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Feds Attempt To Censor Parts of a New Book About the Hydrogen Bomb
HughPickens.com writes: The atom bomb — leveler of Hiroshima and instant killer of some 80,000 people — is just a pale cousin compared to the hydrogen bomb, which easily packs the punch of a thousand Hiroshimas. That is why Washington has for decades done everything in its power to keep the details of its design out of the public domain. Now William J. Broad reports in the NY Times that Kenneth W. Ford has defied a federal order to cut material from his new book that the government says teems with thermonuclear secrets. Ford says he included the disputed material because it had already been disclosed elsewhere and helped him paint a fuller picture of an important chapter of American history. But after he volunteered the manuscript for a security review, federal officials told him to remove about 10 percent of the text, or roughly 5,000 words. "They wanted to eviscerate the book," says Ford. "My first thought was, 'This is so ridiculous I won't even respond.'" For instance, the federal agency wanted him to strike a reference to the size of the first hydrogen test device — its base was seven feet wide and 20 feet high. Dr. Ford responded that public photographs of the device, with men, jeeps and a forklift nearby, gave a scale of comparison that clearly revealed its overall dimensions.
Though difficult to make, hydrogen bombs are attractive to nations and militaries because their fuel is relatively cheap. Inside a thick metal casing, the weapon relies on a small atom bomb that works like a match to ignite the hydrogen fuel. Today, Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States are the only declared members of the thermonuclear club, each possessing hundreds or thousands of hydrogen bombs. Military experts suspect that Israel has dozens of hydrogen bombs. India, Pakistan and North Korea are seen as interested in acquiring the potent weapon. The big secret the book discusses is thermal equilibrium, the discovery that the temperature of the hydrogen fuel and the radiation could match each other during the explosion (PDF). World Scientific, a publisher in Singapore, recently made Dr. Ford's book public in electronic form, with print versions to follow. Ford remains convinced the book "contains nothing whatsoever whose dissemination could, by any stretch of the imagination, damage the United States or help a country that is trying to build a hydrogen bomb." "Were I to follow all — or even most — of your suggestions," says Ford, "it would destroy the book."
Though difficult to make, hydrogen bombs are attractive to nations and militaries because their fuel is relatively cheap. Inside a thick metal casing, the weapon relies on a small atom bomb that works like a match to ignite the hydrogen fuel. Today, Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States are the only declared members of the thermonuclear club, each possessing hundreds or thousands of hydrogen bombs. Military experts suspect that Israel has dozens of hydrogen bombs. India, Pakistan and North Korea are seen as interested in acquiring the potent weapon. The big secret the book discusses is thermal equilibrium, the discovery that the temperature of the hydrogen fuel and the radiation could match each other during the explosion (PDF). World Scientific, a publisher in Singapore, recently made Dr. Ford's book public in electronic form, with print versions to follow. Ford remains convinced the book "contains nothing whatsoever whose dissemination could, by any stretch of the imagination, damage the United States or help a country that is trying to build a hydrogen bomb." "Were I to follow all — or even most — of your suggestions," says Ford, "it would destroy the book."
That sort of censorship is just going to blow up in their face!
when people try and censor stuff that is already public. We see it here, we see it with snowden (im not talking classified stuff) but if this person got the information without looking at classified materials, who do they think they are to tell him to not publish?
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
How dare the government abridge our 2nd amendment rights. Who will join me in a Hydrogen Bomb Open Cary campaign?
The only way to ensure our freedom and safety is that every man woman and child has the comfort of Mutually Assured Destruction.
The U.S. Supreme Court disagrees with you. The author would have to be inciting imminent lawless action. Reporting on the history of the hydrogen bomb is neither inciting nor likely to produce imminent 'safety' effects.
Quite a few years back, Tom Clancy wrote a book called "Sum of All Fears" about a bunch of terrorists building an H-bomb using Pu they recovered from an Israeli bomb lost during the '73 war.
Clancy's Afterward included this:
BLOCKQUOTE>It is generally known that nuclear secrets are not as secret as we would like - in fact, the situation is even worse than well-informed people appreciate. what required billions of dollars in the 1940s is much less expensive today. A modern personal computer has far more power and reliability than the first Eniac, and the "hydrocodes" which enable a computer to test and validate a weapon's design are easily duplicated. The exquisite machine tools used to fabricate parts can be had for the asking. When I asked explicitly for the specifications for the very machines used at Oak Ridge and elsewhere, they arrived Federal Express the next day. Some highly specialized items designed specifically for bomb manufacture may now be found in stereo speakers. The fact of the matter is that a sufficiently wealthy individual could, over a period of from five to ten years, produce a multistage nuclear device.
Based on what I learned about the subject as a young man, I see no particular reason to doubt him...
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Years ago, I remember reading about some dude who designed an A-bomb for his senior thesis.
His last stumbling block was the proper explosives for the implosion. So he called up the sales arm of some manufacturer, said he was a building contractor, and that he would need an explosive with $CHARACTERISTICS.... and that he was ready to buy in quantity.
The sales guy fell all over himself providing the exact info the dude needed.
He turned in his thesis, and then when no grade was published, he went to see his professor, who told him that DOE was considering classifying it.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Brief overview of this: http://www.universitypressclub.com/archive/2013/02/the-a-bomb-kid-and-hows-your-senior-thesis-going/
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I know how suspension bridges work. I probably could build a small one, but any lengthy span would be well beyond me.
I know how internal combustion engines work. It would take a year of training on the tools before I'd be able to make one that even sorta worked, and then it would be at 1900s-level functionality.
