Conference noted::sf

    I second the recommendation of Richard Rhode's book.  The
    bomb cost between one and two billion dollars--1940's
    dollars, worth five or more times current dollars--at
    a time when the US was far less rich and fighting a serious
    war.  It's amazing that the bomb project was funded at all,
    given that it cost about one percent of the whole war effort!
    But they didn't know that when it started.
    
    It's important to know that when work on the bomb started
    in the US, nobody knew exactly how hard it would be, nor
    whether there might not be cheaper paths.  The Germans had
    a lot of technical ability: it was perfectly possible that
    they would come up with some technique the Americans didn't
    happen to invent.  Indeed, one of the reasons it cost so
    much was that the Americans, presented with two ways to 
    do something, just started doing both in parallel.
    
    From my reading of the book, it appears that German scientists
    in general deliberately did not help the Nazis--papers don't 
    get circulated, people don't bother to mention ideas, scientists
    didn't volunteer their services.  It all adds up, I think, to
    non-violent non-cooperation with the Nazis on the part of 
    potential bomb-making scientists and engineers.  Had they 
    gotten more cooperation, they might have gotten a lot farther.
    
    It's also true that it wasn't necessary to make a bomb: even
    a "damp squib" explosion, which merely spread highly radioactive
    junk over a square mile or so, would be a significant weapon
    of war.   H. G. Welles predicted that one.
    
    		-John Bishop

    I'll also second the recommendation to read "The Making of the Atomic
    Bomb".  It is one of the best books of any kind I have ever read.
    Regardless of one's moral position about the Manhattan project, I think
    it has to be acknowledged as one of the most extraordinary engineering
    projects ever attempted.  The first bombs were in many respects
    overengineered; an effective (for example, for terrorist purposes)
    weapon could be made today at considerably less expense, assuming one
    had access (legitimate or otherwise) to an adequate supply of
    weapons-grade fissionable material.  There are several good fictional
    accounts of "homemade" fission bombs; the latest, Tom Clancy's "The
    Sum of All Fears" describes a rather more sophisticated weapon than
    one really needs to reek havoc with a modern city.
    
    The argument that the Manhattan project "let the genie out of the bottle"
    (or "opened Pandora's box", if you prefer) is a little naive; while
    fission weapons do not occur naturally, fission reactors *do*, and the
    step from a reactor to a bomb is one that many people are capable of
    making.  If the Manhattan project did anything, all it did was
    demonstrate the practical feasibility of a fission weapon, but there
    has always been a more than adequate supply of visionaries willing to
    pursue goals the conventional wisdom has branded impossible.  The
    Manhattan Project did not corner the market on people capable of
    imagining or building a bomb.
    
    And while in retrospect it may be clear that the Nazis (or the
    Japanese) were not close to successfully building a bomb, it was not
    at all clear at the time.  The kind of intelligence and communications
    we take for granted today was if anything a matter of pure luck forty
    to fifty years ago.  And while the US was not being bombed, it was
    expending considerable blood and money for the defense and liberation
    of much of the rest the world.
    
    len.
    

    
    Another interesting point is the contention that the human race was
    unbelieveably lucky that atomic weapons were first used in a war
    that was already over, for all practical purposes.  The idea is that
    the evidence of the weapon's frightful effects at Hiroshima and
    Nagasaki kept it from being used in anger to the present day.
    
    Things might have been a lot worse had the A-bomb been invented either
    in 1942 or after WW2 had ended.  In either case, they might have been
    used much more indiscriminately (if you can speak of an indiscriminate
    A-bomb).  And in the latter case, just imagine what might have happened
    if the first atomic attack occurred when both sides had a large
    stockpile on hand.
    
    JP

    re: .3 (fission bombs get built either earlier or later than '45)
    
    Now there's a question for SF!  Let's try later first:
    
    The key insight for the uranium bomb, using shaped charges to
    compress the U-235, doesn't occur to anyone.  No bomb is ready by
    August 1945.  The amphibious invasion of Japan goes forward. 
    It's a ghastly operation, much worse than Normandy.  Hundreds of
    thousands of US troops are lost, and millions of Japanese
    civilians.  The carnage ends only with the surrender of the Emperor.
    
    Now the US has been bloodied in the same way that Britain was after World
    War I.  Instead of being arrogant world-conquerers, the 
    Americans adopt the same attitude as the Brits - that the 
    whole war was nightmarish folly.  Work on fission weapons stops
    in revulsion.  The US turns inward, back to its historical
    isolationism.  There is no Marshall Plan.  Europe remains in
    ruins, and has to slowly dig itself out of the rubble.  
    
