Best nuclear weapons history books according to redditors
We found 83 Reddit comments discussing the best nuclear weapons history books. We ranked the 45 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 83 Reddit comments discussing the best nuclear weapons history books. We ranked the 45 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
Other comments here are spot on.
The simplistic version that underlies all of them is humans are smart so they can identify a problem and approach the desired solution iteratively. This creates a feedback loop.
Before "modern" (the mid to late 1800's onwards) machine tools, you had people making a lot of things custom every time using files to get parts to mate together. There are some exceptions to this with specific measurement and manufacturing tools that were conceived and used but they weren't in wide spread use before the Industrial Revolution and they didn't look as similar to today's machines as everything after. We humans are really good at tweaking stuff slightly until it is far beyond the precision of the individual pieces itself.
Similarly, if I took any old lathe or mill, measured my part to be 0.100" and needed it to be 0.050", I could dial a cut in at 0.05" and take it but depending on the quality and rigidity of the machine, workholding, bearing surfaces and tooling, I would be hard pressed to hit that 0.050" dead on. However, I could take as many passes I wanted while remeasuring until I'm happy with the result. Cut 0.020" off, measure again, I should have 0.030" left but I actually have 0.027" left. Cut again this time at 0.010" and I should have 0.017" left but I have 0.015" left etc.
As others mentioned, the 3 plate method allows you to generate with time and effort, a very precisely flat surface. I could generate that surface, use it as my surface referenced plate and then hand scrape a piece to match it's flatness and squareness to the best of my willingness to work on it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_scraper if you're unfamiliar. The craftsman inks (blues) up a reference surface, imprints the work piece by rubbing it on that surface. Only the points in contact touch. Using a scraper and some training, you can remove .0002" with a scraper cut. Remove all of the high spots that are blue bringing the high spots closer to the average. Remark and do it again iteratively. Each time you bring your work surface closer to your reference.
The same thing was done with precision lead screws. Hand made screws were cut with primitive methods and put in early lathe like machines to cut more screws. These machines had error compensation methods built in that averaged the thread cutting across the original screw (or sometimes multiple screws) resulting in a screw that was more precise than what you started with.
For calibrating a reference surface for flatness, you can use levels or autocollimators for overall variations. The precision of your level can be increased by increasing the longitudinal radius of your glass bubble dial.
An excerpt from another post I made in /r/cnc:
Some source material to consider:
LINK A great site with collections of documents covering major works in the development of precision tools.
Precision Machine Design - Slocum more of a textbook on precision machine design but has tons of footnotes and talks about some of the developmental history.)
Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance talks about some of the accuracy needed in Oakridge etc to help make the atomic bomb and precision guided missiles before GPS existed even for the military. A number of military interests drove ultra precision development such as this and the large optical diamond turning maching (LODTM)
Rolling Bearings and their contribution to the progress of technology covers the history of bearings that allowed precision machinery.
Machine Tool Reconditioning is an older book and highly technical but is considered the bible for old machine tool rebuilding and goes into the processes of how one would make precision flat surfaces and check all of the geometry on their machines and fix them in a time before lasers and fancy computer controlled equipment.
Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy and the followup book Holes, Contours and Surfaces was written by Moore and his son (I believe, respectively), the first especially is considered a bible on the theory of obtaining super precision tolerances. The authors are part of Moore Tool Company which made amongst other machines Moore Jig Borers.
Mitutoyo has a pdf on the history of gauge blocks
You can further go down that rabbit hole and look at metrology books as one can achieve great tolerances by iteratively approaching a desired value and having proper metrology equipment to check your work as you go. For example, metrology standards
You can also look at old professional telescope building books and newer diy telescope making books as there's a lot of interesting information and techniques to obtain precision optics on the order of wavelengths of light.
As someone else here mentioned: How Round Is Your Circle
I can probably dig up a lot more. I've spent way to much money purchasing old out of print books related to precision machinery, machining and metrology.
From the iterative process of making basic tools, you can then use those tools to make even better tools through iteration. In many ways, it's similar to Moore's law in the electronics world; a exponential curve where we stand on the shoulder of giants and improve upon what already exists. Many have proposed technology as a whole as just that such as Ray Kurzweil in "The Singularity is Near" etc.
Edit: Thanks for the gold!
