- 6 hours ago
The neutron bomb, or enhanced radiation weapon, is a type of nuclear device designed to release a greater proportion of energy in the form of radiation while ...It's a concept for nuclear weapons design that seeks to maximize the "prompt radiation" of the weapon, mostly in the form of fast-moving ...
• 中子弹（英语：Neutron Bomb，正式名称为增强辐射武器，Enhanced Radiation Weapon，简称 ERW）是一种第三代小型热核武器（氢弹）。它通过大幅减少传统核爆的冲击波和热辐射，转而最大化释放具有强大穿透力的高能中子流来杀伤活体生命。
• 基本原理：中子弹本质上是一种低当量的小型氢弹。它通常由一个微型原子弹引爆核聚变反应，且去掉了外层通常会吸收中子的重金属外壳（如铀-238），使核聚变产生的高能中子能够穿透弹体自由逸出。
• 主要杀伤机制：依靠高能中子辐射和瞬发γ射线直接穿透装甲、掩体及人体细胞，破坏生物组织，造成人员在短时间内或几天内因急性放射病死亡。
• 低爆炸当量与破坏局限性：中子弹的爆炸威力通常在千吨级甚至更低。虽然流传“只杀人不毁物”（即只杀死敌方人员而建筑物完好无损），但这是一种夸大——在常规作战距离内（例如约 690 米范围内），1 千吨当量的中子弹爆炸依然会对普通民用和军事建筑造成严重破坏。
• 战术用途：最初被设计为战术反导武器（用来在中空引爆摧毁敌方核弹头的核材料）或反装甲武器（穿透坦克装甲杀死车内人员）。
• 中子弹（英语：Neutron Bomb，正式名称为增强辐射武器，Enhanced Radiation Weapon，简称 ERW）是一种第三代小型热核武器（氢弹）。它通过大幅减少传统核爆的冲击波和热辐射，转而最大化释放具有强大穿透力的高能中子流来杀伤活体生命。
• 基本原理：中子弹本质上是一种低当量的小型氢弹。它通常由一个微型原子弹引爆核聚变反应，且去掉了外层通常会吸收中子的重金属外壳（如铀-238），使核聚变产生的高能中子能够穿透弹体自由逸出。
• 主要杀伤机制：依靠高能中子辐射和瞬发γ射线直接穿透装甲、掩体及人体细胞，破坏生物组织，造成人员在短时间内或几天内因急性放射病死亡。
• 低爆炸当量与破坏局限性：中子弹的爆炸威力通常在千吨级甚至更低。虽然流传“只杀人不毁物”（即只杀死敌方人员而建筑物完好无损），但这是一种夸大——在常规作战距离内（例如约 690 米范围内），1 千吨当量的中子弹爆炸依然会对普通民用和军事建筑造成严重破坏。
• 战术用途：最初被设计为战术反导武器（用来在中空引爆摧毁敌方核弹头的核材料）或反装甲武器（穿透坦克装甲杀死车内人员）。
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TVTranscript
00:00:12I'm not universally beloved, to put it mildly, and what gesture in my life is perhaps, and
00:00:22maybe this is correct, the most reviled creature on the face of the earth because of the new
00:00:27neutron bomb, which was unquestionably, at that time of its arrival, the most detested weapon
00:00:35on earth.
00:00:41We are immortal parents, the neutron bomb would operate as a kind of death ray, namely destroy
00:00:48all life in the target area.
00:00:50Real early on, I began to see radiation, nuclear radiation as an effective means of waging ground
00:00:55warfare in a relatively moral way.
00:00:58There is an emission of thermal energy.
00:01:00Enter the neutron bomb.
00:01:02A neutron warhead is a defensive weapon designed to have discovered that radiation kills people.
00:01:11The neutron bomb is no exception.
00:01:12It will kill people.
00:01:14This technology kept ramping up and becoming even more lethal, and now we have the neutron
00:01:19bomb.
00:01:19I mean, was the whole idea with the neutron bomb, was it so that they could go into an
00:01:23area and drop this bomb, and it wouldn't destroy buildings, it would just kill people, right?
00:01:28Yes.
00:01:35Since the beginning of time, man has been devising weapons of destruction.
00:01:41The slingshot, employed by David against Goliath, and used by the armies of Alexander the Great.
00:01:49The catapult and the ballista, formidable weapons in their time.
00:01:54The great spears of the Greek warriors, and the broad swords of the armored knights.
00:02:03The invention of gunpowder by the Chinese revolutionized warfare, and ushered in a new era of explosive munitions
00:02:12through the creation of crude bombs, field artillery, and even hand grenades.
00:02:19World War I saw the development of automatic weapons, like the machine gun, the giant artillery
00:02:26cannons, the tank, and the airplane.
00:02:33Toward the end of World War II, man created the first atomic bomb, and plunged the world into
00:02:40the atomic age.
00:02:43nuclear weapons, created in all shapes and sizes, large ones, and small ones.
00:02:52For nearly 75 years, the United States designed and tested these weapons to improve their size,
00:03:01weight, and purpose for a war which may never be waged.
00:03:07One weapon stood out amongst all others in purpose and function, enhancing an invisible, yet deadly characteristic
00:03:16of nuclear fusion.
00:03:18This was the neutron bomb.
00:03:37remember, theki was kalmar jnakari andしました fashii, and the
00:04:01subject at the attack and Johann Johann Johann Johann Johann Johann Johann Johann Johann Johann Johann Johann Johann Johann Johann
00:04:01Johann Johann Johannlichen
00:04:18Enter the Neutron Bomb.
00:04:22At the center of this weapon is the Neutron.
00:04:26Nestled within the structure of an atom, exists a tranquil subatomic particle that possesses
00:04:33no electric charge called the Neutron.
00:04:36Neutrons were discovered in England in 1932.
00:04:41They were immediately perceived to be immensely valuable for sub-nuclear research because,
00:04:48unlike the particles that had been used to bombard atoms, to look at them, if you will,
00:04:53up to that time, neutrons could slip into the nucleus, positively charged nucleus of an atom,
00:05:00without being repelled by that positive charge.
00:05:03They would just kind of fall into the nucleus and then all sorts of interesting things would happen.
00:05:10These free neutrons can invade the foundation of matter and create useful isotopes for medicine and industry.
00:05:19Free neutrons, however, can be extremely hazardous to all living things.
00:05:26Free neutrons are produced within the heart of a nuclear reactor or from a chain reaction created in the detonation
00:05:34of an atomic bomb.
00:05:38From the beginning of nuclear testing in 1945, neutrons have maintained a special interest in all atomic tests.
00:05:49When scientists at Los Alamos worked on the targeting of the first bombs on the Japanese cities during the Second
00:05:56World War,
00:05:57they were concerned that these weapons not be perceived to be some new kind of poison gas.
00:06:03They were concerned that the primary destructive force that was harnessed would be blast and fire, but not radiation.
00:06:14They were, however, aware that one of the first kinds of radiation coming off a nuclear fireball would be prompt
00:06:22neutrons,
00:06:23a huge flux of neutrons, and that those neutrons would kill anyone within a certain range.
00:06:30What they calculated, however, was that anyone who would be killed by the neutron flux would probably be killed by
00:06:38the blast of the explosion as well.
00:06:41First, there is an emission of thermal energy, gamma rays and neutrons.
