The atomic bomb changed everything. It just did. It's all but
impossible to point to a suitable contemporary analogue to the events of
August, 1945, when the United States military dropped two atom bombs on
Nagasaki and Hiroshima, killed tens of thousands of people, irradiated
vast swaths of land, and reduced entire cities to rubble, all in about
the time it takes to post a status update on Facebook.
Little else compares to that; an unprecedented scientific achievement
harnessed to become what remains the most feared weapon in the world.
And we all deal with the fact that those bombs went off (and that they
might again, someday) in different ways. Some protest nuclear power.
Some lobby for non-proliferation treaties. John Coster-Muller
reverse-engineered the bombs in his spare time and produced the most
accurate replicas of Fat Man and Little Boy ever built. A truck driver
with scant college education, Coster-Muller spent ten years studying
schematics, interviewing scientists, and poring over every shred of
available information on the bombs. Then, meticulously, he recreated the
bomb.
After laying relatively dormant for a brief period, all things nuke
are once again fully entrenched in the zeitgeist—Fukushima has reignited
the debate about the merits and dangers of nuclear energy, and mounting
tensions with Iran have brought back grim visions of the bomb.
Coster-Muller's story is more relevant than ever; it's both a reflection
of our ongoing infatuation with the weapon, and a reminder that the
technology is still very much alive, and open to tinkering, even
hacking.
"The secret of the atomic bomb," he says, "is how easy they are to make."