Category Archives: Nuclear Weapons

Controlled Burn Proposal for Rocky Flats

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Rocky Flats has made it back into the news because of a proposed controlled burn near where the plant produced plutonium and other parts for nuclear weapons. An article by Bruce Finley states that west Metro leaders oppose the burn “…where plutonium contamination created an environmental disaster.” My book, “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats:  Urban Myths Debunked,” puts the plutonium releases from Rocky Flats into context compared to the amount of plutonium added to the environment by atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. A 1974 State of Colorado report estimated total world releases of plutonium from testing of nuclear weapons to be between 9,000 and 15,000 pounds of plutonium that contaminated the entire world everything that lives on it. The total released from all routine operations and accidents from Rocky Flats was estimated to be between 2 and 25 ounces. I can’t be certain of Mr. Finley’s definition of what would constitute an “environmental disaster,” but I’d choose atmospheric testing to have been worse than Rocky Flats.

One critic who has a lengthy career of providing inflammatory comments about of Rocky Flats was quoted in Finley’s article as saying, “If plutonium is released, it would be in the form of tiny particles suspended in the air. These could be inhaled. Even a single particle could destroy someone’s health.” I’ll respond with quotes from my book. “Is it true that a tiny particle of plutonium will kill people? Sadly, it’s too late to avoid that outcome it that is true.” “All humans have billions or trillions of atoms of plutonium in their bodies.” Is it surprising that people are living longer despite the plutonium we’ve all inhaled? Continue reading →

Fourth Anniversary of RockyFlatsFacts.com

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It has been an interesting four years since we launched this site to provide the book titled, “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats:  Urban Myths Debunked.” Several hundred people have elected to hold the actual book or to read the Kindle version, which has several interesting pictures. Some think the pictures of two types of plutonium ingots make the Kindle version worthwhile.

Getting some statistics out of the way, the counters have indicated there have been over 1.3 million visitors. There will have been 654 postings when this one is added. Those postings have been just about equally divided between commentaries, book reviews, and expressions. Frequent readers know that there is no way to predict the subjects since we write about whatever attracts our interest on a given day. There was a series of Rocky Flats-related commentaries in mid-year when a three day event was held at the Arvada Center on an anniversary of the government raid on the plant (see “An Insider’s View, etc., above). There was another Rocky Flat’s series when the Department of Energy announced through a subcontractor that health insurance provided to retirees was changing.

Book reviews continued to be mostly non-fiction, but we will post a review about any book we think is interesting. We are still finding new expressions despite posting descriptions of the origin and meaning of over 200. Perhaps the day will come when we run out of new material, but we aren’t there yet.

The two frequent contributors also have been busy writing and publishing books. Ponderer (Kate Rauner) published a sequel to her book “Glitch.” This one is titled “Venture,” and I recommend it to anyone who has interest in space exploration. A sequel to “Angry Pigs Organized Against Gerbils:  The Farmer Island War,” is titled “Farmer Island Magic,” and should be published soon. The four grandchildren who once again served as “Creative Staff and Illustrators” are hoping to have a copy before Christmas. I’m also in the early stages of writing another Rocky Flats book that I think will be interesting to people who worked there and/or protested the place.  More about that later.

Killing Patton

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killing patton book cvrThis is another in the series of “Killing” books written by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard, and my wife says this is her favorite book in the series. The subtitle of the book is “The Strange Death of World War II’s Most Audacious General.” The book does present some compelling evidence that Patton may have been killed. He did create some powerful enemies, including some in the U.S. military, Stalin, and some Germans.

The book begins with a description of Private First Class Robert W. Holmund, an explosives expert in Patton’s army. Private Holmund and his fellow soldiers have been ordered to attack a heavily fortified and mostly underground fortification called Fort Driant. The bombing and artillery strikes that preceded the assault have had no effect on the Wehrmacht fighters who have remained safe within the fort’s fifteen-food thick walls and hidden forest pillboxes. Machine guns that the soldiers have named “Hitler’s Zipper” because of the high-speed ripping sound as it fires twelve hundred rounds a minute open up on the attackers as their advance stalls at the barbed wire around the fort. The machine guns are joined by rifle fire, mortars, and artillery. The Americans eventually disengage and crawl back to safety. Eighteen have been killed or wounded. And that’s just the start.

The soldiers try again a few days later, and this time they make it through the barbed wire to again be faced with precision fire from everything the Germans have. The survivors are forced to hastily dig foxholes to escape the barrage. The medics race from foxhole to foxhole to tend to the wounded until they are killed. The soldiers find a way into to the tunnels and battle the Germans underground. The survivors withdraw to the foxholes and the Germans mount a counterattack. There are only four of Holmlund’s squad left alive by the time a sniper’s bullet fells him. The descriptions of the combat are vivid.

