Talk on

ATOMIC ENERGY AND WORLD GOVERNMENT

before the members of the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions at the Hollywood-Roosevelt Hotel

8:15 PM Friday Nov. 30, 1945

By Linus Pauling

Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is the atomic bomb which is responsible for my being here tonight - just as the atomic bomb may be responsible for our all not being here a few years from now. Like most other scientists, I have in the past stuck pretty close to my work, and paid little attention to politics and to world affairs, perhaps even less than the average citizen. Now, however, scientists have made a discovery which truly revolutionizes the world. No one understands how great is the significance of atomic energy and the atomic bomb to the world so well as do the scientists, and this understanding has forced them into activity, has caused them ,individually and in groups such as the Federation of Atomic Scientists, to begin a campaign of talking, of presenting the facts about the atomic bomb, in the hope that everyone, as he begins to understand the possibilities of the future, will be horrified by them, and will pledge himself to take the individual action which is necessary to save the world.

I have never seen an atomic bomb explode, but several of my friends have, and have told me about it. The limited experience which I have had during the war with ordinary explosives has not been of much help to me in appreciating the power of atomic explosives, because ordinary explosives are hardly worth mentioning in the same breath with fissionable atoms. And yet we used to think of nitroglycerine and TNT and RDX and PETN as pretty powerful substances, worthy of respect: a pound of TNT, in the form of a shaped charge, can blow a hole through six inches of armor plate; a hundred pounds, which might be carried into this room by one man, could kill everybody in the room; a few tons, which might be dropped as a bomb, could destroy this building or devastate a whole block of houses.

TNT and similar molecular explosives are powerful because the atoms in their molecules are combined in such a way that a large amount of energy is stored up, which can be suddenly released as a detonation wave causes the atoms in the molecules to rearrange themselves into new product molecules, which fly apart with great velocity, impinging on surrounding molecules and producing the shattering shock wave which spreads out from the center of explosion.

The energy of TNT is stored up between the atoms in the molecule, and not within the atoms. Only six years ago was it discovered that there is stored up in the minute nuclei of heavy atoms themselves an almost unbelievably great amount of energy which can be released at the will of man. These heavy nuclei are themselves unstable, in the same way that molecules of TNT are unstable; under the influence of neutrons these nuclei can split in two, with the evolution of an incredible amount of energy, which causes the split products to fly apart with terrific velocity.

It is in the nature of this reaction, its dependence upon a supply of neutrons, that it proceeds slowly if there are not too many fissionable atoms around -- uranium 235 or plutonium -- but that it proceeds explosively, in a millionth of a second, whenever more than a certain amount, a pound or two, of the material is brought together. Suppose that we had two pieces of plutonium, each shaped like half of a golf ball and weighing perhaps a pound (the density of plutonium is very great -- about twenty times that of water), and a mechanism for suddenly clapping them together: this would be an atomic bomb, like that which devastated Nagasaki, and if it were to explode here, it would destroy Hollywood.

This, then, is an atomic bomb -- the smallest that we know how to make now -- a couple of pounds of plutonium, equal to forty million pounds of TNT, and capable of wiping out a city ten square miles in area, and killing hundreds of thousands of people. Yesterday Harold Urey testified that three such bombs exploded in Washington could cause our Federal government to vanish. And these are little atomic bombs, the smallest that will explode -- a big one, which the atomic bomb scientists say could be made, could flatten the whole of New York and kill its millions of inhabitants.

We must not think that because only three atomic bombs have been exploded there are only a few in existence. I can make a guess about this, on the basis of the order-of-magnitude figures quoted in the Smyth report -- and my guess is that there are perhaps a hundred or two in existence -- enough to kill perhaps fifty million people, if each were dropped on a different city -- and by next year there may be five hundred. My colleague Robert Oppenheimer, whose opinion is based on knowledge of the situation, has stated that he expects tens of thousands possibly to be used if there is an atomic war.

Nor must we think that atomic warfare will be expensive. The atomic bomb program cost two billion dollars, and only two bombs were dropped on Japan -- but Oppenheimer has said that in mass production these bombs would cost no a billion dollars apiece, but only a million dollars. This is terribly cheap -- a million-dollar atomic bomb has the power of forty million pounds of TNT, which in bombs would cost perhaps one hundred million dollars. For a given amount of money we can do a hundred times as much damage to the enemy as in pre-atomic days. The next war should be a real one, indeed; perhaps it will be equal to one hundred like the one we have just gone through.

Offensive action will be easy and cheap, but defensive action will be hard and expensive. No good means of defense exists, and it seems inconceivable that an effective one will be found.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the danger now facing the world. What can be done to avoid it? Scientists discovered the basis of the atomic bomb and the atomic scientists on the bomb project have had a longer time to think about the problem it poses than other people have had. They believe, and I believe, that there is only one way to avoid world disaster -- and that is to abolish war, to have effective international control of the atomic bomb, and, as soon as possible, to form a world government to which the nations of the world give up their sovereignty in matters which serve as causes of war. The Federation of Atomic Scientists has formulated a statement to this end, urging "that the President of the United States immediately invite the governments of Great Britain and the Soviet Union to a conference to prevent a competitive armaments race, to plan international control of mankind's most devastating weapons, and jointly to initiate international machinery to make available to all peoples the peacetime benefits of atomic energy." This statement has been signed by hundreds of workers at Oak Ridge, Hanford, and Los Alamos, and by many hundreds of other scientists in Southern California and elsewhere on the Pacific Coast and throughout the nation.

I believe that the only hope for the world is to prevent war, and that war can be prevented only by a sovereign world government to which individuals are directly responsible. Talk about a world government has always been considered visionary -- even now there seems to be a feeling, especially among editorial writers, that the practical people of the United States will never consent to this nation's giving up its sovereignty. But is not the formation of a world government, abolishing war, the practical thing to do? Would it not be more realistic, more practical for the United States and other nations to give up some of their sovereignty, that relating to waging war, to a world government than for these nations to retain all their sovereignty and to be destroyed? It is not more realistic, more practical to use the gifts of nature, as discovered by science, for the good of all the people of the world, considering them as brothers, than for death and destruction? I believe that the discovery of atomic power will be recognized as necessitating world unity, and that the goal of a continually peaceful and happy world, which a few years ago was hardly visible in the greatly distant future, will be achieved within our generation.

[Note: included in file are hand-written copy of speech, typescript with hand-written notes in the margins, and additional typescript with requested deletions from Capt. Robert W. Kirkman, Intelligence officer of Manhattan District.]