Introducing Our Acquaintance, the Atom:

Reposted from my blog, Doomsday Writer originally posted January 15, 2020

Since nuclear weapons unleash the power of the atom in explosions of amazing destructive power, it’s necessary to understand what an atom is to better be able to understand what they can do.

Atoms are the smallest particles of matter that make up chemical element – which are things like oxygen, carbon, helium, iron, silver, gold and (for our purposes) uranium and plutonium.  Atoms are incredibly small (and are actually made up of smaller bits, which are themselves made up of even smaller bits).

One atom is one ten-millionth of a millimeter or 1/254,000,000 of an inch. Trying to get your head around the atomic scale is pretty much the reverse of trying to grasp the cosmic scale, but Corridor Crew’s video “VFX Artist Reveals the True Scale of Atoms” is helpful for getting the idea across.

Atomic Structure:  Atoms are composed of two main components: the electron and the nucleus.

• Electrons – negatively particles that orbit around the atom’s nucleus. Traditionally, at least since 1913, this has been depicted as being similar to the way planets orbit the Sun: in neat, circular orbital paths that never cross over with each other. This model is inaccurate, at least for elements other than hydrogen, but it suffices for our purposes.


• Nucleus – the core of the atom which is made up of:
  
  
  
  • Protons: positively-charged particles that make up the bulk of an atom’s mass. They’re positively-charged particles; they are the bulk of an atom’s mass, being about 2000 times heavier than the electron. The number of protons in a nucleus is always the same and is equal to the element’s atomic number.
  
  
  • Neutrons: have no charge and are, therefore, neutral particles. They are slightly heavier than protons. The number of neutrons in a nucleus can vary from atom to atom, even within the same element. These variations are called isotopes (more on this in a minute)
  
  
  
  

It’s Particles All The Way Down:

Electrons are considered to be elementary particles, since they cannot/do not break down any further. Protons and neutrons on the other hand can be broken down into smaller elementary particles called quarks, which are held together with gluons (because they “glue” the quarks together into larger particles).

There’s a whole zoo of elementary particles, most of which are not germane to our discussion. Suffice it to say that Augustus De Morgan’s 1872 poem, "Siphonaptera"is a fairly apt description of an atom (just substitute "particles" for "fleas"):

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on;
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.

Elements and Isotopes:

Elements are substances that contain only one type of atom and cannot be broken down into a simpler substance. There are 92 naturally occurring elements and 24 synthetic elements (i.e. elements first created in laboratories, though some of these have since been found in nature).  They are the building blocks of other matter.. ^[(1)]

All atoms of a particular element have the exact same number of protons.  The number of protons in a nucleus is element’s atomic number. Hydrogen’s atomic number is 1; uranium’s atomic number is 92. All hydrogen atoms will have 1 proton; all uranium atoms will have 92 protons. On the periodic table, elements are ordered, in part, by their atomic numbers.

The total number of protons and neutrons in an atom is known as the atom’s mass number.  While the total number of protons in an atom’s nucleus will always remain the same, the total number of neutrons can vary from atom to atom. ^[(2)]

This variation is called an isotope and is usually written as the element’s name (or abbreviation) along with the isotope’s mass number. ^[(3)] 

For example:  the most common isotope of carbon has a nucleus that holds six protons and six neutrons. It’s written as carbon-12 or C-12.

Isotopes can be heavier or lighter than the standard for their element. For our purposes, think of isotopes as variant cover versions of a comic book. The difference in the number of neutrons won’t alter an element’s chemical properties, any more than an alternate cover will change the story inside the comic book.

What the difference in neutrons does affect is how stable and, therefore, how radioactive an isotope is.

Elements and stability: Elements can be stable or unstable, depending on how well they hold onto their neutrons and protons. Think of a shopper trying to fill a bag with apples and oranges. For our purposes, the shopper is the atom, the fruits are the protons (apples) and neutrons (oranges) that make up the nucleus and the bag is the binding force that holds the nucleus together.

In the case of a stable atom/element, the bag is strong enough to contain the fruit without tearing. With an unstable atom/element, the bag isn’t strong enough so it tears and allows an apple or orange to spill out and go bouncing off to cause citrusy chaos.

