Perceiving nuclear weapons as powerful, instantaneous potentials capable of driving various earth processes was a new concept having radical impact on military weapons developments. Such geophysically coupled weapons systems brought researchers into a consideration of nonnuclear means for achieving the very same objectives. Despite the domination of bomb development by nuclear physicists, chemists had not ceased developing higher yield chemical explosives. It was during this time frame that chemical aerosol bombs, having high kiloton yield, were tested. Such weapons were recognized for their tactical advcuitage and ease of handling. There were those early nuclear hybrids termed “dirty bombs” whose intended use was the complete poisoning of an enemy territory with long-lived radioactive fallout products. Encasing a nuclear warhead in uranium-238 produced a truly “filthy” explosion. But this was not the new research avenue, where clean precision in killing was desired.
Nuclear detonations are prolific producers of a broadband of energetic spectra. These reach fi-om very lowest electrical signals, below ULF as DC, and range well above hard gamma rays. Energetic outputs of fissile materials, and admixtures of these materials, each contained very specific orders of electric, radiant, and particulate products. It was found that appropriately prepared weapons geometries could be made to reduce blast size, while maximizing specific portions of those products. The development of nuclear hybrid systems began after sufficient data had been gathered concerning such nuclear outputs. The increased efficiency in producing very specific nuclear outputs came as a result of studies which explored basic beam-target phenomena. Apphed to weapons, these otherwise profound nuclear phenomena became the knowledge on which true horror was proliferated.
So successftrl were each of these methods that a new regime of nuclear hybrid devices, hideously efficient killing weapons, was stimulated into production. Thus, developers founds ways to maximize the particulate or radiant outputs with precision. Weapons engineers investigated the possibility that small high-radiation emitting nuclear detonations could be far more devastating than those which simply added higher kiloton and megaton blast potentials. The first new application of these concepts successfully produced high flux neutron-emitting bombs, where blast size was minimized and particle radiation, maximized.
Why these effects were at all intriguing derives fi-om the peaceful applications which experimenters such as Dr. Gustav Le Bon and Dr. Thomas Moray each independently pursued, applications which successfully produced selective streams of particles or radiant energies for energy and medical purposes. Dr. Le Bon produced reactions in which light metals were converted direcdy into particulate emissions and aetheric streams. Dr. Moray produced high energy gamma rays whose mysterious therapeutic potentials were used by him in the curing of several supposed incurable illnesses. Dr. Moray also applied his selective stream emissions to force the crystallization of gold crystals from mining refuse. Specific applications of high energy particle combinations were found able to measurably raise the gold content of these refuse soils. Mining assays confirmed and documented these findings. There were other, more wonderful applications of these mysterious energies.
But military planners who needed to cover their hideous research with similar kinds of peaceful applications were not as sincere, and never as convincing. Project PLOWSHARE had been initiated under President Eisenhower to explore the peacetime uses of nuclear energy. But this investigation, a publicity relations effort to “clean up” the otherwise “dirty” atom, succeeded only in blasting large caverns in the desert and irradiating com seeds vrith gamma rays. While these highly visible projects were daily reported in major newspapers and school weekly readers, the weapons devisers were deeply entrenched in the exploration of new horrors. The first neutron weapon was reported in 1961, it having been claimed that tests had been successful in these directions. Soviet sources protested the hideousness of such weaponry. It was odd that twenty years later, the very same announcement was reported under President Carter. The concept that a small yield nuclear detonator could “spare the cities and kill the enemy” was appealing to those in position to use the weaponry. Magnified neutron blasts did not produce a truly “clean” weapon. Neutron fluxes were so high from these truly small blast sites, usually a city block square, that every piece of surrounding matter became hopelessly radioactive. Neutron irradiation produced a “trace” whose signature was so deadly that the weapon, though approaching the “ideal” nuclear application, was yet not a perfect weapon for tactical occupation. Several neutron bomb explosions, and the population would indeed be destroyed; but the buildings which were left standing would be uninhabitable for centuries.
But in these weapons, scholars perceived a new kind of secretized knowledge; knowledge kept from the technical universities and libraries. What these weapons signalled was a new and highly privatized knowledge of nuclear energy, the surprising development of very small yield nuclear detonations having been secured. It has often been thought that nuclear weapons are necessarily high yield packages, this the result of fixed critical mass requirements. This restrictive view is obviously incorrect, as recovered patents on special optoexplosive systems teach. These hybrid nuclear weapons systems are also referred to as explosive light generating systems (ELGS). Depending on the explosion employed, physicists knew that highly penetrating radiations and particulate emissions would be accordingly produced. A very bizarre tellurian system arranged the reflection and redirection of radiation products from small yield nuclear explosives. Buried beneath the desert floor in heavily lined concrete conduits or in granitic strata, both nuclear explosives (NX) or chemical explosives (CX) were used to produce unimaginable beams of Clear Atomic Light (CAL). Producing curious cruciform beams of unprecedented brilliance, radiant energies were directed toward special targets for the production of otherwise unattainable high intensity particle beams.
