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Stephen Schwartz

@atomicanalyst.bsky.social

15K followers 1.1K following 10K posts

Editor/Co-author, “Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of US Nuclear Weapons Since 1940” • Nonresident Senior Fellow, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists • Nuclear weapons expert (history, policy, costs, accidents) and tracker of the nuclear “Football.”

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · Jun 20

In the March 1981 issue of the @bulletinatomic.bsky.social, conflict resolution expert and Harvard Law School professor Roger Fisher described his “quite simple” idea to force US presidents to viscerally confront the lethal consequences of ordering a nuclear attack. books.google.com/books/about/...

An excerpt from Roger Fisher’s March 1981 article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, titled “Preventing Nuclear War”:

“My suggestion was quite simple: Put that needed code number in a little capsule, and then implant that capsule right next to the heart of a volunteer. The volunteer would carry a big, heavy butcher knife as he accompanied the president. If ever the president wanted to fire nuclear weapons, the only way he could do so would be for him, first, with his own hands, to kill one human being. The president says, ‘George, I’m sorry, but tens of millions must die.’ He has to look someone in the eye and realize what death is—what an innocent death is. Blood on the White House carpet. It’s reality brought home.

When I suggested this to friends in the Pentagon, they said, ‘My God, that’s terrible. Having to kill someone would distort the president’s judgment. He might never push the button.’”

White House Military Office Coast Guard aide Lt. Commander Woody Lee carrying the President Emergency Satchel (aka the “Football”) while walking next to President Ronald Reagan (who had recently undergone surgery on his left hand), near the White House, January 10, 1989.

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 52m

a man with a mustache wearing a cowboy hat and vest is sitting in a bowling alley .

ALT: a man with a mustache wearing a cowboy hat and vest is sitting in a bowling alley .

media.tenor.com

Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 53m

So glad to hear that! What were you writing about?

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 4h

But I will respect whatever decision you make.

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 4h

I'm seeing it tomorrow night, so I'll be ready after that. Folks who saw special previews before it opened last week have kept quiet.

I'm fine with discussing the film before it starts on Netflix on October 24. We can add "SPOILER ALERT" to posts and people can mute terms or look away as needed.

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 6h

“Governor Hoegh [Director, Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization] pointed out that conditions varied a great deal from one DEFCON situation to another. The President said that the thermonuclear bomb did not vary very much and was the bomb [,] which made all these preparations necessary.”

Bill Geerhart @conelrad6401240.bsky.social · 6h

Notes From a Dec. 29, 1960 NSC meeting: President Eisenhower wanted a draft of a doomsday message in his Football. "150 words with some blanks left to be filled in at the last minute was a necessity." Thanks for the lead, @DoomTape1981
history.state.gov/historicaldo... cc: @vermontgmg.bsky.social

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 8h

As a result, any use of US nuclear weapons would be far more destructive than the models indicate, with profound implications not just for people on the receiving end but for US military and civilian leaders' understanding of the impact strikes they ordered and their ability to control escalation.

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 8h

True. Although US nuclear war planners have long focused exclusively on blast effects in their calculations of how many and what types of nuclear weapons are "required" to damage or destroy particular targets. Firestorms, ionizing radiation, and fallout are considered too difficult to model.

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 9h

“Modern” thermonuclear weapons with yields of “only” hundreds of kilotons to one Megaton would produce less radioactive fallout than the multi-Megaton behemoths the US, USSR, UK, France, and China repeatedly tested and deployed during the Cold War. But they would still generate a LOT of fallout.

A color, ground-level photograph of the large white mushroom cloud generated by the TRUCKEE thermonuclear test on June 9, 1962, conducted 10 miles south of Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean. The weapon (a development test of what became the W58 warhead for the Polaris A-3 SLBM) was dropped from a B-52 bomber and detonated at a height of 6,970 feet. The yield was 210 kilotons.

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 9h

For example, the six large tests comprising the 1954 Castle series—BRAVO (15 Mt), ROMEO (11 Mt), KOON (110 kt), UNION (6.9 MT), YANKEE (13.5 Mt), and NECTAR (1.69 Mt)—together created radioactive hot spots not just in and around the Marshall Islands but as far away as Mexico City and Sri Lanka.

A screenshot of an interactive color chart labeled "Castle Series Cumulative Fallout (log scale)" and showing the worldwide dispersal of fallout from the Castle nuclear test series in 1954. Red is used to highlight the highest doses, then orange, yellow, light green, light blue, and dark blue. The vast ocean area surrounding the Marshall Islands and extending to parts of Indonesia is red. The rest of Indonesia, southern India and Sri Lanka, Hawaii and many other Pacific islands, and an area around Mexico City are orange. Western, northern, and central Australia are yellow, light green, and light blue as is most of the United States and parts of southern Canada.

A hotspot in Mexico City is highlighted, showing that it received 9,500 Becquerels per square meter, as much as some locations in the Pacific Ocean much closer to Bikini Atoll.

Source: https://ieer.org/resource/nuclear-testing/impacts-of-the-1954-castle-u-s-nuclear-weapons-test-series/

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 9h

As we know from more than 500 worldwide atmospheric nuclear weapon tests during the Cold War, radioactive fallout repeatedly caused significant, long-lasting harm hundreds and even thousands of miles downwind—so far away most people had no idea how they got sick or why they were dying from cancer.

