Nuclear Weapons

In April 1986 a series of explosions shook the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Flames lit up the sky, and radiation escaped to contaminate the land and poison the people for years to come. While officials tried to hush up the accident, Svetlana Alexievich spent years collecting testimonies from survivors - clean-up workers, residents, firefighters, resettlers, widows, orphans - crafting their voices into a haunting oral history of fear, anger and uncertainty, but also dark humour and love.

The Dead Hand is the suspense-filled story of the people who sought to brake the speeding locomotive of the arms race, then rushed to secure the nuclear and biological weapons left behind by the collapse of the Soviet Union - a dangerous legacy that haunts us even today. The Cold War was an epoch of massive overkill. In the last half of the 20th century the two superpowers had perfected the science of mass destruction and possessed nuclear weapons with the combined power of a million Hiroshimas.

The Cold War between the United States of America and the Soviet Union lasted for more than 40 years. In general, this was a war of spies and subterfuge, of covert action and espionage. There was always a danger, however, that an error of judgment on either side could suddenly cause the Cold War to turn red-hot with an exchange of nuclear weapons. On many occasions, tensions between the countries increased, but the prospect of all-out nuclear war between America and Russia was never closer than during a two-week period in October of 1962.

How to keep you and yours safe from the perils of the modern world. In today's increasingly hostile climate, people are anxious about how to keep themselves safe. Chris Ryan is an expert in dangerous situations, and here he tells you how to keep yourself and your family safe from the perils of modern urban life.

In 1990, two atom bombs were smuggled out of Ukraine from Dnipro, "Rocket City." They were called "The Boys." Now, they are coming home. With the backdrop of a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape, The Rocket City Boys explores the complexities of international relations, the enduring impact of the past, and the choices individuals make in the face of unimaginable threats. The story seamlessly blends the quiet beauty of the Irish countryside with the high-stakes world of espionage and the chilling potential of nuclear war. Read the book that changes the world. Today.

Professor Julius Fielding arrived in Honolulu after quitting his position with the Los Alamos Laboratory. It is 1946 and Fielding is wracked with guilt following the explosions of the atomic weapons over Japan that he was instrumental in developing. He wanted to join his newly found friends who rescued him from the Japanese prison camp in Hiroshima. The information about the bomb is locked in Fielding's head and the Russians want it. Jake Rawlins was supposed to meet Fielding at the airport, but the Russian agents got there first. The FBI and the recently formed Office of Strategic Service ...

From master storyteller and historian H. W. Brands comes the riveting story of how President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur squared off to decide America's future in the aftermath of World War II.

The justification for the atomic bomb was simple: it would defeat Hitler and end the Second World War faster, saving lives. The reality was different. Fallout dismantles the conventional story of why the atom bomb was built. Peter Watson has found documents showing that long before the Allied bomb was operational, it was clear that Germany had no atomic weapons of its own and was not likely to. The British knew this, but didn't share their knowledge with the Americans, who in turn deceived the British about the extent to which the Soviets had penetrated their plans for the bomb.

In this book we look at the history of the South African Nuclear Weapons Program, long denied but always winked about, an open secret to many although the details were always vague with rumours of Israeli assistance in designing the bombs. In fact, the Israeli input was negligible as the South African nuclear weapons worked in an entirely unique way, yielding about what the Hiroshima bomb did and considered “sufficient” as a deterrent against a Soviet Union originated and supported conventional attack. This attack almost came to be in 1988 – 1989 via Angola into what was then South ...

In Three Days in Moscow, Baier explores the dramatic endgame of America’s long struggle with the Soviet Union and President Ronald Reagan’s central role in shaping the world we live in today. On May 31, 1988, Reagan stood on Russian soil and addressed a packed audience at Moscow State University, delivering a remarkable - yet now largely forgotten - speech that capped his first visit to the Soviet capital.

While on a routine security assessment in India, Taskforce operator Pike Logan foils an attempted attack on a meeting between the CIA and India’s intelligence service. Both agencies believe it’s a minor incident, but Pike suspects that something much more sinister is at play. After another terrorist attack takes place, Pike begins to believe that outside powers are destabilising India, leveraging domestic separatist groups for nothing more than economic gain. But those conducting the operations have their own agenda.

At an isolated location along the Columbia River in 1944, the world's first plutonium factory became operational, producing fuel for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, during World War II. Former Seattle Times science writer Hill Williams traces the amazing, tragic story - from the dawn of nuclear science to Cold War testing in the Marshall Islands.

On July 16, 1945, at 05:25 AM, just half-an-hour prior to sunrise, the Second Sun rose in New Mexico’s night sky with the Trinity test which brilliantly lit up the dark sky with light so bright that it forced even a blind girl to literally sit-up from sleep and notice the resulting flash even 100 miles away from the Alamogordo test site. The first nuclear age, thus, witnessed the detonation & testing of nuclear weapons on land, below surface, under water as well as in space; as humanity was still coming to grips with the immense power of the atom which is almost 100 million times more ...

The Soviet Nuclear Weapons Program: The History and Legacy of the USSR’s Efforts to Build the Atomic Bomb examines the Soviets’ race to reach the ultimate goal during and after World War II, and how they went about their objectives. You will learn about Nazi Germany’s nuclear weapons program like never before.

After his father died, James L. Nolan, Jr., took possession of a box of private family materials. To his surprise, the small secret archive contained a treasure trove of information about his grandfather's role as a doctor in the Manhattan Project. Dr. Nolan, it turned out, had been a significant figure.

There are as many as 60 miles of underground tunnels beneath Wiltshire, England alone. While some of these abandoned and decaying subterranean spaces are playgrounds for urban explorers, others have been shrouded in secrecy for decades. This bunker-busting journey to some of Britain's dark and forgotten places will give you the chance to peek behind the heavy blast-proof doors of some of the country's best-kept underground secrets.

Is it worthwhile to invest one hour of your time to learning about nuclear war survival? The devastating events in Hiroshima and Nagasaki proved that there will always be survivors in the aftermath of a nuclear explosion. They did a few things right that made all the difference, and after listening to this short audiobook, you’ll know these critical steps too....

Why did the US intelligence services fail so spectacularly to know about the Soviet Union's nuclear capabilities following World War II? As Vince Houghton, historian and curator of the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, shows us, that disastrous failure came just a few years after the Manhattan Project's intelligence team had penetrated the Third Reich and knew every detail of the Nazi's plan for an atomic bomb. What changed and what went wrong?

Only a few nuclear weapons fell. But in the chaos of famine and plague, there existed a few pockets of order. The strongest of them was the state of Deseret. The climate has changed, and the lake has filled up. There, on the fringes, brave, hardworking pioneers are making the desert bloom again.

How close did we come to nuclear war? Within a word, but most people don't know the story. Based on the true story...suffering PTSD and radiation poisoning from the K-19 disaster, Vasili Arkhipov rides the B-59 submarine carrying a nuclear torpedo into the Cuban Missile Crisis that thrusts him between Captain Savitsky and apocalyptic disaster. The Last Saturday of October is the real-life hero’s saga of the Russian sailor who saved the US from a nuclear firestorm on the most dangerous day in human history. It bears witness to the little-known B-59 incident in a scorching portrayal of the ...