04-24-2007, 02:44 PM
foreword: I'm bored.
So, I've always had an interest in the Golden Age of Nuclear weapons and technology, and the cold war in general. I've been reading this book called The Nuclear Predicament that was published before the end of the cold war. Basically it's compiled from a bunch of essays from various sources - and has some good insight on just how close the world came to having a serious problem.
"I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds" - Oppenheimer, right after trinity blew up.
"As for China, if the imperialists unleash war on us, we may lose more than three hundred million people. So what? War is war, the years will pass, and we'll get to work producing more babies than ever before" - Mao Tse-Tung (obviously pro baby)
And don't think the U.S. was taking a strictly defense stance either. LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command totally adopted a "use 'em or lose 'em" attitude when it came to our resources, and said if he saw a buildup happening, he was not going to seek approval before "knocking the shit out of them" which totally went against policy - but who's going to stop him? Soviet Union had a political party in place that *looked democratic, but in reality the General Secretary held all the power, and dismissed anyone political, or military, who was against him, so basically if he wanted to use anything, he had no opposition.
And just for kicks, here's some video of Ivy Mike, the first fusion device(thermonuke) (which wasnt totally fusion...just had a fusion booster)
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.archive.org/details/OperationIVY1952">http://www.archive.org/details/OperationIVY1952</a><!-- m -->
This had a yield of just over 10 megatons. The ruskies have exploded weapons of 50 megatons yield. And they have more weapons than us by about 6,000...which presumably all have larger yield, but are less accurate. (9500 us, 16000 them)
That's a hell of a thing to think about.
So, I've always had an interest in the Golden Age of Nuclear weapons and technology, and the cold war in general. I've been reading this book called The Nuclear Predicament that was published before the end of the cold war. Basically it's compiled from a bunch of essays from various sources - and has some good insight on just how close the world came to having a serious problem.
"I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds" - Oppenheimer, right after trinity blew up.
"As for China, if the imperialists unleash war on us, we may lose more than three hundred million people. So what? War is war, the years will pass, and we'll get to work producing more babies than ever before" - Mao Tse-Tung (obviously pro baby)
And don't think the U.S. was taking a strictly defense stance either. LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command totally adopted a "use 'em or lose 'em" attitude when it came to our resources, and said if he saw a buildup happening, he was not going to seek approval before "knocking the shit out of them" which totally went against policy - but who's going to stop him? Soviet Union had a political party in place that *looked democratic, but in reality the General Secretary held all the power, and dismissed anyone political, or military, who was against him, so basically if he wanted to use anything, he had no opposition.
And just for kicks, here's some video of Ivy Mike, the first fusion device(thermonuke) (which wasnt totally fusion...just had a fusion booster)
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.archive.org/details/OperationIVY1952">http://www.archive.org/details/OperationIVY1952</a><!-- m -->
This had a yield of just over 10 megatons. The ruskies have exploded weapons of 50 megatons yield. And they have more weapons than us by about 6,000...which presumably all have larger yield, but are less accurate. (9500 us, 16000 them)
That's a hell of a thing to think about.
2013 Cadillac ATS....¶▅c●▄███████||▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅||█~ ::~ :~ :►
2008 Chevy Malibu LT....▄██ ▲ █ █ ██▅▄▃▂
1986 Monte Carlo SS. ...███▲▲ █ █ ███████
1999 F250 SuperDuty...███████████████████►
1971 Monte Carlo SC ...◥☼▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙☼◤
2008 Chevy Malibu LT....▄██ ▲ █ █ ██▅▄▃▂
1986 Monte Carlo SS. ...███▲▲ █ █ ███████
1999 F250 SuperDuty...███████████████████►
1971 Monte Carlo SC ...◥☼▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙☼◤
