If you’re interested in this topic, I highly recommend the book “Command and Control” by Eric Schlosser which describes the details of America’s nuclear arms through the lens of an accident at a Titan II missile silo that could have gone very badly.
It is no longer sold, as far as I can tell. Hansen's widow was selling it after his death. You are supposed to send an email to order it (now as PDF downloads rather than optical disc). I emailed to order back in March of this year and never got a response.
I more recently discovered that it has been uploaded to Library Genesis so I got it there.
Swords of Armageddon is a history that quotes from primary sources very extensively. That's the bulk of the publication, by word count. It lends itself to more skimming than detailed reading in many sections due to this approach. These documents are more about policy, politics, and planning than about technical details. That may be due to Hansen's relative weakness on the technical side as well as due to source availability; I'm sure that documents about the diplomatic considerations following Operation Castle were more readily declassified than documents about the device data. Hansen's early introductory material contains some odd blunders about e.g. the physical properties of deuterium. Don't let that discourage you. Most of the book is so primary-source-driven that his powers of interpretation take a back seat.
There are surely other histories of the post-war Atomic Energy Commission. This is the first book I have read that makes it clear what a leviathan it was. In 1956, the AEC alone accounted for 3.2% of the federal government's budget (not counting nuclear weapons costs allocated to other departments like Defense). This is comparable to NASA's share in the Apollo era of the following decade, but the AEC operated with much more secrecy. It spent billions of dollars on weapons improvements that were obsoleted in just a few more years by even greater improvements. It was the era of Moore's Law for mass destruction.
One small interesting thing I learned: AEC had a multitude of reasons for experimenting with uranium 233 bred from thorium. Almost all of these reasons were related to nuclear weapons. U-233 was used in many nuclear weapons test series, though the details of usage (except for the one Operation Teapot test) have yet to be declassified.
Worth noting: PBS’ “American Experience” did a documentary (part docudrama?) on the accident which was okay, but not as nearly as outstanding as the book.
I read the book is the result of seven years of research. The text itself is 500 pages with ~110 of notes and references.
Schlosser’s book (at times) reads like fiction. I enjoyed how he weaved the story of the Damascus accident and history of America’s nuclear program seamlessly to a climax. It is one of my favorite books of on both subject matter and writing style.
This is a pretty excellent site. A few years ago, I worked on a series on nuclear weapons and recently released one of the articles. There's a backlog of articles you can read by clicking on the publication including on the physics.
"The US has admitted to having 32 broken arrows with 6 nukes never being recovered."
"By some accounts, the Soviet Union built hundreds of [suitcase nukes], of which several dozen were missing. Based on other reports, suitcase nukes were never built in large numbers or were never deployed."
People in charge of nukes are like us, they make mistakes. Thats why we shouldnt have 12,000 of them
I spent an almost pathological amount of time reading this site as a teenager in the later half of the 90s. It's really cool it is still online.
This is what peak websites look like: packed full of information written in text with images. Nothing needing to be executed, function over form, and incredibly long lasting and robust.
Questions for anyone who maybe knows answers:
How likely is that there are nuclear weapons beyond listed in the article, something as Black projects? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_project)
Also I am curious, when new nuclear weapons are developed, as testing is banned, how do scientist know what will be the effects/yields/outcomes?
I mean theory is well known, but again in practice there are always some unexpected thing that can happen.
What little I know is half-remembered bits from Richard Rhodes' books about the atomic and nuclear bomb development. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rhodes Plus some lay reading.
One of bits was that, before the US agreed to a test ban, American scientists ensured that it was possible to be confident that new warheads could be built, with a high confidence that they would work, even without additional testing.
The people involved with this had experience drawn from the >1,000 nuclear detonations that had occurred and from designing multiple generations of warheads.
New nuclear weapons, that is, the "physics package", aren't developed. See https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Allbombs.html where the post-ban proposals say "Modifications of B-83 and B-61 bombs considered" and "Similar or the same as for the W-88".
New ways of delivering them are developed. You don't need as big a boom if you can deliver the bomb to within a meter of the target, vs. the 100m of the Minuteman III, or develop methods like "Super-Fuze" which can "[boost] the overall killing power of existing US ballistic missile forces by a factor of roughly three", without changing the physics package.
> Also I am curious, when new nuclear weapons are developed, as testing is banned, how do scientist know what will be the effects/yields/outcomes?
I'm sure that the detailed answers to that are highly classified. My answer to this would be to observe three things: a) that there have been no publicly-disclosed substantially new designs in a really remarkably long time (remember -- we're talking about 1950s-1960s technology!); b) the underlying physics is well understood; and c) the amount of computing power available now is many orders of magnitude higher than in the 1940s.