The US bombed most cities but left a select few alone to minimize the resistance there. Japan did notice this pattern of avoidance, but due to embargoes there was a massive shortage of materials, so they didn't commit many resources to defend these locations Additionally, weather also played a factor: the US wanted to see it happen.
When it was time to deploy the ordinance, the US had a list of cities they had left alone. They chose the cities where the weather was the clearest on that day.
Fun fact: the US had the capacity to build and drop one nuke a
weekmonth, and indeed that was the plan until Japan surrendered.Fun fact 2: Removed after inaccuracy was pointed out regarding Einsteins role
Fun fact 3: Israel paid some Jews (I'm not racist, I'm pointing out the Jewish nationalism that came to play) who worked on the Manhattan project a very hefty sum to come to Israel a few years later, bringing their research. They then secretly whored this information out to anyone who would pay for it, including the Russians. Iran got the research, and North Korea bought it from them. China, India, Pakistan, Britain, France, Russia, Australia, Libya, Saudi Arabia and a bunch of others also bought this research from Israel.
Fun fact 4: Little known fact is that Libya had a nuclear weapons program as well as unrefined nuclear materials (yellowcake). I suspect the recent international invasion of Libya was more about this fact than it was for humanitarian reasons. The reason Libya didn't become a nuclear power is because their education system was so terrible they didn't have the expertise necessary to bring the research to fruition.
Fun fact 5: 2 days prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan's ambassador to the US gave President Roosevelt a bunch of "peace charms" despite knowing there was about to be an attack (via intercepted and decrypted diplomatic cables telling him the attack was a "go"). Prior to the bombing, as if to say "Fuck You," President Truman personally attached these "peace charms" to the first nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima.
Fun fact 6: Japanese diplomatic cables and naval codes had already been decrypted by the US by the time Pearl Harbor happened, and indeed, an attack was forecasted several hours before, but this report was dismissed by the US Army's high brass as the importance of electronic warfare had not yet been appreciated.
There were a hell of a lot more nuclear shenanigans that went on after world War 2 than people let on. If you're interested in learning more, try this book, it's an excellent read:
http://www.amazon.ca/Nuclear-Express-Political-History-Proliferation-ebook/dp/B004GJVXL6/ref=sr_1_1/184-5044977-7494648?ie=UTF8&qid=1416766051&sr=8-1&keywords=nuclear+proliferation
Edit: posts facts, gets downvoted. Damn.
> Two days later, the bombing of Nagasaki made it obvious to the entire world that Japan was defeated and had no choice but to surrender. The U.S.S.R. had no choice but to call off any invasion and join the Allies in victory.
This is completely wrong. It was not clear that the Japanese were going to surrender after Nagasaki, and it's not clear that Nagasaki had anything to do with their actual surrender. And I don't see any evidence that it stopped the Soviets' plans — they certainly continued invading Japanese territory on the Asian landmass, and even took the Kurils sometime afterwards. The USSR didn't "call off" anything. If the Soviets had plans to invade Hokkaido, they were called off later, when Japan actually indicated they were going to surrender. But even then, Stalin didn't order the invasion of the Kurils until after Japan indicated it would accept the Potsdam terms.
Great book on the uncertainty that reigned between August 9 and August 15: Michael D. Gordin, _Five Days in August: How World War II Became a Nuclear War_.
Lastly, the notion that this was a big "choice" for Truman is incorrect. Truman and his advisors did not see this as a "use the bomb, or invade" question. It was a "we have a bomb, of course we'll use it," and they were still planning to invade if they needed to. They didn't know if the bomb would compel Japan to surrender. And, in fact, there is considerable evidence that it didn't.
Just went over this with out group.
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Nuclear War Survival Skills book. Look up the author. He has seen and done some shit. If I remember he was also there for some testing of nukes. Was working with congress on civil defense before M.A.D. and eventually started petitioning them to start civil defense up again after the US stopped it. This book has a lot of what civilians can do in case of an attack. There are some parts of the book that describe what you can do in 30 minutes (basically what you can do before the fallout starts landing outside blast radius) to survive. Amazing book.
The more you study, there are two schools of thought. One argues that we are so fucking lucky to still be alive after all the missed signals, technical malfunctions and botched diplomacy that has occurred since nuclear weapons were invented. The second argues that nuclear weapons have imposed the longest peace between the great powers in the modern era, and that their existence speaks to an uncontrollable variable that squashes the ability of militaries or governments to talk themselves into war. If you want to know more, I highly recommend checking out The Spread of Nuclear Weapons by Sagan and Waltz.