These buried tellurian systems had very obvious applications in other nuclear applications. With simple conversions, these systems could be inverted and placed in orbit Arranged in various large volume baffle-shaped conduits, systems are described as requiring surprisingly small yield nuclear blasts. These included nuclear explosives of yield as small as 1 or 2 Tons. Specially doped with light metals, the emerging radiant beams were directed by large mirrors to strike targets. In the literature, these experiments were referred to as “High Parameter Energy-Matter Interactions”. Blast and shock formation was minimized by using complex cross-tunnels; N-shaped, Z-shaped, and triangle-shaped tunnels. These baffles were arranged with proper lengths and widths to isolate debris products from the emerging light pulse. With a great deal of help from data gained through Project PLOWSHARE, a great deal of research went into the construction of these thick-walled tellurian chambers (OPERATION DISTANT PLAIN).
Thus free of explosion debris, beams of nuclear brilliance levels were obtained just before the units self-destructed. The large reflector surfaces employed in such systems were consumed with each test run. Reflectors were often simple plastic sheets, or polished metals, and were therefore inexpensive arrangements. The production of reflectable X-Ray, ultraviolet, infrared, or trans-infrared, was thus secured. These clean atomic light beams (CAL) could be shaped be appropriate optical means, producing shaped atomic light (SAL). The optoexplosive technology found new applications, a long series of test allocation granting an array of available nuclear explosives to assess the other weapons potentials of the system. Light pulses from these tests proved conclusively that the emissions were sinusoidal in character, an amazing fact which reveals something of the nuclear blast nature. Close examination of high speed nuclear blast movies reveals a curious darkening effect just preceding the sudden explosive emission of light energies, evidence of a collapsing energy field just prior to explosion. These sudden first darkening effects are not the result of intense brilliance and film bums.
Patent texts teach that the optoexplosive weaponry worked best in greatly lowered atmospheric pressures, producing transcending X-Ray yields. In analogous design tests, obviously conducted in high altitude settings, trials describe concern for atmospheric clarity; a specific space-prone intention. In addition to these nuclear explosives, a series of tests were conducted using high-speed chemical explosives of various compositions, PETN explosives representing the highest speed detonations (8.3 kilometer/sec burn rate). These were doped with a great variety of metallic elements (Ti, Zr, Th, U) to obtain very special radiant characteristics. In addition, a large arsenal of small yield electroexplosives were employed in calibration tests. Abandoned railroad tunnels, missile silos, mine shcifts, and artificially scoured tunnels were used as test sites. Tests were conducted from September 1957, both in Montana and Nebraska. The HARDTACK series lists five NX shots during October 1958. Each experiment used nuclear explosives of various small yields and burial depths. TAMALPAIS 72 Ton NX, EVANS 55 Ton NX, NEPTUNE 90 Ton NX, RAINIER 1.7 Kiloton NX, LOGAN 5 Kiloton NX, and BLANCA 19 Kiloton NX. Burial depths ranged from 330 feet to 840 feet The GNOME NX shot in December 1961 used a 3.5 Kiloton warhead at HARD HAT shot in 1962 used 5 Kiloton NX at 939 feet below sea level.
Fifty percent of NX radiation energy was confined to infrared spectra, ten percent to Ultraviolet, and forty percent to the visible. The thermal X-Ray pulse was absorbed within 10 feet of the blast site, contributing chiefly to plasma fireball expansion. NX shots at 50 miles above sea level altered all of these photon yields, X-Ray pulses being measured out to 10 miles. Metal doping powders could modify all of the resultant spectra. Dopant-enhancement employed foil coatings and particulates (Ag, Cd, Zn, Au, Pb, W, Nb, Ta, Si, B, Li, Be, Ce). Chemical salt dopants were used (chlorides and halides of Sn, Si, Ge) to coat the large plastic reflector diaphragms. Each obtained very specific radiation energy yields. The incredible photon yields from these blasts were used to pump and produce fiightfully powerful laser beams, a brilliance comprising a 10 Terrawatt per square meter beam of deadly light energy. While the researchers spent an extensive amovmt of time studying a wide range of related natural phenomena and effects, these experiments had their deadly directives.
World History
