The nuclear weapon is going to die.
Why? Simply because it's long outlived its usefulness. As Economics graduates will delight in telling you, every product has a definite lifecycle. As I see it, a hundred years of experimenting, developing and actually using it, then lamenting over it, is enough of a lifecycle. Don't agree with me? Allow me to convince you.
Point number one. A thing can inspire only so much fear. Once you cross that boundary between fear and acceptance, once you've reviled something enough, once you've poured hate enough at it, it soon becomes a fixture. Granted, an unwanted one, but one quite easily missed. And what's a weapon that's feared no more? It ceases to be one.
The only avatar the nuclear weapon's yet to go through is its trivialization. The stage in which mothers frighten their little boys with tales of the ‘big bad bomb'. The day that happens, will be the death of the nuclear bomb.
Point number two. Humanity as a whole is inherently peace-loving. Nuclear bombs are a blatant challenge to our notions of peace and ideals of civilization, which we hold so high. Would you really like to wish the bomb on even your worst enemy? Does anyone actually have the stomach to take another million casualties, another million maimed for life, another million cursed even before they are born? Is there anyone strong enough, or should I say weak enough to perpetrate such horror and still keep a clean conscience?
We used it before, when we didn't know its power (though that can never be an excuse). As I said, humanity is essentially peace loving. We can't produce justification enough for doing it again. And in that inability lies our salvation.
Quite obviously, two realities so much at odds cannot coexist. That leaves for only two options – remove the incongruity itself or face imminent destruction. Really quite an obvious choice to make, isn't it?
As a final point, history has an uncanny tendency to set the scores right. Mutations and misfits are always ironed out of the final picture. Though history allowed us to invent the bomb, it has served its purpose well. True, it took us two horrific mistakes and millions of lives lost, but ironically or perhaps aptly, its helped teach us the meaning and value of a thing called life. We have learnt. Now, denouncing the bomb gives us the feeling of moral superiority, of ‘having arrived'. That's reason enough to be content. Yes, the bomb has served its purpose. It's time for it to go, wouldn't you say?
Do I hear you scoffing? Do I hear you telling me that if you start banking on history to wipe out this aberration, you may find yourself in the middle of the next Hiroshima or Nagasaki ? True perhaps. Or perhaps not. Either way, pray hard and yes, keep your radiation suits handy.
