Essay About Howard Morland And Opponents Of Nuclear Weaponry

The Secret That Exploded
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The Secret that Exploded
by Howard Morland
“The Secret that Exploded” written by Howard Morland is
a non-fiction book based on his findings on the H-bomb.
Howard dedicated his life to finding out the secret of the
H-bomb and releasing his findings to the public who have
been in the dark since the beginnings of the Manhattan
Project. The book goes through everything he went through
from when he became an airforce pilot to him becoming
involved in radical groups to him fighting the government in
court for freedom of press. His book goes through everything
he had to do to get the information he needed to find out
the secret of the H-bomb. Howard felt that if “He would
attack secrecy; if secrecy could be dismantled, then the
opponents of nuclear weaponry would have a fighting chance.
(pg.50)” He wanted to break down the secrecy of the
government and give the radical groups that were against the
bomb a chance to get there views heard around the U.S. and
possibly bring a stop to the nuclear arms race. Howard
thought that the “secret of the H-bomb could be the
centerpiece of the secrecy structure and that if he could
crack it he could bring down the whole secrecy
structure.(pg.50)” This is what he wanted and he wanted all
of the secrets that the government has been keeping from the
public to be revealed so that the public could know what was
going on and not be in the dark.
Howard knowing that finding the secret would be near
impossible moved on in his journey and visited every major
nuclear manufacturing sight in the U.S. that he knew about.
On his journey he encountered problems with security. The
government has bottled up the secret by giving security
clearances to anyone who knew the secret. These people could
not tell anyone anything that was deemed classified and they
could get in very big trouble if they did. Howard had to get
by this by asking questions that would bring back answers
that wasnt classified material but the information that he
needed. Howard got so good at asking questions that he
eventually put together all the information he found out
from all of his sources and put together his version of the
H-bomb. This version was so near accurate that the
government wanted to classify it so that Howard could not
publish it in the The Progressive magazine. Howard and The
Progressive took the government to the Supreme court where
the government dropped their case because the info that they
wanted to contain had already leaked out to the public.
Howard and The Progressive got what they wanted and earned
the right to print their article that revealed the secret of
the H-bomb.
One major theme in the book was how the U.S. and Russia
both had so many nuclear bombs that they could end life on
both continents and possibly the world and still have bombs
left in their arsenal to do more damage. The carnage and the
fallout of a nuclear bomb is devastating. As shown on page
276 one “Poseidon submarine in the Gulf of Mexico could kill
50 million Americans who live in the 17 largest cities in
America. This attack would expend more explosive energy than
all the wars of history, and still use less than 1% of the
force of the U.S. Triad.” If one sub could kill one fifth of
the U.S. population then the amount of nuclear bombs that
both Russia and the U.S. hold could kill every single person
on the earth. Bernard Feld said that “Fifty to a hundred
nuclear weapons, not ten thousand, were all we needed for
deterrence.(pg.61)” If we only need a hundred H-bombs to
deter the enemy then there is no reason for us to have ten
thousand. Something has to be done to decrease the amount of
bombs in our arsenal and the Russians. If a war was to break
out the world would end and there would be total
destruction. Some people dont understand that if we got in
a nuclear war that there would be total destruction.
Everything and everybody will die. Just because we have more
bombs than our enemy doesnt mean that we will win and
survive. All the Russians need to do is get off about fifty
bombs and more than half of the U.S. will be destroyed. The
fallout afterwards would bring death to all around the world