Post archives
Filtering for posts tagged with ‘1940s’
2023
July 2023
2022
May 2022
6
Redactions
What if Japan did offer nearly-full surrender terms to the US in early 1945? In the 1940s, just this was claimed — but it's not very likely.
2
Redactions
Did the Japanese offer to surrender before Hiroshima? Short answer: no. Long answer: also no, but it's a bit complicated.
2021
November 2021
19
Visions
The Rosatom historical website has an entire section devoted to "Atomic Fun" — jokes and stories from the Soviet nuclear program. It's... something.
June 2021
14
Redactions
A bizarre leak from a powerful Senator made the Top Secret debate over building the hydrogen bomb part of national discourse — and doomed its direction.
2020
August 2020
4
Redactions
My new article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists outlines the history of casualty estimation attempts, and why they have been inherently fraught.
July 2020
16
Meditations
If the first nuclear weapons test had been a flop, would the world be better or worse off?
June 2020
9
Meditations
As we approach the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings, we're going to see a lot of journalistic takes on them — many of them totally wrong.
2018
29
Redactions
What would it take to turn the world into one big fusion reaction, wiping it clean of life and turning it into a barren rock? Asking for a friend.
January 2018
19
Redactions
A remarkable set of speech drafts from August 6-9th, 1945, shows an evolution in Truman's thinking about the bomb — from an unambiguous good, to a horror that needed to justified.
2017
August 2017
7
Meditations
Dispatches on a Roundtable and a Workshop with historians and political scientists in Hiroshima, Japan, on the 72nd anniversary of the atomic bombing.
May 2017
2
Redactions
Was the first history of the atomic bomb biased towards physics to avoid public associations with chemical weapons? My take on a recent article.
2016
November 2016
18
Meditations
Why asking whether there are checks on the US President's ability to order a nuclear attack gets the issue exactly backwards.
September 2016
30
Redactions
If he had lived to make the decision, would Roosevelt have dropped the atomic bomb?
July 2016
25
Visions
On the anniversary of America's first nuclear disaster, when the Manhattan Project still ruled the bomb...
15
Meditations
How the US came to have three major strategic nuclear platforms, and why it started calling them a "triad."
May 2016
27
Meditations
Some thoughts about the first sitting President to have visited Hiroshima.
23
Redactions
Digging into the unusual death of Louis Slotin and the fate of the bomb core that killed him.
April 2016
22
Visions
What do the shapes of nuclear weapons reveal, and what do they hide?
8
Meditations
Inventing the bomb was hard. Maintaining the bomb was harder.
February 2016
26
Visions
What does Frayn's famous play get wrong, and what does it get right?
12
Redactions
How did the first history of the atomic bomb end up in a Soviet Gulag prison?
2015
December 2015
11
Redactions
Who killed J. Robert Oppenheimer's Communist lover?
4
Meditations
What caused the atomic spies of Los Alamos to do what they did? Somewhere in the zone between ideology and ego, monsters live.
November 2015
27
Visions
What does an atomic bomb scientist look like? Not just white men.
20
Redactions
Reading about the various radiation hazards in the Manhattan Project's history can be spine-tingling, even with a measured view of the dangers.
13
Redactions
At what point did the Manhattan Project scientists and administrators realize they weren't in a race with Nazi Germany after all?
6
Visions
The popular version of Oppenheimer at Los Alamos is one of infinite competence, confidence, and charm. The reality is far more complex.
October 2015
30
Redactions
One of the most unusual, curious, and controversial members of the Manhattan Project was their in-house newspaperman from the New York Times.
23
Redactions
How far would Manhattan Project security go to deal with a problematic genius?
