40 years ago at this moment (1:23:45 AM local time, April 26), the poorly-designed Chernobyl Unit 4 nuclear reactor in Pripyat, Ukraine, exploded and partially melted down during an unapproved, poorly-conceived safety experiment, releasing at least 378,000,000 curies of dangerous radionuclides.

BOMABs on stands with dosimetry placed on front and backside Source: LLNL

First measles case of the year eported in New Jersey. Officials say people may have been exposed at an airport and a medical center. www.healthday.com/health-news/...

This week on DOOMSDAY MACHINES: “I’ll just write up a short on the trope of a run-away nuclear reaction,” I said to myself, before finding myself deep, deep in a history that stretches back to at least 1903… doomsdaymachines.net/p/burning-up...

It's also the day Mom and Dad met on a train crossing the Sydney Harbor Bridge. The Japanese would attack six weeks later. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_...

On DOOMSDAY MACHINES, this week I dive into the idea of “atomic bombs” before the discovery of nuclear fission made them actually feasible. I’ve long thought it makes for an interesting case study — a fateful intersection of scientific fact and science fiction. doomsdaymachines.net/p/strange-ev...

Zunar wishing everyone well

After landing in Normandy in 1944, he fought across France and Germany, receiving five battle stars. In the last stages of #WWII, he was tasked with investigating newly liberated concentration camps to gather evidence of war crimes. www.stripes.com/veterans/202...

A drug for pancreatic cancer succeeded in a highly anticipated Phase 3 trial, almost doubling the typical length of survival and slashing the risk of death by 60% versus chemotherapy. www.cnbc.com/2026/04/13/p...

Los Alamos Science Number 15: Special Issue on Stanislaw Ulam 1909 - 1984 Stan Ulam, brilliant mathematician, participant in the Manhattan Project, and co-inventor of the hydrogen bomb, was one of those extraordinary men who solidified LANL's early reputation. Link: www.osti.gov/servlets/pur...

#WWII Free of charge, the company’s artists created over 1,200 insignia for different military units, including the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) and the famed “Flying Tigers.” Disney-designed “nose art” adorned aircraft fuselages. www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-...

Utilizing Time Reversal Ultrasonics to Detect the Removal of Nuclear Materials from Geological Repositories www.osti.gov/servlets/pur...

Survey of emerging nuclear data needs for nonproliferation applications with advanced reactors www.osti.gov/servlets/pur...

If you’re at all interested in the complex and lethal mechanics of nuclear war (circa 1960), be sure to read @wellerstein.bsky.social’s detailed and careful analysis of QUICK STRIKE, the primary war plan (which is largely realistic but not real) depicted in this one-of-a-kind Air Force film.

For DOOMSDAY MACHINES this week, a post that has in some sense been in the making for something like a decade. It is a very close look at the "war plan," QUICK STRIKE, featured in the formerly classified 1958 film "The Power of Decision," produced for the USAF. doomsdaymachines.net/p/a-long-loo...

Yummies!

It's gender!

"Bethe and Garwin did not mislead their audiences, they weren’t hypocrites, and they didn’t act corruptly in their roles as government advisors."

For DOOMSDAY MACHINES this week: Is it possible to forget how to make nuclear weapons? Some thoughts from fiction, sociology, and history… doomsdaymachines.net/p/forgetting...

Today in 1954 at Bikini Atoll, the United States conducted Castle ROMEO, its third-largest thermonuclear weapon test (11 Megatons, a proof test of the Mark-17 bomb) and the first detonated on a barge (inside the March 1 BRAVO crater, because testing was rapidly vaporizing the atoll’s coral islands).

For a pointless war Gift link

The shingles vaccine is linked to a significantly lower risk of major cardiovascular events in people with existing heart disease. Vaccinated individuals had reduced risks across multiple outcomes, including heart attack, stroke, heart failure, and death. www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/shi...

NRC unveils the finalized 10 CFR Part 53! This is the long awaited risk-informed (rather than prescriptive) reactor licensing pathway "Under Part 53, [Acting Deputy Office Director for New Reactors] Bowen expects reactor designs to receive approval in 18 months or less." www.ans.org/news/article...

Sandia Lab Accomplishments: Nuclear Deterrence B61-13 gotta love the teeth!

This is a good primer on the JCPOA, in response to an erroneous post making the rounds. You can see that post in this thread, but I want to minimize it in favor of the facts. (I have a few minor differences with Judah, but if you memorize this thread, you will be ahead of most commentators.)

