Bombs and rockets – Page 28 – a sibilant intake of breath

Climate change and nuclear war

In Gil Elliot’s Twentieth Century Book of the Dead, the Scottish writer seeks to estimate how many human beings died as the result of mass violence during the 20th century, concluding that the toll was about 110 million. Even without a nuclear winter, he also estimates that a thermonuclear war between the United States and Russia could have killed two billion, back in 1982.

His conclusions about the ethics of this have relevance to the question of climate change:

The moral significance is inescapable. If morality refers to relations between individuals, or between the individual and society, then there can be no more fundamental moral issue than the continuing survival of individuals and societies. The scale of man-made death is the central moral as well as material fact of our time.

With nuclear weapons and anthropogenic climate change, humanity has engineered two possible calamities, each of which could potentially eliminate the species. The moral obligation to curb both risks is immense, and ought to be a top political priority everywhere.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Richard Rhodes’ Pulitzer Prize winning 800-page account of the history of the atomic bomb is a comprehensive and highly important book. He covers the science, from the earliest theorizing about the structure of the atom through to the early stages of the development of thermonuclear weapons. He also covers the political and military history associated with the Manhattan Project, and touches upon attempts to develop nuclear weapons in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Rhodes also goes beyond straight history to examine the scientific and military ethics associated with the development and use of the bomb, while also raising questions about what the existence of nuclear weapons means for global politics in the long term. The book goes beyond being a detailed historical account, by also engaging in serious ethical questioning about the implications of this dreadful technology. The book is also quite philosophical in places, such as when contemplating the nature of science.

One overwhelming message from Rhodes’ book is the horror of modern war – from ingenious combination poison gas attacks during WWI through to strategic bombing of civilians in WWII and the ongoing threat of thermonuclear annihilation. While nuclear weapons have certainly increased both the actual and potential horror of war, Rhodes uses appalling examples to show how they are not at all necessary for people to treat one another atrociously. That in turn affects the ethical status of using atomic weapons: was doing so preferable to invading Japan with conventional forces? Were any other alternatives available? Regardless of how you answer such questions for yourself, Rhodes’ account of warfare is one that cannot fail to produce revulsion in whoever reads it. His extensive use of primary documents and quotations – particularly when describing the destruction wrought by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs – is effective both at conveying the history and providing some understanding of how people were thinking at the time. Colourful anecdotes also give a human quality to the account, such as when Rhodes describes personality clashes between military officers, or the existence of a women’s dorm at Los Alamos that was “doing a flourishing business of requiting the basic needs of [the] young men, and at a price.”

In addition to providing the broad strokes of history, Rhodes provides fairly detailed accounts of the lives and personalities of the key scientists, military figures, and politicians. Indeed, one of the most interesting things about the book is how it draws together timelines that would normally be treated separately: scientific discoveries alongside social and geopolitical developments. Seeing them described in parallel gives the reader a strong sense of context, and hints at some of the linkages between scientific advancement and other aspects of history.

I have some minor quibbles with The Making of the Atomic Bomb. It doesn’t always define terms at first usage, which could make some passages difficult to understand for those who don’t have a pre-existing familiarity with the subject matter. He also provides extremely little information on the spies within the American nuclear weapons program who provided so much critical information to the Soviet Union, greatly speeding the development of their nuclear and eventually thermonuclear weapons. He also only hints at how a permanent nuclear institution emerged in the United States. While many at Los Alamos scattered at the end of the war, there were those who realized as soon as the theoretical possibility of nuclear weapons arose that they would profoundly alter the security of states and the relationships between them.

