Slashdot Mirror
"H-Bomb Secret" Now Online
DrDNA writes "In 1979, the US Government sued Howard Morland, Erwin Knoll and Sam Day at The Progressive Magazine for prior restraint over the planned publication of 'The H-Bomb Secret: How We Got It--Why We're Telling It,' citing national security. Six months later, a Federal appeals court vacated the restraining order on publication, and the article was published. There's an interview about the case with George Stanford, of Argonne National Lab, Illinois, a technical adviser for the Progressive Magazine. After all this time, the Progressive article is now online (4Mb pdf)."
Someone set them up the bomb.
CC Licensed Serialized Story and Podcast: Ingenioustries
For the Orange alert. Thanks for helping the terrorists!
FYI Americans, we are now at Orange Alert. There is a higher level of indication now than ever that SOMETHING is going to happen. Before, we were on Yellow Alert, so it was possible that something was going to happen, but now we are Orange, meaning that it is slightly more likely that something is going to happen. When something happens, we will go to Red Alert, indicating that something has happened, but until that time, we will remain at Orange alert.
Be Prepared Americans, Something May Happen Today!
"After all this time, the Progressive article is now online"
Not for long.
If you read only the first page of only one article posted to Slashdot this year, make it this one. I don't think I've ever seen a more eloquent, and relevant, defense of the First Amendment.
Somebody will eventually post that we should not publish this information because other countries will get it and thus be able to create nuclear weapons.
Of course, this is bull. But I found this quote from the article puts it best:
GS: It should by now be clear to everyone that in the past we
relied far too much on secrecy. We arrogantly assumed that we
were the only ones who could develop nuclear weapons, and that
therefore we could retain our monopoly. That kept us from
pursuing international arrangements that might have held the
nuclear arms race under some sort of control.
I don't wanna dive into a political rant here, but I think the balance of power, combat, and international discussion is vital to keeping the world safe from the threat of nuclear war.
Speaking of the history of the H-Bomb, a great read on the subject is the mammoth Pulitzer Prize winning book The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. He also wrote Deadly Feasts which I enjoyed even more.
Seemed kinda slow... So I mirrored it. Go ahead and /. it as much as you want. Fortunately, I managed to grab it before you bastards killed their server.... Now I have to RTFA.
Check it out!
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
It's certainly better than destroying freedom in the name of national security.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
Of the Radioactive Boyscount who built a nuclear reactor in his shed from uranium paint you find on antiques
meridian at tha.net
well by the look of it, the PDF is actually a scan of the original article. I know people flame about deep-linking complaints, but it still seems like we could link to the download page rather than to the file.
Yawn.
GA: At the end of the trial, the Progressive magazine lost a
small fortune, even though it managed to get the Morland article
published without censor. Essentially, it was a case of limited
private funds versus a bottomless pot of Government gold
I'm not sure where I stand on the article and its attempted censorship, but I am somewhat amused that one of its authors said the above. Doesn't it sound *exactly* like a typical right-wing diatribe against the government? The article in question was in the well known *leftist* magazine "The Progressive".
Re-tooled as an introduction to Microsoft's linux survey:
It should by now be clear to everyone that in the past we relied far too much on secrecy. We arrogantly assumed that we were the only ones who could develop computer operating systems and software, and that therefore we could retain our monopoly. That kept us from pursuing international arrangements that might have held the upsurge on linux under some sort of control.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
In 1979, The Progressive publishes an article on how to build H-bombs, and our courts hold that our right to free speech is so strong that the government can't do anything to stop the article. Barely 20 years later, Dimitri Sklyarov is arrested for publishing a program that reads copy-protected PDF files. Clearly, copyright infringement is a greater threat to humanity--or at least to politicians' campaign contributions--than H-bombs are.
Yeah. Your neighbour is probably just itching to do something with the 3kg of weapons-grade plutonium that he doubtless has kicking around in his back yard, not to mention his ample supplies of tritium and carefully shaped high explosive.
Telling ordinary people how a bomb is made presents negligible threat; it's impractical for them to make one themselves but does give insight into the most significant arms race of the last century. As for other nations and terrorist groups, they have spies to obtain such information for them, and it's still very difficult to obtain the relevant amounts of bomb-grade material.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Can you really stop people thinking ??? Do you really take the rest of the world that retarded that no other physicist than the US could come up with the "recept" ? If you read the article you might see that *FOUR* nation came up *INDEPENDANTLY* onto the recept.
