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The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Lansing Lamont's Day of Trinity was the first book I read about the Manhattan Project. In what turns out to be a decent if uncritical look at the pursuit of atomic weaponry, Lansing was given exclusive access throughout the life of the Manhattan Project. In reading the book you feel like you have a fly-on-the-wall view of the process of producing the first uranium and plutonium bombs.
Lamont's telling is a bit thin though, not going into the motivations of the scientists and only barely touching on the geopolitical situation at the time. This not to say that it is craven, but it is overly sympathetic and a bit too rah-rah about atomic weaponry and their usefulness.
In the book, Mr. Rhodes takes the time to explore the base motivations of the scientists. Ever wonder exactly what motivated Teller's bloodthirstiness? What inspired the scientists to continue driving toward the atomic prize even after the fall of Germany? Rhodes has spent the time researching exactly what made the major players tick.
This is all well and good, but probably the most enjoyable thing about the book is how it's not really a story about the men so much as the science they pursued. The book is not really about the bombs, either, but more the history of physics and physicists.
Always keeping the science accessible and exciting, he manages to explain concisely the process of discovery and experimentation and how the significant events of history affected both the project's progress.
The way that Mr. Rhodes tracks the movements of physicists from anti-semitic Germany to Los Alamos, Chicago and other centers of the nuclear arms program is especially compelling and lends keen insight into the motivations of the physicists involved.
One of the most important (and stomach churning) things about the book is how it shows how cheap human life became in the first half of the 20th century. I think that it is important, when considering the horror of dropping bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that people have the proper historical context before coming to one conclusion or another about the morality of the dropping of the bomb. This book gives that context.
This is not to say that this is a perfect book. Reaching as it does from the mid 1800s through to the dawn of Teller's super-bomb, the book's scope means that some discoveries and scientists don't get the in-depth coverage that Bohr, Szilard and Oppenheimer do, and he doesn't talk much at all about the espionage that surrounded nuclear development. Nor in my mind does he fully answer the question of why the scientists remained motivated to produce the weapons after Germany had been conquered.
Those caveats aside, this is a terrific book well worth checking out if you are interested in the birth of modern physics, the men and women behind it, or the most powerful weapon that has ever been used on humans.
You can purchase The Making of the Atomic Bomb from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Anyone who buys this book will probably get arrested under the patriot act, because the govt will think you want to know how to make an atomic bomb. God help the author.
Do you always talk about yourself in third person? :)
I think this review was just an attempt at
Trolling is a art,
I read this a few years ago, and would absolutely recommend it to anyone interested in the history of the bomb.
There are a lot of good things about it, but one of my favorites is the fact that the book is filled with direct quotes from letters, diaries, memos, etc from the people involved. You really get a good idea of what the people were actually thinking in their own words, not just the historical summary.
One thing that surprises me about his review is that he mentioned the cheapness of life early on in the century, but doesn't mention the chapter on the effects of the bomb. One of the most powerful chapters in the book is amost nothing but direct quotes from interviews and diaries of folks who were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki when they were bombed. It's very powerful, and a good reminder of just what a nuke actually does to people.
Speaking of soviet russia, does this book also cover the bomb developments during the cold war or is it only its invention and early (pre-hiroshima/nagasaki) days ?
...and I have to agree with the reviewer. The book doesn't spend much time on the emotional or philosophical issues the people involved in developing the bomb were experiencing.
I believe it was meant strictly as a factual account of how things progressed, who did what, etc. It definitely was interesting to see how physics was brought to the US and the fact the US was way behind in science before the biggest minds in Europe started coming over because of the war.
All in all a good long read, sometimes too much detail in spots but iteresting nonetheless.
"It's comin' back around again..." -RATM
-General Jack D. Ripper, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
GameTab - Game Review Database
Actually, this is a very good book. After reading Tom Clancy's The Sum Of All Fears I was interested in finding out 'just how difficult is it to make an atomic bomb?'
I found this book at my local Half Prices Books store and picked it up cheap. It's an interesting read, and there is an awful lot of history involved that a majority of Americans don't know about.
I highly recommend this book even though it's not a recent release.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
At first glance I thought this might be an O'Reilly book. Then I had to envision which animal would be on the cover. The answer, of course, was obvious.
Godzilla.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Though that one was 13 and change billion years ago.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Find a do-it-yourself manual here (or Google for irreproducible+atomic+bomb)
my other sig is a 500 page novel
This book is almost 15 years old! I believe Rhodes won the Pulitzer Prize, National book award, and one other major award for this book. Anyway, why the book review now?
(For those of you who will say it was published in 1995, that's for the paperback edition).
By all means, read the book, but it's hardly news.
My other sig is extremely clever...
Never before in the history of Mankind has there ever been an equalizer like the atomic bomb. The stone spearhead helped the Neanderthal Man usurp Homo Erectus as king of the hominids, the catapult and the arrow helped the Anglos crush the Saxons, and the atomic bomb brought an end to Nazi/Nipponese aggression and eventually delivered the glory of Christ to billions of Soviets suffering under Communistic enslavement.
It is clear that J. Robert Oppenheimer, Robert Goddard, Albert Einstein, and the rest of the tiger team that worked on the Manhattan Project had nothing but moral purposes in mind. The atomic bomb is an instrument of hope, not terror. Christ Himself said that splitting the atom would lead to a new world of peace and harmony if we did not allow Islam to get out of hand. We have heeded His first piece of advice but ignored the second, and now we face a new threat brought on by our own failure to keep infidelity in check.
To cleanse the world of evil and return it to morality, we must use our sizable nuclear arsenal to rid the world of the Muslimic threat. By dropping 10-megaton warheads on Islamic epicenters such as Baghdad, Mecca, Medina, Detroit, Damascus, Tehran, Riyadh, and Cordoba, we can instantly remove the vast majority of the evil that threatens moral society. Please write your Congressman and demand that we cleanse the world, and implore the others within your congregation to do the same. The power of Christ compels you. The power of Christ compels you.
