Stemming from the NATO Advanced Research Workshop, this book asserts that no single institution or country possesses all the resources to effectively address radiological and nuclear threats. Moreover, the book asserts that fundamental scientific challenges must be overcome to achieve new and improved technologies. In response, the book sets forth research strategies that advance the ability to counter nuclear and radiological threats.

Churchill's Bomb - from the author of the Costa award-winning biography The Strangest Man - reveals a new aspect of Winston Churchill's life, so far completely neglected by historians: his relations with his nuclear scientists, and his management of Britain's policy on atomic weapons. Churchill was the only prominent politician to foresee the nuclear age and he played a leading role in the development of the Bomb during World War II. He became the first British Prime Minister with access to these weapons, and left office following desperate attempts during the Cold War to end the arms race. Graham Farmelo traces the beginnings of Churchill's association with nuclear weapons to his unlikely friendship with H. G. Wells, who coined the term 'atomic bombs'. In the 1930s, when Ernest Rutherford and his brilliant followers, such as Chadwick and Cockcroft, gave Britain the lead in nuclear research, Churchill wrote several widely read newspaper articles on the huge implications of their work. British physicists, in 1940, first showed that the Bomb was a practical possibility. But Churchill, closely advised by his favourite scientist, the controversial Frederick Lindemann, allowed leadership to pass to the US, where the Manhattan Project made the Bomb a terrible reality. British physicists played only a minor role in this vast enterprise, while Churchill ignored warnings from the scientist Niels Bohr that the Anglo-American policy would lead to a post-war arms race. After the war, the Americans reneged on personal agreements between Roosevelt and Churchill to share research. Clement Attlee, in a fateful decision, ordered the building of a British Bomb to maintain the country's place among the great powers. Churchill inherited it and ended his political career obsessed with the threat of thermonuclear war. Churchill's Bomb is an original and controversial book, full of political and scientific personalities and intrigues, which reveals a little-known side of Britain's great war-leader.

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union the nuclear threats facing the world are constantly evolving and have grown more complex since the end of the Cold War. The diversion of complete weapon systems or nuclear material to rogue nations and terrorist organizations has increased and new nuclear powers (e.g. Iran, Korea, Pakistan and India) have further complicated global proliferation issues. The events of the past years have proved the necessity to reevaluate these threats on a level never before considered. In recognition that no single country possesses all of the answers to the critical scientific, institutional and legal questions associated with combating nuclear and radiological terrorism, the 2005 Workshop and this proceeding was structured to promote wide-ranging, multi-national exploration of critical technology needs and underlying scientific challenges to reducing the threat of nuclear/radiological terrorism; to illustrate through country-specific presentations how resulting technologies were used in national programs; and to outline the role of legal, policy and institutional frameworks in countering nuclear/radiological terrorism. One key outcome of this book is better understanding of the independent contributions from across the international community of the scientific and technological components and the legal, policy and institutional components to combating nuclear/radiological terrorism. The book can serve as a tool for communicating the outcomes of the workshop not only to the multi-national scientific communities engaged in combating nuclear/radiological terrorism, but also to those working at governmental and policy levels whose actions affect the directionsthe science takes and how the technology is incorporated into country-specific national systems for combating nuclear/radiological terrorism.

Acclaim for the Bomb in My Garden

"This one book will tell you more about Iraq's quest for weapons of mass destruction than all U.S. intelligence on the subject. It is a fascinating and rare glimpse inside Saddam Hussein's Iraq--and inside a tyrant's mind."
--Fareed Zakaria, author of The Future of Freedom

"The Bomb in My Garden is important and utterly gripping. The old cliche is true--you start reading, and you don't want to stop. Mahdi Obeidi's story makes clear how hard Saddam Hussein tried to develop a nuclear weapon, and the reasons he fell short. It is also unforgettable as a picture of how honorable people tried to cope with a despot's demands. I enthusiastically recommend this book."
--James Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic Monthly

"One of the three or four accounts that anyone remotely interested in the Iraq debate will simply have to read. Apart from its insight into the workings of the Saddam nuclear project, it provides a haunting account of the atmosphere of sheer evil that permeated every crevice of Iraqi life under the old regime."
--christopher hitchens, Slate

"Mahdi Obeidi describes in jaw-dropping detail how Iraq acquired the means to produce highly enriched uranium, the key ingredient to building a nuclear weapon, by the eve of the first Gulf War. . . . [His book] offers insights into how a determined dictator, backed by sufficient resources, can come within reach of acquiring the world's most horrific weapons."
--The Washington Post BookWorld