NNSA Achieves Milestone in Uranium Purification at Y-12 NSC Enriched Uranium purification capability restored; supports nuclear deterrent modernization! www.energy.gov/nnsa/article...

‘My God what have we done’: Enola Gay pilot’s combat notebook is for sale www.armytimes.com/veterans/mil...

Sixty years ago today—50 days after a 1.45 Megaton B28 thermonuclear bomb fell from a B-52G bomber flying over southern Spain and disappeared into the Mediterranean Sea, spurring a massive underwater search—US Ambassador to Spain Angier Biddle Duke went swimming in an effort to dispel public fears.

Over the weekend, health officials in Spain reportedly informed the World Health Organization (WHO) of a possible human case of swine flu that may have been caused by person-to-person transmission. abcnews.com/Health/human...

Billions of dollars, decades of progress spent eliminating devastating diseases may be lost with undoing of USAID. theconversation.com/billions-of-...

Special Ops To Get The Uranium

Trinity Site

Why did Trump attack Iran in 2025 & 2026 but not North Korea in 2017-2019? Free, open post for all about when & why Trump starts wars of (nuclear) choice. www.patreon.com/posts/iran-b... #PhDLife

Today in 1990, “The Hunt for Red October,” adapted from insurance salesman Tom Clancy’s bestselling 1984 first novel, opened in theaters across the United States. “This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.”

These little drawings of proposed diagnostic experiments from Operation CASTLE (1954) fascinate me — the little "devices" (thermonuclear weapons), the palm trees, waves, the isometric views. I find "top secret art" pretty fascinating as an emergent visual genre in the 20th century...

Guess they don’t remember their “The House in the Middle” Civil Defense lessons. Light colors reflect thermal energy but dark colors absorb it. A fact that is very important for nuclear warfare survivability. Always thought that drove AF-1 lighter color scheme? Maybe not…?

MISSILE is streaming for free on Kanopy (www.kanopy.com) in the United States, along with all of Frederick Wiseman’s films. Here’s a taste (two US Air Force missileer trainees at Vandenberg Air Force Base practice the process for launching a Minuteman ICBM):

Stockpile Stewardship and Nuclear Testing: A Technical Assessment November 2025 Interesting read! Full document at link www.osti.gov/servlets/pur...

Best scientific advice I’ve seen thus far!

Interesting question

Release the hounds!🐶

75 years ago this morning, the United States conducted FOX, a proof test of a Mk-6 atomic bomb, at the Nevada Proving Ground, its fifth test there. The yield was 22 kilotons (the predicted yield was 34 kilotons). Below, the first published photographs of a mushroom cloud over Nevada, from that test.

Marines Drill on Establishing Arming, Refueling Point at remote Tinian Island in the Pacific — USNI News news.usni.org/2026/02/04/m...

A.E.C. matchbook...

70 years ago today, in a first, the USSR launched an R-5 medium-range ballistic missile (NATO designation: SS-3 Shyster) carrying a live warhead across populated areas of Kazakhstan from the Kapustin Yar test site to the Sary Shagan test range. The 0.3-kt warhead detonated on the ground near Aralsk.

There's an May 9, 1952 accident at Eielson AFB, Alaska, listed in one heavily redacted accident I have. This might be the one Hansen has listed. Again, little info on it. Note that this was declassified in 2014 — hard to know why this would still be classified!

75 yrs ago today at 5:47 AM local time, television station KTLA made an unauthorized live broadcast from atop Mt. Wilson just to Los Angeles of the 1-kiloton EASY nuclear test at the Nevada Proving Ground more than 200 miles away. It was watched by an estimated 30,000 people (start video at 22:30).

January 31, 1958: 10:48 PM EST- The United States puts its very first satellite into Earth orbit, Explorer-1. To learn more about the science around the mission here's a link to a JPL website that explains more explorer1.jpl.nasa.gov

Some of the recently declassified images of the NRO's Cold War-era JUMPSEAT HEO signals intelligence satellite program. lnkd.in/eGym2xBj

Here @joshuakeating.bsky.social points out that, as of January 14, 2026, we've entered the longest period since July 16, 1945, without a full-scale nuclear test explosion (exceeding the time between the 1998 Pakistani test and North Korea's first test in 2006) www.vox.com/future-perfe...