HISTORY
The Manhattan Project was the code-name for the program based in the United States which developed the first nuclear weapons. The project ran during World War II.
Deadline is a 1944 science fiction short story about the use of nuclear bomb. It includes topics such as uranium enrichment, methods of isotopic separation and moral questions about the weapon. Its author, American writer Cleve Cartmill, had no knowledge of The Manhattan Project and came up with the idea from scientific journals.
In 1944 Lex Luthor was the first character in a comic book (and one of the first in fiction) to use an atomic bomb. The United States Department of War asked this story line be delayed from publication, which it was until 1946, to protect the secrecy of the Manhattan Project.
The Soviets realized that the Americans and British were developing an atomic bomb when they noticed that Western scientists had ceased publishing papers on nuclear science. Correctly guessing that nuclear science had been made a state secret, they began their own program.
The identity politics of the Nazi Party led them to marginalizing Albert Einstein's quantum physics as "Jewish Physics". This prevented Nazi Germany from pursuing an effective nuclear weapons program.
The Atomic Age begun on July 16, 1945, when the USA successfully detonated a plutonium-based nuclear bomb. The test was conducted in the Jornada del Muerto desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, on what was then the USAAF Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range (now part of White Sands Missile Range).
At 05:29:21 MWT the bomb exploded with an energy equivalent to around 20 kilotons of TNT (84 TJ). The desert sand, largely made of silica, melted and became a mildly radioactive light green glass.
The explosion left a crater in the desert 5 feet (1.5 m) deep and 30 feet (9.1 m) wide.
After the first atomic bomb was detonated in in the Jornada del Muerto desert, a car full of ranchers happened to witnesses it, with one asking what happened, as it was so bright. She was blind.
Kodak accidentally discovered the US were secretly testing nuclear bombs in 1945 because the fallout made their films look fogged.
The United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan near the end of World War Two, killing an estimated 140,000 people. It was the first use of a nuclear weapon in warfare.
Physicist Bernard Waldman witnessed the bombing of Hiroshima, as a camera operator on the observation aircraft. He was equipped with a special high-speed movie camera with six seconds of film to record the blast. Unfortunately, Waldman forgot to open the camera shutter, and no film was exposed.
At its center, the Hiroshima nuclear explosion was estimated to be 300,000°C—over 300 times hotter than what it takes to cremate a body.
The Atomic Age begun on July 16, 1945, when the USA successfully detonated a plutonium-based nuclear bomb. The test was conducted in the Jornada del Muerto desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, on what was then the USAAF Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range (now part of White Sands Missile Range).
At 05:29:21 MWT the bomb exploded with an energy equivalent to around 20 kilotons of TNT (84 TJ). The desert sand, largely made of silica, melted and became a mildly radioactive light green glass.
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| Trinity Site explosion, 0.016 second after explosion, July 16, 1945 |
The explosion left a crater in the desert 5 feet (1.5 m) deep and 30 feet (9.1 m) wide.
After the first atomic bomb was detonated in in the Jornada del Muerto desert, a car full of ranchers happened to witnesses it, with one asking what happened, as it was so bright. She was blind.
Kodak accidentally discovered the US were secretly testing nuclear bombs in 1945 because the fallout made their films look fogged.
The United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan near the end of World War Two, killing an estimated 140,000 people. It was the first use of a nuclear weapon in warfare.
Physicist Bernard Waldman witnessed the bombing of Hiroshima, as a camera operator on the observation aircraft. He was equipped with a special high-speed movie camera with six seconds of film to record the blast. Unfortunately, Waldman forgot to open the camera shutter, and no film was exposed.
At its center, the Hiroshima nuclear explosion was estimated to be 300,000°C—over 300 times hotter than what it takes to cremate a body.
The United States dropped a second nuclear bomb, the "Fat Man" at 11:02 local time on August 9, 1945.
165 survivors of Hiroshima moved to Nagasaki and also survived the destruction there on August 9, 1945.
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| The mushroom cloud of the atomic bombing of the Japanese city of Nagasaki |
Kokura was the main target for the "Fat Man" nuclear bomb, but on the morning of August 9, 1945, the city was obscured by morning fog. Because the order was to drop the bomb visually, the pilots diverted about 100 km south to Nagasaki, killing an estimated 37,500 people within seconds of its detonation.
The city of Kyoto was originally the primary target of the atomic bombs in 1945, but was removed by the insistence of Secretary of War Henry Stimson, who went there on a honeymoon and admired the ancient city with its thousands of palaces, temples, and shrines.
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| Johnston with the Fat Man plutonium core on Tinian in 1945 |
Before dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, US forces dropped five million leaflets warning "In the next few days, some or all of the cities named on the reverse side will be destroyed....These cities contain military (assets, and civilians should evacuate)." Also warnings were sent by radio every 15 minutes.