In 1976, and underachieving 3rd year physics student at Princeton designed an atomic bomb in just a few months. It was his independent study term project.
The biggest problem he faced was determining the geometric configuration of the explosives used to implode the fissile core. After weeks of fruitless work, he had the crazy idea to call up DuPont and just ask them about it. They gave him the information over the phone.
He published a very entertaining book about the experience and the ensuing media frenzy. It's well worth reading.
As a companion piece, check out The Curve of Binding Energy, an investigation into just how astoundingly poorly secured nuclear material was in the 70's. I remember one description of a storage site where a chain link fence and an window with no alarm were the only barriers to entering a room full of containers of enriched uranium. The only security was a guard post around the corner, 1/4 mile away. Hopefully security is better now.
It's absolutely amazing there has not yet been a nuclear terrorist attack.
Most people don't know it, but a fusion bombs actually uses a standard nuclear bomb as a detonator. It uses the x-rays generated to compress the fissile material to start the reaction.
Once that step was figured out, scaling them up to tzar bomba really wasn't anything more complicated than adding more fuel(lithium deuteride).
So yeah, pretty hard to set off.
EDIT: For those interested in the history of it, this is a fascinating book: https://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-Express-Political-History-Proliferation/dp/076033904X
Chernobyl Unit 4 was a military plutonium-production reactor making weapons-grade plutonium for nuclear warheads. To do that, it needed to have its fuel rods changed out once-a-month (and then reprocessed to extract the plutonium), and thus couldn't have a containment-building around it. Leaving the fuel rods in for the 18-24 month fuel-cycle that commercial reactors use would allow too much of the wrong plutonium isotopes to build up, thus rendering the resulting plutonium in the rods non-weapons-grade.
No commercial nuclear power reactor has ever been used to make plutonium for warheads. See: Megawatts and Megatons by Richard Garwin and (Nobel Prize laureate {in Physics for 1992}) Georges Charpak: https://www.amazon.com/Megawatts-Megatons-Future-Nuclear-Power/dp/0226284271
I read this that says Israel had a lot of help from the French in developing their program in the 60s and they had help form the South African's in the late 70s test a bomb way off the coast of South Africa.
If there's an EMP, you can count on two things: you won't be reading any of the books you've saved on your electronic devices, and you'll be trying to survive in a post-nuclear nightmare. For this reason get a hard copy of Nuclear War Survival Skills by Cresson H. Kearny. It is the single best book written on the subject for the average citizen.
In addition I would get a hard copy of the LDS Preparedness Manual. You can skip past the first couple of dozen pages if you aren't interested in the religious stuff. After that is an encyclopedic resource for survival.
You can get both books on Amazon right now for about $40 total, and if you do it will vastly improve your survival library.
Wish I could go outside, but I'm stuck in the office for another 45 minutes yet.
And unfortunately, I have to say that if you think that's "a bunch of shit that's nothing to do with that," you may want to consider reading up on nuclear escalation. I'd strongly recommend On Limited Nuclear War In The 21st Century.
World War I might have been the reason some might have believed America to be soft. You have to remember that despite what American textbooks might have you believe, American involvement in that war was minimal compared to the suffering other countries endured. More Canadians died in World War I than Americans, as just one example. Furthermore the Great Depression was much worse elsewhere in the world than in America. Read up on hyperinflation if you doubt that.
Undoubtedly there were many other contributing factors to a belief that America was soft, however it wasn't a view everyone held. In fact I might argue that the most insightful leaders from all countries understood that America was not a force to be trifled with lightly.
My favorite example is from General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, the Japanese officer tasked with fortifying Iwo Jima (one of the main characters in the movie Letters From Iwo Jima), had a very deep understanding of America's power, based on his experience touring the country while a military attache in Washington D.C.:
"I was in the United States for three years when I was a captain. I was taught how to drive by some American officers, and I bought a car. I went around the States, and I knew the close connections between the military and industry. I saw the plant area of Detroit, too. By one button push, all the industries will be mobilized for military business."
During the tensions leading up to Pearl Harbor, he repeatedly told his family:
"America is the last country in the world Japan should fight."