Frankly once you know this *IS* feasible, as a physicist then you can come up with a solution. that then the engineereer can work upon and come up with an effective device.
Secrety is worthless in nuclear weapon run. Only experience and engineering is somethign worth.
As the article author I wish US , France , Russia and China would have worked together on stoping nuclear proliferation thru treaty , because as we may now observe every country which have money to spend on engineering can get the bomb (Pakistan, India, N-K maybe and whoever else).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Alaska Bugs Sweat Gold Nuggets
After actually downloading the article and reading the forbidden pages it seems to me that there are many things that need to be made a little clear to those who will comment without ever reading an iota of the article itself.
First off, Osama Bin Laden does not celebrate christmas. Christmas is a christian holliday in which the Muslim community does not celebrate. This does not mean that all Muslims are terrorists just as it means not all catholics are repbuclicans. While Osama Bin Laden himself has been behind some of the worlds worst acts of terrorism, this should not reflect on all Muslims, and a bit of respect for other religions should be in place, but that would be a matter of decency and humanity.
Secondly the article itself states that this is in no means a "how-to". Reading this article will do nothing in comparison to going to school to learn about physics and chemistry. The article helps put in lamens terms what exactly is done with the creation of such devices. If you notice this article was supressed during the peak of the cold war. At a time when the US Government was playing shadow games by providing tidbits of information for mass consumption but never enough meat to chew on.
The government supressed this to make it seem that there was a large amount of complicated procedures and research being placed in their weapons of mass destruction and that they could load these weapons on the same rockets that sent men into space and ahniliate an entire Soviet city at will. Fair to say that creating an H-Bomb is in fact something that is not at all an easily accomplishment to undertake. While it may be possible to obtain the parts neccessary it still requires someone with a vast amount of knowledge to place all the ingredients together.
I don't think that Al Qaeda or any other terrorist faction will ever be able to design such weapons. I do however think that with the fall of the soviet union and other countries in massive recession that are in fact nuclear that they may be able to purchase said nuclear weapons of mass destruction. So did this article send us to code level orangish red? Nope, but something sure did.
I am not a sympathist by any means for terrorists or freedom fighters who surpass diplomatic measures to accomplish their goals by bringing death and destruction in its place. These people have lost a sense of equality and humanity and are in fact extremely horrible evil people. Should science be supressed because of fears, should we stop manufacturing cars because they are accessories to crimes (bank robberies, car bombs, etc.) NO.
Scientific innovations can be used for good or can be used for bad, it is a matter of the beholder of the information as to what will happen with it. This article meerly suggests that there is a procedure and massive science behind weapons of mass destruction, which is apparent that they are not meant to be used for good, yet will be used for killing and destruction. Think of the good the reasearch itself could be done if only the knowledge was used for good, and not as a weapon to bring death and destruction.
I think this is a prime example of how science for the sake of death is not good, but without the nuclear program we wouldn't have nuclear power. Without a means to deliever said weapons of mass destruction, we wouldn't have a space program. How a redundant communication line for launching said weapons could be used to create the network which has become the worlds internet. There is obviously positive ramifications for the research and design of these technologies, but does that excuse the original intent of the death and destruction even if it was never used to date for such a thing?
Short of WWII with Japan there has never been a nuclear attack on anyone from anyone in the world. Yet we as americans with our democratic control are responsible for this destruction of property and life, and we did it through our research and science.
Will our children forgive us, or curse us?
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
With all the whining about national security, I was expecting to see detailed blueprints. But instead we get poor quality diagrams. Hell, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, real plans for tested models are probably available on the international arms market for the right price, or even surplus parts. Or you can just pick them up from France, Sudan, or on the black market in Iraq.
I saw better diagrams in highschool textbooks from that era. Go to a use book store. The theory has been out there, but the precision parts and the highly toxic and radioactive components are just a trifle hard to come by.
I know that you alarmists believe that the local militia is going to hurry over to Ace Hardware and get all the supplies tonight to be the first one on the block to have their own H-Bomb. Can't let those Pinkoes and Furriners beat them to it.