The book intersperses descriptions of Patton and the speeches he gave his troops to prepare them for war with descriptions of the war. He said, for example, “Americans despise cowards.” “Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.” I wondered whether the parents of Private Holmlund wished he had been a little less brave. Continue reading →

Dropshot: The United States Plan for War with the Soviet Union in 1957

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dropshot book coverThis book, edited by Anthony Cave Brown, is startling. The U.S. military had determined in the mid to late 1940s that the only way the United States and its allies could combat an expected massive Soviet military assault in Europe as the Cold War progressed was with a full-scale nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. Some military planners believed that the attack should be “preemptive or preventive,” and that the bombers carrying nuclear weapons should be unleashed on Soviet cities and military installations before the Soviets launched what U.S. military planners believed to be the inevitable World War III. Dropshot was prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff led by General Omar Bradley in 1949 with the authority and knowledge of President Harry Truman. The plan listed the date for the outbreak of World War III as January 1, 1957, although that date was arbitrarily selected for planning purposes. The 330 page book is not written for any other purpose but to describe the complex plans to prepare the United States for Armageddon. It educates but does not entertain.

The Editor writes in the Prologue, “Dropshot was promulgated in three volumes of green-colored paper late in 1949. It became public property in 1977 through the United States’ Freedom of Information Act and may now be purchased at the National Archives for fifteen cents a page. This incongruous fact belittles its importance, for at the time nothing could have been more secret.” The editor continues, “Was it folly to make Dropshot public? I have thought extensively about this point, and I am bound to conclude it was folly to release this document. It should have been burned, buried, or preserved in some secret vault, for it cannot endear America to Russia. As will be seen, not only was Dropshot the blueprint for the atomization of Russia, but it provided for occupation by American armies of that vast continent.”“Why, therefore, was Dropshot made public? The Joint Chiefs were not required by law to declassify it?…The question, therefore, becomes a tantalizing one in which several conjectures are possible. The first is that there was no point in keeping it a secret because the Russians already knew about it. This is conceivable; Dropshot was hatched at a time of considerable Soviet intelligence activity…Stalin frequently in 1948 did refer to American war plans, and his representative at the United Nation, Andrei Vishinsky, did allege that America was planning atomic war against Russia over Berlin.” “Is it possible Dropshot was some gigantic blind, that it was created to hide some other relevant plan?” Continue reading →

The Los Alamos Primer

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los_alamos-primerThe subtitle of this book is “The First Lectures on How to Build an Atomic Bomb.” The book was annotated by Robert Serber and edited with an introduction by Richard Rhodes. It is a fascinating book that would take a long time to fully digest despite its length (only 98 pages including Appendices, Biographical Notes, and an index. The Biographical Notes includes many of the “famous scientists of the times,” but not Robert Serber. I enjoyed the book because it wove the very complicated scientific developments with refreshing non-technical descriptions and comments that made me feel less intimidated about the brilliance of what was being described. The descriptions were often “clipped,” which means it didn’t always flow as well as what you would expect from a literature major. Perhaps that is because the author was a physicist. Some of my favorite passages involve Charlotte Serber (who also is sadly not listed in the index), Robert Serber’s wife. For example, she is described as being the librarian for the project before there were books. I thought about buying a copy for each of our grandsons who are interested in science. However, I admit that I was a bit intimidated by the $40-$60 price for the used books. I suggest you request your local library to borrow it from a local university, which is what I did.

I’ve selected a few snippets from the introduction by Richard Rhodes. Young scientists began arriving in New Mexico to work on a project they were told could end the war. They knew they would be behind barbed wire and cut off from the world. They knew they would be governed by a blanket of secrecy, but “…unofficially they whispered that they had signed on to attempt nothing less than inventing, designing, assembling the world’s first atomic bombs…” “Signing on to invent and craft new weapons of unprecedented destructiveness may seem bloodthirsty from today’s long perspective of limited war and nuclear truce. Those were different times. War was general throughout the world, a pandemic of manmade death.” ix Churchill used the postwar phrase, “a miracle of deliverance.” Continue reading →

Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb

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dark-sun book cvrThe first several chapters of this book by Richard Rhodes contain a detailed description of Soviet spying on the Manhattan Project. The value of what was provided to the Soviets is well documented. The U.S. only identified and convicted some of the spies. Some escaped detection and others managed to make it to the Soviet Union before they were captured.

The Prologue demonstrates the rich dialogue of the book. “The Hiroshima bomb, Little Boy, was a uranium gun. It used sixty-four kilograms of rare uranium 235, all of that dense, purple-black metal the United States had been able to accumulate up to the end of July 1945.” Luis Alvarz was an American experimental physicist who worked in the Manhattan Project and invented a device for measuring the yield of the Hiroshima burst. The devices were dropped by parachute ahead of the bomb radioed their readings to Alvarez in a backup plane. “Alvarez had seen the bright flash of the Hiroshima explosion, had watched (the) pressure gauges register on the oscilloscopes…(and) felt the two sharp slaps of direct and ground-reflected shock waves slamming the plane like flak explosions…”Alvarez searched for the city below the rising mushroom cloud. “Alvarez could not see the city because the city had been destroyed.” A second atomic bomb exploded over Nagasaki three days later and the Japanese surrendered a few days later with the emperor referring to the “terrible bomb.” Continue reading →