Why Every Nuclear Power Built the Bomb (And Everyone Else Hasn't) 

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Minor correction: Although Sealand has some resemblance to an oil rig, it was not an oil rig, it was a WW2 sea fort, previously known as HM Fort Roughs.

Did they learn to stop worrying and love the bomb?

Correction: You neglected to mention important background information about the 1974 Indian nuclear test. It is true that domestic events played a role in the detonation, but we also need to remember what happened in the years before. In 1971, there was a war in the subcontinent in which East Pakistan (Bangladesh) fought Pakistan for independence and India supported the Bengalis in their fight. During this, the US under President Richard Nixon openly supported Pakistan and brought its navy into the Bay of Bengal and even privately considered to use nuclear weapons against India. The US only backed down when India sent out a call for help and the USSR, a friendly state, sent a nuclear-powered submarine to the region. While the war ended in an Indian victory and Bangladeshi independence, this moment showed that India was vulnerable against foreign powers. There is evidence that preparation for the Pokhran-1 tests occurred in 1972, two years before the moment of the actual test. So while the test may have been conducted partially as a political statement, it was not merely to boost Indira Gandhi’s popularity but as a statement that India would pursue any method to deter foreign aggression. It is also important to note the reason why India refused to sign the NPT. India was actually involved in the discussions on drafting the treaty. The Indian government at that time agreed with the goal of non-proliferation, but they viewed the treaty in its current form as a half step at best and hypocritical at its worst. In particular, they took issue with the section of the treaty which created a situation of haves and have-nots by allowing the then nuclear states to retain their arsenal and not disarm. They proposed that what they viewed as a fairer treaty in which all signatories would abandon their nuclear programs provided that the states with nuclear bombs disarm. But this wasn’t accepted by the nuclear states. So India refused to sign the treaty. Pakistan, a hostile state to India, also refused to sign if India refused to as well. But I think a big misconception is that addressing security concerns that motivate proliferation can lead states give up nuclear programs. This may be possible in the case of states who do not yet have nuclear weapons as this video demonstrates with the example of Egypt. But this is a lot harder for states to give up nuclear weapons if they already have them. Say the US and Russia somehow peacefully resolve all their security issues and adopt good diplomatic relations with each other. America still remains a hegemonic power in the world, but it still won’t give up its nuclear weapons so as to maintain its hegemony over the world and it will have security issues with other states. Russia likely won’t either so as to remain a major power in the part of the world it considers as its domain. This is just how big powerful countries are; they do not want to give up their hegemony over the world. It gets even trickier for nuclear states such as India and Pakistan. In these countries, the bomb is not merely a defence but also a political symbol. Having the bomb for them is a symbol of emergence from colonialism and exploitation as modern, technologically advanced countries. The bomb is a symbol of sovereignty and independence from foreign powers. Even if underlying security concerns are addressed, it is still likely that these countries won’t so easily give up their nuclear weapons viewing the giving up of the bomb as caving into pressure from the powerful Western countries that, in their view, do not treat them as equals on the world stage. The only way this can be overcome is if all the nuclear states agree to simultaneously dismantle their arsenals, which will be both a practical and logistical nightmare to get states to agree to and also is not possible with the current state of the world (wars, trade wars, espionage, self-interest of states, and mutual distrust of other states).

Came for the lines on maps, stayed for the nuke-making tutorial

I think Iran enjoys the threat of building a bomb more than having a bomb. It seems convincingly deliberate at this point.

I know its not discussed here but isn't it generally believed that Israel and South Africa worked together in developing nuclear weapons and there were some unexplained 'incidents' believed to be connected to this in the Indian ocean south of South Africa. This would also in part explain why we haven't any records of testing of Israel nukes as they were tested along with the South African ones far from Israel.