    Japan remains occupied by the US.  However, the old regime is now
    much more thoroughly discredited since the people themselves have
    seen the havoc they wreaked.  A thorough purge is done, as it was to
    Germany in our time line.  War criminals are tried and executed.
    A humbler Japan results.  It slowly makes amends with its former
    enemies and conquests.  Just as Germany became the nucleus of the
    EEC, Japan becomes the nucleus of an Asian Economic Community. 
    
    There is no Cold War.   The US sees no need to ring the world
    with bases.  The Soviet Union does not get a tidy external threat
    to hold it together.  Its ancient enemy, Germany, is utterly
    destroyed, and no new enemy surfaces.   The exhausted Red Army is
    in no mood to put down internal crises; they just want to go
    home.  The Siberians are the first to revolt against Stalin.  The
    empire disintegrates forty years earlier.
    
    Wernher Von Braun has no customers for his rockets.  He takes the
    pump technology developed for the V2 and turns them into very
    nice little fuel pumps for VWs.  He starts a small auto parts
    company and does very well with it.  As an old man he looks
    longingly up at the moon.
    
    Richard Feynmann never liked those goons on the Manhattan Project
    anyway, and is glad to get back to real work.  Since funding for
    nuclear physics dries up, he turns to something more interesting,
    like solid-state.  He joins Shockley at Bell Labs and works out
    all the quantum mechanics of semiconductors by 1950.  They get lasers by
    1954 and integrated circuits by 1955. By 1960 he's playing with
    small computers.  He sneaks a blackjack counter into Vegas and
    cleans up.
    
    Edward Teller is as fiercely anti-communist as ever, but Hungary
    wriggles its way out of the weaker Soviet yoke as adroitly as Austria
    did.  He returns home at last, and comes up with quantum
    electrodynamics in collaboration with Oppenheimer.  The other
    exiles return home as well, and America no longer dominates the
    Nobels by being a scientist refugee camp.
    
    Work on nuclear fission proceeds, of course.  It looks like a
    promising energy source, but the peace-time research shows just
    how dangerous radiation can be.  The waste products are really
    hard to handle, and there's nowhere to put them. Since there is no
    steady supply of enriched uranium as a side-effect of the weapons
    program, it doesn't look economically sound.  Fusion is a more
    interesting process in any case, since that's what powers stars. 
    Using Feynmann's lasers they start imploding deuterium pellets by
    1970. By 1980 they've got break-even fusion running in the old
    enrichment plants at Oak Ridge.
    
    Ultimately a fission bomb gets built.  By that time it's
    considered a hopelessly crude weapon.  The goal in war is not to
    turn the enemy's country into a radioactive wasteland - it's to
    seize his industries.  Why threaten to flatten a city when a
    micro-drone missile can fly into the enemy leader's ear and turn
    his brain to oatmeal?  
    
    The first bomb gets built in Iraq by people who don't know any
    better.  One morning they all wake up to find that little red
    targets have been painted on their foreheads.  The bomb itself has
    a rat-size missile sitting on it that buzzes angrily when anyone
    comes near.  They get the message and go into selling real estate.
    
    By 1995, fifty years after the bomb was almost built, the world
    is split into dozens of tense factions.  No superpower
    rivalry existed to line up countries.  All the old hatreds are
    there, but smart weapons make sure that wars are short, albeit
    bloody.  
    
    Implausible?  Hey, the weapons are becoming obsolete even now. My
    1995 scenario could happen in our time line. Without the success
    of the Manhattan Project we could have avoided forty-five years of
    apocalyptic doom hanging over our heads.

    /jlr

    
    John,
    
    ELF tells me you do semiconductors.  I fear you may have missed your
    real calling when you decided not to write SF for a living.
    
    JP

    re .4 - you ought to package it up as a book proposal and ship it off
    to some publisher.
    
    len.
     

    re .0
    
    I recall a non science fiction novel which assumes the Trinity test
    fails.  The U.S. undertakes operation Coronet which is the invasion of
    the Japanese mainland.  The novel discusses the bloodshed and carnage
    that results.  The invasion hits a standstill but the bomb is made to
    work in 1946, is dropped and that ends the war.
    
    Can anyone remember the name of this novel? It was a good read
    
    Conan the Librarian
    

    re:.7
    
    Ack!  It's on the tip on my brain. The author was Alfred Coppel, but
    the title escapes me at the moment.
    
    There was also a novel by Edward Corley (again, the title escapes me)
    that was predicated on the fact that the atom bomb didn't work.
    
    --- jerry

    The Edward Corley book you're thinking of is "The Jesus Factor"--a good
    read--especially interesting is how they 'faked' the atom-bombing
    of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
    
    _Randy

    re:.9
    
    Right. THE JESUS FACTOR.
    
    And the Coppel book was THE BURNING MOUNTAIN.
    
    --- jerry