Nagasaki and Hiroshima are no longer radioactive, aside from trace amounts, due to the fact that the bombs exploded at a height of 500+ meters.
The Convair B-36 Peacemaker was a six-engine, long-range strategic bomber that was developed by Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation (later Convair) for the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF). The B-36 was the largest piston-engined aircraft ever built, and it was the first nuclear weapon delivery vehicle to be mass-produced.
The first prototype of the B-36, the XB-36, made its maiden flight on August 8, 1946. The XB-36 was followed by two more prototypes, the YB-36 and the RB-36D. The first production B-36, the B-36A, was delivered to the USAAF in May 1948.
The B-36 was the backbone of the USAAF's strategic bomber fleet during the Cold War. It was capable of carrying a nuclear bombload of up to 40,000 pounds (18,000 kg), and it had a range of over 10,000 miles (16,000 km). The B-36 was also equipped with a variety of defensive weapons, including 20mm cannons and machine guns.
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| B-36J Peacemaker |
Italian Enrico Fermi was on the verge of developing bombs for Benito Mussolini, when he found out that Italy's anti-Jewish laws affected his wife. He sailed for the US using prize money from his 1938 Nobel Prize award and later helped develop the nuclear bombs used on Japan.
It was Theodore Hall, a scientist working on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos during World War II, who gave the designs of the atomic bomb to the Soviets. He did so because he did not want the USA to have a monopoly on nuclear weapons. He was never charged for his crimes.
Atomic tests were a tourist draw in 1950s Las Vegas. They advertised detonation times and best viewing spots to see the massive flash and mushroom cloud from the bomb test site, 65 miles away. (104.6 kms) Casinos flaunted their north-facing vistas, offering special “atomic cocktails” and “Dawn Bomb Parties.”
The United States conducted their first and only nuclear artillery test at the Nevada Test Site in 1953.
The largest nuclear bomb ever tested by the United States, Castle Bravo, was detonated on March 1, 1954 at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands. It was the first in a series of high-yield thermonuclear weapon design tests conducted by the Americans. However, due to a miscalculation, the bomb was three times stronger than expected. This resulted in most of the test equipment being destroyed or vaporized rendering the experiment a failure.
On May 15, 1957 Flight Lieutenant Alan Washbrook, the navigator in a four-engined Valiant jet, pressed a button eight miles above the Pacific and turned Britain into an H-bomb power. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had sped up the tests so Britain could make sure the weapons work before talks with Russia and America about banning nuclear weapons.
The US Air Force lost a nuclear bomb in the waters near Savannah, Georgia in 1958 that has still not been found.
India's first nuclear test, codenamed "Smiling Buddha", was conducted on May 18, 1974, at the Pokhran Test Range in Rajasthan. The test was a peaceful nuclear explosion, and India claimed that it was conducted for the purpose of developing nuclear energy. However, many experts believe that the test was a way for India to assert its nuclear power status. It was the first confirmed nuclear test by a nation outside the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China).
It was Theodore Hall, a scientist working on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos during World War II, who gave the designs of the atomic bomb to the Soviets. He did so because he did not want the USA to have a monopoly on nuclear weapons. He was never charged for his crimes.
The Soviet Union's first nuclear weapon test was codenamed RDS-1, also known as "First Lightning" (Russian: Пе́рвая мо́лния, tr. Pérvaya mólniya). It was a plutonium implosion device with a yield of about 22 kilotons of TNT. The test was conducted at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan on August 29, 1949.
The RDS-1 device was based on the design of the American Fat Man bomb, which was used to destroy Nagasaki. The Soviets were able to reverse engineer the Fat Man design through a combination of espionage and their own nuclear research.
The success of the RDS-1 test was a major achievement for the Soviet Union and a major setback for the United States, which had been the only country to possess nuclear weapons since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The RDS-1 test ushered in the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union, which would last for decades.
Atomic tests were a tourist draw in 1950s Las Vegas. They advertised detonation times and best viewing spots to see the massive flash and mushroom cloud from the bomb test site, 65 miles away. (104.6 kms) Casinos flaunted their north-facing vistas, offering special “atomic cocktails” and “Dawn Bomb Parties.”
The United States conducted their first and only nuclear artillery test at the Nevada Test Site in 1953.
The largest nuclear bomb ever tested by the United States, Castle Bravo, was detonated on March 1, 1954 at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands. It was the first in a series of high-yield thermonuclear weapon design tests conducted by the Americans. However, due to a miscalculation, the bomb was three times stronger than expected. This resulted in most of the test equipment being destroyed or vaporized rendering the experiment a failure.
On May 15, 1957 Flight Lieutenant Alan Washbrook, the navigator in a four-engined Valiant jet, pressed a button eight miles above the Pacific and turned Britain into an H-bomb power. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had sped up the tests so Britain could make sure the weapons work before talks with Russia and America about banning nuclear weapons.
The US Air Force lost a nuclear bomb in the waters near Savannah, Georgia in 1958 that has still not been found.
