|
For a bit of non-near-apocalypse history, I saw a lecture tonight on Project Sapphire, which was a covert mission to recover/downblend nuclear weapons material from Kazakhstan after the dissolution of the Soviet Union - part of a larger effort to secure nuclear material from former Soviet states. The speaker's perspective was specifically IAEA safeguards and material accountancy and it sounds like they did a pretty good job there as far as controls go. For this type of situation, the biggest concerns are material theft and criticality safety, so there's a lot of process management to ensure that nothing is going missing and that you don't cause a criticality accident. I'm actually taking graduate classes on nuclear weapons effects and nuclear politics in the middle east at the moment so good timing on this thread. Just off the top of my head, here's some recommended reading if you're interested in nuclear weapons: The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes, this is a classic telling of how the bomb was developed, starting with the scientific developments of the late 19th/early 20th century. The Effects of Nuclear Weapons by Samuel Glasstone and Phillip Dolan, this is a technical guide to what happens when a nuclear bomb is detonated, with tons of graphs and tables. It describes how to calculate the extent of pretty much all the effects, from the prompt gammas to the fireball and the crater, etc. This book is actually cited several times in the FAQ for the NUKEMAP linked by McDowell. This really is the go-to text for calculating nuclear weapons effects. If you want a sort of quick and dirty but technical guide to the theory behind a nuclear bomb, read The Los Alamos Primer, which has been required reading in at least 3 of my classes. I especially recommend this if you have a technical background and a decent grasp of geometry/kinematics. Very quick read. I can probably also give recommendations on specific topics of people are interested. Nuclear weapons and their history are really interesting because on the one hand, it shows our capacity for amazing ingenuity and genius when we really need it; on the other hand, it shows our terrible incompetence when managing such a large responsibility and sometimes apocalyptic situations are avoided by sheer luck. I guess that's just humanity! Phayray fucked around with this message at 02:46 on Oct 27, 2015 |
#
¿
Oct 27, 2015 02:43
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 18, 2024 18:41 |
|