Read For Free Dark Sun: The Making Of The Hydrogen Bomb Depicted By Richard Rhodes Distributed As Online Book

this to the longterm TBR list, I liked his first Making of the Abomb a lot,

I came across this quote from the book:
"The discovery inof how to release nuclear energy introduced a singularity into the human world a deep new reality, a region where the old rules of war no longer applied.
The region of nuclear singularity enlarged across the decades, sweeping war away at its shock front until today it excludes all but civil wars and limited conventional wars

Science has revealed at least world war to be historical, not universal, a manifestation of destructive technologies of limited scale.
In the long history of human slaughter, that is no small achievement, "

The context being the surprising peacekeeping power of nuclear weapons: no nucleararmed state has attacked a nucleararmed adversary.
So far, anyway.

That would be the book I would like to read, Which, of course, is a hypothetical, Hard to prove a negative! Still, suggestions welcome!
An excellent follow up to Rhodes' Pulitzer winning 'Making of the Atomic Bomb'.
This one is about the history and development of the Super Bomb, This tome contains a great deal of espionage and less physics than the first one but it is still quite dense and took me some time to read it.


stars. Highly recommended. Not quite as engaging for me as his previous volume about the Manhattan ProjectRhodes bounces from the Soviet atomic espionage programs to the postwar research environment to eventually the development of the hydrogen bomb, and all the threads don't entirely come together.
Still, a wealth of information and lots of interesting anecdotes about various members of the U, S. atomic fraternity of the day, Richard Rhodes follow up to The Making of the Atomic Bomb provides a detailed history from the Manhattan Project to the development of the HBomb Super by both the Americans and the Russians.
The book starts out with aboutpages of summary on the Manhattan Project focusing mostly on the Soviet espionage as it relates to the Soviets development of the A Bomb and the push then by the Americans to invest in the development of the Super.
From a detailed account of the spying done by the Rosenbergs spy ring and Klaus Fuchs to the drama of Edward Teller and Robert Oppenheimer over the moral development of the HBomb you will find it all in this account.
The discussions that were held by the sciences over building a bomb that could end all life on earth never pursued to the final tests that vaporized an island in the south pacific and once again infected a group of Japanese with radiation are all covered.
Russia is not left out and the efforts of Beria and eventually Khrushchevs diplomacy are well covered, In short like his first book this is a thorough account of the development of the Hydrogen Bomb on both sides of the Cold War.
Rhode's history of thermonuclear weaponry is well written, but the subject seems oddly dated, as if the "Cold War" and the terrors of atomic attack were something from centuries ago, not from my lifetime.
The fear, dread, paranoia, and hysteria were very real and very recent, and it is only surely by the restraining hand of God in human history that it continues.
Or, as Rhodes concludes, the greatest and only effective deterrent against nuclear war was "personal dread, "

This abject and groveling fear in its own way changed history, shaping national policy during the Berlin crisis, the Cuban Missile crisis, in Southeast Asia, andother small places.
It made otherwise rational leaders envision and propose a plan to hide nucleartipped missiles in train cars and shuttle them continuously around the USa plan that was proposed in my adult life time lates and earlys, and seemed positively Gothic seemingly impossible, yet substantially real in its horrific nature when I confronted ityears later in the display of one of the railroad cars and disarmed missiles in the museum at WrightPatterson Air Force Base.
"Personal dread" indeed The hydrogen bomb is the natural sequel to the atomic bomb, but Dark Sun is a shadow of its predecessor, and Rhodes can't find a single narrative thread in this trudge of a history.


The individual pieces are there, the transformation of the American atomic complex from a handful of scattered parts in the lates to an instrument capable of killing a nation inis a fascinating story of bureaucratic transformation.
The TellerUlam device is a masterpiece of precision engineering, directed towards evil ends, And there are personalities aplenty, from Teller to Oppenheimer to Curtis LeMay, The Russian atomic bomb effort was guided by plans stolen from Los Alamos by Klaus Fuchs, and the Rosenbergs paid with their lives for their minor part as couriers.
Yet, I had no real sense of the people, or the uncertain time of the age, I love this stuff, and this book was a struggle to get through, This is the worthy successor to Making of the Atomic Bomb focusing on Soviet espionage and the development of the Soviet atomic bomb Joe,their first thermonuclear test Joein, as well as the US story featuring Edward Teller, Stanislaw Ulam, Oppenheimer, Fermi, and many both familiar and new faces that made the colossal.
megaton Ivy Mike test ofa success, Finally, Rhodes spends the last chapter on exposition and epilogue,