I read it several years ago and have recommended it to others. No one else I know actually finished it :\
It really is a good book that will make physics much more interesting as you learn the background behind the discoveries leading up to the a-bomb. It does take a pretty serious commitment to finish though.
Right here.
I think you'll enjoy it.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
It goes past Hiroshima and Nagasaki somewhat, but not tremendously far. Basically, you're looking at a history of nuclear physics, chemistry, and the Manhattan Project. The H-bomb stuff is almost a postscript, but a longish one.
This is a very interesting book, btw. If you set aside the atomic bomb issues, it would still be an interesting history of chemistry and physics. I learned a lot more than I expected to learn when I read it a couple fo years ago.
GF
Lots of petrified grits
Everyone got your Homeland-Defense(TM) poly sheeting and duct tape? If not, you'll want some after reading this book.
(For the clueless: the same materials can be used to prevent the infiltration of fallout particles into your home)
Chip H.
It also takes a look at the history and philosophy of the late 1800's that lead to the development of chemical weapons used in WWI, and how the atomic was the natural evolution of these events/ideas. This is the first book that I read about the atomic bomb that brings these things into light.
I agree that the book does focus quite a bit on the science it also brings the scientist's lives to life.
It also points out that there is a valley in Romania ? (i believe, it has been a couple of years since i have read this book) that has a huge density of nobel prize winnign scientists. He looks at the methods used in their elementary education that may have contributed to this one area producing a disproportionate amount of nobel laureates.
All in all, I agree it is a wonderful book. I also recommended his book "Deadly Feasts" which takes a look at prion dieseases. Mad-cow is a prion disease. These are unique as the are a particular protein that can cause infections. David Brin references these in nifty ways in his book "Kiln People" - also a good read.
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
For me, the bomb is a really good case on the illegitamcy of democracy or at least the need to fix it up.
6 years
43,000 Employees
2.2 billion dollars in a time of war
7 installations
operations in 19 states, including Canada
the multinational marshalling of expertise
All this was hidden from congress, the vice president, and many other high ranking gov. officials. It was strictly censored from the media as well.
Once invented, the same companies that produced televisions were hired to manufactured the bomb for the government. I mean RCA, NBC, and General Electric.
Of the 85,000 feet of film shot in Japan depicting the massive chaos and suffering the bomb inflicted, ZERO made it onto television because of a STRICT GOVERNMENT PRESS BAN until the 1980s.
Production companies prefered to depict test explosions, especially at the beautiful Bikini Atoll (now non-existant).
How can we make any claim that we live in a democracy?
-- "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." Jean Jacques Rousseau
This book is not really new, but it's still good to see a review on it here. It is a thoroughly researched and very well written book, not just on the atomic bomb but on a good chunk of the history of 20th century physics.
But one person does feature prominently: General Leslie R. Groves, the military director of the project. There are a few other biographies that concentrate specifically on Groves: one by Robert Norris and another by William Lawren. But read Rhodes' book first before going into either of these.
'before coming to one conclusion or another about the morality of the dropping of the bomb.'
How could anyone see it as possibly moral? It's not an ethical question, it is a question of who should die. At this point morality is gone.
Dark Sun was the history of the hydrogen bomb. I greatly enjoyed his "Making of the Atomic Bomb", but didn't find "Dark Sun" quite as gripping a read. "Making of..." was perhaps more enjoyable to me both because of the context of the times and because of the tales of people such as Einstein, Fermi, Oppenheimer, et. al.
By the way...it's a bit late for the review, isn't it? It made it to paperback in 1995 -- goodness knows when it was first published in hardback!
How can we make any claim that we live in a democracy?
The fact that Americans voted for the relevant President, Vice-President, and Congress. Do you have some other definition of "democracy"?
And, more specifically, nobody claims that the United States is a democracy - it's a representative republic, and in representative republics important decisions tend to be made by the eponymous representatives.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
I found this one a fascinating read, though at times my head would swim with dates and names as they could be thrown at you at a heckuva pace. The technical info is excellent for those (like me) not intimate with quantum physics and the like. An excellent read over all.
I followed this up with "Saddam's Bombmaker" and the two give an idea of the sort of industrial apparatus that UN inspectors today might be looking for.
This book was a Pultizer winner in 1988 for general non-fiction. I read it in the early 90's and enjoyed it. It is somewhat technical, but no so technical that the reader requires a degree in physics to enjoy it. It also covers the moral and political issues facing those involved with developing the bomb. Anyone interested in the history of the first half of the twentieth century will get value out of this book.
isn't a state yet. They aren't scheduled for invasion until after Iraq, N. Korea, Libya and Cuba. Don't tell the Canadians, though.
--Nor in my mind does he fully answer the question of why the scientists remained motivated to produce the weapons after Germany had been conquered.--
They wanted to reduce the death of Americans and possibly Japaneese by bringing the war to a total conclusion.
Time for a brief history lesson. 1914-1918 World War I, started out of Germany. 1941-1945 World War II, started out of Germany. Two world wars, twenty years apart, both started out of Germany. I'd speculate that they didn't want to see World War III, in another twenty years, also started out of Germany.
I assume you are talking about why they remained motivated to produce the weapons after Germany was conquered, but before Japan was. The reason which was discussed in the book was that they had already spent a lot of money, and it had been decided by then that the concept would work. Because of the perceived usefullness of the thing to end what looked at the time to be a protracted war with the Japanese they kept going. Just because the initial motivation was as a foil for Germany, it didn't mean it was a bad idea after Germany was gone. Plus by that time the scientists were genuinely interested in the idea and really wanted to see it go boom after living in the desert on the top of a mesa for a few years.
For the motivation after the end of World War II was over, you should read Rhodes' followup book, Dark Sun, The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. This book goes a lot more into the wholesale operation of Russia's espionage business here in the US after the war and details what was going on at Los Alamos while the Cold War was really building up steam.
The H-Bomb stuff is a postscript in this book, but he wrote a follow-up book, Dark Sun, that tells its story in the full detail it deserves.
no kidding, when i first saw the article, i had to laugh. the moronic editor could have at least to other resources relating to the book.
this book is not exactly obscure either. instead, it seem chrisd just "discovered" this book and now is passing off his review like it's some new thing. guess what, it's not.
next up: a review of the bible on slashdot. new and exciting insights from the slashteam.
