Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
Embedded Files
Sources – Sundial
Sources – Sundial
We thank our expert for their feedback:
Professor Alex Wellerstein
Director of Science and Technology Studies, College of Arts and Letters, Stevens Institute of Technology
—In the 1950s the US began the top secret project Sundial, most of it is still classified. The goal: a single nuclear bomb so powerful it would destroy all of human civilization. Conceived in cold logic from the mind of a genius scientist.
Sundial is a paper concept proposed in a secret 1954 meeting of the Atomic Energy Commission by Edward Teller. It would have a yield of 10,000 megatons. We only have a few details collected by Alex Wellerstein, our helpful expert on this script.
#Wellerstein, Alex (2021): “An Unearthly Spectacle: The untold story of the world’s biggest nuclear bomb” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
https://thebulletin.org/2021/11/the-untold-story-of-the-worlds-biggest-nuclear-bomb/
Quote: “[I]n July 1954, Teller made it clear he thought 15 megatons was child’s play. At a secret meeting of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission, Teller broached, as he put it, “the possibility of much bigger bangs.” At his Livermore laboratory, he reported, they were working on two new weapon designs, dubbed Gnomon and Sundial. Gnomon would be 1,000 megatons and would be used like a “primary” to set off Sundial, which would be 10,000 megatons.”
#Wellerstein, Alex (2012): “In Search of a Bigger Boom” Restricted data: A Nuclear History Blog
https://web.archive.org/web/20240613165534/https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/09/12/in-search-of-a-bigger-boom/
Quote: “In the summer of 1954, representatives from Los Alamos and the new Livermore lab met with the General Advisory Committee [(GAC)] to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Operation Castle had just been conducted and had proven two things: 1. very large (10-15 megaton or so), deliverable hydrogen bombs could be produced with dry fusion fuel. Livermore still couldn’t design successful nuclear weapons.
[...]
When Teller met with the GAC, he also pushed for smaller bombs, but he thought there was still plenty of room on the high end of the scale. To be fair, Teller was probably feeling somewhat wounded: Livermore’s one H-bomb design at Castle had been a dud, and the AEC had cancelled another one of his designs that was based on the same principle. So he did what only Edward Teller could do: he tried to raise the ante, to be the bold idea man. Cancel my H-bomb? How about this: he proposed a 10,000 megaton design.
Which is to say, a 10 gigaton design. Which is to say, a bomb that would detonate with an explosive power some 670,000 times the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.
If he was trying to shock the GAC, it worked. From the minutes of the meeting:
“Dr. Fisk said he felt the Committee could endorse [Livermore’s] small weapon program. He was concerned, however, about Dr. Teller’s 10,000 MT gadget and wondered what fraction of the Laboratory’s effort was being expended on the [deleted]. Mr. Whitman had been shocked by the thought of a 10,000 MT; it would contaminate the earth.”
The “deleted” portion above is probably the names of two of the devices proposed — according to Chuck Hansen, these were GNOMON and SUNDIAL.”
—Sundial had the energy equivalent to 10 billion tons of TNT.
The energy released from nuclear bombs is usually so enormous that we don’t use joules to describe it, but ‘TNT equivalent’.
#Encyclopedia Britannica: “Nuclear Weapon” (retrieved 2024)
https://www.britannica.com/technology/nuclear-weapon
Quote: “Nuclear weapons produce enormous explosive energy. Their significance may best be appreciated by the coining of the words kiloton (1,000 tons) and megaton (1,000,000 tons) to describe their blast energy in equivalent weights of the conventional chemical explosive TNT.”
#Wellerstein, Alex (2021): “An Unearthly Spectacle: The untold story of the world’s biggest nuclear bomb” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
https://thebulletin.org/2021/11/the-untold-story-of-the-worlds-biggest-nuclear-bomb/
Quote: “Gnomon would be 1,000 megatons and would be used like a “primary” to set off Sundial, which would be 10,000 megatons.”
—A pyramid of explosives thirteen times taller than the actual Great Pyramid.
The energy released from nuclear bombs is usually so enormous that we don’t use joules to describe it, but ‘TNT equivalent’.
#Encyclopedia Britannica: “Nuclear Weapon” (retrieved 2024)
https://www.britannica.com/technology/nuclear-weapon
Quote:“Nuclear weapons produce enormous explosive energy. Their significance may best be appreciated by the coining of the words kiloton (1,000 tons) and megaton (1,000,000 tons) to describe their blast energy in equivalent weights of the conventional chemical explosive TNT.”
TNT has a density of 1.65 g/cm³
#PubChem: “2,4,6-Trinitrotoluene: Density” (retrieved 2024)
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/2_4_6-Trinitrotoluene#section=Density
or 1650 kg/m³.
Thus, Sundial’s 10 billion tons, or 1013 kg, of TNT, would have a volume of
1013 kg / (1650 kg/m³) = 6 × 109 m³
The Great Pyramid of Giza has a volume of
147 m × (230 m)2 /3 = 2.6 × 106 m³
#Encyclopedia Britannica: “Pyramids of Giza” (retrieved 2024)
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pyramids-of-Giza
Quote:“Called the Great Pyramid, it is the largest of the three, the length of each side at the base averaging 755.75 feet (230 metres) and its original height being 481.4 feet (147 metres).”
Assuming both pyramids have the same shape, the height ratio is
TNT pyramid height/ Great Pyramid height =
=(TNT pyramid volume/ Great Pyramid volume)⅓
= (6 ×109 m³/ 2.6 × 106 m³)⅓= 13
—Three thousand times more than all the bombs dropped during World War II.
All the bombs dropped during WWII are estimated to add up to the equivalent of 3 million tons of TNT.
#Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation (2021): “Fact Sheet: The Nuclear Triad”
https://armscontrolcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Nuclear-Triad.pdf
Quote: “[A]ll explosives dropped during the six years of World War II, including the two
nuclear weapons, equaled three megatons”
Sundial’s 10 billion tons of TNT would be over 3000 times that total.
1010 ton / (3×106 ton) = 3 × 103
Other sources claim similar estimates for only the Allied explosives, also including the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
#Higginbotham, Adam (2016): “There Are Still Thousands of Tons of Unexploded Bombs in Germany, Left Over From World War II” Smithsonian Magazine
As this value is hard to estimate, we settled on the widely cited figure by the Arms Control Center.
—If you dropped the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima every minute, it’d take you over 15 months to match Sundial.
The Little Boy nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a yield equivalent to 15 thousand tons of TNT. Sundial aimed for the energy of 666,666 Little Boy bombs.
#U.S. Department of Energy: “The atomic bomb of Hiroshima” The Manhattan Project: An Interactive History
https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1945/hiroshima.htm
Quote: “In the early morning hours of August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber named Enola Gay took off from the island of Tinian and headed north by northwest toward Japan. The bomber's primary target was the city of Hiroshima, located on the deltas of southwestern Honshu Island facing the Inland Sea.
[...]
