Nuclear Weapons

On August 9, 1945, three days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, a small port city on Japan's southernmost island. An estimated 74,000 people died within the first five months, and another 75,000 were injured. Published on the 70th anniversary of the bombing, Nagasaki takes listeners from the morning of the bombing to the city today, telling the firsthand experiences of five survivors, all of whom were teenagers at the time of the devastation.

In a world on the brink of nuclear war, one man stands between peace and global chaos. Following the devastating aftermath of a nuclear detonation in the Panama Canal, the world teeters on the edge of war. The Russian president's claims about a hidden Soviet weapons depot in Georgia escalate tensions, pushing the globe closer to the abyss of conflict. Acting U.S. President Jordan Stratton faces a nation in turmoil, grappling with the shadows of recent terrorist attacks and the critical condition of President Maggie Trousdale.

In Countdown, science journalist Sarah Scoles uncovers a different atomic reality: the nuclear age's present. Drawing from years of on-the-ground reporting at the nation's nuclear weapons labs, Scoles interrogates the idea that having nuclear weapons keeps us safe, deterring attacks and preventing radioactive warfare. She deftly assesses the existing nuclear apparatus in the United States, taking listeners beyond the news headlines and policy-speak to reveal the state of nuclear-weapons technology.

Based on years of forensic archaeology combined with interviews of more than two hundred survivors and their families, Ghosts of Hiroshima is a you-are-there account of ordinary human beings thrust into extraordinary events, during which our modern civilization entered its most challenging phase—a nuclear adolescence that, unless we are very wise and learn from our past, we may not

Our planet is on the brink of another World War as a civilian you feel like the only thing you can do is wait for updates on what will happen next but then you see a massive explosion off in the distance and your whole house begins to shake The first attacks are underway and with no official government plan on how to stay safe your feet using your own hands here's how to survive World War three international relationships are tense right now so the idea of a global war breaking out isn't far-fetched some countries such as Sweden Germany and Lithuania are even are even educating their ...

An epic story of science and technology at the very limits of human understanding: the monumental race to build the first atomic weapons.

Rich in personality, action, confrontation, and deception, The First War of Physics is the first fully realized popular account of the race to build humankind's most destructive weapon. The book draws on declassified material, such as MI6's Farm Hall transcripts, coded Soviet messages cracked by American cryptographers in the Venona project, and interpretations by Russian scholars of documents from the Soviet archives.

For more than half a century, the United States has been pursuing a grand imperial strategy with the aim of staking out the globe. Our leaders have shown themselves willing, as in the Cuban missile crisis, to follow the dream of dominance no matter how high the risks. Now the Bush administration is intensifying this process, driving us toward the final frontiers of imperial control, toward a choice between the prerogatives of power and a livable Earth.

A fresh window on American history: the eye-opening truth about the government's secret plans to survive a catastrophic attack on US soil, even if the rest of us die - a road map that spans from the dawn of the nuclear age to today.

Let's rewind in time to meet a certain J. Robert Oppenheimer. We'll call him the "Master of Atomic Mayhem," and for a good reason. This lad, once a lover of poetry in the academic jungles of Harvard and Cambridge, ended up playing with the building blocks of the universe in the dry, remote desert of Los Alamos. In the midst of World War II, Oppenheimer was not penning sonnets to the serene landscape. Oh no, he was orchestrating the creation of the world's deadliest weapon, the atomic bomb, under a veil of secrecy. This cocktail of doom and destruction ushered in the Atomic Age. Post-war ...

Based on an exhaustive review of formerly classified government documents-as well as previously unexplored corporate filings, office diaries and unguarded interviews-Grant F. Smith has written a riveting story of the 1960s diversion of US weapons-grade nuclear material from an Israeli front company in Pennsylvania into the clandestine Israeli atomic weapons program. The talented but highly conflicted founder of the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC)-Dr. Zalman Mordecai Shapiro alongside his close friend and financial backer David Lowenthal-engaged in a ferocious clandestine...

