#Oppenheimer feared nuclear annihilation – and only a chance pause by a Soviet submarine officer kept it from happening in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, as it gave him time to rethink before firing his nuclear torpedo/.
“World War III was very likely averted as a result of a brief delay in time caused by a sailor who happened to be stuck in the right place at the right time..."
Today in Labor History March 1, 1954: The U.S. detonated Castle Bravo, a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll. It caused the worst radioactive contamination ever by the U.S. However, this occurred after years of nuclear testing and contamination of the islands and waters around them. The U.S. detonated 23 nuclear devices on the islands from 1946 to 1958. They blew up the bombs on the reef, in the sea, in the air and underwater. They relocated islanders several times, each time to supposedly safe islands. But they neglected to provide sufficient food and water, causing starvation. When the islanders tried to catch fish to eat, or grow their own crops, they were so contaminated from radioactive fallout, that it poisoned all who ate it. Women started having miscarriages and giving birth to babies with abnormalities.
Today (March 1) is the 70th anniversary of the #Bravo Test, the largest nuclear weapon test ever conducted by the US, on #Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. It was a radiological disaster that resulted in the irradiation and forced displacement of whole communities.
Here is an article I wrote about how Bravo put the word #fallout into our lexicon.
"The Bravo Test and the Death and Life of the Global Ecosystem in the Early Anthropocene"
Today in Labor History February 18, 1955: The U.S. launched Operation Teapot at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. Teapot included 14 nuclear bomb tests. Wasp was the first, detonated on February 18. It had a yield of 1.2 kilotons. During shot Wasp, ground forces participated in Exercise Desert Rock VI. This included an armored task force moving to within 3,000 ft of ground zero, while the mushroom cloud was still growing. From 1945 through 1962, the U.S. conducted 230 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests, with approximately 235,000 military personnel participating. Most were enlisted men, from the navy. However, millions of people were exposed to the fallout from U.S. nuclear weapons tests in the southwest of the U.S. and the Marshall Islands. University of Arizona economist Keith Meyers estimates that radioactive fallout was responsible for 340,000 to 690,000 American deaths from 1951 to 1973.
Is there any merit to framing conflicts of the recent past in ideological terms?
For example, the events leading up to WWII could be described as #fascism vs #communism, until you learn about the economic and military pacts Bolsheviks made with Hitler and Mussolini.
Sure, Brownshirts were fighting communists on the streets of Berlin, but once each side captured their own state, differences were set aside for the greater project of making their respective nations stronger.
Similarly, the Cold War was supposedly about capitalism vs communism, until you learn about China embracing Kissinger and the Sino-Soviet split.
It feels like nationalism is the singular dominant ideology of the XX and XXI century and all other ideologies are incidental and need to align themselves with the ultimate goal of "how to make our country strong".
My students and readers of my site often wonder why I’m so obsessed with Cold War science fiction and nuclear gloom stories. I now have the perfect paragraph to point them towards!
1 reason why #Trump's comments about abandoning #NATO matter are, 1st & foremost, bc he ordered GOP to abandon #Ukraine which virtually all near-Ukraine allies think makes them next
He is, in front of our faces, delivering Ukraine up to Putin as a gift.
But the other reason it matters is bc we SAW this call-and-response in '16 & '20, when Trump got help from Russian spies
...constitutional lawyer, but in my understanding, "the supreme law of the land" equates "levying War against" the #UnitedStates with doing likewise against any #NATO member state.
Thus, #TFG just invited the former arch-enemy of the #ColdWar's legal successor, the #Russian Federation, to attack any member state, as #Putler pleases.
Today in Labor History February 11, 1953: Cold War: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower denied all appeals for clemency for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The government executed them at Sing Sing in 1953. They had been convicted of espionage for the USSR. Their sons, Michael and Robert Meeropol (adopted by Abel Merepol, composer of the anti-lynching song “Strange Fruit,”), maintained their parents’ innocence. However, after the fall of the Soviet Union, decoded Soviet cables showed that their father had collaborated. They continued to fight for the mother’s pardon, but Obama refused to grant it.
Today in Labor History February 3, 1961: The U.S. Air Forces began Operation Looking Glass, code name for its airborne nuclear weapons command and control center. Ever since, there has been a "Doomsday Plane" always in the air, able to take direct control of U.S. nuclear bombers and missiles if the land-based strategic command (USSTRATCOM Global Operations Center (GOC) is incapacitated. Perhaps it will come in handy, should its current game of chicken between the US/NATO and Russia go sideways.