• Stable atoms/elements are not radioactive and do not emit radiation. Carbon-12 is an example of a stable element.


• Unstable atoms/elements are radioactive and emit radiation through radioactive decay (more on this in a moment). Carbon-14 is an unstable element, which is a big part of why it is used to help date certain archaeological finds.

Radioactivity, Radiation and Radioactive Decay:

Radioactivity is, according to Merriam-Webster.com, “the property possessed by some elements […] of spontaneously emitting energetic particles […] by the disintegration of their atomic nuclei.”

Radiation is, also per Merriam-Webster.com, “the process of emitting radiant energy in the form of waves and particles [and/or] the combined processes of emission, transmission, and absorption of radiant energy”. Scientifically speaking there are several different types of radiation, but the ones we’re most concerned with are:

• Electromagnetic radiation: which includes radio waves, microwaves, infrared, the visible light spectrum, ultraviolet, x-rays and gamma radiation.


• Particle radiation: which includes fast-moving subatomic particles such as alpha particles, beta particles and neutrons.

Radiation can be further categorized as being ionizing or non-ionizing radiation. Both types can come in the form of particles or waves. The differences are:

• Ionizing radiation is high-energy radiation that can directly disrupt chemical bonds by stripping electrons from atoms. In living tissue, ionizing radiation can cause damage to proteins, to DNA and damage or destroy cells.
  
  
  
  • Types of ionizing radiation: X-rays, gamma rays, ultraviolet B (UVB) and ultraviolet C (UVC ) rays, alpha and beta particles, neutrons.
  
  
  
  


• Non-ionizing radiation: is lower energy radiation that cannot disrupt chemical bonds, but instead can increase the thermal energy of atoms and molecules (aka heat)
  
  
  
  • Types of non-ionizing radiation: radio waves, microwaves, infrared and visible light, and ultraviolet A (UVA) radiation.
  
  
  
  

Radioactive Decay: Stable elements, like Popeye, are what they are and that’s all that they are. They do not change, even during a chemical reaction they stay who they are. Coal is, primarily, made of carbon. When you burn coal, its carbon atoms don’t change into another kind of atom.

Unstable elements change over time. This process of change was first discovered by French physicist Henri Becquerel in 1896; it was confirmed – and named radioactive decay – by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898. Both Becquerel and the Curies were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery in 1903

Nutshell Definition: radioactive decay occurs when an atom undergoes a random change that causes it to turn into something else – either a different isotope of itself (C-12 becoming C-14) or into an entirely different element, which can be stable (Uranium-238 to Lead-206) or unstable (Uranium-238 to Thorium-234). This process is called a decay chain.

There are, of course, different types of radioactive decay. We’re going to be focusing on the three that seem to come up the most with regards to nuclear weapons:

• Alpha decay – the nucleus of the atom emits an alpha particle (two protons and two neutrons; essentially a helium-4 nucleus). Alpha particles are, generally speaking, mostly harmless to humans and can be shielded against by a piece of paper. ^[(4)]


• Beta decay – the nucleus of the atom emits a beta particle, either by releasing a negatively-charged electron, causing a neutron to change into a proton (beta-minus decay) or releasing a positron (essentially a positively-charged electron) and a proton becomes a neutron (beta-plus decay). Beta particles are able to penetrate living tissue, but can be shielded against by, among other things, a few millimeters of aluminum. ^[(5)]


• Gamma decay – After a nucleus emits either an alpha or beta particle, the new “daughter nucleus” is usually left in a high-energy, excited state. If so, it may decay by releasing a gamma ray photon. Gamma radiation has little trouble passing through substances, especially the unshielded human body, which makes it the most immediately dangerous. Shielding against it requires thick, dense materials, like lead.  ^[(6)]

Next time, we'll take a look at the health effects and risks associated with exposure to radiation.