Admiral Yamamoto was another leader who understood that war with America would not be a light undertaking:
"Should hostilities once break out between Japan and the United States, it would not be enough that we take Guam and the Philippines, nor even Hawaii and San Francisco. To make victory certain, we would have to march into Washington and dictate the terms of peace in the White House. I wonder if our politicians (who speak so lightly of a Japanese-American war) have confidence as to the final outcome and are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices."
Since you seem interested in the subject of reactions to the news of Pearl Harbor, I remember reading in this book that Hitler was ecstatic upon hearing the news of Pearl Harbor... however his excitement turned to anger when he realized not one of his advisors could locate Pearl Harbor on a map.
Still, there might be a grain of truth to the idea that Americans were soft. At the very least they took luxury to war with them. During the liberation of France and the final drive on Germany, the daily allocation of toilet paper for an American soldier was 16 sheets. For a British soldier, it was 3. :)
The Fate of the Earth
Herman Kahn's "On Thermonuclear War" is a Wonderful (if dry) read. He was a badass, because when everyone else was talking OMG NUCLEAR APOCALYPSE, he was proposing timelines for nations restoring their prewar GNP. Can you imagine that shit? Sitting down and running the numbers for GNP? Anyway, the book's a fascinating read, and it's great to think of nuclear war as a "Now what?" kinda scenario, as oppposed to "everyone died".
It's quite a lot to bite off, but everything you want is contained in these four books:
https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-25th-Anniversary/dp/1451677618/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb-ebook/dp/B008TRUB6O/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
https://www.amazon.com/Arsenals-Folly-Richard-Rhodes-ebook/dp/B000W93DEO/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
https://www.amazon.com/Twilight-Bombs-Challenges-Dangers-Prospects-ebook/dp/B003F3PKXQ/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
Rhodes is the guy for nuclear history. I've read all four, but the last two are, admittedly, somewhat forgettable. They deal with the continuing command issues surrounding nuclear arsenals and the eventual political movement to eradicate (or, as it happened, simply limit) strategic stockpiles.
That being said, the first two, Making of the Bomb and Dark Sun, are utterly indispensible. The Making of the Atomic Bomb is a Pulitzer Prize-winning, 1986 history of the scientific effort to elucidate the physical principles which led to bombs and of the miliitary-scientific-industrial effort to realize the possibility of a weapon. It discusses many interesting characters within this history, such as Ernest Lawrence, Leo Szilard, and of course, Oppenheimer.
I have to be honest with you - I've saved Dark Sun for last for a reason. This is one of the most phenomenally engaging books I've ever read. It has everything: the creation of doomsday weapons of, and I don't use this term loosely, unimaginable destructive potential and the obsessive quasi-fetishization of their refinement and testing on behalf of the United States' and Soviet militaries. Rhodes discusses the post-war split within the scientific community over whether to develop a hydrogen "Super" bomb, whether to share information relating to it with the Soviet Union, and the factional leveraging of security privileges and political favor to exclude those from research who did not take a sufficiently hard stand against cooperation with the USSR.
Dark Sun details bomb physics and the minutia of the testing program in just enough detail to remain compelling and accessible. Rhodes also does his best to humanize Soviet scientific personnel such as Igor Kurchatov, the father of the Soviet bomb, and the strained relationship they shared with their political patrons, such as the Darth Vader-esque Lavrenti Beria.
I hope this answers your question, and I hope that you enjoy these books as much as I did!
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
Besides basic survival skills, I would say farming would be a key skill to have. Both to feed yourself and to guarantee your usefulness after the fact. Also, any job skills that are hands-on, basic, pre-industrial would be most useful. Essentially, many places in a country attacked with nuclear weapons would be reduced very quickly to a pre-20th century life.
EDIT: This might be a book you would find useful--[Nuclear War Survival Skills] (https://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-War-Survival-Skills-Instructions/dp/1634502973/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473952441&sr=8-1&keywords=survival+nuclear+war)
Hermann Kahn's On Thermonuclear War & Thinking about the Unthinkable in the 1980s are still go-to texts for nuclear strategy.
The Parallel History Project is a good resource for Early to Mid Cold War era Warsaw Pact warplanning.
The CIA's Historical Collections contain declassified documents regarding US assessments of the WP and Soviet stances, The CAESAR, POLO, and ESAU Papers in particular.
For some interesting context, the GWU's National Security archive has some documents showing US intelligence failures.
Unfortunately, you will run into the secrecy wall really quick in this area, since nuclear strategy is more a political strategy, than a strictly military one, and grand strategy like this hangs around a good, long while (for example, I am not aware of any declassified Single Integrated Operational Plans).
