Reddit Reddit reviews Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb

We found 14 Reddit comments about Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

History
Books
American History
United States History
Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb
Simon Schuster
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14 Reddit comments about Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb:

u/gaussprime · 38 pointsr/todayilearned

I really can't recommend Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb enough. Teller in particular is amazing, so much so that he was the inspiration for Dr. Strangelove.

That book, and the precursor, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, are great reads if you want to understand both the science and the politics behind the bomb projects. They're written by a historian, so they're not too crazy into the math, but they will explain to you the issues, such as why you need U235 to make a bomb rather than U238.

u/Tangurena · 28 pointsr/AskHistorians

> In my view, the second certainly wasn't

According to Rhodes [1], the Japanese command knew what affected Hiroshima was an atomic bomb [2] but concluded that since it took 4 years to build the first atom bomb, it would take the Allies 4 years to build the next. The folks at the top kept believing that they could force the Allies to a negotiated peace and that westerners were too weak - hence the suicidal efforts in Okinawa/Saipan and kamikaze to demoralize Allied troops.

The Yalta conference required Stalin to enter war against Japan within 90 days of the end of the German campaign. Depending on how you do the math and count timezones, Russia declared war against Japan and entered combat on day 89, 90 or 91.

According to Cook in Japan at War there were 4,335,500 Japanese soldiers at the time of the surrender with about 3,500,000 stationed outside the "home islands" (mostly stuck in Korea and Manchuria). This was a lot more than the Allies thought that Japan had.

Notes:
1 - I forget whether it was in Dark Sun (most likely because it was the followup written after the fall of the Soviet Union which opened up a lot of their secret archives) or The Making of the Atomic Bomb.
2 - The Japanese had 2 atom bomb projects: a chemical separation project in Tokyo and a gaseous diffusion project in what is now called North Korea around the Chosin Reservoir.

u/eleask · 16 pointsr/AdviceAnimals

Well, they may not know about radiation exposure effects (even though they know something about it. The absolute madman Louis Slotin took a dive near a reactor to fix it, and his colleagues were "shocked", and Japan itself tried to start a nuclear project, failing due to the fact, well, that only the United States had the capability of invest on it: developing nuclear bomb was expensive as hell), but they surely knew that it was different. They saw just a couple of planes, and then hell broke loose, and the aftermath of the explosion was a bit worst than the one of a firestorm. Mind that a fire bombing is not meant to create a shock wave as an atomic bomb does.
And after all of this, after the bombing of Nagasaki, the emperor (I won't ever remember his name) stated:

"The enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization."

"a new and most cruel bomb": average Japanese may not care about the difference between a firebomb and an atomic bomb, but I can assure you that upstairs, they were concerned about the use of the new weapon.

As an ending note, if you love to read, and if you don't care about lengthy readings, Richard Rhodes wrote a couple of very well documented books about the matter:

u/lobster_johnson · 13 pointsr/AskHistorians

As regards the Rosenbergs, Harry Gold, David Greenglass, Morton Sobell, Klaus Fuchs and others, Richard Rhodes' Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb is excellent. It covers the aftermath of the development of the atom bomb: The hydrogen bomb, Oppenheimer's atomic energy commission work, American/Soviet espionage, the Oppenheimer trial, etc. It's not specifically about Cold War espionage, but covers a lot of ground in detail.

(The first part of Rhodes' series of books on nuclear arms, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, is fantastic, by the way.)

u/Sunfried · 12 pointsr/todayilearned

Okay, thanks for clarifying. It's been over a decade since I read Dark Sun, but I never let a thing like that prevent me from talking out of my ass, evidently.

u/Infulable · 12 pointsr/todayilearned

It's a major what if, but not baseless.

How close did we come to nuclear war when we knew it was MAD?

How severe where the proxy wars fought in the misnamed cold war?

In a what if scenario America thought they had years, but knew that USSR was going to get the bomb, if not through espionage then through independent research.

Say the Soviet spies fail, they begin putting in the work to develop their own bomb.

Do you think the American's are just going to sit back watching with baited breath as they get reports of their progress.

They have a super weapon and an ideological enemy, I don't see that happening.

There is no way to tell what would have happened, but I think what did happen is better than the most likely alternative.

Fun/scary book on the subject on which I do base a lot of my speculation, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb also the insane plans of several American generals.

In 1949 the commander of Strategic Air Command drew up a plan which was essentially, ""a single massive attack," which meant dropping 133 A-bombs on 70 cities within 30 days."

u/Justin72 · 7 pointsr/CatastrophicFailure

I read a book some years back that I want to say was called "Black Hole Sun", but as I type this I'm pretty sure the title was similar, but not this. It was about the nuclear weapons program from its inception to the later days of live testing. That being said the Book was beyond good, and pretty much changed my reading habits from almost all fiction to almost all non-fiction. If anyone knows what the title of the book was I'd love to know.