Consult Richard Feynman's classic Surely you're Joking Mr. Feynman. In this, for example, Feynman (working on the Manhattan project pre-doctorate) catches a ride to visit his sick wife from the man who would later be shown to be a Russian spy on the project. Awesome book, and required reading for geeks.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
One of the most important (and stomach churning) things about the book is how it shows how cheap human life became in the first half of the 20th century.
Uhhhh right. If you travel outside the US at all you would notice that life is still pretty cheap.
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
I could just go look this up, but I wanted real-time opinions. Someone answer me this: why did the United States drop two atomic bombs are civilian targets in Japan? I do not understand why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were targetted for these attacks. I do not understand how anything even remotely moral may be derived from this. Can I get some insight?
Why bother.
Do you have a mirror ?
I haven't seen this book, but I'm gonna look out for it now.
I really did enjoy reading Feynman's accounts of the time which are included in Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman, his mentions focussed on the safety aspects of designing the storage facilities for the euranium.
Rhodes wrote a fantastic sequel, too: "Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb."
Dark Sun is even more fascinating -- and more ominous. The idea seemed to be in the 50s and 60s to keep making bigger and bigger bombs. Some of the photographs of the test shots are amazing.
Also, if you're reading this stuff, by all means check out the play "Copenhagen" by Michael Frayn. It details a meeting between Bohr (a Dane) and Heisenberg (a German) in the middle of the war. The text is pretty engaging -- both for the questions it asks (Why did Heisenberg visit Bohr? Was he trying to figure out what Bohr new about the American atomic programs) and for the background it offers about the beginnings of atomic energy. Highly recommended.
This is off-topic, but I add it because I find it fascinating: but one of the topics touched upon in 'Copenhagen' is the fact that the Germans, apparently, had constructed a reactor in Germany and where literally days away from activating it (without any safety precautions or control mechanisms) when the Allies came crashing through and destroyed it. Why this incident hasn't been made into a film -- even a crappy Bruce Willis/Stallone film -- is beyond me. It's absolutely fascinating -- the idea that the Allies may or may not have know about the reactor but were lucky enough to catch it just before it went live. The reactor was constructed at the bottom of a mountain in a deep cave. It's amazing, actually. Frayn touches upon it in his play when Bohr reminds Heisenberg -- like something straight out of a Bruce Willis movie, in fact -- that had they successfully activated the reactor, there was no mechanism to slow or even control the reaction. It could have conceivably gotten completely out of control. Absolutely frightning.
For Edward's side of the story, may I recommend reading "Memoirs - A twentieth-Century journey in science and politics" ISBN 0-7382-0532-X. This is his autobiography, which gives some remarkable insights into an incredible portion of our history.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
im trying, but it doesnt make sense.
First off, if this is a troll, good job, you got me...;)
Of the 85,000 feet of film shot in Japan depicting the massive chaos and suffering the bomb inflicted, ZERO made it onto television because of a STRICT GOVERNMENT PRESS BAN until the 1980s.
I want to see something regarding the press ban. If you mean that the government owned the footage and didn't release it, they're not obligated. If you mean supression of privately owned footage after the 50's, I want to see a source.
All this was hidden from congress, the vice president, and many other high ranking gov. officials. It was strictly censored from the media as well.
No shit it was. If you haven't noticed, Congress is about as secure with secrets as a gaggle of schoolgirls. They've gotten many of our operatives killed overseas by blabbing about classified material. So the fact that congress is off the distribution list for something as secret (well, supposedly) as the ATOMIC BOMB...well, duh. As for the media, you have GOT to be kidding. It was wartime. It was an experimental weapon. Yeah, it was concealed, as anything else would have been downright irresponsible.
So, your beef is that EVERYTHING in a democracy should be absolutely open, with no secrets, right? Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way, nor should it. We vote for the people we theoretically trust to deal with such matters, or to appoint others who can. Naturally, it doesn't always work, but keeping atomic research secret during WWII was pretty much a necessity. I do believe, of course, that our government has FAR overused secrecy as a tool, too often to cover its own ass. But I don't at all believe that this was an example - you can find MUCH more egregious examples (where are those Kennedy files, anyway? No, the REAL ones, Mr. Warren...)
Sorry, but war kind of necessitates secrecy. Otherwise, you tend to lose them.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
"Nor in my mind does he fully answer the question of why the scientists remained motivated to produce the weapons after Germany had been conquered." A little known fact was that the Japanese had been developing a nuclear device as well. In fact last year the plans for it were returned to the Japanese government from a Japanese Physicist's estate after he died. Also, some of the nuclear material that was confiscated from the Germans at the end of the European theater war was on a German submarine with japanese military officers bound for Japan. The Japanese had plans in development, and they had deals in the works to attain the needed fissile material. This confiscated material was then sent to the manhattan project to supplement the material generated for the devices that the US had been building. I have never read the discussed books, but have found that the Japanese nuclear program is alway ignored when these discussions bring up the fact that Post VE day the US continued development of the weapons. A reason for why alot of the atrocities conspired by the Japanese military were not headline news after the war like the Nuremburg trials is that the US made deals with the responsible officers of the Japanese military in which the US would recieve all of the data and matarials from the tests the US would consider too unethical to perform themselves, in exchange for immunity from prosecution for the alleged war crimes. The Japanese military nuclear program could very well have been lumped into the deal. Thus concealing a very real program.
The Manhattan Project, 1960's book, interesting read but not as detailed as Rhodes.
Brighter than a Thousand Suns, wishy washy glorification of physicists and scientists working on bomb
Military Uses of Atomic Energy, Glasstone for AEC, good but hard to find.
The Curve of Binding Energy, Mcfee, excellent must read book on terrorist use of nuclear materials
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Rhodes didn't discuss espionage much in "The Making of the Atomic Bomb", but his follow-up, "Dark Sun", discusses it extensively. (Its subjects are the Soviet nuclear program, and the development of the hydrogen bomb, which really can't be discussed in detail without going deeply into intelligence and counter-intelligence).
