Effects of nuclear secrecy (to Alex Wellerstein)

2016-12-25 · ~195 words

Dec 25, 2016:

Merry Christmas :)

This is speculation, but I wonder if secrecy (despite its obvious disadvantages) might have made the Manhattan Project more productive. I would guess that, were one to take a typical WWII physics professor and simply give them cash for atom bomb research, they would not have taken it very seriously - they would conclude it was impossible, impractical, in the far distant future, or that their own role was unimportant. When you create a secret - especially an entire secret city - I think you strengthen the social ties between people who share that secret. That, in turn, might help convince people the bomb was real ("well, everyone else in-the-know thinks so") and that their own job was important ("well, they told me the secret, so they must think my research matters"). What do you think?

Dec 25, 2016 (follow-up):

Thanks. Interesting. I wonder why they didn't just make something up? Say it was a factory for synthetic rubber production, or something else important-but-boring?

BTW, if I'm ever lucky enough to be involved in historically significant research, is there anything historians would especially like to be written down?