A reader asks Matt for a status update on his idea for a “New Los Alamos” dedicated to world peace. 

Matt responds:

As of right now, it’s a dream—a dream that has reality to it.

We are still building the thought of it, the concept of it.  The reality of it will be once I believe that there is a groundswell and a realization by our species that we’re going to have to address the problems that we keep sweeping under the rug.

With the first Los Alamos, it became a race between good and evil, democracy and totalitarianism, where all the forces gathered the minds and the power and the tools.  At that point, the making of the weapon was supposedly going to be achieved either by Hitler’s regime or by the Allied forces.

I know that afterwards, the participants had grave reservations about what happened.  I suppose you could go on forever about why we did this, but the reality is:  We did, and it exists, and now there’s an elephant sitting in the outhouse, and no one knows when he’s going to come out of it and wreck havoc.

So far we’ve been able to keep it in the outhouse—by luck, persuasion, the help of God and the angels, who knows...

I’m of an attitude that we can’t just keep relying on our stupidity and blindness to the reality of this power to destroy everyone.

All around us are people who have said they want to destroy certain parts of the world, because they don’t agree with them.  And there are other parts of the world that want to destroy the people who want to destroy them, tit for tat, until all of a sudden, we ain’t got nuttin’...

So the New Los Alamos, I believe, is as necessary to life as clean water and air.

Whether we’ll wake up in time, I don’t know.  The only thing I do know is that on April 7, I turned 77 years old, and within a short time, frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn, I’m going to be 6 feet under.  But before I drop into the next dimension, I’m going to leave a message in a bottle that I hope somebody will open up and begin the process.

The message is that Humpty Dumpty can be put together again; it just takes risk and the ability to look beyond problems and figure out the necessity.

It is probably a very grave miscalculation on my part to think that a former undertaker painter recovered alcoholic from the South Side of Chicago could be the Paul Revere—not yelling, “The British are coming!” but “Something bad is coming!”

I think Paul Revere was a silversmith, so maybe you have to be some kind of a craftsman to succeed on this fool’s errand.  Maybe I should polish some silver, or better yet, take up horseback riding.

Matt