Two of the best books that I have read are:
Those are comprehensive views of nuclear weapon strategy and plans for use during the Cold War. The first tracks how capability enhancement changed the geopolitical balance during the Cold War and also covers the Game Theory elements. The second is more about how to fight, and win, an all-out nuclear war.
> In my essay, I reference the Cold War and mutually assured destruction.
Nitpick: it's "mutual" not "mutually". The core concept is the capability of "Second Strike", that is, there is no route of attack against a nuclear armed power that would destroy that power's ability to inflict unacceptable losses on the attacker in retaliation.
> The idea of nuclear weapons as a deterrent from war may seem ludicrous
Nope. It does not seem ludicrous at all. In fact is is the orthodox view, then and now.
They don't have much of an option to do that. China is actually in a fairly weak bargaining position with North Korea. The likeliest outcome of China ceasing to subsidize North Korea is a crisis the likes of which they had after the collapse of the USSR. Except this time, there would likely not be another country to step in and take over the subsidies.
That runs the risk of a humanitarian crisis on China's border, which they don't want because they'd rather not deal with the influx of refugees. It also raises the risk of a North Korean collapse, which is most likely not in their interests. Here they get adverse political outcomes, ranging from nuclear weapons in the hands of remnants of the North Korean military that could fall into the wrong hands to a possible reunification of Korea under the South, meaning US troops on the Chinese border.
The short version: the costs to China of a North Korean collapse are much greater than the cost of subsidizing and attempting to police a difficult ally. It's reasonably clear that this is the case, so China threatening to withdraw all support is a bit of an empty threat.
Great insight here and in your earlier post!
I just finished reading Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance. Great read on this very topic!
Chinese company 'sold North Korea nuclear bomb materials'
How North Korea Got Its “Made in China” Nukes
How North Korea Built Its Nuclear Program
Peddling Peril: How the Secret Nuclear Trade Arms America's Enemie
Between China, North Korea and Pakistan, we have a triad of rogue nuclear states. The real axis of evil.
Hope that was worth your 50 cents.
Only the greatest story ever told.
Source:Dirty Little Secrets of World War II: Military Information No One Told you About the greatest, most terrible war in history
so a large number of tanks were sent from the US and UK, no denying that. hell there's a joke i found while digging up your answer that tanks made in the USA would have 'USA' and other notes on them, which Slovaks took to a stab at 'translating' as Ubiyat Sukensyna Adolfa - Kill that Son of a bitch Adolf.
Another note, the largest single source of allied tanks lost was in shipping them to the soviet union, with 5,000 tanks, 7,000 aircraft and 200,000 tons of other goods.
apologies, i may have misremember the passage. After the war a number of russian generals revealed that while all of the 100 billion+ (1994 dollars) of aid they receieved, the most useful items were 100 octane fuel, Trucks, Waterproof telephone wire and radios.
You'd be surprised. The CEP of the Peacekeeper is estimated to be 120 meters or less than 400 feet. I did screw up my units, PKs range is about 10,000KM, not miles. :P The AIRS (Advanced Inertial Reference Sphere) is considered the pinnacle of inertial technology. To really boggle your mind you have to consider that PK is not dropping 1 warhead within 400 feet, but up to 10 warheads, on individual targets, within 400 feet!
The 500 foot number I quoted is for Trident II (Trident D5) SLBM. It is not solely black box though. It takes a single star sighting during flight, which corrects for INS offset due to the launch platform having initial errors in INS calibration. It's CEP is between 300-500 feet (depending on the source you cite). Trident D5 is also suspected of having an upgrade to GPS sometime in the near future (if not already on some lots), which will improve accuracy even further.
I highly suggest reading Inventing Accuracy by Donald Mackenzie. The book is about the most detailed publicly available information on ICBM INS development in the US. It is a really good read.
How could there not be a mention of the true classic?
http://www.amazon.com/Thermonuclear-War-Herman-Kahn/dp/141280664X
Actually the myth of deterrence has been disproved (at least on the side of the US).
Source
I think, but I'm not positive, that it was in The Fate of the Earth by Jonathan Schell while talking about the aftermath of cities destroyed by nuclear weapons.