Ultimately, Rhodes shares the conviction of the physicist Niels Bohr that nuclear weapons have fundamentally changed world politics. He argues that they have “destroy[ed] the nation-state paradoxically by rendering it defenseless” and calls upon states to accept the necessity of “dismantl[ing] the death machine”. Specifically, he argues that nuclear weapons make the settling of disputes between states by armed conflict impossible, creating the need for some form of world government. Rhodes stresses the risk of accidental or unauthorized war – a risk that can only grow in severity as more and more states acquire nuclear weapons of their own. Unfortunately, it is hard to share his conviction that such a transformation is really possible. For people of his generation, the fact that most of humanity could be wiped out in less than an hour in a major nuclear exchange is a novel and terrifying feature of life. For those who were both during and after the Cold War, it is a reality that most have been aware of since childhood. Still, there is every reason to continue to try to reduce the risks associated with nuclear weapons. Doing so includes working to prevent the proliferation of such weapons to new states, as well as working to reduce the danger of accidents and the sheer number of weapons deployed.

Rhodes continues the history of nuclear weapons with a successor volume on thermonuclear bombs: Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. In the course of reading Rhodes’ book, I was also compelled to write posts on cancer and the neutron, anti-Semitism, the nature of human rights, Pearl Harbor, and the distinction between nuclear ‘devices’ and deployable weapons. Rhodes also has a third book on nuclear weapons – The Twilight of the Bombs – which I certainly aim to get around to reading eventually.

The future of India and China

This briefing on the relationship between India and China makes for interesting and important reading, given the strong possibility that both countries will have major global importance in this century. Already, China and India are the world’s largest and fourth-largest greenhouse gas emitters.

Some of the climate, energy, and security issues mentioned include their shared dependence on oil imports from Africa, competition over water and natural gas, and the “bitterly contested” status of the Indian-Chinese border.

Kessler Syndrome

When an atom of uranium undergoes fission in the right circumstances, it produces multiple neutrons which in turn induce fission in other uranium atoms, creating a chain reaction. Today, due to a lack of caution on the part of governments, there is a risk of something similar happening to satellites in orbit around the Earth. When they collide or get blown up, satellites produce large quantities of fast-moving debris. This can cause additional satellites to disintegrate, in turn.

The nightmare scenario is one resembling a nuclear chain reaction, in which a small number of initial collisions produce debris, additional collisions, and debris in an escalating cycle, until certain orbits are no longer safe and usable. This scenario is called Kessler Syndrome, a possibility first identified in 1978 by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler.

The risk of this outcome can be reduced by improving procedures in the future. For instance, satellites can be designed so that they fall out of orbit when they cease to be useful. There could also be financial incentives put in place to encourage the operators of satellites to behave responsibly at the end of their lives – for instance, a bond that is paid when the satellite is launched and which is refunded when it burns up in the atmosphere. If a satellite is simply left to die in orbit, the bond money can be put into an insurance fund, to compensate the owners of any satellite that it collides with.

It may also be possible to deal with some of the existing junk in space, using a variety of methods such as lasers, the after-the-fact attachment of small disposal rockets to existing satellites, or possibly the use of some kind of membrane to catch small pieces of debris.

Non-nuclear EMP

Several fictional portrayals have drawn attention to the possibility of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) being used as a weapon, capable of disabling or destroying electronic equipment over a wide area. Such pulses can be created by detonating nuclear weapons at high altitude, though doing so in a war would provoke international outrage. To get around that, the United States and possibly others have developed non-nuclear EMP generators:

One such weapon uses a small charge of explosive to ram an armature down the axis of a current-carrying coil, squeezing its magnetic field so violently in the process that it emits a powerful burst of electromagnetic energy over distances of several hundred metres. Another type employs a Marx generator (a machine used for simulating lightning strikes) to dump a large electrical charge stored in a bank of capacitors into a specially shaped antenna.

American defence forces have converted a number of cruise missiles to function as non-nuclear EMP generators. Apparently, cars parked up to 300 metres away have had their alternators, ignition coils and engine controls disabled this way. Such e-weapons are said to have been used in Kosovo, the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan.

Intriguingly, a pair of such devices has recently broken cover. The Counter-Electronics High-Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP) is an unmanned aircraft fitted with a microwave pulse generator—presumably for disrupting enemy communications. The Pentagon has also announced that it is deploying an electromagnetic weapon, believed to be called Max Power, for detonating roadside bombs and disabling enemy vehicles. Both CHAMP and Max Power mimic the electromagnetic pulse of a nuclear explosion—albeit over a narrowly focused area and without the geomagnetic effect.

