Post by Catsmate on Sept 12, 2014 12:10:05 GMT
At 5:29AM on the 16th of July 1945, the Nuclear Age began with a bang, an eighteen kilotonne one. The 'Gadget', the first atomic bomb1 was detonated at a site in the Jornada del Muerto desert in New Mexico, about 55km from the town of Socorro.
The Trinity test was the culmination of the Manhattan Project, one of the greatest scientific and technical efforts in human history, the development of controlled nuclear fission.
Less than a month later, after the second and third atomic bombs were employed against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered and World War 2 ended.
The decision to employ nuclear bombs against Japanese cities in August of 1945 remains a controversial event, however the planners in 1945, with the recent experience of the invasion of Okinawa, were forecasting enormous Allied and Japanese casualties.
All this is history, but what if the test had failed? Depending on events this would have had a huge effect on the history of the Second World War, with the Allies going ahead with Operation Downfall; the plan for an ampihibious invasion of Japan.
Sabotaging the bomb.
There are, generally speaking, three options for sabotaging the Gadget; disable it so the test fails, detonate it prematurely or magnify the force of the explosion.
How a saboteur achieves this depends greatly on the technology and resources available, as well as the objective for the sabotage. Infiltrating the Manhattan project with forged documentation, hypnotising staffers to carry out the tasks, sneaking around the test site on the
morning of the detonation, using some device to remotely neutralise it.
1. Disable the bomb.
The 'Gadget' used a mix of electro-mechanical and valve electronic systems, it would not be susceptible to, for example, electro-magnetic pulse effects that would disable more sophisticated electronics. Possibilities include sabotaging the plutonium core, by altering it's precise configuration, or interfering with the relatively complex detonation circuit for the explosive lenses, causing the implosion of the plutonium to fail or fizzle.
Assuming the sabotage effected only the fissionable material little evidence would be available for examination; the approximately 4.5 tonnes of chemical explosive used in the implosion charge would see to that.
2. Trigger the bomb prematurely.
An explosion before the correct time would give the impression of a design flaw, and a dangerously unstable weapon It would also potentially kill many of observation and preparation teams, leading to a delay in the deployment of the next atomic bombs against Japan. This would be especially true if combined with option 3.
Triggering the bomb early is a far more difficult task; the arming wasn't carried out until just prior to the test, when the ground zero site was evacuated.
3. Enhance the bomb.
Another possibility would be to boost the power of the bomb drastically, giving the impression of fundamental misunderstandings of the theory of nuclear weapons and deterring their use.
If the detonation was far more powerful, several megatonnes, it would potentially kill many of the observers and the programme would probably have been halted until the event was better understood.
The closest bunker (housing Oppenheimer amongst others) was about 9km from the test site; to destroy it a detonation of about 10Mt would be needed. How could a saboteur manage this? Well a large fusion bomb, anti-matter or somepurely fictional weapon such as the Z-bomb.
Consequences.
Assuming that the failure of the Trinity test caused the United States to, at least temporarily, abandon the use of nuclear weapons it's probable that Operation Downfall will go ahead in late 1945. It was was scheduled to start
on 01NOV1945 with major US and UK landings (14-17 divisions) on southern Kyushu with a second landing (Coronet) in March 1946 in Honshu.
The casualty figures expected were high and uncertain; estimated at
250,000 to one million Allied troops for each of the two elements (Olympic and Coronet) with 20-30% of these being
fatalities. Japanese casualties, mostly civilian, were estimated to be
three to six times as many.
The Soviets were already planning an invasion of Hokkaido and might
have been persuaded to cooperate in Coronet. However this would have
meant adding all of Korea and half of Japan to the Soviet sphere with significant long term political changes.
Motivations.
So why would someone want to prevent the Trinity test? Well the obvious motivation is ideological, to prevent the development of nuclear weapons, though realistically this is doomed to fail. It won't take long before further tests are carried out successfully.
Someone sympathetic to the Soviet Union might be trying to disrupt the balance of power in the post-WW2 period; the sabotage may be an official Soviet effort using a captured or developed time machine.
