7 ms·

A truck driver uncovers secrets about the first nuclear bombs (2008)

56 points by haomiao 12y ago

schrodingersCat 12y ago
I had not caught this article when it was originally published. Thanks for the share! I really like how one man, with a lot of time on his hands, could reverse engineer the designs of some of the most secret weapons ever created.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
I bought one of his books on Amazon. Its a lot of fun. And it is interesting to see some of the pictures in his book that were edited in other sources. I can easily recommend it as worth adding to your library on nuclear weapons and their development.
mkreef 12y ago
Remarkable story about a remarkable man. If not on HN, I don't think I would have stumbled across it. Thank you.
theoh 12y ago
Wow, I don't usually have a problem with the New Yorker, but this is a really patronising and naive profile. He drinks too much Diet Coke? Well, Bill Gates and Karl Lagerfeld also drink too much Diet Coke. Worse than that, apparently he's not expected or, really, allowed, to apply basic logic and arithmetic in his research without being subject to ridicule: "It was a typical Coster-Mullen moment: he treats the world’s most destructive invention as an ordinary clocklike mechanism, made of simple parts that must fit together according to readily discernible laws." Seriously, if there's one thing you can say about the Manhattan project, it is that it was an entirely positivistic, scientific activity. The lack of moral or ethical qualms that might be lamented in retrospect doesn't change the nature of the weapon. The mechanical aspects of the bomb are just that, mechanical. Kenneth Goldsmith would probably excuse the style of this article as twee, but it feels worse than that. It is corrosively anti-geek.
- zdean 12y ago
  I think HN adds to that tone by including "truck driver" in the title of the post. I suppose the inference is that truck drivers are not very smart; therefore, giving the title an interesting contrast. But the reality is that people become truck drivers (as well as any other profession) for any number of reasons.
  - gregors 12y ago
    another truck driver .... http://nasa.orau.org/postdoc/about-fellows/milligan.htm http://nasa.orau.org/postdoc/about-fellows/milligan.htm
  - Ancorehraq 12y ago
    Not being very smart accounts for some of those reasons. Do you feel there is a significant category of people who are intelligent enough to be nuclear physicists, but decided to drive trucks instead?
    - zdean 12y ago
      Whether the number is significant or not is irrelevant. The fact is that being a truck driver does not in any way disqualify one from being intelligent. A less loaded but more helpful title might have been something along the lines of "Man who isn't a nuclear scientist uncovers secrets about first nuclear bomb." It might help to understand the problem I'm describing if you replace "truck driver" in the title with a race.
      - Ancorehraq 12y ago
        I don't think that helps understand the problem at all. Are truck drivers a protected class? Can you provide some evidence regarding intelligence of truck drivers?
        nmrm 12y ago
        > Can you provide some evidence regarding intelligence of truck drivers? Sure. This very article. Some non-truck drivers were apparently pretty impressed with the truck driver's book: The review, written by the eminent atomic historian Robert S. Norris, began, “For many years, Coster-Mullen has been printing his manuscript at Kinko’s (adding to and revising it along the way) and selling spiral-bound copies at conferences or over the Internet.” Norris clearly considered Coster-Mullen’s understanding of the bomb superior to his own. My own copy of “Atom Bombs” soon arrived in the mail, along with a sheet of testimonials from Harold Agnew, the former director of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, who was aboard the Enola Gay when it annihilated Hiroshima (a “most amazing document”); Philip Morrison, one of the physicists who helped invent the bomb (“You have done a remarkable job”); and Paul Tibbets, the commander and pilot of the Enola Gay (“I was very much impressed”). Incidentally, can you provide some evidence regarding the intelligence of software engineers? See how that feels?
dbh97 12y ago
Asperger's?
- MichaelApproved 12y ago
  What about it?
- tjmc 12y ago
  Almost certainly.
- hacknat 12y ago
  I prefer "on the spectrum", because, let's be honest, everyone is.
tjradcliffe 12y ago
It's worth remembering this the next time you hear some hysteria about Iran's "nuclear program" which they have been supposedly working on for the past 30 years without actually producing a bomb. Basic nuclear weapons are really, really simple to build. This is especially true of uranium bombs. Is there any case of a weapon being deployed operationally without ever being test-fired, other than dropping Little Boy over Nagasaki? That's how simple uranium bombs are. Gas centrifuges (when not being sabotaged) make uranium enrichment pretty simple, and they have been around since the '80's as a fairly well-understood technology. There were warnings back then that they would lead to a wave of proliferation, which to an extent they have. So the only plausible way Iran could have been "working on" nuclear weapons for 30 years without producing one is if they aren't working very damned hard. Their economy is about half the size (GDP per capita) than the US economy was in the early '40's but much more concentrated in terms of the state's ability to control it. So it isn't lack of resources that is holding things up. It is most likely lack of political will: Iran would like to be seen to be working on a Bomb, but for whatever reason isn't actually doing much toward building one. If they were, they would have one by now. A team of competent high school students with a billion dollar budget could manage it in a year. [Edit: this is not a defense of the theocratic monsters that run Iran, I just don't think they are as big a nuclear threat as is commonly assumed.]
- tadfisher 12y ago
  Little Boy was dropped over Hiroshima, not Nagasaki.
- Kroem3r 12y ago
  You can imagine the pretty natural go-go-stop behavior. "Good for prestige: go for it." versus "Going to have Mossad and cruise missiles all over the place; shut it down!" versus "Bring it on you !@#~!!!~!ers!" versus "We are entitled to do this under the various treaties; opposition will highlight the hypocrisy in the geopolitic" versus "Um, duh?"
- trhway 12y ago
  yep, even North Korea has managed to do even plutonium device (though of course employing Russian specialists in 199x helped it)