If you are interested in learning more about its guidance system I suggest reading the book Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance
If you have time, I read this in a course on the safety and viability of nuclear energy, and it really seemed to cover all the bases. From there, I agree that you'll probably have to look through journals for newer information.
Megawatts and Megatons by Garwin and Charpack: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0226284271/ref=pd_aw_sbs_1?pi=SL500_SY115
Well, firelock_ny, I think you'll find that this guy uses the term that way. So did this person. And, you know, this dictionary. Or this site, or this site, or this page.
But, no, you're totally right, firelock_ny, I'm the only one.
Edit: Also, nice job slipping "primarily" in there, knowing full well nobody said it was primarily anything.
Link to Amazon. According to one reviewer, it's rumored that Kubrick based the Dr. Strangelove character on Herman Kahn.
Man, the Cold War was such a weird era to grow up in, although this one is a real doozy, too.
The elite from the two countries are aligned in the hydrocarbon industries, for instance.
Many of the oligarchs benefitting from these industries are international and the complex relationships are murky. Russian oligarchs have ties to the U.K. or Israel, and pass money to other elites. Israel is more openly reaching out to Russia as well. I don't think Israel would be doing that if Russia and the U.S. were such mortal enemies as alleged. Why would we sanction Russia but then do nothing while Europe and Israel strengthen hydrocarbon ties to Russia?
This person claims the gas off the coast of Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine caused the recent war against Syria. Imo, Russia is not seriously defending Syria. It could have armed Syria so it could do some real damage to the invaders, even the U.S., but it is pulling punches and reneging on agreements with Syria; Russia is letting Syria slowly degrade as it signs contracts for the hydrocarbons in the region. All the while playing the part of the bad boy wrestler.
Also, this guy has an interesting theory as well.
I'd recommend you check out the book Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance (Inside Technology).
I am not totally sure what you are asking for actually exists in book form...which is odd, now that I think about it.
If it were me, I would think about magazines instead. And if you really want to push him, think about the following options:
If you insist on books...
I see you already mentioned A Brief History of the Universe, which is an excellent book. However, I am not sure if you are going to get something that is more "in depth." Much of the "in depth" stuff is going to be pretty pop, without the rigorous foundation that are usually found in textbooks.
If I had to recommend some books, here is what I would say:
Hope that helps! OH AND GO WITH THE SUBSCRIPTION TO NATURE
edit: added the linksssss
I never at any point denied the threat of terrorism. It is however, domestically, a threat that has been exacerbated and an obsession that has outrun the actual threat and allowed for the erosion of civil liberties, preemptive wars, and a ginormous military budget. I also don't think you understood my point - I am talking about the domestic sphere, where there is an exacerbation of a home grown terrorism threat - and this has been instrumentalized and exacerbated greatly. The external Islamic extremism threat is another concerning matter on its own -- which has seen a dramatic growth and empowerment since the beginnings of the US GWOT.
Check out Mullers, Atomic Obsession to see just the extreme extent of the discourse on the terrorism - by his interpretation of the nuclear terrorism threat.
Always good to get other perspectives on complex events - I do appreciate your opinion. You seemed slightly irritated with what I said, so apologises if I came across generic and reductionist. But my studies and analysis of the discourses have led me to these logical conclusions.
Take a look at the book published by Michio Kaku and another physicist back in the 1980s on the US policy book in which the US declassified documents showing the US was always a first strike force, not a retaliatory force.
Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb
Analyzing Strategic Nuclear Policy
Nuclear Deterrence in the 21st Century: Lessons from the Cold War for a New Era of Strategic Piracy
The Evolution of International Security Studies
Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict
The Fallacies of Cold War Deterrence and a New Direction
The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate
North Korea is absolutely safe in this case, because like you said America values lives. And this has being the rationale behind China's minimal deterrence policy during the cold war. Because, during the game between the Soviet Union and the US, have nuclear weapon means it will be used as a easy game board for whatever political gains as the risks always outweigh the benefits. This is the game North Korea is playing now, basically North Korea is China during the cold war.
However, if the said country does pose a real threat, there is little qualms about taking the nuclear option, if there is little risk of return fire. See US plans to wipe the Soviet Union off the map in 1945, while the US has the nuclear advantage and the knowlege that the Soviets will soon have them too. US plans for first strike during the cuban missile crisis, while the US still the advantage of European and Turkish sites, while the Soviet haven't fully brought up the Cubans ones yet. And last the Herman Kahn's excellent book On Thermal War, where millions of lives lost is just statistic and can be calculated and sacrifice to pressed for an advantage.
