Weapon History

Between 1961 and 1967 the United States Air Force buried 1,000 Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles in pastures across the Great Plains. The Missile Next Door tells the story of how rural Americans of all political stripes were drafted to fight the Cold War by living with nuclear missiles in their backyards - and what that story tells us about enduring political divides and the persistence of defense spending. By scattering the missiles in out-of-the-way places, the Defense Department kept the chilling calculus of Cold War nuclear strategy out of view.

There are as many as 60 miles of underground tunnels beneath Wiltshire, England alone. While some of these abandoned and decaying subterranean spaces are playgrounds for urban explorers, others have been shrouded in secrecy for decades. This bunker-busting journey to some of Britain's dark and forgotten places will give you the chance to peek behind the heavy blast-proof doors of some of the country's best-kept underground secrets.

In A Nuclear Family Vacation, husband-and-wife journalists Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger hit the road to explore the secretive world of nuclear weaponry. Weaving together first-class travel writing and crack investigative journalism, the pair pursues both adventures and answers: Why are nuclear weapons still on hair-trigger alert? Is there really such a thing as a suitcase nuke? And which nuclear power plants are most likely to be covers for weapons programs?

Un recorrido de seis siglos, de las primeras armas de fuego a la bomba atómica, que da cuenta de las relaciones entre industria, diplomacia y destrucción. La entrada de los países europeos en la modernidad no es ajena, como ningún proceso histórico, al desarrollo armamentístico y militar: los imperios españoles, portugueses, británicos u holandeses se consiguieron y se administraron con pólvora.

Are nuclear arsenals safe from cyberattack? Could terrorists launch a nuclear weapon through hacking? Are we standing at the edge of a major technological challenge to global nuclear order? These are among the many pressing security questions addressed in Andrew Futter's groundbreaking study of the cyber threat to nuclear weapons.

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.

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.

During the occupation of Japan after WWII, the US had an important decision to make. Should they hold those responsible for atrocities during the war accountable or should they take the information to advance the national interest? The researchers who worked at Unit 731, the biological and chemical warfare research and development unit, were given immunity in exchange for their research data. Unit 731 included factories filled with humans, tested with various diseases, as well as field tests on civilians of the Soviet Union and China. Imperial Japan had aspirations to develop operative ...

Science and violence converge in modern warfare. While the finest minds of the 20th century have improved human life, they have also produced human injury. They engineered radar, developed electronic computers, and helped mass produce penicillin all in the context of military mobilization. Scientists also developed chemical weapons, atomic bombs, and psychological warfare strategies. Rational Fog explores the quandary of scientific and technological productivity in an era of perpetual war.

La guerra ha estado presente desde la Prehistoria, descubrir la historia de la guerra desde una perspectiva científica, es descubrir una parte de la historia de la humanidad. La guerra, el enfrentamiento humano, está presente en las sociedades humanas, si bien habría que distinguir entre el enfrentamiento personal y el conflicto organizado entra varios individuos representativos de un pueblo.

Si alguien todavía piensa que un hombre de a pie, una persona corriente, se debería resignar y presenciar la Segunda Guerra Mundial agazapado en su casa, está equivocado. Operaciones secretas de la Segunda Guerra Mundial viene a refutar esa idea y supone una novedad en el tratamiento del conflicto armado más complejo de la historia. La mayoría de los estudios sobre la guerra tratan con rigor las batallas, los movimientos de cientos de miles de soldados, pero esto no debe eclipsar la relevancia de estas pequeñas escaramuzas.

This is the story of a British deterrent. Much has been written about the V-bombers—the Valiant, Victor, and Vulcan—but virtually nothing has been said about their strategic nuclear strike role. How would Britain's small force of subsonic bombers have retaliated following a Soviet attack, and would they have succeeded? This book is the product of seven years of research by Dr. Tony Redding.

Chronicler Tsai Yini monitors the tachyon communication system, which transmits data faster than the speed of light. When classified results from an astrobiologist's research are leaked to her, she cannot believe what she reads. The report reveals that intelligent life forms exist on a tropical planet in the Gliese system. Their civilization is still in its infancy but revolves around an artifact of unknown origin that seems to influence their body chemistry.

One-third of American adults—approximately 86 million people—own firearms. This is not just for protection or hunting. Although many associate gun-centric ideology with individualist and libertarian traditions in American political culture, Race, Rights, and Rifles shows that it rests on an equally old but different foundation.

From 1951 to 1967 Egypt pursued a secret program to build military rockets that could have conceivably posed a threat to neighboring Israel. Because such an ambitious project required Western expertise, the Egyptian leader President Nasser hired West German scientists, many of them veterans of the Nazi rocket program at Peenemünde and elsewhere. These covert plans soon came to the attention of Israel’s legendary secret service, Mossad, and caused deep alarm in Tel Aviv.

Soon after dawn on July 1, 1916, British and Commonwealth troops climbed out of damp, muddy trenches in the Somme valley and began to advance across no-man’s land toward German positions. The British commander, Field Marshal Douglas Haig, was certain that this battle would lead to a decisive victory. However, by the time that night fell on that day, 57,000 British troops had become casualties, including more than 19,000 killed, the highest number of British casualties in a single day of combat.

Thomas B. Allen’s expertise in military history and strategy is combined with Roger MacBride Allen’s knowledge of technology to reveal a lesser-known yet fascinating side of the 16th president of the United States. Their authoritative narrative reveals Lincoln as our nation’s first hands-on commander in chief, whose appreciation for the power of technology plays a critical role in the North’s Civil War victory over the less-developed South.

The Soviet Nuclear Weapons Program: The History and Legacy of the USSR’s Efforts to Build the Atomic Bomb examines the Soviets’ race to reach the ultimate goal during and after World War II, and how they went about their objectives. You will learn about Nazi Germany’s nuclear weapons program like never before.

The United States Depart of Defense uses of biological testing for biological warfare. It is a topic that is rarely discussed buy our lovely media. Most government agencies and organizations have kept quiet about the possibility that, as a nation, we are testing biological warfare agents on our own civilians.

This is the exhilarating secret history of the melding of technology and espionage. Gordon Corera's compelling narrative, rich with historical details and characters, takes us from the Second World War to the internet age, revealing the astonishing extent of cyberespionage carried out today.