Trickery is the way of war.
– Sunzi

The process of atomic fission produces all kinds of elemental “stuff”:

Plutonium and uranium split unevenly. It is rare that they split into two equal parts, and in the explosion their fragments become every element below them. Anything you can name is there – molybdenum, barium, iodine, cesium, strontium, antimony, hydrogen, tin, copper, carbon, iron, silver, and gold.
– (‘The Curve of Binding Energy’ John McPhee)

In that eclectic spirit, this book can be read as a critical assembly of many different elemental traces: primer (Nuclear Bombs for Dummies), history, polemic, prophecy, comedy or tragedy. If you think this topic’s gray and gloomy gravitas rules out any of those, watch Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece of atomic humor, Dr. Stranglove, and think again.

If you’re already an atomic skeptic, this book will serve as a handy reference compendium of familiar evidence coherently organized. If you’re a firm believer in the reality of nuclear weapons, this book could make you think twice. If you haven’t considered the subject one way or the other, I can promise you that by the end of this book you’ll have received a larger dosage of nuclear knowledge with less strain and boredom than you’d have thought humanly possible. If I get you thinking more seriously about the implications of atomic weaponry, then as far as I’m concerned – result!

Keep one thing in mind as you read. In addition to all the junky byproducts of a nuclear blast listed above, there’s one other: photon emissions. That’s visible light and it’s what I hope this book can radiate. I think you’ll find it both enlightening (like a stimulating course lecture) and entertaining (like a horror movie).

How could a topic so unthinkably ghastly be entertaining? I don’t mean to disrespect the suffering of anybody injured or killed in any war, by any means – conventional or otherwise. In this world of madness and pain, we need gallows humor. I use levity to reduce our risk of ending up like noted historian Iris Chang, who (it is speculated), spiraled into suicidal depression after interviewing one too many of the survivors of the 20th century’s worst horrors.

As a counter-balance, I advise all readers to browse the Hiroshima memoir Barefoot Gen (manga by Keiji Nakazawa) in parallel. Whenever you tire of the occasional witticism or moment of sarcastic levity in this book, revert to Barefoot Gen. Absorb the madness and mainline the stupefying graphic atrocity as a mood-corrective. The conventional understanding of nuclear history is as true in its function of allegory and metaphor (or warning and prophecy) as it is false in its literal facts.

God gave Noah the rainbow sign,
No more water, the fire next time.
– Traditional

In May of 2016, Russian state news outlet Sputnik reported on the latest incarnation of the devil that has dogged humanity these seventy-plus years: the RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, which can carry a variable number of warheads. According to Wikipedia, at maximum throw-weight of 10,000 kilograms, this doomsday machine can deliver a 50 megaton charge. It’s a shotgun version of the largest single explosive device ever deployed, the ‘Tsar Bomba’, supposedly tested by the Soviets, weighing in around 55 megatons yield – more than all the ordnance used in World War II (including the atomic bombs) combined. The RS-28 Sarmat (‘Satan 2’) can wipe out Texas or France.

Or can it? Hmmm. Only one way to find out: 3… 2… 1 – hit that red button: ‘FIRE IN THE HOLE!’

If the above weapon exists, it (and its brothers) will be used – sooner more likely than later. Psychopaths run the world. The classic movie Dr. Strangelove will easily convince you that all a nation’s top cabal needs is some confidence that their central mil.gov officials (and a few buddies and lovers) have at least a roach’s chance to survive the enemy’s counterpunch, and they will bring it. As for non-state actors, they may not care about self-preservation, in which case none of the elaborately gamed deterrence theory (Mutual Assured Destruction, the Prisoner’s Dilemma, the Nash Equilibrium, and the like) is worth spit.

But hang on a sec – is fire in the hole truly the only way to determine the credibility of the Satan 2 or any nuclear weapon? Is there no rational resting place between fear-porn foreplay and the money shot that ends the world? There is a calm eye in this storm – the fact that nuclear weapons don’t work, don’t exist. This book explores the claim that nuclear weapons do not function, they are a large-scale hoax. I call this hoax the Fake Nuke Feint.

feint: noun
1. a deceptive or pretended blow, thrust, or other movement, especially in boxing or fencing. “a brief feint at the opponent’s face”

Who exactly ‘the opponent’ might be remains as a research topic. I’m just going to lay out the relevant technical and social considerations without pointing fingers at specific individuals or particular institutions.

Why this book:

• To assemble relevant arguments and evidence
• To organize arguments and evidence for easy access and navigation
• To filter out irrelevant points, ill-logic, ill-will and prejudice
• To disseminate key questions for wider awareness
• To stimulate further discussion and research

A treatment of a hot topic like the fundamental feasibility of nuclear weapons needs some justification, framing and scene-setting. The immediate expected reaction, from a sane, rational, and educated audience, is the ad hominem killshot below:

This author is just another internet conspiracy nut.

I won’t blame you for that knee jerk. After all, this book lays out a wild proposition. It’s also an inconvenient truth, because I cannot reveal the technical clincher. I’m forced to circle the issue, and use a megaton of circumstantial evidence to do the clearance that a single gram of the direct, incontrovertible but un-publishable counter-science would accomplish. Since that result cannot be openly published, this book boils down partly to a review of circumstantial challenges to the nuclear weapons orthodoxy. Though I could nuke the entire orthodoxy with the scientific result (beyond a reasonable doubt), unfortunately due to archaic USA national security laws I can only carpet-bomb the topic with circumstantial material and inference (preponderance of the evidence).