The closest we've ever come to the end of the worldDEFCON-2 is the best single volume on the Cuban Missile Crisis published and is an important contribution to the history of the Cold War. Beyond the military and political facts of the crisis, Polmar and Gresham sketch the personalities that created and coped with the crisis. They also show us how close we came to the edge without becoming sensationalistic.
--Larry Bond, bestselling author of Dangerous GroundSpy-satellite and aerial-reconnaissance photos reveal that one of the United States's bitterest enemies may be acquiring weapons of mass destruction and the means to use them against the American homeland. Administration officials refuse to accept intelligence professionals' interpretation of these images and order an end to spy missions over the offending nation. More than a month later, after vicious infighting, the president orders the spy missions to resume. The new photos reveal an array of ballistic missiles, capable of carrying nuclear warheads and striking deep within U.S. territory. It appears that the missiles will be fully operational within one week.This is not a plot setup for a suspense novel; it is the true story of the most terrifying moment in the 45-year Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union: the Cuban Missile Crisis. DEFCON-2 tells this tale as it has never been told before--from both sides, with the help of hundreds of recently declassified U.S. and Soviet documents, as well as interviews with numerous former spies, military figures, and government officials who speak out here for the first time.

James Bond's amazing gadgets reveal both enthusiasm about technology and fear of its potential ramifications. The popularity of the 007 franchise depends on a seductive formula of sex, violence, and snobbery. Much of its appeal, too, lies in its gadgets: slick, somewhat improbable technological devices that give everyone's favorite secret agent the edge over his adversaries. In Equipping James Bond, Andre Millard chronicles a hundred-year history of espionage technology through the lens of Ian Fleming's infamous character and his ingenious spyware. Beginning with the creation of MI6, the British secret service, Millard traces the development of espionage technology from the advanced weaponry of the nineteenth century to the evolving threat of computer hacking and surveillance. Arguing that the gadgets in the books and films articulate the leading edge of technological awareness at the time, Millard describes how Bond goes from protecting 1950s England from criminal activity to saving a world threatened by nuclear bombs, poison gas, and attacks from space. As a modern and modernizing hero, Bond has to keep up with the times. His film franchise is committed to equipping both Bond and his adversaries with the latest technological gadgets. Simultaneously, Millard stresses, the villains and threats that Bond faces embody contemporary fears about the downside of technological change. Taking a wide-ranging look at factual (and fictional) technology, Millard views the James Bond universe as evidence for popular perceptions of technological development as both inevitably progressive and apocalyptically threatening.

The controversial Bush doctrine of preemptive war is often described as revolutionary. In fact, as this comparative study of rivalries involving weapons of mass destruction (WMD) shows, notions of preventive and preemptive war have long been closely tied to such weapons. In this study, a wealth of historical data is analyzed to address the fundamental question that WMD proliferation raises for U.S. defense policy: will the projection of U.S. power be deterred by nascent WMD arsenals in the hands of rogue states?
This wide-ranging comparison yields the conclusion that small WMD arsenals do not have the deterrent effects often attributed to them by scholars and analysts. These theorists ignore history's close calls, an oversight we share at our peril.

In this book, a leading authority on India's nuclear program offers an informed and thoughtful assessment of India's nuclear strategy. He shows that the country's nuclear-strategic culture is generally in accord with the principle of minimum deterrence, but is sometimes inconsistent and has a tendency to drift into a more open-ended process. He addresses areas of concern, notably the relationship between minimum deterrence and subnuclear conflict, the threat from nuclear terrorism, and the special challenges nuclear weapons pose for a democratic society.

"Huchthausen knows the hidden history of the Cuban Missile Crisis. . . . Contains a number of startling revelations. . . . Fascinating."–Tom Clancy

"Excellent. . . . Clearly and engagingly reflect[s] the young officer’s confidence and enthusiasm–and even glee–during his adventure. . . . Colorful and exciting."–Associated Press

The Cuban Missile Crisis was the defining moment of the Cold War. Yet one aspect of that drama–the naval confrontation between the U.S. and Soviet submarines off the coast of Cuba, in October of 1962–has, until now, received scant attention. Written by a naval officer who was there, October Fury vividly recreates that fateful encounter, from both the American and Russian points of view. Based on recently declassified Soviet naval records and interviews conducted with his Russian counterparts, Peter Huchthausen recounts in harrowing detail the dramatic events and reveals for the first time just how close we came to nuclear war at sea.