Practically, this means two things: i) the governing equations and scaling laws are relatively well-understood, and have been experimentally validated; ii) the parts of the simulation that require detailed numerical codes were developed quite a long time ago, and have also been experimentally validated -- this was literally one of the first ever applications of computing and I am sure that they all have detailed notes. Somewhere there is a tale about an old DEC machine being used as a timekeeping clock in an underground explosion by printing out its CPU timers over a high-speed serial link, and the experimenters noting when the signal stopped. The core "physics package" is something that has been highly optimised with literally trillions of $CURRENCY's worth of man-hours over the last half-century. The real difficulty -- as this website beautifully shows -- is not in understanding the undergraduate-level physics behind it; it's in getting the starting materials and actually making the thing work well. For that, we can all be grateful.
Separately, another answer to the "how do you test things without testing" is by looking for analogues in terms of the insane pressures, temperatures and timescales that go on in these things. There's a reason that the US has NIF [1], the national ignition [laser] fusion facility, which helps both basic science and...not. Similar experiments include hydrodynamic blast testing [2] in which the behaviours of materials under extreme strain rates, driven by high explosives, are performed. The idea again is to validate the core simulation model of "what goes down" in the ps-ns-µs-ms that the explosion lasts, with its distinct phases. It's hard to stress how different materials are under high strain rates -- e.g. unreinforced concrete, often thought of as 'hard', performs poorly and plastically under similar conditions; very high velocity (gas-gun fired) projectiles can deform it very easily and penetrate for literally tens of meters. The challenge of design comes down to taking an assembly, and instantaneously doubling (or more) the density at its core, without jets, or spalling. All of these have analogous problems elsewhere in physics. Subcritical testing is allowed, as are explosions/detonations with other radioactive compounds, which can be followed by high-speed gamma-cameras to permit a determination of the degree of compression. Historically these were used a lot -- see the RaLa experiment [3], which was required to ascertain the behavior of converging shock waves (needed to achieve the spherical implosion necessary for compression of the plutonium pit) -- but instead of using plutonium, they used a radiotracer (Radioactive Lanthanum) in a sphere made of an inert material.
> Questions for anyone who maybe knows answers: How likely is that there are nuclear weapons beyond listed in the article, something as Black projects? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_project)
I think this is unlikely, largely because there isn't a military need for them. Black projects have historically been for useful things. We're already at the point whereby the US or Russia alone could literally annihilate most humans on earth, with their existing, 1980s designs and materials. A lot of the focus -- I understand -- of this area of research is on detecting other nation's activities, and ensuring that "your" own stockpile is safe, and ready. MAD was mad, but it was effective. My gut feeling is that, if anything, US black projects are more likely to focus on asymmetric / information warfare, yet more low-observable aircraft or spacecraft, and, above all, intelligence gathering, cryptography, and similar. We have the doomsday machine. We showed that we could have the doomsday machine literally a lifetime ago. I hope above all that we never use it.
> I think this is unlikely, largely because there isn't a military need for them. Black projects have historically been for useful things. We're already at the point whereby the US or Russia alone could literally annihilate most humans on earth, with their existing, 1980s designs and materials.
That never been the case, even at the peak arsenal levels. USSR, and USA bombing each other into the iron age? Yes, but not much more.
The Norko h-bomb is a "black project." Israel's bomb is too. It's much harder to hide the fact of making plutonium, than what you are making with it.
USA, and Russia both have enough plutonium to do quite a bit with it, but most likely smelting it into smaller, higher yield weapons.
Tactical weapons were taken out from duty not because of them being "ineffective," or any humanism minded reasons, but because they were inefficient when it comes to plutonium use. Too much of it for "little" bang.
I heard of one 152mm nuclear munition having enough plutonium for making 2-3 proper h-bombs.
With START 2 being provisionally extended, but not followed by START 3, I see both Russia, and USA already preparing plans to upgrade their arsenals in 2026, the moment START 2 lapses.
We have lost like a dozen nukes over the years - rhey are on ocean floor or in a glacier or totally unaccounted for. Tactical weapons are horrible, they are not kept safely in a secure silo, they are deployed, moved, they travel, they are near the front line and are more likely to start WW3.
"That never been the case, even at the peak arsenal levels. USSR, and USA bombing each other into the iron age? Yes, but not much more."
I was also surprised to learn that directly killing every person in a country with nukes is impossible.
However, Nuclear Winter might finish off most or all survivors - models predict massive fires triggered by nuclear war, soot in the upper atmosphere leading to major temperature drops and widespread famine. Surviving that after all infrastructure and industry has been obliterated, and with widespread radioactive fallout...
Suffice to say that I agree with OP's overall point, we have the doomsday machine.
