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"Isotope bombs, which are not even feasible at this point and require a pretty massive technological base "

I do believe isotope bombs are quite feasible indeed. It is the isoMER bomb which I posted a story on that is now in question. Nuclear isotopes contain varying numbers of neutrons with identical numbers of protons in the nucleus. Nuclear ISOMERS contain the same of both but have excitiations of the spins of the nucleons' constituant neutrons and protons.

You are right to be so sceptical. The whole book is just an elaborate hoaxe, as the authors themselves point out, if you find the right page.

You are right to be so sceptical. The whole book is just an elaborate hoaxe, as the authors themselves point out, if you find the right page.

As the authors point out themselves on their own site, the whole thing is an elaborate hoaxe. The spelling "mistakes" were intentional give-aways, congrats for picking them up. This just looks like the biggest troll in Slashdot's history. (does this make it a nuclear troll?)

They point it out on their own site! Congrats, GoneGaryT for this excellent troll! You made it to the Slashdot front page.

• Most of the comprehensive data and analyses of those data that are available in Government Port Chicago explosion records are extraneous to the purpose of this book and will not be considered. Sections of available Port Chicago explosion records, for example, that precisely detail and mathematically dissect the "Percentage of plaster damage to total houses damaged" and the "Frequency distribution of number of structural members broken by buildings, area" would be neither instructive nor interesting to a general readership.

where is the residual radiation?

Good question. There isn't any. Case closed.

The main supporting inference requires considerable suspension of disbelief, and is presented as nothing more than conjecture. From Chapter 10, page 19:

Deliberate detonation of the carload of Mk-47 bombs spotted at the No. 2 cargo hold of the E.A. Bryan with the purpose to effect the detonation the Mark II fission bomb and to conceal the detonation of that bomb within the larger explosion the E.A. Bryan's massive cargo of TNT and torpex munitions was not sabotage. But that is the means I impute as the origin of the Port Chicago explosion. The Mark II weapon was concealed among the cargo of crated aerial bomb tail vanes loaded 16 July 1944 into the No. 3 hold of the E.A. Bryan and was set with aerial depth bomb or depth charge hydrostatic pressure-activated fuses to detonate the Mark II at a pressure of 3-4 atmospheres in excess of sea level ambient atmospheric pressure; that necessary pressure above the ambient was propagated by the detonation of the carload of Mk-47 bombs.

The author thinks the thing was loaded concealed and armed with a 4 atm pressure depth charge fuse? Please.

I know it's consider incorrect around here to comment on spelling, but the author begins to lose credibility when he misspells "Manhattan Project" on his front page.

One observation is that many people are slow to draw the connection between nuclear and ordinary explosives because today's nuclear yields are so high. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki each had raw explosive power of around 10 kilotons each (the Nagasaki plutonium bomb was a good deal more powerful than the U-235 Hiroshima bomb, but because of inaccurate placement inflicted about half the damage). Nuclear explosions are worse for human life by heat and gamma radiation, but otherwise this tonnage could realistically be delivered by aircraft by conventional explosives or, in equivalent destructive terms, by firebomb bombardment such as had leveled most of Tokyo and Dresden.

So there was some resistance at the time to focusing on the nuclear program when waves of 1,000 B-29's delivering 10 tons each could do the same task with proven technology. In another parallel, some estimates are that the "$3 Billion Dollar Gamble" B-29 may have cost more to develop and build than the bomb!

Also, all large explosions assume the familiar mushroom cloud appearance.

I don't address at all the propriety of dropping "the bomb," just the reasons a conventional explosion might be mistaken for one.