ParadoxTrick
@paradoxtrick.bsky.social
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📥 293
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V Bombers, the deterrent, the Cold War & the science behind it all Berkshire to Bermondsey
reposted by
ParadoxTrick
Chek
1 day ago
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Valiant XD812
#aviation
#nuclear
#coldwar
#history
about 22 hours ago
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Vulcan, Spitfire & aerobatic friends
1 day ago
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Valiants, 49 Squadron, Christmas Island, May 1957
2 days ago
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Vulcan over a Consolidated B-24D Liberator, 'Lady Be Good' Somewhere in North Africa...
2 days ago
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Test-bed for the Olympus 22R engine. The 22R was going into the TSR2. Destroyed by fire on 03/12/1962 after the engine was run to full power on maximum reheat when an Low Pressure turbine disc failed. This disc punctured two fuel tanks which started a fire which destroyed XA894. No injuries caused.
3 days ago
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Valiant and a CF100 Canuck
#aviation
#nuclear
#coldwar
#history
7 days ago
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57 Sqn Victors on Wideawake, 1982
#aviation
#history
7 days ago
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I think that is a flypast over Buckingham Palace, June 1980
#nuclear
#coldwar
#history
#aviation
7 days ago
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This would have been noisy!
#aviation
#history
#coldwar
#nuclear
9 days ago
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reposted by
ParadoxTrick
David, Host of The Cold War
11 days ago
Just finished
@wellerstein.bsky.social
newest book, "The Most Awful Responsibility", looking at the role of Truman in the development of early nuclear C&C and I was struck by this last line in Chapter 19. I want more on this specific topic!!
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reposted by
ParadoxTrick
Cold War Conversations Podcast
11 days ago
NEW EPISODE - Dead Drops and Disguises - A Female
#CIA
Officer in 1980s
#Moscow
Listen here 🎧🎧
coldwarconversations.com/episode441/
#coldwar
#spies
#Espionage
#intelligence
#undercover
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Victor - good view of her wing shape here
#aviation
#nuclear
#history
#coldwar
10 days ago
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Vulcan's over St Paul's, City of London in the Falkland's victory fly-past; 1982 Credit to Imperial War Museum
#aviation
#history
13 days ago
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reposted by
ParadoxTrick
Alex Wellerstein
14 days ago
Would you be a good leader of a communal fallout shelter in the event of World War III? Fortunately the US Department of Defense created a self-assessment quiz in the 1970s so that you can "rate yourself as a potential shelter leader"…
doomsdaymachines.net/p/take-me-to...
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"Take me to your shelter, leader!"
Do you have what it takes to be a shelter manager after World War III breaks out? Take this quiz from 1973 and find out!
https://doomsdaymachines.net/p/take-me-to-your-shelter-leader
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I don't disagree...
#nuclear
#nuclearweapons
14 days ago
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reposted by
ParadoxTrick
Cold War Conversations Podcast
15 days ago
Spectacular new hangar extension for the Avro Heritage Museum has been approved. I volunteer at the museaum, helping to produce their podcast and delivering cockpit tours.
www.avroheritagemuseum.co.uk
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Vulcan head on...
#aviation
#coldwar
#history
#nuclear
15 days ago
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Vulcan tooled-up
#aviation
#history
#coldwar
#nuclear
15 days ago
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reposted by
ParadoxTrick
Stephen Schwartz
16 days ago
75 years ago today, the United States conducted the first of 100 aboveground nuclear tests in Nevada, leading to the blanketing of most of the continental United States (and parts of Canada and Mexico) with significant radioactive fallout over the next 11 years.
add a skeleton here at some point
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Vulcan and Friends!