A more chaotically inclined Temporal Marauder may simply be experimenting with changing history.
Of course it could be a trap for your party; an old enemy disrupting history to attract them to a location where they can be picked off.
Access to the test site.
Some notes that may be useful.
The actual site used was decided in late 1944, with a small base camp constructed in December to support the deployment of various sensors to monitor the detonation. From this point on there was a detachment of military police (about a dozen) in residence, mostly to guard the buildings. in 1945 additional builds and road access were completed, though during the period before May 1945 few scientists were at the site as many had been reassigned to help with problems in the actual bomb.
On 7th of May 1945 at 4:37AM (delayed from the 5th) a 'test shot' of about 100 tonnes of chemical explosive, laced with radioactive material, was detonated about 750 from the Trinity site to calibrate instruments. This also acted as a trial for procedures to be used for the atomic test, then known to be planned for July (the 4th was the original test date, this was changed in late June).
After the test activity at the Trinity site was considerable in the run up to the July test; more than thirty kilometres of additional roads were laid for better vehicle access and dozens of kilometres of additional phone cabling (as radio communications had experienced problems).
The site team had more than seventy vehicles assigned to it by late June, with thirty more in the week before the test
Security at the site was actually loosened, mainly as a result of problems in the run up to the May test. However patrols continued and checkpoints existed on all roads. About 125 MPs were resident at the camp site for security, with a force ranging from 50-175 (depending on the nearness of the test)
From July 2nd onwards a series of trials of aspects of the test detonation were performed and the test site and camp. Detailed rehearsals of the process were held on the late morning of the 12th and 13th of July 12 and finally just before midnight on the 14th.
At midday on the 13th of July the components for the test bomb were trucked to the detonation site and assembled there (inside a tent). At 14:00 the fissionable material was inserted and the implosion charge assembled. Work finished around 22:00 and the site was left under guard until the morning of the 14th (Saturday). Then the test was removed and the bomb casing lifted to the top of the tower. Work then began on connecting the 'X unit', the electrical device responsible for the actual firing of the explosives. Work was complete at about 17:00. No work was performed o Sunday the 15th, though the site was roped off and guarded. On Monday the 16th the Arming Party began work at about 2AM, and finished at 5:10AM. Twenty minutes later the bomb exploded.
References.
Downfall - Strategic Plan for Operations in the Japanese Archipelago
Operation Downfall
Silkett: Downfall- The Invasion that Never Was
Report on the Trinity test
Fiction.
Ronald Clark's The Bomb that Failed (also published as The Last Day of the Old World) was published in 1969. Klaus Fuchs sabotaged the Trinity test, Downfall went badly and rice fungus was employed as a biological weapon. It also features a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, the main reason for the Trinity sabotage.
Kevin Anderson's The Trinity Paradox features a modern day (early '90s) anti-nuclear activist who'd tossed back in time and sabotages the Trinity test. Meanwhile the Germans accelerate their nuclear programme..
Alfred Cobbel's The Burning Mountain also features a failed Trinity test and Downfall in progress.
More recently there's a graphic novel series Storming Paradise where the Trinity test goes badly, killing the observers, and the US goes ahead with Downfall.
1 Perhaps not in the Whoniverse of course
2 While a mass (m) of anti-matter will react with a similar mass of matter
yielding energy according to E=mc² about half the energy is in the form of neutrinos which
don't interact with much.
The Trinity test was the culmination of the Manhattan Project, one of the greatest scientific and technical efforts in human history, the development of controlled nuclear fission.
Less than a month later, after the second and third atomic bombs were employed against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered and World War 2 ended.
The decision to employ nuclear bombs against Japanese cities in August of 1945 remains a controversial event, however the planners in 1945, with the recent experience of the invasion of Okinawa, were forecasting enormous Allied and Japanese casualties.
All this is history, but what if the test had failed? Depending on events this would have had a huge effect on the history of the Second World War, with the Allies going ahead with Operation Downfall; the plan for an ampihibious invasion of Japan.
Sabotaging the bomb.
There are, generally speaking, three options for sabotaging the Gadget; disable it so the test fails, detonate it prematurely or magnify the force of the explosion.