00:06:48Depending upon the altitude of the burst, the neutrons reach the target in large or small quantities.
00:06:54The gamma rays extend far from the target center.
00:06:58In general, radiation causes ionization in the component atoms of cells, altering their chemical nature and impairing or destroying their
00:07:08normal functions.
00:07:09With whole body radiation, ionization causes loss of function of the more sensitive tissues and organs.
00:07:17The degree of loss depends upon the dosage.
00:07:20If the exposure is both general and severe, death results.
00:07:38In May of 1945, the war in Europe came to an end.
00:07:44Nazi Germany was defeated.
00:07:47Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met cordially at Yalta and Potsdam to discuss the fate of Germany.
00:07:54The Allies agreed that the countries they had occupied should be liberated and that freely elected governments should be encouraged.
00:08:03But for the countries occupied by Russia, Stalin had other plans.
00:08:10The Russians kept their army intact, overwhelmingly maintaining the largest military force in Europe.
00:08:18Then, Russia decided to cut off the Allied sectors of Berlin from the west.
00:08:29Trains and road transports were stopped.
00:08:33Electric power was cut.
00:08:34At the end of the night, West Berlin was isolated from the free world.
00:08:39The response was the Berlin airlift.
00:08:43For the next 11 months, American, British and French planes landed one after another, delivering supplies of food, coal and
00:08:54petroleum into the besieged city.
00:08:57The Russian blockade of Berlin had brought Europe to the brink of war.
00:09:01It was at last clear that only a strong defensive alliance could deter them from further aggression.
00:09:07On April 4th, 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty was signed by 12 Western nations.
00:09:15This alliance became known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
00:09:23In 1949, there were a series of very momentous events happening on the geopolitical stage.
00:09:29One of them, of course, in April 1949 was the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
00:09:34This was a group of 12 nations, including the United States and several other European nations,
00:09:40which together created a security alliance where the whole would be greater than the sum of the parts.
00:09:45The fact that the Soviet Union had taken over Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War as
00:09:52part of the spoils of victory.
00:09:54The fact that, therefore, there was, as Winston Churchill famously said in 1946, an iron curtain drawn across Europe,
00:10:03with the Soviet communist world on one side and the Western, we hoped, democratic world on the other side.
00:10:11The loss of China, if you will, to the communists.
00:10:15And then finally, I suppose we could say this sense of crisis culminated in August of 1949,
00:10:21when the Soviets detonated their first atomic bomb, which was then announced to the American people about a month later
00:10:27in September 1949.
00:10:32Six, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero.
00:10:54Early nuclear operations focused on training American and NATO ground troops in the use of atomic weapons on the battlefield.
00:11:11Nuclear weapons can, to put it crudely, be divided into two categories.
00:11:15One of them would be tactical nuclear weapons, which would be for use on a battlefield.
00:11:19These would be small-yield weapons that would be designed to be used in particular theaters of operation.
00:11:27Theater and tactical nuclear weapons are, to some degree, interchangeable terms.
00:11:33But theater basically refers to a particular area of conflict, thus the Korean War theater, the European theater.
00:11:44And at the other end of the spectrum are the strategic nuclear weapons, the weapons that are large enough to
00:11:50destroy entire cities.
00:11:57In the summer of 1951, more than 100 scientists and academics participated in Project Vista, a secret study hosted by
00:12:07the California Institute of Technology.
00:12:10Vista's purpose was to determine how existing technologies supported by nuclear weapons could offset NATO's weaker conventional forces and repel
00:12:20a massive Soviet invasion.
00:12:31Vista was a special project. It was initiated both by the Air Force and then also by the U.S.
00:12:37Army, and the whole idea of Vista was to study the ways in which Western Europe might be defended against
00:12:44a massive Soviet attack.
00:12:46And, of course, one of the technologies that was looked at and probably the most controversial aspect of the Vista
00:12:52report was that the United States should develop lots of small-scale, low-yield tactical nuclear weapons and deploy these
00:12:59for use on the battlefield.
00:13:01Meaning that the United States would counter Soviet superiority in manpower and tanks with American superiority when it came to
00:13:09nuclear armaments.
00:13:11As Robert Oppenheimer told the Army in his lecture in the early 1950s, they were always too big. How do
00:13:19you make them little? And if you make them little, does that put everything at risk of crossing what was
00:13:27an increasing barrier between conventional weapons, as we now call them, and nuclear weapons?
00:13:33Mr. President Von Frems, CBS News. Yesterday at his news conference, Secretary of State Dulles indicated that in the event
00:13:42of general war in the Far East, we would probably make use of some tactical small atomic weapon. Would you
00:13:49care to comment on this and possibly explain it further?
00:13:52Well, in any combat where these things can be used on strictly military targets and for strictly military purposes, I
00:14:02see no reason that they shouldn't be used just exactly as you'd use a bullet or anything else.
00:14:07Can't we design some that could be used by the Army? Remember, Eisenhower was an Army man. He wasn't an
00:14:13Air Force pilot. He was concerned that the Army have the benefit of these very powerful and efficient and lightweight
00:14:22relatively speaking explosives. Therefore, he commissioned all sorts of efforts to find ways to make battlefield scale nuclear weapons.
00:14:45The battleground of the future may well be a nuclear battleground. And the nuclear weapon is perhaps the greatest challenge
00:14:52to the foot soldier in military history. The United States Army believes it is a challenge that can be met.
00:14:59And that today's soldier has a chance of surviving this new weapon.
00:15:03Just as the soldier of the past was able to survive the weapons of his day.
00:15:10Keeping in mind that your first priority, as always, is to perform your assigned task, now let's see what protective
00:15:17measures you can take against an atomic attack.
00:15:21For atomic defense, you need a deeper hole than usual. Have a minimum of three feet between ground level and
00:15:28the top of your body in crouching position. The sides may crumble, but this foxhole will give you very good
00:15:34protection against flying missiles, heat and radiation.
00:15:40Have faith in your leaders. They will ensure that you do not get more radiation than is absolutely necessary. Your
00:15:49weapons and equipment may also be contaminated by radioactive fallout.
00:15:56If your immediate assignment requires their use, go ahead and use them. The risk of not carrying out your job
00:16:02will be more critical than the amount of radiation you get.
00:16:08You can decontaminate your equipment in the field by sweeping or scraping it down.
00:16:17Today, the army is training its soldiers against possible nuclear warfare and teaching them the most effective methods of defense
00:16:24against atomic attack.
00:16:26There is no minimizing the potency of the nuclear weapon, but today's soldier, well informed as to the nature of
00:16:34that weapon and well trained in test explosions over the last few years, has a better chance of survival on
00:16:40the atomic battlefield.
00:16:44In November of 1952, an event took place which was to have a profound effect on the scientific and political
00:16:52climate of the world.
00:16:54This event was the detonation of Ivy Mike, the first full-scale test of a thermonuclear device.
00:17:03The blast produced a flood of neutrons.
00:17:06In an instant, experiments were exposed to more than ten times the neutrons that similar experiments could be exposed to
00:17:15by a nuclear reactor in a year.
00:17:18This caught the interest of some in at least two separate fields.
00:17:22That of bomb design and the associated diagnoses of bomb performance.
00:17:27And those interested in collateral effects, the incidental reaction to material and people in particular.
