Alex Wellerstein
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wellerstein.bsky.social
Alex Wellerstein
@wellerstein.bsky.social
9.9K followers 550 following 2.6K posts
Nuclear historian. Professor at Stevens Institute of Technology. Visiting researcher at Nuclear Knowledges program, Sciences Po (Paris). Author of THE MOST AWFUL RESPONSIBILITY (2025). Creator of NUKEMAP. Blogging at https://doomsdaymachines.net.
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wellerstein.bsky.social
"You will be visited by three spirits"

The three spirits:
J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Ernest O. Lawrence, at Berkeley in the early 1940s
November 26, 2025 at 2:23 PM
wellerstein.bsky.social
Wait, so the actor who played the singer who used the godfather's influence to get a movie role in "The Godfather" (1972) apparently got his role in "The Godfather" because of the intervention of his own real-life godfather???
Pasted in quote from Wikipedia: Johnny Fontane Johnny Fontane, a mob-associated singer and Vito's godson, seeks Vito's help in securing a movie role; Vito dispatches his consigliere, Tom Hagen, to Los Angeles to persuade studio head Jack Woltz to give Johnny the part. Woltz refuses until he wakes up in bed with the severed head of his prized stallion. Al Martino, a then famed singer in nightclubs, was notified of the character Johnny Fontane by a friend who read the eponymous novel and felt Martino represented the character of Johnny Fontane.[3][4] Martino then contacted producer Albert S. Ruddy, who gave him the part.[3] However, Martino was stripped of the part after Francis Ford Coppola became director and then awarded the role to singer Vic Damone.[3] According to Martino, after being stripped of the role, he went to Russell Bufalino, his godfather and a crime boss, who then orchestrated the publication of various news articles that claimed Coppola was unaware of Ruddy having given Martino the part.[3] Damone eventually dropped the role because he did not want to provoke the mob, in addition to being paid too little.[5][3] Ultimately, the part of Johnny Fontane was given to Martino.[3][6]
November 25, 2025 at 2:52 PM
wellerstein.bsky.social
November 21, 2025 at 10:16 AM
wellerstein.bsky.social
Cartoon by Peter Arno, the New Yorker, showing a child with a chemistry set that has a dramatic mushroom cloud coming out of it. His parents look on and one comments: "I certainly hope we have [nuclear proliferation] controls before *he* gets the bomb!"
November 21, 2025 at 9:17 AM
wellerstein.bsky.social
Pie charts usually have such low information density that they are worth avoiding, but these ones from a classified December 1945 report by the US Naval Technical Mission to Japan on the "medical effects" of the atomic bombings carry much more information than was perhaps intended... wow and yikes.
November 20, 2025 at 11:39 AM
wellerstein.bsky.social
November 18, 2025 at 2:50 PM
wellerstein.bsky.social
Although it does create some unintentional humor, such as James Conant, nerdy administrator, automagically morphing into Conan, barbarian.
November 18, 2025 at 7:03 AM
wellerstein.bsky.social
FWIW I have found the Hilde de Ridder-Symoens volumes on "A History of the University in Europe" to be REALLY interesting for medieval and early modern universities. Like here is just one random tidbit re: accessibility of medieval universities — not what anyone (much less students) expect...
"If on the one hand there were no particular requirements for admission and attendance at a university, so there were no particular rights of admission on the other hand. The universities accepted everyone wishing to become a suppositum or a membrum universitatis. Neither origin nor rank, neither proximity of residence nor distance, neither poverty nor wealth, neither health nor physical handicap influenced acceptance. Even blindness presented no obstacle. The case of the later professor artium et juris, Nicasius de Voerda from Mechelen in Brabant, who had been blind since the age of two, is perhaps only an especially prominent example of this: he attended the Universities of Louvain (1459) and Cologne (1489) and was awarded at the former a magister artium and a licentiatus of theology, and at the latter a doctor decretorum."
November 14, 2025 at 2:31 PM
wellerstein.bsky.social
The new book... exists!!! Got my author copies in the mail today! Looks quite readable! Spelled my name right on the cover, even!!!

harpercollins.com/products/the-most-awful-responsibility-alex-wellerstein
November 12, 2025 at 3:42 PM
wellerstein.bsky.social
A few more graphs and tables from said article. I am sort of obsessed with the phenomenology of the bomb — so much of it seems so hard to capture — so I eat this kind of stuff up.
November 12, 2025 at 2:01 PM
wellerstein.bsky.social
In my part, I make reference to photos of a nuclear test in which birds can be seen igniting in the air as a result of the thermal pulse — this is what I was referencing. From Science, vol 138, no. 3539 (October 26, 1962), which included an article on the brightness of an atomic bomb.
