Summer is over a month old. It will soon be middle-aged. The heat indices have exceeded 100 degrees today. It is hot. It was an excellent day to see Oppenheimer the movie in the air-conditioned theatre. Three hours long and thirty minutes of coming attractions. When I was a youngster one of the advantages of going to the movies in the summer was being allowed to luxuriate in air-conditioned bliss. The real Oppenheimer always looked haunted to me. His eyes betrayed his conflict. He appeared to be a man who could see two worlds…

The movie is based on the book American Prometheus by authors Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. They wrote it over 25 years. ‘Prometheus is best known for defying the Olympian gods by stealing fire from them and giving it to humanity through technology, knowledge, and more generally, civilization.’

Just after the end of the Cold War our politicians and pundits pontificated on their belief that nuclear warheads from the former Soviet Union need no longer be feared. The Bomb Race was over. Why now we could convert our backyard bomb shelters into potato bins and storage units and clubhouses. I grew up fearing the bomb. Our school had regular Bomb Drills where an alarm blared out and we would ‘Duck And Cover!’ We were on the brink of Nuclear War during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Of late Russia’s leader Putin says that he may use nuclear warheads in his battle to take the Ukraine.

There was some pretty tasty candy in the Civil Defense Sealed Tins in the tunnels under the Engineering And Technology building on the Campus of Southern Illinois University @ Carbondale when I worked there in 1980. It was a bit surreal to see the boxes of crackers tins of candy and other survival items for use in the event of a nuclear war.

Oppenheimer feared that once the atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and a few days later on Nagasaki…all countries would want the Bomb. There was a fear that the detonation of the atomic bomb had the potential to destroy the planet. Over two hundred thousand people died as a result of the bombs…’Little Boy’ and ‘Fat Man.’

It seems we seek the deliverance of Peace through the atomic fires of death. Oppenheimer said that Hindu scripture ran through his mind at the sight of the explosion. ‘Now I am become Death the destroyer of worlds.’

The movie asks the question that we have lived with since the carnage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki…’ Perhaps the fear is realized that the dropping of the atomic bombs…will destroy the world…’