College Colloquium Links, Fall 2013, Prof. Janeba

Skating on the Edge of the Unthinkable: The Nuclear Arms Race

Nuclear news and timeline

Major resource websites:

• The Nuclear Information Project  The Nuclear Information Project provides declassified documents and analysis about nuclear weapons policy and operations.
• National Security Archive at George Washington University:
• The Nuclear Vault, resources from the National Security Archive's Nuclear Documentation Project
• The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II, A Collection of Primary Sources - lots of declassified memos about the decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan
  
• Cuban Missile Crisis 40th anniversary page
  
•  A host of declassified U.S. documents on Nuclear History
  
• WMD [information] resources at the Federation of American Scientists site
• The Atomic Archive - a huge amount of information
• The Nuclear Weapon Archive, a guide to nuclear weapons - another huge collection of resources

Important Large Works:

• The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the Manhattan Engineer District (The official army report)
  
• The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, by Glasstone & Dolan, the best known compendium of information about what a nuclear weapon does.  (Links to chapters lower on this page)
• The Congressional Office of Technology Assessment's 1979 report, The Effects of Nuclear War

Some Lists:

• Lists of Nuclear Forces (check when each article was updated; some of these things are changing quickly)
• By country: Delivery vehicles (bombers, missiles) with some info about warheads
• By country: More concise list of vehicles & warheads
• Another fairly recent list of US forces
  
• List of U.S. Nuclear test explosions and Soviet test explosion information
• List of all U.S. Nuclear bombs/warheads through history
• List of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Accidents (with details and some background)
• List of sixteeen "known" nuclear crises of the cold war (Note: This list seems accurate, but finding corroboration would be a good idea before relying on the information.)
  

Links for particular class days:

• Here is a transcription of the last war-room scene. 
• "Plan R" was real: declassified documents show that "presidents predelegated nuclear weapons release authority to the military."
  

•    Here's the last scene of Stanley Kramer's film based on Shute's On the Beach.
• If you start the clip at 7:29, you'll see some minor changes; do you think Shute would have approved of the very last shot?
• Looking ahead, a significantly abbreviated version of Secretary of War Henry Stimson's explanation of the decision to use the atom bomb on Japan.
• Here's a more complete (fully complete?) version; note there are typos that are confusing is a few spots.
  Reading the full version, I see that the abbreviated version may give a very different impression.

• "Ivy Mike" on Youtube
  
• Comparison of fireball sizes, plutonium vs hydrogen bombs
  

Prof. Janeba's Home Page | Send comments or questions to: mjanebawillamette.edu