#aviation
#coldwar
#nuclear
#history
16 days ago
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Vulcan launching with Skybolts
18 days ago
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Vulcan test-bed
#nuclear
#coldwar
#history
#aviation
20 days ago
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reposted by
ParadoxTrick
David, Host of The Cold War
about 1 month ago
The British Army once considered using to chickens to keep some of its nuclear weapons warm enough to use in winter.
add a skeleton here at some point
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reposted by
ParadoxTrick
Scarred For Life
about 1 month ago
In 1980, Tyne Tees' magazine show for teens, CHECK IT OUT, gave kids in the North-East of England the lowdown on nuclear war. And it's a delight from start to finish. Future 'The Tube/Top of the Pops' producer Chris Cowey there, with the perm and mussie.
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Vulcan - gear down!
#aviation
#nuclear
#history
#coldwar
about 1 month ago
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Victor prototype
#aviation
#history
#coldwar
#nuclear
about 1 month ago
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reposted by
ParadoxTrick
Alex Wellerstein
about 1 month ago
I stumbled across this first-hand account of a nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site from 1957 and couldn’t stop reading it. So I put it up on DOOMSDAY MACHINES. Something to ring in the New Year with, perhaps…
doomsdaymachines.net/p/zero-time-...
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"Zero time was speeding toward me like a car you cannot dodge"
A gripping first-hand account of a nuclear test from 1957
https://doomsdaymachines.net/p/zero-time-was-speeding-toward-me
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Spot the aircraft!
#aviation
#history
#coldwar
about 1 month ago
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ParadoxTrick
Alex Wellerstein
about 1 month ago
This is a nice addition to the "bad Cold War ideas" file — nukes that would detonate themselves at full yield "in the event the carrier and/or crew fell prey to the enemy defense." Never adopted as far as I know... from a Sandia study of nuclear safety issues, 1959.
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ParadoxTrick
Stephen Schwartz
about 1 month ago
OTD in 1958 at 4:35 PM MST at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, experienced chemist Cecil Kelley, 38, stood on a step ladder peering through a viewport into a 1,000-liter stainless steel tank holding what he believed to be dilute aqueous and organic plutonium solutions as he switched on the stirrer.
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This is possiibly one of the greatest things I've seen on the internet...
#penguin
add a skeleton here at some point
about 1 month ago
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reposted by
ParadoxTrick
🇵🇸Martin “Doomsday” Pfeiffer🖖🏳️🌈
about 2 months ago
Hans Bethe, the scientist who worked in both the Manhattan Project & USA H-bomb programs, wrote in 1983 a 40 page history called "The Story of Los Alamos." It seems not to be publicly available online except where I have made it so, free for all:
osf.io/thjpk
#NukeSKY
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reposted by
ParadoxTrick
Cheryl Rofer
about 2 months ago
A friend wants to know more about Teller's concern during the Manhattan Project that the atomic bomb could set off a catastrophic reaction in the atmosphere. So I did a bit of searching. Wikipedia has a bit about it, but I wanted to know the exact reaction Teller was worried about. 1/
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Valiant, the forgotten V-Bomber...
#aviation
#nuclear
#history
#coldwar
about 2 months ago
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Vulcan with a LOT of friends...
#aviation
#history
#ColdWar
#nuclear
about 2 months ago
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reposted by
ParadoxTrick
Stephen Schwartz
about 2 months ago
55 years ago this morning, BANEBERRY—a 10-kiloton, weapons-related, underground nuclear test 912 feet beneath the Nevada Test Site—accidentally vented, releasing 6.7 million curies of radioactive debris, including 80,000 curies of iodine-131, the second largest venting in US history. (THREAD)
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ParadoxTrick
Alex Wellerstein
about 2 months ago
I'm excited about this — expect lots of interesting things in the new year!
thebulletin.org/2025/12/alex...
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Alex Wellerstein joins the Bulletin
The Bulletin is proud to welcome Alex Wellerstein as a new Senior Fellow. In this role, he will work with the Bulletin’s editorial team on historical
https://thebulletin.org/2025/12/alex-wellerstein-joins-the-bulletin/
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Moody Victor...