Captain Peter A. Huchthausen, U.S. Navy (Retired), (Hiram, ME), served as Electronics Materials Officer and a watch officer aboard the USS Blandy when it took part in the quarantine of Cuba in 1962.

On September 10, 1996, The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Copmprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), prohibiting nuclear explosions worldwide, in all environments. The treaty calls for a global verification system, including a network of 321 monitoring stations distributed around the globe, a data communications network, an international data center (IDC), and on-site inspections, to verify compliance. This volume presents certain recent research results pertaining on methods used to process data recorded by instruments of the International Monitoring System (IMS) and addressing recording infrasound signals generated by atmospheric explosions. Six papers treating data processing provide an important selection of topics expected to contribute to improving our ability to successfully monitor a CTBT. Five papers concerning infrasound include descriptions of ways in which that important research area can contribute to CTBT monitoring, the automatic processing of infrasound data, and site conditions that serve to improve the quality of infrasound data.

This volume presents summaries of recent research results on the related subjects of source processes and explosion yield estimation, which are important elements of any treaty verification system. The term Source Processes, in the context of nuclear test monitoring, refers to a wide range of research topics. In a narrow definition, it describes the complex physical phenomena that are directly associated with a nuclear explosion, and the catastrophic deformation and transformation of the material surrounding the explosion. In a broader sense, it includes a host of topics related to the inference of explosion phenomena from seismic and other signals. A further widening of the definition includes the study and characterization of source processes of events other than nuclear, such as earthquakes and, in particular, mining explosions. This latter research is especially important relative to the question of identifying and discriminating nuclear explosions from other seismic events. Explosion Yield Estimation deals with the corresponding inverse problem of inferring explosion source characteristics through analyses of the various types of seismic signals produced by the explosion. This is a complex technical task which has been the focus of some of the most contentious treaty monitoring debates. The current compilation of eight articles on Source Processes and six articles on Explosion Yield Estimation gives a good representation of state-of-the-art research currently being conducted in the broad area of seismic source characterization in the context of nuclear test monitoring.

"Huchthausen knows the hidden history of the Cuban missile crisis . . . October Fury contains startling revelations."
–– TOM CLANCY

Drama on the high seas as the world holds its breath

It was the most spectacular display of brinkmanship in the Cold War era. In October 1962, President Kennedy risked inciting a nuclear war to prevent the Soviet Union from establishing missile bases in Cuba. The risk, however, was far greater than Kennedy realized.

October Fury uncovers startling new information about the Cuban missile crisis and the potentially calamitous confrontation between U.S. Navy destroyers and Soviet submarines in the Atlantic. Peter Huchthausen, who served as a junior ensign aboard one of the destroyers, reveals that a single shot fired by any U.S. warship could have led to an immediate nuclear response from the Soviet submarines.

This riveting account re-creates those desperate days of confrontation from both the American and Russian points of view and discloses detailed information about Soviet operational plans and the secret orders given to submarine commanders. It provides an engrossing, behind-the-scenes look at the technical and tactical functions of two great navies along with stunning portraits of the officers and sailors on both sides who were determined to do their duty even in the most extreme circumstances.

As absorbing and detailed as a Tom Clancy novel, this real-life suspense thriller is destined to become a classic of naval literature.

*Shortlisted for the Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History* 'An enthralling account of a pivotal moment in modern history. . . replete with startling revelations about the deception and mutual suspicion that brought the US and Soviet Union to the brink of Armageddon in October 1962' Martin Chilton, Independent The definitive new history of the Cuban Missile Crisis from the author of Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy, winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize For more than four weeks in the autumn of 1962 the world teetered. The consequences of a misplaced step during the Cuban Missile Crisis could not have been more grave. Ash and cinder, famine and fallout; nuclear war between the two most-powerful nations on Earth. In Nuclear Folly, award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy tells the riveting story of those weeks, tracing the tortuous decision-making and calculated brinkmanship of John F. Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, and of their advisors and commanders on the ground. More often than not, Plokhy argues, the Americans and Soviets simply misread each other, operating under mutual distrust, second-guesses and false information. Despite all of this, nuclear disaster was avoided thanks to one very human reason: fear. Drawing on an impressive array of primary sources, including recently declassified KGB files, Plokhy masterfully illustrates the drama of those tense days. Authoritative, fast-paced and unforgettable, this is the definitive new account of the Cold War's most perilous moment.

