Desiring The Bomb

A timely interdisciplinary study that applies psychoanalysis and the rhetorical tradition of the sublime to examine the cultural aftermath of the Atomic Age Every culture throughout history has obsessed over various “end of the world” scenarios. The dawn of the Atomic Age marked a new twist in this tale. For the first time, our species became aware of its capacity to deliberately destroy itself. Since that time the Bomb has served as an organizing metaphor, a symbol of human annihilation, a stand-in for the unspeakable void of extinction, and a discursive construct that challenges the limits of communication itself. The parallel fascination with and abhorrence of nuclear weapons has metastasized into a host of other end-of-the-world scenarios, from global pandemics and climate change to zombie uprisings and asteroid collisions. Desiring the Bomb: Communication, Psychoanalysis, and the Atomic Age explores these world-ending fantasies through the lens of psychoanalysis to reveal their implications for both contemporary apocalyptic culture and the operations of language itself. What accounts for the enduring power of the Bomb as a symbol? What does the prospect of annihilation suggest about language and its limits? Thoroughly researched and accessibly written, this study expands on the theories of Kenneth Burke, Jacques Lacan, Sigmund Freud, and many others from a variety of disciplines to arrive at some answers to these questions. Calum L. Matheson undertakes a series of case studies—including the Trinity test site, nuclear war games, urban shelter schemes, and contemporary survivalism—and argues that contending with the anxieties (individual, social, cultural, and political) born of the Atomic Age depends on rhetorical conceptions of the “real,” an order of experience that cannot be easily negotiated in language. Using aspects of media studies, rhetorical theory, and psychoanalysis, the author deftly engages the topics of Atomic Age survival, extinction, religion, and fantasy, along with their enduring cultural legacies, to develop an account of the Bomb as a signifier and to explore why some Americans have become fascinated with fantasies of nuclear warfare and narratives of postapocalyptic rebirth.

The name of this book, ‘Nuclear Bomb in Ganga’ sounds fearsome. But, it is a hard fact which has to be brought in black and white for the safety of millions of Indians who consider the river ‘Sacred Ganga’ or ‘the Ganges’ as their mother. After China detonated its first nuclear test on May, 1964 at Lop Nor, the USA was keen to keep track of further nuclear designs of Communist China in this region. The CIA teamed up with the Indian Intelligence Bureau (IB) to install a Nuclear Device on Nanda Devi Mountain to monitor further detonations by China in Lop Nor, across the Himalayas. Inclement weather during the installation mission forced the team involved in the expedition to hide the nuclear-powered device in a ledge around 2000 feet below the installation point of the Nanda Devi Mountain. When the recovery team of Indian climbers was sent in October 1966 to retrieve the equipment, they found it missing in the glaciers due to avalanches. The CIA and Indian Intelligence maintained an eerie silence about the missing device until it was exposed by an American magazine on 12 April 1978. The then Prime Minister of India, Morarji Desai, briefed the Parliament on 17 April 1978, about the missing device and appointed a committee of scientists to investigate this issue.

In this exciting new collection, leading and emerging Lacanian scholars seek to understand what psychoanalysis brings to debates about the environment and the climate crisis. They argue that we cannot understand climate change and all of its multifarious ramifications without first understanding how our terrifying proximity to the real undergirds our relation to the environment, how we mistake lack for loss and mourning for melancholy, and how we seek to destroy the same world we seek to protect. The book traces Lacan’s contribution through a consideration of topics including doomsday preppers, forest suicides, Indigenous resistance, post-apocalyptic films, the mathematics of climate science, and the relevance of Kant. They ask: What can you do if your neighbour is a climate change denier? What would Bartleby do? Does the animal desire? Who is cleaning up all the garbage on the internet? Why is the sudden greening of the planet under COVID-19 no help whatsoever? It offers a timely intervention into Lacanian theory, environmental studies, geography, philosophy, and literary studies that illustrates the relevance of psychoanalysis to current social and environmental concerns.

Practical Aviation Security is a complete guide to the aviation security system, from crucial historical events, to the policies and policy makers and the major terrorist and criminal acts that have shaped the procedures in use today, to the tip-of-the-spear technologies that are shaping the future. This text enables the reader to enter airport security or other aviation management roles with the proper knowledge to immediately implement the necessary security programs, to meet international guidelines and to responsibly protect their facility or organization, no matter how large or small. Using case studies and practical security measures in use at airports all over the world, readers learn the effective methods and the fundamental principles involved in designing and implementing a security system. This text covers commercial airport security, general aviation and cargo operations, threats and threat detection and response systems as well as international security issues. While not perfect, the aviation security system is comprehensive and requires continual focus and attention to be able to stay a step ahead of the next attack. This text provides the tools necessary to prepare practitioners to enter the industry, and if they are already in the industry to better understand it so they can prevent the next tragedy. * Covers commercial airport security, general aviation and cargo operations, threats and threat detection and response systems as well as international security issues * Lays out the security fundamentals that can ensure the future of global travel and commerce * Applies real-world aviation experience to the task of anticipating and deflecting threats

Bringing just war doctrine to life, Richard J. Regan raises a host of difficult questions about the evils of war, asking first and foremost whether war is ever justified, and, if so, for what purposes? Regan considers the basic principles of just war theory and applies those principles to historical and ongoing conflicts through case studies and discussion questions. His well-received 1996 work is updated with the addition of case studies on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Islamist terrorist organizations. Especially timely are the added discussions of the use of drones to assassinate terrorist leaders and, in the matter of weapons of mass destruction, asking how certain is "certain enough" that a country has weapons of mass destruction before it can be justly attacked? Regan considers the roles of the president, Congress, and the U.N. Security Council in determining when long-term U.S. military involvement is justified.

Overbearing, avaricious and difficult, yet talented and ambitious, George Brydges Rodney has never attracted much sympathy or understanding. He was nevertheless an original thinker and one of the great admirals of the eighteenth century. The contents of this volume, the first of three, document his career from 1742 until 1763 - his private and political life. His early years as a captain were spent in the severe conditions of the North Sea and in taking privateers in the western approaches. During the peace after 1748 he was Governor of Newfoundland and in the Seven Years' War blockaded Le Havre before going, as a flag officer, to command in the Leeward Islands where he participated in the capture of Martinique. This volume also contains letters to his wife which indicate, against past opinion, that Rodney had a heart.

Risk society and beyond traces the evolution of Ulrich Beck's ideas as expressed in Risk Society (1992) and expands into previously unforeseen risk areas, such as genetics and cyberspace.

Before the Bomb, there were simply 'bombs', lower case. But it was the twentieth century, one hundred years of almost incredible scientific progress, that saw the birth of the Bomb, the human race's most powerful and most destructive discovery. In this magisterial and enthralling account, Gerard DeGroot gives us the life story of the Bomb, from its birth in the turn-of-the-century physics labs of Europe to a childhood in the New Mexico desert of the 1940s, from adolescence and early adulthood in Nagasaki and Bikini, Australia and Siberia to unsettling maturity in test sites and missile silos all over the globe. By turns horrific, awe-inspiring and blackly comic, The Bomb is never less than compelling.