When I was in middle school, there was an accident at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. About the same time, there was a movie that came out called, “The China Syndrome.” In fact, I looked it up…the movie came out 10 or 12 days after the incident. People took the fictional events in the movie and conflated them around the accident at Three Mile Island. It spawned a massive worldwide backlash against nuclear energy. There were all kinds of protests in Germany, the US, and elsewhere demanding that the governments and the UN end nuclear power. When the disaster at Chernobyl in the USSR happened, that was just one more nail in the coffin of nuclear energy. People blamed the science, not what they should have blamed (at least in the case of Chernobyl). They should have blamed the garbage Soviet system that, like all communist systems, rewards conformity, not merit; incentivizes laziness and extremely poor work ethic. When all workers are paid equally for the amount of time worked and not for the quality of the job that is done, the system is going to devolve to the level of the worst worker. If the worker shows up drunk or does not do a quality job, they still get paid the same as the most conscientious worker that only produces masterpieces.

Our True Hero today is a man that was working on the Manhattan Project during the Second World War, and after a slip in one of the labs, exposed the lab workers to a potentially lethal dose of radiation. His quick thinking and action, however, saved the lives of all those nearby. Unfortunately, his actions exposed him to a lethal dose of radiation. His willingness to sacrifice his own life, to protect others, makes him a hero.