Janus Manhattan Island had something for everyone in 1945.
The spirit of ISOLATIONISM , last seen going under in the wake of Pearl Harbour, was back stronger than ever , albeit in a new Easter bonnet.
For God's America had decided its role was no longer to stand above and away from a wicked, wicked European-dominated world.
Rather it was to become God's avenging angel , benevolently ruling over a badly fallen world , with a velvet fist in a nuclear glove.
But telling the world's other empires they now had to bow and kneel before the American empire, because only it had the Bomb, was a non-starter.
The other empires all immediately felt they too had to have a nuclear arsenal , regardless of the cost to their war torn economies.
Cue the Cold War, enter stage right.
And cue fifty trillion in wasted defence expenditures worldwide ever since .
Expenditures above and beyond what might have been adequate for each nation's defence , if this international race for a 'national Bomb' had never happened.
All this, because America's leadership stupidly thought that they could keep the science of making an atomic bomb an America-only secret, hidden away from the rest of the world.
By contrast, Henry Dawson's Manhattan project had selflessly focused on producing enough inexpensive natural wartime penicillin to heal all in the world dying of bacterial infections it could cure.
The basic human technology for growing penicillin was in the public domain.
The real penicillin-making factory in this process were actually the tiny penicillium spores ubiquitously found all over the world.
The feedstock for the fungus were the equally ubiquitous plant waste, water and air.
America and Britain's leadership had also selfishly tried to keep penicillin technology all to themselves , as they had with atomic bomb-making, but thankfully were thwarted this time.
Inspired by the actions of Dawson and his small band of supporters, John L Smith, head of Pfizer, had switched sides at a crucial moment.
As had the WPB (War Production Board.)
Partly through informal advice to the Board's head ,Donald M Nelson, from (Dawson-supporting) industrialist and special advisor Floyd B Odlum.
Partly because the WPB was filled with activist New-Dealers.
So it fought and won a tussle with its Washington bureaucratic rival the OSRD (author of the isolationist atomic bomb policy) over the amount of American penicillin that would be required during WWII.
Instead of only just enough to heal lightly wounded American front line troops capable of going back into combat, now US penicillin was to be produced in vast enough quantities - even during wartime - to heal all of the world's seriously infected patients - on Allied , Axis and Neutral sides.
But suddenly having the ability and the willingness to give away precious life saving penicillin to friend and foe alike - the WPB's Good Neighbour Penicillin Diplomacy - proved far more popular - and at least as effective - as the OSRD's heavy handed Atomic Diplomacy.
And certainly a heck of a lot less expensive - and a hell of a lot less dangerous ...
The spirit of ISOLATIONISM , last seen going under in the wake of Pearl Harbour, was back stronger than ever , albeit in a new Easter bonnet.
For God's America had decided its role was no longer to stand above and away from a wicked, wicked European-dominated world.
Rather it was to become God's avenging angel , benevolently ruling over a badly fallen world , with a velvet fist in a nuclear glove.
But telling the world's other empires they now had to bow and kneel before the American empire, because only it had the Bomb, was a non-starter.
The other empires all immediately felt they too had to have a nuclear arsenal , regardless of the cost to their war torn economies.
Cue the Cold War, enter stage right.
And cue fifty trillion in wasted defence expenditures worldwide ever since .
Expenditures above and beyond what might have been adequate for each nation's defence , if this international race for a 'national Bomb' had never happened.
All this, because America's leadership stupidly thought that they could keep the science of making an atomic bomb an America-only secret, hidden away from the rest of the world.
By contrast, Henry Dawson's Manhattan project had selflessly focused on producing enough inexpensive natural wartime penicillin to heal all in the world dying of bacterial infections it could cure.
The basic human technology for growing penicillin was in the public domain.
The real penicillin-making factory in this process were actually the tiny penicillium spores ubiquitously found all over the world.
The feedstock for the fungus were the equally ubiquitous plant waste, water and air.
America and Britain's leadership had also selfishly tried to keep penicillin technology all to themselves , as they had with atomic bomb-making, but thankfully were thwarted this time.
Inspired by the actions of Dawson and his small band of supporters, John L Smith, head of Pfizer, had switched sides at a crucial moment.
As had the WPB (War Production Board.)
Partly through informal advice to the Board's head ,Donald M Nelson, from (Dawson-supporting) industrialist and special advisor Floyd B Odlum.
Partly because the WPB was filled with activist New-Dealers.
So it fought and won a tussle with its Washington bureaucratic rival the OSRD (author of the isolationist atomic bomb policy) over the amount of American penicillin that would be required during WWII.
Instead of only just enough to heal lightly wounded American front line troops capable of going back into combat, now US penicillin was to be produced in vast enough quantities - even during wartime - to heal all of the world's seriously infected patients - on Allied , Axis and Neutral sides.
But suddenly having the ability and the willingness to give away precious life saving penicillin to friend and foe alike - the WPB's Good Neighbour Penicillin Diplomacy - proved far more popular - and at least as effective - as the OSRD's heavy handed Atomic Diplomacy.
And certainly a heck of a lot less expensive - and a hell of a lot less dangerous ...
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