The yield of the explosion was later estimated at 15 kilotons (the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT).”
1010 ton / (15 × 103 ton) = 6.7 × 105
Thus, Sundial had the explosive power of 6.7 × 105 bombs like the one dropped on Hiroshima, Little Boy.
6.7 × 105 minutes /(60 minutes an hour × 24 hours a day × 30 day a month) = 15. 4 months
So, if one dropped a bomb like Little Boy every minute it would take 15. 4 months to deploy the same explosive power as the Sundial bomb would have.
– Let’s set the stage. If you were 40 in 1945 you had been born in 1905 – back then monarchs ruled over much of the world, only 3% of homes in the US had electricity, Cities were dominated by horses, the first experimental planes has just flown. Less than a hundred thousand soldiers died in war each year.
In 1905, much of the world was under closed autocracies, meaning that citizens could not choose either the chief executive of the government or the legislature through multi-party elections. Many of these autocracies were monarchies, empires, or colonies.
#Our World in Data (2024): “World Map by Political regime, 1905, Based on the classification by Lührmann et al. (2018) and the estimates by V-Dem’s experts.”
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/political-regime?time=1905
#Bailey, Martha J.; Collins, William J. (2011): “Did Improvements in Household Technology Cause the Baby Boom? Evidence from Electrification, Appliance Diffusion, and the Amish”, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics vol. 3, 2, pp. 189–217 https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w14641/w14641.pdf
Quote: “only 3 percent of homes had electrical service in 1900”
#Kilby, Emily R. (2007): “The Demographics of the U.S. Equine Population“ n. In D.J. Salem & A.N. Rowan (Eds.), The state of the animals 2007 (pp. 175-205). Washington, DC: Humane Society Press.
https://www.americanequestrian.com/pdf/US-Equine-Demographics.pdf
The first powered airplane flight took place on December 17th, 1903.
#Encyclopedia Britannica: “Wright flyer of 1903” (retrieved 2024)
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Wright-flyer-of-1903
#Our World in Data (2022): “Deaths in wars, World, 1900-1910”
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-in-wars-project-mars?time=1900..1910
— Imagine growing up in this world and seeing change almost too fast to keep up with. By 1945 24 million soldiers and 50 million civilians had died in two world wars.
The two World Wars caused about 25 million military and 48 million civilian deaths.
#Encyclopedia Britannica: “World War I: The last offensives and the Allies’ victory: Killed, wounded, and missing” (retrieved 2024)
https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-I/Killed-wounded-and-missing
Quote: “The casualties suffered by the participants in World War I dwarfed those of previous wars: some 8,500,000 soldiers died as a result of wounds and/or disease.
[...]
It has been estimated that the number of civilian deaths attributable to the war was higher than the military casualties, or around 13,000,000. These civilian deaths were largely caused by starvation, exposure, disease, military encounters, and massacres.”
#U.S. Defense Casualty Analysis System: “Conflict Casualties: World War II” (retrieved 2024)
https://dcas.dmdc.osd.mil/dcas/app/conflictCasualties/ww2
Quote: “World War II was the largest and most violent military conflict in human history. Official casualty sources estimate battle deaths at nearly 15 million military personnel and civilian deaths at over 38 million.”
—And suddenly there were TV, microwaves, jet planes and… nuclear bombs.
The first microwave patent is from 1945.
#American Physical Society: “This Month in Physics History: October 8, 1945: First Patent for the Microwave” (retrieved 2024)
https://www.aps.org/archives/publications/apsnews/201510/physicshistory.cfm
The first patent for a cathode-ray television was filled in 1923, and the first demonstration took place in 1927
#Encyclopedia Britannica: “Television: The development of television systems: Electronic systems” (retrieved 2024)
https://www.britannica.com/technology/television-technology/Electronic-systems
The first jet plane flew in 1939.
#Gavrieli, Kfir; Salim, Nora; Yañez, Armando (2004): “The Jet Engine, a Historical Introduction: Jet Planes and World War II” (retrieved 2024)
https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/ww2/projects/jet-airplanes/planes.html
Quote: “A young German physicist, Hans von Ohain, worked for Ernst Heinkel, specializing in advanced engines, to develop the world's first jet plane, the experimental Heinkel He 178. It first flew on August 27, 1939.”
The first nuclear bomb detonation was on July 16, 1945 with the Trinity test.
#Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center: “Trinity: World’s First Nuclear Test" (retrieved 2024)
https://www.afnwc.af.mil/About-Us/History/Trinity-Nuclear-Test/
Quote: “The world's first nuclear explosion occurred on July 16, 1945, when a plutonium implosion device was tested at a site located 210 miles south of Los Alamos, New Mexico, on the plains of the Alamogordo Bombing Range, known as the Jornada del Muerto. The code name for the test was "Trinity."”
—Without nuclear weapons it seemed you would stand no chance in future conflicts. Nations without that power would get trampled by those that did have it, no matter how big their armies were.
Military strategists of the time, such as Bernard Brodie, believed nuclear weapons to be a definite advantage against non-nuclear powers. The volume “The absolute Weapon: Atomic power and world order”, edited by Brodie, express such a view:
#Brodie, Bernard et al. (1946): “The Absolute Weapon: World Order and Nuclear Power”
https://www.osti.gov/opennet/servlets/purl/16380564-wvLB09/16380564.pdf
Quote: “There was not and very likely would not be a sure defense against atomic attack,or any reliable way of keeping bombs away from a national territory. A great power might, it is true, by building up to the limit what good of its strength, have a chance of winning a war in the end, but what good was that if in the meantime the urban population of the nation had been wiped out?”
—There was one brief moment where it all could have been stopped: In 1946 the US proposed the Baruch Plan and promised to get rid of their atom bombs, share nuclear technology with the world and set up an international authority to make sure no-one ever built such weapons again. But the military advantage of nuclear bombs was too great to let go.
#U.S. Office of the Historian: “The Acheson-Lilienthal & Baruch Plans, 1946” (retrieved 2024)
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/baruch-plans
Quote: “On June 14, 1946, before a session of the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC), U.S. representative Bernard Baruch, presented a proposal for the creation of an international Atomic Development Authority. The presentation of the Baruch Plan marked the culmination of an effort to establish international oversight of the use of atomic energy in the hopes of avoiding unchecked proliferation of nuclear power in the post World War II period.”
#The Atomic Archive: “The Manhattan Project: Making the Atomic Bomb: The Baruch Plan” (retrieved 2024)
https://www.atomicarchive.com/history/manhattan-project/p6s5.html
Quote: “[The overseers of the Manhattan project] held that the American and British lead would last no more than three or four years and that security against the bigger bombs that surely would result from a worldwide arms race could be gained only through international agreements aimed at preventing secret research and surprise attacks. Bush and Conant's basic philosophy found expression in the Acheson- Lilienthal report of March 1946, fashioned primarily by Oppenheimer and evolving into the formal American proposal for the international control of atomic energy known as the Baruch Plan.