It also takes a good hard look at the leadership of the Strategic Air Command, in the 1950s, which at times came close to advocating a preemptive nuclear strike...
Read "The Curve of Binding Energy" by John McPhee
Very scary.
There's really no better work than Richard Feyman's "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman".
It might be hard to comprehend from our vantage point but, for the most part, people building the bomb really didn't *have* any emotional or philosophical issues. They had one of histories grandest scientific head rushes.
Think about. Hell, until they had actually built and used the thing to them it was just bomb, but bigger. We were making lots and LOTS of bombs at the time.
*Afterward* is a different story, after the work and the head rush were over and everyone could sit back and reflect on what God, and they, had wraught.
Richard actually went into a deep depression for a while and didn't want to do physics anymore. There were a lot like him.
But at the time they were doing it it was pretty much a grand adventure.
KFG
http://www.csi.ad.jp/ABOMB/
Includes:
Voices of A-Bomb survivors
Miyoko's Room: Let's Talk about Peace
A child's experience
Children of Hiroshima
Hiroshima today (interviews with children and citizens)
The cheapness of human life in WWII wasn't really related to nuclear weapons. The Allied Air Forces were firebombing "enemy" cities with conventional weapons long before Hiroshima. Objective: create blast-furnace-hot city-sized fires that left nothing but half-melted human bones amid the ash & rubble. Method: hundreds or thousands of bombers and an unlimited supply of incendiary bombs.
The Japanese experts who looked over Hiroshima shortly after the A-bombing initially concluded that Uncle Satan had merely invented a bigger & badder conventional firebomb.
It was only later, when nukes got bigger and far more plentiful, that "hit 'em with nukes" became meaningfully worse than "hit 'em with firebombing".
It's easy to make up & spread cool- and credible-sounding stuff. Finding & checking hard facts is hard work.
This is over 15 years old, and it won a bunch of awards back then. If the espionage aspect of the story interests you, it is well covered in the sequel, "Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb" also by Richard Rhodes, just over 700 pages.
Rhodes is, in my opinion, the first (and only) author on the topic to thoroughly understand both the physics story and the personal/political story. The richness of the story is lost without both aspects.
Oh and the Japanese weren't bombing cities? You go on believing that Japan was an innocent victim in all of this.
Miniature video loops of the full-screen movies showing the atomospheric testing program can be viewed at this DOE website
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
I have this book and Rhodes' follow-up, Dark Sun, The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. Both are excellent reads... while they've both been out a while, like Shirer's Third Reich book, these take a while to read and digest properly.
What I find fascinating about both books is that it really isn't as easy to make a nuke as some claim, particularly given the right-wing paranoia that seems to have swept the U.S. as of late.
Although this isn't brought up in either book (the 2nd gives you an excellent overview of Cold War issues, spying, and just how destructive McCarthyism was in the 50s... plus you do get the clear impression that Curtis LeMay was both a genius and a psycho all wrapped up into one neat package) I do get paranoid thinking about nuclear security issues - namely, all those Soviet-era nukes that are lying around that someone could conceivably rip off.
I can see where a Kidman-Clooney Peacemaker scenario could easily unravel - someone might remove the fission trigger of an H-bomb and walk into a city and set it off. Although I'm sure Hollywood took some liberty in that movie; I somehow don't think the triggers are small enough... and light enough (plutonium + the HE compression mechanism) to slip into a backpack.
Maybe they are, h3ll, I'm not a nuke weapons expert. But that seems a lot more plausible scenario - someone stealing (or more grimly, buying, on the black market) a fission trigger and setting it off - than the scenario shown in the Sum of All Fears.
Still would kill a lot more people than an airplane full of aviation fuel, even if set off at ground level amongst skyscrapers (the Nagasaki bomb had a higher yield - being a plutonium weapon - than the uranium gun design Hiroshima bomb - but because it landed in a hilly area, some of the bomb's effect was dampened (I believe both bombs were proximity/altitude fused - neither went off close to ground level)). The best way to inflict a lot of damage with a nuke is the compression wave (it also limits fallout) with an airburst. However, terrorists might be more interested in having as much fallout contaminate as large of an area as possible. So a groundburst is probably more likely if, God forbid, they ever get a hold of a nuke.
I agree with a previous post that the eyewitness accounts from Hiroshima that are in the book are extremely sobering. Plus the pictures of people who were flash-incinerated and their "photos" left on buildings.
I have very mixed feelings on the use of the Bomb... my wife would not be here, nor would my children, as her father was a POW (captured during Bataan and had the lovely experience of surviving the 50+ %age casualty rate of the Death March) who was about a month from death by starvation and abuse (he was a POW for 3 1/2 years) when we caulked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I do not believe the Japanese of that time would have surrended if the Bomb had not been used.
War is simply horrible, plain and simple. I look at the current Iraqi situation... and North Korean... and look at my family, and think, "damn, nukes are horrible, and I don't like war... but I don't want to see my children die in the future because we were afraid/hesistant to take care of rogue states." I don't think we have a choice if Saddam uses WMDs on our troops or Israel. We have to turn Baghdad into green glass. And that thought turns my stomach, but that's war.
They'd do the same thing to us if the positions were reversed.
It is common to see judgments on the use of the atomic bomb from a "holier that thou" perspective and with full use of the benefit of hindsight.
I don't envy Harry Truman. He had to make a choice between likely tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of GI lives if Japan was invaded or hundreds of thousand Japanase casualties if the bomb was used.
It was a horrible, subhuman choice to make, which is what war makes us into.
It's an excellent book and should be required reading for all of us. The thing that struck me most about it was how all of the scientists involved had the best intentions -- they thought they were saving the world and that the bomb would ensure peace for all time. Then the politicians got involved and the disillusioned scientists lost control of the project. The military and government weren't nearly so idealistic.
-- Steve
Lost: one sig, witty, 120 chars, sentimental value. Reward offered.
I must voice my disagreement. I don't feel that Rhodes captured the same excitement of fundamentally world-changing events. The first atomic bomb was revolution. Subsequent advances in power constituted evolution.