International nuclear disarmament is at a standstill. A Nuclear-Weapon-Free World discusses steps that should be taken to restart the disarmament process, including de-alerting nuclear weapons, ending production of fissile material, and introducing policies of 'no first use'. The book includes a history of attempts to eliminate nuclear weapons, together with a summary of the arguments for and against; an analysis of whether nuclear weapons prevented a war in Europe between 1945 and 1991; and a worldwide survey of public opinion on nuclear weapons.

The Cold War may be over, but you wouldn't know it from the tens of thousands of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons of mass destruction still held by Russia, the United States, and other world powers. Arguing that the time has come to dispense with incremental approaches to arms control, Admiral Stansfield Turner, the former head of the CIA and an experienced senior military commander, proposes a practical yet safe plan--strategic escrow--that would move the world into a new and secure millennium. The paperback edition of this widely acclaimed work has been updated to consider the implications of such a build-down if applied to non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Specifically, Admiral Turner details how a plan for weapons reduction could be carried out for biological and chemical weapons and what tactical and strategic differences exist between de-escalation of nuclear and non-nuclear weapons.

The "Nuclear Borderlands" alters the meaning of 'ethnography' in a way that will challenge all of us in anthropology. It will certainly take its place among the classic texts assessing the cultural politics of the bomb, and it will join the must-read ranks in the literature on American nationalism and nation-making in the late twentieth century."--Susan Harding, University of California, Santa Cruz, author of "The Book of Jerry Falwell" and "Remaking Ibieca"

"No account of the post Cold War environment can afford to ignore this study and the tangle of economic, political, and cultural rights, interests, and imperatives it maps. Joe Masco pushes the ethnographic agenda firmly forward into an ambivalent twenty-first century, where Los Alamos is both dangerous polluter and lifeline employer, where rival eco-cultures, ethnicities, and social hierarchies fight over control of nature, and where the technological future can exacerbate or redeem the nuclear past. Neither antinuclear environmentalists, nor Native Americans, nor Nuevomexicanos, nor the Los Alamos scientists, nor the Washington politicians have a monopoly on the answers, and Masco shows us why."--Michael M. J. Fischer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of "Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice"

"Joseph Masco's argument that nuclear weapons are no longer a technology subject to scientific challenge but rather exist primarily as powerful cultural constructs takes us a long way toward understanding post-Cold War continuities in U.S. security strategies, as well as some of the astounding aspects of American exceptionalism in international politics."--John Borneman, Princeton University

This book, first published in 1995, explores how the everyday person reasons about nuclear strategy. James DeNardo's data reveals surprising patterns of thinking on basic issues from SDI, arms control, and proliferation to the end of the Cold War. The book describes a fascinating cast of players, including 'Nice Hawks' like Ronald Reagan, who wanted to give SDI to the Russians, and the 'NIFFs,' whose procurement rule, expressed simply, was: 'If they have it, we don't want it, but they don't have it, we should get it.' To explain his remarkable evidence, Professor DeNardo presents an innovative theory of intuitive deterrence reasoning. He then confronts the theory with data from professional nuclear strategists. His discovery that the amateur's strategic reasoning defies all conventional theories lays the groundwork for a new understanding of national security politics. His demonstration that professional strategists reason like novices - that we are all Amateur Strategists - challenges the intellectual foundations of modern deterrence theory, public opinion studies, and game theory.

President Eisenhower's reliance on atomic weapons created as many problems as he hoped to solve with his defense policy. He hoped to provide a sustainable defense strategy that allowed the United States to maintain its security requirements without creating an excessive economic burden. This defense strategy, known as the New Look, benefitted the U.S. Air Force due to the focus on strategic bombing. However ballistic missiles offered the capability to launch nuclear warheads into the Soviet Union without the risk of their being intercepted. In order to do this, the U.S. required European missile bases to deploy its Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles, while efforts continued to develop U.S. based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. Deploying atomic missiles to Europe required balancing regional European concerns with U.S. domestic security priorities. In the wake of the Soviet Sputnik launch in 1957, many in the U.S. feared Soviet missile capability. Getting ballistic missiles into Europe mitigated this domestic security issue but convincing North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies to agree to base missiles in their country raised issues concerning sovereignty, weapons control, and ran the risk of creating divisions in the NATO alliance.

