 60 years since the first nuclear bomb, the main
lasting use for nuclear energy has proven to be to build
bombs — although thankfully none have been used against
people in the interim. Although it is also used for producing
electricity, no new nuclear power plants are being built
since most people view producing electricity that way as
being too fearsome.
A practical application of one of the proudest pieces of
science in the Twentieth Century, Einstein's Special Theory
of Relativity, nuclear energy has found application mainly in
producing death and fear. Even in an era when there is only
one superpower, it seems that it is likely to consume ever
more resources to no good effect.
The knowledge of science has not brought enlightenment. The
tremendous power that it has tamed and its wondrous abilities
have not done much that can be called good. Man now knows how
to kill 200,000 people in an instant, but not how to
eliminate or control unjustified, unreasoning hate that can
abuse that knowledge.
Torah is a technology of peace. "All its pathways are peace."
Those who learn Torah bring peace to the world, since that is
a by-product of the knowledge that they gain through their
learning. How wide the peace is spread depends on their
environment; the more receptive it is, the more the peace
will spread. At least the talmidei chachomim are at
peace with themselves. At most, the spread of Torah can bring
peace throughout Creation.
