Title: The Armageddon Experience: A Nuclear Weapons Test Memoir
Author: Rod Buntzen
Publisher: Xlibris
ISBN: 978-1796011593
Pages: 236
Genre: Memoir/History
Interviewed by: Anthony Avina

Read Author Interview

PBR: Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I am retired from a long career in research and development for the U.S. Department of the Navy and as a chief scientist in an advanced technology company. I began my naval career as an engineering trainee in San Diego at the North Island Air Station and later for the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory (NRDL) in San Francisco while attending UC Berkeley. I was still a student employee at NRDL in 1958 when I participated in nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific Proving Grounds. When NRDL closed in 1967, I continued research work at the Naval Undersea Center in San Diego for almost three decades when I retired and joined the industrial R&D community. I worked another two decades and ended up at a small high tech company in San Diego.

I currently live in Calistoga, California enjoying a lifelong interest in science, art, and writing.
Besides The Armageddon Experience, I am also the author of 1501-Leonardo and Michelangelo in a Tale of Art, Love, and Betrayal.

PBR: What was the inspiration behind your book, “The Armageddon Experience”? I realized that I was participating in an unusual experience at the Hardtack I nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific, and took notes of everyday activities thinking that someday I would want to tell my family about what I witnessed. As the Cold War continued and finally ceased to be as threatening, I realized that our contemporary leaders and also general public awareness of the horrific damage these weapons can create had faded. Nowadays, few in government and the public can fully comprehend their horror. In addition, NRDL’s history and contributions to our national defense appears lost. My inspiration was to remind our leaders and inform the public of the possible horror that lurks ahead, help archive the history of NRDL, and tell my story.

PBR: What themes or messages do you hope readers take away from your memoir? I would most like to help inform readers about the knowledge, experience, and personal feelings my colleagues and I had regarding nuclear war during the Cold War period.

PBR: What would you say is the one thing today’s society should be aware of in regards to the history of nuclear weapons that they might not necessarily know about?
As you stated, the threat of nuclear war is so far removed because of how much time has passed since WWII and the nuclear bombs detonated during that war. What part of either that point in history or your own experience seeing the study of nuclear weapons up close would shock the modern day individual?

I am not sure that I know what would shock the modern day individual. Today’s society is so much removed from the Cold War days that I am not sure many people care much about the possibility of nuclear war. Politics and climate change dominate the news. I’m not sure many people will be interested enough to read my story.

PBR: As an expert in this field, what is one thing a nuclear war would affect that would shock the average citizen? Popular entertainment has used nuclear war as a storytelling device for years, but as is often the case entertainment can either embellish or leave out critical details of very real threats. So in your experience, what would be one long-term concern anyone living in a time of nuclear war wouldn’t be aware of?
I do not think the average citizen understands how few nuclear detonations of less than a Megaton it takes to seriously affect the planet’s climate by causing a nuclear winter. Although I am not an expert on climate change, reading about the subject confuses the issue and I have no idea what would happen if a regional nuclear exchange between, for example, India and Pakistan, occurs. It may delay global warming at a horrendous cost, but allow the surviving world a chance to curtail an overarching deadly future.

PBR: What steps do you think could be taken to prevent this kind of nuclear hostility and the threat of nuclear war from becoming a reality?
No one really knows. However I believe that it would help to remind our leaders and inform the public of the impact of nuclear war we understood early during the Cold War. We became lulled into indifference under the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction and with some good luck. I suggest that we read Daniel Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine, and David Hoffman’s The Dead Hand, to help understand how terrifying our future might become. Of course, reading The Armageddon Experience would help introduce a personal side to the views those books reveal.

PBR: What would be your biggest piece of advice for anyone interested in studying nuclear power or the affects of nuclear energy when weaponized, based on your own studies and personal experience during your time at the NRDL?
My experience with nuclear weapon effects is personal. It should be for others as well. Nuclear war will affect everyone on earth in ways that are not written in think tank studies and defense doctrine. It’s personal.

PBR: Now that you have published your book, what are your future plans? Any other novels or research papers in the works?
My Armageddon experience and following time at NRDL occupied the first decade of my professional career. The remaining 55 years in research and development for the navy and private industry was just as awesome. I was able to work in the field, laboratory, and in various government think tanks in national defense that involved high energy lasers for fusion and weapons, particle beam weapons, hyperspectral imaging, and nonacoustic antisubmarine warfare. There was never a day in all that time that was boring. I can’t wait to write about it.
In the meantime, people can read my book 1501–Leonardo and Michelangelo in a Tale of Art, Love, and Betrayal.