BY MATT LINDSEYNorth Country This Week

OGDENSBURG — An Ogdensburg Free Academy history teacher and former Canadian nuclear weapons specialist has published a book exploring lesser-known stories from the history of nuclear weapons and arms control.

Ryan Hewer’s Acceptable Losses: An Absurd History of Mutually Assured Destruction is an illustrated collection of strange but true stories involving nuclear weapons and arms control. The book is available in hardcover, paperback and ebook editions.

Hewer said the project began as an effort to map suspected locations of nuclear weapons lost during the Cold War.

“It started off as an earnest attempt to make a detailed map of the suspected locations of all the nuclear weapons that have been lost during the Cold War, and by the time I got to Goldsboro and Thule, I decided that there was a lot here that was declassified, but not really widely known publicly,” Hewer said.

He initially planned to collect the material for a graphic novel but said some of the events required more detail and nuance, leading him to write short stories instead.

Hewer focuses on events including missing warheads, secret procurement networks and recently declassified cover-ups.

“It gives a spotlight to the people who lost everything to incidents their governments are only now starting to acknowledge, and it highlights the surreal thinking of the past few generations,” Hewer said. “These stories needed to be told, and I wanted to peel back the curtain on the weirder corners of a world where I spent a formative part of my life.”

One of the subjects that surprised Hewer involved the use of nuclear weapons for geological engineering.

“Most of these stories are familiar in arms control circles, even if they're not necessarily general knowledge,” Hewer said. “The one exception for me has to be that while America was experimenting with using nuclear weapons for geological engineering purposes, those results were ultimately abandoned for being impractical.”

Hewer said the Soviet Union continued such efforts, detonating more than 100 nuclear devices for purposes including digging lakes and canals, putting out gas well fires, stimulating oil fields, carving out storage caverns and mapping the Earth’s crust.

“Some of those projects will fail spectacularly,” he said.

The book is written for general readers and does not require a background in arms control, according to Hewer. Each chapter is paired with original comic art by Ukrainian illustrator Andriy Dyakiw.

Hewer said he hopes readers gain an appreciation for the history behind today’s nuclear weapons and arms-control issues.

“It wasn't written with young readers in mind, but I hope anyone who does pick up a copy appreciates the unhinged insanity that was the nuclear era, and this coming generation is the one that inherits the weapons, the treaties, the arguments, the betrayed promises and they deserve to know how we got here,” Hewer said. “If I can keep those stories alive a little longer, that's a win.”

Hewer said his work as a history teacher has influenced his approach to telling the stories.

“Long before public education, there was storytelling,” he said. “We are dealing with weighty subjects, but that doesn't mean stories have to be told as a somber history.”

“A story that is funny, surprising or absurd stays with a student far longer than one that is merely important, and where the record is absurd, I have let it be absurd,” Hewer said.

He pointed to a story involving a British nuclear landmine warmed by live poultry as an example.

“I'd rather they remember the chickens and, because of them, remember everything else the story is about,” Hewer said.

Hewer also sees lessons in history for current arms races.

“The real lessons belong to all of us,” he said. “Every arms race begins with ‘if we don't, they will.’ Each time, the fear of what a rival might do became the justification for doing it first, faster, and with fewer questions asked.”

“Today a new race is underway, and its participants speak the same language of inevitability and urgency,” Hewer said. “The technology is different, but the pedigree remains.”

Hewer teaches global history at Ogdensburg Free Academy. He previously worked in nuclear safeguards and nuclear counterproliferation for the Canadian government, including as deputy director for Middle East relations at Global Affairs Canada.

Acceptable Losses is Hewer’s first book. It is 199 pages, with ISBN 9798172399565 for the hardcover edition and ISBN 9798177732718 for the paperback edition. The book is available through Amazon.com.