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There was plenty of technical headroom left for making more fearsome weapons in the early 1960s. Fortunately, the pace of innovation plummeted after atmospheric

There was plenty of technical headroom left for making more fearsome weapons in the early 1960s. Fortunately, the pace of innovation plummeted after atmospheric testing ended, and none of the later nuclear weapons states have surpassed the high water mark set by Cold War era superpower rivalry. Chuck Hansen's book The Swords of Armageddon is a fascinating account of the vast hidden empire of the post war Atomic Energy Commission, and how it developed atomic weapons so far beyond the early atomic bombs used on Japan. And then again optimized thermonuclear weapons so far past the early hydrogen bombs.

Synaesthesia 5y ago
But really, how much more do you want? The US upped the ante several times, developing all kinds of more advanced super weapons, as well as modes of delivery, the first long range bombers, the Hydrogen bomb, ICBM's, MIRV, the Neutron bomb ... I mean, as you say it was FAR beyond the early atomic weapons. And they're continuing with development, in secret of course ...
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  Americans keep developing their missile shield so China and Russia need to keep developing ways to outsmart it. It will never end.
  - vkou 5y ago
    A missile shield that actually works will actually precipitate a nuclear conflict, because it means an end to MAD. If you know that your adversary will become invulnerable to your counter-strike in three months, the optimal game-theory solution is to strike him today. Optimistically, military planners are aware of this, and are just doing pork barrel spending. Pessimistically, military planners don't care about this, and are actively working on 'winning' a nuclear war.
    - Enginerrrd 5y ago
      This doesn't really follow IMO and is a result of deep oversimplifications. Even if you make those simplifications though: If your choices are pre-emptive strike where MAD applies now (near-total destruction) vs. live to 3 months from now, where you have a post-MAD world where one adversary dominates, the post-MAD dominant adversary no longer has the incentive to pre-emptively strike since they aren't worried about a pre-emptive strike from their adversaries since they'd have an effective missile defense system.
    - joconde 5y ago
      > If you know that your adversary will become invulnerable to your counter-strike in three months, the optimal game-theory solution is to strike him today. Striking today means MAD happens and your country gets wasted. That only makes sense if the shield-building adversary is some sort of psychopath who wants to see you dead. The 3 big nuclear powers don't seem to be that stupid. Maybe the calculus would be different with Israel vs Iran or India vs Pakistan, where the conflict has religious aspects.
      - vkou 5y ago
        > That only makes sense if the shield-building adversary is some sort of psychopath who wants to see you dead. Or if they may become a psychopath who wants to see you dead - in the name of self-defense, of course. Or if they think that you are a psychopath who wants to see them dead. Or if they think you may become a psychopath who wants to see them dead. It's difficult to assure your counterparty that you will never behave in a psychotic manner in the future - or to assure yourself that they will not. If you're not planning on starting a nuclear war, and you assume that your adversary isn't going to, either, why do you need a missile shield, anyways? MAD is a necessary and sufficient deterrent. If you're building a shield, you are very conspicuously betting that at least one of these two assumptions is no longer true...
        joconde 5y ago
        > Or if they may become a psychopath who wants to see you dead - in the name of self-defense, of course. Or if they think that you are a psychopath who wants to see them dead. Or if they think you may become a psychopath who wants to see them dead. These assumptions better be strongly supported by evidence, if one's going to decide to get their country annihilated by attempting a first strike. Striking first won't protect the country from a hypothetical future attack, it will just make it happen now. I don't really see a sane reason to do it if the threat isn't considered immediate.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    Which is precisely why during the Cold War there was a treaty limiting anti-missile defence (ABM Treaty). Who wants to guess which side withdrew from it in 2002 under a war criminal leader?
    - nix23 5y ago
      It could not be one of the NATO states...i mean the nato is to preserve freedom...right? :)
gjkood 5y ago
Just searched for Hansen's book on Amazon. The only one available was 'U.S. Nuclear Weapons the Secret History'. Steep price, $159 for a used copy.
- philipkglass 5y ago
  The Swords of Armageddon was only ever available digitally (first on CD-ROM, then as download). Hansen's widow used to sell it after his death but she is no longer responding to sales requests. Or at least mine was ignored early this year. You can find it on Library Genesis. U.S. Nuclear Weapons: The Secret History is sadly missing from LibGen, but it appears to be available as a digital checkout from the Internet Archive. It's a good companion book to Swords because it went through a professional editing-publishing cycle. Swords is a lot longer and rawer, with a higher ratio of text to illustrations.
LorenPechtel 5y ago
They quit making bigger booms because there was no need for them. Two factors are at work: 1) Square-cube law. You do more damage with a collection of smaller warheads than with one big one with the same total yield. 2) The Earth isn't flat. Once a boom gets big enough the area of damage doesn't go up much as the shockwave ends up separating from the ground and the atmosphere above the bomb just ends up blasted off. Note that this does *not* limit the usefulness of big bombs detonated high up for thermal and EMP effects. Very big booms in low orbit could be very nasty with total surprise.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  >They quit making bigger booms because there was no need for them Obviously there's no need for them on Earth or anywhere nearby. But it might become useful to scale nuclear explosions to an arbitrary extent if/when something large on a collision course with Earth is discovered.
  - Arainach 5y ago
    Less than you'd think. At the scale of object which poses a serious collision risk to Earth, nuclear weapons could (at best) break up the object, but would have no realistic chance of significantly reducing the mass/momentum of the object. Unless you can break it up into dust (which at that scale you can't), most of it is still going to land on Earth and do just as much damage.
    - hwbehrens 5y ago
      Actually, one recent work on n-body gravitational methods found that "nuclear explosives remain an indispensable element of the planetary defense portfolio." [0] In particular, although these dispersion methods (as you pointed out) don't typically reduce the impact energy to zero, they offer a roughly 2 order-of-magnitude decrease in impact energy while requiring only month-scale warning. In contrast, diversion techniques which can reduce the impact energy to 0 (e.g. by shifting the impactor to 'miss' our planet) can require decade-scale to accomplish their goal. [0]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576521003921 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009457652...
GoodbyeMrChips 5y ago
> And then again optimized thermonuclear weapons Here in Blighty, during the early cold war we built fall-out shelters and equipped a civilian force with "Green Goddess" fire engines to enable them to extinguish fires from nuclear flash. Yet this all stopped after development and adoption of the Hydrogen Bomb..... because unlike nuclear weapons (kT yield), trying to defend against thermonuclear weapons (MT yield) is pointless. This was a very real and honest defence policy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Goddess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Goddess [In the UK, some younger people may recognise the Green Goddess Fire engine because they were seen during fireman strikes].
- bsanr 5y ago
  ...Huh. On an EXTREMELY tangential note, I wish I'd known about this when I was drawing a political cartoon comparing California to a burning building which [redacted] was turning a "Green New Deal" ("Green Dream or whatever") fire engine away from. Tracing and recoloring a random US fire truck didn't quite have the same kick this would have.
- CamperBob2 5y ago
  Of course civil defense against the H bomb isn't pointless. In fact, the bigger the bomb, the larger the perimeter zone where survival becomes a matter of knowing how to react appropriately. "Duck and cover" won't work if you're too close to the fireball, but most people won't be.
KennyBlanken 5y ago
It's worth noting, in case anyone thinks that we somehow slowed down testing with the atmospheric test ban...that we went on to conduct 1,352 nuclear weapon detonations. That's roughly 3/4 of all nuclear testing. It really is mind-boggling that we set off so many.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