Footnotes:

• [1]Note on Compounds and Molecules: Compounds are combinations of two or more different elements; water is a compound formed from one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms; table salt is a compound of chlorine and salt.
  Molecules are groups of atoms; they can be a collection of atoms of the same element (an iron molecule) or a collection of compounds (a water molecule)


• [2]Hydrogen Isotopes are a bit different than other elements’ isotopes. It’s most commonly found isotope, hydrogen-1, doesn’t have a neutron. Other hydrogen isotopes, starting with hydrogen-2 and higher, do have neutrons. Hydrogen isotopes also have proper names in their own right: hydrogen-1 is known as protium; hydrogen-2 is deuterium and hydrogen-3 is tritium. To further add to confusion? Deuterium has one proton and one neutron; tritium, 1 proton and 2 neutrons; hydrogen-4, 1 proton and 3 neutrons and so on and so forth.


• [3]Or as 12C or 12C, which seems to be more in use by actual scientists. Since I’m not an actual scientist, I’m going to stick with the element-number versions because those are easier to write and (for me) to code into html.


• [4]So long as they stay outside the human body, alpha particles are entirely harmless. If they get inside the human body, by being inhaled, consumed with food/drink, or enter through broken skin, they can cause significant amounts of internal, long-term damage, mostly by increasing cancer risks.


• [5]Beta particles are more dangerous than alpha particles, since they can penetrate unshielded skin. Like alpha particles, the main risk is an increased, long-term cancer risk.


• [6]If you don’t have any lead handy, you can also shield yourself from gamma rays using other materials – but you’re going to need to use more of them. For example, you can get the same protection as 1.3 feet of lead by using 13.8 feet of water or 6.6. feet of concrete. (source: http://nuclearconnect.org/know-nuclear/science/protecting)

Note on Sources and a Caveat/Plea for Mercy:

In addition to the sources cited directly in this article, I also made use of information from Wikipedia, both the standard English version and the Simple English version

I also made use of information from Using Medicine in Science Fiction: The SF Writer’s Guide to Human Biology by H. G. Stratman, specifically from chapter 6, Danger! Radiation!.

Any errors in this article are my responsibility. In my defense, I am not a physicist and my last chemistry class was during the Reagan administration. If you find an error, please bring them to my attention and I will correct them.

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A Round of Words in 80 Days is the writing challenge that knows you have a life. If you want to join, you can at any time.Set the goals you want to accomplish and get and give encouragement to fellow ROWers. Feel free to join us on Facebook at ROW80 or follow us on Twitter at #ROW80.  Or you can do all of the above!

Originally posted at: Nuke Opera 2020: Introducing Our Acquaintance, the Atom January 15, 2020

Nostalgia, Nuclear War and Navel-Gazing: An Introduction to NUKE OPERA 2020

Reposted from my blog, Doomsday Writer; originally posted January 8, 2020

Nostalgia:

This is the year I turn fifty and like a lot of people do when they find themselves approaching the half-century mark, I’ve found myself turning introspective and more than a bit nostalgic for the years of my childhood. ^[1]

Of course, being me and having spent the majority of my formative years in the 1980s, one of the things that fuels a lot of my introspection and nostalgia is nuclear war. The other is science fiction. So, guess what we’re going to be talking about over the next however many blog posts?

I was twelve when I first discovered science fiction – for the definition of ‘discovered’ that boils down to ‘became aware of the fact that this thing I liked had a name.’ Prior to that age, I’d been absorbing science fiction for years, mostly through cartoons like Space Ghost and Johnny Quest (the 1960s one); TV shows like Quark and Buck Rogers (the 1980s one); and, of course, movies like War of the Worlds (the 1950s one) and Star Wars (the 1970s one). Really, science fiction was something I grew up surrounded by and didn’t really notice, for much the same reason fish probably don’t notice water.

But it was at twelve that I discovered that science fiction came in book form and never looked back. Exactly when and where I was when this happened, I can’t remember. I believe, though, the first book that sparked my sense of wonder was The Weapon From Beyond, the first book in Edmond Hamilton’s Starwolf trilogy. Though it might also have been Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper. Or maybe the Northwest Smith stories by C.L. Moore or maybe…well, suffice to say, once I was hooked, I was hooked.

I was thirteen when I first learned about nuclear war – for the definition of ‘learned about’ that includes ‘became aware of the fact that this thing that could kill me and everyone I knew was a thing.’ Prior to that age, I’d likely heard about the bomb – after all, there’s a scene in War of the Worlds (1953) where the U.S. Government attempts to nuke the Martians with no real success – but the idea that nuclear war was a thing that could/would happen outside of a movie had escaped me until that day in 8th grade history class.