The material is a mix of ‘new stuff’, sourced from me, blended with existing historical and technical evidence scattered across the web, books and films. Even if you work with highest beyond-top-secret clearance at a nuclear weapons design facility, don’t feel superior to those in the Outer Darkness. We’re all in the same boat. Amateur nuke debunkers, concerned analysts like me, academic scientists of every stripe, and yes, you too, whoever you are – when it comes to nukes, we’re all just rats beneath the mil.gov’s high table. For the foreseeable future (because of the security laws), we can only gnaw at whatever scraps have slopped down to the public domain. Yet by means of those scraps I have discovered ‘the nuclear secret that dare not speak its name’.

This book is based entirely on unclassified public materials. As you can see from the Bibliography, those mostly consist of mainstream histories and technical manuals, compiled by qualified and knowledgeable authorities. It’s overwhelmingly respectable, intellectual, clinical, responsible stuff. Additionally, over the past few years a small community of internet nuclear skeptics has developed. They occasionally display a spark of useful comment or the glowing ember of a little-known citation. We may enjoy dissing them as paranoid nutcases, but I feel that, if nothing else, we should admire their guts in holding to a contrarian stance in this world of fearful conformity. Unfortunately, their stuff suffers from contamination with both prejudice and distraction.

The prejudices are the usual tsunami of keyboard hate, directed at one or another ethnic or religious group(s) suspected of secretly pulling the strings. I have no idea how that disgusting and reprehensible ethnic hatred has crept into, or perhaps originally motivated, investigation of nuclear weapons. Read my lips: this book has zero connection with any ideology or propaganda of hate.

Prejudice and hate are the symptoms of a vile mental illness, for which I have no tolerance whatsoever. Hate speech is also irrelevant to the technical, cultural and political topic at hand, which is one thing and one thing alone: the feasibility of explosive nuclear weapons.

Even when existing skeptical materials are bias-free, they often suffer from muddled focus. Conspiracy people, by the nature of their game, want to connect all dots and enlarge the picture as much as possible. Thus, on any given site devoted to exploring the nuclear weapons hoax, you’ll usually find interleaved discussion of other presumed hoaxes, with links to scams and (putative) ‘false flag’ operations, such as the JFK assassination, the Apollo moon landings, the Oklahoma City bombing, and 9-11 as an inside job. This book takes no position on any of those attractive nuisances. For this book, I don’t care about any of that. This book is rigidly circumscribed to one thing and one thing alone: the Fake Nuke Feint.

The core of this analysis is my own research result. Since I cannot present that openly, I am doing the next best thing, which is to compile, organize, streamline and cross-index the voluminous circumstantial evidence. In order to stick (as closely as this radical subject matter may allow) to conventionally accepted factoids, I use boilerplate citations from the USA Wikipedia for historical context and technical reference wherever possible. Wikipedia is not an infallible oracle, but as an orthodox sampling of ‘received’ opinion on most of the topics I treat, it’s a good-enough point of departure.

Even when I have incorporated pre-existing skeptical material, I have developed my own cross-correlated and creatively annotated versions of those (usually inchoate and underdeveloped) points. I don’t cite sources for those kinds of random internet inspirations, partly because of the identity problem. Most internet boosters and drive-by cheerleaders for the null nukes conjecture use aliases, handles and nicknames. It’s meaningless to credit net handles and nonsense nicknames. Additionally, there’s the provenance and origination issue. Who am I to say Mr. or Ms. X is the one to be credited with a specific point of analysis or citation? Everything’s being copied back and forth relentlessly. The info flow is as restless and unknowable as the quantum superposition of atomic orbitals.

Ultimately does it matter who first made what little point about which minuscule anomaly? The only unitary and truly original ‘smoking gun’ out there is the formula of scientific infeasibility – and that can’t be published. Apart from that, there’s no other absolute, final coffin nail to the nuclear orthodoxy. There’s only a creeping accretion – preponderance of the evidence. This book is a circumscribed but incrementally convincing compilation of all relevant peripheral evidence and logic.

Throughout the book I’ll use Fake Atomic Instantaneous Liquidation – with its easy acronym FAIL – for the hypothesis that explosive nukes don’t work. Liquidation might seem a weird term in the technical sense (to refer to the putative adverse effects of atomic explosion), but consider its synonyms: destruction, eradication, annihilation, murder, extermination, carnage. The end of the world as we know it – not. The FAIL hypothesis holds that nuclear weapons are a technical fizzle rebranded for super-sized shock and awe, not to mention a triumph of political/social command and control.

The book eases you gently into this radioactive retention pond, or no – more like a tropical lagoon. Picture the gentle lapping of warm azure wavelets on a South Seas coral atoll… Certainly no sane person would associate nuclear hellfire with that sweet paradise. So you’ll hardly notice that, as the book drills forward, you now seem to be out on the ocean side of the reef and the waves are big and dark, and hitting harder, and the spray is biting now, and the ocean floor is falling away beneath your feet as you can’t wade any deeper while the tide is ripping you out to sea. And the book will continue to build as we dive deeper, to the point where the conventional nuke story is being clamped and crushed on all sides by so many atmospheres that the hull begins to creak and groan, and rivets start popping from the inner seams like a .50 cal. fusillade across the control room. Climb aboard for a wild ride.

In no area of modern life is the chasm separating experts from lay readers wider than when it comes to nuclear weapons. This is both by deliberate design (national security laws), and by natural tendency (the topic is too complex and depressing for most people to even approach). This book is an inevitably insufficient and limited treatment of the world’s most complicated and urgent problem. I hope it will serve as a fire-striker to spark up radical inquiry.