Synaesthesia 5y ago

But really, how much more do you want? The US upped the ante several times, developing all kinds of more advanced super weapons, as well as modes of delivery, the first long range bombers, the Hydrogen bomb, ICBM's, MIRV, the Neutron bomb ... I mean, as you say it was FAR beyond the early atomic weapons. And they're continuing with development, in secret of course ...

MomoXenosaga 5y ago
Americans keep developing their missile shield so China and Russia need to keep developing ways to outsmart it. It will never end.
- vkou 5y ago
  A missile shield that actually works will actually precipitate a nuclear conflict, because it means an end to MAD. If you know that your adversary will become invulnerable to your counter-strike in three months, the optimal game-theory solution is to strike him today. Optimistically, military planners are aware of this, and are just doing pork barrel spending. Pessimistically, military planners don't care about this, and are actively working on 'winning' a nuclear war.
  - Enginerrrd 5y ago
    This doesn't really follow IMO and is a result of deep oversimplifications. Even if you make those simplifications though: If your choices are pre-emptive strike where MAD applies now (near-total destruction) vs. live to 3 months from now, where you have a post-MAD world where one adversary dominates, the post-MAD dominant adversary no longer has the incentive to pre-emptively strike since they aren't worried about a pre-emptive strike from their adversaries since they'd have an effective missile defense system.
  - joconde 5y ago
    > If you know that your adversary will become invulnerable to your counter-strike in three months, the optimal game-theory solution is to strike him today. Striking today means MAD happens and your country gets wasted. That only makes sense if the shield-building adversary is some sort of psychopath who wants to see you dead. The 3 big nuclear powers don't seem to be that stupid. Maybe the calculus would be different with Israel vs Iran or India vs Pakistan, where the conflict has religious aspects.
    - vkou 5y ago
      > That only makes sense if the shield-building adversary is some sort of psychopath who wants to see you dead. Or if they may become a psychopath who wants to see you dead - in the name of self-defense, of course. Or if they think that you are a psychopath who wants to see them dead. Or if they think you may become a psychopath who wants to see them dead. It's difficult to assure your counterparty that you will never behave in a psychotic manner in the future - or to assure yourself that they will not. If you're not planning on starting a nuclear war, and you assume that your adversary isn't going to, either, why do you need a missile shield, anyways? MAD is a necessary and sufficient deterrent. If you're building a shield, you are very conspicuously betting that at least one of these two assumptions is no longer true...
      - joconde 5y ago
        > Or if they may become a psychopath who wants to see you dead - in the name of self-defense, of course. Or if they think that you are a psychopath who wants to see them dead. Or if they think you may become a psychopath who wants to see them dead. These assumptions better be strongly supported by evidence, if one's going to decide to get their country annihilated by attempting a first strike. Striking first won't protect the country from a hypothetical future attack, it will just make it happen now. I don't really see a sane reason to do it if the threat isn't considered immediate.
- sofixa 5y ago
  Which is precisely why during the Cold War there was a treaty limiting anti-missile defence (ABM Treaty). Who wants to guess which side withdrew from it in 2002 under a war criminal leader?
  - nix23 5y ago
    It could not be one of the NATO states...i mean the nato is to preserve freedom...right? :)

