Doomsday Men, by PD Smith

We are right to be afraid. By the mid-20th century, nuclear physics had created weapons so immense that they dwarfed everything that went before. With the dropping of the uranium and plutonium bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, scientific modernity had taken on a distinctly menacing dimension. In 1952, the first trial of the hydrogen bomb took place. Scientists such as Robert Oppenheimer warned President Truman that the new bomb was a "weapon of genocide". They alerted him that radioactivity could have "global effects". He paid no attention. Today, many powerful states possess the capacity to destroy our world. Without wanting to minimise the danger posed by criminal terrorists, the real threat to our security still lies with nuclear-primed governments.

So how do frightened people react? The strange thing about fear is that it can trigger laughter. Stanley Kubrick's dark 1964 comedy film, Dr Strangelove, effectively parodied the mad scientist (played by Peter Sellers) whose nihilism could bring us to Doomsday. Jokes about the end of the world are frequently recited. When I was a child, a popular joke in the playground started with the question, "What should you do in case of a nuclear attack?" The answer: "Get a shovel and a sheet, and walk slowly to the nearest cemetery." Why slowly? "You mustn't start a panic." Even as a child, I understood why it was funny. The joke drew attention to the ludicrous proposals put forward by civil defence experts: we would survive a nuclear attack by throwing ourselves under our flimsy school desks and curling into tight balls. The problem of nuclear weapons, we were led to believe, was one of psychology, not politics.

That said, there are not many jokes in PD Smith's latest book about the evolution of nuclear physics. His purpose is much more sober. Doomsday Men combines a straightforward analysis of the technology of destruction with a subtle examination of the aesthetics of destruction, as revealed in novels and films. For good measure, he throws in sketches of the chief protagonists in the scientific scene. Would men and women of science save or destroy the world? The answer is pessimistic. Science may have minimised fears fashioned by magical thinking and religious dogma, but it invented a legion of other threats. Scientists replaced sorcerers in threatening to destroy the world. Shrapnel, poisonous gas and nuclear bombs are their gifts.

Chemists and biologists feature in Smith's book, but physicists really preoccupy him: it was they who imagined and created new super-weapons as they strode around their laboratories singing "Onward Christian Soldiers" (as did the eminent physicist Ernest Rutherford). It was, however, a Faustian pact, in which the scientists' desire to understand the secrets of the universe led them to strike bargains with forces of evil. At the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen, young scientists even parodied Goethe's great play, Faust, with leading physicists of the day in the roles of Mephistopheles, Faust and God. It was no coincidence that these men took inspiration from literature. Scientists are avid readers of science fiction. The eminent nuclear scientist Leo Szilard even admitted that "the father of the atomic bomb was no physicist – he was a dreamer and a writer" and his name was HG Wells. Wells's The World Set Free, in 1914, accurately imagined the atomic bomb. Literature and film frequently stimulated "eureka moments" in the lab.

Although Doomsday Men is a lively read and packed with both information and anecdote, there are some problems. The book is structurally chaotic. The narrative leaps between decades bewilderingly. Literary discussions are clumsily fused with scientific debates. More disturbingly, there is a lack of political and economic analysis. After all, it is no coincidence that the pre-eminent power in creating the threat of nuclear holocaust is the US. According to some estimates, the American government spends more money on the military than all the other nations in the world added together. Military technologies and skilled scientific personnel of the 21st century are expensive: the Faustian bargain is being struck predominantly in one nation.

In the end, however, Doomsday Men is well worth reading. It is a powerful reminder that weapons of mass destruction are still "out there" and new ones are being developed every day. But it is not solely about scientific knowledge; it ranges much wider than science fiction. It tells the story of disaster. One question is left hanging: will we allow our governments to repeat the mistakes of the last century?

Joanna Bourke is the author of 'Fear: A History' and is a Professor of History at Birkbeck College

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