EDIT: never mind... Found it "Dark Sun" by Richard Rhodes You can get it here

u/Lmaoboobs · 4 pointsr/WarCollege

Currently: The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran

After this I will probably read

The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan

On War

Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

Illusions of Victory: The Anbar Awakening and the Rise of the Islamic State

On Grand Strategy

A fellow on the combined defense discord layed out his recommendations for books on nukes, so I'll list them here.

On Thermonuclear War By Herman Kahn

On Limited Nuclear War in the 21st Century by Jeffrey Larsen and Kerry Kartchner

The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, Third Edition by Lawrence Freedman

Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces by Pavel Podvig

Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America's Atomic Age by Francis J. Gavin

Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb by Feroz Khan

Prevention, Pre-emption and the Nuclear Option: From Bush to Obama by Aiden Warren

Nuclear Deterrence in the 21st Century: Lessons from the Cold War for a New Era of Strategic Piracy by Thérèse Delpech

Analyzing Strategic Nuclear Policy by Charles L. Glaser

Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb by Richard Rhodes

Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict by Vipin Narang

Building the H Bomb: A Personal History By Kenneth W Ford

The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy by Matthew Kroenig

Paper Tigers: china's Nuclear Posture by Jeffery Lewis

Arms and Influence by Thomas Schelling

u/CharlesEGrant · 3 pointsr/Physics

On a pragmatic historical note, Fermi's wife was Jewish, and the Fermis fled Italy to avoid being caught up in the anti-Jewish laws enacted by the Fascist government of Italy. Surely this would have made any cooperation between Fermi and the Nazi government of Germany extremely unlikely.

IMHO, from extensive reading about the Manhattan Project, I think you are reading way too much into Fermi's contribution. The development of the fission bomb depended less on strokes of brilliant physical insight (physics genius), and far more on the creation of a 'deep bench' of talented physicists, chemists, and engineers, grinding away at complex measurements and calculations, along with the commitment of a substantial part of the nation's wartime infrastructure to enable them. To be sure, Fermi played an important role in the project, but that is in part because he was given an important role because of his obvious talent and acheivements. I haven't seen anything that indicates that other slightly less stellar physicists couldn't have successfully led the pile-1 team or solved the problem of xenon poisoning at the Hanford reactors. This contrasts with the development of the fusion bomb, where an "insight of genius" by Ulam cracked one of the fundamental problems in creating a practical weapon.

As yangyangR points out, the Germans had several physicist of near Fermi's caliber, but they were used ineffectively. They lacked the equivalents of a Vanevar Bush, James Conant, Leslie Groves, and Robert Oppenheimer, to advocate for the project and negotiate the political minefields of allocating the project such a large fraction of wartime resources.

>If the US did not have the bomb by the end of the war, would the Soviets have pursued the project so aggressively?

As recounted in Dark Sun by Richard Rhodes, Stalin was skeptical of the atomic bomb project during the war, but did assemble a core development team, and a large espionage team, both supervised by Beria. After the Hiroshima bomb, it was full speed ahead, with the full commitment of the industrial resources of the USSR.

u/lurking_tiger · 3 pointsr/HistoryPorn

This excellent book can satisfy all of your curiosities: http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb/dp/0684824140

u/thehumungus · 2 pointsr/Military

I strongly recommend this book to people interested in understanding Hydrogen bomb science, and also a bit of the spying that went on in the early cold war.

http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb/dp/0684824140

u/[deleted] · 2 pointsr/TrueReddit

If you're interested in the Soviet nuclear advances, check out Dark Sun by Richard Rhodes. It's interesting, but during WWII, we gave the Soviets unprecedented access to our military secrets. They flew out entire planes full of our research into the atomic bomb. That being said, they also made advances on their own developments. There's rumor that the US development was based heavily on politics. I have read that Teller took quite a while to get to the radiation pressure trigger for the spark plug, when it was readily apparent to others on the team.

When you say fourth generation nukes, do you mean neutron bombs? They sound quite a bit like what you are saying about energy release. They would be quite good at depopulating areas, but they were really meant for hardened targets like tanks that could withstand a nuclear blast at fairly close distances.

I thought the same thing about the 2004 repeal, but the act says:

"Nothing in the repeal made by subsection (a) shall be construed as authorizing the testing, acquisition, or deployment of a low-yield nuclear weapon." Source

I'm reading a paper now that I'll summarize for you in a bit on fourth generation weapons and nuclear shaped charges.

As far as testing goes, computer simulations don't account for everything. We need to make sure that the radioactive material we have is still able to become super critical. I asked a question about testing with treaties in effect, and this was one of the answers that I got. Basically, we use subcritical reactions to test the behavior of the material.

As far as the Bulava surviving the blast goes, I can't find much information on it, but I imagine it has to do with the materials that it is made from. Remember that there were a number of structures including this arch that survived in Nagasaki near ground zero. 500 meters is still a pretty decent distance from the epicenter.

u/the_breadlord · 0 pointsr/todayilearned

If you've not read it, get "Dark Sun" by Richard Rhodes. Best civilian book on the Hydrogen bomb program ever.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dark-Sloan-Technology-Richard-Rhodes/dp/0684824140

Mostly covers the American effort, but also goes into the Khurkatov's project to build the soviet one.