I know how nuclear weapons work. Several types, in fact. But I cannot make them.
1) I could build a gun-type weapon, given the material (200lbs of 90% pure U-235, a 76mm artillery barrel, and some regular explosives), but I could not create the equipment to refine uranium.
2) I could probably build a reactor to generate plutonium, with massive effort and a significant risk of poisoning myself, but I could not build a working implosion bomb with it. It would take a year's training in explosives just to be able to build an existing design, and those designs are tightly secured.
3) With the materials, I might be able to upgrade an unboosted fission weapon into a boosted one. Maybe.
4) A fusion weapon is completely beyond me. You could stick me in Lawrence Livermore with all the parts in front of me, and without some Ikea-like instructions you aren't going to get anything.
We are protected from homemade gun-type weapons by the scarcity of uranium and the immense difficulty in refining it. Remember, this is something that was beyond the capabilities of most nations a scant 70 years ago. A dedicated nation-state or perhaps certain multinational corporations could pull it off, but not without detection.
We are protected against homemade implosion-type weapons by the complex engineering necessary, the esoteric nature of the specific engineering knowledge needed (nuclear physics and shaped explosives are not a common dual-major), and by the absolute need for testing before use. The former prevents fringe groups from succeeding; the latter prevents the non-suicidal from trying.
We are not protected by lack of general knowledge on nukes, because no such lack of knowledge exists. I learned half of this stuff from school textbooks, and the other half from Wikipedia. Anyone driven to find more can easily do so.
Many feel the Japanese would have surrendered anyhow.
I call BS. Before the atomic bombs, Japan's strategy was to basically arm every citizen and make the invasion of the mainland such a bloody, costly quagmire for the Allies that they would negotiate favorable peace terms. Even the Wikipedia article on Surrender of Japan has a deeper understanding of the issue than whatever you're making up. Even after Hiroshima, the Supreme Council voted against surrender. They thought that maybe the U.S. only had one bomb, or that it lacked the will power to use it again. After Nagasaki (and the Soviet invasion), the Supreme Council still didn't want to surrender, so they tortured a captured U.S. P-51 pilot, and he told them that the U.S. had at least 100 atomic bombs (he was lying). But the cabinet still split on whether to surrender. It took the emperor basically begging the cabinet, for the sake of the millions who were about to be slaughtered, to persuade them to vote in favor of surrender.
Modern navel-gazing revisionist historians really don't appreciate how truly warlike and blood-soaked the entire Japanese culture was before 1945. They were obsessed with killing and torture. The Japanese surrender and subsequent disarmament fundamentally transformed the entire nation.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Yeah, we used the Bomb, twice, against an enemy that fought tenaciously, and far beyond any reasonable chance of victory. The death toll, while still horrific, was a tiny fraction of the alternative.
Have you ever heard of Operation Downfall? It was the planned invasion of the Japanese homeland. The basic gist was to, ultimately, march into Tokyo and dictate surrender terms to Emperor Hirohito, personally. The planned amphibious landings were double the size of D-Day, and would have extended the war well into 1946, with casualty estimates into the millions. Additionally, the Japanese defensive plan (Operation Ketsugo) called for the all-out mobilization of the civilian population.
For some perspective, in preparation for Operation Downfall, 500,000 Purple Hearts were made. They made so many that we were still using that same batch in Afghanistan and Iraq in the 2000s.
THAT'S how many people were expected to be wounded, let alone killed, and that was just the American side of the conflict.
BS. Utter BS. Here is the one documented fact about the end of the PTO war that everyone in your country who spews this BS about a necessary invasion of the Japanese homeland islands wants to conveniently forget ...
The Japanese had made it clear through diplomatic channels by June of 1945 that were willing to completely surrender and end the war with one condition ... the Emperor (alone) would be immune from any war crimes charges. Military generals etc were fair game, but the Emperor gets off without any war crimes charges brought against him. (Remember that until May 1947 when the Japanese Constitution was changed, Hirohito was considered by many a "living god" and remained even afterwards "a descendent of the Sun Goddess".)
The United Sates refused to accept this single condition for surrender and carried on with the plans to use atomic weapons so that they could dictate the surrender terms.
DaveyJJ
Note that the atomic bombs saved the lives of millions of Japanese by removing six cities from the "bomb these places into the stone age list". Apparently, the people making the bomb wanted to get a good idea of the effects without having to take into account the effects of prior bombings. This included Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were spared the years of bombings (and their attendant casualties) that other cities had to endure.
Note further that the death tolls of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined were lower than that of the firebombing of Tokyo.
Note, finally, that when generals talk about saving lives, they're generally (if you'll excuse the pun) talking about the lives of their men, not their enemy's men. Saving the lives of the enemy is someone else's job....
Addendum: just curious - where in Japan would you be finding "plenty of uninhabited or low population areas"?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Two things:
1. One night of fire bombing in Tokyo killed more people and did more damage than the atomic attack on Hiroshima did. The difference was it took an armada of bombers to do it, rather than just one plane with one package to drop off.
2. Truman wasn't just looking to end this war, but prevent the next conflict that was already brewing up - one with the Soviets. By showing Stalin that he was not only incredibly vulnerable to an attack that he couldn't bog down by throwing millions of people at like he did with the Nazis, and that the person on the other side was capable of using that kind of weapon, that war never came.
Was dropping those two bombs the right decision? Maybe, maybe not. However, it is world history, and seeing the devastation of two cities from these comparatively small weapons compared to what the 1950s and 1960s brought, it might have brought pause to anyone looking to use them later in the coldest days of the cold war.
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