Happy Nice Mall

Sixty years ago on Saturday, the Soviet Union exploded world’s most powerful nuclear weapon, with a force 3,333 times the bomb used in Hiroshima. As the device shattered all records, it sent shock waves through the American defense agency: How should the United States react? Did the nation need bigger, more destructive weapons? Was it wise to do nothing? What was the best way to protect the nation from the deadly acts of a belligerent enemy?

American policymakers now face similar questions daring competitors pursue new distribution systems for nuclear weapons. A new study based on recently declassified documents offers insights into how a previous president solved a similar dilemma. The report shows that the secret discussion about what to do about the unprecedented Soviet explosion was ended by President John F. Kennedy. He chose not only to ignore the military’s calls for more deadly weapons, but also to sponsor and sign an East-West treaty that would prevent more superweapons.

“He went all the way to the top” Alex Wellerstein, a nuclear historian at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ, and the study’s author, said in an interview. “It’s clear that Kennedy is on the fence. But he decided not to go in the direction of the bomb.”

Andrew Cohen, author of “Two Days of June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours That Made History,” Dr. He said that Wellerstein lays out “an gruesome, sober, and illuminating, untold story.” Mr. Cohen’s book It reveals the axis of diplomacy that helped make the president’s groundbreaking arms deal possible in 1963. He added that the disclosure of Kennedy’s calculated failure to respond to aggressive clamor showed “deep disgust at nuclear weapons.”

The explosive power of the Soviet device, called the Tsar Bomb or the Tsar’s bomb, which launched on October 30, 1961, was equal to 50 megatons or 50 million tons of conventional explosives. Last year, the Russian nuclear energy agency Rosatom, It was published 30 minutes, formerly secret documentary video It showed the readiness and detonation of this mega gun. The blinding glow and churning mushroom cloud hinted at its immense strength. Its radioactivity splashed into the stratosphere and traveled the world for years.

Inside his work, published on Friday Bulletin of Atomic ScientistsDr. Wellerstein demonstrates that the Soviets were not the only nuclear power to devise such astonishing explosives; The United States had long secretly prepared to follow the same path.

By definition, plans for American unthinkable weapons focused on hydrogen bombs, which were revived on some level in the years after WWII. about 1,000 times It was as devastating as the nuclear weapons dropped on Japan. Making more powerful weapons required trial-and-error tests that detected problems and allowed bomb designers to come up with fixes and workarounds.

Wellerstein quotes Edward TellerAt the 1954 meeting of the Atomic Energy Commission, one of the main architects of the hydrogen bomb, announced that his laboratory was working on the design of two super bombs. One would be 1,000 megatons – or 20 times as powerful as the planetary shaker the Soviets would detonate in 1961. The other would be 10,000 megatons, or 200 times more destructive.

Dr. Citing an official record, Wellerstein writes that the scientists at the secret meeting were “‘shocked’ by his suggestion.” “Most of Teller’s testimony has remained confidential to this day,” he adds.

Lobbying intensified as the army added its voice. Dr. Wellerstein notes that in 1958 the chief of staff of the Air Force called for a review of weapons weighing up to 1,000 megatons. A once-secret Air Force chronicler said enthusiasm for the giant gun had cooled as the study found that “deadly radioactivity may not be found within the borders of an enemy state.”

When Kennedy took office in January 1961, plans for a smaller superbomb became more elaborate. Dr. Wellerstein reported that the new president was told that a 100-megaton gun would be six feet wide and 12 feet long—easy for a large bomber to carry and drop.

The explosion of the Tsar Bomb in October 1961 gave the matter a new urgency. Dr. Wellerstein said a scientist at the Sandia weapons lab, one of the country’s three design centers for nuclear weapons, reported that the US military wanted superbombs “although no known target justifies such weapons.”

In late 1962, defense minister Dr. Wellerstein, Robert S. McNamarahas been informed that the Atomic Energy Commission is ready to build the American equivalent of a Tsar Bomb. The Commission reported that the experimental devices would be ready for explosive testing by the end of 1963.

That year, President Kennedy came to find a way out of the impending arms race. To end the deadly radiation fluctuations from atmospheric testing, and Cancer waves and other diseases that follow for downwind people, government nuclear experts had learned how to detonate their device underground in Nevada.

Rocky ground can bottle up relatively small blasts, but not those of superbombs whose enormous energies and kilometers-wide fireballs burn, shattering hard rocks and blasting radiation into the air. The Nevada region conducted underground weapons tests until the long series ended in 1991 with the end of the Cold War.

In June 1963, Kennedy outlined his vision for a partial test ban agreement with the Soviets that would limit nuclear testing to underground facilities.

“I’m announcing now,” he said. A talk at American University“The United States does not recommend conducting nuclear tests in the atmosphere unless other states do so.” The statement added that “it is not a substitute for a formal binding agreement, but hopefully it will help us achieve one.”

He did. An agreement with Moscow was negotiated and approved by the Senate. On October 7, 1963, Kennedy signed the agreement into effect. “First time,” said“We were able to reach an agreement that could limit the dangers of this age.”

Forty-six days later, a sniper bullet ended the Kennedy era. But the massive global rejection of atmospheric tests has resulted in hundreds of nuclear explosions being sent to the underworld. Russia never broke the agreement. France and China never signed and executed recent atmospheric tests In 1974 and 1980, India, Pakistan and North Korea conducted all their nuclear tests underground.

Dr. “It has become the norm,” Wellerstein said of the underground approach, “and so are the smaller warheads.”

He said that if the future of superbombs is now forgotten and unfamiliar, it’s important to remember as an object lesson how ridiculously dangerous the nuclear arms race once threatened to become.

Dr. “The Tsar Bomba is dead,” Wellerstein said in his study. “Long live the Tsar Bomba.”