Post archives
Filtering for posts tagged with ‘Speculation’
2021
April 2021
25
Meditations | News and Notes
Reflections on the life of John-Coster Mullen (1946-2021), the truck driver who sought nuclear history and secrets.
2018
June 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.
2016
April 2016
22
Visions
What do the shapes of nuclear weapons reveal, and what do they hide?
February 2016
26
Visions
What does Frayn's famous play get wrong, and what does it get right?
2015
December 2015
11
Redactions
Who killed J. Robert Oppenheimer's Communist lover?
November 2015
13
Redactions
At what point did the Manhattan Project scientists and administrators realize they weren't in a race with Nazi Germany after all?
October 2015
9
Redactions
Niigata was one of the possible targets for atomic attack in 1945. Why was it spared? And why don't we ever talk about it?
August 2015
3
Meditations
Considering a few of the options that were on the table in 1945.
March 2015
27
News and Notes | Redactions
The US government has once again created a headache for itself in trying to censor information about the hydrogen bomb.
6
Redactions
In 1945, some scientists thought we should "demonstrate" the bomb to Japan before dropping it on a city. Others disagreed. Who was right?
January 2015
7
Meditations
Was a "Nazi nuclear bunker" recently discovered? Almost certainly not — but that hasn't stopped the story from being passed around.
2014
December 2014
15
Visions
Is there a big red button that can launch nuclear war? No — but thinking about why there isn't is a nice way into the complexities of command and control issues.
November 2014
14
Visions
Experiments in representing the atomic bomb and the substances that fuel it.
September 2014
22
Meditations
How many people would have died if an atomic bomb had been dropped on Tokyo in early 1945, instead of firebombs? And why does it matter?
August 2014
22
Meditations
The original target for the second atomic bomb was Kokura, not Nagasaki. Why was Kokura spared? Three theories are considered.
May 2014
16
Meditations
Leo Szilard conceived of the nuclear chain reaction 5 years before fission was discovered. What was he really thinking, and why didn't anyone listen?
March 2014
7
Visions
A rare find: science fiction giant John Campbell wrote about dirty bombs and U-235 in the summer of 1941.
2013
October 2013
11
Redactions
Who told Werner Heisenberg that an atomic bomb might be dropped on Dresden? Plus: another curious wartime leak.
September 2013
20
Redactions
How did an article about the work at the Los Alamos laboratory come to be published in March 1944?
13
Redactions
Are there any indications that the Germans penetrated into the secrecy surrounding the American atomic bomb project during World War II? Not many.
April 2013
5
Visions
A vision of future war, only a few months after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
March 2013
15
Meditations | Redactions
Did atomic secrets kill Lt. Col. Paul P. Stoutenburgh?
1
Redactions | Visions
An anonymous wartime wordsmith comes up with an novel interpretation of why Hanford was so secretive, and so unpleasant to work in.
2012
June 2012
27
Redactions
Hans Bethe on why it was safe to declassify Project SUNSHINE, a study of the global effects of nuclear fallout.
20
Redactions
Why Hans Bethe wanted to postpone the test of the first hydrogen bomb in 1952.
May 2012
11
Visions
How does one make visual sense out of the size of the nuclear stockpile?
2
Redactions
In 1946, scientists at the U. of Penn. attempted to publish a book about atomic bomb design. 60+ years later, here is the censored chapter.
April 2012
25
Redactions
What would have happened if Japan hadn't surrendered and the US had continued to drop atomic bombs on Japanese cities?
March 2012
2
Visions
Why Life magazine's speculative August 1945 story on the atomic bomb -- and its drawings -- raised the censors' eyebrows.
February 2012
17
Visions
An obscure Soviet publication on nuclear weapons reveals differences in how different countries draw their atomic bombs.