00:17:35The experimental hydrogen bomb test verified that an extremely high flux or surge of neutrons had occurred within the Ivy
00:17:43Mike detonation.
00:17:44What comes off, well a lot of different kinds of radiation, but one of the most prominent kinds, an enormous
00:17:51flux of neutrons.
00:17:53And these neutrons in turn, as the scientist Philip Morrison commented about our first big test,
00:18:01those neutrons produced every element on the periodic table and a bunch of man-made elements all the way up
00:18:09through from 92 to 116 on the now bigger periodic table of man-made elements.
00:18:16Intrigued, the Atomic Energy Commission established a study program to investigate this particular characteristic of nuclear weapons.
00:18:33Event 3
00:18:34Several subsequent events would help to shape the development of the neutron bomb.
00:18:44Select a neutron bomb.
00:18:56Castle Bravo, the largest nuclear test conducted by the United States, exploded, delivering
00:19:06a promptly lethal dose of radioactive fallout to more than 6,000 square miles of the Pacific
00:19:13Ocean, injuring the Marshall Islanders and some Japanese fishermen caught inside the danger
00:19:20zone.
00:19:41In response to the public alarm over fallout, Louis Strauss, chairman of the AEC, requested
00:19:50both weapon laboratories to investigate the possibility of reducing radioactive fallout
00:19:55through designing clean multi-megaton weapons, relying almost entirely on fusion.
00:20:13I have been visited by people that certainly by reputation and common knowledge are among
00:20:22the most eminent scientists in this field. Among them, Dr. Lawrence and Dr. Teller. What they're
00:20:29working on is this, the production of clean bombs. They tell me that already they are producing
00:20:39bombs that have 96 percent less fallout than was the case in our original ones or what they
00:20:45call dirty bombs. But they go beyond this. They say, give us four or five years to test
00:20:55each step of our development and we will produce an absolutely clean bomb. So that the weapon becomes
00:21:01completely military in its application. If you use it on the battlefield, you will have an effect only so
00:21:08far as it's a blast and heat waves reach. And there will be no fallout to injure any civilian or
00:21:15anyone,
00:21:16any innocent bystanders that are off X miles or the necessary distance to get out of the area of heat
00:21:24and blast.
00:21:26Moreover, they go to say this, if you are going to get the full value out of the atomic science
00:21:34in peaceful development,
00:21:36that is, let us assume that there are no more bombs made or used. And you want to make certain
00:21:43that you are getting the best out of this new science for the peaceful uses of mankind, these tests must
00:21:49go on.
00:21:51The weapon laboratories vigorously pursued clean nuclear weapon technology, which would minimize fission in favor of radioactively cleaner fusion.
00:22:03This would be an important step toward development of the neutron bomb.
00:22:08However, success in developing clean nuclear weapons wasn't easy.
00:22:14At first, only extremely large nuclear bombs could be made clean.
00:22:22The government tested such devices in the Pacific as part of Operation Red Wing in 1956.
00:22:30Conducted at Bikini Atoll, these megaton tests were over 200 times the yield of the bomb which leveled Hiroshima,
00:22:39and of which the majority of the explosive force was considered clean from fusion.
00:22:48These weapons could only be considered clean when compared to their dirty counterparts,
00:22:54yet still included tens of kilotons of fissionable material.
00:23:09The military needed small, low-yield weapons for the future battlefields of Europe.
00:23:16Small tactical weapons in the fractional kiloton range, only a thousandth the size of the Nagasaki atomic bomb.
00:23:26But these were still radiologically dirty devices, and their fallout threatened collateral damage for allied troops on the battlefield.
00:23:45Meanwhile, testing continued with tactical fission bombs for the battlefield.
00:23:51The government tested competing designs for the Davy Crockett battlefield nuke.
00:23:56During these tests, pigs placed in tactical environments were used as biological targets,
00:24:04with immediate lethality from radiation as the principal objective.
00:24:09I see that they could've gone through the battlefield.
00:24:12I see that they could've gone through the battlefield.
00:24:20And the bollocks have gone through the battlefield.
00:24:36I see that for the same time, we have to die by the other XYZ.
00:24:38There are a few players, when I see the rest of myoshima,
00:24:39bit. Thank you. I'd like the first slide please. Our primary objective was to
00:24:48determine the immediate lethal response to the Humboldt device. Next. Here are
00:24:54the animals 12 minutes after detonation. You can see that they hardly move at all.
00:25:00This one was very close to the front of the APC at 25 yards and he is
00:25:05manifesting central nervous system syndrome due to the acute central
00:25:09nervous system radiation injury. Next. All of these animals have received an
00:25:18average dose of 40,000 rats. Next. They were all alive for at least two and a
00:25:25half hours. You can obviously see how stunned these animals are. Next. This is
00:25:32pure prompt neutron gamma radiation injury. We've been getting requests from
00:25:38commanders repeatedly concerning how much radiation it takes to kill a human
00:25:42immediately or how much radiation it would take to stop an infantry man in his
00:25:46tracks or to prevent him from driving a truck or prevent him from pulling a
00:25:49trigger. Obviously no one can give an exact answer on this with respect to
00:25:54human beings. The group decided a person had to be 10% efficient just to pull a
00:26:00trigger. To assault a position with any hope of survival he should be 90% efficient.
00:26:06If a commander is interested in incapacitating 50% of a group of troops so
00:26:10that 50% of them cannot pull a trigger, 3,000 rats would be necessary. If the
00:26:15commander were interested say in a period of one hour he would have to deliver
00:26:1910,000 rats to incapacitate 50% of these troops so that they couldn't pull a
00:26:23trigger. Now at eight hours the dose is reduced again because radiation sickness has
00:26:28taken over and by 24 hours a thousand rats would have sufficed initially. Now with
00:26:34respect to killing immediately no one knows how much radiation it would take to
00:26:38kill 50% of a unit within five minutes. The dose would certainly be most fantastic.
00:26:44At 30 minutes it is estimated that the dose would still be greater than a hundred
00:26:48thousand rats. Are there any questions? Anthony?
00:26:52You see, here's the problem. Immediate lethality only occurred where the test subjects would have
00:26:59been killed by the force of the blast anyway. If you're gonna weaponize radiation you want it to
00:27:05incapacitate the enemy immediately, not two days or a week later. Enter Sam Cohen, the architect of the
00:27:16Neutron bomb who began his career at Los Alamos providing the Neutron calculations for the Fat Man
00:27:23atomic bomb. Real early on I began to see radiation, nuclear radiation, as an effective means of
00:27:37raising ground warfare in a relatively moral way. The army called for the use of atomic weapons to
00:27:45break the stalemate in the Korean War, advocating field tests to establish a doctrine for battlefield use.
00:27:57And I was dispatched as an observer to see what was happening there and then in the back of my
00:28:03mind
00:28:04wonder about the application of tactical nuclear weapons.
00:28:13But now here I was in the middle of a war going on and I saw the hideous
00:28:19coherence of the innocents and destruction in their habitats and their industries, you know,
00:28:26and all the structures that, you know, made their lives viable.
00:28:31And this was all done by non-nuclear weapons. And we did just as good a job with our conventional
00:28:39weapons
00:28:40as the bomb that level Hiroshima did. So-called little boy bomb. What Sewell looked like when I
00:28:48entered Sewell for the first time, looked almost exactly like Hiroshima after the bomb.
