5 ms·

About as likely as open source nuke design.

• alwayslikethis 3y ago
  If we ignore the sanctions you'll be getting, open sourcing nuke design is much easier.
• hef19898 3y ago
  Building one the WW2 designs isn't really that hard today, is it? Getting the fission material on the other hand... Just ask Doc Brown, because it is not the 80s anymore were you get Plutonium at pharmacies, ah those days!
  • pests 3y ago
    It depends. Little boy would be easiest as the speherical detonation and materials science for the Fat Man implosion would still be difficult to design and machine. I also do not beleive the activator designs have ever been declassified.
    • hef19898 3y ago
      Doesn't have to be an exact copy so, but yes design might be tricky. I assume solvable so, at least in a primitive and workable way. Machining, to be honest, beside size of the parts themselves, is something you can do in some reasonably well equipped maker space. And for size, CNC machines are readily available on the used market. And those are light years ahead of anything the Manhatten project had. Or Apollo for that matter (excluding the Saturn V of course, but that is rocket science).
      • trashtester 3y ago
        From my undertanding, Fat Man requires a very precise design to focus the shock wave properly, or the bomb will never detonate properly. This design is quite non-trivial even today. It took several of the brightest minds of all time to get it just right back then (like von Neumann). Even with modern tools, you still need a team of quite capable engineers/scientists to pull something like that off, even if you do have the plutonium. The little boy design is easier to engineer, but bomb grade uranium is even harder to produce than plutonium.
        • hef19898 3y ago
          Totally agree, the science / design part of it is still not trivial. Also I know next to nothing about it. The machining bit so, uaing proper machinery, is easy. And the necessary engineers and technicians readily available.
          • trashtester 3y ago
            Not even a 1000 normal engineers can replace a single von Neumann. What makes it easier, though, is that the general principle is relatively well known, so one could always brute force the solution using computer simulations, even if unable to do the math by hand.
• FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  North Korea can build a Nuke without OS. I doubt they can build a semi fab even with OS.