Nukespeak is the language of the nuclear mindset — the worldview or system of beliefs of nuclear developers and enthusiasts.
The word “Nukespeak” is a tribute to George Orwell, who in his novel 1984, used the term “Newspeak” as the name of the language of Big Brother and the totalitarian state. Unlike a living language, the state was constantly removing words from common usage, with the ultimate goal to make it (literally) impossible for a citizen to think a seditious thought.
In the world of “Newspeak,” vast numbers of people spent their days frantically revising the records of the past in order to make those records correspond with the political reality of the present: “He who controls the past, controls the future.”
In 1984, the authorities did everything they could to eliminate all references to the events in the past that might be embarrassing in light of subsequent political change. George Winston, who labored at revising newspaper accounts of the past, had a special tube at his desk. Once he finished working on a copy of a document from the past, he dropped the original into “the memory hole,” where it would be whisked away to be burnt and never seen again. In the world of nuclear technology, an ever-more elaborate system of classification has served as a “memory hole,” allowing politicians and the military to prevent the public from ever knowing about the plague of accidents and near-misses that could have lead to the accidental detonation of nuclear weapons, or the meltdown of nuclear reactors.
This blog has two authors: Richard Bell and Rory O’Connor. Bell and O’Connor are the co-authors (along with Stephen Hilgartner) of Nukespeak: Nuclear Language, Myths, and Mindset, published in hardback by Sierra Club Books in 1982, and in paper by Penguin Books in 1983. The three co-authors were recipients of the 1982 George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language, an annual award sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English.
More about Richard Bell