00:29:01And then wandering around the countryside and seeing the awful state of the peasantry and seeing how
00:29:09they were affected by the war and by our weaponry. And that's what it's always been about.
00:29:17And it's immoral.
00:29:23Just plain immoral.
00:29:27Now, excuse me.
00:29:30It's not irrational.
00:29:33Because that's what war has always been about.
00:29:37Use the biggest bombs you can.
00:29:40Blast 11 daylights out of all these goddamn cities.
00:29:44Which is precisely what we did in World War II.
00:29:47And we did a beautiful job against Germany and Japan.
00:29:55With firebombs and large high-explosive bombs.
00:30:01And we killed countless, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of innocent urban dwarves.
00:30:16And that ain't right.
00:30:20That's immoral. That's the way it was fought.
00:30:22That's immoral.
00:30:25That's immoral.
00:30:33That's immoral.
00:30:35That's immoral.
00:30:36That's immoral.
00:30:39That's immoral.
00:30:40That's immoral.
00:30:40That's immoral.
00:30:40That's immoral.
00:30:40That's immoral.
00:30:41That's immoral.
00:30:44That's immoral.
00:30:57that's just the way that war was and I was all for it and I'm not about to damn myself
00:31:05and condemn myself for the attitude that I had it was typically American
00:31:10you blast the bad guys you know into oblivion and bad guys being men women and children
00:31:22another feeling of of wretchedness of guilt not in the slightest
00:31:34this began to put a little sense of what I would call moral decency into me namely if you want
00:31:42to
00:31:42go to war and sometimes you have to try and keep it as clean as you can
00:31:53so we drove into Seoul and we had to drive across a bridge on the Han River and this bridge
00:32:02looked
00:32:02like it had a case of smallpox it's just cratered as a result of countless high explosive bombs
00:32:09that have pocked it up but it was never destroyed it was built so firmly
00:32:16and so the first question I asked myself suppose we dropped a nuclear weapon on that bridge it would
00:32:23go into the river now that bridge was a very important part of our military exercises and
00:32:32so it was a real military asset so I began getting ideas but now from a moral standpoint see I
00:32:42would
00:32:42not have regarded the structure of that bridge as immoral because it could have been done with a
00:32:48very low-yield accurately delivered nuclear weapon
00:33:02and it would not have destroyed the town of Seoul or anything else like that it simply would have destroyed
00:33:07the bridge
00:33:08while the phones are ringing off the hook tonight this is a very interesting topic
00:33:12do you think that using a neutron bomb is that a moral issue because Sam Cohen
00:33:17he talks about how he felt that it was a moral weapon to use this on somebody else
00:33:22I think drones are the way to go myself
00:33:24maybe I could maybe I could fill in all right well thank you so much then we have another caller
00:33:29well thank you thank you for calling do you think that it's a moral issue the neutron bomb
00:33:33I'm stuck on this moral issue we have a call online this is a Jim from Orange County
00:33:37hi are you familiar with the effects of a neutron bomb and it's not just we're not just talking about
00:33:43an immediate death this is horrific all right Jim well thank you very much for your call
00:33:50wow pretty interesting huh they love or hate this guy
00:33:55I went to work for a very famous air force general who masterminded our ICBM development
00:34:05and that's Benny Schriever General Bernard Schriever and here's a guy who would devise
00:34:10a thermonuclear ballistic missile that would have killed godly knows how many millions
00:34:26at the same time
00:34:28regarding the battlefield he began hammering at me see I was his nuclear advisor he was running a
00:34:35planning shop for the air force in the pentagon he began hammering on me Sam he says why don't you
00:34:41give me a weapon it won't produce all these horrendous effects on innocence he says it's a logical thing to
00:34:49do
00:34:53now what I had to do is I had to look for a boarhead
00:34:57that had the necessary characteristics and so I used to pay very frequent visits
00:35:03up to the Livermore Nuclear Laboratory in Northern California
00:35:07and I'd always visit with the director of the lab we were very good friends and ask him if anything
00:35:13new
00:35:14in your developments well on this particular visit he said yes he said but I'm not quite sure if you'd
00:35:21be
00:35:21interested I said why didn't you why are you hesitant about my interest he says this is a non-military
00:35:30warhead
00:35:31this is for peaceful applications for the so-called project plowshare you know turn swords into plowshares
00:35:42the united states is conducting for the benefit of all nations a program it calls plowshare
00:35:51the great and violent power of nuclear explosion can be used for peaceful purposes
00:36:00we call this project plowshare
00:36:05geographical engineering move great amounts of earth build canals harbors use nuclear explosives
00:36:16like high explosives have been used for the purpose of mining use nuclear explosives in the bowels
00:36:26of the earth using the earth itself as the possible we built up a physics laboratory right down there in
00:36:36the salt mine
00:36:37to find out more about the neutrons which make nuclear explosives and nuclear reactors thick
00:36:48we try to do the best to develop further this great tool nuclear energy for peaceful purposes but at the
00:37:00very outset we were convinced of one thing the most interesting thing that we might find out
00:37:07that may be something which no one expects a surprise
00:37:23i really wasn't all that much interested in peaceful application of nuclear devices and he called the
00:37:32the project heads of two projects were working on these clean peaceful nuclear weapons to come in
00:37:39and brief me on these weapons and they went through briefing see they were thermonuclear fusion not fission
00:37:47when they were through briefing me i asked them i said
00:37:51how many neutrons come out they said well we have to make a quick calculation
00:37:56and the answer was essentially all of the neutrons came out they weren't absorbed in the device
00:38:06well with that i said thanks a lot and i excused myself and i raced for the airport
00:38:13went back to santa monica to the rank corporation where i was working
00:38:19up to my office i took out a slide roll my dad had given me on my 15th birthday when
00:38:26i had displayed
00:38:27an interest in science and i made the necessary calculations i knew how to make neutral calculations
00:38:34real good and lo and behold came out for these calculations was a weapon they burst at a proper
00:38:43altitude would kill bad guys underneath the sphere of the properties the cities and towns of the good guys
00:38:55and voila here is how the neutron bob came about
00:39:07what would someone expect to feel or experience from the effects of the neutron bomb
00:39:17all depends how close you are to the birth point
00:39:46if you're roughly a thousand yards away you within a matter of minutes are going to be rendered
00:39:55totally incapacitated and physiologically you will be one of the most miserable creatures imaginable you
00:40:03will be vomiting your guts out your head will be bursting as your central nervous system has been
00:40:15knocked out of order and within a matter of
00:40:25less considerably less than an hour you'll be dead but within a matter of minutes
00:40:34you'll be unable to conduct combat operations so you're gone
00:40:42if you go a few more hundred yards out then you can pick up a non-lethal dose that will
00:40:50still have
00:40:51effects on you you'll survive it you'll live through it but you will not feel very well and you'll feel
00:41:03disoriented you won't be violently ill like the poor guy you'll have a thousand yards but nevertheless
00:41:13you will not be physically or mentally capable of conducting combat operations
00:41:20so if you're talking about a tank crew that picks up this dose
00:41:25they won't be able to work their tank for a while
00:41:32now if they were out of the combat there
00:41:35i say well fine and dandy they'll pull through they won't be very happy for a while
00:41:40just as far less those that produce these you know god awful hideous effects
00:41:44could still have the desired military result of putting an enemy soldier out of action