In 1945, the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and warfare was never the same again. Armageddon and Paranoia relates how the power of the atom was harnessed to produce weapons capable of destroying human civilisation and considers what this has done to the world. There are few villains in this story: on both sides of the Iron Curtain, dedicated scientists cracked the secrets of nature, dutiful military men planned out possible manoeuvres and politicians wrestled with potentially intolerable decisions. Patriotic citizens acquiesced to the idea that their country needed the ultimate means of defence. Some tried to grapple with the unanswerable question: what end could possibly be served by such fearsome means? Those who protested went unheard. None of them wanted to start a nuclear war, but all of them were paranoid about what the other side might do. The danger of annihilation by accident or misjudgement has not been entirely absent since. Rodric Braithwaite, author of bestsellers Moscow 1941 and Afgantsy, paints a vivid and detailed portrait of this intense period in history. Its implications are terrifyingly relevant today, as ignorant and thoughtless talk about nuclear war begins to spread once more.

Ever since the late 1930s, scientists have been sharply divided on the question of atomic energy. It is hardly surprising, then, that the American public is so apprehensive about its use. Hack M. Holl, former chief historian a the U.S. Department of Energy, characterizes the furor over nuclear energy as "one of the great debates in American history." In this second edition of The American Atom, the editors have updated the collection of primary documents that tell the story of atomic energy in the United States from the discover of fission through the development of nuclear weapons, international proliferation, and attempts at control. Anyone interested in the evolution of the issues will want to examine the book's major sections on the Manhattan Project, the Oppenheimer Case, the hydrogen bomb, nuclear testing and the test ban, proliferation, arms control, and the strategy of deterrence.

American Survivors is a fresh and moving historical account of U.S. survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, breaking new ground not only in the study of World War II but also in the public understanding of nuclear weaponry. A truly trans-Pacific history, American Survivors challenges the dualistic distinction between Americans-as-victors and Japanese-as-victims often assumed by scholars of the nuclear war. Using more than 130 oral histories of Japanese American and Korean American survivors, their family members, community activists, and physicians - most of which appear here for the first time - Naoko Wake reveals a cross-national history of war, illness, immigration, gender, family, and community from intimately personal perspectives. American Survivors brings to light the history of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that connects, as much as separates, people across time and national boundaries.

This book provides a comprehensive account of the mysterious story of Pakistan's attempt to develop nuclear weapons in the face of severe odds. Hassan Abbas profiles the politicians and scientists involved, and the role of China and Saudi Arabia in supporting Pakistan's nuclear infrastructure. Abbas also unravels the motivations behind the Pakistani nuclear physicist Dr A.Q. Khan's involvement in nuclear proliferation in Iran, Libya and North Korea, drawing on extensive interviews. He argues that the origins and evolution of the Khan network were tied to the domestic and international political motivations underlying Pakistan's nuclear weapons project, and that project's organisation, oversight and management. The ties between the making of the Pakistani bomb and the proliferation that then ensued have not yet been fully illuminated or understood, and this book's disclosures have important lessons. The Khan proliferation breach remains of vital importance for understanding how to stop such transfers of sensitive technology in future.Finally, the book examines the prospects for nuclear safety in Pakistan, considering both Pakistan's nuclear control infrastructure and the threat posed by the Taliban and other extremist groups to the country's nuclear assets.

Although the authors believe that the level of conventional and nuclear forces in Europe should and will be reduced, they do not consider that the military instrument will have lost all of its value in European political affairs. They still see a need to be prepared for tension and conflict.

Between December 1943 and August 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill ignited the Cold War, a superpower rivalry that would dominate the world over half a century, by building an atomic bomb and excluding their Russian allies. Peter Watson tells the pulse-pounding story of how two atomic physicists tried to counter this in two very different ways. While Niels Bohr sought to convince President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill to share their nuclear knowledge with Joseph Stalin, nuclear scientist Klaus Fuchs, a German Communist emigre to Britain, was leaking atomic secrets to the Soviets in a rival attempt to ensure parity between the superpowers. Neither succeeded in preventing the World War II allies from unleashing the atom bomb on the world. Fallout proves that the atomic bomb was not needed, and was made as a result of a series of flawed decisions. The Americans did not tell the UK that the atomic research was compromised by Soviet spies; the British did not tell the Americans that in 1943 they knew for sure that Germany did not have a nuclear bomb program. Neither country admitted to the scientists developing the bomb that it would never be used to counter the (non-existent) German nuclear threat. Had the scientists known, many of them would have refused to complete work on the bomb. This story shows how politicians fatally failed to understand the nature of atomic science and, in so doing, exposed the world needlessly to great danger, a danger that is still very much with us.