I just finished "Bomb," a book about the atomic bomb and how it was built. The book ends talking about who I'd say is one of the more important characters in the book, chemist and Soviet spy Henry Gold. Three years after WW2 and Henry Gold has fallen in love with a chemist named Mary Lanning. This is a really important milestone for Gold because throughout the book and the war, he wished for a normal life. Now was his chance. "Gold became more and more convinced that this was his shot at happiness. Why not grab it?" But this was really hard for him because of his past as a spy (which Lanning did not know about). He was afraid of being exposed and that it would ruin his relationship if he didn't tell Lanning. But if he did, the Soviets would never let him get away with it. Meanwhile, the Soviets have been hard at work trying to produce an atomic bomb of their own, and they finally have. This marked the start of the Cold War, a proxy war of economic tension between the U.S. and Soviet Union. Gold's fear of exposure did end up ruining his relationship and FBI agents Scott Miller and Richard Brennan were suspicious he was a Soviet spy. They came to his house and questioned him, but Gold would give no information. The book officially ends with Gold having "a few more minutes to destroy seventeen years of evidence." This book matters because the atomic bomb won America the war. Who knows what would've happened without it? I think the most valuable idea from this book was people's reactions after the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Reactions were described as "very considerable elation and excitement." When President Truman first gave the news on a ship back to the U.S., "the room erupted in cheers." But the reaction that followed was a little different. "Before the whole sentence of the broadcast was finished, one suddenly got this horror of all the people who had been killed." 130,000, to be exact. And that doesn't include the radiation poisoning that took the lives of many that didn't die instantly by the explosion. "Almost everyone was feeling the same strange mix of pride and horror." Otto Hahn, the chemist that discovered fission, felt personally responsible and even contemplated suicide. These reactions show the consequences of dropping the atomic bomb and the toll it takes on the people involved. Sure, the U.S. won the war. But it is still debated today whether dropping the bomb was worth it and that the U.S. should have taken a different approach to winning the war. These reactions are important to remember today because they teach others to think about their actions and its consequences, which tends to lead to people making smarter decisions.
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