As to the German program, it was certainly fascinating, but got coverage in both The Making of the Atomic Bomb and in Copenhagen. Essential reading for people interested in the atomic bomb or physics. Oh, and Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman was indeed most excellent. It is a genuinely entertaining look into the mind of a great modern genius.
----
So a bar walks into a physicist -- oops! wrong reference frame.
Grabbed it from my cache:
http://slashdotebayitem.0catch.com/
The thing that hit me the most was how pathetically simple it all was, once they figured it out. The thought of a uranium pile in a squash court under the stadium at the U of Chicago is a bit mind blowing. And you'll finally know the origin of the word "scram".
Totally recommended.
"The Effects of Nuclear Weapons" from the AEC. Has a circular slide rule for calculating overpressures, firebal sizes, size of crater, etc.
Best Slashdot Co
over the difference between science and engineering. This time I decided to just take the easy way out, for once.
Feynman is basically correct in that assertion. Although Los Alamos and Schenectady were both somewhat exceptions to that rule. Feynman was a junior member of the team and was most involved with the engineering aspects, the true scientific aspects being handled by men such as Bethe and Oppy.
Surely You're Joking actually shows a number of instances where real science was at question.
(As an aside I live just a couple blocks from GE's Manhatten Project site and in a box somewhere I've got an A1 security clearance badge. It's just button, like any kid could whack out if he wanted to. I use it as a reminder of how times have changed)
KFG
Mayhap the reviewer needs to take a look at history for a bit.
Prior to the modern era, human life was cheap. Incredibly cheap. Armies fought essentially by throwing "cannon fodder" at each other in a hope to win by overwhelming the other side's meat grinder. Industry fired employees for damaging the machines by getting thier limbs caught up in the gearworks--why not, the employees were by far less expensive than the machine!
Quite simply, the farther back in time you go, back to the dawn of our civilization, the cheaper human life gets. The 20th century didn't "cheapen" human life--we put a value on it far above that of any other time in history.
Oh wait, that's 'restricted knowledge'.. Along with a lot of other things now..
Must not allow the citizens to have information.. or allow them the ability to take care of themselves.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The first atomic bomb was 3 orders of magnitude larger than the largest conventional weapons.
The biggest thermonuclear bombs were another 3 orders of magnitude larger than the first atomic bomb. The increase in capabilities was just as significant, but it's hard for people to absorb that because the pictures of the explosions lack scaling context and look superficially similar.
Moving from being able to wreck a few cities with A-bombs to threatening the very existence of civilization itself (mosly through monumental releases of fallout and soot) seems revolutionary to me.
Saddam: Whaaat?? no blueprints??!! What a complete waste of money
Bush: Nee nee nee nee
Blix: We just need a little more time...
I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.
Dear AC,
You seem to have some "special source" of information on my beliefs that i'm not aware of.
Unfortunately, your "special source" appears to be either miserably incorrect or a pathological liar.
I suggest that you start using more reliable sources of information.
Sincerely,
0x69
It's easy to make up & spread cool- and credible-sounding stuff. Finding & checking hard facts is hard work.
Where do you look if you want to just find a simple HOWTO doc? =P
I had a wicked knee jerk reaction when I thought they were pushing a book on how to make a bomb, while at the same time the lead story is people getting prosecuted for developing tech to hack a satellite transmition. Glad I read a bit more before going off like a grenade.
Dictators are cool. We europeans love them. Would prefer a bearded madman in a military uniform over a corporate drone like bush anytime.
I mean, I read Rhode's Atomic Bomb book in college for a comparative literature class. It's not new. This /. article was like reading a review of Doom or Mac OS 8.1.
In above post, paragraph 4 should have read "And for those who say that democracies have to be open, you're right. That's why there aren't any democracies, but a bunch of representative republics. The difference is subtle, but important here. We appoint people to make our decisions - not necessarily to tell us what all those decisions are.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
For people who cant be bothered to read, or who like watching big things blow-up, theres a brilliant documentry on this: "Trinity and Beyond" is narrated by William Shatner and has interviews with Teller and others, and lots and lots of footage all the way from the first bomb to the biggest hydrogen bomb. Its on DVD or you can find a DivX rip like i did (i was actually going to buy this but the online store i found it in pissed me off so much by telling me it was out of stock after 6 weeks of bullshitting me). Also there are a few other documentries by the same people including one about nuclear accidents:
http://www.vce.com/
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Cary Sublette, author of the Nuclear Weapons FAQ, has some info about "suitcase nukes" at http://nuketesting.enviroweb.org/hew/News/Terrori
note: The Nuclear Weapons FAQ can be downloaded as a zip file from here.
In my view, this is the best book about science ever written (The Soul Of A New Machine comes close). If anyone knows of others in this league, please let me know.
google.com "fusion bomb blue prints."
They did. However, this kind of logic always has bothered me. The Japanese Army slaugthered thousands of innocent civilians. So, to punish "them", we slaughthered an order of magnitude more innocent civilians.
I suggest you read the book "Hiroshima".
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Read Walzer's "Just and Unjust Wars." At the time that the decision was made, we were not in a state of supreme emergency that trumped the just war convention
The story of the development of the atomic bomb is in many ways as much about the people as the technology. It is the story of harnessing some of the most brilliant minds of our time (ok, my time anyway) and directing them to one task. Considering the independence of most of these folks it was a task akin to herding cats.
To get a feel for two of the pivotal figures involved try reading Lawrence and Oppenheimer by Nuel Pharr Davis . Oppenheimer led the Los Alamos project to success with unswerving dedication, only to be branded "Red" years later during the McCarthy period. While he was exhonorated years later, a good portion of his later life was ruined. This was published in 1968, so I am sure some of the technical details were still classified, but if you are interested in the era it is a must read.
Rhodes' works are considered one of the best general books on the topics. Our site, http://www.atomicarchive.com , has a lot of information; biographies, photographs, a science section and more. If you interested in the topic, or need some of the parts of the books explained or expanded on, you might try browsing our site.