Photographs of an "atomic fireball," with small black clouds visible in the foreground. "An interesting effect of the light from an atomic fireball is shown in the series of prints (cover photo) which were taken from motion picture ifim made during one of the Eniwetok tests in the Pacific. The device was detonated at night when the birds of the island were roosting in the trees and bushes located between the camera and the point of detonation. With the appearance of the light from the fireball, which at this distance was many times that of the noon day sun, the birds were suddenly awakened and took to the air. Because they were between the camera and the fireball, their silhouettes showed clearly on the film. The time required for them to fly above the tree tops was about the -same as the time- for the maximum delivery of the therhial radiation pulse. At this time, the intensity of thermal radiation was sufficient to ignite the tail and wing feathers of the black birds. As their feathers burned, they could no longer remain airborne; their trails were marked by curving puffs of smoke as they fell to the ground. These trails are visible in the last two prints of the series. In the motion pictures, it is possible to detect a few birds which remained airborne and continued on their way. These are the white-feathered ones. The difference" (continued next) ..."in the thermal effects on these two classes of birds is due to the differences in the absorption of thermal radiation. As with sunlight, dark and especially black objects are heated more than white ones, and in this case the energy levels were just sufficient to ignite the feathers of the black terns and not the white ones." Graph showing the "luminous efficiency of a nuclear fireball in air" with "some other familiar light sources shown for comparison." The fireball is briefly brighter than the Sun.
November 12, 2025 at 1:43 PM
wellerstein.bsky.social
buddy, if it was up to me, you wouldn't be running at all. like hell I'm going to give you unfettered access to my keychain.
November 12, 2025 at 1:24 PM
wellerstein.bsky.social
The first photo of my new book, courtesy of my editor... "The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age" comes out in early December! Feel free to pre-order it today! www.harpercollins.com/products/the...
November 6, 2025 at 10:41 AM
wellerstein.bsky.social
Loving this Reddit exchange about a bug in which Arthur's mouth doesn't move during a mission of Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC
November 4, 2025 at 7:01 PM
wellerstein.bsky.social
The half-life of a relevant analogy: instances of the terms "atomic Pearl Harbor" and "nuclear Pearl Harbor" (combined) across the Google Books corpus using Google Ngrams. Unfortunately doing the same search for "nuclear 9/11" turns up too much OCR noise.
November 4, 2025 at 12:14 PM
wellerstein.bsky.social
Your first photo reminds me of this fastener for window shutters that I saw near the Jardin du Luxembourg... I love these kinds of things both because they reflect a wonderful attention to detail, and, more selfishly, because they make me feel observant and clever when I notice them...
November 4, 2025 at 12:07 PM
wellerstein.bsky.social
I mean, he's a great dog. I just don't think he'd get a lot of re-sale value. He only cost us $20 brand-new! Of course we've put a lot more than that into him over the years...
October 25, 2025 at 10:15 PM
wellerstein.bsky.social
My suggestion that nearly 13-year old American rescue mutts, while very loving and adorable and definitely Good Boys, were probably not fetching top dollar on the dog resale market was treated as painfully naive.
October 25, 2025 at 8:39 PM
wellerstein.bsky.social
Don't forget our friend Hugh Explosive
October 22, 2025 at 5:02 PM
wellerstein.bsky.social
oh Luxembourg. what have you done?
October 11, 2025 at 6:54 PM
wellerstein.bsky.social
I updated my post with one more graph — converting those fissile material numbers to "weapon equivalents," including different possibilities for composite core weapons.
October 11, 2025 at 12:01 PM
wellerstein.bsky.social
In Luxembourg for the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) annual meeting at the University of Luxembourg at Belval. Which used to be a steel mill? Huh.
October 10, 2025 at 6:31 AM
wellerstein.bsky.social
Wild illustration choice in this slide from training materials for ICBM launch officers, ca. 2010
Screenshot of a Powerpoint slide. The title is "Strategic Effects." It has three bullet points: 1. The physical employment of nuclear weapons at any level requires explicit orders from the President. 2. Nuclear weapons are unique in their destructive power and psychological impact. 3. The use of nuclear weapons represents a significant escalation from conventional warfare. There is then an incongruous illustration: a screenshot of the game MISSILE COMMAND for the Atari 5200 (1982).
October 1, 2025 at 2:14 PM
wellerstein.bsky.social
There is a "double flash" in the apparent brightness of a nuclear detonation in the atmosphere, which may be what you are thinking of...
October 1, 2025 at 12:38 AM
wellerstein.bsky.social
OK, this is the strangest subreddit I've stumbled across for awhile. I get what it is about, but there's something very cyberpunk and surreal about it... www.reddit.com/r/TraceAnObj...
September 26, 2025 at 8:42 PM