Such weapons could be useful for reducing civilian casualties in war, particularly in situations where military targets are located in civilian areas. For example, if a state put an air defence RADAR station in a residential area, an EMP weapon could disable it at lesser risk to the civilian population, compared with conventional munitions.

Apparently, electromagnetic pulses can also be used to punch holes through steel for industrial purposes.

Deployability of nuclear weapons

Being able to build a device that can produce a nuclear explosion is a significant challenge in itself. Also challenging is building such a device in a self-contained way which does not require difficult last-minute assembly, and which can be stored in a usable state for years. The first American bombs certainly did not meet this standard.

Captain William Parsons, a U.S. Navy weapons expert with the 509th Composite Group (the B-29 squadron that dropped the atomic bombs on Japan during WWII) described the complex and hazardous operation, in a letter intended to convince his superiors that dummy devices were required for practice runs:

It is believed fair to compare the assembly of the gun gadget [the uranium bomb] to the normal field assembly of a torpedo, as far as mechanical tests are involved… The case of the implosion gadget [the plutonium bomb] is very different, and is believed comparable in complexity to rebuilding an airplane in the field. Even this does not fully express the difficulty, since much of the assembly involves bare blocks of high explosives and, in all probability, will end with the securing in position of at least thirty-two boosters and detonators, and then connecting these to firing circuits, including special coaxial cables and high voltage condenser circuit… I believe that anyone familiar with advance base operations… would agree that this is the most complex and involved operation which has ever been attempted outside of a confined laboratory and ammunition depot.

Rhodes, Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. p.590 (paperback)

Probably the reason why the bomb had to be so substantially assembled right before use had to do with the initiator – a sub-component at the very centre of the bomb, designed to produce a handful of neutrons at the critical moment to initiate fission. At the same time, it was critical that the initator not produce even a single neutron before the bomb was to be used.

In early American bombs, initiators were apparently comprised of the alpha particle emitter Polonium 210 (half life 138.4 days) sandwiched between metal foils to keep it from reacting prematurely with the beryllium metal nearby. When the high explosive shell wrapped around the natural uranium tamper and plutonium core of the implosion bomb detonated, the components of the initiator would mix and react, producing neutrons at the same time as the explosives were producing compression.

Details on initiators are still classified, so we can only speculate on how the implosion primaries in modern bombs function.

The whole issue of deployability is relevant to questions of nuclear proliferation insofar as it is more difficult to make a stable, battlefield-usable bomb than to make a device capable of generating a nuclear explosion. That being said, many of the technical details of bomb manufacture have been made available to states contemplating the development of nuclear weapons. That has partly been the product of clandestine activities like the operation of the A.Q. Khan proliferation network. It has also been the consequence of states being insufficiently cautious when it comes to safeguarding knowledge, materials, and equipment.

Canada and Joint Strike Fighters

Responding to criticism about Canada’s decision to purchase 65 Lockheed-Martin Joint Strike Fighters (F-35), through a sole source contract for a total cost of about $16 billion, the government has twice highlighted interceptions of Russian bombers as justifications for the purchase.

Does this analysis make any sense?

Partly, it comes down to what the Russians are trying to do. If they just wanted to obliterate Canada, they would do so using ground- and submarine-based ballistic missiles, and perhaps cruise missiles. There would be no reason to send vulnerable bombers into Canadian airspace. On the other hand, just as NATO regularly tests Russian air defence systems, the Russians could be flying into Canadian territory to provoke us into pointing RADAR in their direction, so they can try to suss out what capabilities we have. Finally, the flights could be an attempt to assert sovereignty or de facto control over the Arctic.

In the foreseeable future, the only plausible path to a war with Russia would be an invasion of a central European country prompting an armed response from NATO. In such a circumstance, Canadian Joint Strike Fighters could conceivably be useful. They could also potentially be useful in conflicts like Afghanistan, where air superiority and close air support are clear advantages for Canada and its allies. Also, purchasing Joint Strike Fighters could help keep Canada in the good graces of the United States, especially given how politically savvy the big defence companies are, and how strategic they are about spreading big weapon contract jobs across the country.