[...]
Baruch proposed the establishment of an international atomic development authority along the lines proposed by the Acheson-Lilienthal report, one that would control all activities dangerous to world security and possess the power to license and inspect all other nuclear projects. Once such an authority was established, no more bombs should be built and existing bombs should be destroyed. Abolishing atomic weapons could lay the groundwork for reducing and subsequently eliminating all weapons, thus outlawing war altogether. The Baruch Plan, in Baruch's words "the last, best hope of earth," deviated from the optimistic tone of the Acheson-Lilienthal plan, which had intentionally remained silent on enforcement, and set specific penalties for violations such as illegally owning atomic bombs.
[...]
The United States position, then, was that international agreement must precede any American reductions, while the Soviets maintained that the bomb must be banned before meaningful negotiations could take place.”
—Just three years later the Soviet Union detonated their first atom bomb.
The Soviet Union tested their first nuclear weapon in 1949. The US had made some further progress in nuclear bomb technology since 1945, but it still meant the Soviets were close to nuclear parity.
#National Museum of Nuclear Science and History & Atomic Heritage Foundation (2014): “Soviet Atomic Program – 1946”
https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/soviet-atomic-program-1946/
Quote: “The yield of the device, RDS-1, is unknown. Contemporary estimates suggest 10 kilotons of TNT equivalent (less than the 15 kiloton Little Boy bomb deployed on Hiroshima), while the official account of Soviet nuclear tests lists a yield of 22 kilotons (slightly more than the 20 kiloton Fat Man dropped on Nagasaki).”
#Podvig, Pavel (2013): “Details of the RDS-1 device” Russian strategic nuclear forces blog
https://russianforces.org/blog/2013/05/detailed_description_of_the_rd.shtml
Quote: “The 10% estimate assumes fission of about 640 g of plutonium, which would be equivalent to about 13 kt. The first measurements, conducted after the test, suggested that RDS-1 produced an explosion with a yield of about 10 kt, which was a bit lower than the expected value, but not inconsistent with it. However, that initial estimate was apparently based on the energy of the blast wave, so the total energy release was probably higher. The official account of Soviet nuclear tests lists RDS-1 as having the yield of 22 kt. But it's a somewhat different story.”
—This caught everyone by surprise. The Soviets were not decades behind American technology but had just pulled even.
Most American officials expected the Soviets to take longer to develop their own atomic bomb.
#Steury, Donald P. (2005): “How the CIA Missed Stalin's Bomb” Studies in Intelligence vol. 49, 1.
https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/CIA-Missed-Stalins-Bomb.pdf
Quote: “The Intelligence Community's first judgment on Soviet atomic capability was made very early in the Cold War. It appeared on 31 October 1946 in one paragraph of ORE 3/1, a short, but wide-ranging estimate on the progress of a number of Soviet weapons programs. Although ORE had very little evidence on which to base its analysis, it made a fairly definitive judgment: It is probable that the capability of the USSR to develop weapons based on atomic energy will be limited to the possible development of an atomic bomb to the stage of production at some time between 1950 and 1953. On this assumption, a quantity of such bombs could be produced and stockpiled by 1956”
#Schweber, S. S. et al. (2011): “Contingencies of the early nuclear arms race” Metascience
https://alexwellerstein.com/publications/wellerstein_schweber_contingencies(metascience).pdf
Quote: “Certainly among the most knowledgeable about the development of the American bomb, General Leslie Groves himself was notably uncertain in his estimates for development of a Soviet A-bomb. In September–November 1945, for example, as Red Cloud stresses, Groves variously estimated 10 years, 5–20 years, and 15–20 years with (he said) ‘‘more likely’’ 20 years.”
—The whole concept of what war was and how it would be won was overturned in a hot second. In a world where your enemy could fly over your soldiers and vaporise your cities, the only answer seemed to be a nuclear arsenal that could strike faster and harder. The nuclear arms race began.
Though there were plans to use smaller nuclear weapons in the battlefield, their potential as mass destruction weapons to be used against cities and economic centres transported by plane was soon established as the primary strategic advantage of nuclear bombs.
#Encyclopedia Britannica: “Countervalue Targeting” (retrieved 2024)
https://www.britannica.com/topic/countervalue-targeting
Quote: “Countervalue targeting, in nuclear strategy, the targeting of an enemy’s cities and civilian population with nuclear weapons. The goal of countervalue targeting is to threaten an adversary with the destruction of its socioeconomic base in order to keep it from initiating a surprise nuclear attack (first strike).”
In a scenario where two military powers have the ability to unleash weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear bombs on an opponent’s cities, the threat of retaliation at the same scale becomes an important deterrent against a “first strike”, which incentivized both nuclear powers to increase the number and power of their nuclear bombs.
#Encyclopedia Britannica: “Secure Second Strike” (retrieved 2024)
https://www.britannica.com/topic/second-strike-capability
Quote: “Secure second strike, the ability, after being struck by a nuclear attack, to strike back with nuclear weapons and cause massive damage to the enemy. Secure second strike capability was seen as a key nuclear deterrent during the Cold War. The strategy also partially explained the extraordinarily high number of nuclear weapons maintained by both the United States and the Soviet Union during the arms race.”
—In 1946 there were just 9 nuclear bombs in the world. In 1950 it was 300. In 1960 it would be 20,000.
#Our World in Data (2013): “Estimated nuclear warhead stockpiles” (retrieved 2024)
—Superpowers spent trillions to have thousands of the most intelligent people show off how hard they could destroy humanity.
The US is estimated to have spent at least $5.5 trillion on nuclear weapons between 1940 and 1996.
#Schwartz, Stephen I. (2008): “The Costs of U.S. Nuclear Weapons” Nuclear Threat Initiative Report
https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/costs-us-nuclear-weapons/
The cost of the Soviet nuclear weapons program is unknown.
—Edward Teller was a brilliant Hungarian theoretical physicist. He was among the first people to realize that the fission chain reaction in uranium could make a bomb. And he helped to build it.
#Encyclopedia Britannica: “Edward Teller” (retrieved 2024)
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-Teller
#National Museum of Nuclear Science and History & Atomic Heritage Foundation (2022): “Edward Teller”
https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/profile/edward-teller/
Quote: “Teller, along with Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner, helped urge President Roosevelt to develop an atomic bomb program in the United States. Teller joined the Los Alamos Laboratory in 1943 as group leader in the Theoretical Physics Division”
—But for Teller, the bombs were not powerful enough. He was ready to pay any price for security. And to be more secure, to be less afraid, he urged that larger bombs were the answer.
#Galison, Peter; Bernstein, Barton (1989): “In Any Light: Scientists and the Decision to Build the Superbomb, 1952-1954” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, vol. 19, 2, pp. 267-347
https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/andrewhsmith/files/27757627.pdf
Quote: “Teller, by contrast, pressed vigorously for thermonuclear weapons on scientific as well as strategic grounds; he successfully lobbied for the establishment of a new national weapons laboratory and ultimately became known as the "father" of the Super“
—Even in the 1950s this was a pretty hot take and many scientists were appalled by his ideas.