It’s eight-seventeen on a Tuesday morning, and every coma patient in the world has just woken up. When an inexplicable phenomenon sweeps across the globe, the Australian government orders every agency to use their full resources to uncover the cause of the awakening. As her organisation's response, anti-terrorist unit agent Jacinta Robbins is assigned to lead a small investigative taskforce to satisfy their obligations, despite the event falling far outside the A.T.U.’s regular domain. However, as inexplicable events begin taking place across the city, evidence begins to mount against ...

Hiroshima was one of the great tragedies of WWII. But out of the devastation of the first atomic bomb, some survivors emerged, 25 courageous Japanese women who became part of a remarkable humanitarian epic. Victims of the atomic blast that ushered in the Nuclear Age, these women were brought to the United States in 1955, where they underwent reconstructive surgery to repair the ravages of the bomb. Schoolgirls when the bomb destroyed their futures, they began to remake their lives and re-create themselves. This is the compassionate, often bittersweet chronicle of the Hiroshima Maidens.

On the morning of April 26, 1986, Europe witnessed the worst nuclear disaster in history: the explosion of a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine. Dozens died of radiation poisoning, fallout contaminated half the continent, and thousands fell ill. In Chernobyl, Serhii Plokhy draws on new sources to tell the dramatic stories of the firefighters, scientists, and soldiers who heroically extinguished the nuclear inferno. He lays bare the flaws of the Soviet nuclear industry....

Prime Minister Ben-Gurion had thusly concluded and stated clearly to his President, Chaim Azriel Weizmann, and chief advisor on atomic matters, Dr. Ernst David Bergmann, that, “What Einstein, Oppenheimer, and Teller, the three of them are Jews, made for the United States, could also be done by scientists in Israel, for their own people.” So, at close to the end of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War for Israel's independence, Ben-Gurion sought out Israeli physicists. They were to be given special assignments, as part of a secret Israeli spy mission. He formed a special branch of the Israeli ...

Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States and at the bottom rests a B-1B bomber and its cargo of 24 nuclear weapons. Scott Tanner, a former Navy SEAL, and his eccentric partner, David Stafford, are called into action to recover the plane and its deadly cargo, a mission that could determine the fate of Crater Lake National Park forever. Tanner and Stafford soon discover the horrific facts surrounding the accident and are face to face with an enemy who will do anything to prevent the safe removal of the weapons. The terrorists are on the run and with them the means to detonate the ...

Here for the first time, in rich human, political, and scientific detail, is the complete story of how the bomb was developed, from the turn-of-the-century discovery of the vast energy locked inside the atom to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan. Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftly - or have been so misunderstood. From the theoretical discussions of nuclear energy to the bright glare of Trinity, there was a span of hardly more than 25 years.

Adam and his two companions continue to fight their way across the devastated landscape of a post-apocalyptic America. The artificial intelligence that inhabits the supercomputer implanted in Adam's brain has become more and more human. Nan, the A.I., eventually reacquires the body she feared had been lost to her forever. Adam and Nan train rigorously to gain the maximum benefit from their genetic augmentations as Adam's wolfdog, Roe, grows stronger in both body and mind. With the support of his companions Adam is able to overcome the many challenges along the way. During their journey the ...

'Trinity' was the codename for the test explosion of the atomic bomb in New Mexico on 16 July 1945. This exceptional book - Trinity - tells the story of the bomb's metaphorical father, Rudolf Peierls; his intellectual son, the atomic spy, Klaus Fuchs; and the ghosts of the security services in Britain, the USA and USSR.

The story of the twentieth century is largely the story of the power of science and technology. Within that story is the incredible tale of the human conflict between Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller—the scientists most responsible for the advent of weapons of mass destruction. How did science—and its practitioners—enlisted in the service of the state during the Second World War, become a slave to its patron during the Cold War?

The most important place in American nuclear history are the Marshall Islands - an idyllic Pacific paradise that served as the staging ground for more than 60 US nuclear tests. It was here, from 1946 to 1958, that America perfected the weapon that preserved the peace of the post-war years. It was here - with the 1954 Castle Bravo test over Bikini Atoll - that America executed its largest nuclear detonation, a thousand times more powerful than Hiroshima.