Good morning!

This is a fabulous book! I highly recommend it to anyone who loves cats or is owned by one! It has stickers too!

NERVA Reactor NRX A1

NERVA (Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application)

A few more neat Nuclear Rocket Engine graphics for the 1960s

Wow! Some hardcore 1960s Nuclear Engineering vibe going down in this photograph! Neat nuclear rocket engine diagram in background too!

NERVA Nuclear Rocket Engine

As I get closer to the launch of my new book, THE MOST AWFUL RESPONSIBILITY, I have started to really in earnest update some pages relating to it. Here is one that contains photos relating to the book — some well-known, some unusual/rare. alexwellerstein.com/writing/book...

New free post up on 3 ways, over 13 years, of Nuclear Museum exhibition of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. #DissertationWriting #PhDLife I was unpleasantly surprised. You can enable me & the cats being able to eat: paypal.me/nuclearanthro patreon.com/nuclearanthro www.patreon.com/posts/143807...

Euro-Deterrent: Analysis of Proposals for a European Nuclear Arsenal (CNSIS Paper) www.osti.gov/servlets/pur...

Evaluation of the Huron King Test Chamber Area 3 Nevada Test Site 1/n

My weekly post.

From Stewardship to Transformation: Toward a Nuclear Enterprise for the 21st Century Note: some very interesting tidbits. A must read for all nuclear wonks! www.osti.gov/servlets/pur...

Requesting some sun, pls #Caturday

Hello #booksky, looking for a funny gift for the cat lover in your life? Check out my best selling "The Cat Operator's Manual", written and illustrated by a drag queen in orbit on #SpaceStation1 cuddleunit5.com

Today in 1952—November 16, local time—the United States conducted the Ivy KING nuclear test at Enewetak Atoll in the Northern Pacific Ocean. A B-36H bomber flying from Kwajalein Atoll dropped an 8,600-pound device, which exploded 1,480 feet above Runit Island with a yield of 500 kilotons.

“Energy Secretary Chris Wright, National Nuclear Security Administration leader Brandon M. Williams and officials from the US National Laboratories are planning to inform the White House that they do not think blowing up weapons for nuclear warhead testing—as Trump suggested last month—is tenable …”

Los Alamos National Laboratory - National Security Science Winter 2025 The Nevada Issue cdn.lanl.gov/files/nss-wi...

Answers from underground Subcritical experiments below the Nevada desert ensure reliable nuclear weapons! www.lanl.gov/media/public...

B61-12 flight tests yield positive results! Dual FB61-12 on F35 www.sandia.gov/labnews/2025...

Today in 1974, Karen Silkwood’s white Honda Civic was apparently forced off a quiet highway in western Oklahoma where it crashed into a culvert, killing her instantly. Silkwood, 28, was employed as a technician at Kerr-McGee Nuclear Corporation’s plutonium fuel rod fabrication plant in Cimarron.

The new book... exists!!! Got my author copies in the mail today! Looks quite readable! Spelled my name right on the cover, even!!! harpercollins.com/products/the-most-awful-responsibility-alex-wellerstein

Gift idea for the cat lover in your life, my hilarious Cat Operator’s Manual (with free stickers!) Maybe your #secretsantaAoNZ recipient hints at being a feline fancier. Available online and at Whitcoulls , Paper Plus and gift stores nationwide cuddleUnit5.com

Watched Nuremberg today. Thought it was pretty good.

Describe your cat's personality with one photo

Today in 1963, the “Twilight Zone” episode “The Old Man in the Cave” aired for the first time on CBS. Set in 1974, 10 years after a nuclear war, survivors in a remote town must choose whether to continue to follow the advice of their leader and an unseen old man or a cadre of newly-arrived soldiers.

The US withdrawal from WHO could impact the flu shot. Flu samples sent to CDC from around the world are down 60% this year, as of July. "When those viruses are not coming in, we don't know what to put in the vaccine, and you're going to have less effective vaccines." www.npr.org/sections/goa...

OK, as promised, here's my thread about the links between tear gas/pepper spray and the arms trade and gun industry.

Today in 1983, NATO began ABLE ARCHER 83, a European-wide nuclear weapons release exercise that paranoid Soviet leaders feared was a cover story for a nuclear first strike and “may have inadvertently placed our relations with the Soviet Union on a hair trigger.” nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/eb...

By popular demand (read: maybe three people asked me) — some thoughts on Kathryn Bigelow's new film, "A House of Dynamite." TOTAL SPOILER ZONE, you have been warned! doomsdaymachines.net/p/bolt-out-o...

Today in 1971, the United States conducted CANNIKIN, its largest-ever underground nuclear test. A Spartan antiballistic missile carrying a W71 thermonuclear warhead was lowered into a 7.5-foot-wide, 5,873-foot-deep shaft beneath Amchitka Island, Alaska, and detonated. The yield was about 5 Megatons.

The first photo of my new book, courtesy of my editor... "The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age" comes out in early December! Feel free to pre-order it today! www.harpercollins.com/products/the...

A more convenient form of Terry Wallace's statement.

F.D.A. Drug Unit Chief George Tidmarsh Is Placed on Leave, and Cites a ‘Toxic’ Environment www.nytimes.com/2025/11/02/h...

Psst! Want to know a secret? US Tests its nuclear weapons all the time, just not w/ nuclear yield! Through Stockpile Stewardship program we scientifically verify nuclear deterrence is safe, secure, and effective. We should keep it that way because any alternative helps our adversaries!

Passing through a gloomy looking Paris at CDG.

Yummy but spicy lunch yesterday! Note to future self no more spicy Thai the day before international flight! Also, make sure your passport is signed before you get in the security line.

Today in 1973, in response to CIA reports that the Soviet Union was shipping nuclear weapons and troops to Egypt to intervene in the Yom Kippur War, Strategic Air Command, Continental Air Defense Command, European Command, and the Sixth Fleet all moved to DEFCON 3 for the first time since 1962.

Nuclear science week tip: do not fall into the reactor pool! www.michiganpublic.org/news/2025-10...

Thrilled today to release our big report on tactical nukes. In writing up all of the effects, it was striking just how unprepared we would be to handle any of these scenarios—and how much the mere presence of these weapons add vulnerability to any crisis. Quick thread on why TNW are so risky:

Work to clean up long-lived radioactive waste at one of the world’s most polluted places took a big step forward last week, when a facility at a former nuclear weapons site in eastern Washington state began to entomb radioactive waste in glass. https://scim.ag/47fPwEp

There it is.

I have licked the exact nuclear weapon casing in this photo (Palomares, Spain 1966). As well as the other surviving weapon casing. We built them. We can take them apart. We can #LickTheBomb.

Nuclear rush hour: Russia, US, NATO hold simultaneous exercises: Russian test-launched strategic missiles today iz.ru/1977107/alen... USSTRATCOM began Global Thunder strategic nuke ex yesterday www.stratcom.mil/Media/News/N... NATO is completing tac nuke ex x.com/nukestrat/st...

Zunar chilling out! Wishing everyone peace!

PONI is now accepting applications for its Nuclear Scholars Initiative! Young professionals with less than 7 years of experience are welcome to apply for the Class of 2026. Apply by November 17:

An amateur satellite tracker stumbled across the signal which is coming from Starshield satellites in a "hidden" part of the radio spectrum. n.pr/3WGaS8X

Ace Frehley 1951-2025 Damm.

Interesting: concerns about water immersion of the little boy uranium bomb apparently lead to some rather ad-hoc water testing at a lake near Los Alamos, to see how water proof the gun assembly actually was. Source: John Coster-Mullen

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