The End Is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses

by Dan Carlin

Once the Second World War was over and emotions had cooled somewhat, questions arose about what to do with this weapons technology. How can it be controlled? What if other countries get the new weapons, too?* Many debates took place within the United States in 1945 and 1946 concerning topics such as who should be in charge of the weapons. The military seemed like the logical choice—it was the one who was going to use them, after all. But President Truman wasn’t having it,* and eventually, it was decided that going forward the US president would have the exclusive power to authorize and order the use of the superweapons. But this was a level of personal power the constitutional framers of the United States had never foreseen. And that, historian Garry Wills wrote, was one of the side effects of the bomb—it changed the American constitutional system. “Lodging ‘the fate of the world’ on one man,” Wills argues, “with no constitutional check on his actions, caused a violent break in our whole governmental system.” But it was a development that “was accepted under the impression that technology imposed it as a harsh necessity.” How, for example, would a president have time to consult with other leaders or branches of government if the enemy’s missiles were already in the air?