A Nuclear History Blog
I ve been working on upgrades to the NUKEMAP for several years now, but I actually would like to get them implemented this year. I figured that one way to both make this invisible work visible to the rest of the world would be to write about it on here, and that this would also, perhaps, [ ]
This is just a brief post to make sure I have announced on here formally that my new book from HarperCollins is now on sale! The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age (HarperCollins, 2025) is a new and provocative and possibly controversial take on Harry Truman and his role in US atomic policy, [ ]
Understanding how much fissile material — enriched uranium and separated plutonium — was produced, and at what time, by the Manhattan Project is one of those seemingly-obscure technical questions that comes with a lot of important historical implications. It is what determined the scheduling of the bombings, for one thing. For another, it is how [ ]
I realized I haven t updated things here for a long while, and that it would be worth consolidating a few overdue news updates. First and foremost, if you want to read things from me on a more regular basis, you should be reading Doomsday Machines, which is another blog of mine, and is much more [ ]
I happened to look at a slide deck from Sandia National Laboratories from 2007 that someone had posted on Reddit late last night (you know, as one does, instead of sleeping), and one particular slide jumped out at me: It s a little graphic advertising the different kinds of modeling software that are part of something [ ]
I have been busy this summer (and spring, and the winter before that and the fall before that and the summer before that ), but one of the things I ve been busy with has finally launched: Doomsday Machines, a new blog dedicated to exploring the post-apocalyptic imagination from several different perspectives. It will include discussions of [ ]
The city of Kyoto was the only great city of Japan to be spared serious bombing during World War II, despite being among the top targets preferred for the atomic bomb, thanks to the unprecedented and extraordinary efforts by the Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, to protect it. I have written at length on [ ]
When I learned several months ago that Daniel Ellsberg had pancreatic cancer, and was opting not to treat it, I was not quite sure what I ought to do. I consider it a great honor that I got to spend several days with Ellsberg, a few years back, and was periodically in touch with him [ ]
One of the sleeper news items of last week was that the Department of Energy officially vacated the Atomic Energy Commission decision that stripped J. Robert Oppenheimer of his security clearance in 1954. It did come as a surprise to me. I knew that there was a campaign to overturn Oppenheimer s clearance loss — I [ ]
This is second post of a two part series on this topic. Click here for part one. Did the Japanese offer to surrender before the atomic bombs were dropped in August 1945? In my first post earlier this week, I gave what we might call the standard diplomatic history answer: no, they didn t. There were [ ]