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 9h

Tyson’s subsequent remark that, “What you really have to worry about is being vaporized, and after that, if you’re not vaporized, blown to bits by the shockwave. That’s a way bigger problem that you’re gonna have,” is only true for people close enough to affected by the powerful shockwave.

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 9h

anyone relatively close to the blast but still harmful further away. The women, children, and men killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki within minutes to days after the airburst attacks died from ionizing radiation, fatal burns from the thermal pulse, blast trauma, or some combination of all three.

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 9h

killing an estimated 210,000 people, exploded high enough in the air that—other than radioactive black rain—they generated little local fallout.

In their earliest moments, nuclear explosions also produce an intense burst of prompt ionizing radiation (neutrons, gamma rays, and x-rays) lethal to …

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 9h

The primary source of fallout is from the intensely radioactive fission products left over after uranium or plutonium nuclei split when a nuclear weapon explodes. Some last just hours or days, while others persist for months or years. The atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, …

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 9h

deGrasse Tyson also seems to think that because “modern” thermonuclear weapons are more efficient than older atomic weapons (more of the uranium or plutonium fuel fissions in the chain reaction) they create less radioactivity. But this is exactly backwards. More fissioning means more radioactivity!

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 9h

the USSR did design and test “clean” (90%-plus fusion) thermonuclear weapons. This was a key reason we opposed a nuclear test ban in the 1950s. But neither country widely deployed them because they were not powerful enough for the miniaturized warheads that could fit into MIRVs on ICBMs/SLBMs.

A circular color photograph of the team leaders of the W87-1 warhead modification program (left to right, a white man, an asian woman, and a white woman) standing next to a black Mk21A conical reentry vehicle sitting vertically on a wheeled platform. The Mk21A is roughly as tall as the white man and the white woman.

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 9h

At least 50% of the yield of “modern” thermonuclear weapons comes from fission, because the weapons have been optimized for efficiency (the highest yield for the lowest weight), not cleanliness (generating the least amount of fission products).

During the first half of the Cold War, the US and …

A logarithmic 2013 color graph by Alex Wellerstein titled "Yields and Weights of U.S. Nuclear Weapons." The X-axis denotes weapons yields from 0.01 kilotons to 100,000 kilotons (100 Megatons). The Y-axis denotes weight in kilograms (from 10 kilograms to 100,000 kilograms).

Link: https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/12/23/kilotons-per-kilogram/

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 9h

deGrasse Tyson apparently believes thermonuclear weapons do not generate radioactive fallout because their immense power comes from fusing atoms together, which is a cleaner process than fissioning them apart. But as already noted, a “dirty” fission bomb is required to trigger a fusion reaction.

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 9h

Meanwhile, a nuclear weapon detonated high enough in the air contributes mostly to global fallout (increasing background radioactivity levels around the entire hemisphere or planet).

Local fallout returns rapidly to the surface in hours or days. Global fallout can circulate for years or decades.

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 9h

How much radioactive fallout a nuclear weapon generates is a function of its total yield, how much of that is from fission, the height at which it detonates, and weather conditions in the area and downwind. Any nuclear weapon exploded on the ground, underground, or underwater creates local fallout.

A ground-level color photograph of the very large and glowing mushroom cloud produced by the MOHAWK test of a thermonuclear device on July 2, 1956, on Eberiru Island at Enewetak Atoll. The sky and sea are orange-red and the mushroom cloud is orange-yellow. The MOHAWK device, which weighed 1,116 pounds and was 15 inches in diameter and just over 46 inches long, was detonated atop a 300-foot steel tower and had yield of 360 kilotons. The explosion carved a wide but very shallow crater out of the porous coral soil (1,340 feet wide and 8 feet deep).

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 9h

For starters, the fusion chain reaction in every thermonuclear or hydrogen bomb is ignited by a small atomic (fission) bomb.

It’s now 1,096 days later, and deGrasse Tyson still has not retracted or clarified his remarks, which surprised Bill Maher and received more than a little attention online.

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 9h

Three years ago today, @neildegrassetyson.com asserted on “Real Time with Bill Maher” that unlike atomic bombs, “… modern nukes [thermonuclear bombs] don’t have the radiation problem … not in the way we used to have to worry about with fallout and all the rest of that.”

This is completely wrong.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: modern hydrogen nuclear weapons don’t have the radiation fallout problem of WW2

YouTube video by Interstellar1977

www.youtube.com

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 1d

Good find. Patterson is _the_ source on the satchel’s weight. For a guy who claims to be super concerned about military security, he sure talks a lot about the “Football” (nothing classified, but still).

Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 1d

I would love to know all the details about the skit and what prompted it. And that certainly looks like the Presidential Emergency Satchel now on display the Smithsonian Museum of American History. (FYI: Patterson was a White House Military Office Air Force aide from 1996-98.)

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Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 1d

Because using nuclear weapons is a heavy responsibility.

But seriously …

Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · May 26

The customized Zero Halliburton aluminum case alone weighs about 8 pounds empty (excluding its separate black leather sheath). Additional but unknown weight and bulk comes from hardening to protect some items from an EMP. But most of the weight comes from multiple binders of laminated paper.