Top all-time · #381
Alex Wellerstein
Personal blog · blog.nuclearsecrecy.comhistoryscience
Alex Wellerstein writes Restricted Data: A Nuclear History Blog, a personal blog at blog.nuclearsecrecy.com about history and science. Since 2013, 140 different Hacker News readers have linked it 267 times, most often “The President and the bomb”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-02-10, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 2 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Alex Wellerstein's posts on Manhattan Project history, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, US nuclear policy, declassification and nuclear secrecy. Commenters cite them as evidence and point others to the blog to read more.
- Recommended for · 2 comments
- One commenter calls the author fantastic on nuclear bomb history and says they cannot recommend the blog enough. Another calls a Davy Crockett photo on the blog
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Restricted Data is a blog about nuclear secrecy, past and present, run by Alex Wellerstein, an historian of science.
Most-linked posts?
- The President and the bomb9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2016-11-18
- The President and the Bomb, Part IV7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2016-11-06
- In Search of a Bigger Boom (2012)6 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2015-04-02
- The Kyoto misconception – how Kyoto almost got bombed in 19455 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2014-09-30
- Who smeared Richard Feynman?5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2014-07-12
- /5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-01-22
- In Search of a Bigger Boom4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2023-03-30
- The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-03-29
- The Heart of Deterrence (2012)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-06-30
- The blue flash3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-05-23
What Hacker News says?
That's false, the average age was 29.4: https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/L... Here are the ages of the senior scientists: Oppenheimer: 38 Teller: 34 Lawrence: 41 Rabi: 44 Szilard: 44 Ulam: 33 Bethe: 36 Fuchs: 31 von Neumann: 39 So the younger people would have had plenty of supervision.
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Los-Alamos-age-statistics.jpg
on “The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE”Submitted Why Nukemap Isn't on Google Maps Anymore as a story · 787 points
HN discussionI'm afraid that you have misunderstood the Bloomberg article. Nothing in it is about checking the power of the president (it says itself the president determines when to end the meetings and whether to ignore advice). It is all about verifying that The President has issued the order, and then ensuring that order is carried out. The President is contacted in this scenario simply because he's the only one who can actu…
Comment linking /2016/11/18/the-president-and-the-bomb/
on “Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet”Submitted Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo? as a story · 660 points
HN discussionLeaving aside the accuracy of this claim, "building a weapon" here means "taking the uranium they've already enriched almost to weapons-grade, and completing final assembly into a working device". The nuclear physicists got the glory for the Manhattan Project, but the enrichment was the vast majority of the time and cost[1]. Similar ratios apply today. There is zero question that Iran's government is spending a sign…
Comment linking /2013/05/17/the-price-of-the-manhattan-project/
on “U.S. bombs Iranian nuclear sites”Submitted Who smeared Richard Feynman? as a story · 224 points
HN discussion> with thousands of bombs over months? Say what now? Tokyo was bombed by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) .. The strikes conducted by the USAAF on the night of 9–10 March 1945, codenamed Operation Meetinghouse, constitute the single deadliest and most destructive aerial bombing raid in human history.[1] Sixteen square miles (41 km2; 10,000 acres) of central Tokyo was destroyed, leaving an estimated 100,000…
Comment linking /2014/09/22/tokyo-hiroshima/
on “Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices”Submitted The Heart of Deterrence (2012) as a story · 181 points
HN discussionThis is a complete misunderstanding of US nuclear policy and weapons systems. It's designed to enable the president to launch missiles at any target as rapidly as possible, not to doublecheck or safeguard against him. http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2016/11/18/the-president-and-... You might say "sure, but there are people who have to actually execute those orders." But give the Pentagon some credit--those are people…
Comment linking /2016/11/18/the-president-and-the-bomb/
on “Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People”Submitted Oppenheimer and the Gita (2014) as a story · 162 points
HN discussionIs this story (which popped up on HN less than a week ago) better service? http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2019/12/13/why-nukemap-isnt-o... Google letting the Google Maps API rot on the vine even as they raise their rates for developers and exactly zero support for effected users is a perfect example of how they are pulling the rug out. Also, as has been mentioned, if your option is tolerating seriously crappy suppor…
