[R-390] On The Beach; Endgame

Thu Sep 24 23:22:01 EDT 2009

I'm a part-time graduate student at The Bush School of Govt & Public  
Service (http://bush.tamu.edu/) at Texas A&M and in June, took a four- 
week summer session class about nuclear deterrence.  There were 20  
students in the class and eleven of them were nuclear physicists from  
Lawrence Livermore Labs who occupy various positions related to  
design, manufacturing, testing, and various other tasks that won't be  
described.  The other nine students from The Bush School, me  
included, were there by invitation only so I felt rather privileged  
given that I'm old enough to be the father of the professor and the  
grandfather of the students.

In so many words, I learned more than I wanted to know about bomb  
design, manufacture, testing of components, assembly, storage,  
rotation from storage to active status, how many components work and  
how they can fail, and how bombs are designed for specific targets  
and therefore for kilotonnage yield.  And yield is the name of the game.

I wrote two research papers during class and both were part of a DOE  
project the class took on and the papers are not gonna be discussed.   
However, I was able to find 40 years worth of US targeting plans for  
"the enemy" and was aghast at the casualness with which, by 1983, the  
so-called "SIOP" (Special Instructions of the President) called for  
the outright death of 60,000,000 million people in Eastern Europe,  
Eurasia, Russia, and China as well as the consequent destruction of  
all economic activity with the stated goal of permanently rendering  
such lands uninhabitable.  Of course, the US planners accepted as  
many as 200 nuclear devices impacting upon CONUS and felt that civil  
defense preparedness would assure survival of the bulk of the  
population.

A second major impact made was my gaining access to DOE nuclear  
weapons budgets.  That's the same DOE that oversees the TVA,  
Bonneville Power Authy, solar and wind power, and so forth and so  
on.  DOE is the sole authority for manufacture, storage, and  
destruction of the nation's nuclear weapons.  The first budget I  
found was for FY 2000 and by the time I found all of it, scattered  
hither and yon in bits and pieces throughout the entire DOE budget,  
it totaled 400 pages of $12,000,000.00 here, $23,000,000.00 there,  
and an incredible description of facilities and purposes of  
facilities as well as anticipated scientific and manufacturing needs  
(physical and fiscal) for FY 2000 through FY 2002.

Today, everywhere I look I see incredible stories about nuclear  
weapons not only in the US but throughout the world and I don't look  
in newspapers.  I scan a variety of national defense sites, NATO  
sites, and various INTEL sites and the weapons and knowledge are  
everywhere.

And the eleven nuclear physicists I spent four weeks with put a very  
human picture on how things work as well as the psychology of how  
things work.

"For I have become death, the destroyer of worlds . . . "

Bill Neill
Conroe, Texas

https://www.llnl.gov/str/JulAug01/pdfs/07_01.1.pdf

https://www.llnl.gov/str/March01/pdfs/03_01.pdf
(Read the articles on Pages 3-11 and 23-25; best I've seen abt  
plutonium.)

http://www.defensegroupinc.com/cira/pdf/doctrinebook.pdf
(This covers Chinese nuclear doctrine; 399 pages long.)

http://www.armscontrol.ru/start/

(I have beau coup related materials if anyone is truly interested.   
As repulsive as the topic may seem, it's actually quite fascinating  
when cultural psychologies get thrown in, especially those of India  
and Pakistan.)

On Sep 24, 2009, at 9:46 PM, Dave Mayfield W9WRL wrote:

I've watched this move many times, and the part about the strange CW
signal coming from San Fran was really a cool part of the movie. The
story however really makes me sad.

bernie nicholson wrote:
>   I guess this is off topic a bit  but I Grew up in Melbourne and I  
> remember the film being shot ,and I remember Ava Gardner  Being  
> interviewed  on TV  and Being asked What she thought of Melbourne ,  
> Her Reply was memorable as she said that she thought Melbourne was  
> a Particularly suitable place,  to make a Movie about the end of  
> the world ! it wasn't what the good folks of Melbourne were  
> expecting to hear , My memories of the film  are that the people of  
> Melbourne were waiting for the fall-out to reach them , After the  
> rest of the world was destroyed , The Story by the way was by  
> Neville Shute , Who was a mathematician/ designer and worked for  
> the AirSpeed Aircraft company , he also had a lot to do with the  
> design of the British airships in the thirties , Later becoming a  
> writer of some note!  regards Bernie Vk2ABN
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