How a saboteur achieves this depends greatly on the technology and resources available, as well as the objective for the sabotage. Infiltrating the Manhattan project with forged documentation, hypnotising staffers to carry out the tasks, sneaking around the test site on the
morning of the detonation, using some device to remotely neutralise it.
1. Disable the bomb.
The 'Gadget' used a mix of electro-mechanical and valve electronic systems, it would not be susceptible to, for example, electro-magnetic pulse effects that would disable more sophisticated electronics. Possibilities include sabotaging the plutonium core, by altering it's precise configuration, or interfering with the relatively complex detonation circuit for the explosive lenses, causing the implosion of the plutonium to fail or fizzle.
Assuming the sabotage effected only the fissionable material little evidence would be available for examination; the approximately 4.5 tonnes of chemical explosive used in the implosion charge would see to that.
- While it was originally planned to allow for the possibility of a
failure by encasing the bomb in a containment vessel (allowing for the plutonium to be recovered), this was abandoned before the test.
2. Trigger the bomb prematurely.
An explosion before the correct time would give the impression of a design flaw, and a dangerously unstable weapon It would also potentially kill many of observation and preparation teams, leading to a delay in the deployment of the next atomic bombs against Japan. This would be especially true if combined with option 3.
Triggering the bomb early is a far more difficult task; the arming wasn't carried out until just prior to the test, when the ground zero site was evacuated.
- The 'Arming Party' (three scientists and three soldiers) didn't depart the tower holding the bomb until just after 5:10AM, after that time the bomb was monitored from a number of locations via binoculars and searchlights were focussed upon it to deter saboteurs.
3. Enhance the bomb.
Another possibility would be to boost the power of the bomb drastically, giving the impression of fundamental misunderstandings of the theory of nuclear weapons and deterring their use.
- While the scientists of the Manhattan project speculated about the efficiency of the fission chain-reaction and thus the explosive power, most expected a power close to the 84PJ released, with the largest predicated explosion being about 2.5 times as powerful.
- Test preparations were made in case of yields up to 200kT or 832PJ.
If the detonation was far more powerful, several megatonnes, it would potentially kill many of the observers and the programme would probably have been halted until the event was better understood.
- Not least because of the effective impossibility of safety delivering such a weapon with aircraft available in 1945.
The closest bunker (housing Oppenheimer amongst others) was about 9km from the test site; to destroy it a detonation of about 10Mt would be needed. How could a saboteur manage this? Well a large fusion bomb, anti-matter or somepurely fictional weapon such as the Z-bomb.
- A ten megatonne thermonuclear bomb using current technology is rather large, at least 2,000kg, and would produce large amounts of radioactive fallout (making the disaster very obvious). Potentially this could be made smaller with advanced technology such as compression by powerful artificial gravity.
- Anti-matter is far more efficient. Only about half a kilogramme would be needed2, though the device itself would be larger as actually building an efficient anti-matter bomb would probably be
tricky, broadly similar to the engineering problems of an implosion
fission bomb. A 10Mt anti-matter explosion is difficult to model exactly, but it would
be similar to a nuclear explosion; severe burns to anyone exposed out
to about 30km, residential structured demolished to about 25km and even bunkers destroyed to 10km. - Depending on exactly what technobabble is used to justify them a 10Mt Z-bomb could be tiny. (Personally I consider them matter conversion bombs and therefore even smaller than anti-matter devices).
Consequences.
Assuming that the failure of the Trinity test caused the United States to, at least temporarily, abandon the use of nuclear weapons it's probable that Operation Downfall will go ahead in late 1945. It was was scheduled to start
on 01NOV1945 with major US and UK landings (14-17 divisions) on southern Kyushu with a second landing (Coronet) in March 1946 in Honshu.
The casualty figures expected were high and uncertain; estimated at
250,000 to one million Allied troops for each of the two elements (Olympic and Coronet) with 20-30% of these being
fatalities. Japanese casualties, mostly civilian, were estimated to be
three to six times as many.