Come on, now. Anyone who has taken a college class in modern physics has most of the know-how to build a fusion bomb. Anyone with a degree in physics is more than capable of doing all the necessary calculations to design one. This article provides very little assistance really. The difficult part is not the theory -- it's fairly simple. The challenge lies in the practicalities of actually making one. Obtaining the materials is nearly impossible for most nations, never mind for an individual! This precludes just about everyone except major governments from building them, and it's hard even for them. Successfully assembling one without dying of acute radiation poisoning requires advanced manufacturing facilities and equipment beyond the reach of any but the wealthiest experimenter. It's just not a hazard. *Think* before you decide to restrict information.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
Every 5 minutes someone "discovers" that the world is going to end because of something science came up with. This is getting really old now. Could all those pessimists finaly realise this planet is going to be here for quite some time. What else would God play with?
Even if this particular article hasn't previously been available you could always visit nuclearweaponarchive.org to find out the principles behind a Teller-Ulam bomb (and much else, besides). It won't give you the non-deducible R&D results, but neither does this article (in fact, even the Progressive argues that these should not be publically divulged).
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
People always get that quote wrong.
Captain: What happen?
Operator: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What!
Operator: Main screen turn on.
I know it doesn't sound right, but that's how poorly translated it was.
is this:9 /235522 5&mode=thread&tid=99
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/2
which references www.portchicago.org
The howtos of thermonuclear are all out there in userland; this _old news_ Progressive article doesn't help much. The above links are _FAR_ more useful, IYAM(AIAAP). (If You Ask Me, And I Am A Physicist.)
The file is slashdotted. Here is a .torrent so all you bittorrent users (that should be all of you by now) can get it.
The trouble is, now these terrorists will know that they can hogtie the FBI and who knows how many government lawyers in a colossal waste of time simply by threatening to publish news!
We do not need this calamity confounding our precious givernement custodians of truth and prosperity. This is a windfall for the terrorists and a sad day for true Americans everywhere.
Infuriate left and right
Thank God those days are behind us. The 21st century is a much more enlightened time.
Sadly, consolidation of the media and reduced competition will make them more likely to roll over on things like this in the future.
Nowadays we are into multi-culturalism, and besides, there are now many immigrants from India in various walks of life in American society, and then there was George Harrison and all of that, so the comfort level with Indian culture and Hindu religious icons is much better these days. But back then, Oppenheimer was already suspect for being somewhat left-of-center in his politics and for being somewhat of an egghead (to use swing-era slang), and being Jewish in America of that time already made a person suspect of not worshipping the same God, perhaps in the way being Muslim in America does today, and gosh, quoting some obscure Hindu scripture really put a person way in left field.
But the nagging, unanswered question I have is this: isn't "I am become death" ungrammatical or am I missing some fine point. I can understand "I am death" (present tense) or "I have become death" (past perfect? -- I am not up on grammer), but I always thought "I am become death" was the result of some mistranslation on the order of "all your base."
You misunderstand, badly.
I am against censorship. I am not against secrecy.
Secrecy is saying, "I do not wish to publish my personal information."
Censorship is the government telling you, "Publishing your personal information is illegal, and we will put you in jail if you do so."
Secrecy is fine. If the government wants to keep secrets, that's fine, up until the point where it uses censorship to do so. Keeping secrets with encryption, lockboxes, barbed-wire fences, and armed guards is fine. Keeping secrets by forbidding publication of material gathered from public sources is not fine.
Until and unless you understand the difference between secrecy and censorship, and how it is possible to be completely against one while accepting of the other, there is no point in responding.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
I know how you feel, this whole "freedom of speech" thing is just wrong! I firmly believe that the government has our best interests at heart, and would only conceil information that could be used by evil people (probably terrorists). I feel so much safer knowing that upstanding people like George Bush are in office.
We always say security through obscurity is bogus. Case in point -- closed source software, squlching of bug/expolit reports, use of the DMCA to silence hackers instead of fixing the exploits et al.
When it comes to national security, what makes people think secrecy makes the nation any more secure?
What I don't find fair (to the public) is the indignant way Mr. Ridge handles the press. His responses serve to propagandise and/or scare the public, IMO. To wit:
OK. Back to our regularly scheduled topic....
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
The government looked in to how hard it would be for people to cull together a working nuclear weapon design from available information years ago.
"Interestingly enough, the United States government conducted a controlled experiment called the Nth Country Experiment to see how much effort was actually required to develop a viable fission weapon design starting from nothing. In this experiment, which ended on 10 April 1967, three newly graduated physics students were given the task of developing a detailed weapon design using only public domain information. The project reached a successful conclusion, that is, they did develop a viable design (detailed in the classified report UCRL-50248) after expending only three man-years of effort over two and a half calendar years. In the years since, much more information has entered the public domain so that the level of effort required has obviously dropped further."