> We have lost like a dozen nukes over the years - rhey are on ocean floor or in a glacier or totally unaccounted for. Tactical weapons are horrible, they are not kept safely in a secure silo, they are deployed, moved, they travel, they are near the front line and are more likely to start WW3.
Makes me think that future proliferation of them is almost guaranteed, esp if a belligerents goals move away from trying to cause mass destruction in state-state way (doubly so as knowledge become more widespread, and cheaper to gather the materials for home synthesis), but effective deterrence in a individual trying to assert its sovereignty against any given nation/city state (like "hey, if you stop me, the dead-man switch on this mini thermo nuke will take out an area the size of an small/large airport and irradiate it for thousands of years")
"effective deterrence in a individual trying to assert its sovereignty against any given nation/city state (like "hey, if you stop me, the dead-man switch on this mini thermo nuke will take out an area the size of an small/large airport and irradiate it for thousands of years")"
You could do something similar with a car bomb but we've never heard of it happening. I don't think it's the lack of destructive power, the concept itself doesn't make sence.
As individual you rely on the rest of society to buy from them food and shelter.
What if two such people come into conflict over land, do they threaten each other? Are you gonna blow up your family alpng with you?
> You could do something similar with a car bomb but we've never heard of it happening. I don't think it's the lack of destructive power, the concept itself doesn't make sence.
Not yet at least wrt radiation fallout, the AT&T bomb[0] had destructive power, but they could have done more with a bit more planning…
> As individual you rely on the rest of society to buy from them food and shelter.
No doubt this is true, but in the modern age, less than 1% of the people are farmers (and declining) and even things like shelter can be 3d printed (or created out of haphazard assembling of what can be gathered in "nature" if you look at shanty towns in 3rd world countries or tent cities in 1st world ones).
> What if two such people come into conflict over land, do they threaten each other? Are you gonna blow up your family alpng with you?
In the age of metadata drone strikes, this arguably already happens wrt the collateral damage…
> The end of surface testing of nuclear weapons after the atmospheric test ban treaty effectively removed "cleanliness" as a significant concern for designers. Complaints about fall-out vanished, and so did the ability of the international community to monitor weapon design through fall-out analysis. The cost-effectiveness of lighter weapons put great pressure on designers to extract weight saving however they could, and it is likely that the idea of using non-fissile tampers disappeared very quickly. There is scant evidence that so-called "clean" designs were ever deployed in any quantity.
I found this pretty interesting, if somewhat disconcerting. I always assumed that modern nuclear weapons were "cleaner" than older ones. Not sure if this was a misunderstanding on my side or a common misconception I adopted.
If I understand this part correctly, the "cleaner" designs have significantly worse yield at higher weight, and are unlikely to be actually used today. Though I'm not entirely sure if this only compared relatively modern nuclear weapons and whether there are other aspects to this that affect how "clean" nuclear weapons are.
In a war many thermonuclear weapons would be targeted at hardened military structures and so detonate close to the ground to maximize local pressure. In a scenario like that you'll get a large amount of fallout just from neutron activation of what was once the ground and the bomb casing won't expecially matter.
Cleaner designs tend to leave out the final fission stage in the standard fission-fusion-fission "H-bomb" design - as this is where most energy is generated even though fissioning uranium with neutrons from the fusion step is, I believe, inherently messy.
Edit: I'd have thought the biggest factor in how messy things would be is whether it is a ground or air burst, rather than the weapon design.
Air versus ground is a major factor. In the early days, we targeted whole cities with air bursts, relying on a WWII mentality to warfare. Then, as we gained the ability to target specific military installations, which simultaneously became more hardened, we moved to high ground bursts, then impact bursts, which pretty much means a huge mess. We can easily dig a hole in the ground 60 meters deep, but that means a staggering amount of debris high in the air, some of which will be radioactive.
Is radioactive fallout from a thermo-nuclear weapon an important consideration (compared to the destruction of the "thermo" part)? The bombs dropped in Japan only contained a few kg of fissile material, those cities were rebuilt within years. Modern bombs are probably way bigger, but even a W78 warhead comes in at only 120 kg or so and I'm guessing most of that is not plutonium.
Compare this to the thousands of tons of radioactive or activated material that flew around Europe following the steam explosion at Chernobyl.
According to Daniel Ellsberg the only thing considered by US planners was blast yield - fallout and direct radiation (particularly thermal effects) were ignored as their effects were regarded as too unpredictable.
This was in the 1960s though - things may have changed.
edit: Fall out, even with modern weapons, would be a huge consideration if you are downwind of a target likely to be hit by a surface burst. You can experiment on Nukemap with the different options:
No more plastic wheels to spin like a sliderule. Want to take out a target? What's your weapon system's CEP (Circle of Equal Probability)? How is the target built, that is, how much overpressure to destroy it, and how deeply buried is it? Now choose a weapon. If it'a high-priority target, aim more than one weapon at it.
