Nuclear Weapons

Since 1945, the United States Armed Forces have fielded 70 different nuclear and thermonuclear devices on approximately 120 weapon systems. During this period, the manufacturing operations of the Manhattan Project, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the Department of Energy produced about 70,500 nuclear bombs and warheads. The Air Force and the Navy currently deploy eight types of thermonuclear device on six weapon systems and the Department of Defense maintains about 2,500 nuclear bombs and warheads (tactical and strategic) on active duty. It keeps approximately the same number in reserve. ...

Revealed for the first time in Racing for the Bomb, Groves played a crucial and decisive role in the planning, timing, and targeting of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki missions. Norris offers new insights into the complex and controversial questions surrounding the decision to drop the bomb in Japan and Groves' actions during World War II, which had a lasting imprint on the nuclear age and the Cold War that followed.

The INSTANT New York Times bestseller Instant Los Angeles Times bestseller Finalist, Dayton Literary Peace Prize One of NPR's Books We Love One of Newsweek Staffers' Favorite Books of the Year Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize “In Nuclear War: A Scenario, Annie Jacobsen gives us a...

This Very Short Introduction looks at the science of nuclear weapons and how they differ from conventional weapons. Tracing the story of the nuclear bomb, Joseph Siracusa chronicles the race to acquire the H-bomb, a thermonuclear weapon with revolutionary implications; and the history of early arms control, nuclear deterrence, and nonproliferation. He also tracks the development of nuclear weapons from the origins of the Cold War in 1945 to the end of Moscow-dominated Communism in 1991, and examines the promise and prospect of missile defense.

The American public's introduction to nuclear technology was manifested in destruction and death. With Hiroshima and the Cold War still ringing in our ears, our perception of all things nuclear is seen through the lens of weapons development. Nuclear power is full of mind-bending theories, deep secrets, and the misdirection of public consciousness - some deliberate, some accidental. The result of this fixation on bombs and fallout is that the development of a non-polluting, renewable energy source stands frozen in time.

A myth-shattering exposé of America’s nuclear weapons. Famed investigative journalist Eric Schlosser digs deep to uncover secrets about the management of America’s nuclear arsenal. A groundbreaking account of accidents, near misses, extraordinary heroism, and technological breakthroughs...

This work, The Sword of Damocles: Our Nuclear Age, deals with our history as well as today's headlines. I had the opportunity to study that precarious period in a unique way. As a museum director with a forty-year career behind me, I met and worked with some of the leaders in the field of nuclear weapons testing.

Nuclear Fire is a series of related even connected short stories that leads the reader through some of the most horrendous nuclear events of the past 100 years. From the development of nuclear weapons under The Manhattan Project, through the creation of reactors, to nuclear fires and core meltdowns, it takes you through plausible reasons why they happened and the implications of human greed and errors in the design, construction, and operation of both weapons reactors and commercial power reactors. Yet through it all with only one exception, the Chernobyl disaster, fewer people have died ...

After the Soviet Union proved to the United States that it possessed an operational intercontinental ballistic missile with the launch of Sputnik in October 1957, the world watched anxiously as the two superpowers engaged in a game of nuclear one-upmanship. Amid this rising tension, eccentric physicist Nicholas Christofilos brought forth an outlandish, albeit ingenious, idea to defend the US from a Soviet attack: detonating nuclear warheads in space to create an artificial radiation belt that would fry incoming ICBMs. Known as Operation Argus, this plan is the most secret and riskiest experiment in history, and classified details of these nuclear tests have been long obscured.

The culminating volume in Richard Rhodes’s monumental and prizewinning history of nuclear weapons, offering the first comprehensive narrative of the challenges faced in a post–Cold War age. The past twenty years have transformed our relationship with nuclear weapons drastically. With...

In this concise account of why America used atomic bombs against Japan in 1945, J. Samuel Walker analyzes the reasons behind President Truman's most controversial decision. Delineating what was known and not known by American leaders at the time, Walker evaluates the options available for ending the war with Japan. In this new edition, Walker incorporates a decade of new research - mostly from Japanese archives only recently made available - that provides fresh insight on the strategic considerations that led to dropping the bomb.

My Journey at the Nuclear Brink is a continuation of William J. Perry's efforts to keep the world safe from a nuclear catastrophe. It tells the story of his coming of age in the nuclear era, his role in trying to shape and contain it, and how his thinking has changed about the threat these weapons pose. In a remarkable career, Perry has dealt firsthand with the changing nuclear threat.

In the annals of human history, few specters loom as ominously as that of nuclear warfare. From the hushed laboratories of World War II, where the seeds of atomic ambition were first sown, to the blistering firestorms of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the journey of humanity through the nuclear age has been fraught with peril and uncertainty. Delve into the heart of this gripping narrative as we journey through the cataclysmic events that shaped our world. Follow the trail of scientific discovery and political machinations as nations raced to unlock the destructive power of the atom. Witness the ...

Early in 1968, a nuclear-armed Soviet submarine sank in the waters off Hawaii, hundreds of miles closer to American shores than it should have been. Compelling evidence strongly suggests that the sub sank while attempting to fire a nuclear missile.

Nuclear weapon bunkers keep the world's dangerous nuclear weapons safe. Guards, electronic security systems, and barriers protect the bunkers. Learn more about these high-security places!

What would happen if Iran had nuclear weapons? Are you sure you want to know? Really sure? Because once you read this story, you can't unread it. The scenario is fictional. The physics are real. The politics are uncomfortably familiar. And the people who die in these pages could very well be you and me. For decades, the world has negotiated, sanctioned, threatened, and bargained with Iran over one question: what happens if they get the bomb? This is that story. Go ahead. Read it. But don't come complaining to me when you lose sleep for weeks.

In Heroes Beneath the Waves, many brave men who rode submarines to great depths and across the oceans into unknown territory share their experiences, fears, and thoughts. They allow us to travel back in time through their memories. Trained for years to keep silent - for "loose lips sink ships" - many still believe what they know to be classified and refuse to disclose even the minutest of recollections. Others, however, want to leave a legacy of reminiscences for people to learn and live by - to know that freedom is not free.

Robert Oppenheimer: Destroyer of Worlds offers a compelling journey into the life, mind, and legacy of one of the 20th century’s most enigmatic figures. Known as the "father of the atomic bomb," J. Robert Oppenheimer was a brilliant physicist, a complex human being, and a reluctant harbinger of a new, terrifying era. This book explores Oppenheimer’s early brilliance, his leadership of the Manhattan Project, and the moral turmoil he faced as the consequences of his work unfolded. Through vivid storytelling and rich historical detail, readers gain an intimate understanding of his triumphs...

Near the close of the Cold War era, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency used a highly placed mole within Taiwan's nuclear weapons program to halt the project just as it had accumulated enough plutonium to build a small arsenal of atomic bombs. Crossing the Red Line provides a first-hand account of how the CIA whisked its spy out of Taiwan and shut down the project in 1988. The U.S. had once tacitly supported the nuclear efforts of its Cold War allies -- Taiwan, Israel and South Africa -- all pariah states with hostile enemies on their borders. Yet decades later, America switched its ...

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.