A Bath of Radiation Fallout

Science Fiction on Acid: the LSD Chromosome Scare

‘The case is not yet proven,’ wrote celebrated sci-fi author Isaac Asimov in 1968, ‘but the indications are that LSD-users are undergoing the equivalent of a private bath of radiation fallout.’ This was, as far as he was concerned, no science fiction, but a potentially terrible fact.

Today we are perhaps more exposed to thinking about radiation and mutations in light of fantastic new abilities, thanks to the mainstreaming of comic book characters. Yet in an age when nuclear war seemed such a likelihood that scary infomercials and drill-practices were part of daily life, a ‘bath of radiation fallout’ had horrific connotations.

Thinking about LSD in this light now is even stranger. Psychedelic lore is replete with poetic comparisons between LSD and the atom bomb, but only so far as the former was so thoroughly tied with countercultural, antiwar symbolism. It was to many people a political antidote: ‘drop acid, not bombs’.

Why then should LSD, famous for its psychological rather than physio…