Cakra, Destroyer Of Planets: Did Ancient Nuclear Technology Exist?
Nuclear power has caused some serious disasters throughout the world. Is it a modern phenomenon, or is there evidence of its existence in the ancient world? The worst nuclear disaster in the United States occurred in Rhode Island at Wood River Junction in Richmond in 1964 when a production operator at United Nuclear Corporation’s Fuels Recovery Plant poured a concentrated uranium solution into a tank containing a sodium carbonate solution. He died shortly after. In 1957 a radioactive contamination accident occurred at the plutonium production center Mayak in Chelyabinsk-40 (now known as Ozyorsk), where nuclear weapons were made.
"Chernobyl. Last day of Pripyat" (April 26, 1986) by Alexey Akindinov (CC BY-SA 4.0)
In 1986, the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl exploded, and five percent of the radioactive reactor core was released into the environment and ended up contaminating various European countries. Approximately 335,000 people were evacuated. Many died, and cancer spread. Recently, in 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Okuma, Fukushima, Japan was rocked by an earthquake and tsunami. The active reactors shut down and the emergency generators failed, leading to three nuclear meltdowns and three hydrogen explosions. Approximately 154,000 people were evacuated from the plant and surrounding area and many died. Obviously, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were targeted with nuclear bombs, killing 40,000 people instantaneously in Nagasaki and 80,000 instantly in Hiroshima, though countless others died in subsequent days.
Destroyer Of Worlds
Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) was a theoretical physicist and the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory during the Manhattan Project, in which the first modern atomic bombs were developed and tested. He is called the ‘father of the atomic bomb’, but while he was a student at Harvard University, he also studied ancient historical accounts and ancient languages, including Sanskrit, and he read the Bhagavad Gita, the Mahabharata, and other Indian ancient texts. He often quoted ancient verses when talking about physics and nuclear power in particular, and when he first created the atomic bomb and witnessed its explosion, he quoted the Bhagavad Gita, exclaiming, “I have become the Destroyer of Worlds.” Years later, during a classroom lecture, one of his students asked if the atomic test at Alamogordo was the first nuclear blast in history. Oppenheimer responded, “Yes, in modern times,” indicating he perhaps believed that nuclear reactions, both natural and artificial, might have occurred in antiquity. Is this possible?
