The Secret That Exploded

The Secret that Exploded

by Howard Morland

"The Secret that Exploded" written by Howard Morland is

a non-fiction book based on his findings on the H-bomb.

Howard dedicated his life to finding out the secret of the

H-bomb and releasing his findings to the public who have

been in the dark since the beginnings of the Manhattan

Project. The book goes through everything he went through

from when he became an airforce pilot to him becoming

involved in radical groups to him fighting the government in

court for freedom of press. His book goes through everything

he had to do to get the information he needed to find out

the secret of the H-bomb. Howard felt that if "He would

attack secrecy; if secrecy could be dismantled, then the

opponents of nuclear weaponry would have a fighting chance.

(pg.50)" He wanted to break down the secrecy of the

government and give the radical groups that were against the

bomb a chance to get there views heard around the U.S. and

possibly bring a stop to the nuclear arms race. Howard

thought that the "secret of the H-bomb could be the

centerpiece of the secrecy structure and that if he could

crack it he could bring down the whole secrecy

structure.(pg.50)" This is what he wanted and he wanted all

of the secrets that the government has been keeping from the

public to be revealed so that the public could know what was

going on and not be in the dark.

Howard knowing that finding the secret would be near

impossible moved on in his journey and visited every major

nuclear manufacturing sight in the U.S. that he knew about.

On his journey he encountered problems with security. The

government has bottled up the secret by giving security

clearances to anyone who knew the secret. These people could

not tell anyone anything that was deemed classified and they

could get in very big trouble if they did. Howard had to get

by this by asking questions that would bring back answers

that wasn't classified material but the information that he

needed. Howard got so good at asking questions that he

eventually put together all the information he found out

from all of his sources and put together his version of the

H-bomb. This version was so near accurate that the

government wanted to classify it so that Howard could not

publish it in the The Progressive magazine. Howard and The

Progressive took the government to the Supreme court where

the government dropped their case because the info that they

wanted to contain had already leaked out to the public.

Howard and The Progressive got what they wanted and earned

the right to print their article that revealed the secret of

the H-bomb.

One major theme in the book was how the U.S. and Russia

both had so many nuclear bombs that they could end life on

both continents and possibly the world and still have bombs

left in their arsenal to do more damage. The carnage and the

fallout of a nuclear bomb is devastating. As shown on page

276 one "Poseidon submarine in the Gulf of Mexico could kill

50 million Americans who live in the 17 largest cities in

America. This attack would expend more explosive energy than

all the wars of history, and still use less than 1% of the

force of the U.S. Triad." If one sub could kill one fifth of

the U.S. population then the amount of nuclear bombs that

both Russia and the U.S. hold could kill every single person

on the earth. Bernard Feld said that "Fifty to a hundred

nuclear weapons, not ten thousand, were all we needed for

deterrence.(pg.61)" If we only need a hundred H-bombs to

deter the enemy then there is no reason for us to have ten

thousand. Something has to be done to decrease the amount of

bombs in our arsenal and the Russians. If a war was to break

out the world would end and there would be total

destruction. Some people don't understand that if we got in

a nuclear war that there would be total destruction.

Everything and everybody will die. Just because we have more

bombs than our enemy doesn't mean that we will win and

survive. All the Russians need to do is get off about fifty

bombs and more than half of the U.S. will be destroyed. The

fallout afterwards would bring death to all around the world