The US isn't a democray where every citizen has equal decision-making power -- It's a republic where the citizens elect representatives to determine law/government action. If our elected officials decide that they need to keep these kinds of secrets from us, that is their legal right. If you don't like the people making these decisions, then elect others. The US has never been nor never will be a democracy because it 1) doesn't work (See: Rome vs. Greece), 2) is too difficult to implement and 3) is impractical because urgent matters could not be decided quickly.
Many know the quote: 1 death is a tragedy, a million death is a statistic. It's interesting that so many think a hundred thousand deaths by nuclear weapons is more of a tragedy than millions of deaths by conventional warfare. Death == Death. Ike killed a hundred thousand to save millions and that is an arguably moral position.
The US isn't a democray where every citizen has equal decision-making power -- It's a republic where the citizens elect representatives to determine law/government action.
Sorry - I muddied the concepts in my original post, and the difference between a democracy and a republic is integral to the free vs. open debate. I fixed it in my followup, but of course the one that gets modded up is the one where I made the mistake. ;)
My bad. ;)
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
... is Robert Jungk's "Brighter than a Thousand Suns" which is a little dated but a real page turner. As it gives a lot of room to the scientists' perspectives (both technical and ethical )it might be one especially for the slashdot reader
First post, i hope i don't get flamed with '..you are a nazi,antisemitic, jew hater..' bullsh!t. I'm simply open minded and accept all posibilities offered and try to make my own point of view,
' s a review for a book called WUNDERWAFFENS .txt
I'm posting two links that will be of interest to anyone researching in How the A-Bomb was made and tend not to swallow the "official" history or at least want to have all possibilities before forming an opinion on the subject.
This page is in Spanish (use google translate)
http://www.3dshort.com/nazibomb2/
It
"...a definitive approach to the nazi atom bomb history, done thanks to recently desclassified russian, Japanesse, east-german and american documents. They (the nazis) had the bomb in 1943, and both Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were captured in Norway by the allies in May, 1945. Stalins soviet Union suffered also a "distance nuclear test" in last February, then the russian dictator was forced to create the "1908s Tunguska Meteorite Fake", occluding the facts...at last, this book is a rational explanation for many pseudo-esoteric, UFO legends done in the last 60 years..." from the books prologue.
It speaks for itself, adding to this short excerpt, you will find that **aparently** the nazis could have nuked NYC.
For more reading about the theme you can get
http://www.3dshort.com/nazibomb2/CRITICALMAS
It's a book from Carter Hydrick, former COMPAQ executive, written in 1998 where basically says that Project Manhattan was stuck until they caught a runaway nazi sub carrying enriched uranium and detonators needed for the plutonium bomb.
After reading it, and given the current state of the world, it make me think seriously how much our govts hide and distort from the real facts.
Greets!
See, again, you're missing the whole "democracy is open, republic isn't" argument. I'm not a sheep because I understand both arguments and choose a bit of governmental secrecy - not because I don't want to know their secrets, but because I don't trust everyone they would be telling. I guess irresponsibility is in the eye of the beholder.
As for footage, first, I'm waiting for a source. Second, for the first few years (even up to 10-15 years), seeing footage of the destruction pattern could actually help other countries (ie, USSR, our mortal enemy at the time - ugh) develop their own bomb. Think about it - if they see exactly how geography, buildings, and such affect the destruction pattern, it could help in planning a bomb. And if they had as much footage as was claimed, the footage was likely collected for development of our next-generation bombs. Remember, as grisly as it was, Hiroshima and Nagasaki presented the only full-scale tests of the bombs, and the only in urban settings (ie, more around than tumbleweed). Hell, why else did we take the film, if not for ruture bomb development - it sure as hell wasn't tourist shots!
And for chrissake, it wasn't a secret what happened - the fatality statistics were fairly well-known - so there was no motive for cover-your-ass here.
Also, when a government is concerned, never ascribe to malice what you can ascribe to beuracracy and incompetence.
So before you go getting all conspiracy-theorist and Stallman on us (information wants to be free...), think about other possibilities. 1, that it was legitimately classified for reasons you don't necessarily understand. 2, that they forgot about it or lost it, or whatever. 3, that the correct 20 people didn't get around to signing off on it's public release.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Rhodes published a follow-up
Dark Sun a few years ago.
Has anyone read it? If so, how was it?
It's a great, involving book about truly horrible weapons. My favorite bit from the book is that early on Bohr is asked about what it would take to separate enough U-235 to make a bomb, and he said that you'd have to turn the entire country into a factory to do it.
When given a tour of massive Oak Ridge and Hanford projects after production was under way, a Manhattan project scientist said "See! We did it!" And Bohr said, "well, yes, but you did turn the entire country into a factory..."
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I'm not going to split hairs, but the original Greek-style democracy basically meant that every decision was a referendum, all the people knew about everything (or close), etc. Canada doesn't have this. So in this sense, Athens was the first and only true democracy.
and your FAITH in the fact that the US gov. doesnt hide things from congress during times of "peace" (we have been at war for the last 60 years: WWII, cold war, gulf war, war on poverty, war on drugs and war on terrorism) is rather silly. How could Congress become "cranky" if they DONT KNOW ABOUT IT? The only thing Congress can do is manipulate domestic policy: taxes, judges, health care, etc. etc. matters of "security" and foreign policy dont need Congress. The US was WAGED WAR without congress.
Yeah. So? Ultimately, you vote for the president too - this might be more egregious if we had a prime minister, who you DON'T vote for - but you vote for the President. And if a majority of the people think that having a warmonger president is bad, and that's their priority, they'll vote for one who isn't. And nothing stays secret forever - Congress does get cranky when they aren't consulted. There was massive whining from the Dems that they were out of the loop after 9/11, and it forced Bush to include them more.
Finally, you cleary hold as a matter of faith that security and peace are best when they are enforced. This is a long standing American myth as old as Ulysses S. Grant and is reflected in the gun laws and American foreing policy since Roosevelt.