The reaction at the AEC meeting to Teller’s proposal is recorded in the meeting notes. Despite their shock, work was done on Gnomon for several years, which was an integral part of Sundial.
#Wellerstein, Alex (2021): “An Unearthly Spectacle: The untold story of the world’s biggest nuclear bomb” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
https://thebulletin.org/2021/11/the-untold-story-of-the-worlds-biggest-nuclear-bomb/
Quote: “Most of Teller’s testimony remains classified to this day, but other scientists at the meeting recorded, after Teller had left, that they were “shocked” by his proposal. “It would contaminate the Earth,” one suggested. Physicist I. I. Rabi, by then an experienced Teller skeptic, suggested it was probably just an “advertising stunt.” But he was wrong; Livermore would for several years continue working on Gnomon, at least, and had even planned to test a prototype for the device in Operation Redwing in 1956 (but the test never took place).”
#Fermi, Enrico; Rabi, Isidor I. (1949): “General Advisory Committee's Majority and Minority Reports on Building the H-Bomb. October 30, 1949.”
https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/hydrogen/gac-report.html
Quote: “The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light.”
—He didn’t care one bit and incessantly lobbied scared politicians to green light more devastating nuclear weapons.
#Encyclopedia Britannica: “Edward Teller” (retrieved 2024)
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-Teller
Quote: “A staunch anticommunist, Teller devoted much time in the 1960s to his crusade to keep the United States ahead of the Soviet Union in nuclear arms. He opposed the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which banned nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere, and he was a champion of Project Plowshare, an unsuccessful federal government program to find peaceful uses for atomic explosives. In the 1970s Teller remained a prominent government adviser on nuclear weapons policy, and in 1982–83 he was a major influence in Pres. Ronald Reagan’s proposal of the Strategic Defense Initiative, an attempt to create a defense system against nuclear attacks by the Soviet Union.”
#Hirsch, Daniel O. (1990): “Rewriting the History of the Brains Behind the H-Bomb: Edward Teller Giant of the Golden Age of Physics” Los Angeles Times
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-02-11-bk-773-story.html
Quote: “The principal advocate of the development of the H-bomb, a primary opponent of virtually all arms-control agreements and the godfather of “Star Wars,” Teller has shaped this era as have few others. His pivotal role in the destruction of J. Robert Oppenheimer (called in this volume a “dark duty”) created a schism in American science that has yet to heal. Nuclear weapons-testing likely would have been banned as of the early ‘60s rather than just forced underground had it not been for his strenuous opposition to a comprehensive test ban.
Teller’s defense of all things nuclear led popular culture to cast him as the prototypal Dr. Strangelove, the mad scientist fixated on bigger and better means of mass destruction.”
—And lucky for him, his timing was just right. Terrified by the rapid nuclear progress of the Soviet Union, he got a blank cheque from the military to bring his most destructive fantasy to life. It took him only a few years to make them a reality: The Hydrogen bomb.
#National Museum of Nuclear Science and History & Atomic Heritage Foundation (2022): “Hydrogen Bomb – 1950”
https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/hydrogen-bomb-1950/
Quote: “The Soviet nuclear test in August 1949, coupled with the “fall” of China to Communism later that year, struck fear in many Americans. The perceived balance of power that had existed between the Western countries and the Communist Bloc since World War II seemed to have radically shifted in the Communists’ favor. All of this raised a very serious pair of questions: What should the American response be, and how should the United States go about achieving it?
Some, including Edward Teller, E.O. Lawrence, and Luis Alvarez, believed that building the hydrogen bomb was the best way to counter the new Soviet threat and reclaim the advantage in the nuclear arms race.”
#Manhattan Project National Historical Park: “Manhattan Project Scientists: Edward Teller” (retrieved 2024)
https://www.nps.gov/people/manhattan-project-scientists-edward-teller.htm
Quote: “After the war, and after the Soviet Union successfully detonated an atomic bomb in 1949, Teller urged President Harry Truman to develop a hydrogen bomb program which Truman approved the following year. Collaborating with mathematician Stanislaw Ulam, Teller developed the world’s first hydrogen bomb design in 1951. In 1952, the hydrogen bomb was successfully tested in the Pacific Ocean.“
—A hydrogen bomb is so powerful that it needs a regular atom bomb just to trigger it. It is basically a nuke, the first stage, next to a capsule of fusion fuel, the second stage, encased by dense materials like lead. When the atom bomb is detonated, it releases ungodly amounts of X-rays that get channelled onto the capsule. The capsule’s surface explodes, pushing inward and compressing the fusion fuel so violently that for a brief moment it simulates a star.
Teller’s original ‘Super’ idea for a thermonuclear bomb could not work, as Stanislaw Ulam proved with his mathematical contributions. Instead, a different ‘staged’ method for igniting a fusion reaction was worked out by Teller and Ulam, called the Teller-Ulam design.
#National Museum of Nuclear Science and History & Atomic Heritage Foundation (2022): “Stanislaw Ulam”
https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/profile/stanislaw-ulam/
Quote: “Ulam remained at Los Alamos until 1967. During this time, he worked on the development of the hydrogen bomb together with Edward Teller. After concluding that Teller’s design for the hydrogen bomb would not work, Ulam suggested that a compression model was needed. The eventual Teller-Ulam design, the details of which are still highly classified, was a two-stage implosion model and led to the large scale production of hydrogen bombs. It is believed to be the basis for all thermonuclear weapons existing today.”
#Encyclopedia Britannica: “Thermonuclear Warhead” (retrieved 2024)
https://www.britannica.com/technology/thermonuclear-warhead
Quote: “Teller and his colleagues at Los Alamos made little actual progress in designing a workable thermonuclear device until early in 1951, when the physicist Stanislaw Marcin Ulam proposed to use the mechanical shock of an atomic bomb to compress a second fissile core and make it explode; the resulting high density would make the burning of the second core’s thermonuclear fuel much more efficient. Teller in response suggested that radiation, rather than mechanical shock, from the atomic bomb’s explosion be used to compress and ignite the thermonuclear second core. Together these new ideas provided a firm basis for a fusion weapon, and a device using the Teller-Ulam configuration, as it is now known, was successfully tested at Enewetak atoll in the Pacific on Nov. 1, 1952; it yielded an explosion equivalent to 10 million tons (10 megatons) of TNT.”
#Wellerstein, Alex (2012): “In Search of a Bigger Boom” Restricted data: A Nuclear History Blog
https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/09/12/in-search-of-a-bigger-boom/
Nuclear fission, which takes place at the last stage of the Teller-Ulam bomb, is also the mechanism that sustains stars.
—When this bomb was first tested in 1952 it instantly erased a pacific island off the map.
