What Could Go Wrong?

The insane 1950s plan to use H-bombs to make

roads and redirect rivers.
Ed Regis Sept 30, 20159:30 AM

Physicist Edward Teller—part of the Project Plowshare team—appearing on Face the Nation, April 3, 1967.

Photo by CBS/Getty Images

This essay is adapted from Monsters: The Hindenburg Disaster and the
Birth of Pathological Technology, by Ed Regis, published by Basic Books.

A pathological technology is a triumph of emotional infatuation over

reason, logic, and the unpleasant facts of the real world. Such technologies
usually center around objects or processes that are physically huge: the
airship Hindenburg; an H-bomb blast; a particle accelerator that’s 54 miles
in circumference; a starship that would hold thousands of people. All of
these things came with grandiose ambitions driven by emotional,