Not following you here - I never said anything about peace (ie, foreign policy) - but a free, open society tends to be an insecure one, and this is simple fact. Note that autocracies tend not to have security problems (USSR comes to mind...), whereas we do. Is that a fair tradeoff? For some. But others, such as me, would prefer to have a free, secure society, even if it is less than transparent. Total freedom (well, a hobbes/locke/rousseau social-contract style of freedom) and total openness (ie, no secrets) WILL lead to vulnerability. The question is, how much is too much?
So I would say your last interpretation of what I said is off - I'm not saying we need a perpetual state of war to be secure, and I'm not saying people need a bunch of damned guns to be secure. But some secrets? Yeah, sorry. You just can't have *domestic* security, openness, and freedom simultaneously and completely.
What it comes down to is that there is no *right* answer in terms of choice of government- you might prefer to live in a society where you know what's going on and can do whatever you want, but I'd prefer to know that our country can't be infiltrated, and no important secrets lost...but still do what *I* want, even if I don't know what *you* do.
Naturally, there are degrees - and, as in my original post on the matter, I don't support ALL the shit our government has covered up. But since this originally came out of a discussion on the A-bomb, come clean - you think that should have been completely open, our methods for producing it?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
"Very informative, I highly recommend this book to all bloodthirsty dictators on the block!" -- Kim Jong Il, dear leader of the PRNK
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I never implied that the evolution was not impressive, but it was evolution nonetheless. The original atomic bomb harnessed a new physics, pioneered by the most brilliant minds on the planet. That is what I mean by revolution.
I say the human species was threatened with the original a-bomb. Improvement upon the concept took only lesser minds to accomplish.
----
e+ ----><---- e-
Fatal Attraction
I don't know about "..you are a nazi,antisemitic, jew hater..", but you are definately a LOONEY !
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
You wouldn't ask why he didn't discuss the espionage around atomic bomb development nor the motivation to continue development after the war in the first volume.
Because much of "Dark Sun" is devoted to those two topics and to their effects on the Soviet nuclear weapons program and the Cold War.
We didn't do it to "punish them" you jelly-spined lump of failure, we did it to end the god damned war. Next time why don't you take a second or two to think rationally before you open your filthy cock-holster.
As is pointed out in the book, the Japanese did not have large manufacturing districts to target, like the Allied forces or Germany did. Civilians were given a drill press and parts and told how to work the parts, and they did this from their home, as part of their contribution to the war effort. When this was pointed out to Truman, he said, "Why should we change our method of bombing just because they changed their method of making bombs?" (not a direct quote)
The Japanese were not being 'punished' for their slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians, though God knows they deserved punishment; we were simply bringing the war to Japan, and did it to end the war. If 'punishment' was the goal, then why did we let them off so easy after they offered to surrender?
1)Think
2)Think again
3)Then open mouth
The Democratic Party: We've been pussies since 1968!
I thought the Iraqis invented "WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION". So it was the fucking US all along, eh?
Double standards.
If you want the postwar development of the hydrogen bomb, read "Dark Sun", also by Richard Rhodes. We must prevent a mineshaft gap!
Now boys, stop it! I know this is slashdot, home of all things petty and annoying, but even by the (non existent) standards of this community, you guys have gone too far.
Stop it! STOP IT!! STOP IT!!!.
Thank you.
- Sister Mary Elephant
Out Lady of 103rd Street Elementary School
with the complementary emphasis - about the people over the science - is "American Ground Zero" by Carole Gallagher.
It will make you cry.
Rubbish. The number of Chinese and southeast Asian civilians slaughtered directly by Japan, or killed as a result of Japanese occupation between 1937 and 1945, numbers in the millions. Through summer 1945, it is estimated that 100,000 civilians -- in China, Malaysia, Indonesia and Burma -- a month were dying, thanks to Japan, and that number was expected to continue indefinitely. Moreover, Japan itself was very likely to face an internal food crisis in winter 1945-1946 which would have exacted a heavy toll on her own population.
The atom bombs weren't dropped to "punish" Japan, and to state that the ~200K people -- military as well as civilian -- that they killed far exceeded the death toll wrought by Japan is flat out wrong.
The bombs were dropped in the hope of forcing Japan to a quick and full surrender. The nightmare at that time was an invasion of Japan, with military and civilian casualties proportional ly large compared to those on Okinawa, followed by the need to defeat individual Japanese forces in mainland Asia.
As awful as ~200K deaths is, the alternatives were worse.
I suggest you learn the Pacific/Asian war was more than Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima.
I read this book a long time ago, and it was one of a number of good books that helped my (basic) understanding of atomic weapons.
Rhodes has a real mastery of the history of the development of nuclear arms. Any of his writings are well worth reading.
When I was in college, they had a copy of the US Army strategic bombing survey [of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki] in the library. I do not know the exact, precise, formal title, and this was not a terribly large book - it was pretty concise. However, it presents the results of the study of the nature of the damage inflicted on the two cities, describes effects related to the nature and structure of buildings, terrains, and other characteristics particular to each city. I don't remember the degree to which the human toll was documented, but I am sure that it was addressed.
I recall that the strategic bombing survey report helped give a respect for the nature (and consequences) of these weapons in a manner that was more lasting than other works.
Sam Nitzberg
http://www.iamsam.com
What REALLY worries me is the fact that al-Qaeda may have been able to cart off a small number of Pakistani-made nuclear bombs from Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.
And we're not talking an improvised nuclear device, either--we're talking a bomb that could fit inside a Chevy Surburban van and have a yield of around 10 kilotons, only slightly lower in yield than the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Look at what Little Boy did to Hiroshima--most of the town was essentially flattened. Detonating such a device in the middle of any large American city will result in an immediate death tool that will reach well into six figures and a radiation poisoning lingering death tool that is just as big. (eek!)
geeks are libertarian and want all information to be free. That means bomb info. And the means to build it too. That's what all these messages will say.
Not at all. The cheapening of human life (and other life, really) is a product of industrialisation. It really is the rise of the machine.
It's also one of the products of overpopulation. That has happened before, but never so commonly before the 20th century. In a small community, each individual life has a great impact. In an anonymous society that's no longer true.
