DailyDirt: It's 11:57pm... Do You Know Where Your Nuclear Bombs Are?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The Doomsday Clock says it's 3 minutes to midnight -- the same time it was in 1949. Sure, plenty of people are saying we're not building new nuclear bombs, and we have some pieces of paper that say some countries (ahem, Iran) aren't going to build new nukes. But... tick tock. Are we really any safer from nuclear self-annihilation?

• The US Air Force is developing an upgrade to the B61 thermonuclear bomb  called the B61-12. This new version has improved targeting capabilities due to a tail kit assembly that has GPS functionality, and some anti-nuke folks argue that the B61-12 is more than just an upgrade. [url]
• In 1957, we were still testing nuclear weapons above ground -- with human guinea pigs (not all volunteers) at ground zero to document the effects. It's pretty amazing how little we knew about radiation and yet still pressed on with crazy dangerous experiments. [url]
• Nine nuclear powers -- the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea -- control about 16,000 nuclear weapons, down from over 60,000 during the Cold War. That's still a lot to keep track of.. not to mention the ones we've simply lost over the years. What are a measly few nuclear bombs between friends, right? [url]

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Filed Under: b61, b61-12, bombs, doomsday clock, nuclear bombs, nuclear powers, nuclear testing, weapons

DailyDirt: Not So Secret Nuclear Weapons

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

As technology advances, it gets easier and easier to make all kinds of complicated things. Information spreads more easily, and it's more and more difficult to keep technology away from any particular group of people. It's an exciting time, but it could also be a bit scary. The knowledge of how to design and build nuclear weapons has existed for decades now, and more countries are developing their own nuclear weapons programs (sometimes with the help of other nuclear-capable countries). Here are just a few things that might keep you awake as the Doomsday Clock is just 5 minutes away from midnight.

• Saudi Arabia doesn't have its own nuclear weapons program, but it apparently has a standing order with Pakistan to buy some nuclear warheads. This arrangement isn't exactly transparent, but it's a situation that likely exists and may become more obvious if more Middle East countries develop nuclear weapons. [url]
• Back in the 1960s, the Nth Country Experiment set out to show how long it would take for a country to develop its own atomic bomb from scratch. In 1964, three PhDs in physics were given a support staff and publicly available information about nuclear weapons, and just three years later, these scientists had reasonable blueprints for a nuclear weapon. [url]
• Starfish Prime was part of a series of high-altitude nuclear bomb tests that detonated nuclear weapons over the Pacific Ocean in the 1960s. Starfish Prime demonstrated the effects of a 1.4 megaton nuclear bomb, by knocking out satellites and causing EMP problems for hundreds of miles -- and its blast has shown everyone the potential destructive power of an atomic bomb. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: atomic bomb, doomsday clock, emp, nth country experiment, nuclear, starfish prime, weapons