gjkood 5y ago

Just searched for Hansen's book on Amazon. The only one available was 'U.S. Nuclear Weapons the Secret History'. Steep price, $159 for a used copy.

philipkglass 5y ago
The Swords of Armageddon was only ever available digitally (first on CD-ROM, then as download). Hansen's widow used to sell it after his death but she is no longer responding to sales requests. Or at least mine was ignored early this year. You can find it on Library Genesis. U.S. Nuclear Weapons: The Secret History is sadly missing from LibGen, but it appears to be available as a digital checkout from the Internet Archive. It's a good companion book to Swords because it went through a professional editing-publishing cycle. Swords is a lot longer and rawer, with a higher ratio of text to illustrations.

LorenPechtel 5y ago

They quit making bigger booms because there was no need for them. Two factors are at work: 1) Square-cube law. You do more damage with a collection of smaller warheads than with one big one with the same total yield. 2) The Earth isn't flat. Once a boom gets big enough the area of damage doesn't go up much as the shockwave ends up separating from the ground and the atmosphere above the bomb just ends up blasted off. Note that this does *not* limit the usefulness of big bombs detonated high up for thermal and EMP effects. Very big booms in low orbit could be very nasty with total surprise.

perl4ever 5y ago
>They quit making bigger booms because there was no need for them Obviously there's no need for them on Earth or anywhere nearby. But it might become useful to scale nuclear explosions to an arbitrary extent if/when something large on a collision course with Earth is discovered.
- Arainach 5y ago
  Less than you'd think. At the scale of object which poses a serious collision risk to Earth, nuclear weapons could (at best) break up the object, but would have no realistic chance of significantly reducing the mass/momentum of the object. Unless you can break it up into dust (which at that scale you can't), most of it is still going to land on Earth and do just as much damage.
  - hwbehrens 5y ago
    Actually, one recent work on n-body gravitational methods found that "nuclear explosives remain an indispensable element of the planetary defense portfolio." [0] In particular, although these dispersion methods (as you pointed out) don't typically reduce the impact energy to zero, they offer a roughly 2 order-of-magnitude decrease in impact energy while requiring only month-scale warning. In contrast, diversion techniques which can reduce the impact energy to 0 (e.g. by shifting the impactor to 'miss' our planet) can require decade-scale to accomplish their goal. [0]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576521003921 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009457652...

GoodbyeMrChips 5y ago

> And then again optimized thermonuclear weapons Here in Blighty, during the early cold war we built fall-out shelters and equipped a civilian force with "Green Goddess" fire engines to enable them to extinguish fires from nuclear flash. Yet this all stopped after development and adoption of the Hydrogen Bomb..... because unlike nuclear weapons (kT yield), trying to defend against thermonuclear weapons (MT yield) is pointless. This was a very real and honest defence policy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Goddess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Goddess [In the UK, some younger people may recognise the Green Goddess Fire engine because they were seen during fireman strikes].

bsanr 5y ago
...Huh. On an EXTREMELY tangential note, I wish I'd known about this when I was drawing a political cartoon comparing California to a burning building which [redacted] was turning a "Green New Deal" ("Green Dream or whatever") fire engine away from. Tracing and recoloring a random US fire truck didn't quite have the same kick this would have.
CamperBob2 5y ago
Of course civil defense against the H bomb isn't pointless. In fact, the bigger the bomb, the larger the perimeter zone where survival becomes a matter of knowing how to react appropriately. "Duck and cover" won't work if you're too close to the fireball, but most people won't be.

KennyBlanken 5y ago

It's worth noting, in case anyone thinks that we somehow slowed down testing with the atmospheric test ban...that we went on to conduct 1,352 nuclear weapon detonations. That's roughly 3/4 of all nuclear testing. It really is mind-boggling that we set off so many.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]