Review of The Bomb - Poorly researched

Poorly researched

☆

“I enjoyed listening to it but it makes me wonder how much of it is accurate. I am shocked that the BBC would have publicized this. Her overly dramatic, “inherited guilt” is a little over the top. Plus, she is over emphasizing her grandfather’s part in history. He didn’t “help invent the atomic bomb.” He simply was one of the 130,000 people who worked on the Manhattan project. In fact, she even admitted that because he was a mid-level chemist at Oak Ridge, he didn’t he know what he was working on. Therefore, it is even a bit of a stretch to say that he, “helped build the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.” Again she makes another overly dramatic statement about her grandfather that, “He spent nearly a decade in and out of psychiatric hospitals, alcoholic and suicidal, and was finally medically retired, declared “totally and permanently disabled” by his psychiatrist. Part of my journey has been trying to understand how his work contributed to his unraveling.” I find it difficult to believe that someone so mentally ill for so many years held any pivotal position even after the war. I am equally disappointed in the Bulletin of Atomic Science that is pushing the inaccuracies. On their web page she stated that, “The design for the first atomic bomb was frighteningly simple: One lump of a special kind of uranium, the projectile, was fired at a very high speed into another lump of that same rare uranium, the target.” It clearly wasn’t so simple or it wouldn’t have taken so many years to develop the bomb. Even many scientists at the time didn’t even know if it would work, how long it would take to develop, or how well. If it was so simple and obvious, the German’s would have done it. This would be like saying that Newton and gravity is simple or that it was obvious the earth was round. Finally, and most important, the first atomic bomb wasn’t gun type “little boy” atomic bomb design, it was the Fat man implosion design. She mentions that Einstein wrote the letter and it was delivered to Roosevelt the next day. She tells this cute anecdotal story of the event that clearly was inaccurate. It makes you question all her other anecdotal stories. While they were amusing, they could be totally made up. In reality, Wigner drove Szilard to Einstein's house because Szilard didn’t drive. Szilard wrote the letter. They convinced Einstein to sign the letter. Later, Edward Teller then drove Szilard to Einstein’s house to sign the letter. I am sure that if I started fact checking some of her other stories, they would also be a stretch. — Let’s also put the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in perspective. More civilians died in the Curtis Lemay’s conventional incendiary bomb campaign. The ensuing fire storms in Tokyo and the other cities in one night caused more deaths than the dropping of the first atomic bomb. The only reason Hiroshima and Nagasaki were spared the incendiary bombs is they wanted a city that was undamaged to compare the impact of using incendiary bombs to an atomic bomb. If the atomic bomb wasn’t developed and dropped, every major city in Japan would have been burnt to the ground by Lemay’s further planned bombing campaign. Therefore, the dropping of the atomic bomb with its shock value and the Russians invading Manchuria may have actually saved civilian lives by ending the war early. It clearly saved US soldiers lives who didn’t have to then invade Japanese home islands in Operation Downfall.”Read full review »

san2134 via Apple Podcasts · United States of America · 08/22/20

More reviews of The Bomb

See all »

So compelling!

☆

“What an interesting and compelling way of telling this story! I am definitely hooked, and can’t wait for more episodes.”

SBSArts via Apple Podcasts · United States of America · 08/01/20

Fantastic - well produced

☆

“Amazing story telling.”

daveflynch via Apple Podcasts · Great Britain · 08/04/20

Listen to this