Alex Wellerstein, a historian at the American Institute of Physics, writes the fascinating "Restricted Data" blog, which is devoted to the history of nuclear secrecy and related matters. From time to time he comments on matters graphical, and today he has blogged about the atom-and-olive-branch logo of the International Atomic Energy Agency ( Read more... )

Fermilab's flamboyant founding director, Robert Rathbun Wilson (1914-2000), worked as a cowhand in Wyoming some years before he joined the cyclotron builders at the University of California in Berkeley. Eventually he became part of the effort to develop a uranium fission weapon, working at Princeton University on an isotope-separation device he ( Read more... )

Not long ago, the Arms Control Wonk blog underwent a redesign. I found the result intriguing.

Arms Control Wonk was redesigned by a firm called Hexive, and Hexive drew inspiration from the credit sequence created by Pablo Ferro for the 1964 Cold War movie Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Headings and names ( Read more... )

At last, I have thought of a scenario to serve as my entry in Bruce Schneier's famed Movie-Plot Threat Contest.

Having obtained an ex-USSR nuclear weapon, evil terrorists conceal it in a brightly-painted trailer containing a merry-go-round in Illinois, then take it on a cross-country rampage, stealing gasoline and rolling from state to state, ( Read more... )