The Soviet nuclear effort benefitted enormously from espionage and would not have succeeded as quickly as it did without it.
Rhodes spends most of his time on covert Communist scientist Klaus Fuchs and his courier who he only ever knew as "Raymond", Harry Gold.
BetweenandFuchs would funnel virtually all key Manhattan Project plans to the USSR where Stalin set up a parallel Los Alamos under quasiOppenheimer, Igor Kurchatov and quasiGroves, Lavrenti Beria.
Important innovations like use of a graphite as moderator and the implosion design were all directly lifted from the Americans.
Joewas essentially a copy of Fat Man dropped over Nagasaki in, Even the plane the Soviets wanted to use for delivery of their bomb, the Tu, was developed by reverse engineering a couple of US Bs that crashed over Siberia during the war.


I think contrasting the US and Soviet nuclear programs highlights what was and continues to be America's durable advantage in the world: the ability to take risks, disagree, and unleash creativity to create new knowledge.
Soviet scientists worked under Beria a screaming, angry, comic book style Soviet leader and Sarov was staffed by scientists who were essentially imprisoned and fed by gulag laborers.
The imperative was to make a bomb to match the Americans, It wasn't a place where you could take risks, It also doesn't seem like it was much fun! Meanwhile, Teller could go off on his own and disobey orders to start working on the Hbomb.
Groves gave his team a long leash, Scientists came and went from Los Alamos guided by their conscience and will, It was the kind of place where you would dare bring up the idea of e, g. an implosion device over a uranium gun design without fear that your head would be lopped off by an angry Georgian man.
Without making it too potted: I think that this disposition towards risk taking and our tolerance of free speech is what enables the US to consistently outinnovate the world.
This is also why our tradition of free speech is extremely valuable and why the idea of cancel culture is so poisonous.
Things like sitelinkthis Nature article can be recognized for the sentiment but that attitude cannot be tolerated.


Back to the story: in the US, an Edward Teller with a chip on his shoulder from his perceived snubs during the war pushes to develop a thermonuclear weapon in the wake of Joe.
A great debate ensues. Oppenheimer leads a group of scientists with strong consensus that there is no need for an Hbomb: "we thought a decision not to build a thermonuclear weapon would make it less likely the Russians would attempt it and less likely they would succeed in the undertaking".
Truman and the Joint Chiefs of Staff totally ignore the recommendation and fund it lavishly, By early, Norris Bradbury who had since replaced Oppenheimer and Edward Teller are reassembling the band, There are fewer takers this time around Bethe, Fermi, etc don't commit, Notably, the old Hungarian guard like Teller and von Neumann the Jewish Hungarians with the least trust of the Russians are the most eager to build

the bomb.


On November,, Ivy Mike explodes over the Marshall Islands and obliterates the entire island of Elugelab with.
megatons of force and a fireballmiles long and we enter the thermonuclear age, Rhode's description of the various steps in the bomb's detonationis beautiful in its concision and clarity, The Soviets detonate a device that is technically thermonuclear inbut much less potent and impossible to deliver.
In any event, we know how this story ends, By thes, the US and USSR are funneling considerable treasure into stockpiling weapons that nobody ever uses.
Even without the Hbomb by the lates we had enough nukes to level virtually every population center and industrial site in the USSR.


I find myself divided on the question of if the US should or should not have created the Hbomb.
On the one hand, that nuclear terrorism could exist is unsettling, And society's resources could have been marshaled towards other important programs instead of nukes, And, it seems clear that any leader authorizing the use of an Hbomb which is so powerful that virtually its only purpose is to obliterate massive population centers would not be able to maintain legitimacy.
On the other hand, authoritarian regimes with control of media and without history of free speech can manipulate a story however they want and perhaps become immune to that backlash.
And what if such an actor had a weapon that the United States didn't have There isn't a "right" answer here politics is about trade offs.
However, I lean towards the side of weapons development, I hope that we never do have to use thermonuclear weapons or any of the other modern tools of war built since.
But more intolerable than our own violence is leaving the free West without a goalkeeper, .