#The Atomic Archive: “"Mike" Device is Tested” (retrieved 2024)
https://www.atomicarchive.com/history/hydrogen-bomb/page-13.html
Quote: “The first fusion bomb was tested by the United States in Operation Ivy on November 1, 1952, on Elugelab Island in the Enewatak Atoll of the Marshall Islands. Scientists had to work faster and harder in order the meet the short deadline to complete the weapon, but their work paid off when "Mike" was successfully completed on the target date. "Mike" used the Teller-Ulam configuration, liquid deuterium as its fusion fuel and a large fission weapon as its trigger.“
A before and after image of the Elugelab Island (and what now remains of it) appears in the following paper:
#Munk, Walter; Day, Deborah (2009): “IVY – MIKE” Oceanography, vol. 17, 2
https://topex.ucsd.edu/geodynamics/IVY_MIKE5b.pdf
Quote: “On 1 November 1952 at 0714:59.4 Elugelab Island was evaporated by
Mike, the 10.4 megaton thermonluclear explosion, leaving a crater 200 ft deep and 1 mile in diameter"
—Two years later he tested an even bigger nuke, 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.
#U.S. National Security Archive (2024): “Castle BRAVO at 70: The Worst Nuclear Test in U.S. History”
Quote: “Seventy years ago, on 1 March 1954 (28 February in Washington), the U.S. government air-dropped a thermonuclear weapon, code-named “Shrimp,” on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands in what turned out to be the largest nuclear test in U.S. history. The Bravo detonation in the Castle test series had an explosive yield of 15 megatons—1,000 times that of the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima and nearly three times the six megatons that its planners estimated.”
—The world recoiled in horror. With weapons this powerful war stopped being about winning and total human annihilation became very real.
#Encyclopedia Britannica: “Mutual Assured Destruction” (retrieved 2024)
https://www.britannica.com/topic/mutual-assured-destruction
Quote: “By the early 1950s both the Soviet Union and the West were making impressive technological strides in what American futurist Herman Kahn called “the Model T era” of atomic warfare. To many Western strategists, the development of the hydrogen bomb with its incredible killing potential spelled the end of conventional ground warfare.
[...]
In 1965 McNamara instead proposed a countervalue doctrine that expressly targeted Soviet cities. McNamara stated that this doctrine of “assured destruction” could be achieved with as few as 400 high-yield nuclear weapons targeting Soviet population centres; these would be “sufficient to destroy over one-third of [the Soviet] population and one-half of [Soviet] industry.” McNamara proposed that the guarantee of mutual annihilation would serve as an effective deterrent to both parties and that the goal of maintaining destructive parity should guide U.S. defense decisions. McNamara based this tenuous equilibrium on the “assured-destruction capability” of the U.S. arsenal.”
— In just two years he had enabled the creation of American warheads a hundred times more powerful.
Before 1952, the most powerful bomb was 400kT in 1951. In 1954, it was 48 000 kT.
#The Atomic Archive: “United States' Nuclear Tests” (retrieved 2024)
https://www.atomicarchive.com/almanac/test-sites/us-testing.html
—His dream was to have a bomb of almost unlimited power. And once again, his timing was pretty great. When the Soviet Union detonated its own hydrogen bomb, it sparked a new wave of fear.
The Soviets had their own thermonuclear weapons program.
They managed to detonate the RDS-6 device in 1953. It did ignite fusion reactions, but it was not a ‘true’ hydrogen bomb as the fusion energy was only a small fraction of the total energy, and the lithium deuteride fuel served mainly to increase the output of the fissioning uranium. Its total energy was equivalent to 400 kilotons of TNT. Still, it spurred the US to accelerate its own hydrogen bomb development.
#Encyclopedia Britannica: “The spread of nuclear weapons: The Soviet Union” (retrieved 2024)
https://www.britannica.com/technology/nuclear-weapon/The-Soviet-Union
Quote: “A Layer Cake bomb, known in the West as Joe-4 and in the Soviet Union as RDS-6, was detonated on August 12, 1953, with a yield of 400 kilotons. Significantly, it was a deliverable thermonuclear bomb—a milestone that the United States would not reach until May 20, 1956—and also the first use of solid lithium-6 deuteride.”
#The Atomic Archive: “The Soviets' "Joe-4" Bomb Makes its Mark” (retrieved 2024)
https://www.atomicarchive.com/history/hydrogen-bomb/page-14.html
#Galison, Peter; Bernstein, Barton (1989): “In Any Light: Scientists and the Decision to Build the Superbomb, 1952-1954” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, vol. 19, 2, pp. 267-347
https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/andrewhsmith/files/27757627.pdf
Quote: “The official American announcement, issued by [United States Atomic Energy Commissioner Admiral Lewis] Strauss, played down the event: the test "involved both fission and thermonuclear reactions. It will be recalled that more than 3 years ago the United States decided to accelerate work on all forms of atomic weapons. Both the 1951 and the 1952 Eniwetok test series included tests involving similar reactions." Strauss privately concluded that the Soviet test confirmed his old fear, shared by Teller and Lawrence among others, that America had to race for the Super.”
—Teller skipped right to the end. The end of the nuclear arms race. He wanted to build a world destroyer. Something so breathtakingly destructive, so incredibly scary, that it made no sense to continue playing. Almost everything about it is still classified, but what we DO know about it is terrifying. Work on it actually began and tests were planned.
#Wellerstein, Alex (2021): “An Unearthly Spectacle: The untold story of the world’s biggest nuclear bomb” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
https://thebulletin.org/2021/11/the-untold-story-of-the-worlds-biggest-nuclear-bomb/
Quote: “Only a few months later, in July 1954, Teller made it clear he thought 15 megatons was child’s play. At a secret meeting of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission, Teller broached, as he put it, “the possibility of much bigger bangs.” At his Livermore laboratory, he reported, they were working on two new weapon designs, dubbed Gnomon and Sundial. Gnomon would be 1,000 megatons and would be used like a “primary” to set off Sundial, which would be 10,000 megatons. Most of Teller’s testimony remains classified to this day, but other scientists at the meeting recorded, after Teller had left, that they were “shocked” by his proposal. “It would contaminate the Earth,” one suggested. Physicist I. I. Rabi, by then an experienced Teller skeptic, suggested it was probably just an “advertising stunt.”[4] But he was wrong; Livermore would for several years continue working on Gnomon, at least, and had even planned to test a prototype for the device in Operation Redwing in 1956 (but the test never took place).”
AEC meeting notes:
#Wellerstein, Alex (2021): "GAC Meeting Notes" Restricted data: A Nuclear History Blog
—Sundial wouldn’t be some warhead loaded up onto a bomber and dropped on a target. No. It would be a backyard bomb. After all, if a bomb would destroy the world, why bother moving it at all? No need to bring it close to your enemies, so you could as well just put it in your backyard.
