[DOWNLOAD] "After Fifty Years, Do We Remember Our Humanity?" by The Humanist * Book PDF Kindle ePub Free

eBook details

Title: After Fifty Years, Do We Remember Our Humanity?
Author : The Humanist
Release Date : January 01, 2005
Genre: Reference,Books,
Pages : * pages
Size : 332 KB

Description

Fifty years ago, near the midpoint of the twentieth century, a document was issued that awakened the world to the defining crisis of its time--a crisis that remains with us still. And it constituted the last public appeal of scientist and humanitarian Albert Einstein before his death; in a sense, it was his final testament to humanity. Called the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, the document was conceived by philosopher and activist Bertrand Russell and, after an exchange of correspondence with Einstein, was signed by both and nine other eminent scientists. Its formulation occurred against a backdrop of cold war threats and posturing, and it became a clarion call to scientists, world leaders, and the public--warning all of unprecedented dangers to humanity with the advent of thermonuclear weapons. Russell, Einstein, and the other prominent signers of the Manifesto were fearful of impending disaster as world events unfolded in the early 1950s. After heated debates in the United States, work had gone forward on thermonuclear weapons. The U.S. government had detonated its first hydrogen bomb on November 1, 1952, which was, at 10.4 megatons, over 500 times more powerful than the bombs that had devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Less than a year later, on August 12, 1953, the Soviets answered with a test of their first fusion weapon. In early 1954 then Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announced a policy of massive retaliation, stating, "Local defenses must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retaliatory power" On March 1, 1954, the United States detonated a seventeen-megaton hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. This bomb was over 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.