IVY-MIKE

IVY-MIKE PDF Author: W.G. Van Dorn
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1453551565
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
PREFACE On Saturday, 1 November 1952, at 0715 hours local time, and three days before General Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected President, the United States detonated the world’s first “Super Bomb” at Eniwetok Atoll, Marshall Islands. This is an accurate historical account of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s participation in that test, an unpublicized event that changed for all time the lives of every person on earth. The first half of the book treats the conception and design of the Super at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, during which Scripps’s assistance is sought when a late development indicates that the Mike’s energy release might substantially exceed design expectations, thus mandating a drastic expansion of the Test Operation. The latter half describes the frantic efforts of 12,000 military and scientific personnel, living on a small Pacific atoll, to prepare for and conduct a test of Mike, the first thermonuclear device, to measure its effects, and to escape radioactive fallout from a mushroom cloud three times as large as the Atoll. The account is narrated by a fictitious participant who was in a position to know everything. But from this and future events, I came to know all of the players in this drama and the details of their experiences. I have preserved the names and titles of principal Task Force officers and scientists, and employed fictitious names for other participants. The entrapment of Jack Clark in the firing bunker actually occurred two years later during the BRAVO shot of Operation CASTLE. W. G. Van Dorn La Jolla, California Book Review “IVY-MIKE is a remarkable book. William Van Dorn has managed to combine a comprehensive description of the major historical activities associated with the Mike test with enough fictional narrative to make it appealing to the non-scientist:” -----Harold M. Agnew, Director, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 1970-1979. Ivy-Mike offers a scientific slice of history and glimpse into the post World War-II philosophy regarding nuclear arms. The 1952 test at Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands was not only a feat of science but also a feat of logistics. While an army of scientists and military scurried to secure the area prior to the test, late calculations suggested that the bomb’s power was significantly larger than expected. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography was asked to advise the team on alerting vulnerable areas without exposing the top-secret project. Author William Van Dorn, an oceanographer and tsunami expert who worked for the institution during this time, narrates the story as a fictional protagonist named Bob Ward. The author’s conversational writing style makes his complicated subject accessible, even to non-scientists. The account is thorough and historically significant, even as to day-to-day details. Threaded through the history lesson is a romance between Bob and his new love, “Suzy.” The relationship warms the story and, given the setting, this stylistic choice has the ring of verisimilitude. Altogether, Ivy-Mike is an illuminating historical tale. ---Kirkus Discoveries

IVY-MIKE

IVY-MIKE PDF Author: W.G. Van Dorn
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1453551565
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
PREFACE On Saturday, 1 November 1952, at 0715 hours local time, and three days before General Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected President, the United States detonated the world’s first “Super Bomb” at Eniwetok Atoll, Marshall Islands. This is an accurate historical account of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s participation in that test, an unpublicized event that changed for all time the lives of every person on earth. The first half of the book treats the conception and design of the Super at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, during which Scripps’s assistance is sought when a late development indicates that the Mike’s energy release might substantially exceed design expectations, thus mandating a drastic expansion of the Test Operation. The latter half describes the frantic efforts of 12,000 military and scientific personnel, living on a small Pacific atoll, to prepare for and conduct a test of Mike, the first thermonuclear device, to measure its effects, and to escape radioactive fallout from a mushroom cloud three times as large as the Atoll. The account is narrated by a fictitious participant who was in a position to know everything. But from this and future events, I came to know all of the players in this drama and the details of their experiences. I have preserved the names and titles of principal Task Force officers and scientists, and employed fictitious names for other participants. The entrapment of Jack Clark in the firing bunker actually occurred two years later during the BRAVO shot of Operation CASTLE. W. G. Van Dorn La Jolla, California Book Review “IVY-MIKE is a remarkable book. William Van Dorn has managed to combine a comprehensive description of the major historical activities associated with the Mike test with enough fictional narrative to make it appealing to the non-scientist:” -----Harold M. Agnew, Director, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 1970-1979. Ivy-Mike offers a scientific slice of history and glimpse into the post World War-II philosophy regarding nuclear arms. The 1952 test at Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands was not only a feat of science but also a feat of logistics. While an army of scientists and military scurried to secure the area prior to the test, late calculations suggested that the bomb’s power was significantly larger than expected. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography was asked to advise the team on alerting vulnerable areas without exposing the top-secret project. Author William Van Dorn, an oceanographer and tsunami expert who worked for the institution during this time, narrates the story as a fictional protagonist named Bob Ward. The author’s conversational writing style makes his complicated subject accessible, even to non-scientists. The account is thorough and historically significant, even as to day-to-day details. Threaded through the history lesson is a romance between Bob and his new love, “Suzy.” The relationship warms the story and, given the setting, this stylistic choice has the ring of verisimilitude. Altogether, Ivy-Mike is an illuminating historical tale. ---Kirkus Discoveries

