First posted September 09, 2014 America has over 4,800 nuclear weapons, and we don’t take terrific care of them. It’s terrifying. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya-yF35g See also: Maybe there is a God after all: US Air Force nearly detonated atomic bomb over North Carolina in 1961 Noam Chomsky – How Many Minutes to … Hiroshima Day 2014. If some extraterrestrial species… Read More Funny and very scary: John Oliver on Nuclear Weapons
Japan has marked the 78th anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima where the mayor urged the abolition of nuclear weapons and called the G7 leaders’ notion of nuclear deterrence a “folly”. On Sunday a peace bell tolled at 8.15am, the time the bomb was dropped. About 50,000 participants in the outdoor memorial ceremony… Read More On 78th anniversary of atomic bomb, Hiroshima mayor says nuclear deterrence ‘folly’
First posted April 17, 2012 “In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly be employed, and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war,… Read More The Russell-Einstein Manifesto of 1955
The Oppenheimer director, Christopher Nolan, has highlighted the difficulties of applying nuclear weapons-style regulation to artificial intelligence, as he warned that the United Nations had become a “very diminished” force. Nolan told the Guardian J Robert Oppenheimer’s call for international control of nuclear weapons had “sort of come true”, but there had nonetheless been extensive proliferation of… Read More Christopher Nolan: strong parallels between Oppenheimer and scientists worried about AI
Martin Sherwin struck the deal and dived into the research. But it was only when Kai Bird joined as a collaborator that American Prometheus came to be. By Andy Kifer Martin Sherwin was hardly your classic blocked writer. Outgoing, funny, and athletic, he is described by those who knew him as the opposite of neurotic. EDDIE… Read More Behind ‘Oppenheimer,’ a Prizewinning Biography 25 Years in the Making
When the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb in 1949, US President Harry Truman ordered American scientists to embark on a new programme to build a hydrogen bomb, whose nuclear explosion could be 1,000 times more powerful… Oppenheimer, the government’s chief scientific advisor on nuclear policy and defence, objected on moral and practical grounds, reportedly telling… Read More ‘The father of the atomic bomb’ spent his final days as a Caribbean castaway
Scientists warned of dangers to those living downwind from the Trinity site but, in a pattern-setting decision, the director of the bomb project, General Leslie R. Groves, ruled that residents should not be evacuated and kept completely in the dark (even after they were sure to spot a blast brighter than any sun before dawn… Read More The atomic age was born 78 years ago — ‘cover-ups’ have held sway ever since
Adam Tooze ‘Vautour II’ flying in the cloud of the ‘Canopus’ nuclear explosion, the first explosion of a French thermonuclear bomb, over the lagoon of the Fangataufa atoll in French Polynesia in 1968. The Vautour II was taking samples of material from the cloud. Source: Marlène Aviation https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/russia-under-sanctions-the-foreign?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email Nuclear Testing in the Marshall Islands: A… Read More Mushroom cloud over Fangataufa atoll, French Polynesia, 1968
First posted Hiroshima Day, August 6, 2014 NB: This article was written for an edited volume on contemporary terrorism, more specifically, terror in the name of Hindutva. I disagree with the habit of approaching terrorism with a prefix, but nevertheless wrote it, in order precisely to make my point more explicitly. It was completed more than… Read More A matter of time
Jonathan Steele NB: While I appreciate Steele’s evocation of moderation and restraint, there’s just one big problem with this article. One man alone saved the world from nuclear war in 1962, and his name was Vasili Arkhipov, one of three senior officers in the Soviet nuclear-weapon equipped submarine, the B-59, off the Cuban coast, which… Read More Sixty years ago, true statecraft avoided a nuclear war. We need that again over Ukraine
After the truth-shower 