Nuclear Weapons

Robert Oppenheimer had a lot resting on his shoulders. During the Second World War, he was tasked with directing the development of the world’s first nuclear arsenal. Known as the Manhattan Project, this super-secretive wartime project had the stoic visage of Oppenheimer overseeing the greatest experiment ever conducted by humankind. Much had happened in Oppenheimer’s life to lead him to this point, and much would subsequently take place after, but this moment was indeed the pinnacle of his career and his life.

On a tranquil summer night in July 2012, a trio of elderly peace activists infiltrated the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Nicknamed the "Fort Knox of Uranium", Y-12 was reputedly one of the most secure nuclear weapons facilities in the world, a bastion of warhead parts that harbored hundreds of metric tons of highly enriched uranium - enough to power thousands of nuclear bombs. The activists - a house painter, a Vietnam war veteran, and an 82-year-old Catholic nun - penetrated the complex's exterior with alarming ease.

Part 2 of the series analyses as to how; after the transition from nuclear to the thermonuclear weapons for mankind, within less than a decade of the onset of the Atomic Age; the focus across superpowers shifted towards miniaturization of nuclear warheads and development of novel and difficult to detect & track strategic nuclear delivery vehicles (SNDVs), which witnessed the emergence of ICBMs and SLBMs, after nuclear-tipped torpedoes, thereby, further increasing the risks of nuclear warfare & holocaust manifold while simultaneously also reducing the reaction times considerably. The same ...

A ground-breaking account of accidents, near-misses, extraordinary heroism, and technological breakthroughs, Command and Control explores the dilemma that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age: how do you deploy weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them? Schlosser reveals that this question has never been resolved, and while other headlines dominate the news, nuclear weapons still pose a grave risk to mankind.

"Defense XXIV" is a valuable resource for defense professionals, policymakers, and students of international security. Its strength lies in providing ground-level insights from military leaders and defense experts rather than purely theoretical analysis. The book makes a compelling case that Western democracies face a strategic inflection point requiring new thinking about force structure, alliance cooperation, and technological innovation. By capturing multiple perspectives on these challenges, it offers readers a nuanced understanding of how defense establishments are adapting to a more ...

The dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 changed the nature of war forever. The awesome power of the atomic blast and its deadly fallout meant that nowhere was safe: every town, village, street and home in Britain fell under the nuclear shadow, and the threat of annihilation coloured every aspect of ordinary life for the next forty years. As the media reported on the inevitability of approaching conflict with the Soviet Union, the British people were told to prepare for the coming apocalypse.

The Book-3 of the series takes-off at the onset of the 1970s decade, when, after having developed deployed thousands of ICBMs & SLBMs armed to the teeth with megaton-class thermonuclear warheads, both the U.S. as well as the U.S.S.R; were faced with the urgent need to invest billions of dollars towards the development & nationwide deployment of Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Systems to protect themselves against each other's ICBMs & SLBMs. The Soviets, incredibly, had deployed around 1,000 heavy ICBMs hosting a massive & insane 6,000+ megatons worth of thermonuclear warheads, collectively ...

Tens of millions died during World War II as the warring powers raced to create the best fighter planes, tanks, and guns, and eventually that race extended to bombs which carried enough power to destroy civilization itself. While the war raged in Europe and the Pacific, a dream team was working on the Manhattan Project in America, a program kept so secret that Vice President Harry Truman didn’t know about it until he took the presidency after FDR’s death in April 1945. During this time, J. Robert Oppenheimer emerged as an extraordinary scientific mind in the United States.

Leading analysts have predicted for decades that nuclear weapons would help pacify international politics. But why do international relations in the nuclear age remain so competitive? Indeed, why are today's major geopolitical rivalries intensifying? In The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution, Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press tackle the central puzzle of the nuclear age: The persistence of intense geopolitical competition in the shadow of nuclear weapons.