Comment linking /2019/12/13/why-nukemap-isnt-on-google-maps-anymore/
on “Google Brass Set 2023 as Deadline to Beat Amazon, Microsoft in Cloud”Submitted How many people have Q Clearance? as a story · 161 points
HN discussionThe author is a historian whose main published work is the book Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States . He isn't very interested in the information itself; he's interested in where it comes from and in the process that led to its release. It's notable not because it contains interesting information, it's notable because it seems like it might represent a radical break with established…
Comment linking /2021/05/17/how-not-to-redact-a-warhead/
on “Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?”Submitted Surely you're joking, Comrade Beria as a story · 148 points
HN discussion> What is it that the author thinks is particularly unusual about this image? Read the article and look at the "officially sanctioned" diagram. This looks like the tl;dr of what he things about this: > Anyway, I’m just surprised the DOE would release any image that gave really any implied graphical structure of a thermonuclear secondary, even if it is clearly schematic and meant to be only somewhat representative. I…
Comment linking /2021/05/17/how-not-to-redact-a-warhead/
on “Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?”Submitted 10 Years of Nukemap as a story · 133 points
HN discussion> What is it that the author thinks is particularly unusual about this image? In two decades of crawling through most of the declassified public nuclear material from the US nuclear weapons program, some exposure to classified material, and numerous hours of interviews with working and retired nuclear scientists he believes it's the single most detailed schematic of an actual specific type of warhead he's seen so fa…
Comment linking /about-me/
on “Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?”Submitted Forbidden Spheres as a story · 131 points
HN discussionNot just any black spot either. A black spot of random size larger than what you want to redact. That way you avoid leaking the size of what's being redacted. The size of what's being redacted can sometimes provide enough information to determine plausible contents: http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/07/11/smeared-richard-fe...
Comment linking /2014/07/11/smeared-richard-feynman/
on “Blur Tools for Signal”Submitted What Did Bohr Do at Los Alamos? as a story · 122 points
HN discussionTruman's actions here must also be considered in light of the argument that he had been misled about the nature of the targets for the atomic bombings. From his diary in July 1945: "This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are…
Comment linking /2014/08/08/kyoto-misconception/
on “In 1957, Five Men Agreed to Stand Under an Exploding Nuclear Bomb (2012)”Submitted The button that isn’t as a story · 120 points
HN discussionThe Japanese were ready and willing to surrender before the bombs dropped - and they knew the war was lost as soon as the Soviet Union betrayed its neutrality treaty. What they were not ready for, was an unconditional surrender. (And, in the end, they surrendered conditionally! The entire sticking point turned out to be moot.) Truman and his advisers have deliberately pushed a false dichotomy of "Drop the bomb - and…
Comment linking /2015/08/03/were-there-alternatives-to-the-atomic-bombings/
on “In 1957, Five Men Agreed to Stand Under an Exploding Nuclear Bomb (2012)”Submitted What if the Trinity test had failed? as a story · 116 points
HN discussion> They're still there last time I checked. Hiroshima has a population of ~1m. Nagasaki closer to 300k. This is an argument by equivocation. There’s still a “World Trade Center” in NYC but it’s not the one that fell in 2001. Nor does saying it’s so restore the dead to life. > An invasion of Japan would have cost an order of magnitude more lives. It was the 4th year of an extremely bitter conflict that Japan started.…
Comment linking /2015/08/03/were-there-alternatives-to-the-atomic-bombings/
on “How a French judge was digitally cut off by the USA”Submitted How Not to Redact a Warhead as a story · 112 points
HN discussionAnd there was this: https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/05/02/weekly-document-t... and this: https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/01/04/weekly-document-8...
Comment linking /2012/01/04/weekly-document-8-reexamining-the-the-nth-country-experiment-1967/
on “Ukraine Conflict Live Map”Submitted The President and the Bomb, Part IV as a story · 111 points
HN discussionFrankly, I wouldn't mind if we saw an end to Trump's tweets. Not because of their content, but because of their impulsiveness, which is a behavior that Twitter's design encourages. Which is cool when it comes to celebrities and such in which it's fun to see what they think about sans filter. But the president of the United States speaks with the executive authority for an entire nation. It's questionable enough when…
Comment linking /2016/11/18/the-president-and-the-bomb/
on “Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer to Leave Company”Submitted The curious death of Oppenheimer’s mistress (2015) as a story · 105 points
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