nukes

​There were once plans for nuclear-powered planes

Presenting an all-new horror movie: Nuclear Reactors on a Plane! In the 1950s, when nuclear power was still full of promise and wonder, there were plans to make a nuclear-powered aircraft. In the 1950s, the world was still on the fence regarding nuclear technology. On the one hand, nuclear bombs were powerful weapons. On the…

Silent raw footage of the bombing of Nagasaki is absolutely chilling

This 11-minute video takes us from the preparations of the Fat Man nuclear weapon, its loading onto the plane Bockscar, and the explosion of the bomb in Nagasaki. It’s a sobering look at this catastrophically destructive technology and a reminder of the toll it took in human lives. YouTube user RestrictedData uploaded this video and…

How the US Invented Dirty Bombs to Stop the Soviet Advance in Europe

The thought of mutually assured destruction in the form of worldwide nuclear annihilation made leaders on both sides of the Iron Curtain squeamish. But, limited nuclear war, now there was a plan! Irradiating the Soviets just a little bit, you know, as a deterrent, was seen as the clearly superior option to outright ICBM volleys.…

Photographs of Atomic Bomb Tests Are Like Science Fiction Made Real

During the Cold War, scientists tested atomic bombs in remote areas of the globe. These terrifying and beautiful images were used in research, but they were also used to intimidate anyone who would be stupid enough to challenge the US or USSR in an armed conflict. High-speed photos by Harold “Doc” Edgerton, taken during the…

How to shelter from fallout after a nuclear attack on your city

Terrorists have detonated a low-yield nuclear warhead in your city. How long should you hide, and where, to avoid the worst effects of radioactive fallout? We talked to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory atmospheric scientist Michael Dillon to find out. Yesterday Dillon published a paper on this topic in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A.…

Early Nuclear Safety Posters Are Perky and Disturbing

These Radiation Protection posters were produced at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the late 1940s, where the most of the work was done on the Manhattan Project. Before the Cold War was in full effect, these posters warned of dangers that would come to define a generation. Health Physics Surveyors are trained and equipped to…

The Fukushima radiation nightmare isn’t over. Japanese officials have upgraded from a level 1 to a level 3 “radiological event” alert after discovering that highly radioactive water is leaking from the plant into the ground nearby.

New Google Earth Hack Lets You Nuke Any City in Devastating 3D

A perverse fascination with nuclear fallout and blast radii isn’t that weird. Don’t you want to know how hard you and everything you know is going to disappear from the face of the Earth in the unlikely case that some maniac drops twenty kilotons of atomic death on your front door? Now you can see…

Why environmentalists embrace nuclear power

A new documentary, Pandora’s Promise, has scientists and politicians arguing over the future of nuclear power. It’s a movie about how prominent environmentalists went from being anti-nuclear power to favoring it — largely because the alternative, fossil fuel, is so damaging to our ecosystems. New York Times journalist Andrew Revkin has captured the substance of…

How Fallout from Nuke Tests Just Proved that Brain Cells Regenerate

Before the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 barred all aboveground, subsea, and orbital nuclear weapons testing, the world’s nations were popping off nukes like champagne bottles on New Years. Surprisingly, that sprinkling of high-energy particles was actually quite beneficial, to science at least, as it’s just helped solve a longstanding dispute in human physiology—can…

Dangerous San Onofre Nuclear Plant Finally Shutting Down

The long troubled oceanfront nuclear plant in Southern California will be shut down for good, Southern California Edison announced today. The doomed domes have been closed for multiple, outrageous safety and operating violations since January 2012. More than 7 million people live within a 50-mile radius of the dangerously mismanaged and unsafe nuclear plant. Sitting…

Princeton Nuke Detector Could Spot World-Ending Warheads

The US and USSR had more than 60,000 nuclear warheads pointed at each other at the height of the Cold War. While the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970 and START in 1994 have shrunk that figure to around 26,000, nobody is really sure how many still exist—because nobody’s ever actually verified the number of warheads, just…

How NASA’s Nuclear Rockets Will Take Us Way Beyond Mars

The first people to step on to the surface of Mars won’t arrive aboard the chemical-fueled rockets that delivered Apollo 11 to the Moon—they simply don’t provide enough thrust to get to the Red Planet before exposing their crews to months of dangerous space radiation. Instead, NASA is turning to long-ignored nuclear-thermal rocket technology to…

Could North Korea Really Hit Us With a Nuke?

In a predictably insane but still unsettling development, North Korea has declared its interest in showering the US mainland with missiles. The bluster comes on the heels of an American stealth bomber show of force, and is largely just posturing. https://gizmodo.com/north-korea-is-putting-its-rockets-on-standby-for-fire-5992860 But if it came down to it, could they follow through? Could a North…

Pentagon: Let’s Threaten Nuke Strike Against Hackers

Most of us are content keeping hackers away with a firewall and decent password. But the Pentagon isn’t nearly content, and in a new report, insists we should keep our nuclear arsenal ready for Internet retaliation. What could go wrong? The report, “Resilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat,” was prepared by the Department…

The Tragic Story of the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site

The Semipalatinsk Test Site (“The Polygon”) was the primary nuclear testing site for the Soviet Union. It’s about 150 kilometres west of the town Semey (named Semipalatinsk until 2007). The place was selected in 1947 by Lavrentiy Beria, head of the Soviet atomic bomb project, who claimed the huge steppe region was totally uninhabited. It…

A Complete History of American Nuclear Explosions in 90 Seconds

On July 16, 1945, the US Army destroyed a small part of New Mexico by testing the first nuclear bomb in human history, the most powerful weapon of all time. It then proceeded to blow up 1,054 more. All of these detonations were part of separate operations, given cute code names like Wigwam and Teapot—hundreds…

Here’s why you shouldn’t nuke a hurricane

Why don’t we nuke hurricanes? Apparently the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration gets asked this question often enough that it has produced an official response, explaining in no uncertain terms why launching a nuclear missile into the eye of a storm “would not be an effective hurricane modification technique.” You can read NOAA’s full, scientifically…

Meet The Tiny Bomb-Wielding Spacecraft That Could Someday Save Our Species

Scientists have given some thought as to how we’ll defend ourselves when a giant asteroid inevitably heads our way and solutions range from paintballs to nukes. A team at Iowa State University has settled on the latter, and they’ve got plans for a ship that can do it waiting in the wings. https://gizmodo.com/paintball-pellets-could-deflect-an-asteroid-from-destro-5955415 While the…

US Air Force Tests Doomsday Nuclear Launch Attack

If Lenin ever leaps out of his coffin and starts singin’ nukes at Rhode Island, this is how America will seek her justice: a nuclear-tipped Minuteman III rocket, aimed straight down Moscow’s throat. Will it work? Watch and see! Just to make sure all the buttons still work and there isn’t too much dust in…