Does that justify a price tag of around $500 per Canadian? Does it justify whatever ‘collateral damage’ will result from the purchase of the jets?

Torpedoes, Pearl Harbor, and the atomic bomb

One of the most interesting things about Richard Rhodes’ detailed history of the making of the atomic bomb is the way it gives the reader a better sense of context. This is especially true when it comes to things happening in very different places and spheres of life. It would take an unusual facility with dates, for instance, to realize how the timeline of research into the abstract physical questions about the nature of atoms lined up with political, economic, and military developments.

One grim but interesting example comes from the end of Chapter 12. In November 1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had just committed the United States to the serious pursuit of an atomic bomb based upon enriched uranium (U235) and three methods for producing the substance were to be attempted: gaseous diffusion, electromagnetic separation, and centrifuges (the approach Iran is using now). On December 7th of that year, the Japanese Navy attacked the American base at Pearl Harbor.

Rhodes describes how Japanese research into atomic weapons began with the personal research of the director of the Aviation Technology Research Institute of the Imperial Japanese Army – Takeo Yasuda – in 1938, and expanded into a full report on the possible consequences of nuclear fission in April 1940. Rhodes also describes a somewhat grim coincidence involving Japan, the United States, and atomic weapons. He describes how ordinary torpedoes would not have worked for the Pearl Harbor attack, because the water was insufficiently deep. As such, the torpedoes used had to be modified with a stabilizer fin and produced in sufficient quantity for the pre-emptive strike to be successful:

Only thirty of the modified weapons could be promised by October 15, another fifty by the end of the month and the last hundred on November 30, after the task force was scheduled to sail.

The manufacturer did better. Realizing the weapons were vital to a secret program of unprecedented importance, manager Yukiro Fukuda bent company rules, drove his lathe and assembly crews overtime and delivered the last of the 180 specially modified torpedoes by November 17. Mitsubishi Munitions contributed decisively to the success of the first massive surprise blow of the Pacific War by the patriotic effort of its torpedo factory in Kyushu, the southernmost Japanese island, three miles up the Urakami River from the bay in the old port city of Nagasaki. (p.393 paperback)

That attack – launched partly in response to the American embargo of aviation fuel, steel, and iron going into Japan – sank, capsized, or damaged eight battleships, three light cruisers, three destroyers, and four other ships. The two waves also destroyed or damaged 292 aircraft, and killed 2,403 Americans, while wounding another 1,178. More than 1,000 people were killed just in the sinking of the U.S.S Arizona.

The history of anti-Semitism

In the course of reading Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb, I have learned more about the history of anti-Semitism than from any other source I can recall. I wasn’t exposed to it in literature until recently and I don’t remember hearing anything much about it before high school. There, I recall it being treated as basically an exclusively Nazi phenomenon that arose in the interwar years and was basically crushed after the Nuremburg Trials (though there are worrisome re-emergences in the European far right).

As such, it was surprising to read a history going back to the 6th century. Rhodes describes the experience of Jews in the Roman Empire; a protection deal some made with the son of Charlemagne; massacres when Jews were blamed for the bubonic plague; the expulsion of Jews from England in 1290 and France in 1392; their harsh treatment by Catherine the Great and the Pale of Settlement in imperial Russia; the forcing of Jewish children into 31 years of military service by Czar Nicholas I in 1825; and various other outrages extending into the 20th century. Reading Rhodes’ book was also the first time I had been exposed to the actual contents of the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion – an anti-Semetic text that describes a Jewish conspiracy to control the world, and which apparently had a large effect on the thinking of Adolf Hitler.

