Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb

Again, following The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Rhodes has done a fantastic job of taking us back to the early days of the nuclear age. The constant underlying theme is that there were alternatives to the constant mutual nuclear terror under which we live every day, but which thankfully, for the sake of our mental and emotional health, we (mostly) don’t obsess over. Were those alternatives ever realistic? Perhaps not. But history has a way of making seem inevitable that which really happened.Part One of this book focusses on Soviet espionage up to the end of World War II. Because of such men as Fuchs, Gold and others, the Soviets had a pretty good idea of what was going on with American bomb developments and were able to “piggyback” and greatly accelerate their own bomb program. Little attention is paid to the details of the American programs at places such as Los Alamos and Oak Ridge, probably because Rhodes has already described these in The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Perhaps the most startling (to me) revelation here is that on August 12, three days after Nagasaki, the U.S. released a report on the Manhattan Project that supplied the Soviet Union with information “nearly equivalent” to that which the Soviets had acquired through espionage during the war.Part Two is a history of the early Cold War years, usually in the context of the development of nuclear weapons. Perhaps most surprising was the meagerness of the U.S.’s nuclear force in the early years. As Lilienthal told Truman, “[T]his defense did not exist. There was no stockpile.” There were no weapons, just “piles of pieces.” At least this one bit of information apparently did not make it to the Soviets, who were busy trying to steal every bit they could. Rhodes describes the attempts at control of atomic weapons at least until 1947, the overriding growing mutual suspicion and distrust between the US and USSR, and the meeting of scientific and mathematical challenges culminating in the “Super,” or hydrogen bomb. We learn, among other things, that the initial problem assigned to the world’s first working electronic digital computer, ENIAC, was the hydrogen bomb. We learn also that there was serious opposition to building the hydrogen bomb at all.Part Three takes us through the designs and tests of the first hydrogen bombs, by the US and USSR, to the Cuban Missile Crisis. The scientific details of the design of “Mike,” the US thermonuclear that vaporized the island of Elugelab in 1952, are as horrifying as they are fascinating. Throughout, Rhodes explores the dichotomy between those who perceived the mutually destructive futility of a nuclear arms race, and those who pushed for ever more bombs with ever bigger “yield.” As Rhodes points out, “nuclear weapons are not cannonballs; how many times could either country be destroyed?” Many of those, like Oppenheimer, who had the vision to perceive the ultimate futility of the arms race were blacklisted and/or persecuted.Rhodes asks a fundamental question: “If real political leaders understood from one end of the Cold War to the other that even one hydrogen bomb was sufficient deterrence, why did they allow the arms race to devour the wealth of the nation while it increased the risk of an accidental Armageddon?” The answer for both sides is essentially the power of the military-industrial complex about which Eisenhower warned: “Far more influential on the US side were such domestic political phenomena as competition among the military services, coalitions of scientific and industrial organizations promoting new technologies, the pressure of ‘defense’ as a political issue and defense spending to prime the economic pump, particularly in election years. Similar patterns obtained along somewhat different lines for the Soviet command economy.”Still, Rhodes ends on an optimistic note. While the world will not soon be free of nuclear weapons because they serve so many purposes, “as instruments of destruction, they have long been obsolete.” One can only hope that he’s right. But it’s been only just over three-quarters of a century since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I'm about halfway through (pp300 or so) and it's a fantastic book written in Rhodes usual style which manages to narrate history in a way that keeps you wanting to know what's next. However, the reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5, and perhaps this is my own expectation, is that it is not so much like The Making of the Atomic Bomb. The first 250 pages jump between the Soviet Union's atomic bomb program and how much it depended on espionage from the US, as well as post-WWII atomic policy (and a little about the organizational structure of weapons development at LANL) in the US and the world. There's very little exposure to the science so far, which is markedly different from his first book on atomic weapons, and something I enjoyed greatly. Don't get me wrong; the policy aspects are also fascinating, especially given how much interest there was in building up a huge nuclear stockpile, including by secretly forcing Britain to give up their uranium supplies in return for helping them rebuild after they fought WWII (the agreement was kept from the United Nations so as to not alert other countries)In fact, one thing that surprised me was the intent on planning for the next war after WWII. It's been a long time since my last history class, but I remember that there was very little support for entering WWII in the years leading up to Pearl Harbor, and, after the war, according to Dark Sun, there was much hoo-ha about being prepared for the next war, in a way that seemed focussed on the offensive. I'm assuming these were different groups of people.

Dark Sun is put together by a master storyteller. His knowledge of the events and the ability to put them together in an interesting and authoritative way is breathtaking. The story here is about the development of the bomb, the spies that spread the knowledge across the world and the relationships among the scientists and their relatives. One is left with the belief that if one has the resources and is willing the commit them, it must not be too hard to develop the bomb. If one uses centrifuges to separate isotopes, for instance, one need not have just a few tens or hundreds of these but thousands or hundreds of thousands. The dozen or so hydrogen bomb nations indicate this. We are not aware of anyone failing to become an a nuclear bomb nation so one must dismiss the extreme difficulty of the design. It must come down to the extreme difficulty of amassing the resources.The development of a safe delivery system is probably even more demanding but this is not his prime concern in the book. Without bombers or ICBM's as operational delivery systems, the bomb would be still-born. One is expected to have quick reaction bombers on alert, missiles in launch holes, submarines with multiple missiles and bombs, etc. This brings it down to a massive array of bombs, delivery systems and trained people to operate the systems flawlessly and without failures. Therein is the rub. People are fallible. Procedures are inadequate or ignored. Fail-safe arming and fusing systems are not up to the task. Maintenance requirements demand people interact with the bomb and elements of the delivery system often. Each interaction seems to be an accident waiting to happen. Surely the design of the bomb and delivery system can be better than presently fielded. Wiping out a few cities by a nuclear bomb accident will not determine the victors in such a war. Probably, A single bomb can cause the victim's government to fall. At least, that was the lesson of Japan. The U.S. was said to have about 44,000 in our arsenal at one time. The transportation of such a plethora alone puts us at great risk.Further, people are making decisions every day at the general flag level. Every time we learn the insides of presidential systems, it is appalling how many of the decision-makers follow Gen. Curtiss Lemay's advice to bomb them back to the stone age.Joel Dobson's book, Broken Arrow, indicates how that operational system reacts to a nuclear accident, This time a Titan, a liquid propulsion missile. He suggests and illustrates how dysfunctional the operation can be.Mister Rhodes obviously has the capability of putting the story together of the operational considerations and how they put us at risk. We hope he addresses many of the larger issues in the future.Meanwhile, this book is the best read available and forces us all to think about this source of energy. This book is highly recommended.

President Franklin Delano Roosvelt was very smar and he could sense the technology rapid advancement , and he knew the isolationism policy has already become invalid , and president Roovelt after receiving Albert Einstein 's Letter , he immediately started the Manhattan Project .

Buen libro. Llego antes de lo esperado

Well written und superbly researched. Gives deep inside put into historical perspective.In short: a must to read for the historically minded

Excellent book, well documented on the genesis of A and H bombs. The Making of the Atomic Bob by the same author is excellent too.

Good comprehensive history narrated well