Category Archives: History

New Affiliate Website: NuclearDeterrence.net

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NuclearDeterrence.net header image

Nuclear deterrence has been a central element of American security policy since the Cold War began. The deterrence concept is straight-forward: persuade a potential adversary that the risks and costs of his proposed action far outweigh any gains that he might hope to achieve. To make deterrence credible, the United States built up powerful strategic, theater and tactical nuclear forces that could threaten any potential aggressor with the catastrophic risks and costs of a nuclear retaliatory strike against his homeland.

During the Cold War, the primary focus of this deterrent was the Soviet Union. The Soviets built their own nuclear force targeting the United States, producing a situation of mutual deterrence, often referred to as “mutual assured destruction” or MAD. Continue reading →

Natural Plutonium

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Coming-Soon_RFB2_Front_Cvr_300x450pxAn excerpt from the new book, “U.S. Nuclear Deterrence: The Cold War and Colorado’s Nuclear Weapons Factory” by Farrel Hobbs. (Coming Soon to Amazon.com bookstore by Sept. 15, 2018.)

Let’s start at the beginning, which, in the case of Rocky Flats, is about 4.5 billion years ago. The Rocky Flats Plant was known mostly for its role in producing plutonium components for nuclear weapons. Those of us who worked there knew that the plant did much more than that; many thousands of people who worked at the plant never came close to any plutonium. However, plutonium is what comes to mind for most people when they think of Rocky Flats. Activists who devoted themselves to protesting the place learned that they created more support against the plant when they focused on plutonium, and they began to declare that “plutonium was designed to kill.” That’s a very catchy phrase, but there weren’t many people around to be killed 4.5 billion years ago when plutonium first existed on Earth. I restrict my discussion to Earth and ignore what possibly happened in other galaxies. Continue reading →

U.S. Nuclear Deterrence: The Cold War and Colorado’s Nuclear Weapons Factory

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Coming-Soon_RFB2_Front_Cvr_300x450pxWe are excited to announce a new book by Farrel Hobbs titled, “U.S. Nuclear Deterrence: The Cold War and Colorado’s Nuclear Weapons Factory,” arriving at Amazon.com by Sept. 15, 2018.

In an extensively researched account seasoned with secrecy and espionage, Hobbs traces the emergence of nuclear technology through the development and testing of the first atomic weapons. Initially intended to crush the WWII Axis powers in Western Europe, atomic weapons were first deployed in the Pacific Ocean theater. But post-WWII events brought an unexpected change in tensions among the Western Allies and U.S.-Soviet relations, in particular.

In late 1948 massive numbers of Soviet tanks and armed forces lined up in Eastern Europe facing a diminished and war-wearied Allied defenses. Stalin continued to amass combat forces and materiel that the Soviet military had prepared for a World War III.

Stalin had been planning this offensive as he fought alongside Allied Forces during World War II. He was waiting for the moment that his increasingly powerful armies could sweep through Western Europe and initiate his visionary communist world domination. Continue reading →

Archeology Takes Courage

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book coverIt’s a shame to miss the story behind science. With The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story you don’t have to – the book offers a fascinating tale of discovery.

Since the first Europeans set foot in the Americas, they chased rumors of “lost” cities of gold. The first third of his book, Douglas Preston recounts an amazing group of, generally, con-artists claiming to have found the Monkey God City in an inaccessible jungle, and would rich donors just give them more money to prove it. These characters make for fun reading.

But there are real ruins in Honduras, and the Monkey God City legend is a conglomeration of real places. Space age technology and changing politics in Honduras enabled a scientific team to take up the search. Deadly snakes, deadly insects, drug cartels, dense jungle, and sucking mud all provide a thrilling backdrop to the expedition. Continue reading →

Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread

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I caught this on NPR:

Home of sliced bread

Chillicothe Baking Company’s building in Chillicothe, Missouri, where bread was first machine-sliced for sale

You’ve heard people call some innovation the greatest thing since sliced bread. Well, that was a real event. The first commercially sliced bread was sold in Chillicothe, Mo., on July 7, 1928. People had to slice it themselves in the old days. The innovation is now the occasion for an annual bluegrass festival, and lawmakers are debating a bill to declare sliced bread day

I remember my grandmother telling me how happy she was to buy bread instead of baking two or three times a week (related to family income I think), but I don’t remember her mentioning sliced bread. So I wanted to learn more.

Wikipedia says bread cut with a slicing machine was advertised as “the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped.” I guess those images of a Frenchman peddling along with a long loaf, bare naked (the loaf that is), under one arm are more romantic than preferred.

Thank you, Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa, USA, for inventing the first loaf-at-a-time bread-slicing machine. One of his early customers, Gustav Papendick, figured out how to easily slide the sliced loaf into a bag. Sliced bread was a hit, and In 1930 Wonder Bread began marketing sliced bread nationwide. The convenience was credited with increasing consumption of bread and everything you might slather on it.

Theatlantic adds “with such products rapidly penetrating the American home, automated bread-making was not only an invention benchmark, but also a key indicator of the mechanization of daily life from the 1930s onward.” I guess that’s where my grandmother comes into the story.

It’s the Best Time Ever to Be Alive – Make It Even Better in 2018

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Adam & Eve Driven From Eden

Driven out of paradise for our sins

Humanity is not going to hell in a hand basket. We have problems, crises, and dire threats that we must tackle, but once in a while, lift your head up from your phone/tablet/TV and be encouraged.

Steven Pinker tells us the long arc of human history bends away from war, towards commerce and expanding sympathy for others. In a more immediate timeframe, a New York Times columnist writes that 2017 was the best year ever.

We, naturally, focus on our own current problems. But consider the whole world:

I’m actually upbeat, because I’ve witnessed transformational change [in 2017]…. A smaller share of the world’s people were hungry, impoverished or illiterate than at any time before. A smaller proportion of children died than ever before. The proportion disfigured by leprosy, blinded by diseases like trachoma or suffering from other ailments also fell. Nicholas Kristof

He cites statistics regarding illiteracy, extreme poverty, and childhood death rates (once, two-thirds of parents had a child die before age 5) all vastly improved in our lifetimes.

If that’s too far away for you, consider America in the 1950s:

the U.S. had segregation, polio and bans on interracial marriage, gay sex and birth control… it was a time of nuclear standoffs, of pea soup smog, of frequent wars, of stifling limits on women.

Nostalgia has always been attractive. Ancient Greeks wrote of a past Golden Age when a Golden Race of people enjoyed a perfect life. Hindu and Norse cultures have similar stories, and the Bible describes a succession of kingdoms in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (Daniel 2) as degenerating from gold, to silver, bronze, iron, and finally to clay. Clay – that’s us.

It’s very human to yearn for a past that never was, or maybe for a time in our own lives when we were young, optimistic, and unburdened. But, as a famous wizard observed, “it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”

Take Kristof’s advice to heart: let our triumphs empower you to tackle the mortal threats we face. Let’s make 2018 the best year ever.