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TEDx: Alex Wellerstein

Alex Wellerstein is Stevens Institute of Technology’s resident nuclear aficionado. An Assistant Professor in the College of Arts and Letters and a David and GG Farber Fellow in the program for Science and Technology Studies, Wellerstein is entering his fifth year of employment at Stevens. He graduated from the University of California Berkeley in 2002 with a degree in History, and he earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in History of Science in 2010. As a freshman at Berkeley, he took a job working in the Office for the History of Science and Technology helping to organize their scientific journals. He attributes the beginning of his love for nuclear science and history to reading through these scientific journals. In 2010, he started a blog, nuclearsecrecy.com. In 2014, he created NUKEMAP, a website that uses scientific models and Google Maps to showcase the outcome of a nuclear weapon being detonated anywhere in the world. Currently, he’s working with fellow Stevens professors and students on the Reinventing Civil Defense Project, a project dedicated to safety education in the event of a nuclear threat. In his TEDx talk titled “Reinventing Civil Defense: Duck and Cover for the New Nuclear Age,” Professor Wellerstein laid out a fascinating analysis of our nuclear past and a vision for the future.

Wellerstein started off his talk with some terrifying facts: Our missile interception system isn’t as good as we’ve been led to believe it is. During his interview, he said it was one of the biggest misconceptions the Reinventing Civil Defense project faces. “Under controlled conditions, where we know where the missile is coming from and we know what it is and it’s not trying to fake us out, we can destroy the thing maybe half the time. Under uncontrolled conditions, we have no idea.” Next, he made a sphere in the air, about the size of a soccer ball. “With a mass of nuclear fuel this big, any terrorist with the technical ability of say, a Stevens undergraduate can make a nuke,” he said, much to the chagrin of the audience. Now that the nerves of the crowd had been suitably heightened, Wellerstein continued on.

Next, Wellerstein offered some good news. While some may mock the corny Duck and Cover PSAs of the 1950s, it’s not as preposterous as it may seem. Wellerstein explained, “The data shows, even at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it worked in certain circumstances.” That’s what his Reinventing Civil Defense Project is all about. The project is currently in the process of developing and securing funding for many different educational materials: video games, graphic novels, VR simulations, and more. Wellerstein predicted that the first of these projects should be publicly available over the next year. After his talk ended, I asked him what Stevens students could do in case of a nuclear attack in New York. He responded, “The easiest, smartest, and most reliable thing, especially from a single weapon, is to get inside, and don’t leave for a couple days. You might ask ‘What about food?’ Hopefully there’s a candy machine in there with you.”

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