From The Nuclear Weapon Archive: a Guide to Nuclear Weapons
That was back in 1967, a bit more than thirty-six years ago. It probably takes a lot less digging nowadays.
Without the second amendment the first amendment is pretty hard to enforce. Please forgive me for my bluntness here, but I own a pistol or three, and I speak my mind. I would much rather have people tell me that I can't speak my mind than have them tell me that I can't own my firearms. If you take my firearms I cann't keep you from taking my speech. If you take my speech, I'll just use my firearm to take it back. Yes, I do live in Mississippi, yes I do drive a truck, and no I am not undeucated, violent, or poor.
--Forest C. Adcock--
There are ongoing rumors that a way exists to build a fusion bomb without a fission trigger. Efforts were made to develop such a weapon, the "pure fusion" bomb, in the 1950s. The "neutron bomb" was an outgrowth of that effort, although it is not a pure fusion weapon. There's a whole conspiracy theory on this, revolving around Sam Cohen, who developed the neutron bomb, and "red mercury".
The "red mercury" thing is probably disinformation, but given the amount of work LLNL has put into pulsed fusion, there may be a way to do this by now.
Take a look around and see how many American newspapers and other news outlets reported the fact that Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N.S.C. prior to "Operation Iraqi Freedom" was plagiarized from a 12-year-old thesis paper. You'd think this salacious bit of news would have been splattered all over every front page. Instead it appeared in only a few local independent newspapers. It was published almost immediately in the U.K., feeding the groundswell of opposition to the US position. In the US very few people even know about it now! Whenever I hear Monday morning quarterbacks talking about the reasons why the intelligence was bad or why we shouldn't have jumped in without planning, etc., they never bring this glaring bit of bad intelligence up. Either they don't know about it, or they believe it would be blasphemy to disparage the character of Colin Powell. At least Gen. Powell, to his credit, was very much against taking the case he did to the U.N., but in the end he did what a good soldier does.
-- thinkyhead software and media
If you read the original article and the articles published with it, you may notice something that jumped out at me. It was later made moot by the government giving up the ghost on the injunction, but before they did, they made a claim that "technical" information was different from other forms of speech and therefore not afforded First Amendment rights.
Does this sound vaguely familiar to anyone from a more recent case? Perhaps I'll jog your memory. In the DeCSS case, it was argued that Code is not protected because it has functional value. In effect it is technical rather than political or other speech. In this case, it doesn't seem to be the government making the assertion, rather an organization. But that would be misleading. The DMCA represents a restraint on speech just as broad as the Energy Act used against this article. The identity of the party pushing for the censorship is irrelevant. It's the laws with over broad, sweeping generalizations on what we can, and cannot say, as well as the idea that there is protected and unprotected speech that are truly dangerous. Surely some forms of speech are distasteful in the extreme, and prompt a gut reaction that they should not be allowed. But once you establish a form of speech that is officially "not OK", The worst of your obstructions as a censor are over.
What part of of this is confusing?
"That Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and consult for their common good, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
It's straight forward, black and white. Our nations third grade students can easily understand it. But once you add even ONE exception, however well meaning it might be, the floodgates have opened, and the end result is the muddle we have today. Sufficiently muddled, the citizenry are too afraid to use the rights they might have, for fear of a costly lawsuit, and then they basically don't have those rights. Then we require people like The Progressive, 2600, Penthouse and Lary Flint, and anyone else willing to put their livelihoods and privacy on the line for our freedom.
The base point is this. As soon as something I can personally say out loud becomes Illegal, the whole of my freedom of speech is gone. As soon as something I could sit down and write with my own pen becomes illegal, my freedom of press is gone. Be it technical specifications, computer code, poetry, a political indictment, a story about rape, or a shopping list, If one of those things is illegal, eventually fear will make them all impossible. And once our freedom of speech is gone, Our ability to claim to live in a free society will be a farce.
Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?
We're not worried - we have our trusty anti-terrorism fridge magnets to protect us!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
[quoteblock]A graduate student at the University of Alabama, who knows people who work in Oak Ridge, told me...[/quoteblock]
Lemme tell ya, I would have omitted that source.