India's first nuclear test, codenamed "Smiling Buddha", was conducted on May 18, 1974, at the Pokhran Test Range in Rajasthan. The test was a peaceful nuclear explosion, and India claimed that it was conducted for the purpose of developing nuclear energy. However, many experts believe that the test was a way for India to assert its nuclear power status. It was the first confirmed nuclear test by a nation outside the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China).
Stanislav Petrov is widely credited with preventing a potential nuclear disaster. On September 26, 1983, Petrov, who was a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defense Forces, was on duty as the officer in charge of monitoring the Soviet Union's early warning systems for a potential nuclear attack. During his shift, the system falsely detected multiple incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles from the United States. The protocol at the time was to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike, but Petrov, based on his intuition and against protocol, decided to classify the alarm as a false alarm.
Petrov's decision turned out to be correct, as it was later determined that the system had malfunctioned due to a rare combination of sunlight reflecting off high-altitude clouds. His actions averted a potentially catastrophic nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States.
Although Petrov received some recognition for his actions within the Soviet military, his story gained wider international attention after the end of the Cold War. He is often referred to as "The Man Who Saved the World" and is praised for his judgment and calmness during a highly tense and dangerous situation.
President Ronald Reagan wrote in his diary that the 1983 movie The Day After "left me greatly depressed" and that it changed his mind on the policy on nuclear war. Reagan's memoirs drew a direct line from the film to his signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987.
From the 1960s to the 1990s, South Africa assembled six nuclear weapons. In the 1990s, the South African government dismantled all of its nuclear weapons, the first nation in the world which voluntarily gave up all nuclear arms it had developed itself.
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the first legally binding international agreement to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons was passed on July 7, 2017. 122 out of 193 member states voted in favor of the proposed agreement.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union; over 50% of the nuclear fuel used in America reactors from 1993-2013 came from demilitarized Soviet-era nukes in Russia. The program was called "Megatons to Megawatts" and over 20,000+ warheads were purchased.
The number of nuclear weapons in the world is actually down from 70,000 in 1986 to around 14,000 today.
In 2002 the heads of the USA's weapons labs were asked by a classified session of Congress to prove that it was possible to build a nuclear bomb using commercially available materials (minus the uranium). They did so, and brought it into the Senate hearing room.
There are nine members of the "nuclear club" of nations known or believed to have nuclear weapons. Russia, US, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.
The number of nuclear weapons in the world is actually down from 70,000 in 1986 to around 14,000 today.
FUN FACTS
In 2002 the heads of the USA's weapons labs were asked by a classified session of Congress to prove that it was possible to build a nuclear bomb using commercially available materials (minus the uranium). They did so, and brought it into the Senate hearing room.
There are nine members of the "nuclear club" of nations known or believed to have nuclear weapons. Russia, US, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.
Astronomer Carl Sagan worked with the US Air Force on detonating a nuclear device on the Moon.
The US spends around $25billion (nearly £20bn) a year on nuclear weapons.
Harvard professor Roger Fisher proposed implanting nuclear launch codes in a volunteer so that the President would have to kill an innocent person before firing. The Pentagon rejected the idea fearing the President would not go through with it even if it was necessary.
Nearly a third of deployed US nuclear weapons are based near downtown Seattle.
Some of America's nuclear arsenal still runs on 8 inch floppy disks.
For twenty years, the U.S. nuclear launch code was '00000000.'
Launching a nuclear weapon within the City of Chicago is punishable by up to 30 days' imprisonment and a $1,000 fine.
An average nuclear weapon detonated over a city would instantly destroy everything within a 50-mile radius.
In the US, the IRS and the USPS both have a plan in place in case of a nuclear war. The IRS has an employee handbook called the "Internal Revenue Manual" that details how to collect taxes after the nukes. The USPS will continue delivering mail and has 60 million change-of-address forms prepared.
Source Daily Express
The US spends around $25billion (nearly £20bn) a year on nuclear weapons.
Harvard professor Roger Fisher proposed implanting nuclear launch codes in a volunteer so that the President would have to kill an innocent person before firing. The Pentagon rejected the idea fearing the President would not go through with it even if it was necessary.
Nearly a third of deployed US nuclear weapons are based near downtown Seattle.
Some of America's nuclear arsenal still runs on 8 inch floppy disks.
For twenty years, the U.S. nuclear launch code was '00000000.'
Launching a nuclear weapon within the City of Chicago is punishable by up to 30 days' imprisonment and a $1,000 fine.
An average nuclear weapon detonated over a city would instantly destroy everything within a 50-mile radius.
In the US, the IRS and the USPS both have a plan in place in case of a nuclear war. The IRS has an employee handbook called the "Internal Revenue Manual" that details how to collect taxes after the nukes. The USPS will continue delivering mail and has 60 million change-of-address forms prepared.
Source Daily Express
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