Sleepwalking to Armageddon/Atomic Thunder
Dr Helen Caldicott + Elizabeth Tynan
Auditorium 2, State Library of Queensland
Environment
208
#Performances
#About the event
Duration: 60 minutes
A frightening but necessary assessment of the threat posed by nuclear weapons in the twenty-first century; and the Maralinga story.
About Sleepwalking to Armageddon by Dr. Helen Caldicott
With the world’s attention focused on climate change and terrorism, we are in danger of taking our eyes off the nuclear threat. But rising tensions between Russia and NATO, proxy wars erupting in Syria and Ukraine, a nuclear-armed Pakistan, and unsecured stockpiles of aging weapons around the globe make a nuclear attack or a terrorist attack on a nuclear facility arguably the biggest threat facing humanity.
In Sleepwalking to Armageddon, pioneering antinuclear activist Helen Caldicott assembles the world’s leading nuclear scientists and thought leaders to assess the political and scientific dimensions of the threat of nuclear war today. Chapters address the size and distribution of the current global nuclear arsenal, the history and politics of nuclear weapons, the culture of modern-day weapons labs, the militarization of space, and the dangers of combining artificial intelligence with nuclear weaponry, as well as a status report on enriched uranium and a shocking analysis of spending on nuclear weapons over the years.
About Atomic Thunder by Elizabeth Tynan
In September 2016 it will be 60 years since the first British mushroom cloud rose above the plain at Maralinga in South Australia. The atomic weapons test series wreaked havoc on Indigenous communities and turned the land into a radioactive wasteland.
In 1950 Australian prime minister Robert Menzies blithely agreed to atomic tests that offered no benefit to Australia and relinquished control over them – and left the public completely in the dark. This book reveals the devastating consequences of that decision. After earlier tests at Monte Bello and Emu Field, in 1956 Australia dutifully provided 3200 square kilometres of South Australian desert to the British Government, along with logistics and personnel.
How could a democracy such as Australia host another country’s nuclear program in the midst of the Cold War? In this meticulously researched and shocking work, journalist and academic Elizabeth Tynan reveals how Australia allowed itself to be duped. Maralinga was born in secret atomic business, and has continued to be shrouded in mystery decades after the atomic thunder stopped rolling across the South Australian test site. This book is the most comprehensive account of the whole saga, from the time that the explosive potential of splitting uranium atoms was discovered, to the uncovering of the extensive secrecy around the British tests in Australia many years after the British had departed, leaving an unholy mess behind.
Chair: Emma Griffiths
#Artists
Dr Helen Caldicott
Helen Caldicott, a graduate of the University of Adelaide School of Medicine, was a faculty member of Harvard Medical School and in 1974 founded the Cystic Fibrosis Clinic at Adelaide Children’s hospital. In 1971 she played a major role in Australia’s opposition to French atmospheric nuclear testing in the Pacific. While at Harvard in the early 1980s, she helped to reinvigorate, as its president, Physicians for Social Responsibility, an organization of 23,000 doctors committed to educating their colleagues about the dangers of nuclear power, nuclear weapons and nuclear war. On trips abroad she helped start similar medical organizations in many other countries; their umbrella group, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. She also founded the Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND) in the US in 1980.
The author or editor of eight books including Nuclear Madness, Missile Envy, and, most recently, Sleepwalking to Armageddon, she has been the recipient of many awards and honorary degrees, the subject of three award-winning documentary films, and was named one of the 20th Century’s most influential women by the Smithsonian Institution.
Elizabeth Tynan
Associate Professor Elizabeth Tynan PhD is co-ordinator of the professional development program at the James Cook University Graduate Research School. She is a prominent researcher of the history of British atomic weapons testing in Australia. Her first book on the topic (Atomic Thunder: The Maralinga Story) won the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Australian History and the CHASS Australia Prize for a Book in 2017. She is a former journalism academic with a background in both print and electronic media, specialising in science writing and editing. Her PhD from the Australian National University examined aspects of the British nuclear tests in Australia in the 1950s and 1960s. Her new book about British atomic tests in Australia, The Secret of Emu Field: Britain’s Forgotten Atomic Tests in Australia, was published by NewSouth Publishing in May 2022.
#Moderator
Emma Griffiths
From breaking news and political reporting to the latest in entertainment, Emma Griffiths loves the variety of presenting a fast paced Drive program. Taking up a post in Moscow for 4 years saw Emma reporting on the school siege in Beslan, the political upheavals of Ukraine’s “orange” revolution, travelling to the Arctic circle and of course, keeping a close eye on Vladimir Putin. Emma’s coverage in Beslan won her a highly commended nod in the 2005 Walkley Awards. The road from Moscow led to Sydney and Canberra for a long stint of political reporting, including a number of years reporting from the Parliament House bureau. Emma has moved back to her home town and now presents the ABC Brisbane Drive program.
