Course Details

There are now generations of young (and youngish) people who have no memory of the once all-consuming societal terror of an Armageddon from a nuclear weapons exchange with the then Soviet Union. Yet the threat to our existence remains as real today as at its peak in the late twentieth century. Nuclear weapons, if used on the Korean Peninsula, the Indian subcontinent, or in the Western Pacific, in addition to creating nearly unimaginable death and human misery for millions, have a very real prospect of drawing the US into an all out attack/response scenario with Russia and/or China, escalating the disaster to quite literally billions of people.

This course will actually teach the basic physics of nuclear weapon design,
(algebra level math), study the effects of nuclear weapons (drawn from US archives of our 30 year testing of nuclear weapons), view several of the legendary films of the 1970-80s (e.g. Fail Safe, Dr. Stangelove), debate the only event in which nuclear weapons were used in anger (Hiroshima), and through research and class discussion, show that the Cold War was all about nuclear weapons, and how the cold war begat our present day terrorism.

Grades will be assigned on class participation, assigned essays, and a term paper.