Now the question is, what is China's position now. Does America see China on the same level as Soviet Union. Even worse, during the cold war, it quiet clears in the west (and in some circles inside the soviet union), long run the west will win. As long as the west contain soviet aggression and check soviet advances, then victory will be assured. This idea is vocalize most succinctly in the long telegram. In fact, the most dangerous time for nuclear exchange was in the 1980s, when the Soviet Union is clearly losing and the fear was the Soviets would go for it and hope a surprise a counterforce attack will prevail.
China, it seems that China is on the trajectory to to eclipse the US in the next two decade in terms of economical, comprehensive national power and even military power. And China is seeming to chart its own institution, national policy and governmental ideology that's different from the West and would not to controlled or guided by the west (this make it very different from Japan fear in the 1980s). So essentially, China no longer a north korea, but more like the United States, and the United State is a bit like the Soviet Union, with its leadership position erroting, the doubts emerge both about her exceptionalism as well as superiority of its ideology.
The United State currently have counterforce capabilities against China, while China only have limited countervalue capabilities. Additionally, the US is confident about it capability of tracking Chinese submarines. This means while a surprise first strike by the US will not only completely destroy China, it will also have a resonable chance of destroying most of China's nuclear arsenal as well. The US missile defense system could have catch the few missile missed by that first strike, leave the US mostly unscached (and in the views of a confident commander, completely unscached) in such an exchange and permanently stop a force that could not be stopped in the future. With other rational and moral leaders in power, this is very unlikely, even though RAND just recently published war plans with China. But with Trump in power, he might just wonna make it a reality.
With China archiving MAD, this places the possibility of a winnable nuclear war with China completely out of the windows, and would ensure the relative peace we all had since the end of WWII. And it is a policy that will not ending up saving Chinese lives, but American ones as well.
Maybe there is no problem and the big bad "nuclear scare" is a bogeyman invented during the Cold War (a psychological war which involved mass conditioning of the world's population).
Recent samples collected by researchers from Kelp Watch and Cal State Long Beach professors have determined that no detectable radiation has entered the ecosystem along the West Coast since the disaster, which occurred in 2011.
Once again, testing finds Alaska seafood free of Fukushima radiation
Physicist: There was no Fukushima nuclear disaster. The terrible toll from Japan's tsunami came from the wave, not radiation
The Trillion Dollar Nuclear Weapons Fraud - Just like Germans couldn't question the Hitler/Nazi story, Japanese couldn't question the Hiroshima/Nagasaki story; punishment was imprisonment and execution
All information about exploding atomic bombs radiating people to death since August 1945 is propaganda invented by Franklin D. Roosevelt, (Harry S. Truman) and Joseph V. Stalin! It is just a 72 years old example of Fake News to scare.
Air Force drops non-nuclear 'mother of all bombs' in Afghanistan. Produces a devastating above-ground explosion that sends a mushroom cloud roiling high in the sky. (nuclear winter is coming!!! but no fear about countries unleashing hundreds of MOABs on each other? isn't MOABageddon upon us???)
The War Was Won Before Hiroshima—And the Generals Who Dropped the Bomb Knew It
Some Reasons Why I Don't Believe Nuclear Weapons Exist
North Korea drops nuclear bomb on US in disturbing propaganda video (north korea wants to scare silly americans, media follows suit and reports widely)
Quora - How realistic is the theory that nuclear weapons are a hoax as the referenced film implies? (lots of shilly answers)
Book - The Nuclear Hoax: Kennedy, Khrushchev, Castro and the Cuban Missile Crisis by Servando Gonzalez
Book - Death Object by Akio Nakatani - Trickery is the way of war - thus has it always been. But the nuclear trick is the biggest, boldest and baddest-ass scam in all of mankind’s ancient and eternal quest for power and profit through mass slaughter.
Remember, we need to be scared and in constant fear so that we hand over our freedoms to an overreaching global elite (NWO) who is here to protect us.
Insanity? I'll take the word of a Nuclear scientist who has published his claims over the ad hominem attacks of a nationalist.
Pakistan's "economy" benefited from billions of dollars of handouts given by the US because Pakistan was being rented for use against the Soviets in Afghanistan. The Saudis are partial owners/stake-holders in the Pak nuke program. The Libyans were sold a dud by PakMil though.