00:41:56because the neutron bomb is the most discriminant weapon ever devised
00:42:03there's a very sharp cutoff between the radius out to which the enemy will be killed and where the
00:42:11friendly troops are positioned after the war is over instead of having a continent of devastation
00:42:18physical devastation it will be a physically intact continent
00:42:26from a radioactivity standpoint the radioactive effects will be to a first approximation zero
00:42:33zilch and the area under the burst will be inhabitable immediately and if the burst is used in a city
00:42:44and the populace is taking common sense steps
00:42:48to protect themselves by taking shelters against the radiation the neutron radiation
00:43:04then they will be touched further developments of the neutron bomb would have to wait as eisenhower
00:43:12imposed a moratorium on nuclear testing through the end of his presidential term
00:43:18undeterred by the moratorium sam continued his research with fellow strategists at the rand corporation
00:43:25whose responsibility was to formulate and shape military policy
00:43:29at rand sam continued to pursue his vision of a bomb that would one day weaponize neutron radiation
00:43:37i went in to analysis strictly for audio and this went on for about six years
00:43:45and it was six of the most agonizing yet fascinating
00:43:54years of my life because thanks to listening to myself
00:44:02because i had no choice
00:44:04see now i have the analyst and the son of a bitch he would just sit there and he wouldn't
00:44:09say a word
00:44:11i was to a certain extent and this would vary from individual to individual
00:44:19and neurotic i wasn't a psychotic at this stage of the game i might say i was employed in the
00:44:28security
00:44:29work doing nuclear weapons work and i had top secret clearances and so on and so forth so if i'd
00:44:36been
00:44:36psychotic i never would have gotten a job or let alone clearances
00:44:43i was working with a thick tank called the rand corporation which has become world famous in
00:44:51santa monica california and i was in with a group of extremely bright guys put it mildly
00:44:58they were not only bright but to a very very high percentage level they were neurotic as all hell just
00:45:06like i was okay and now having this analytic background in allowing me to understand people
00:45:18i began to see these guys who were being driven by their neuroses now the revanche corporation had a
00:45:26huge effect on our nuclear policies they had it all figured out on computers and computers were based
00:45:35on mathematical models and the mathematical models were based on their neurotic way of thinking
00:45:43but they're with us now the question which came to shove and we wound up in a nuclear war
00:45:51would it go according to these policies and strategies no absolutely no way how it would go heaven only knows
00:46:05i don't
00:46:07despite all the profound calculations by such jesus as the late great herman kahn you know the master of
00:46:16the thurman nuclear war and so on you see herman who had a huge effect on washington thinking
00:46:26believed we could fight and win a thurman nuclear war
00:46:52for free and so i could see her because of this is also the last time the day of the
00:47:16world so
00:47:16well i'm gonna be happy to see that in the last part of this was the last time it was
00:47:16a powerful
00:47:26what a pile of crap he pretended to really believe it now the truth of the matter is
00:47:32he didn't believe it one bit but he was a natural born showman and he desperately needed attention
00:47:39man looks not only to their great energy but also to their relative size and cost
00:47:45he sees that a 10 kiloton nuclear explosive for example could be as small as 15 inches in diameter
00:47:52and three feet long the price would be about 350 000
00:47:59furthermore if he increases the nuclear yield 200 times up to two megatons the package is only about
00:48:06two feet greater in diameter and seven feet longer and the price barely doubles
00:48:18i visited the pentagon and i was introduced to tom moore who was a fledgling rear admiral in
00:48:26charge of long-range planning for the navy by a colleague of his so i come into moore's office
00:48:33and i take out my briefing charts and i go through my song and dance and when i'm all through
00:48:39he has practically gone through the ceiling he really got excited and he said do you mind if i
00:48:48ask you to give your briefing around certain quarters of the navy in the pentagon i said of course i
00:48:54don't
00:48:55mind you arrange for it and i'll show up and before you knew it you had an exponentiating chain reaction
00:49:04i had briefed every significant quarter of the navy in the pentagon all the way on up to the chief
00:49:11of
00:49:11naval operations and they wanted that bomb
00:49:18thanks to the navy pressures it worked its way out of the navy and into the office of the secretary
00:49:25of
00:49:25defense and there was this briefing in his conference room to the secretary's conference room
00:49:32and i was on stage with my charts and in the audience were a bunch of very senior characters
00:49:40you know in the pentagon including an admiral the name of arthur radford who was then the chairman of
00:49:47the joint chiefs of staff and when i was all through admiral radford muttered if we only had these
00:49:55weapons at the end been food this was during the french war in indochina and it would have been ideal
00:50:02for us in vietnam had we used these weapons in vietnam we could have won that war in short order
00:50:12and saved god only knows how many thousands upon thousands of american social boys lives
00:50:22throughout 1959 sam continued to pitch his fusion weapon concept to various agencies of the government
00:50:30including the department of defense the state department the cia the atomic energy commission
00:50:36and the national security council planning board it was during this time period that this advanced
00:50:43weapon concept became popularly known by the press as the neutron bomb generating the kind of hysteria
00:50:52that could only be created by the premiere of a hollywood movie news of the neutron bomb spread quickly
00:50:59as the revelation of this newly proposed weapon raced across newspapers television and radio it took
00:51:06root in the political landscape and resounded through congress connecticut's democratic senator thomas j dodd
00:51:16became the neutron bomb's most enthusiastic proponent telling congress we are in mortal peril more than a
00:51:24year has passed since i first spoke on the folly of the test man moratorium i mentioned the neutron bomb
00:51:30would operate as a kind of death ray it would do next to no physical damage and result in no
00:51:37contamination
00:51:38but it would immediately destroy all life in the target area today i doubt there is a single nuclear
00:51:45physicist of repute who would challenge the neutron bomb from the standpoint of feasibility it can be built but
00:51:52nothing can be done to build it until we are free to resume nuclear testing responding to senator dodd linus
00:51:59pauling proclaims
00:52:02we have had one principle reason for hope during the last three years the negotiations for a bomb test
00:52:08agreement being carried out in geneva and now there is a great effort being made by the forces of militarism
00:52:15in the united states to break off the negotiations in geneva and to start up bomb tests again uh the
00:52:22greatest foe of the peace movement and the committee for a sane nuclear policy is senator thomas j dodd he
00:52:30in the his speech on the 12th of may 1960 urged that we stop trying to make an international agreement
00:52:38stop
00:52:38the testing of all nuclear weapons that the united states immediately resume the testing of nuclear weapons and
00:52:45now he is ballyhooing what he calls a neutron bomb this is a great fraud senator dodd said if the
00:52:52soviets
00:52:53were together first it might well cost us our freedom if the day should ever come when the kremlin forces
00:52:59a
00:52:59showdown crisis over berlin and then demonstrates its possession of the neutron bomb we would find
00:53:05ourselves confronted with the choice of capitulation in europe or all-out nuclear war this is pure poppycock the
00:53:13neutron bomb is a fraud a hoax and nothing more former atomic energy commissioner thomas murray sent an
00:53:20ominous letter to presidential candidates kennedy and nixon warning that the russians were developing new
