Sunday, October 7, 2012

Nuclear Weapons and Morality: A view from Los Alamos


 In the early 1980's of the Cold War Rev. John Conway at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish in Los Alamos, NM, brought together a group of weapons scientists and engineers in his parish to write a report on the morality of nuclear weapons work.

When I first came to Los Alamos I inquired of the local priest what his opinion of the primary work of the town was.  He directed me to this document.  I found it very interesting.  I may not agree with everything that is in here, but I feel it is a very personally honest document.  I actually lived at the home of one of the contributors a number of years ago.  For the last three decades a copy of this document has been sitting on the selves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic church library.  I do not believe many people outside of Los Alamos have seen it.  In the last couple year's I got the permission of the parish priest to make an electronic copy of the document and freely distribute it.  You can download the book here.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B29ZDwwo2r_KSUd1X2hhbEZramc

I have made this copy for people who are generally in the morality of nuclear weapons, and war in general.  I believe this is a very interesting document from a historical point of view as well.  I think it is a shame it is not more well known since it is a first hand account of Catholic nuclear weapons scientists and engineers at Los Alamos.

I have been meaning to do this for quite some time but I finally got around to making the electronic copy today.  Unfortunately I do not have a scanner so I had to make do by making my own "book scanner" using some scrap steel and my digital camera.  Sorry but I cannot help but share a photo.  I welded the camera fixture you can see in the picture above this morning.  I like the way it turned out.

I hope you enjoy reading this document. 







1 comment:

  1. Hello,

    Thank you so very much for publishing this document! May I add it to my online collection of NATSEC and nuclear weapon materials (https://osf.io/46sfd/). I am happy to cite you as you desire or not.

    Thank you!

    Regards,
    -marty-

    ReplyDelete