The more we learn about top secret Cold War weapons, the more insane they seem. The race to build bigger nuclear weapons than the Soviet Union was crazy, until we had the capability of destroying the entire world many times over. The ultimate step was to design a weapon that would annihilate the earth and everyone in it in one fell swoop. Why would we do that? Just to have a bigger nuke than the Soviets.
Project Sundial was a project to develop just such a bomb. It, of course, could never be tested. And it didn't even have to be built, because the rumor of such a weapon was all we really needed. See, the arms race itself was based on fear of the terrifying weapons of the other side. Once we achieved weapons that assured suicide as well as offensive power, those in charge started to think that maybe we'd gone too far. Ya think? This video is 10:40, the rest is advertising.
Friday, November 08, 2024
The Apocalypse Bomb
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The USSR had much the same idea. I saw an interview with Nikita Kruschev's (son? grandson? nephew?) in which he described a casual chat with Khrushchev about his day and hearing Kruschev rant angrily about the "blood-lust" of USSR military scientists. They wanted funding for essentially a dirty bomb the size of an aircraft carrier. It would sail back and forth along the ocean coast, carrying a large sensor array aimed at Soviet territory. Should the sensors detect radiation or other signs of nuclear attack, the assumption would be that the USSR had been destroyed; should that happen the ship would detonate, creating enough fallout to cover the Earth in lethal radiation, exterminating all life. Khrushchev felt this was insane and refused to authorize further work on the project.
When people want to eliminate nukes remember the Ukraine had 1700 of them and agreed to give them up when the US, Russia and Great Britain agreed to defend the Ukraine from invasion. Finally completed, it 2 years before Putin attacked.
Sundial guarantees everyone dies would be a logical deterrent. The fly in the ointment is humans are not logical. It would only take one person whose spouse ran off with a ne’er do well and feeling nothing left to live for, to destroy the world. Think Dr Strangelove.
xoxoxoBruce
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