Comparing George Orwell's 'You And The Atomic Bomb'

On August 6, 1945 humanity’s relationship to war, and state power changed as the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Two month later, George Orwell wrote a piece entitled “You and the Atomic Bomb,” attempting to understand the consequences of the use of a nuclear weapon and looking towards the future world with nuclear weapons. Importantly, Orwell outlined the next fifty years of history, a cold war. The United States’ nuclear policy, showed how Orwell was correct in articulating the relationship between the United States and Soviet Union, with in the context of nuclear weapons. The United States’ nuclear strategy was based on the changed the nature of war, the perception of living in a constant state of war, attempts to rationalize nuclear weapons, and the separation of the means and ends within the context of war. These themes over lay with Orwell’s argument of the history of civilization as the history of weapons. In October 1945 Orwell, wrote a piece entitled “You and the Atomic Bomb”; the argument of the piece was that the “history of civilization…is largely the history of weapons” (Orwell, 1,

Rationality worked with the idea of “killing the nation” that would allow for the destruction of the Soviet system over time. (Kaplan, 45, 1983). “Killing the nation” was Orwell’s argument of a long drawn out war. The attempts at rationalization for nuclear weapons led to issues of having to live with nuclear weapons (Kaplan, 38, 1983). Living daily with nuclear weapons combined with the issue of thinking about the rational use of nuclear weapons in war. (Kaplan, 73, 1983) However, the rationality of nuclear weapons was lost with the H-bomb, because of the destructive force of the bomb. For example, the blast radius was large enough, that the bomb could miss the target by two miles and still damage the target. The rationality of strategic bombing served no purpose (Kaplan, 82,