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#71 - The World Set Free
* In 1913, H. G. Wells wrote a book called The World Set Free
* The novel begins: "The history of mankind is the history of the attainment of external power. Man is the tool-using, fire-making animal. . . . Always down a lengthening record, save for a set-back ever and again, he is doing more."
* In the book, the human race develops an atomic bomb.
* This was written in 1913.
* A few years earlier, Frederick Soddy had published a book about the properties of radium which Wells had read.
* Soddy and others, including Rutherford, had the slow natural radioactive decay of elements like radium continues for thousands of years, and that while the rate of energy release is negligible, the total amount released is huge.
* Wells wondered what would happen if you could get all of that energy to release at once?
* He got a lot of the details wrong - but plutonium, the fissile material used in the first atomic explosions, wasn’t actually discovered until 1941.
* Wells's "atomic bombs" have no more force than ordinary high explosive and are rather primitive devices detonated by a "bomb-thrower" biting off "a little celluloid stud."
* He also said that ‘A man could carry about in a handbag an amount of latent energy sufficient to wreck half a city’.
* I don’t know about a handbag, but suitcase bombs certainly are a thing.
* In the 1960s the U.S. built a mini nuclear device-- the Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM).
* It weighed 80-100 pounds, was small enough to fit in a duffel bag or large case and was designed for sabotage missions-- airfields, bridges, dams.
* It had an explosive charge of roughly one thousand tons of TNT (one kiloton).
* The Russians also developed a suitcase bomb.
* The highest ranking GRU defector, Stanislav Lunev, has said that suitcase nukes might be already deployed by the GRU operatives on US soil to assassinate US leaders in the event of war.
* He claimed that arms caches were hidden by the KGB in many countries.
* They were booby-trapped with "Lightning" explosive devices or Molniya as its known in Russian.
* Just like Mad Max’s Interceptor, a sequence of specific actions had to be taken in the correct order to render the device safe prior to moving or opening the container, or the device would automatically detonate.
* This detonation was designed to be lethal to anyone in its immediate proximity, as well as being sufficient to destroy all materials in the cache.
* In 1992, KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin defected to the UK, and brought with him 30 years of handwritten archives.
* He indentified the location of one hidden suitcase radio transmitter, not a bomb, which exploded when Swiss authorities sprayed it with a high pressure water cannon in a wooded area near Bern.
* Several others caches were removed successfully.
* The lightest nuclear warhead ever acknowledged to have been manufactured by the U.S. is the W54, which fit into 11 in by 16 in (28 cm by 41 cm, small enough to fit in a footlocker-sized container) cylinder that weighed 51 lbs (23 kg).
* Anyway, back to Wells’ book.
* His bombs ‘made a mighty thunder in the air, and fell like Lucifer’.
* They produced ‘tremendous pillars of fire . . . Hard upon the sound of them came a roaring wind, and the sky was filled with flickering lightnings and rushing clouds.’
* They destroyed buildings like a scythe cutting down grass, while mountainous clouds billowed up into the air.
* The book was published in 1914, just as World War I was starting.
* In 1932, the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, a Wells fan, read the book.
* The following year, he realized that you could indeed make an atomic bomb.
*
* In the first memorandum passed to President Roosevelt, outlining the possibility of making a bomb, Szilard’s first citation is to The World Set Free.
*
* F
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By Cameron Reilly & Ray Harris* In 1913, H. G. Wells wrote a book called The World Set Free
* The novel begins: "The history of mankind is the history of the attainment of external power. Man is the tool-using, fire-making animal. . . . Always down a lengthening record, save for a set-back ever and again, he is doing more."
* In the book, the human race develops an atomic bomb.
* This was written in 1913.
* A few years earlier, Frederick Soddy had published a book about the properties of radium which Wells had read.
* Soddy and others, including Rutherford, had the slow natural radioactive decay of elements like radium continues for thousands of years, and that while the rate of energy release is negligible, the total amount released is huge.
* Wells wondered what would happen if you could get all of that energy to release at once?
* He got a lot of the details wrong - but plutonium, the fissile material used in the first atomic explosions, wasn’t actually discovered until 1941.
* Wells's "atomic bombs" have no more force than ordinary high explosive and are rather primitive devices detonated by a "bomb-thrower" biting off "a little celluloid stud."
* He also said that ‘A man could carry about in a handbag an amount of latent energy sufficient to wreck half a city’.
* I don’t know about a handbag, but suitcase bombs certainly are a thing.
* In the 1960s the U.S. built a mini nuclear device-- the Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM).
* It weighed 80-100 pounds, was small enough to fit in a duffel bag or large case and was designed for sabotage missions-- airfields, bridges, dams.
* It had an explosive charge of roughly one thousand tons of TNT (one kiloton).
* The Russians also developed a suitcase bomb.
* The highest ranking GRU defector, Stanislav Lunev, has said that suitcase nukes might be already deployed by the GRU operatives on US soil to assassinate US leaders in the event of war.
* He claimed that arms caches were hidden by the KGB in many countries.
* They were booby-trapped with "Lightning" explosive devices or Molniya as its known in Russian.
* Just like Mad Max’s Interceptor, a sequence of specific actions had to be taken in the correct order to render the device safe prior to moving or opening the container, or the device would automatically detonate.
* This detonation was designed to be lethal to anyone in its immediate proximity, as well as being sufficient to destroy all materials in the cache.
* In 1992, KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin defected to the UK, and brought with him 30 years of handwritten archives.
* He indentified the location of one hidden suitcase radio transmitter, not a bomb, which exploded when Swiss authorities sprayed it with a high pressure water cannon in a wooded area near Bern.
* Several others caches were removed successfully.
* The lightest nuclear warhead ever acknowledged to have been manufactured by the U.S. is the W54, which fit into 11 in by 16 in (28 cm by 41 cm, small enough to fit in a footlocker-sized container) cylinder that weighed 51 lbs (23 kg).
* Anyway, back to Wells’ book.
* His bombs ‘made a mighty thunder in the air, and fell like Lucifer’.
* They produced ‘tremendous pillars of fire . . . Hard upon the sound of them came a roaring wind, and the sky was filled with flickering lightnings and rushing clouds.’
* They destroyed buildings like a scythe cutting down grass, while mountainous clouds billowed up into the air.
* The book was published in 1914, just as World War I was starting.
* In 1932, the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, a Wells fan, read the book.
* The following year, he realized that you could indeed make an atomic bomb.
*
* In the first memorandum passed to President Roosevelt, outlining the possibility of making a bomb, Szilard’s first citation is to The World Set Free.
*
* F
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