#Wellerstein, Alex (2012): “In Search of a Bigger Boom” Restricted data: A Nuclear History Blog
https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/09/12/in-search-of-a-bigger-boom/
Quote: “The scientist Edward Teller, according to one account, kept a blackboard in his office at Los Alamos during World War II with a list of hypothetical nuclear weapons on it. The last item on his list was the largest one he could imagine. The method of “delivery” — weapon-designer jargon for how you get your bomb from here to there, the target — was listed as “Backyard.” As the scientist who related this anecdote explained, “since that particular design would probably kill everyone on Earth, there was no use carting it anywhere.”
—In his mind, the rationale was the ultimate deterrence – If you attack us or our allies we will destroy the world.
In other words, Sundial was both a deterrent and a proof of suicidal determination to destroy any enemy: if the US was attacked, it was willing to blow itself up with Sundial first to get its chance at retaliation.
—On a technical level his concept was not even that complicated. It probably was some kind of nuclear matryoshka doll.
At the time of Sundial’s inception, the most powerful nuclear weapons tested by the US was that of the Castle Bravo test, which was based on the Teller-Ulam design.
#National Museum of Nuclear Science and History & Atomic Heritage Foundation (2017): “Castle Bravo”
https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/castle-bravo/
It is conceivable, then, that Teller had this design in mind when proposing Sundial. A conceptually simple variation of the design would increase the bomb’s total yield by adding successive stages, each ignited by the previous stage.
#Wellerstein, Alex (2012): “In Search of a Bigger Boom” Restricted data: A Nuclear History Blog
https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/09/12/in-search-of-a-bigger-boom/
Quote: “The Teller-Ulam design allows you to link bombs to bombs to bomb. John Wheeler apparently dubbed this a “sausage” model, because of all of the links. Ted Taylor recounted that from very early on, it was clear you could have theoretically “an infinite number” of sub-bombs connected to make one giant bomb.
A few selected frames from Chuck Hansen’s diagram about multi-stage hydrogen bombs, from his U.S. Nuclear Weapons: A Secret History. Drawing by Mike Wagnon.”
The most powerful bombs detonated by the US American, B41, also followed this principle.
#Wellerstein, Alex (2021): “An Unearthly Spectacle: The untold story of the world’s biggest nuclear bomb” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
https://thebulletin.org/2021/11/the-untold-story-of-the-worlds-biggest-nuclear-bomb/
Quote: “Details on the development of the Mark 41 are still highly classified, but it was apparently a three-stage weapon—the only such weapon ever fielded by the United States. It was never tested at its full strength. For the 1950s, this appeared, ultimately, to be all that the US military required. Work on such high-yield weapons seems to have been put on hold once the Test Moratorium began.”
We know that Sundial was a staged warhead, whose test was planned for 1956, and both the Castle Bravo bomb —tested in 1954— and B41 —tested in 1960— followed a Teller-Ulam design, with the main innovation in B41 being the added tertiary stage. It is then reasonable to think that Sundial was meant to follow the same principle: a thermonuclear Teller-Ullam weapon with more than three stages. It likely needed three stages to reach a 100 Megaton yield, then it added a fourth stage (Gnomon) to reach 1000 Megatons and a fifth stage (Sundial) to achieve 10,000 Megatons.”
#Encyclopedia Britannica: “Principles of thermonuclear (fusion) weapons: Basic two-stage design” (retrieved 2024)
https://www.britannica.com/technology/nuclear-weapon/Basic-two-stage-design
Quote: “Historically, some very high-yield thermonuclear weapons had a third, or tertiary, stage. In theory, the radiation from the tertiary can be contained and used to transfer energy to compress and ignite a fourth stage, and so on. There is no theoretical limit to the number of stages that might be used and, consequently, no theoretical limit to the size and yield of a thermonuclear weapon. However, there is a practical limit because of size and weight limitations imposed by the requirement that the weapon be deliverable.”
—The true breathtaking thing is the idea itself and that he actually attempted to make it real. From what we know, Sundial would weigh at least 2000 tons, as massive as a 250 meters long cargo train. It would explode with the power of at least 10 billion tons of TNT. A number so big it doesn’t mean anything anymore.
We don’t know the design details of Sundial. However, it is still subject to physical limits. One limit is how much energy can be extracted from its fusion fuel. The largest and most advanced thermonuclear weapons can release energy equivalent to 5 kilotons of TNT per kilogram of bomb weight. If we apply that performance to Sundial:
1010 tons / (5 × 103 kiloton/1 bomb kg) = 2,000,000 kg.
#Wellerstein, Alex (2013): “Kilotons per kilogram” Restricted data: A Nuclear History Blog
https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/12/23/kilotons-per-kilogram/
Taking an approximate weight of 8 tons per meter in heavy-haul train cars:
2,000 ton / (8 ton per meter) = 250 m
#Chen, Chunyang et al. (2020): “Exploration of key traction-running equipment and its problems on heavy-haul trains and research on technology development” Transportation Safety and Environment, vol.2, 3
—One wild thing about it is that humanity never tested anything remotely like it, so this is the best speculation we developed together with experts.
Our expert Alex Wellerstein offers this comment:
"A warning: as the Sundial would be over 200 times more explosive than even the largest weapon ever tested, it is not clear how well known weapons effects scaling laws would apply to it. For one thing, the fireball itself would be a significant percentage of the Earth's atmosphere, and that would impact how the weapon's heat and blast effects might work. But we can still get a sense of it."
—For a brief moment a fireball of pure energy appears, up to 50 kilometers in diameter, larger than the visible horizon.
We can provide rough estimates for the effects of a 10,000 megaton blast.
Our expert Alex Wellerstein has this to say:
“However, the size of the fireball itself is potentially this large, or larger. Scaling up the basic fireball equation used by NUKEMAP gets a fireball that is about 30-50 km in diameter. Using a means of scaling up a fireball specifically for thermal transmissivity purposes (from another report on this from the 1960s), it gives about 30 km in diameter, and gives 7 km as the maximum height of the fireball for the relevance of heat transfer.”
—Everything within 400 km is instantly set on fire – every tree, house, person.
We can provide rough estimates for the effects of a 10,000 megaton blast.
#Wellerstein, Alex (2021): “An Unearthly Spectacle: The untold story of the world’s biggest nuclear bomb” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
https://thebulletin.org/2021/11/the-untold-story-of-the-worlds-biggest-nuclear-bomb
Quote: “It is hard to convey the damage of a gigaton bomb, because at such yields many traditional scaling laws do not work (the bomb blows a hole in the atmosphere, essentially). However, a study from 1963 suggested that, if detonated 28 miles (45 kilometers) above the surface of the Earth, a 10,000-megaton weapon could set fires over an area 500 miles (800 kilometers) in diameter. Which is to say, an area about the size of France.”
There are few studies which explore nuke effects beyond 100 megatons of yield. One study calculated the thermal effects for warheads up to 10,000 megatons. It found that it is able to start fires 550 km from the point of detonation, burning a circle up to 1100 km in diameter. However, it assumes a detonation point at 50 km altitude, meaning if Sundial was detonated on the surface, it may act differently.
