One Of The Hydrogen Bombs Is Missing

One of the first applications of the atomic bomb after Nuclear War I was to serve as the trigger for much more powerful hydrogen bombs. The explosion of an atom bomb emits nuclear radiation, heat energy, and photons. These emissions compress fusion fuel to thermonuclear conditions. From 1945 to 1949, the United States had a monopoly on nuclear weapons until August 29, 1949, when the USSR exploded its first nuclear device. Edward Teller was already actively working on the design of hydrogen bombs, but J. Robert Oppenheimer opposed these efforts. It was President Harry S. Truman who approved the US program to design, build, and test hydrogen bombs. Meanwhile, the USSR had been secretly working on nuclear weapons since 1941, with extensive help from several spies, including Klaus Fuchs. Both the United States and the USSR achieved early success with hydrogen bombs, as was demonstrated by hundreds of test explosions that spread radioactive fallout around the entire Earth. It was the US BRAVO test of a huge hydrogen explosive device on March 1, 1954, that brought matters to a conclusion. The radioactive fallout proved to be lethal over thousands of square miles. The result was an international ban on testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere (1963). However, the Wizards of Armageddon were busily preparing to fight, and maybe win, future wars fought with hydrogen bombs. These plans included risky maneuvers with live hydrogen bombs on planes, submarines, and other mobile devices. Accidents happened, and many hydrogen bombs were lost, blown apart, or simply abandoned. The absolute worst aspect of hydrogen bomb explosions is global ecocide. The explosions are so powerful they harm the ozone layer and ignite huge fires on Earth that darken the skies. The latter was termed nuclear winter by Carl Sagan. The conclusion of this book is very simple. All hydrogen bombs should be banned, forever

In The Day We Lost the H-Bomb, science writer Barbara Moran marshals a wealth of new information and recently declassified material to give the definitive account of the Cold War’s biggest nuclear weapons disaster. On January 17, 1966, a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber exploded over the sleepy Spanish farming village of Palomares during a routine airborne refueling. The explosion killed seven airmen and scattered the bomber’s payload–four unarmed thermonuclear bombs–across miles of coastline. Three of the rogue H-bombs were recovered quickly. Tracking down the fourth required the largest search-and-salvage operation in U.S. military history. Moran traces the roots of the Palomares incident, giving a brief yet in-depth history of the Strategic Air Command and its eccentric, larger-than-life commander, General Curtis LeMay, whose massive deterrence strategy kept armed U.S. bombers aloft at all times. Back on the ground, Moran recounts the myriad social and environmental effects of an accident that spread radioactive debris over hundreds of acres of Spanish farmland, alarmed America’s strategic allies, and damaged Spanish-American diplomatic relations. As the American military floundered in its attempt to keep the story secret, the events in Spain sometimes took on farcical overtones. Constant global media hype was fueled by the hit James Bond movie Thunderball, with its plot about an atomic weapon lost at sea. In addition, there were the unwanted attentions of a rusty- hulled Soviet surveillance ship and even awkward public relations stunts, complete with American diplomats in swim trunks. The Day We Lost the H-Bomb is a singular work of military history that effortlessly and dramatically captures Cold War hysteria, high-stakes negotiations, and the race to clean up a disaster of unprecedented scope. At once epic and intimate, this book recounts in stunning detail the fragile peace Americans had made with nuclear weapons–and how the specter of imminent doom forced the United States to consider not only what had happened over Palomares but what could have happened. This forgotten chapter of Cold War history will grip readers with the tension of that time and reawaken the fears and hopes of that dangerous era.

Hiroshima is the story of six people—a clerk, a widowed seamstress, a physician, a Methodist minister, a young surgeon, and a German Catholic priest—who lived through the greatest single manmade disaster in history. In vivid and indelible prose, Pulitzer Prize–winner John Hersey traces the stories of these half-dozen individuals from 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, when Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city, through the hours and days that followed. Almost four decades after the original publication of this celebrated book, Hersey went back to Hiroshima in search of the people whose stories he had told, and his account of what he discovered is now the eloquent and moving final chapter of Hiroshima.

Here, for the first time, in a brilliant, panoramic portrait by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, is the definitive, often shocking story of the politics and the science behind the development of the hydrogen bomb and the birth of the Cold War. Based on secret files in the United States and the former Soviet Union, this monumental work of history discloses how and why the United States decided to create the bomb that would dominate world politics for more than forty years.

PREFACE On Saturday, 1 November 1952, at 0715 hours local time, and three days before General Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected President, the United States detonated the world’s first “Super Bomb” at Eniwetok Atoll, Marshall Islands. This is an accurate historical account of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s participation in that test, an unpublicized event that changed for all time the lives of every person on earth. The first half of the book treats the conception and design of the Super at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, during which Scripps’s assistance is sought when a late development indicates that the Mike’s energy release might substantially exceed design expectations, thus mandating a drastic expansion of the Test Operation. The latter half describes the frantic efforts of 12,000 military and scientific personnel, living on a small Pacific atoll, to prepare for and conduct a test of Mike, the first thermonuclear device, to measure its effects, and to escape radioactive fallout from a mushroom cloud three times as large as the Atoll. The account is narrated by a fictitious participant who was in a position to know everything. But from this and future events, I came to know all of the players in this drama and the details of their experiences. I have preserved the names and titles of principal Task Force officers and scientists, and employed fictitious names for other participants. The entrapment of Jack Clark in the firing bunker actually occurred two years later during the BRAVO shot of Operation CASTLE. W. G. Van Dorn La Jolla, California Book Review “IVY-MIKE is a remarkable book. William Van Dorn has managed to combine a comprehensive description of the major historical activities associated with the Mike test with enough fictional narrative to make it appealing to the non-scientist:” -----Harold M. Agnew, Director, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 1970-1979. Ivy-Mike offers a scientific slice of history and glimpse into the post World War-II philosophy regarding nuclear arms. The 1952 test at Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands was not only a feat of science but also a feat of logistics. While an army of scientists and military scurried to secure the area prior to the test, late calculations suggested that the bomb’s power was significantly larger than expected. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography was asked to advise the team on alerting vulnerable areas without exposing the top-secret project. Author William Van Dorn, an oceanographer and tsunami expert who worked for the institution during this time, narrates the story as a fictional protagonist named Bob Ward. The author’s conversational writing style makes his complicated subject accessible, even to non-scientists. The account is thorough and historically significant, even as to day-to-day details. Threaded through the history lesson is a romance between Bob and his new love, “Suzy.” The relationship warms the story and, given the setting, this stylistic choice has the ring of verisimilitude. Altogether, Ivy-Mike is an illuminating historical tale. ---Kirkus Discoveries