56 points by haomiao 12y ago

I had not caught this article when it was originally published. Thanks for the share! I really like how one man, with a lot of time on his hands, could reverse engineer the designs of some of the most secret weapons ever created.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

I bought one of his books on Amazon. Its a lot of fun. And it is interesting to see some of the pictures in his book that were edited in other sources. I can easily recommend it as worth adding to your library on nuclear weapons and their development.

mkreef 12y ago

Remarkable story about a remarkable man. If not on HN, I don't think I would have stumbled across it. Thank you.

theoh 12y ago

Wow, I don't usually have a problem with the New Yorker, but this is a really patronising and naive profile. He drinks too much Diet Coke? Well, Bill Gates and Karl Lagerfeld also drink too much Diet Coke. Worse than that, apparently he's not expected or, really, allowed, to apply basic logic and arithmetic in his research without being subject to ridicule: "It was a typical Coster-Mullen moment: he treats the world’s most destructive invention as an ordinary clocklike mechanism, made of simple parts that must fit together according to readily discernible laws." Seriously, if there's one thing you can say about the Manhattan project, it is that it was an entirely positivistic, scientific activity. The lack of moral or ethical qualms that might be lamented in retrospect doesn't change the nature of the weapon. The mechanical aspects of the bomb are just that, mechanical. Kenneth Goldsmith would probably excuse the style of this article as twee, but it feels worse than that. It is corrosively anti-geek.

zdean 12y ago
I think HN adds to that tone by including "truck driver" in the title of the post. I suppose the inference is that truck drivers are not very smart; therefore, giving the title an interesting contrast. But the reality is that people become truck drivers (as well as any other profession) for any number of reasons.
- gregors 12y ago
  another truck driver .... http://nasa.orau.org/postdoc/about-fellows/milligan.htm http://nasa.orau.org/postdoc/about-fellows/milligan.htm
- Ancorehraq 12y ago
  Not being very smart accounts for some of those reasons. Do you feel there is a significant category of people who are intelligent enough to be nuclear physicists, but decided to drive trucks instead?
  - zdean 12y ago
    Whether the number is significant or not is irrelevant. The fact is that being a truck driver does not in any way disqualify one from being intelligent. A less loaded but more helpful title might have been something along the lines of "Man who isn't a nuclear scientist uncovers secrets about first nuclear bomb." It might help to understand the problem I'm describing if you replace "truck driver" in the title with a race.
    - Ancorehraq 12y ago
      I don't think that helps understand the problem at all. Are truck drivers a protected class? Can you provide some evidence regarding intelligence of truck drivers?
      - nmrm 12y ago
        > Can you provide some evidence regarding intelligence of truck drivers? Sure. This very article. Some non-truck drivers were apparently pretty impressed with the truck driver's book: The review, written by the eminent atomic historian Robert S. Norris, began, “For many years, Coster-Mullen has been printing his manuscript at Kinko’s (adding to and revising it along the way) and selling spiral-bound copies at conferences or over the Internet.” Norris clearly considered Coster-Mullen’s understanding of the bomb superior to his own. My own copy of “Atom Bombs” soon arrived in the mail, along with a sheet of testimonials from Harold Agnew, the former director of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, who was aboard the Enola Gay when it annihilated Hiroshima (a “most amazing document”); Philip Morrison, one of the physicists who helped invent the bomb (“You have done a remarkable job”); and Paul Tibbets, the commander and pilot of the Enola Gay (“I was very much impressed”). Incidentally, can you provide some evidence regarding the intelligence of software engineers? See how that feels?

dbh97 12y ago

Asperger's?

MichaelApproved 12y ago
What about it?
tjmc 12y ago
Almost certainly.
hacknat 12y ago
I prefer "on the spectrum", because, let's be honest, everyone is.

tjradcliffe 12y ago

It's worth remembering this the next time you hear some hysteria about Iran's "nuclear program" which they have been supposedly working on for the past 30 years without actually producing a bomb. Basic nuclear weapons are really, really simple to build. This is especially true of uranium bombs. Is there any case of a weapon being deployed operationally without ever being test-fired, other than dropping Little Boy over Nagasaki? That's how simple uranium bombs are. Gas centrifuges (when not being sabotaged) make uranium enrichment pretty simple, and they have been around since the '80's as a fairly well-understood technology. There were warnings back then that they would lead to a wave of proliferation, which to an extent they have. So the only plausible way Iran could have been "working on" nuclear weapons for 30 years without producing one is if they aren't working very damned hard. Their economy is about half the size (GDP per capita) than the US economy was in the early '40's but much more concentrated in terms of the state's ability to control it. So it isn't lack of resources that is holding things up. It is most likely lack of political will: Iran would like to be seen to be working on a Bomb, but for whatever reason isn't actually doing much toward building one. If they were, they would have one by now. A team of competent high school students with a billion dollar budget could manage it in a year. [Edit: this is not a defense of the theocratic monsters that run Iran, I just don't think they are as big a nuclear threat as is commonly assumed.]

tadfisher 12y ago
Little Boy was dropped over Hiroshima, not Nagasaki.
Kroem3r 12y ago
You can imagine the pretty natural go-go-stop behavior. "Good for prestige: go for it." versus "Going to have Mossad and cruise missiles all over the place; shut it down!" versus "Bring it on you !@#~!!!~!ers!" versus "We are entitled to do this under the various treaties; opposition will highlight the hypocrisy in the geopolitic" versus "Um, duh?"
trhway 12y ago
yep, even North Korea has managed to do even plutonium device (though of course employing Russian specialists in 199x helped it)