#Passell, Thomas O. (1963): “Transmission by the Earth’s Atmosphere of Thermal Energy from Nuclear Detonations above 50 km altitude” Technical report of Stanford Research Inst., Menlo Park, Calif.
—The energy would reach much further, but the explosion is so big that the Earth’s horizon curves away from it.
The sphere of thermal radiation is so big that it is comparable to the Earth’s radius, with just one order of magnitude between them.
—The surrounding deserts turn into a field of glass.
The Trinity nuclear test melted the sand of the desert into a jade-like glass, later named trinitite after the test. Similar effects are expected in the case of Sundial.
#Encyclopedia Britannica: “Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki” (retrieved 2024)
https://www.britannica.com/event/atomic-bombings-of-Hiroshima-and-Nagasaki
Quote: “The floor of the crater was fused into a glassy jade-colored mineral subsequently dubbed trinitite.”
Images of various samples of trinitite can be found in the following paper
#Eby, Nelson et al. (2015): “Trinitite redux: Mineralogy and petrology” American Mineralogist vol. 100, 2-3, pp.427-441
#Unattributed (1945): “Science: Atomic Footprint” Time Magazine
https://time.com/archive/6791986/science-atomic-footprint/
Quote: “Seen from the air, the crater itself seems a lake of green jade shaped like a splashy star and set in a sere disc of burnt vegetation half a mile wide. From close up the “lake” is a glistening incrustation of blue-green glass 2,400 ft. in diameter, formed when the molten soil solidified in air. The glass takes strange shapes—lopsided marbles, knobbly sheets a quarter-inch thick, broken, thin-walled bubbles, green, wormlike forms.”
—a magnitude 9 earthquake shakes the United States
Here, we are using the moment magnitude, not the Richter magnitude, because the Richter scale is not reliable for earthquakes this big.
#U.S. Geological Survey: “Moment magnitude, Richter scale - what are the different magnitude scales, and why are there so many?” (retrieved 2024)
“Because of the limitations of all three magnitude scales ([Richter’s], Mb, and Ms), a new more uniformly applicable extension of the magnitude scale, known as moment magnitude, or Mw, was developed. In particular, for very large earthquakes, moment magnitude gives the most reliable estimate of earthquake size.”
#Pamuła, Hanna (2024): “Earthquake Calculator”
—the sound of the blast reverberates around the world.
We can compare the sound produced by Sundial to the Krakatoa eruption from 1883. That volcano released energy equivalent to 200 megatons of TNT and was loud enough to be heard as a cannon firing, 4800 km away.
#Harvard Map Collection (2016): “Krakatoa, 1883”
https://archive.blogs.harvard.edu/wheredisasterstrikes/volcano/krakatoa-1883/
#Gabrielson Thomas B. (2010): “The Krakatoa and the Royal Society: The Krakatoa explosion of 1883” Acoustics Today, vol. 6, 2.
“In addition to records of the pressure wave, the Krakatoa Committee compiled reports of audible sound from the explosion (Fig. 5). Only reports from at least 30 km distant are included in the tabulation: 84 reports from land observers and 15 reports from ships’ logs. There were 53 reports from greater than 1500 km and 16 reports from greater than 3000 km. The farthest credible report4 came from Rodrigues Island in the Indian Ocean (600 km east of Mauritius), a distance of more than 4800 km. In most cases, observers reported sounds like those of artillery or cannon fire.”
Sundial is fifty times more powerful so, according to the inverse square law, its sound would carry:
#Donev, Jason: “Inverse square law” Energy Education, University of Calgary (retrieved 2024)
https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Inverse_square_law
I~1/r²
So the relationship between the radius where the events would last be perceptible and the power of the event is:
PSundial/PKrakatoa~rKrakatoa²/rSundial²
Rearranging:
rSundial=(PSundial/PKrakatoa)½ × rKrakatoa
Since Sundial would be 50 times more powerful than Sundial, it would be head at at least a distance of:
rSundial= 501/2 × 4800 km = 34 000 km
And given that the radius of the Earth is 6300 km, the sound would only have to travel
π × 6300 km = 20 000 km
to make it to the other end of the planet. Then, the sound from Sundial would actually be heard all across Earth, a few times over.
#NASA (2024): “Earth Fact Sheet” (retrieved 2024)
https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/earthfact.html
—North American forests burn, adding their soot to the bomb’s radioactive fallout to create toxic death clouds that shroud the world like a dark curtain.
#Spencer, Jon (2022): “Nuclear Winter and the Anthropocene”, GSA Today, vol. 32, 8.
https://rock.geosociety.org/net/gsatoday/science/G538A/GSATG538A.pdf
“ Pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) clouds produced by rising hot air and smoke from large wildfires can inject smoke into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (Fromm et al., 2010, 2021). PyroCb clouds are similar to typical thunderstorm clouds and form under similar conditions (Fig. 2B), but they receive an extra boost from hot air rising above a fire (Fromm et al., 2006; Rodriguez et al., 2020). Rainout of smoke due to water condensation on smoke particles is suppressed because of the warmth of the pyroCb cloud, the rapid ascent rate of heated air, and the small size of the abundant water-condensation droplets (Rosenfeld et al., 2007). As a result, smoke particles in large pyroCb clouds are effectively delivered to the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere.
Unlike volcanic aerosols and wind-blown mineral dust, the black carbon (soot) content of smoke absorbs sunlight and warms the surrounding air, which can result in gradual rise in a process called “self-lofting.” In nuclear-winter scenarios, convective ascent of smoke to the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere is followed by self-lofting to higher altitudes in the stratosphere where very low water content prevents condensation and particulate rain-out. Furthermore, the black carbon component of smoke is highly resistant to degradation by sunlight and can have a residence time of months to years in the stratosphere (Peterson et al., 2021).”
#Toon, O.B. et al. (2007): Atmospheric effects and societal consequences of regional scale nuclear conflicts and acts of individual nuclear terrorism. Atmospheric Chemistry And Physics, Vol. 7 (8)
https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/7/1973/2007/
Quote: “Here we have estimated the mass of elemental carbon (also referred to as light absorbing carbon, soot, and black carbon) emitted by the fires. Most treatments of atmospheric aerosols subdivide smoke into elemental carbon, which is assumed to be absorbing at visible wavelengths, and other components, which is meant to represent materials in the smoke that do not absorb sunlight. The elemental carbon has a greater impact on climate per unit mass than the other components because it absorbs light rather than simply scattering it, but the other materials can also enhance the absorption by the elemental carbon.”
We shouldn’t forget the radioactive fallout either. Our expert Alex Wellerstein explains:
“Each kiloton of fission produces 0.06 kg of fission products. So the Hiroshima bomb produced about 0.9 kg of fission products. The Castle Bravo explosion was about 10 Mt of fission (out of 15 Mt total), and so produced about 588 kg of fission products. If Sundial was 50% fission (a charitable assumption), that means 5,000 Mt of fission (out of 10,000 Mt total), which means some 300 tons of fission products. By comparison, all nuclear tests ever conducted in the atmosphere only produced around 13 tons of fission products (217 Mt). So that is a huge amount of radioactive contamination from just one bomb.”