00:53:26types of atomic weapons which could lead to nuclear blackmail unless the united states was allowed to resume
00:53:35testing murray murray identified two different weapons on the drawing board whose code names were synonymous
00:53:42with the neutron bomb
00:53:47contemplated as a battlefield weapon eisenhower eventually had reservations about the concept
00:53:53of the neutron bomb he didn't like it for his own i consider to be grossly immoral reasons
00:54:06didn't believe in battlefield nuclear weapons regardless of how discriminant they might be
00:54:14even though he had these thousands of nuclear weapons under his command battlefield weapons tactical
00:54:21weapons under his command i don't think he ever would have made that call
00:54:34we'll never know our military organization today bears little relation to that known of any of my predecessors
00:54:44in peacetime or indeed by the fighting men of world war ii or korea until the latest of our world
00:54:52political conflicts the united states had no armaments industry american makers of plowshares could with time
00:55:02and as required make swords as well but we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense
00:55:11we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions in the councils of
00:55:19government we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence whether sought or unsought by the military industrial complex
00:55:29only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military
00:55:38machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals soon after eisenhower left office the newly elected
00:55:46president and nato allies were faced with renewed threats over west berlin by the soviet union
00:55:56on august 30th 1961 the russians broke the nuclear testing moratorium culminating with the detonation
00:56:04of a 57 megaton hydrogen bomb allowing the united states to proceed with a new series of tests
00:56:13many of those tests conducted in the fall of 1961 were designs considered for low yield tactical use
00:56:21including continued development of the neutron bomb
00:56:25despite its growing reputation as the government's worst kept rumor the neutron bomb was back in the news
00:56:33mr president there's been a lot of talk recently about the development of a new trump
00:56:37bomb um could you give us your estimate of the feasibility of developing a weapon which would uh
00:56:43destroy human beings without destroying real estate values no publicly kennedy refused to discuss the neutron bomb
00:56:52privately however he debated the use of the weapon he referred to as the fusion bomb
00:57:00about the infusion
00:57:01based on the characteristics of a fusion weapon there's some difference between the characteristics
00:57:12we believe there's advantage to having it
00:57:15that there was a couple years ago general belief
00:57:18of the fusion weapon that's a special kind of battle for the weapon which you can kill
00:57:23feelers maybe you can kill a few weapons that could use to kill troops without doing blast damage
00:57:29and without leaving maybe that could be defined but a rather detailed study that was made last year
00:57:35when we were going around this a little more right showed that this was a much blessing
00:57:40because while it killed a few people close in rapidly it was really a time bomb sent to most of
00:57:47the
00:57:47people who got the neutron blast were not killed in some pain in the fact they're not in bad health
00:57:52but we're going to die in a period of 12 hours to two weeks so that we could be creating
00:57:57them
00:57:57in the battle for the defense that kind of copies the troops will have to do so they're not going
00:58:03to do that
00:58:06these troops forming a special task force were the first in our army's history to engage in a tactical
00:58:12exercise supported by live nuclear firepower
00:58:38so
00:58:45so
00:58:47so
00:58:49so
00:59:14This field exercise was not a wargaming maneuver,
00:59:17but rather a pre-designed demonstration of the tactical employment of low-yield nuclear weapons in conjunction with conventional weapons.
00:59:29By this time, I think the rest of the group had all reached the same conclusion I had reached,
00:59:34that some limited wars can best be fought with a combination of conventional weapons plus nuclear weapons for appropriate tactical
00:59:43targets.
00:59:44It could mean the difference between winning now or fighting for months.
01:00:01In 1964, important steps in this direction were taken in experiments
01:00:06with nuclear explosives specially designed to produce high-intensity neutron radiation,
01:00:12the specific characteristic that promotes isotope formation.
01:00:16In one hundred millionth of a second, more neutrons were released by each explosion
01:00:21and could be released over decades in the most efficient nuclear reactor.
01:00:26The blasts pumped these neutrons into targets of uranium, producing isotopes of very heavy elements beyond uranium.
01:00:35Eventually, Plowshare scientists hoped to use these heavier elements as targets in nuclear explosions.
01:00:42Over the next decade, 26 nuclear tests would be conducted under Project Plowshare
01:00:47for the development of peaceful nuclear weapons.
01:00:55The neutron bomb continued to be aided by advancements in this technology.
01:01:02The future looked bright for peaceful nuclear explosions.
01:01:08But unrealized expectations and public and political opposition doomed the program to closure.
01:01:16Plowshare quietly ended in 1977.
01:01:20Without Plowshare, the path the neutron bomb would take would be bumpy.
01:01:26The neutron bomb found early success as the warhead for the Sprint missile.
01:01:30The Sprint was an anti-ballistic missile, or ABM, designed to explode and deliver a blast of neutrons,
01:01:39rendering incoming ICBMs inoperable.
01:01:43The Sprint was capable of hypersonic speeds.
01:01:47Reaching temperatures twice the melting point of steel would cause the missile to glow
01:01:51as it shot through the atmosphere.
01:01:56However, high costs, questionable results, and a lack of Congressional support retired the Sprint in 1975.
01:02:05In the ever-changing world of defense,
01:02:08Sam's advocacy for his neutron bomb was falling increasingly on deaf ears.
01:02:18The Air Force favored its strategic programs, like the ICBM and long-range bomber.
01:02:27The Navy favored the Polaris as its nuclear weapon of choice.
01:02:38The Army was preoccupied with the Vietnam War and stewardship of the Sentinel-ABM program.
01:02:50Lyndon Johnson had little interest in Cold War confrontation
01:02:53as he reduced government support for many programs to pay for the Vietnam War.
01:03:00After Vietnam, the government and the military returned to a strategy of flexible response,
01:03:08reviving interest in tactical nuclear weapons.
01:03:14All right, you'll be working on this assignment in groups.
01:03:18Barker, your group will develop plans using only conventional weapons.
01:03:26Fox, you have no restrictions.
01:03:29You may use any weapons in the arsenal, including nuclear ones,
01:03:33against any targets you deem suitable.
01:03:37Malloy, your group also has permission to use nuclear weapons,
01:03:42but you're restricted to using them against tactical targets.
01:03:47Our next get-together will be on Thursday to receive your reports.
01:03:50That's all, gentlemen.
01:03:54In 1973, the Army Chief of Staff produced a memorandum requesting a study to re-examine nuclear artillery.
01:04:02The study requested radiation dose requirements for incapacitating military personnel
01:04:08and minimizing collateral damage.
01:04:12The goal is to establish a valid and consistent model from which military planners can predict the probability of mission
01:04:19accomplishment in a wide range of operational situations.
01:04:24A project involving ten primates was initiated to determine gross performance efficiency after irradiation.
01:04:31The reactor is programmed and the subject positioned to receive a mid-head dose of approximately 10,000 rads of
01:04:38mixed gamma and neutron radiation in a period of about 50 microseconds.
01:04:43These parameters approximate the dose and delivery rate that might be anticipated following the detonation of a nuclear weapon.
01:05:18COVID-19 restarted the
01:06:46Hello there. Are you conscious?
01:06:52Can you hear us? Can you see this light?
01:07:03We'd like to ask you some questions. Is that okay?
01:07:10What was the last thing you remember before the blast?
