Post archives
This feature is experimental and meant to make it easier to browse past posts. If it blows up or fails in some way, let me know. Not all old posts have brief descriptions as of this writing, but eventually I will fill them all in.
2013
May 2013
17
Meditations
Of the $2 billion spent on the Manhattan Project, where did it go, and what does it tell us about how we should talk about the history of the bomb?
2
Redactions
A brief update to the last post: translations of leaflets dropped on the Japanese after Hiroshima.
April 2013
26
Redactions
Did the United States warn Japan about the atomic bombs prior to their use? A mystery is unravelled.
12
Meditations | Redactions
Blacking something out is only a step away from highlighting its importance, and the void makes us curious.
5
Visions
A vision of future war, only a few months after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
March 2013
29
Meditations
How many ways are there to talk about secrecy? Quite a few.
22
Visions
When seen in color, what were cities of dust become cities of rubble.
15
Meditations | Redactions
Did atomic secrets kill Lt. Col. Paul P. Stoutenburgh?
8
Meditations | Redactions
Where do historians stand, in the 2010s, about the decision to use the atomic bomb? A report from a recent workshop.
1
Redactions | Visions
An anonymous wartime wordsmith comes up with an novel interpretation of why Hanford was so secretive, and so unpleasant to work in.
February 2013
25
Redactions
A poem and song, both classified "secret," shed light on the early days of continental nuclear testing.
19
Meditations
Why I get annoyed when we talk about meteors, earthquakes, and tsunamis in terms of megatonnage.
8
News and Notes | Visions
Some data from a year of NUKEMAP, and a promise of new things to come...
4
Redactions
"A good deal has been written about Hiroshima, but no-one can describe adequately the smell — and the flies."
January 2013
25
Meditations | News and Notes
Three recent losses — two people, one building — highlight that the living presence of the Manhattan Project is rapidly vanishing.
22
Visions
The U.K. Atomic Energy Authority's bizarre coat of arms, and more H-bomb drawings from George Gamow.
18
Redactions
The colorful physicist's postwar concerns about the teaching of nuclear physics, and an H-bomb doodle.
15
News and Notes
An announcement of a talk about the history of the hydrogen bomb being given at the National Museum of American History.
11
Visions
An investigation into the graphical history of the UN nuclear watchdog.
4
Meditations
Herman Kahn on the relationship between price and control, and what it might mean for the biological revolution underway.
2012
December 2012
28
Redactions
A list of scholarship published on nuclear history for the year of 2012.
25
Visions
Decorating a tree, Hanford-style.
21
Meditations
Children and existential fear, from the high Cold War to Stockton, California, from Stockton to Newtown, Connecticut.
14
Visions
How does one recruit nuclear weapons designers? In the 1950s, you could just take out ads in popular magazines.
7
Meditations | News and Notes
Are we closer to Doomsday than we were last year? Plus, some pretty things to distract you from all that gloomy thinking.
November 2012
30
Redactions | Visions
The US government doesn't like to draw atomic bombs, but the Russians don't mind drawing American nukes.
15
Redactions
What would make a nuclear bomb attack even worse? How about a nuclear attack that generates its own thunderstorm?
7
Meditations | Visions
Reflections on a year of nuclear secrecy blogging. Plus some neat images.
2
Meditations
Are there new things to be said about the Cuban Missile Crisis after 50 years of talking about it?
October 2012
25
Meditations
Contrary to popular perception, Kennedy's "quarantine" of Cuba during the Missile Crisis wasn't a complete success — there were already lots of nukes there.
