The Black Hole (redux)

This is something I wrote back in January for another blog, but I figure it's something that deserves mention.

From January 4th, 2008:
"The other day, Jon, Travis and I wandered up to Los Alamos to check out the infamous Black Hole, that repository of weird crap and awesome stuff that has attracted us so many times. We made our usual rounds, checked out all sorts of stuff, the geiger counters, oscilloscopes, welding masks, PA systems, vacuum tubes, fabrication equipment, coolant piping, and more junk than I can honestly remember. Then, after we selected our purchases (I bought five patches and two mildly radioactive marbles, and Travis bought a length of climbing rope), old man Grothus points to two model obelisks on his counter, and says that he's got the full size versions outside. I'm somewhat doubtful about this, but we go and take a look. Just a sketch of Ed Grothus, he's an eighty three year old anti-nuclear activist living in Los Alamos. Every time I've seen him, he's worn a pair of purple camouflage pants, a white shirt with a turquoise bolo and an assortment of pins. In this bitterly cold winter, he was wearing a jacket and gloves, and the gloves were torn along several of the fingers, leaving them flapping open.


So he lead us outside to show us these obelisks. He opened up a shipping container, and there they were. They're white granite obelisks, ten meters long (thirty two feet) with black granite bases and black granite spheres to top them, representing the explosive core of nuclear weapons. They were disassembled, with the obelisks lying on their sides, but they were remarkably impressive to me (I won't speak for Travis or Jon) because they were the work of a single man. Most projects like this would take years of a city council's or similar organization's time to organize, purchase, politically wrangle, and finish. But this man did that work out of his own pocket. I found the entire thing to be a demonstration of the dedication that this guy, and probably most men, are capable of.

On the base, there is a message inscribed in fifteen different languages, seven on one, eight on the other. The message reads:

Welcome to Los Alamos, New Mexico, the United States of America, the city of fire. Our fires are brighter than a thousand suns. It was once believed that only God could destroy the world, but scientists working in Los Alamos first harnessed the power of the atom. The power released through fission and fusion gives many men the ability to commence the destruction of all life on Earth. The first atomic bomb was designed and built here. It was at Trinity Site (33 degrees, 44 minutes, 38 seconds North latitude and 106 degrees, 28 minutes, 29 seconds West longitude) on July 16 1945, at 5:29:45 AM that the first nuclear bomb was detonated. Trinity Site is 2 degrees, 8 minutes, and 29 seconds and 153.2 miles southwest of Los Alamos. Two cities in Japan, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by single atomic bombs on August 6th and 9th, 1945 bringing an end to World War II. Now 62 years later, Los Alamos, obedient to the almighty Pentagon, carries on its awesome, assigned mission to assure continuing nuclear capability. Nuclear bombs cannot be used rationally and dreams for safe and useful nuclear power may never be realized. It is only in Los Alamos that the potentials for unimagined, fantastic good and demonstrated, horrendous evil are proximate. There is no assurance that man will pass safely through the Nuclear Age to a benign Solar-Hydrogen Age.

On each face of each obelisk there is a peace sign surrounded by the latin motto "Semper Fabricate Numquam Consumite," which roughly translates as "Always Build, Never Destroy." Underneath this is Grothus' more recognizable motto, "One Bomb Is Too Many," and on the side, "No One Is Secure Unless Everyone Is Secure." He also has the name of Albert Einstein, his famous equation and birth and death years. So this whole thing is essentially eighty tons of granite, conceived of, funded, and brought into being by one man as an anti-nuclear protest.

I've personally never felt a great empathy with the anti-nuclear group. Their reasoning has always seemed a bit specious to me, and the majority of them seem to be luddites, terrified of something of which they have no understanding. Truthfully, I find a lot of their protests have only served to actually make nuclear technology less safe, especially with regards to the disposal of byproducts. They complain that nuclear technology creates a lot of dangerous waste (which is true), and then protest the creation of facilities in which to safely (as much as possible) dispose of said waste. And while Mr. Grothus is opposed to nuclear technology in its entirety, I find myself sympathizing with him more and more on the topic of disarmament, and find his comment that "one bomb is too many" makes a lot of sense. To turn back the clock entirely on nuclear power is not only impossible, it's probably not a very good idea. But the use of nuclear weapons can never be justified in today's world. It's almost impossible to use against a solely military target, and the corresponding environmental and collateral damage is nigh unjustifiable. So I find that the idea of nuclear disarmament makes a lot of sense, I just can't really see any practical means of achieving it."

It's worth noting that Esquire actually did a much more in depth and quality interview and profile of this topic.

Also, this is totally not filler. I swear.