The Soviets were already planning an invasion of Hokkaido and might
have been persuaded to cooperate in Coronet. However this would have
meant adding all of Korea and half of Japan to the Soviet sphere with significant long term political changes.
- Alternatively, with the US embroiled in Japan and British forces also engaged, Stalin might have felt the time was right to extend Soviet control of Europe.
Motivations.
So why would someone want to prevent the Trinity test? Well the obvious motivation is ideological, to prevent the development of nuclear weapons, though realistically this is doomed to fail. It won't take long before further tests are carried out successfully.
Someone sympathetic to the Soviet Union might be trying to disrupt the balance of power in the post-WW2 period; the sabotage may be an official Soviet effort using a captured or developed time machine.
A more chaotically inclined Temporal Marauder may simply be experimenting with changing history.
Of course it could be a trap for your party; an old enemy disrupting history to attract them to a location where they can be picked off.
- Alternatively it may be a trap, just not aimed at them.
Access to the test site.
Some notes that may be useful.
The actual site used was decided in late 1944, with a small base camp constructed in December to support the deployment of various sensors to monitor the detonation. From this point on there was a detachment of military police (about a dozen) in residence, mostly to guard the buildings. in 1945 additional builds and road access were completed, though during the period before May 1945 few scientists were at the site as many had been reassigned to help with problems in the actual bomb.
On 7th of May 1945 at 4:37AM (delayed from the 5th) a 'test shot' of about 100 tonnes of chemical explosive, laced with radioactive material, was detonated about 750 from the Trinity site to calibrate instruments. This also acted as a trial for procedures to be used for the atomic test, then known to be planned for July (the 4th was the original test date, this was changed in late June).
After the test activity at the Trinity site was considerable in the run up to the July test; more than thirty kilometres of additional roads were laid for better vehicle access and dozens of kilometres of additional phone cabling (as radio communications had experienced problems).
The site team had more than seventy vehicles assigned to it by late June, with thirty more in the week before the test
Security at the site was actually loosened, mainly as a result of problems in the run up to the May test. However patrols continued and checkpoints existed on all roads. About 125 MPs were resident at the camp site for security, with a force ranging from 50-175 (depending on the nearness of the test)
From July 2nd onwards a series of trials of aspects of the test detonation were performed and the test site and camp. Detailed rehearsals of the process were held on the late morning of the 12th and 13th of July 12 and finally just before midnight on the 14th.
At midday on the 13th of July the components for the test bomb were trucked to the detonation site and assembled there (inside a tent). At 14:00 the fissionable material was inserted and the implosion charge assembled. Work finished around 22:00 and the site was left under guard until the morning of the 14th (Saturday). Then the test was removed and the bomb casing lifted to the top of the tower. Work then began on connecting the 'X unit', the electrical device responsible for the actual firing of the explosives. Work was complete at about 17:00. No work was performed o Sunday the 15th, though the site was roped off and guarded. On Monday the 16th the Arming Party began work at about 2AM, and finished at 5:10AM. Twenty minutes later the bomb exploded.
- Or not.
References.
Downfall - Strategic Plan for Operations in the Japanese Archipelago
Operation Downfall
Silkett: Downfall- The Invasion that Never Was
Report on the Trinity test
Fiction.
Ronald Clark's The Bomb that Failed (also published as The Last Day of the Old World) was published in 1969. Klaus Fuchs sabotaged the Trinity test, Downfall went badly and rice fungus was employed as a biological weapon. It also features a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, the main reason for the Trinity sabotage.
Kevin Anderson's The Trinity Paradox features a modern day (early '90s) anti-nuclear activist who'd tossed back in time and sabotages the Trinity test. Meanwhile the Germans accelerate their nuclear programme..
Alfred Cobbel's The Burning Mountain also features a failed Trinity test and Downfall in progress.
More recently there's a graphic novel series Storming Paradise where the Trinity test goes badly, killing the observers, and the US goes ahead with Downfall.
1 Perhaps not in the Whoniverse of course
2 While a mass (m) of anti-matter will react with a similar mass of matter
yielding energy according to E=mc² about half the energy is in the form of neutrinos which
don't interact with much.