#aviation
#history
#coldwar
#nuclear
about 2 months ago
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reposted by
ParadoxTrick
Alex Wellerstein
about 2 months ago
TODAY: Tuesday, December 16, at 12-2pm ET / 18-20h CET!
add a skeleton here at some point
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Vulcan and Tornado - two RAF Cold War veterans
#nuclear
#coldwar
#history
#aviation
about 2 months ago
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reposted by
ParadoxTrick
Alex Wellerstein
about 2 months ago
TOMORROW, Tuesday, December 16, at 12-2pm ET / 18-20h CET I will be part of a book launch event for THE MOST AWFUL RESPONSIBILITY. YOU can attend: in person if you happen to be in Paris (lucky you), or on Zoom. Click "INSCRIPTION" (top right) here to register.
www.sciencespo.fr/ceri/fr/even...
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The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman's struggle for control of the atomic age
Alex Wellerstein’s new book argues that, contrary to current understandings, Truman was perhaps the most anti-nuclear president of the 20th century. In a key period, he did more than any leader since ...
https://www.sciencespo.fr/ceri/fr/evenements/the-most-awful-responsibility-truman-s-struggle-for-control-of-the-atomic-age/
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reposted by
ParadoxTrick
🇵🇸Martin “Doomsday” Pfeiffer🖖🏳️🌈
about 2 months ago
Huh! TIL Pu-238 was first plutonium isotope discovered! Seaborg bombarded U-238 w/energetic (15MeV) deuterons making Np-238 that beta decayed to Pu238. hydrogen isotopes (all 1 proton) protium 0 neutrons deuterium 1 neutron tritium 2 neutrons (radioactive) deuteron= deuterium nucleus
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5. The Discovery and Isolation of Plutonium
The transuranium element, plutonium, was the first synthetic element to be produced on a large scale. In addition to being fissionable, it has interesting and unusual chemical and metallurgical …
https://chem.libretexts.org/Ancillary_Materials/Exemplars_and_Case_Studies/Case_Studies/Nuclear_Energy_for_Today's_World/05._The_Discovery_and_Isolation_of_Plutonium
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reposted by
ParadoxTrick
Darth Putin
about 2 months ago
It's Monday. You might hate your job. But at least you're not a russian general about to tell Putin that you lost the city you've claimed to have captured 4 times.
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ParadoxTrick
Stephen Schwartz
about 2 months ago
Eighty-five years ago today, chemists Glenn Seaborg, Joseph Kennedy, and Arthur Wahl (continuing work by physicist Edwin McMillan) first produced element 94 (plutonium) in the 60-inch cyclotron at UC Berkeley. Exactly 1,700 days later, “Fat Man”—fueled by 13.6 lbs. of Pu-239— destroyed Nagasaki.
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reposted by
ParadoxTrick
Cheryl Rofer
about 2 months ago
The New York Times tries to make a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) into a nuclear weapon.
add a skeleton here at some point
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reposted by
ParadoxTrick
Alex Wellerstein
2 months ago
I am absolutely gutted to hear that Dr. William (Bill) Burr of the
@nsarchive.bsky.social
passed away yesterday. Bill was so kind, so generous, and so important to the field of nuclear history. And he was just a great guy on top of everything else. It is a huge loss.
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reposted by
ParadoxTrick
Cheryl Rofer
2 months ago
This was a dumb thing to do, but the article gets a lot wrong. This was not a "device" in the nuclear weapons sense of an explosive without a delivery vehicle. It was not an explosive at all. I'll write a post.
#nukesky
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How Did the C.I.A. Lose a Nuclear Device in the Himalayas? (Gift Article)
A plutonium-packed generator disappeared on one of the world’s highest mountains in a covert mission that the U.S. will not talk about.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/12/13/world/asia/cia-nuclear-device-himalayas-nanda-devi.html?unlocked_article_code=1.8U8.RvLy.BKBlHFDPPUfa
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Victor & Buccaneer
#aviation
#history
#coldwar
#nuclear
2 months ago
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Valiant up amongst the clouds Credit to Alex Hall / Airlines. net
#aviation
#history
#coldwar
#nuclear
2 months ago
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