You can learn more about the terrible aftermath of nuclear weapons in our video “What Happens AFTER Nuclear War?”:
—Sundial is like a nuclear war happening all at once. But it is more like a giant volcano erupting or an asteroid striking, than a nuclear war.
Sundial’s TNT equivalent is larger than the TNT equivalent of all present day nuclear weapons:
#Our World in Data (2013): “Estimated nuclear warhead stockpiles” (retrieved 2024)
A typical US warhead has the power of 200,000 tons of TNT.
#United States nuclear forces, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2018
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00963402.2018.1438219?needAccess=true
So 15,000 warheads would be the equivalent of 3 billion tonnes of TNT.
15,000 x 200,000 = 3,000,000,000
Which is less than the 10,000,000,000 tons from Sundial.
That is more powerful than volcanic eruptions like that of the Krakatoa
#Harvard Map Collection (2016): “Krakatoa, 1883”
https://archive.blogs.harvard.edu/wheredisasterstrikes/volcano/krakatoa-1883/
And more powerful than asteroid impacts like the one of the Barringer Meteorite Crater
#Kring, David A. (2017): “Guidebook to the Geology of Barringer Meteorite Crater, Arizona (a.k.a. Meteor Crater)” Chapter 11, Lunar and Planetary Institute. LPI Contribution No. 2040
https://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/books/barringer_crater_guidebook/chapter_11.pdf
—Sundial would bring about an apocalyptic nuclear winter, where global temperatures suddenly drop by 10°C, most water sources would be contaminated and crops would fail everywhere. Most people in the world would die. So uhm. Congratulations, you won?
#Spencer, Jon (2022): “Nuclear Winter and the Anthropocene”, GSA Today, vol. 32, 8
https://rock.geosociety.org/net/gsatoday/science/G538A/GSATG538A.pdf
#Coupe, J. et al. (2019): Nuclear Winter Responses to Nuclear War Between the United States and Russia in the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model Version 4 and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies ModelE. JGR Atmospheres, Vol. 124 (15)
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2019JD030509
#Xia, L. et al (2022): Global food insecurity and famine from reduced crop, marine fishery and livestock production due to climate disruption from nuclear war soot injection. Nature Food Vol. 3
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0#Abs1
(Table: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0/tables/1)
—The good news is that Sundial was never built. Most details are still top secret. But we know that scientists reacted with horror and politicians who were secretly informed reacted with disbelief. Even the US Military thought was this was a bit much. In the insane world of nuclear arms, this madness was too much, building it considered a crime against humanity.
The reaction at the AEC meeting to Teller’s proposal is recorded in the meeting notes. Despite their shock, work was done on Gnomon for several years, which was an integral part of Sundial.
#Wellerstein, Alex (2021): “An Unearthly Spectacle: The untold story of the world’s biggest nuclear bomb” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
https://thebulletin.org/2021/11/the-untold-story-of-the-worlds-biggest-nuclear-bomb/
Quote: “Most of Teller’s testimony remains classified to this day, but other scientists at the meeting recorded, after Teller had left, that they were “shocked” by his proposal. “It would contaminate the Earth,” one suggested. Physicist I. I. Rabi, by then an experienced Teller skeptic, suggested it was probably just an “advertising stunt.”[4] But he was wrong; Livermore would for several years continue working on Gnomon, at least, and had even planned to test a prototype for the device in Operation Redwing in 1956 (but the test never took place).[5]”
#Fermi, Enrico; Rabi, Isidor I. (1949): “General Advisory Committee's Majority and Minority Reports on Building the H-Bomb. October 30, 1949.”
https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/hydrogen/gac-report.html
“The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light.”
—At the peak of the cold war humanity had over 70,000 nukes. Even today we still have about 12,000 nuclear weapons, enough to destroy human civilization.
At their peak, the nuclear arsenals of the world could deliver a total destructive energy equivalent to one Sundial at a moment’s notice, with many more warheads sitting in reserve.
That energy is divided into thousands of devices instead of a single weapon.
#Our World in Data (2013): “Estimated nuclear warhead stockpiles” (retrieved 2024)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-warhead-stockpiles-lines
—Instead of a single world burner, the superpowers built tens of thousands of nuclear weapons of all types and sizes. Hidden in submarines or waiting in bunkers and silos. And this sounds so much more reasonable, doesn’t it? But this also makes them a much more credible threat. Because if people feel they can risk setting off a smaller nuke, they might actually get launched. And we don’t know what kind of chain reaction this might trigger.
#Parthemore Christine (2024): “Tactical Nuclear Weapons are Uniquely Dangerous—Let’s Not Forget That” Council on Strategic Risks Blog
Quote: “With nuclear weapons on hand that leaders may view as acceptable to use in situations short of the most extreme crises, there is no way to truly predict how escalation would occur, potentially to catastrophic levels, once the nuclear threshold is crossed.
That’s why we need to continue calling tactical nuclear weapons what they are. Terms that downplay the massive damage they can do risk building a false confidence that these weapons can be used with predictable local, limited, or controlled consequences. From that baseline, the world can press forward on significantly lessening the risks these weapons pose.
The United States, NATO, and China already have policies and doctrine that call out the unique dangers of tactical nuclear weapons, including in lowering the threshold for use (even if other wording is used at times). These nations should publicly and strongly reiterate and recommit to these tenets, whether together or separately.”
—So in reality humanity the difference between Sundial and what we have today is not even that big. Humanity didn’t build a doomsday bomb but a doomsday machine.
Map created from:
#Our World in Data (2013): “Estimated nuclear warhead stockpiles” (retrieved 2024)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-warhead-stockpiles-lines
—Today the world may be on the verge of another nuclear arms race. The US is on track to spend a trillion dollars on nuclear modernization programs while China is expanding its arsenal and might have more than 1000 nuclear weapons ready to be deployed by 2030.
#Mecklin, John (2024): “2024 Doomsday Clock Statement” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/
Quote: “Ominous trends continue to point the world toward global catastrophe. The war in Ukraine and the widespread and growing reliance on nuclear weapons increase the risk of nuclear escalation. China, Russia, and the United States are all spending huge sums to expand or modernize their nuclear arsenals, adding to the ever-present danger of nuclear war through mistake or miscalculation.”
#Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation (2021): “U.S. Nuclear Weapons Modernization: Costs & Constraints”
Quote: “The United States plans to spend up to $1.5 trillion over 30 years to overhaul its nuclear arsenal by rebuilding each leg of the nuclear triad and its accompanying infrastructure. The plans include, but are not limited to, a new class of ballistic missile submarines, a new set of silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, a new nuclear cruise missile, a modified gravity bomb, a new stealthy long-range strike bomber, and accompanying warheads (with modified or new warhead pits) for each delivery system.”
Google Sites
Report abuse