Restricted Data

Restricted Data PDF Author: Alex Wellerstein
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022602038X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 558

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Book Description
"Nuclear weapons, since their conception, have been the subject of secrecy. In the months after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American scientific establishment, the American government, and the American public all wrestled with what was called the "problem of secrecy," wondering not only whether secrecy was appropriate and effective as a means of controlling this new technology but also whether it was compatible with the country's core values. Out of a messy context of propaganda, confusion, spy scares, and the grave counsel of competing groups of scientists, what historian Alex Wellerstein calls a "new regime of secrecy" was put into place. It was unlike any other previous or since. Nuclear secrets were given their own unique legal designation in American law ("restricted data"), one that operates differently than all other forms of national security classification and exists to this day. Drawing on massive amounts of declassified files, including records released by the government for the first time at the author's request, Restricted Data is a narrative account of nuclear secrecy and the tensions and uncertainty that built as the Cold War continued. In the US, both science and democracy are pitted against nuclear secrecy, and this makes its history uniquely compelling and timely"--

Football

Football PDF Author: Mark F. Bernstein
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 9780812236279
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Mark Bernstein shows that much of the culture that surrounds American football, both good and bad, has its roots in the Ivy League. With their long winning streaks, distinctive traditions, and impressive victories, Ivy teams started a national obsession with football in the first decades of the twentieth century that remains alive today. In so doing they have helped develop our ideals about the role of athletics in college life.

The Real History of the Cold War

The Real History of the Cold War PDF Author: Alan Axelrod
Publisher: Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.
ISBN: 9781402763021
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
Reveals the intriguing, suspenseful true story behind the globe-spanning battle of wills between the US and the Soviet Union after the fall of Nazi Germany.

Dark Sun

Dark Sun PDF Author: Richard Rhodes
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 143912647X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 770

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Book Description
Here, for the first time, in a brilliant, panoramic portrait by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, is the definitive, often shocking story of the politics and the science behind the development of the hydrogen bomb and the birth of the Cold War. Based on secret files in the United States and the former Soviet Union, this monumental work of history discloses how and why the United States decided to create the bomb that would dominate world politics for more than forty years.

A Hope in the Unseen

A Hope in the Unseen PDF Author: Ron Suskind
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307763080
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
The inspiring, true coming-of-age story of a ferociously determined young man who, armed only with his intellect and his willpower, fights his way out of despair. In 1993, Cedric Jennings was a bright and ferociously determined honor student at Ballou, a high school in one of Washington D.C.’s most dangerous neighborhoods, where the dropout rate was well into double digits and just 80 students out of more than 1,350 boasted an average of B or better. At Ballou, Cedric had almost no friends. He ate lunch in a classroom most days, plowing through the extra work he asked for, knowing that he was really competing with kids from other, harder schools. Cedric Jennings’s driving ambition—which was fully supported by his forceful mother—was to attend a top college. In September 1995, after years of near superhuman dedication, he realized that ambition when he began as a freshman at Brown University. But he didn't leave his struggles behind. He found himself unprepared for college: he struggled to master classwork and fit in with the white upper-class students. Having traveled too far to turn back, Cedric was left to rely on his intelligence and his determination to maintain hope in the unseen—a future of acceptance and reward. In this updated edition, A Hope in the Unseen chronicles Cedric’s odyssey during his last two years of high school, follows him through his difficult first year at Brown, and tells the story of his subsequent successes in college and the world of work. Eye-opening, sometimes humorous, and often deeply moving, A Hope in the Unseen weaves a crucial new thread into the rich and ongoing narrative of the American experience.

Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear Weapons PDF Author: Alix Wood
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
ISBN: 150814687X
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 34

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Book Description
Nuclear weapons have played an important role in times of war and peace since they were first used in 1945. The use of these weapons has been a topic of strong debate for over 70 years. Readers explore both sides of the debate surrounding these weapons. They also learn the origin of nuclear weapons and the science and technology behind this game-changing development in modern warfare. The environmental impact of nuclear warfare is also addressed. Readers are introduced to this topic through informative main text, additional fact boxes, and photographs.

Danger, Man Working

Danger, Man Working PDF Author: Michael Perry
Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society
ISBN: 0870208411
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
"Every writer has advice for aspiring writers. Mine is predicated on formative years spent cleaning my father’s calf pens: Just keep shoveling until you’ve got a pile so big, someone has to notice. The fact that I cast my life’s work as slung manure simply proves that I recognize an apt metaphor when I accidentally stick it with a pitchfork. . . . Poetry was my first love, my gateway drug—still the poets are my favorites—but I quickly realized I lacked the chops or insights to survive on verse alone. But I wanted to write. Every day. And so I read everything I could about freelancing, and started shoveling." The pieces gathered within this book draw on fifteen years of what Michael Perry calls "shovel time"—a writer going to work as the work is offered. The range of subjects is wide, from musky fishing, puking, and mountain-climbing Iraq War veterans to the frozen head of Ted Williams. Some assignments lead to self-examination of an alarming magnitude (as Perry notes, "It quickly becomes obvious that I am a self-absorbed hypochondriac forever resolving to do better nutritionally and fitness-wise but my follow-through is laughable.") But his favorites are those that allow him to turn the lens outward: "My greatest privilege," he says, "lies not in telling my own story; it lies in being trusted to tell the story of another."

Ivy Mike and the Second Sunrise Murders

Ivy Mike and the Second Sunrise Murders PDF Author: P. A. Gawel
Publisher: Outskirts Press
ISBN: 9781977203038
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description
Holy Devafreakinstation! Two Nukes Aimed at the Motor City. That can't be good. All was well with the world apart from for a trifling skirmish simmering in the background between the USA and Russia, known as the Cold War. Each Superpower flexed its muscles hoping the other would blink, but they persisted until President Ronald Wilson Reagan challenged the Communist Party Chairman, Mikhail Gorbachev, on June 12, 1987 to '...tear down this wall.' That was the Berlin Wall then, but that's not what our story is about. Our adventure begins in 1952, a historic year that ushered in the birth of a new and devastating weapon, nuclear fusion hydrogen bombs. Both sides knew the other was working on one, both sides had one and both sides tested them hoping the other wouldn't find out, with fingers crossed behind their backs. The fireball produced as a result of the first fusion device tested by the USA, known as Ivy Mike, was likened to a second sunrise from over 200 miles away. Before long, technology kicked into high gear transforming Ivy Mike from an 80 ton ground installation into a deployable, go anywhere weapon of world domination magnitude. Shortly thereafter, second and third generation deployable hydrogen bombs were built, tested and shelved until the next generation of smaller, more powerful weapons took center stage. Some were destroyed, others dismantled and two were somehow misplaced. Now, that's what our story is about.

Operation IVY, 1952

Operation IVY, 1952 PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Atomic bomb
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
IVY was a two-detonation atmospheric nuclear weapon test series conducted during October and November 1952 at Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. One of the events was designated MIKE and was the first thermonuclear or hydrogen bomb. Report emphasis is on the radiological safety of the personnel. Available records of personnel exposure are summarized.