Nuclear Science

Aus der Asche erheben sich die Helden ...Innerhalb von Sekunden werden mehrere amerikanische Städte durch Atombomben verwüstet. Ganze Städte werden zu Gefahrengebieten. Die Versorgungskette der Nation ist lahmgelegt. Millionen von Bürgern sind obdachlos, hungrig und ihre Verzweiflung wird von Stunde zu Stunde größer.

President John F. Kennedy once said, “Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.” Today, a new element has been introduced to the preparations—artificial intelligence. The United States, in its quest to rapidly and effectively defend the nation from a nuclear attack, has incorporated AI into its operation plan of response. But what if the artificial intelligence relied upon by the nation’s decision-makers is wrong? What if AI takes the controls of America’s nuclear response? Might it trigger nuclear war without justification?

Are nuclear arsenals safe from cyberattack? Could terrorists launch a nuclear weapon through hacking? Are we standing at the edge of a major technological challenge to global nuclear order? These are among the many pressing security questions addressed in Andrew Futter's groundbreaking study of the cyber threat to nuclear weapons.

Kristen Iversen grew up in a small Colorado town close to Rocky Flats, a secret nuclear weapons plant once designated "the most contaminated site in America." Full Body Burden is the story of a childhood and adolescence in the shadow of the Cold War, in a landscape at once startlingly beautiful and--unknown to those who lived there--tainted with invisible yet deadly particles of plutonium.

Martin and Annelise Anderson drew upon their access to more than eight million classified documents housed within the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. What emerges from this treasure trove of material is evidence that Reagan intended from his first days in office to bring down the Soviet Union, that he considered eliminating nuclear weapons his paramount objective, and that he was the principal architect of the policies that brought the Soviets to the nuclear-arms negotiating table.

After 1991, international organizations from the Red Cross to Greenpeace sought to help the victims, yet found themselves stymied by post-Soviet political circumstances they did not understand. International diplomats and scientists allied to the nuclear industry evaded or denied the fact of a wide-scale public health disaster caused by radiation exposure. Efforts to spin the story about Chernobyl were largely successful; the official death toll ranges between 31 and 54 people. In reality, radiation exposure from the disaster caused between 35,000 and 150,000 deaths in Ukraine alone.

Zach Johnson, the world's last freelance detective, has been man-napped by the beautiful sapphire-haired Amazon Kiana. She's brought him to her home island of Lantis - where the women dominate men with their words - to discover who killed her mother, the Queen. But to save the day this time, Zach and his holographic AI sidekick, HARV, have to tangle with not just one gorgeous superwoman, but four. Each of Kiana's three sisters could have the motive and the means to pull off the crime - and now that you mention it, Kiana could too....

In Bomb Power, Garry Wills reveals how the atomic bomb transformed our nation down to its deepest constitutional roots - by dramatically increasing the power of the modern presidency and redefining the government as a national security state---in ways still felt today. A masterful reckoning from one of America's preeminent historians, Bomb Power draws a direct line from the Manhattan Project to the usurpations of George W. Bush.

They were told as little as possible. Their orders were to go to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and report for work at a classified Manhattan Project site, a location so covert it was known to them only by the mysterious address: 109 East Palace.

Colm's powers could save humanity from extinction … if he can learn to control them. For centuries, humanity has viewed the sentrienza with wonder and reverence. They gifted humanity with technology and knowledge, teaching us the secrets of space travel. Until the Ghosts arrived and everything changed. Among the slaughter of the Ghost invasion, humanity learned an awful truth: Every gift from the sentrienza comes at a price. The price is our freedom. Now humanity is fighting back, but it’s an uphill battle. We’re outnumbered, outgunned, and the sentrienza have the home-field advantage.

Revealed for the first time in Racing for the Bomb, Groves played a crucial and decisive role in the planning, timing, and targeting of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki missions. Norris offers new insights into the complex and controversial questions surrounding the decision to drop the bomb in Japan and Groves' actions during World War II, which had a lasting imprint on the nuclear age and the Cold War that followed.

In Three Days in Moscow, Baier explores the dramatic endgame of America’s long struggle with the Soviet Union and President Ronald Reagan’s central role in shaping the world we live in today. On May 31, 1988, Reagan stood on Russian soil and addressed a packed audience at Moscow State University, delivering a remarkable - yet now largely forgotten - speech that capped his first visit to the Soviet capital.

In the year 2060, Zach Johnson, the world's only freelance private investigator, tackles his strangest case yet - solving the murders of two elves at the North Pole. Santana Clausa, the micro-mini-skirt-clad bombshell and frost-haired mutant who runs the Pole, hires Zach to stop the killer or killers before they strike again, destroying the holiday for billions. If the media gets whiff of the murders at the "happiest, safest place on Earth", mass panic is sure to ensue - and that's never a good thing.

In this concise account of why America used atomic bombs against Japan in 1945, J. Samuel Walker analyzes the reasons behind President Truman's most controversial decision. Delineating what was known and not known by American leaders at the time, Walker evaluates the options available for ending the war with Japan. In this new edition, Walker incorporates a decade of new research - mostly from Japanese archives only recently made available - that provides fresh insight on the strategic considerations that led to dropping the bomb.

Nuclear Winter enveloped the planet with its relentless barrage of dark, sooty air. With each passing day, more and more people died. In a desperate attempt to give people a chance to survive, some government leaders chose to marshal the assets of their community. It was a polite way of saying take from those who have and give to those who have not.

This is how the world ends. Not with a bang, but with many nuclear bombs detonated around the planet. It was no longer a topic of conversation around the dinner table as in years past. Nobody was prepared, including the world's governments. Yet the threat was always real, and the devastation was predictable. The damage was incalcuable. Millions died at the points of impact. Nuclear Winter spread across the globe. A rapidly cooling climate shocked humanity and all living things...to their death.

Adrian will soon discover if the choices he’s made have cost him a son. Even Angela can’t be sure. Neither can any of the others like her. The power of the descendants is growing, and so is Safe Haven's awareness of having magic in their midst. Angela is no longer the only seer in Adrian’s camp of survivors…if she ever was.

It began with plutonium, the first element ever manufactured in quantity by humans. Fearing that the Germans would be the first to weaponize the atom, the United States marshaled brilliant minds and seemingly inexhaustible bodies to find a way to create a nuclear chain reaction of inconceivable explosive power. In a matter of months, the Hanford nuclear facility was built to produce and weaponize the enigmatic and deadly new material that would fuel atomic bombs.

Tim Koeth peered into the crumpled brown paper bag; inside was a surprisingly heavy black metal cube. He recognized the mysterious object instantly—he had one just like it sitting on his desk at home. It was uranium metal, taken from the nuclear reactor that Nazi scientists had tried—and failed—to build at the end of World War II. This unexpected gift, wrapped in a piece of paper inscribed with a few cryptic but crucial lines, would launch Koeth, a nuclear physicist and professor, and his colleague Miriam Hiebert, a cultural heritage scientist, on an odyssey to trace the tale of these cubes.

On the night of March 26, 1938, nuclear physicist Ettore Majorana boarded a ship, cash and passport in hand. He was never seen again. In A Brilliant Darkness, theoretical physicist Joo Magueijo tells the story of Majorana and his research group, the Via Panisperna Boys, who discovered atomic fission in 1934. As Majorana, the most brilliant of the group, began to realize the implications of what they had found, he became increasingly unstable.