01:07:18Were you unconscious at any time?
01:07:23If so, do you know for how long?
01:07:29In the period immediately following the blast, you remember any inability to perform major functions?
01:07:37If so, how long did that impairment last?
01:07:43Are you sick or nauseated?
01:07:46Did you vomit after the attack?
01:08:13Good evening. The neutron bomb is back in the news.
01:08:18Senator Stuart Symington, head of the Committee on Atomic Energy, was a staunch opponent of the neutron bomb.
01:08:25This opposition evaporated when Symington retired from the Senate in 1976, thereby opening the door to approval of the neutron
01:08:35bomb.
01:08:37Quietly, the neutron bomb was reintroduced into the energy department's budget request.
01:08:52The neutron bomb had reappeared after secretly being inserted into a house appropriations bill during the Carter administration.
01:09:03Do you have any questions?
01:09:07How do you reconcile your decision to go ahead with the neutron bomb with your inaugural pledge to eliminate all
01:09:14nuclear weapons?
01:09:15Also, why didn't you know the money was in the bill?
01:09:19And three, doesn't this escalate the arms race?
01:09:22And I have a follow-up.
01:09:27Well, it's a very serious question.
01:09:29In the first place, I did not know it was in the bill.
01:09:31The enhanced radiation or neutron bomb has been discussed and also has been under development for 15 to 20 years.
01:09:41It's not a new concept at all, not a new weapon.
01:09:43It does not affect our assault or strategic weapons negotiations at all.
01:09:49It's strictly designed as a tactical weapon.
01:09:52Before I make a final decision on a neutron bomb's deployment,
01:09:56I would do a complete impact statement, analysis on it, submit this information to the Congress.
01:10:04But I have not yet decided whether to approve the neutron bomb.
01:10:06I do think it ought to be one of our options, however.
01:10:10Almost immediately, funding for the neutron bomb faced opposition by then-Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield,
01:10:16who blocked finances for the weapon.
01:10:19I think that argument is the very reason why we should be very reticent to embark upon this system,
01:10:25because there's more of an invitation to use it and introduce it into conventional warfare.
01:10:31Some of the opponents of this particular bomb seem to have discovered that radiation kills people.
01:10:38They also seem to have discovered that bombs kill people.
01:10:42All weapons kill people.
01:10:44Nuclear weapons are dangerous.
01:10:46There is no doubt about it.
01:10:47The neutron bomb is no exception.
01:10:49It will kill people.
01:10:50That's the express purpose of it.
01:10:52Initially, Carter opposed the neutron bomb, which was on its way to being fitted for use
01:10:58as an artillery shell and as the warhead for the Lance missile.
01:11:05Although the Lance had been on the drawing board since the mid-1950s
01:11:09and eventually introduced into the U.S. arsenal,
01:11:12it wasn't until 1977 when the Lance was ready to move into the production phase for its neutron warhead.
01:11:22The six-keleton device was to be used in a tactical missile called the Lance,
01:11:30a battlefield missile.
01:11:53The Lance, a battlefield missile.
01:12:11The Lone Wars
01:12:11The Lone Wars
01:12:13The Lone Wars
01:12:20Now, the Army Number 1 of this,
01:12:22damn things. They never did it from the very beginning, but it was forced upon them by
01:12:27the President toward keeping a promise, okay? Well, in designing specifications for how
01:12:35the weapon would be used, it would be exploded as close to the surface as possible to avoid
01:12:42contact, which might have produced you a lot of wide-scale radioactive fallout, you know,
01:12:49like a few hundred feet above the surface of the raising being. The Army never trusted
01:12:53radiation. What it wanted was physical demolishment of enemy tanks.
01:13:04The military did not want people to know that it did not have a significant blast component,
01:13:12that it had a reduced blast component, fine and dandy.
01:13:17The neutron bomb would move from one conflict to another, from the battlefields of Congress
01:13:23to the front lines of Europe.
01:13:26That was where the battle would be fought, but it was densely populated with human beings.
01:13:33Germany in particular, which is where the line was really drawn between East and West Germany,
01:13:38was densely populated. How could you use nuclear weapons without killing more friendly civilians?
01:13:46than enemy combatants? The idea of a neutron bomb was if you could suppress the blast and fire
01:13:52effects of a nuclear weapon, and enhance the neutron effects of a nuclear weapon, you might be able to
01:14:00have a weapon that would kill those guys inside those tanks, but with minimal damage to the German
01:14:06German countryside. Germany is a densely populated country. The German leadership really very early on
01:14:13understood, as I think Helmut Schmidt said later on, one nuclear explosion in my country and the war would
01:14:20be over as far as we're concerned. We'd stop. We wouldn't fight anymore, because there's no point in destroying your
01:14:26country to save it.
01:14:28NATO members could not agree on deployment of the neutron bomb, saying it is militarily useful,
01:14:34but politically dangerous. And I can assure you that the SACUer would not ask for the use of those weapons,
01:14:42unless he projected that the defense was no longer going to be viable, and therefore we face two choices.
01:14:50One, to be overrun and to give up, which is not very viable to me. Or two, to resort to
01:14:57the use of
01:14:58nuclear weapons, which is also not very viable to me. The neutron bomb kills people the same way monkeys
01:15:05are killed in this armed forces laboratory, by huge doses of radiation. While pressure erupted from all
01:15:12sides and countries on the issue, President Carter postponed production of the neutron bomb. And I'm
01:15:21looking forward to going to get some rest. The Senate seemed to turn down the neutron bomb by one
01:15:27close today. Oh, did they? That's a matter I haven't gotten into very deeply. We'll look into it in the
01:15:33future. Do you think the neutron bomb is really essential? I don't know. I'll see you later.
01:15:38The neutron warhead is a defensive weapon designed to offset the superiority that the Soviet Union has on the
01:15:46Western Front against the NATO nations. You also have to remember that those who are crying the loudest,
01:15:54the Soviet Union, and many of those who, under the name of pacifism in Western Europe, who are opposing
01:16:01things like this, are really carrying the propaganda ball for the Soviet Union. President Reagan, many
01:16:10people don't realize this, came to office with a personal dream that he had been pursuing ever since 1945,
01:16:20to get rid of all the nuclear weapons in the world. That was the famous summit at Reykjavik in 1986.
01:16:28But he was shrewd enough to realize that he would have to start by building up the U.S. military
01:16:34to
01:16:34such a high level that no one domestically or on the Soviet side could claim he was weak on defense.
01:16:41So the first thing he did was double the U.S. defense budget. And in doing so, they had to
01:16:48go to
01:16:49the farthest reaches of their dream book that they could use to spend all that money on. And I think
01:16:56the reason the neutron bomb reemerges a little bit during the early years of the Reagan administration,
01:17:03we got all this money, the president wants us to spend it. Okay, let's throw that back into the mix.
01:17:08Maybe we should work on that a little more. That was one of his principal themes. And he promised,
01:17:14you know, if elected president, I will develop and stockpile that weapon. And he kept his promise,
01:17:21incidentally. But he went back on it from the following standpoint.
01:17:29It was stockpiling in the United States, not in Europe. It was the only place where they could
01:17:35have been a bit of any good. And the reason being is that the Europeans who really detested my bomb
01:17:42wouldn't have anything to do with it.
01:17:50I put up a big holler. And you know how much good that did me?