I am constantly amazed at the people who are quite willing to destroy the Constitution in order to save it. They are also often the same people who use the term "true Americans" a lot to define anyone who disagrees with them as being un-American. Strangely enough they are often horrible spellers as well.
Claiming this article is an aid to terrorists is silly. Does anyone really think the rest of the world lives in grass huts and only the US has physicists and engineers? All this bomb-making information is old stuff and has been available openly for decades. For example, just because all the technical information to build a 747 is readily available doesn't mean that terrorists can just slap one together. If you need one you buy it or steal it. Same for nuclear weapons.
I suggest that we just forget the Constitution and form a secret government (made up of true-Americans of course) where we Americans (true-Americans and un-Americans alike) don't know who is in charge. That way we wouldn't aid the terrorists by actually publishing the names of our precious custodians and exposing them to risk. While we are at it why don;t we just make these true-Americans custodians for life. After all, they wouldn't do anything BAD, would they?
I don't trust the government one inch, and that is exactly WHY I am a patriot.
I just happened to write an article about atomic weapons recently (though not quite as good as this one ;). I'd appreciate correction and contributions, esp. facts about economic costs and radiological wastes and sicknesses.
- There was a betting pool at the Manhattan Project over whether or not the Earth's atmosphere would be consumed in a planet-wide fireball during the first atomic test explosion (Trinity).
- The second explosion of an atomic device was over the mainly civilian target of Hiroshima, Japan, later that year. President Truman, upon hearing of the successful explosion, said it was "the greatest day in history." 70,000 people died instantly, 200,000 died in total. At Nagasaki, 3 days later, 40,000 people died instantly, 140,000 died in total. Contrary to the initial reports by the U.S. Government that the attacks had shortened the war considerably, it has come to light that Japan's Emporer had agreed to contional surrender before these attacks. The only condition was that he remain Emporer and so the Japanese state remain intact. However, with the awesome destuctive will and power of the U.S. demonstrated, we emerged from the attacks as the sole nuclear power in the world, and largely determined the shape of the post WWII world, in which we later came to be the sole great power.
- As mentioned in the linked PDF, the second h-bomb test (Bravo) went awry, with a yield of twice what was thought possible, 15 megatons. The plume was 62 miles wide, 40 miles high. The exclusion zone after the test was 850 miles wide, or about 1% of the Earth's surface. The fallout cloud reached a distance that would, in comparison, cover the entire U.S. North-Eastern Seaboard.
- Testing was expanded to high atmospheric explosions, where h-bombs were exploded in the ionosphere. They variously disrupted, destroyed and created new layers in the Van Allen Belts, the natural magnetic layers that shield the Earth from solar and cosmic radiation. Those belts have been changed ever since.
- The U.S. nuclear power monopoly ended with a series of Russian tests that yielded the largest explosion yet, at 50 megatons. The shockwave rounded the Earth 3 times. The Russian program had discovered a 3rd stage fusion mechanism, which could have led directly to 100-150 megaton weapons, and virtually unlimited theoretical maximums.
- The U.S. underground testing in Nevada has exploded nearly 1000 devices, turning a large region there into a pockmarked surface, much like the face of the moon.
- At last count, there are 12 countries (U.S., Russia, U.K., France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, South Africa, Israel, Iraq, Iran) who are known to have, or reasonably suspected of having had, active nuclear weapons programs, 7 of which have demonstrated capability (the first 7 of those). This does not include the probable fragmentation of the Soviet stockpile after the collapse of the U.S.S.R, smaller NGOs, or describe the liklihood of nuclear arms being sold. There were reports, just before the recent reversal of M.E. policy by the Bush Administration (i.e. to no invade Syria and Iran) that Russia and China had deployed nuclear missiles along the northern borders of those countries, likely pointed at Israel, the strongest nuclear power in the M.E..
- The combined (known) stockpiles of the U.S. and Russia (including former states) is estimated to be around ~3 Gigatons accross ~10k warheads each. At a total of about 6 Gigatons of explosive force, we're plenty close to the 75-100GT energy of the (K-T event) asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, thank you very much.
- The U.S. has resumed manufacturing the nuclear trigger devices. Maintenance and testing is now almost fully virtualized, being done mainly in simulation, using the U.S.'s most powerful computers provided by IBM.
- Ironically (or perhaps obviously), Japan, the only victim of nuclear warfare, is using what is now the most powerful supercomputer in the world for a completely different purpose: to simulate the natural processes of the Earth.