Sarah Scoles is a journalist and author based in Westcliffe, Colorado. She is a contributing editor at Scientific American and a senior contributor at Undark, and her work has also appeared in publications like the New York Times, Wired, Popular Science, and The Atlantic.
SunLit: Tell us this book’s backstory – what’s it about and what inspired you to write it?
Sarah Scoles: I’m a journalist who writes about how science and technology affect, and are affected by, society. So a number of years ago when I was taking a road trip through New Mexico, I wrote to the Department of Energy’s national laboratories that I was passing by — Sandia and Los Alamos — to ask if I could pop in and learn about some of their ongoing projects, thinking I would find ideas for future articles. At the time, I only vaguely knew what the labs did — some basic scientific research, some technology development, some work on nuclear weapons.
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They agreed to let me come bother their scientists with questions, but the research the lab officials wanted to show off was all innocuous — about black holes or supernovae or solar panels. No one talked about nuclear weapons, although it was clear that the science they were discussing had applications to nuclear weapons (stars are sort of giant hydrogen bombs, after all). Being a journalist, I wanted to know more about the things they didn’t want to talk about: nuclear weapons.
After I got home and did more research, I learned about how the U.S. was modernizing its nuclear weapons, and that these bombs seemed to be becoming more and more relevant — but it seemed like no one was talking about them.
So I set about trying to write a book about what the nuclear weapons complex is like in the modern era, and not the Cold War, like we normally hear about. I write about who works on these bombs, how they make sense of that work, how and why the modernization program is happening, and what nuclear weapons have to do with our daily lives whether or not they’re exploding.
SunLit: Place the excerpt you selected in context. How does it fit into the book as a whole and why did you select it?
Scoles: The excerpt I selected begins with an account of the first nuclear test, Trinity, which took place in southern New Mexico. That explosion, which was prelude to the American bombings of Japan at the end of WWII, set the stage of the next 80 years of atomic development. Since Trinity, scientists have built more bombs, tried to make them better, and tried to maintain the arsenal safely — all with the idea that nuclear deterrence keeps the world peaceful, which obviously lots of people disagree with.
The excerpt gives an overview of those ensuing years and how we ended up where we are today, modernizing the U.S.’s nuclear weapons and reconstituting capabilities we let lapse after the Cold War.
“Countdown”
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One of those is the ability to manufacture plutonium pits, the cores of nuclear weapons, which used to happen right here in Colorado. The connection to the state, and the context the passage provides, are why I chose this excerpt.
SunLit: What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?
Scoles: Before I was a journalist, I was planning to be a scientist. I studied physics and astronomy. And in my early research for “Countdown,” I learned that many of the people who end up working on nuclear weapons come from those fields. They’d begun their careers studying stars and supernovae and whatnot, and then they’d translated that physical expertise — with atoms and explosions and fission and fusion — into something much more earth-bound. I became fascinated with what made each of them pivot their careers, and how different their lives were than if they’d become astronomy professors.
SunLit: What did the process of writing this book add to your knowledge and understanding of your craft and/or the subject matter?
Scoles: As a journalist, I feel like it taught me how to have conversations that were meaningful and thoughtful with people who have to keep a lot of their knowledge and insights under wraps, because it’s classified. There were a lot of scientists I spoke to who couldn’t legally answer, places in the labs I couldn’t get approved to go, and working around those constraints was an important part of the writing process.
I think often such secret subjects don’t get as much public attention because those on both sides of the equation feel like the information is too locked-up. But within the legal lines, there’s a lot of leeway, and gaining the trust of the people I interviewed, so they would occupy that leeway, was important.
SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?
Scoles: While I learned from speaking to sources who had to keep secrets, I do think navigating the secrecy, and the government bureaucracy, were the most difficult parts. There were always points in my conversations with scientists when they would say we were too close to the classified line, and that was the end of the line for me.
And being able to write with enough detail to keep the book interesting, while not having the full detail, was difficult. At the labs, I had to go through background checks, leave all my devices locked up, be escorted everywhere, go through significant physical security checks, in addition to just getting my interview requests approved.
SunLit: What do you want readers to take from this book?
Scoles: I hope readers come away with the sense that nuclear weapons are very much a part of modern life and society, even when they’re not in the news (although they’re in the news an unnerving amount lately). I hope they feel like they got a peek into the labs where that radioactive work happens, and a sense of the people who do that work, and that their own moral thoughts about their jobs are both complicated and well-thought-through. Mostly, I hope readers feel like they have enough information to form their own conclusions about what place nuclear weapons have, and should have, in the world.
SunLit: What’s something that surprised you about the science of nuclear weapons?
Scoles: Scientists are still trying to figure out the exact details of how they work. Since the U.S. doesn’t test nuclear weapons by blowing them up anymore, scientists have to make sense of them using computer simulations — simulating how their pieces and parts, large and small, work together.
While they have a pretty good handle on that physics, there are still aspects that they approximate, or don’t totally understand at a very detailed level.
SunLit: Tell us about your next project.
Scoles: I’m hoping to write a book about scientific and military goings-on in the Arctic.
A few more quick items
Currently on your nightstand for recreational reading: “All Fours” by Miranda July
First book you remember really making an impression on you as a kid: “The Boxcar Children” by Gertrude Chandler Warner
Best writing advice you’ve ever received: Don’t kill all your darlings.
Favorite fictional literary character: Ellie Arroway
Literary guilty pleasure (title or genre): Spy thrillers
Digital, print or audio – favorite medium to consume literature: Print
One book you’ve read multiple times: “Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?” by Lorrie Moore
Other than writing utensils, one thing you must have within reach when you write: Google
Best antidote for writer’s block: Telling myself that the draft doesn’t have to be good today. It can be good later.
Most valuable beta reader: Katie Palmer, my former editor at Wired magazine