The Role of Nuclear Weapons in a Post Cold War World of Terr

The fiction of Wells was 24 years ahead of the discovery of fission when Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman, both German chemists, observed the generation of barium, an element with about one-half the mass and charge of uranium, after uranium was irradiated with slow neutrons. Their former colleague, Lise Meitner, a physicist working in Sweden because of Hitler’s oppression of the Jews, and her nephew, Otto Frisch, concluded that the nucleus of uranium had apparently fissioned with a release of about 200 MeV of energy. In comparison, chemical reactions only release about 5 eV per atom.

In 1942 Enrico Fermi and his team of scientists demonstrated in a Chicago laboratory that the neutrons released by the fissioning of uranium could be used to create a self sustaining chain reaction. In July of 1945 a team of scientists and engineers working under the command of General Groves on the Manhattan

US Policy began to shift subtlety in 1990 to also deter biological and chemical attacks when Saddam Hussein was threatened with the use of nuclear weapons during the Gulf War if he released his known weapons mounted on missiles aimed at Israel or American troops. The so-called “irrational” leader chose prudence over his “joy” of killing many foes. However, with the advent of Terrorist Martyrs in 2001, it became evident that the deterrence policy had serious flaws because radical groups might actually try to induce the US to respond with nuclear weapons from their release of biological weapons and thus trigger a larger conflict.

(1) Mankind could not survive the use of nuclear weapons. [This myth was perpetuated by the political left.] The concept of nuclear winter demonstrated the world’s resources would have been seriously taxed had the U.S. and Soviet Union exploded 100,000 nuclear warheads each with a yield of several hundred kilotons; however, civilization would have survived even this worst case scenario. Furthermore, both countries would have been beaten into submission well in advance of exhausting their stockpiles; therefore, this worst case scenario is beyond realism. The world obviously survived nuclear weapon use in Japan and the hundreds of above ground and underground nuclear weapons tests that were conducted during the 30 year period following the end of World War II. It is now clear tactical nuclear weapons can be selectively used with no serious long term impact on civilization.

(3) Nuclear weapons are so complex that any nation wanting a nuclear weapon would need to steal secrets from one of the nuclear powers or bribe an out-of-work Soviet nuclear scientist. [This myth has been perpetuated by the nuclear weapons community largely for budget reasons but also in an attempt to recapture the sense of self importance that was so strong in the early post World War II days in the nuclear weapons community.] It is the political science of nuclear weapons that is complex, not the physical science. The fields of nuclear engineering, nuclear physics and computational physics have graduated many scientists and engineers that are quite capable of figuring out how to design a nuclear weapon that would work. In fact, the tendency would be to over design the weapon. U.S. policy of not classifying basic research has led to numerous publicly available technical papers that the technically astute could use as a guide in building a nuclear weapon. The truth is that nuclear weapons are technically simpler than a modern automobile and the knowledge of how to make a crude weapon is widely available. If a nation state can procure fissile material, it can figure out how to design a nuclear weapon. That China would need Wen Ho Lee’s help to build a compact nuclear warhead is indisputably absurd and calls to question the intelligence, competence and character of numerous U.S. officials and contractors that argued the security of the U.S. had been put at risk by Dr. Lee’s alleged indiscretions.

(2) If n

Some topics in this essay:
Soviet Union, Russia China, War II, India Pakistan, Dr Lee’s, South Africa, Weapon Myths, nuclear weapons, Hiroshima Nagasaki, Enrico Fermi, Terrorist Martyrs, nuclear weapon, soviet union, terrorist threat, political left, tactical nuclear, nuclear weapons community, nuclear war, world war, weapons community, cold war, tactical nuclear weapons, perpetuated political left, world war ii, nuclear weapons myth,