“Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
A verse from Hindu Scripture, the Bhagavad Gita (XI,32). Upon witnessing the very first successful nuclear test in New Mexico, code-named “Trinity” by him, these words were uttered by John Robert (J.R.) Oppenheimer, one of the principal physicists of the Manhattan project and sometimes referred to as “The Father of the Atomic Bomb“. This characterization is misplaced however as he, with a few exceptions, and his colleagues who worked together on the project, vigorously opposed the use and further development of nuclear weapons once their destructive power became clear, having witnessed numerous tests, their deployment against a civilian population in Japan and the planned development of a hydrogen bomb (ex. the Tsar Bomba). More to this point, in a 1945 meeting with President Harry S. Truman (the war-criminal president who ordered the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) Oppenheimer remarked that he felt he had “blood on my hands“. That remark infuriated Truman after which he (Truman) remarked to then Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson “I don’t want to see that son-of-a-bitch in this office ever again.” The following year however, Truman awarded Oppenheimer the Medal for Merit for his services as director of Los Alamos National Laboratory during the period leading up to the close of WWII and the bomb’s deployment against the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” I suppose we all thought that one way or another.
John Robert (J.R.) Oppenheimer
It should also be pointed out that Oppenheimer is famous for other discoveries and achievements. Given that my field of expertise is Astrophysics, the TOV (Tolman, Oppenheimer, Volkoff) mass limit is of particular interest to me. It describes the mass above which a stellar core will continue to collapse to become a black hole. Below this limit and above the 1.4 solar mass limit known as the Chandrasekhar Limit, a stellar core will remain as a ‘neutron star‘ (Richard Tolman was a colleague, friend and contemporary of Oppenheimer’s, George Volkoff was one of his students).
Being an astrophysicist by choice and training, I know well the origins of Uranium and any other necessary heavy elements and the processes necessary to produce them.
The only place and circumstances under which Uranium and other fissile materials can be created is during the immediate aftermath of a supernova – no other place and under no other circumstances do the conditions exist where such heavy nuclei can be synthesized. During the maelstrom immediately following a supernova, an exploding star, in a process known as Rapid Neutron Capture, the heavy nuclei (isotopes of iron and nickel) created during the last stages of a high-mass star’s life, are bombarded with neutrons, nuclear particles with no electric charge. That neutrons have no electric charge allows for the formation of these heavy nuclei; once the neutrons are close enough to the original nuclei, the strong nuclear force takes over and binds them together.
So what happens when a nuclear weapon is used?
The energy of an exploding star, locked up as the binding energy of uranium nuclei for hundreds of millions or billions of years, is released on a human population! Many people don’t think of it in these terms but that’s exactly what happens. Of all the horrific, perverse and monstrous methods we’ve devised to kill, there can be none so evil as this – to unleash nature’s fury, the stored and pent-up energy of an exploding star, on a human population or any living thing!
The Tsar Bomba
On 30 October 1961, the Soviet Union tested the most powerful weapon of all time, the Tsar Bomba, a thermonuclear, hydrogen bomb. This weapon remains to this day the most powerful bomb ever produced with an energy yield over 50 mega-tons (50 million tons of TNT) or 1000 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the close of WWII or 10 times the combined energy of all the conventional weapons used during World War II. The Tsar Bomba was a 3-stage Thermonuclear device: the first stage was a standard atomic fission stage that boosted a second and third thermonuclear (fusion – the process that powers the sun) stage. Currently, the largest weapon in either the Russian or US arsenals is in the 1 – 12 mega-ton range – and this is not the point. That the Soviets (really, the Russians) produced the Tsar Bomba is the point – and it is that power that the West recklessly continues to antagonize and provoke!
NATO Expansion and Deliberate Provocation
Knowing full-well that any eastward expansion of NATO is a bright red line for the Russians, the Western Empire continues its drumbeat for NATO membership and, for obvious reasons, Ukraine is a bridge too far for the Russians. Now, we learn, that US and NATO troops have been there in an advisory/training capacity since 2014. And today, it’s emerged, the UK has sent it’s Special Air Service (SAS) active-duty military personnel to Ukraine “to train the Ukrainian Army” in combat techniques and the use of a UK Air Defense system. Of all the Western powers who have behaved so recklessly since February 24, the United Kingdom has been the most overt in their attempts to punish and/or provoke the Russians.
The question begs asking: why? What are they hiding? What will the Russians discover? What other dark, nefarious activities will the Russians uncover? Perhaps this is the question or maybe this is how it’s always been, that the sun never really set on the British Empire, the original pirates (stealing and plundering as they lack the ability to produce anything of value on their own). Nazism has always been their real ideology as they genuflect towards democracy and human rights, concealing their true nature. An honest reading of world history will show that for many of these European States, not just the UK, this characterization suits them all. That the British claim some white, racial purity is laughable; they are the most racially diverse people on the planet, having intermixed and intermarried with just about every society and culture, on every continent on the planet over their 1,000-year long existence as an empire. The mask is now off.
Sweden and Finland Joining NATO is the Worst Idea of All Time
So, what could trigger a Nuclear Response from the Russians? The short answer is anything that they perceive as an existential threat. This question and this single answer was explored in our previous article.
The mere suggestion that Sweden and Finland, a country that borders Russia on its Northwest frontier, are contemplating NATO membership would be enough. And so, it happens. With the announcement that these two heretofore neutral countries are contemplating membership in NATO, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced he would fortify his northwestern border [with Finland] with -you guessed it- nuclear weapons!
The use of nuclear weapons can never again be permitted, anywhere, under any circumstances by anyone!
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Featured Image: at 65 kilometers altitude, the expanding and ascending mushroom cloud of the Tsar Bomba can be seen at its greatest altitude, well into the Stratosphere
