Nuclear Weapons
The journal "Science" publishes first report on nuclear winter
Residents of Earth receive a chilling early Christmas present on December 23, 1983, when a group of scientists including Carl Sagan releases a paper titled “Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions.” This publication introduces the concept of nuclear ...read more
8 Spies Who Leaked Atomic Bomb Intelligence to the Soviets
Even while joining forces with the United States and Britain against Nazi Germany during World War II, the Soviet Union launched a massive effort to collect intelligence on the secret Anglo-American atomic bomb program that would become the Manhattan Project. As part of ...read more
The Unsung African American Scientists of the Manhattan Project
During the height of World War II between 1942 and 1945, the U.S. government’s top-secret program to build an atomic bomb, code-named the Manhattan Project, cumulatively employed some 600,000 people, including scientists, technicians, janitors, engineers, chemists, maids and day ...read more
Photos: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Before and After the Bombs
In early August 1945, warfare changed forever when the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, devastating the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and killing more than 100,000 people. America’s immediate goal was to hasten Japan’s surrender, end World War II and avoid ...read more
Hiroshima, Then Nagasaki: Why the US Deployed the Second A-Bomb
Ever since America dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945, the question has persisted: Was that magnitude of death and destruction really needed to end World War II? American leadership apparently thought so. A few days earlier, just 16 hours after the ...read more
'Broken Arrow': When the First U.S. Atomic Bomb Went Missing
In 1950, an American B-36 bomber on a peace-time training mission crashed over British Columbia, Canada carrying a Mark IV atomic bomb, a weapon comparable in size to the nuke dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. According to testimonies from the surviving crew members, they had safely ...read more
Arms Race
An arms race occurs when two or more countries increase the size and quality of military resources to gain military and political superiority over one another. The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union is perhaps the largest and most expensive arms race in ...read more
How a British Secretary Who Spied for the Soviets Evaded Detection for 40 Years
In 1999, an 87-year-old British woman held a press conference in front of her home to announce that for nearly four decades, she’d worked as a spy for the Soviet Union. In fact, Melita Norwood was the Soviet Union’s longest-serving British spy. From World War II through the Cold ...read more
How the Three Mile Island Accident Was Made Even Worse By a Chaotic Response
For tellers at a Shrewsbury, Pennsylvania bank, the final days of March 1979 should have felt like business as usual. Instead, they were sheer chaos: customers piled up, trying to withdraw money in the days before ATMs. “Customers were stopping by with their cars packed up to ...read more
How George H.W. Bush Finished What Reagan Started in Ending the Cold War
Ronald Reagan is often lauded as the U.S. President who won the Cold War, by orchestrating a massive arms buildup that the Soviet Union couldn’t afford to match, and by giving a famous 1987 speech at the Brandenburg Gate in which he challenged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to ...read more
For 40 Minutes in 1971, It Seemed the End Was Near
What would happen if the United States were about to be hit by nuclear weapons? Hopefully, the government would provide some warning through the federal alert system. But that system hasn’t always been in place—and it hasn’t always worked. For over 40 minutes on February 20, ...read more
The Secret 'White Trains' That Carried Nuclear Weapons Around the U.S.
At first glance, the job posting looks like a standard help-wanted ad for a cross-country trucker. Up to three weeks a month on the road in an 18-wheel tractor-trailer, traveling through the contiguous 48 states. Risks include inclement weather, around-the-clock travel, and ...read more
How America Jump-Started Iran’s Nuclear Program
For several decades, the U.S. has sought to deter Iran from developing nuclear weapons. But ironically, the reason Iran has the technology to build these weapons in the first place is because the U.S. gave it to Iran between 1957 and 1979. This nuclear assistance was part of a ...read more
Bill Clinton Once Struck a Nuclear Deal With North Korea
President Bill Clinton took the podium on October 18, 1994, with aspeech that reads like a sigh of relief—the announcement of a landmark nuclear agreement between the United States and North Korea. “This agreement is good for the United States, good for our allies, and good for ...read more
Who Are the White Helmets?
The White Helmets comprise an unarmed, neutral organization of more than 3,000 volunteer rescue workers operating in opposition-held areas of Syria. When airstrikes rain down on civilian targets in the war-torn nation, the men and women of the White Helmets carry out ...read more
Museums Still Can’t Agree on How to Talk About the 1945 Atomic Bombing of Japan
Though an American and a Japanese museum that tell the story of the atomic bomb agree on the horrors of nuclear war, they can’t agree on whether to call for the abolition of the weapons that cause it. As a result, the Los Alamos Historical Museum—located in the New Mexico city ...read more
Harry Truman and Hiroshima: Inside His Tense A-Bomb Vigil
Ever since August 6, 1945, when the first atomic bomb detonated over Hiroshima, the human race has lived in fear of nuclear annihilation. In the annals of history, few events have had more import than this first atomic bombing, and no historical figure has been associated with ...read more
We’ve Been Talking About World War III Since Before Pearl Harbor
Ever since people began to speculate about “World War III,” its very name has implied its own inevitability. We talk about it not only as something that might happen, but something that will. And it’s been on our minds for a very long time. The phrase seems to have emerged during ...read more
Atomic Bomb History
The atomic bomb and nuclear bombs are powerful weapons that use nuclear reactions as their source of explosive energy. Scientists first developed nuclear weapons technology during World War II. Atomic bombs have been used only twice in war—both times by the United States against ...read more
“Father of the Atomic Bomb” Was Blacklisted for Opposing H-Bomb
On July 16, 1945, a team of scientists and engineers watched the first successful atomic bomb explosion at the Trinity test site in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The team, dubbed “The Manhattan Project,” had been secretly developing the weapon at the Los Alamos Laboratory during World ...read more
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was the code name for the American-led effort to develop a functional atomic weapon during World War II. The controversial creation and eventual use of the atomic bomb engaged some of the world’s leading scientific minds, as well as the U.S. military—and ...read more
Inside the Government’s Top-Secret Cold War Hideouts
As the Cold War heated up in the 1950s, the U.S. government devised top-secret plans to ensure its survival if the Soviet Union launched a nuclear attack. These “Continuity of Government” preparations included building dozens of underground bunkers and arranging to move ...read more
Live from Nevada…It’s an A-Bomb Test!
Millions of Americans who turned on their televisions on April 22, 1952, expecting to watch their favorite soap operas and game shows instead saw quite a change in programming. Rather than “Search for Tomorrow” or “Strike It Rich,” mushroom clouds flickered across black-and-white ...read more
The Man Who Survived Two Atomic Bombs
Tsutomu Yamaguchi was preparing to leave Hiroshima when the atomic bomb fell. The 29-year-old naval engineer was on a three-month-long business trip for his employer, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and August 6, 1945, was supposed to be his last day in the city. He and his ...read more