01:17:57On the positive side, zero. On the negative side, a lot of harm.
01:18:05As a matter of fact, the fellow who really ran the Air Force,
01:18:09the famous, infamous General Curtis LeMay, he tried to crush me and bring my briefings to a halt.
01:18:19But LeMay, as well as the other Air Force generals who were part of Strategic Air Command,
01:18:24had a distinct preference, not so much for small-scale tactical nuclear weapons,
01:18:29but for the large strategic nuclear weapons that they wanted to use to
01:18:33lay waste to Soviet cities and Soviet industrial infrastructure.
01:18:38General LeMay wanted all the bombs. And he wanted big bombs, the bigger the better,
01:18:43because his idea of how to prevent an attack on the United States by the Soviet Union was to attack
01:18:50the Soviet Union before they could attack us, either in the final minutes of a conflict before it went
01:18:57nuclear or, God knows, as a preemptive war, which was seriously discussed.
01:19:02Now, really and truly, from the very beginning, the Army never won battlefield nuclear weapons.
01:19:14Never. The reason being, they'd done some studies which they decided to take seriously
01:19:24for political reasons. They showed it was impossible to fight a battlefield nuclear war in Europe
01:19:32without wiping out half of Europe and contaminating the other half.
01:19:42The idea of a weapon that would just kill people and leave the neighborhood intact, so to speak,
01:19:51had a really bad smell to it for most people. It sounded like
01:19:57what had gone on in Nazi Germany in the Second World War, if you will. Let's just kill everybody
01:20:03around and then we'll take over their buildings and their houses and their factories and so forth.
01:20:08So from that point of view, if you will, I'm sure the Pentagon thought of that as a public relations
01:20:14problem.
01:20:15A month after the surrender of Iraqi forces in Operation Desert Storm, President George H.W. Bush
01:20:22moved unilaterally to denuclearize the U.S. Army, including the neutron bomb.
01:20:29I am announcing today a series of sweeping initiatives affecting every aspect of our nuclear
01:20:36forces on land, on ships, and on aircraft. I'll begin with the category in which we will make the
01:20:44most fundamental change in nuclear forces in over 40 years, non-strategic or theater weapons.
01:20:52I'm therefore directing that the United States eliminate its entire worldwide inventory of ground
01:21:01launched short-range, that is theater, nuclear weapons. We will bring home and destroy all of our
01:21:09nuclear artillery shells and short-range ballistic missile warheads. We have zero.
01:21:19Thanks to two guys. General Colin Powell, who advised President George Herbert Walker Bush,
01:21:30this is right after the Persian Gulf War, to get rid of all of the battlefield nuclear weapons.
01:21:37He didn't need them. He didn't want them. And so Bush put forth an edict to destroy all these weapons.
01:21:45And so here were all these thousands of weapons, which were destroyed, including my neutron bomb.
01:21:56For the time being, it's gone for all time.
01:22:09What I've always told myself is not a question of if, but when. The bombs that I've been discussing are
01:22:19the bombs
01:22:19we've actually developed. And so I've talked about their nature and their effects and so on and so forth.
01:22:26Let's talk about another bomb.
01:22:29And I have a nickname for this.
01:22:32I was the first guy to become aware of this bomb and its implications.
01:22:40And this bomb, I call the nothing bomb.
01:22:46bomb. It doesn't duck down buildings.
01:22:52It doesn't contaminate the surface over a huge area or anything else like that.
01:22:59But there's one thing that it doesn't do. So it's not a totally nothing bomb.
01:23:04It kills people with neutrons from a device.
01:23:11Roughly speaking, the size of a baseball.
01:23:16And it yields not kilotons, but at the ton level.
01:23:26And that makes it the ultimate radiation weapon.
01:23:29The ultimate neutron bomb.
01:23:32And it was based technically on a very exotic substance to get the super effective explosives,
01:23:39you know, for a peaceful application.
01:23:43And it involves an explosive didn't go bang.
01:23:47Instead, what it did is it got extremely hot.
01:23:52And it glowed white hot.
01:23:55And inside that glowing material, the pressures were enormous beyond imagination.
01:24:02They were comparable to the temperatures and pressures that existed in the inside of the sun.
01:24:08Now, you know what the sun does.
01:24:10It produces thermonuclear reactions.
01:24:13Where the ingredients are the two heavy forms of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium,
01:24:19which are the same ingredients of a regular neutron bomb.
01:24:23This one is pure fusion.
01:24:26And would you like to know something?
01:24:29Despite all these treaties and agreements we've reached regarding nuclear arms control,
01:24:36for a country to produce these kinds of explosives is strictly permissible.
01:24:42Not one treaty has ever come out.
01:24:45Not one agreement has ever come out has forbidden the development of such devices.
01:24:53Not one treaty has ever come out.
01:24:59Not one treaty has ever come out.
01:25:03But I don't claim any God-given uniqueness as being the only one on earth
01:25:10that really understands what this business is all about.
01:25:13I don't. I never have and I never will.
01:25:17It's not about logic and it's not about rationality.
01:25:21And I'll add one, it's not even about sanity.
01:25:35My thinking along nuclear weapons lines
01:25:38and what kinds of weapons ought to be developed
01:25:42and stockpiled and so on
01:25:44has been my moral view of the subject of nuclear weapons
01:25:52and their use and how they ought to be used.
01:25:56I'm being more than a little bit overly pompous here
01:26:02in claiming my morality because I hate that moral.
01:26:09You know, I've still got a lot of meanies inside of me, but good.
01:26:16Despite all the years of psychoanalysis that I went through.
01:26:21But I'm relatively speaking, whether you want to make the morality
01:26:26a moral, a far more moral person than I was before the analysis.
01:26:32And not only more moral, but more rational.
01:26:40And we have Ray on the line and she had a question.
01:26:44Ray, what's your question?
01:26:46My question is why do I need to wait for 18 hours to die?
01:26:53Why can't I just like up and die?
01:26:55Would it be better if one had a gun or if one had a supply of pills
01:27:05and then one would just down it and toss out or shoot one's brains out
01:27:10instead of suffering the 18 hours?
01:27:14I would say, you know, for me, I'm just going to get a bottle of Jack.
01:27:19It's tactical, practical.
01:27:23It's theoretical, factual.
01:27:26All without the mess and the moral we lay
01:27:29At the end of a business day.
01:27:33Fall out's finished, a thing of the past
01:27:37Everything left is intact
01:27:40You can move in today, did I happen to say
01:27:44Just toss those other folks out of your way
01:27:48We still have time for a new Trump song
01:27:52One more new Trump song
01:27:55We still have time for a new Trump bomb
01:27:59Before this world is gone
01:28:19Off in the hybrid teller
01:28:22Livermore Sam
01:28:23Won't sell the world in the palm of their hands
01:28:26If you could ask them today
01:28:28They might actually say
01:28:30There may be no one left to blow away
01:28:34If you see the light
01:28:36On a nuclear light
01:28:38Talking covered just as fast as you can
01:28:41And hold on tight
01:28:43When might makes right
01:28:45And pray tomorrow is a better day
01:28:49We still have time for a new Trump song
01:28:52One more new Trump song
01:28:55We still have time for a new Trump song
01:29:00Before this world is gone
01:29:03Before this world is gone