Over the course of my K-12 school career, I was very lucky to have three teachers who helped spark my interest in history. Mrs. Pamphile in the 5th grade, who turned history into stories; Mr. Herodotus in high school whose approach was more like a college lecture but who still managed to keep me interested in US and World history. (Not that this was exactly difficult, since even back then I enjoyed lectures.) ^[2]

And then, in 8th grade, there was Mr. Newburgh who was the kind of history teacher every kid should have. During a unit on World War I, Mr. Newburgh came in dressed as a doughboy; for a unit on the Great Depression, he had us play stock market so we could get a better feel for how/why the market crashed. He also talked to us about He combined the best of Mrs. Pamphile and Mr. Herodotus, using stories and facts to help make the past come alive for us.

Nuclear War:

Exactly when he taught us about nuclear war, I can’t recall. I want to say it was in the fall, but it might have been spring – the 8th grade history classroom, at that time, was a windowless concrete box with no windows to the outside so I don’t even have vague memories of the weather to go by.

As part of his lecture, Mr. Newburgh gave us all handouts about fallout patterns and taught us that if, say, Chicago to the west or Grissom Air Force Base to the south were hit, we could expect to receive some of the fallout. Since this was about 36 years ago, I don’t remember much more of what he said though I do remember Mr. Newburgh being sincerely angry that the Carter administration had made some sort of an agreement that had increased our risk of being wiped out by the Soviet Union. I remember being taken aback in part because this was the first I’d heard of this and because I’d rather liked President Carter. ^[3]

Like I said, I don’t remember much of the lecture, but I do remember that it wasn’t particularly scary or really even anything I thought about very much – at least, not then. Of course, part of the reason I didn’t think much about it was because at thirteen, I wasn’t paying all that much attention to the news at the time. ^[4] Since this was the latter half of the Cold War, at a time when tensions between the US and the Soviet Union were ramping up to levels not seen since the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis, my lack of awareness about the state of the world was probably a good thing.

That said, it was still an unescapable bit of conventional wisdom that World War III was pretty much a given; that it was a question of when, not if the nukes would fly. Hell, even to this day I’m periodically honestly amazed that it didn’t happen – especially now that I’ve read into some of the actual history of the time and just how close we came to having World War III happen by accident. Hell, in 1983 alone we had two incredibly close calls within the space of about two months.

Speaking of 1983, that was the year I found an old hardback copy of The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, Third Series on one of the bookshelves at my house. The book was an anthology featuring exactly what it said on the tin: stories from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction that were considered the best for the year of 1953.

Among the stories collected in that volume was Ward Moore’s Lot, a story that skirted the edge of science fiction since it was clearly set in the then-present day of the early 1950s. The only speculative element was that the United States had been bombed by the Soviets and our protagonist and his family were reacting to those attacks by trying to flee to safety. It’s the first story I can remember reading that dealt with the immediate aftermath of a nuclear attack and it gripped me – though, I didn’t quite grasp the ending at the time. In fact, I don’t think I fully “got” it until I read the sequel, Lot’s Daughter, in college.

Despite the point of the story going so far over my head that it was likely in Low Earth Orbit, Lot sparked an interest in fictional depictions of nuclear war and led to me seeking out other examples of the subgenre, which eventually led me to Harlan Ellison’s A Boy and His Dog (as collected in The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World). Like with Lot a lot of the story went over my head, but I was caught up by the world Ellison created. In part, I think, because it reminded me of other post-apocalyptic worlds I was exploring at the time.

Navel-Gazing:

Keep in mind, I was very much at an age where I reading indiscriminately and not everything I got my grubby little hands on was a classic work of science fiction with literary aspirations. ^[5] This was a time in history when paperback originals were readily available on racks at newsstands, drug stores and grocery stores. Even in my hometown, which lacked a McDonalds, let alone a bookstore, there were several stores where a kid with some disposable income could find something to read. There was also a resale store in a nearby town that sold stripped paperbacks (yes, I know reselling stripped paperbacks is awful and horrible but as a teenager who wanted cheap books, all I knew was that ten cents a book was a damn good deal).

