1/ Thread: what do you say when your six year old asks you what nuclear bombs are for?

2/ I have 3 young children, twins boys aged 6 and a 7 year old girl. We have a deck of picture cards from the National Air and Space Museum. At bedtime, each kid gets to choose a card and we talk about it.

3/ Kids and dad alike love this. I nerd out while sharing technical stuff I love, and also the human lessons. What life choices did the Wright Bros make that led to the invention of the airplane? What inspired Burt Rutan to build SpaceShipOne—and how can it inspire us?

4/ Much of the joy of this is answering the kids’ curiosity questions, both whimsical and deep. Why are wheel pants called wheel _pants_ and not socks? Why didn’t those 1960s rockets land vertically like @SpaceX?

4/ Last night, my son Alton picked the card for the Minuteman III missile. We talked about missiles versus rockets, why solid fuel boosters can launch on shorter notice versus liquid fueled. I explained how nuclear bombs are the most powerful bombs we have.

5/ Then he asked me what the bomb was for. “Is it for mining,” he asked, “for blowing stuff up so it’s easier to get stuff we need?”

6/ I didn’t have the heart to tell this innocent six year old: no, it’s for obliterating entire cities and killing everyone there. His next question would have been “why???” And I would have no satisfactory answer.

7/ Think about this. My generation grew up with G.I. Joe, Top Gun, and Hunt for Red October. The threat of world-wide violence seemed real. Our grandparents had personal connection to World War II—perhaps they fought, worked in an arms factory, or knew someone who died.

8/ Three quarters of a century from the last (final?) world war, the next generation is raised in an environment where bombs are.... confusing. My kids literally have no idea why you would ever want one.

9/ What did I tell him? I admit I was caught off-guard and stammered something incoherent.

10/ What I wish I could say: bombs are in museums, because they are a thing of the past. In the past, people didn’t know how to resolve disagreements. They picked leaders who disparaged other peoples, whom they never met. They thought for someone to win, someone else had to lose.

11/ Today we know better. Today we know other people are a value—no matter where they were born or the color of their skin. We wish there were more people on Earth—so there could be more inventions, more great things to enjoy, and more wonderful people to fall in love with.

12/ While we can’t say these all these things today, I’m optimistic we can say them tomorrow. The next generation is growing up in the most peaceful environment we’ve had... ever? (See @sapinker’s The Better Angels of our Nature)

13/ We’ve come such a long way, and I can’t wait to see how the next generation will take us even further.