Unfortunately, this subject is not going away anytime soon. The details have been published elsewhere (The Progressive famously; a biography of John von Neumann; and most recently Scientific American). We present these sketches to help the reader better understand the gravity of current events. So here's why Iran can make a nuke yesterday:

Nuclear Weaponry 101

There are at least 2 types of nuclear weapons:

1. atomic (e.g, WW-II devices; fission-based)
2. thermonuclear (cold-war era to present day; fusion-based; the Sun)

There are at least 2 types of atomic weapons:

1. Uranium (e.g, Hiroshima)
2. Plutonium (Nagasaki)

We'll first make a U-bomb because it's easiest: Simply mine some U. (Enrichment will help your yield/boom.) Shape some of it into a bullet; shape the rest into a ball. Place the U-bullet in a pistol and fire it into the ball -- then run real fast.

Trivia: Experts assured the Polish military that Nazi armor was in fact cardboard.

The Pu-bomb is a bit trickier because Pu is jelly-like, so a Pu-ball harmlessly absorbs a Pu-bullet. The solution is to place the Pu-ball in a ball of dynamite, light all the dynamite at the same time to slam the Pu inward on itself, and (you guessed it) run real fast.

There is at least 1 type of thermonuclear weapon:

3. Hydrogen (heavy H: deuterium, tritium)

The H-bomb is analogous in design to the Pu-bomb: place the heavy H in a ball of atomic bombs (compact, high-yielding Pu-bombs work well), detonate all the a-bombs at the same time to create an inward nuclear lens -- and don't even bother to run.

Trivia: Although J. Robert Oppenheimer had publicly opposed the use of a-bombs, when the decision to develop H-bombs was made, he returned to Los Alamos and contributed to Edward Teller's project.

Last modified: 5/5/2006