The longest passage included, which was plagiarized from a novel called Biarritz, reads a lot like J.K. Rowling:

At eleven o’clock, the gates of the cemetery creak softly and the rustling of velvety coats is heard. A vague, white figure passes like a shadow through the cemetery until it reaches a certain tombstone; here it kneels down, touches the tombstone three times with its forehead and whispers a prayer. Another figure approaches; it is that of an old man, bent and limping. It coughs and sighs as it moves. The figure takes its place next to its predecessor and it too kneels down and whispers a prayer. A third figure appears, and then a fourth and so on until thirteen figures have finally appeared, each one having repeated the aforementioned procedure.

When the thirteenth and final figure has at last taken its place, a clock strikes midnight. From out of the grave there comes a sharp, metallic sound. Suddenly, a blue flame appears and lights up the thirteen figures. A hollow voice says, “I greet you heads of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.” And the figures dutifully reply, “We greet you, Son of the Accursed.”

It is easy to imagine Harry Potter and his wand-wielding friends being added to the scene.

In a sense, it is laughable that this sort of text influenced how politically influential people thought about members of an ethnic group. At the same time, that is frightening. The whole text is a bunch of cobbled-together plagiarized nonsense, and yet it was apparently one of only three books owned by the last Czarina of Russia. I think that shows just how poor quality evidence people are willing to accept, when it confirms something they already believe, as well as just how quick human beings are to demonize one another.

It also suggests that Jewish people have plenty of historical reason to worry about what the governments of both their own states and those of their neighbours might do to them, if the present climate of relative tolerance that exists in most of the world is disrupted. Several contemporary Middle Eastern leaders have apparently expressed their view that the Protocols are a legitimate document, including Presidents Nasser and Saddat in Egypt, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, and Colonel Qaddafi of Libya. Similarly, textbooks in Saudi Arabia apparently describe the Protocols as factual.

Feynman’s Challenger appendix

In the aftermath of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster of 1986, a Presidential Commission was established to determine what went wrong. The most unusual member of the panel was almost certainly the physicist Richard Feynman, some of who’s books I have reviewed. Ultimately, his contribution proved to be controversial and was shifted into an annex of the official report. To me, it seems like a remarkably clear-sighted piece of analysis, with wide-ranging importance for complex organizations in which important things might go wrong.

The full text is available online: Appendix F – Personal observations on the reliability of the Shuttle

He makes some important points about dealing with models and statistics, as well as about the bureaucratic pressures that exist in large organizations. For instance, he repeatedly points out how the fact that something didn’t fail last time isn’t necessarily good evidence that it won’t fail again. Specifically, he points this out with reference to the eroded O-ring that was determined to be the cause of the fatal accident:

But erosion and blow-by are not what the design expected. They are warnings that something is wrong. The equipment is not operating as expected, and therefore there is a danger that it can operate with even wider deviations in this unexpected and not thoroughly understood way. The fact that this danger did not lead to a catastrophe before is no guarantee that it will not the next time, unless it is completely understood. When playing Russian roulette the fact that the first shot got off safely is little comfort for the next. The origin and consequences of the erosion and blow-by were not understood. They did not occur equally on all flights and all joints; sometimes more, and sometimes less. Why not sometime, when whatever conditions determined it were right, still more leading to catastrophe?

In his overall analysis, Feynman certainly doesn’t pull his punches, saying:

Since 1 part in 100,000 would imply that one could put a Shuttle up each day for 300 years expecting to lose only one, we could properly ask “What is the cause of management’s fantastic faith in the machinery?”

and:

It would appear that, for whatever purpose, be it for internal or external consumption, the management of NASA exaggerates the reliability of its product, to the point of fantasy.

It certainly seems plausible that similar exaggerations have been made by the managers in charge of other complex systems, on the basis of similar dubious analysis.

Feynman also singles out one thing NASA was doing especially well – computer hardware and software design and testing – to highlight the differences between a cautious approach where objectives are set within capabilities and a reckless one where capabilities are stretched to try to reach over-ambitious cost or time goals.

Of course, the fact that the Space Shuttle was more dangerous than advertised doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth the risk to launch them. Surely, astronauts were especially well equipped to understand and accept the risks they were facing. Still, if NASA had had a few people like Feyman in positions of influence in the organization, the Shuttle and the program surrounding it would probably have included fewer major risks.