#Ukraine’s popular army chief Valery #Zaluzhny was called to a meeting at the president’s office on Monday and told he was being fired, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN, following weeks of growing speculation over tensions between Volodymyr #Zelensky and his top commander.
A formal announcement has not been made, however, a presidential decree is expected by the end of the week.
The deterioration of #Russia’s #AviationSafety record is undoing decades of work by Russia’s airlines to modernize their fleets after the end of the #ColdWar and turn around a reputation for questionable safety. #Ukraine
Today in Labor History January 31, 1950: President Truman ordered the development of thermonuclear weapons (Hydrogen bombs). The U.S. tested the first thermonuclear weapon in 1952. It was developed by Edward Teller. H-bombs consist of a nuclear fission primary stage, much like older atomic bombs. The fuel for this stage is usually 235U or 239Pu. This is followed by a nuclear fusion reaction using the heavy hydrogen isotope deuterium and tritium. Modern thermonuclear weapons use lithium deuteride. The nuclear fission stage creates a temperature of over 100 million Kelvin (180 million degrees Fahrenheit), flooding the radiation channel with X-rays. The X-ray energy implodes a plutonium spark plug, compressing the secondary stage and driving the plutonium into a supercritical state that drives a fission chain reaction. The fission products heat the thermonuclear fuel to 300 million Kelvin, igniting the fusion reactions.
Return to Winter: Russia, China, and the New Cold War Against America
The United States is a nation in crisis. While Washington’s ability to address our most pressing challenges has been rendered nearly impotent by ongoing partisan warfare, we face an array of foreign-policy crises for which we seem increasingly unprepared.
January 27th is the National Day of Remembrance for America’s Downwinders in the USA. These are people who lived downwind of the Nevada Nuclear Test site, and were exposed to radioactive fallout. Much of that fallout remains radioactive and is now embedded into the ecosystem.
The US government has paid a token compensation to a minuscule portion of this community through #RECA.
Today in Labor History January 24, 1961: A B-52 bomber, carrying three 4-megaton Mark 39 nuclear bombs, broke up in mid-air, dropping its nuclear payload over North Carolina. Five crewmen successfully bailed out of the aircraft and landed safely. Another ejected, but did not survive the landing. Two others died in the crash. Each of the bombs had more than 250 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb. Each one was large enough to create a 100% kill zone within an 8.5 miles radius. A supervisor of nuclear safety at Sandia National Laboratories said that "one simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe." However, there is evidence that the switch of at least one of the bombs was set to ARM. No one knows why none of them exploded. And while the authorities were able to recover the uranium core from two of the bombs, one of them is still lost somewhere in North Carolina.
For a truly terrifying look at just how many times we were just a hair trigger away from a major nuclear accident, read Eric Schlosser’s “Command and Control.”
A relic from the cold war. In 1964 an English traitor spy named Guy Burgess died mostly from the effects of alcohol, in Moscow, Russia where he had fled before being unmasked. The ashes of Guy Burgess are in his father's grave shown in this image. The villagers demanded that his name should not appear on the stone. West Meon, Hampshire, England. January 2024. #coldwar#traitor#westmeon#hampshire#england#guyburgess
"Eisenhower's cabinet met to consider how to limit [On the Beach's] success and exposure."
From Stephen Dedman’s May the Armed Forces Be With You: The Relationship Between Science Fiction and the United States Military (2016) #scifi#sciencefiction#history#coldwar
📖 The book "Consuls in the Cold War", edited by Sue Onslow and Lori Maguire, includes a chapter authored by Pedro Aires Oliveira dedicated to the diplomatic relations between Portugal and the People's Republic of China in the mid-20th century. 🇵🇹 🇨🇳
Today in labor History January 17, 1961: Patrice Lumumba, anti-colonial fighter and former premier of the newly independent Republic of the Congo, was assassinated with the complicity of the CIA. President Eisenhower authorized an assassination in 1960, because of Lumumba’s ties with the Soviet Union. CIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb planned to kill him with poisoned toothpaste. Gottlieb was the main scientist behind the CIA’s MKUltra program, which did illegal human mind control experiments with drugs, like LSD, without the victim’s knowledge or consent. He was also involved in numerous assassinations.