Atomic+Bomb+1st+Period

=ATOMIC BOMB =

–noun 1. a bomb whose potency is derived from nuclear fission of atoms of fissionable material with the consequent conversion of part of their into mass energy. 2. a bomb whose explosive force comes from a chain reaction based on nuclear fission in U-235 or plutonium.


 * The Manhattan Project**
 * Was established before World War II
 * Research team who worked on the atomic bomb
 * This team was endorsed to create the nuclear bomb by Einstein after Enrico Fermi successfully controlled a nuclear reaction in his reactor called the Chicago Pile 1
 * During this the project the first atomic bomb was exploded at Los Alomos
 * After this occurrence the director of Los Alamos, J. Robert Oppenheimer, said, "We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I guess we all felt that one way or another."

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 * **Hiroshima and Nagasaki**
 * Only one month after the bomb was first tested, two nuclear weapons were exploded over Japan at Hiroshima and Nagasaki
 * There were numerous reasons for this, but the official reason was wanting to end the war immediately and therefore saving thousands of lives
 * Together with the United Kingdom and the Republic of China, the United States called for a surrender of Japan in the Potsdam Declaration on July 26, 1945.
 * The Japanese government ignored this ultimatum. By executive order of President Harry S. Truman, the U.S. dropped the nuclear weapon "Little Boy" on the city of Hiroshima on Monday, August 6, 1945, followed by the detonation of "Fat Man" over Nagasaki on August 9.
 * Of the people who died on the day of the explosion, 60% died from flash or flame burns, 30% from falling debris and 10% from other causes.
 * During the following months, large numbers died from the effect of burns, radiation sickness and other injuries, compounded by illness.
 * In a US estimate of the total immediate and short term cause of death, 15–20% died from radiation sickness, 20–30% from flash burns, and 50–60% from other injuries, compounded by illness. In both cities, most of the dead were civilians.
 * Six days after the detonation over Nagasaki, on August 15, Japan announced its surrender to the Allied powers, signing the Instrument of Surrender on September 2, officially ending the Pacific War and therefore World War II.



**Soviet Atomic Weapons Project and Espionage**
 * The Soviet started to get interest in nuclear physics in the early 1930's and in 1943 during World War II the Soviet weapons program proper began.
 * Lavrenti Beria was leaded to head the entire project, with Kurchatov remaining as scientific director. Using data that was available on the American program, and the design description of the Fat Man bomb by Klaus Fuchs in June 1945, the program achieved its first test in almost exactly four years.
 * The first Soviet nuclear test was named "First Lightning", that detonated a plutonium bomb, the RDS-1.
 * Klaus Fuchs used sources from the Manhattan Project had an impact on his own team's research.
 * More than two years passed between the first and second Soviet atomic tests. The crash-program had created a inefficient and hazardous production system to produce an atomic bomb a quickly as possible, and effort was required to rationalize the program and place it on a firmer basis.
 * "Joe-2" exploded on 24 September 1951 with a yield of 38 Kt. This was an improved plutonium implosion bomb, incorporating some improvements that had prevented from being used in Joe-1.
 * This first approach to thermonuclear weapons, called the "Sloika" or "layer cake" (a sloika is a cheap layered pastry somewhat like a napoleon), was originated by Sakharov.
 * Efforts to extend the "Sloika" design to higher yields proved infeasible, and following the successful test of Joe-4, the program stagnated. The U.S. had already demonstrated the ability to build a 10 megaton bomb in November 1952, but the Soviets had no idea how to create it.
 * The first Soviet super bomb was called True H-Bomb was on November 22, 1955 and exploded underneath an inversion layer, which focused the shock back toward the ground unexpectedly. This refracted shock wave did unanticipated collateral damage, killing three people from a building collapse.
 * The first Soviet industrial test was called Chagan and it was on January 15,1965 and many more test were to come after that.
 * The U.S could have made their blue prints and their information on the nuclear weapons more secretive, it would have not made a big motivation as it was for the Soviets to be involved in Nuclear Weapons

**Nuclear Testing and the down winder**s
 * Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine the effectiveness, yield and explosive capability of nuclear weapons. Testing nuclear weapons can yield information about how the weapons work, as well as how the weapons behave under various conditions and how structures behave when subjected to nuclear explosions.
 * Additionally, nuclear testing has often been used as an indicator of scientific and military strength, and many tests have been overtly political in their intention; most nuclear weapon states publicly declared their nuclear status by means of a nuclear test.
 * 1963, all nuclear and many non-nuclear states signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, pledging to refrain from testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, underwater, or in outer space. The treaty permitted underground nuclear testing.




 * ===== A downwinder is someone who is exposed to nuclear radiation, specifically during atomic testing in the 1950's and 60's. they are the states next to and below the one the the nuclear bombs are being tested in =====
 * =====No other step in the nuclear fuel cycle has affected Utah more than nuclear weapons testing in Nevada. Between 1951 and 1992, 1925 nuclear weapons tests were conducted at the Nevada Test Site (NTS) including 100 above-ground tests. Utahns were never told the fallout was dangerous to their health, or to seek shelter as the radioactive clouds rained fallout over their homes =====

** U.S. Missile Development **
 * At this time the United States reversed its longstanding tradition of maintaining a large peacetime military establishment, and at the same time motivated the nation's industrial might and scientific genius to fashion the worlds most sophisticated weapons of war.


 * High technology became the ultimate aspect of military power. Armed with nuclear warheads, guided missiles quickly became the defining weapons technology of the Cold War. • The Cold War missile program was born of technologies invented during World War II and nurtured by the arms race. Immediately after World War II the United States rapidly demobilized, and the military focused on its missile research and development programs. •


 * By 1950 the world had changed. The Soviet Union had developed atomic weapons and the United States became involved in the Korean conflict, which many thought to be a direct provocation by the Soviet Union and China. Confronted with those challenges, in 1950 America began to re-arm.


 * The 1950s were an important decade for the U.S. missile program. One persistent problem was interservice rivalry: the Army and the Air Force fought over which service would develop surface-to-air missiles, and all three services fought for the right to develop long-range ballistic missiles.

**The Space Race**
 * There were also internal disputes within the services.The Air Force was notably reluctant to develop long-range ballistic missiles, and it took a considerable amount of external pressure to convince Air Force leadership to develop them. The Army won primary responsibility for developing surface-to-air missiles, and by 1958 it had deployed 200 Nike missile batteries across the country. The Air Force's long-range BOMARC air defense missile program was slower taking shape, but by the early 1960s seven squadrons were based along the nation's eastern and northern borders.
 * The Space Race was a competition between the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States for supremacy in outer space exploration.
 * Between 1957 and 1975, Cold War rivalry between the two nations focused on attaining firsts in space exploration, which were seen as necessary for national security and symbolic of technological and ideological superiority.
 * The Space Race involved pioneering efforts to launch artificial satellites, sub-orbital and orbital human spaceflight around the Earth, and piloted voyages to the Moon.
 * It effectively began with the Soviet launch of the Sputnik 1 artificial satellite on 4 October 1957.
 * The Space Race had its origins in the missile-based arms race that occurred just after the end of the Worl War II, when both the Soviet Union and the United States captured advanced German rocket technology and personnel.
 * It sparked never before seen increases in spending on education and research, which accelerated scientific advancements and led to more technology development.
 * An unforeseen effect was that the Space Race contributed to the birth of the environmental movement; the first color pictures of Earth taken from deep space were used as icons by the movement to show the planet as a fragile "blue marble" surrounded by the blackness of space.
 * Sources**
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