Some people believe that the nuclear bomb should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, since it scared the major powers away from war by equating it with doomsday.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Nuclear war is such an emotional subject that many people see the weapons themselves as the common enemy of humanity.
Some think the worst horrors of war might be avoided by an international agreement not to use atomic bombs. This is a vain hope.
Nobel was a genuine friend of peace. He even went so far as to believe that he had invented a tool of destruction, dynamite, which would make war so senseless that it would become impossible. He was wrong.
The real abhorrent consequence of the invention of atomic bombs is the fact that we still have them and they're spreading.
Ernest Rutherford's 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry wasn't given for the nuclear power station - he wouldn't have survived that long - it was given for showing how interesting atomic physics could be.
The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.
Nuclear weapons continue to occupy a unique place in global security affairs. No other weapons, in my opinion, anyway, match their potential for prompt and long-term damage and their strategic impact.
People understand that nuclear weapons cannot be used without indiscriminate effects on civilian populations. Such weapons have no legitimate place in our world. Their elimination is both morally right and a practical necessity in protecting humanity.
Much as Cold War nuclear strategists could argue about winning a nuclear war by having more survivors, advocates of a Global Warming War might see the United States, Western Europe, or Russia as better able to ride out climate disruption and manipulation than, say, China or the countries of the Middle East.
The Nobel Peace Prize has always been a joke - albeit a grim one. Alfred Bernhard Nobel famously invented dynamite and felt sorry about it.
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