As award-winning biographer and science writer Graham Farmelo describes in Churchill's Bomb, the British set out to investigate the possibility of building nuclear weapons before their American colleagues. But when scientists in Britain first discovered a way to build an atomic bomb, Prime Minister Winston Churchill did not make the most of his country's lead and was slow to realize the bomb's strategic implications.

Pocas actividades vinculadas al poder se hallan tan sometidas a controversia como la energía nuclear. Este libro brinda datos contrastados sobre uno de los programas de investigación más ambiciosos de cuantos se han realizado en España.

Tens of millions died during World War II as the warring powers raced to create the best fighter planes, tanks, and guns, and eventually that race extended to bombs which carried enough power to destroy civilization itself. While the war raged in Europe and the Pacific, a dream team of Nobel Laureates was working on the Manhattan Project, a program kept so secret that Vice President Harry Truman didn’t know about it until he took the presidency after FDR’s death in April 1945.

US and Israeli intelligence detect a nuclear weapons shipment set to depart Pakistan for Saudi Arabia in several days. The nations of Iran and Iraq already possess nuclear weapons. The spread of nuclear weapons creates a greater chance that war could escalate to a level of destruction never before seen, through accidental launch or a regional conflict spiraling out of control. Logic suggests that more widespread possession of nuclear weapons increases the likelihood of their use. For this reason, efforts at non-proliferation by the international community are an important factor in ...

Jon Hunner’s concise account of Oppenheimer’s life and the emergence of an Atomic West distills a vast literature for students and general listeners. In this brisk, engaging biography, the author recounts how Oppenheimer helped locate the atomic weapons research lab at Los Alamos, New Mexico, and helped establish leading physics departments at the University of California–Berkeley and Caltech.

North Korea's bizarre feuds with the rest of the world have been turned into comedy gold time and time again, perhaps because their endless threats seem so far removed from reality. But just how serious is the threat of nuclear war against North Korea? North Korea’s Nuclear Program: The History of the Hermit Kingdom’s Development of Nuclear Weapons looks at how North Korea has developed and tested destructive nuclear weapons over the past several decades.

After the detente's sudden and abrupt end in the late 1970s, owing to the planned deployment of Pershing-IIs and the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union; it was time for the West to strike back under a defiant Ronald Reagan, who vowed to take-on the Soviet overmatch over the West in conventional forces as well as nuclear weapons. The subsequent, massive arms build-up in the U.S. and the advent of a reformist Tsar, in form of Gorbachev, brought a U-Turn in the Soviet approach as the strategic focus shifted across both sides as Reagan outlined his focus of securing Americans from the ...

Of the many aircraft carriers built by the United States since World War II, none have been successfully attacked by an aggressor. Not yet, that is. It is the final port call during the first deployment of a new US Navy aircraft carrier. There is no better place for a week of shore leave than an allied port way down south on the 42nd parallel. It’s quiet, friendly, out-of-the-way—perfect—because nothing ever happens here. But the location is ideal for another nation too—a superpower with strategic ambitions. It is perfect for an unthinkable attack where the Americans would not ...

Across the Western alliance, liberal politicians and pundits are calling for renewed diplomatic engagement with Iran, convinced that Tehran will respond to reason and halt its nuclear weapons program. Yet, according to best-selling author and former U.N. ambassador Dore Gold, countries have repeatedly tried diplomatic talks and utterly failed.

In The Nuclear Age, acclaimed historian Serhii Plokhy paints an intricate picture of a world governed by fear. From the first artificial splitting of the atom in 1917 and the race to create the first atomic bomb in World War II, through the fraught arms race of the Cold War, to the imperialism, neo-colonial motivation and wars being waged today, the threat posed by nuclear weapons is as pertinent as ever.

As Sarah E. Robey shows in Atomic Americans, people negotiated the contours of nuclear citizenship through overlapping public discussions about survival. Policymakers and citizens disagreed about the scale of civil defense programs and other public safety measures. As the public learned more about the dangers of nuclear fallout, critics articulated concerns about whether the federal government was operating in its citizens' best interests.