In fact the entire notion of a "value" to human life is a modern one. Think about it. At one time the life of a person (albeit where "person" was variously defined but often meant "male of the correct racial ancestry") wasn't something you'd compare to goods; people weren't a commodity. Nowadays they absolutely are. Cotter pin that prevents gas tank explosions? Too expensive a unit cost - we'll settle the lawsuits. There was a time when this wouldn't even have made sense. So the final reason why human life has become cheap is because of the notion that currency can be used to evaluate anything. Not just human lives but entire ecosystems.
We still have vestiges of the older system of thought; murder is still held to be qualitatively different from property crime (though the attendant civil cases with cash damages will gradually erode that). But I don't think we'll see a return to that way of thinking until the end of money - and while I do think that's inevitable, it's probably gonna get worse before it gets better.
I read this one back to back with Rhodes's -- Heisenberg's War: The Secret History of the German Bomb here - a great examination of why Germany didn't get the bomb even though they had one of the Quantum Greats (tm) working for them.
Uncle Satan? As if the Japanese were innocent angels that hadn't done anything.
It's fine to be anti-American--that's the "in" thing these days. But to talk about the U.S. as "Uncle Satan" when talking about WWII Japan is silly to a very extreme degree.
One thing about this book is the high profile given to Leo Szillard, who actually patented nuclear fission. I'd never heard of him before I read it. He was quite a bon-vivant apparently, disarming people with his "Szillardian tales".
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
The espionage is covered in Dark Sun, Rhode's book on the H Bomb. The Dark Sun chapter on the Cuban Missle Crisis is gripping, culminating in Curtis Le May mad at Kennedy for not incinerating Europe.
Both books are highly recomended.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
Does the publisher ship to Iraq?
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
...You mean fission, or fusion bomb. One Saddam has been wanting. Atomic, pft! That's so slashdot.
Having read the book, it was amazing how the physicists of the 19th and early 20th century came to such breakthroughs without computers. No computer modelling, no online databases, major number crunching. Some of the scientific work
still amazes 100 years later.
Just goes to show, the organic brain is still good for some stuff-just not crunching pi to a lot of distant numbers.
" We're all doomed " - Xan - Balders Gate.
I'm well aware of the atrocities committed by the Japanese troops in China and elsewhere.
The atom bombs weren't dropped to "punish" Japan, and to state that the ~200K people -- military as well as civilian -- that they killed far exceeded the death toll wrought by Japan is flat out wrong.
I didn't mean to imply that the death toll from the bomb exceeded the number of people killed by the Japanese. I know it didn't. Even the fire bombings of Japanese cities killed more people in one night than the A-bombs.
I suggest you learn the Pacific/Asian war was more than Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima.
I've read quite a bit about the war in the Pacific. Did you know that Curtiss LeMay said of the fire bombings: "If we had lost, I would most likely be tried for war crimes.".
But, I'm simply trying to make this point: if a bunch of people (like the Japanese army) go and do some terrible things to innocent people, and then in response, we (i.e. our army etc) go and kill thousands of people, who mostly had nothing to do with the stuff their army did and were for the most part innocent.
That's all. It bothers me that people think that this is OK. War is hell, and somehow these things occur, but we should not dismiss them so casually.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
What's next? A Slashdot review of "Huck Finn?"
Best Buy can have you arrested
The cheapness of life argument was placed more on the WW1 attrition policy, not so much on WW2. It was used as a vehicle to describe the background of the scientists from Germany and to give some perspective on how so much talent was wasted on WW1 attrition and how that wasted talent was the motivation for the bomb to end all wars.
Kris
Kriston
The movie that follows a story that is somewhat consistent to the events portrayed in this book is "Fat Man and Little Boy" which occasionally comes by on the Starz! True Stories channel.
Kris
Kriston
Innocent people numbering in the millions.
It was brutal, it was ugly, it sure would have been nice if Japan had gone some other way in the 1930s, but there it was. Tens of thousands dying monthly due to their aggression; their own citizens at risk of starving; their government so corrupt that they insist it's better for their citizens to die than serve their country as productive adults.
There is no plausible scenario for ending that war that does not result in thousands of Japanese civilians dying. If not by being trapped in an invasion by both the US and the Soviet Union, then by starvation; if not by starvation, then being firebombed; if not by firebombs, then by atomic bombs.
You mean like making completely false statements concerning the casualties of the aggressor nation, compared to the casualties of the peoples it victimized?
I don't see how that - a complete and apparently intentional distortion of historical fact - is any less reprehensible than writing off the atomic bombings as unimportant.
I had read some accounts that speculated that the Japanese were ready to surrender before the A-bomb, Except for a fanatical faction among the army's leadership. The whole thing being complicated by US's insistance on uncoditional surrender.
I don't see how that - a complete and apparently intentional distortion of historical fact - is any less reprehensible than writing off the atomic bombings as unimportant.
Fine. But I still stand by my point. Does having killed millions of innocent civilians, justify killing hundreds of thosands of other innocent civilians?
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Anti-American the "in" thing? Certainly not in America. Anyone questioning the absolute authority of the President is likely to be lynched.
Yes.
That faction happened to lead both the military and the "civilian" government. Japan was not ready to surrender.
When the alternative is continued slaughter, then, yes, the justification is there. The killing had to be stopped, Japan's leaders were prepared to push their country towards -- were advocating -- national suicide: they weren't about to fold.
It's not like by 1945, the killing in Asia had stopped. It's not like Japan was causing no significant harm. They were killing 100,000 civilians a month in Asia. Bomb demonstrations were going to have no effect, blockading would have taken months to bring about defeat ... and meanwhile the killing would continue.
The bombs couldn't bring back to life the millions already dead. They could, and did, prevent hundreds of thousands of more -- Chinese and Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese -- from being added to the toll.
Also an interesting book on the subject if not the easiest to initially start reading.
This movie is crap. You'd think without John Cusak's character the project would have been a failure. He does everything; he comes up with the implosion solution and also does the critcal assembly experiments. The accident that kills his character was based up Louis Slotin and didn't occur till after the war in 1946.
.1 kilotons, a dud.
I rate this movie