I don’t remember how old I was when I first discovered that subgenre of cheesy, post-apocalyptic men’s adventure novels that I’ve dubbed Nuke Operas, but I know that the first series I read was either Doomsday Warrior by Ryder Stacy or Endworld by David Robbins. Going by publication dates, which means I discovered these books at some point between 1984-1985, or when I was around 14 or 15. (One of the nice things about being born in 1970, it makes the mathematics of my personal timeline a whole heck of a lot easier).

You would think that reading about the world being destroyed would have ramped up my anxiety but I don’t recall that it did. I think the reasons for that are two-fold. For one thing, I wasn’t reading a lot of these books – I didn’t have the access or the disposable income to be able to buy them when they were new and the resale shop wasn’t getting them consistently.

For another, there was a strange kind of comfort in reading these stories. The idea that survival after a nuclear was possible, even if that survival likely wouldn’t be easy, was strangely soothing. Also, the cheesier books were exactly what they were supposed to be: entertaining adventures that expected you to sit back, relax and enjoy the ride, nothing more, nothing less.

I stopped reading nuke operas shortly before I went off to college in 1988 mainly because of a lack of access and a lack of interest. While I was in college, the Cold War ended and I didn’t think about World War III or those cheesy paperbacks of my childhood until about 2009 when I was walking through a Barnes and Noble and saw a familiar looking series title: Endworld: The Fox Run by David Robbins. I picked up a copy, thinking it’d be fun to revisit those cheesy days of yore.

And it was. And it wasn’t. The book was definitely still cheesy and kind of fun, but there were things missing from the story. Or, more correctly, there were things that I noticed now that I didn’t – even couldn’t – have noticed back when I first encountered these books. Some things, like slipshod world building, could be forgiven – after all, these books were meant to be the literary equivalent of a Syfy channel original movie, not a textbook on post-nuclear survival. Other things, like the casual racism and sexism, were less easily overlooked.

Being a writer, I decided I was going to write my own version of a cheesy post-apocalyptic men’s adventure novel (I hadn’t coined “nuke opera” back then), but I’d write the sort of story that I wish my younger self would have been able to find. One with worldbuilding that made sense and that featured female characters in roles other than victim/prize for the hero. And that still had mutants and silly, super-scientific things because, c’mon, you have to have fun, right? ^[6]

Of course, to be able to understand a genre, I’d need to read more than just one book, right? I’d need a decent sample size to get a handle on common tropes and to find things I would want to riff on and play with. So I decided to collect examples of every cheesy post-apocalyptic men’s adventure series from this time period. That this would also mean I could delay actually writing the project was just a side bonus and purely unintentional. Honest.

Checking out used book stores and hunting online, I managed to collect examples from roughly 30 different series, hunting down at least the first book in each series. In some cases, especially when a series was only 3-5 books long, I picked up all of them. In one case, that of Ryder Stacy’s Doomsday Warrior, I not only have all nineteen books in the series but also have all nineteen audiobook adaptations done by Graphic Audio (A Movie In Your Mind). ^[7]

I also did some digging into critiques or studies of this genre of fiction, but didn’t find much. The closest thing I found to a review of nuke operas was in Paul Brians’ Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, which is an online edition of the book version, which was published in 1987 and is now out of print. Brians’ bibliography of atomic war in fiction helped me track down series titles and was and is an indispensable resources. As are Brians other atomic war related research, available at Nuclear War & Disaster-related Materials.

I’ve also found series and reviews of individual titles at review sites dedicated to pulp novels/paperback originals. Some of my favorites include:

• Paperback Warrior -- check out their “Post Apocalypse” tag
• Glorious Trash -- look under “Post-Nuke Pulps”
• Trash Menace -- doesn’t appear to use tags, but you can check under “Post-Apocalyptic” on their Men’s Adventure Paperbacks list.
• Vault of Evil: Post-Apocalyptic SF in men’s adventure series -- not a blog, but a forum for Vault of Evil, a site dedicated to British Horror fiction. The thread at the forum includes discussion from folks who actually wrote some of these titles and was vitally useful back in 2009 when I was first trying to find series/authors to look for.

Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to find the resource I really want, which is a study/deep dive into Nuke Opera books along the lines of Bill Pronzini’s book-length studies of “alternative classic” (i.e. bad) mystery novels (Gun in Cheek, Son of Gun in Cheek) and Westerns (Six-Gun in Cheek). Not to mention, Grady Hendrix’s look at horror paperbacks in the 1970s-1980s ,Paperbacks from Hell and his reviews at Book Reviews of the Damned. Or Gabrielle Moss’s Paperback Crush. And, last but by no means least, Beyond Heaving Bosoms, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books’ review of the romance novel genre.

So, since I can’t find what I want, I’m going to have to make it myself. That’s what this blog series is going to be. Toward that end, here’s an incomplete listing of what I want to do with these blog posts:

• First and Foremost: is to review several books and stories that are linked by a common theme, including some that I feel haven’t gotten the kind of critical attention they really should have.


• Secondly: To talk about the history of nuclear weapons, civil defense and popular culture’s responses to the possibility of World War III.


• Thirdly: to actually accomplish something I’ve been wanting to do for years now: produce a final product. I’ve been working on writing, focusing on fiction and have yet to actually finish anything. This year, I’m going to take a stab at working on a non-fiction project and setting smaller, more accomplishable goals in hopes of achieving something.

Toward that end, I’m planning on attempting at least one post a week. Some posts will be book reviews (and some of those will be multi-part); others will be on aspects of Cold War history. I’ll also be looking at books that aren’t themselves nuke operas, but which I feel are important to the subject.

Footnotes:

• [1]:Please note: my recollections of this time are not exact; unfortunately, I was not one of those kids who kept a diary, so don’t expect documentary-style accuracy when it comes to my personal recollections. When it comes to actual historical things that I can look up, the accuracy is going to be a lot better.


• [2]: I changed the names of my teachers because I’m from a really small town and it just feels kind of squicky to out my teachers, even if I’m talking about them positively. The names I’ve given them are references to famous historians because I’m that kind of nerd. Though, how cool would it have been to have a history teacher named Herodotus?)


• [3]: I’d voted for him in my first-grade class’s mock presidential election back in 1976 because Carter liked peanuts and I liked peanuts. (I was six.)


• [4]: When I was around fifteen or so, I did become a lot more anxious about nuclear war and the possibility of it actually happening. Though, I do think that was more in response to other things going on in my life at that time that were making me anxious. Kind of like, I couldn’t think about those other things, so all the anxiety got directed toward nuclear war because that was something I could deal with more easily.Oddly enough, I can actually remember when those fears went away. It was while I was watching Spies Like Us (1985). The movie was a comedy featuring Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd as bumbling spies who accidentally launch a nuclear weapon but end up saving the day because the plot demanded it. It wasn’t a good movie; it’s most lasting claim to fame might be the fact it was a plot point in an episode of Family Guy back in 2009. But, for some reason, seeing the characters prevent World War III helped ease my fears and I walked out of the theatre feeling as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Not bad for a film that only has a 32% on Rotten Tomatoes.


• [5]: For a given definition of “classics” that is meant to draw a distinction between stories/novels that were written for the literary side of the genre market, as opposed to stories/novels like Endworld and Doomsday Warrior that were written to be cheap, fast entertainment.


• [6]: If you’re interested in this still-theoretical book, check out my Defcon tag, wherein you can see a lot of navel gazing on the subject of writing/typing up various drafts; the work is, like most of my fiction, currently a Work In Progress.


• [7]: My List of Things to Buy When I Win The Lottery, Despite Not Playing the Lottery includes obtaining the Graphic Audio version of entire run of the long-running Deathlands nuke opera series, which ran to 125 books in print and is being continued by Graphic Audio as audiobook exclusives. Currently, the series is at 136 titles and is available for ‘only’ $3,681.64 in the MP3 CD format. Y’know, if anyone would like to get me a 50th birthday present, just sayin’.

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Boilerplate Links:

A Round of Words in 80 Days is the writing challenge that knows you have a life. If you want to join, you can at any time.Set the goals you want to accomplish and get and give encouragement to fellow ROWers. Feel free to join us on Facebook at ROW80 or follow us on Twitter at #ROW80. Or you can do all of the above!

Originally posted at: Nostalgia, Nuclear War and Navel-Gazing: An Introduction to NUKE OPERA 2020, January 8, 2020