The fallout by mass isn't primarily the direct daughter products of the fission. It's the thousands of tonnes of pulverised dirt and rock (and concrete and steel and...) that has been neutron-activated and ejected high into the atmosphere.
This was my understanding as well. Radiation levels of daughter products from the weapon drop quite quickly. But the dirt that’s been neutron activated can take a while to come back down and the exposure levels are much higher.
So, where does "dirty" in a nuclear bomb come from? The left behind remnants of fission getting mixed into dust and dirt, then lofted up into the air by the force of the explosion and coming down later downwind- that's fallout, which is the "dirt."
Fusion leftover products are essentially fine, and if you explode your bomb high enough that it doesn't throw much dust and dirt into the air that also will limit your fallout (obviously burying deep under the ground also works, but that is generally impossible for a weapon, only matters for tests). One more thing to explain: a typical thermonuclear weapon is actually three stages: fission (the initial atomic bomb) which creates the high temperatures under which we can get fusion, which then gives off roughly an order of magnitude more of energy (second stage) which then hits a natural uranium tamper (third stage) which essentially doubles the amount of energy, at a cost of leaving a lot more fission left-overs around and making it much more dirty. (You can continue to stage indefinitely, but that makes the bomb bigger and less practicable.)
The largest weapon ever tested, the so called Czar Bomba, actually had it's third stage uranium replaced with lead, so its energy came all (~97%) from fusion, therefore it had very few fission by-products and was very very clean. This sort of weapon with no third stage tamper is also known as a Neutron Bomb- the so called 'clean bomb' that kills people (with the radiation from the fusion) but mostly leaves buildings intact, and has minimal fallout.
So why were neutron bombs scary? For most of the Cold War, when NATO ran exercises, they 'lost' within 2-9 days- where lost means that Soviet armored divisions started running free and unopposed. At which point it became a political question: can NATO use nuclear weapons to wipe away those divisions before they conquer everything? Will the German government allow NATO to use nuclear weapons on German soil- or will the rest of NATO overrule the German chancellors opposition?[1] A neutron bomb, which can kill everyone in a few kilometers with minimal fallout, might be a convincing argument in that situation, and that worried a lot of people about the potential for nuclear escalation.
In the post-Cold War context, it is widely believed that the most plausible first use of an American nuclear weapon would be to take out a 'hard' target- one buried deep underground that the US National Command Authority decided needed to be taken out for some reason. That sort of weapon will be extremely dirty, because it will of necessity be right up against the ground, kicking up a lot of dirt and dust and so would have a lot of fallout. Additionally, if you are trying to maximize blast-per-weight or blast-per-dollar, getting rid of that natural uranium tamper is really hard to justify, just to be a bit cleaner to the people who are receiving this weapon.
[1]: The first generation French SRBM, the Pluton, had a range of 17-120km, and was based in France- meaning it could only be used to nuke West Germany.
The amount of detail in this site -- all publicly available and in the public domain -- is incredible. In particular, I think that the section about the physics of the weapons are fascinating, detailed, and terrifying. I find it oddly compelling to read 'forbidden knowledge' of this sort.
As a site, it also has that 90s "pure html" lightweight vibe...
I've read this site many times over the years, i've been fascinated by nukes since childhood. If you ever get a chance to visit the Nuclear Science and History museum in Albuquerque New Mexico jump on it.
On my visit I remember walking out across a hot dusty chalk rock yard to the back corner and being able to actually touch a B53 casing. There's something surreal about being alone in that back corner thinking about the physics, engineering, politics, and dread around what i have my hands physically on while looking out to the desert mountains in the distance.
EDIT: i remember as a child in 80s constantly rattling off nuke facts to my father. One night, i'll never forget, he just yelled "enough!" and i never spoke of it again. As a kid, i was fascinated and interested, as an adult he knew very well what was on the line during the Cold War.
The National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton, OH also has a B53 casing at the entrance of their Cold War exhibit.
I think the sign for it just says rather bluntly "B53 Thermonuclear Bomb", which I always found kind of funny in a dark Dr-Strangelove-esque kind of way.
I remember going to the USAF Museum in Dayton when i got out of the air force. One of the last things i worked on was the new AGM-129 cruise missile that we could "neither confirm nor deny" it existed. I went to the museum and they had one on display. Blew my mind as i thought the shape was classified.
It seems like they just polluted everything:
"The 116-page affidavit led to a raid this week by the FBI and Environmental Protection Agency on the Colorado plant. It catalogs an eight-year pattern of illegal dumping, burning and polluting against a backdrop of bureaucratic cover-ups and foot-dragging."
(see https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=2ZMcAAAAIBAJ&pg=6928%2...)
