Restricted Data

• 

  Alex Wellerstein is a historian of science and nuclear weapons and a professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology. He is also the creator of the NUKEMAP. This blog began in 2011. For more, follow @wellerstein.

  

  Want more nuclear secrecy content? Check out my book:
  Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 2021).

  I have a new book available for purchase from HarperCollins in 2025 — a brand-new take on Truman and the bomb:
  THE MOST AWFUL RESPONSIBILITY:
  Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age

  

  I also have a new blog/newsletter which updates much more regularly:
  
  Doomsday Machines
  Post-Apocalyptic Road Trips, End of the World-Building, and Interesting Times. A blog about how we think and have thought about end of the world, in both fact and fiction.

• Search

  Search for:

• Pages

  • About me
  • About the blog
  • Post archives
  • Articles and appearances
  • Visualizations
  • Document list
  • Resources for Teachers, Students, and Researchers

• Projects

  • Doomsday Machines
  • NUKEMAP
  • Oregon Road '83
  • Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States (2021)

• Recent posts

  • NUKEMAP roadmap
  • New book: The Most Awful Responsibility
  • Manhattan Project fissile material inventories
  • News and updates
  • Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?
  • Announcing DOOMSDAY MACHINES
  • Henry Stimson didn’t go to Kyoto on his honeymoon
  • Deconstructing “The Doomsday Machine” – Part 1: The Question of Memory
  • Oppenheimer: Vacated but not Vindicated
  • Did the Japanese offer to surrender before Hiroshima? (Part 2)

• Post categories ►

  • Redactions (117)
  • Visions (89)
  • Meditations (85)
  • News and Notes (36)
  • Articles (2)

• Post tags ►

  • 1940s (154)
  • 1950s (84)
  • 1960s (32)
  • 1970s (6)
  • 1980s (10)
  • 1990s (7)
  • 2000s (5)
  • 2010s (57)
  • 2020s (11)
  • Accidents (11)
  • Archives (17)
  • Atomic Energy Commission (33)
  • Bad ideas (31)
  • Bomb design (35)
  • Books (28)
  • Business and industry (9)
  • Civil Defense (14)
  • Counterfactuals (6)
  • David E. Lilienthal (9)
  • Declassification (14)
  • Department of Energy (6)
  • Edward Teller (13)
  • Espionage (23)
  • Fat Man (20)
  • FBI (11)
  • Firebombing (7)
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt (6)
  • Germany (8)
  • Graphic design (34)
  • H-bomb (37)
  • Hanford (10)
  • Harry S. Truman (15)
  • Hiroshima (46)
  • Historiography (25)
  • J. Robert Oppenheimer (54)
  • Japan (11)
  • John Coster-Mullen (5)
  • Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (13)
  • Klaus Fuchs (17)
  • Leaks (12)
  • Leo Szilard (7)
  • Leslie Groves (50)
  • Little Boy (8)
  • Livermore (5)
  • Los Alamos (43)
  • Manhattan (show) (9)
  • Manhattan Project (112)
  • Musings (27)
  • Nagasaki (27)
  • North Korea (5)
  • Nuclear fallout (6)
  • Nuclear power (10)
  • Nuclear testing (34)
  • NUKEMAP (23)
  • Oak Ridge (13)
  • plutonium (7)
  • Proliferation (8)
  • Resources (12)
  • Smyth Report (16)
  • Soviet Union (33)
  • Speculation (32)
  • Tinian (10)
  • Trinity (24)
  • Vannevar Bush (12)
  • William L. Laurence (7)

• E-mail subscription

  Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. You can unsubscribe anytime.

  Email Address

  Subscribe

• Recent posts from DOOMSDAY MACHINES

  • Haggling with God June 18, 2026
  • The spoils of nuclear war June 11, 2026
  • A strange, unloved apocalypse June 4, 2026
  • Bomber arithmetic May 29, 2026
  • "To build a shelter was to admit to the kind of age we lived in..." May 21, 2026
  • Paper cups and a Confederate Flag May 15, 2026
  • "It isn’t a happy picture, is it?" May 8, 2026
  • It came from the deep May 1, 2026
  • Burning up the world April 24, 2026
  • "Strange even to the men who used them" April 17, 2026