In the beginning, the slaves had to clean the cotton with their bare hands. The invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney would change everything. But Cotton also destroyed the soil, while using slaves’ bodies like a commodity became the most lucrative enterprise around. More profitable than all lands, banks, railroads, factories and gold products put together. Slaves were used as collateral for mortgages, a newly developed tool of commerce. ibid.
By 1890, disarmed, held in concentration camps, their children taken away half-starved, the Lakota and Dakota survivors found a new resistance: ghost dancing. ibid.
Wounded Knee Massacre: East Indians killed: 300; Survivors: 51 (4 men, 47 women), Army casualties: 25 dead. ibid.
Kirtland AFB UFO landing, Albuquerque, New Mexico, August 1980: In the tunnels is where the nuclear weapons are stored; on this night guards at the base saw a very bright light ... It stops over Coyote Canyon … descended into the canyon … about it was a disc shaped object … The officer grabbed his rifle, got out of his jeep, and decided to pursue it … The ship just took off … The UFO returns to the exact same location … At that point the Air Force just couldn’t deny it … Persistent accounts of UFOs sightings near their nuclear weapons storage site … The case was doomed and eventually buried. UFOs: Top Secret Alien Files, Lee Speigel, Huffington Post, History 2021
The only way to reduce the number of nuclear weapons is to use them. Rush Limbaugh
In August 1945 the city of Hiroshima was destroyed in about nine seconds by a single atomic bomb. The man responsible for building the bomb was a gentle and eloquent physicist named J Robert Oppenheimer. The Day After Trinity, 1980
‘You may well ask why people with kind hearts and humanist feelings – why they would go and work on weapons of mass destruction.’ ibid. Hans Bethe
At the age of twenty-five he accepted an unusual dual professorship. ibid.
His left-wing activities did attract official attention. ibid.
Oppenheimer’s first job was to convince scientists and their families to join him for the duration of the war in a place he was not allowed to identify. ibid.
Oppenheimer had gathered the elite in physics, mathematics and chemistry to build the atomic bomb. ibid.
By 1944 he was in charge of a walled city of six thousand. ibid.
The professor and the general made an unlikely team. When Groves took charge of the Manhattan Project in 1942 there was barely enough plutonium in the world to cover the head of a pin. And very little uranium 235. ibid.
11th July 1945: An unmarked Pontiac sedan arrives at the MacDonald Ranch carrying the world’s entire supply of plutonium – about ten pounds. The courier demands a receipt. Approximate value – one billion dollars. ibid.
Young technicians were horrified to overhear Enrico Fermi taking side-bets on the possibility of incinerating the state of New Mexico. ibid.
More than a million civilians dead – the Japanese fought on. ibid.
Hiroshima, August 6th 1945 ... More than 100,000 killed, 40,000 injured, 20,000 missing. Burns, blindness, radiation sickness. It took only nine seconds. ibid.
He [Oppenheimer] argued adamantly and publicly for the international control of atomic weapons. ibid. commentary
The arms race began in earnest. ibid.
Teller had urged ... the hydrogen bomb. ibid.
A disbelieving America saw the Russians explode a hydrogen bomb in the same year. ibid.
As many as five agents shadowed him [Oppenheimer] in a single day. ibid.
The Atomic Energy Commission found Oppenheimer a security risk. ibid.
There have been more than 1,200 atomic explosions on the face of the Earth. ibid.
Will the next devastating attack against the United States be deliberate with the tap of a key? Using only a computer, a terrorist or a nation can attack critical infrastructure. Nova: Cyberwar Threat, PBS 2015
Cyber weapons have already been unleashed. ibid.
By 2010 [United States] Cyber Command was ready for action. About the same time that the world got a glimpse of the first true cyber weapon, a surprisingly destructive computer worm, a self-replicating program that came to be known as Stuxnet. ibid.
Stuxnet used a ‘Zero Day’ to take advantage of a vulnerability related to USB thumb drives. ibid.
In June 2012 The New York Times reported that Stuxnet was created jointly by the NSA and Israeli intelligence. ibid.
It’s the Cold War and Americans are on red alert. Both sides stockpile weapons to defend themselves against possible attack. America: The Story of the US: Superpower, History 2010
For Hitler more often than not it was a case of style over substance. But when it comes to arming yourself in major world conflict that might not be the way to go. So when it comes to weapons of war it pays to choose wisely. How the Nazis Lost the War II: Wonder(less) Weapons, 2021
Forget reality, for the Nazis it was all about appearances. ibid.
These wonder-weapons were trumpeted as shock-n-awe super-weapons that would turn the tide of the war and save the Reich. ibid.
The V1, however, was very unreliable and remained wildly inaccurate throughout its deployment … but there was no defence against the more advanced version, the V2, an early ballistic missile. ibid.
The Nazis wasted their time on a number of other futile wonder-weapon missiles and projectiles. ibid.
Imagine military superpowers around the world enlisting beloved sea creatures to search and destroy. How about building a swarm of robot assassins. Or turning corpses into killers. These are the weapons so surprising they are truly unbelievable. The UnBelievable with Dan Aykroyd s1e4: Weird Weapons, History 2024
1941: British special ops come with something we can only call unusual: they procure rats … as weapons of mass destruction. ibid.
In 1956 the French debuted their heavily weaponized Vespa that is able to take out a tank. ibid.
From weird weapons dropped from the sky to strange war machines built for the sea. ibid.
HMS Habakkuk: Aircraft carrier which is made entirely of ice … more than four times the size of the Titanic. ibid.
The UN decides that their non-lethal approach is going to be a sticky foam gun. ibid.
[Sam Cohen]: I’m not universally loved. To put it mildly. Neutron Bomb, 2022
The most detested weapon on Earth. ibid. Cohen
The neutron bomb is a defensive weapon … ibid. Reagan
One weapon stood out amongst all others in purpose and function, enhancing an invisible yet deadly characteristic of nuclear fusion. This was the neutron bomb. ibid. narrator
The Armor Soldier on the Nuclear Battlefield (Army training video): Have faith in your leaders. They will ensure that you do not get more radiation than is absolutely necessary. ibid.
A bomb that would one day weaponise neutron radiation. ibid. narrator
Mathematical models were based on their neurotic way of thinking. ibid. Cohen
Eisenhower eventually had reservations about the concept of the neutron bomb. ibid. Narrator
Over the next decade 26 nuclear tests would be conducted under Project Plowshare for the development of peaceful nuclear weapons. The neutron bomb continued to be aided by advancements in this technology … Plowshare quietly closed in 1977. ibid.
Sam’s [Cohen] advocacy for his neutron bomb was falling on deaf ears. ibid.