POS 304/404: Great Power Politics – Spring 2010 – Weapons of Mass Destruction – Nuclear and Thermonuclear Weapons.

Development:

• “Historic Cyclotron”, at UC Berkeley, a 1967 Photograph by Ansel Adams.
• Einstein’s August 2nd, 1939 letter to FDR recommending the development of the atomic bomb.
• Manhattan Engineering District (aka The Manhattan Project), which evolved into Argonne National Laboratory.
• Enrico Fermi who was in charge of running Chicago Pile No. 1 (CP-1).
  • Enrico Fermi Institute.
  • University of Chicago Physics Department page on the Manhattan Project.
    • Who was there when the pile went critical? Here’s a list.
    • A photo of the pile:
  • Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
• Hanford.
• Idaho National Engineering Laboratory.
• Lawrence- Berkeley National Laboratory.
• Lawrence-Livermore National Laboratory.
• Los Alamos National Laboratories and their On-Line Library of Publications.
• Sandia Laboratories.
• Pantex Laboratories.
• Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Espionage and Counter-Espionage.

• Espionage and Counter-Espionage Activities within United States Territory.
• National Security Awareness Program, ANSIR,.
• Federal Bureau of Investigation runs this program.
• National Nuclear Security Administration.
  • Department of Energy.
• VENONA. Joint NSA-FBI Interception Program aimed at Soviet Espionage within United States.
  • National Security Agency.

Testing.

• DOE’s Nevada Operations Office.
• Note: The northeastern edge of the Nevada Test Site and Nellis Air Force base are both near the highly classified US military installations Area 51, and Area S-4, a cluster of facilities known as “Groomlake” or “Dreamland”.
  • Read the State of Nevada Tourist Department’s Guide to visiting the area.
  • Some people like Norio Hayakawa, “Groomlake and Area 51 researcher”, who desigend the “Groomwatch” website, allege some “unusual” tests are being conducted at both Area 51 and S-4.
  • The denouement of the film ID4 (Independence Day) takes place on, and above, a fictionalized version of Area 51.
  • The 11/29/98 and 12/06/98 Dreamland I and II) episodes of the X-Files take place in and around a fictionalized version of Area 51 and S-4.
  • The science fiction weekly series Seven Days is set in a fictionalized version of Area 51 and S-4.
• Marshall Islands Program,  DOE’s attempt to clean up the mess left by thermonuclear tests on the islands of Bikini, Enewetak, Rongelap, and Utirik.
• Department of Energy’s Office of Radiation Experiments Website, “which contains efforts to tell the agency’s Cold War story of radiation research using human subjects”.

Command and Control of Nuclear and Thermonuclear Weaponry.

• White House.
• National Security Council.
• Department of Defense, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
• Department of State.
• Department of Energy.
• Air Force/Air Force FOIA Site: Air Combat Command, US Strategic Command _{(formerly SAC)} , Air Force Space Command, NORAD, (housed in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado).
• Navy.
• Army: Army Intelligence.
• Marines.

Use in Terrorism, Intrastate, or Interstate Military Conflict.

• United States’ first use of nuclear weapons in war: nuclear strikes against Hiroshima and Nagasaki./li>
• Cold War.

Cultural Representations of the Use of These Weapons.

• Fiction.
• Movies:
  • On the Beach.
  • Dr. Strangelove.
  • Failsafe.
  • Colosus.
  • Terminator(s) 1, 2, 3, 4.
  • Miracle Mile.
  • Threads.
  • Independence Day.
  • The Peacemaker.
  • Armageddon.
• Photo Essays:
  • Atomic Spaces:  Site featuring a brief overview of the book Atomic Spaces and some photos of the Manhattan project constructed by its author Prof. Peter Bacon Hales at the University of Illinois, Chicago Art History Dept.

Select Bibliography.

• Rhodes, Richard’s
  • The Making of the Atomic Bomb (amazon).
  • Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (amazon).

Select Websites.

• National Resources Defense Council: Statistical Information on the US, Soviet/Russian, and Global nuclear stockpiles.
• National Museum of Nuclear Science and History at Kirkland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico.
• Race for the Superbomb. PBS‘s American Experience produced this website in conjunction with a documentary film by the same title first aired Monday, January 11, 1999.
• Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
• The Atomic Archive.