Command and Control

Conventional explosives, like TNT: I am grateful to members of the New York Police Department Bomb Squad not only for teaching me how high explosives work but also for demonstrating some of them for me in the field. See Eric Schlosser, “The Bomb Squad,” Atlantic Monthly, January 1994.

similar to the burning of a log in a fireplace: Ibid.

temperatures reach as high as 9,000 degrees: Cited in Samuel Glasstone, ed., The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964), p. 29. Glasstone’s book does an unsurpassed job of explaining what nuclear weapons can do. The original edition appeared in 1950, the last edition in 1977—and the one cited here comes with a round, plastic “nuclear effects computer,” similar to a slide rule, that allows you to calculate the maximum overpressures, wind speeds, and arrival times of various nuclear blasts, depending on how far you’re standing from them.

1.4 million pounds per square inch: Cited in Schlosser, “The Bomb Squad.”

tens of millions degrees Fahrenheit: See Glasstone, Effects of Nuclear Weapons, p. 24.

many millions of pounds per square inch: Ibid., p. 29.

the largest building in the world: Cited in Michael Kort, The Columbia Guide to Hiroshima and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 22.

“the Introvert”: See Hoddeson et al., Critical Assembly, p. 86.

“The more neutrons — the more fission”: “Survey of Weapon Development and Technology” (WR708), Sandia National Laboratories, Corporate Training and Development, February 1998 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), p. 112.

“We care about neutrons!”: Ibid.

“precision devices”: For Kistiakowsky’s thinking about how to create a symmetrical implosion, see George B. Kistiakowsky, “Reminiscences of Wartime Los Alamos,” in Lawrence Badash, Joseph O. Hirschfelder, and Herbert P. Broida, eds., Reminiscences of Los Alamos, 1943–1945 (Boston: D. Reidel Publishing, 1980), pp. 49–65. The reference to precision devices appears on page 54.

the exploding-bridgewire detonator: For the story behind the invention of this revolutionary new detonator, see Luis W. Alvarez, Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist (New York: Basic Books, 1987), pp. 132–36. For a brief overview of the technology, see Ron Varesh, “Electric Detonators: Electric Bridgewire Detonators and Exploding Foil Initiators,” Propellants, Explosives, Pyrotechnics, vol. 21 (1996), pp. 150–54.

Hornig was instructed to “babysit the bomb”: Cited in Donald Hornig and Robert Cahn, “Atom-Bomb Scientist Tells His Story,” Christian Science Monitor, July 11, 1995. For more details of that night atop the tower, see also “60th Anniversary of Trinity: First Manmade Nuclear Explosion, July 16, 1945,” Public Symposium, National Academy of Sciences, July 14, 2005, pp. 27–28; and “Babysitting the Bomb: Interview with Don Hornig,” in Kelly, Manhattan Project, pp. 298–99.

This is what the end of the world will look like: See James G. Hershberg, James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), p. 234.

[Weisskopf] thought that his calculations were wrong: See Brain, Voice of Genius, p. 75.

“The hills were bathed in brilliant light”: See O. R. Frisch, “Eyewitness Account of ‘Trinity’ Test, July 1945,” in Philip L. Cantelon, Richard G. Hewlett, and Robert C. Williams, eds., The American Atom: A Documentary History of Nuclear Policies from the Discovery of Fission to the Present (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), p. 50.

“The whole country was lighted by a searing light”: Quoted in “Appendix 6. War Department Release on New Mexico Test, July 16, 1945,” in Henry DeWolf Smyth, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes, 1940–1945: The Official Report on the Development of the Atomic Bomb Under the Auspices of the United States Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1945), p. 254.

“Now we are all sons of bitches”: Bainbridge was disturbed by the immense explosion — but also exhilarated and relieved. Had the nuclear device failed to detonate, he would have been the first person to climb the tower and investigate what had gone wrong. See Kenneth T. Bainbridge, “A Foul and Awesome Display,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist (May 1975), pp. 40–46. The “sons of bitches” line appears on page 46.

the “inhuman barbarism” of aerial attacks: The full text of Franklin Roosevelt’s statement can be found in Bertram D. Hulen, “Roosevelt in Plea; Message to Russia, Also Sent to Finns, Decries ‘Ruthless Bombing,’” New York Times, December 1, 1939.