Thats a really myopic view of the Indian programme for nuke. Preparations for the peaceful nuclear explosions started before indira gandhi (approved during shastri's term who was earlier opposed to it. It had a long history when bhabha made sure india could procure plutonium from Canada's CIRIUS and then nehru finally gave way in 1960 for a plutonium reprocessing plant with the chinese threat looming. The 1962 defeat and unreliability of the soviet allies nudged india to head for nuclear deterrence.)While the test certainly would have yielded domestic political points for her, its wrong to attribute indian pursuit for nukes for domestic benefits.

The soviets also did their best to remove as much uranium ore as possible from their eastern european satelite states. For example, Romania alone "voluntarily" exported more than 17,000 tones of uranium ore to Soviet Union. It left an ecological disaster behind, one that still affects people today.

You are 100% wrong about the US providing the UK with technical assistance. The Manhattan project was supposed to share results with the US and UK but instead the US cut the UK off at the knees entirely denying them access to the research they had been jointly doing - going so far as to confiscate British scientist's personal notes. The UK was forced to conduct their post-war nuclear weapons program entirely independently, right up until the US relented after the UK detonated their first H-bomb. The US treated a lot of technology "sharing" agreements with the British with similar contempt, for example taking British high speed flight technology and giving them nothing in return, allowing the US to beat the UK to breaking the sound barrier.

25:50 When the US lost an H bomb in 1966, Robert McNamara stated publicly that it was worth $2B. Perhaps someone divided the total program cost by the current number of nukes? He may have regretted saying this because a Spanish fisherman saw it enter the water and helped the US find it without waiving his right to a salvage award based on a percentage of its value. Source: John Piña Craven "The Silent War".

Sea land is not an old abandoned oil rig. It is however an abandoned world war two gun emplacement I believe that was constructed for the Uk's defence during that conflict.

The Ukrainian nuclear weaponeers who oversaw them in the years prior to ‘ 94 didn’t think Ukraine getting full control of a sufficient number would be difficult. I imagine they were referring to the tactical ones which were built to be under authority of the highest ranking officer in relevant area . In Cuba , it was a soviet captain….

I think if you have the ability to test a nuke but not in your home territory, you're officially a modern empire.

Unfortunately, Reddit was harping at Ukraine with the nuclear weapon narrative. I'm glad this video is here because we really don't fully understand the nuances of geopoltiical issues of nuclear weapon ownership

Well since gunpowder is made of charcoal and that charcoal had a small bit of radioactive carbon 14 in it. I would like to announce im 10th nuclear power.

Correction: The British did NOT receive information on how to build a bomb from the Manhattan Project. The American’s betrayed Britain and refused to hand over the promised technical info, despite Tube Alloys being fundamental to solving the material property issues with building the Little Boy and Fat Man. This is why there was such a delay between the MP & Britain’s first nuclear test. The UK had to basically start over from scratch, using publicly available science as a base instead of the engineering & technical developments of MP.

Switzerland actually had a nuclear weapons program, mostly as a response to Germany asking its allies for nukes under their direct control, this made us a bit concerned because of all that WW2 stuff. Anyway, we stopped the program with the final report saying we process all technical requirements to build a nuke. We even had Plutonium and enriched Uranium stored for some time, just in case (we gave it to France so we don‘t have it anymore, at least not officially).

IIRC, regarding the UK testing nukes in the UK, apparently that was indeed the original idea. Site was somewhere in the highlands of Scotland, possibly an island. However, William Penney (Chief Government Scientist) apparently said that he thought that was not a good idea.

Always impress how much I learn, and how easily it happens, when watching your vids. Thank you for what you do.

Ukraine also retured supersonic bombers Tu-22 to Russia, which are now used to fire missiles back at Ukraine. What a lousy deal it was

Many Israeli scientists worked together with the French in France to develop the French bomb. The 1960 French bomb test was essentially a France-Israel bomb test.

dude the subtle flex of a peer-reviewed paper on EXACTLY the topic of the video. WS at their finest.

An amazing video that clearly took a lot of effort and time to make. I appreciate that someone as educated and informed as you is also willing to share their expertise is such an understandable manner.

William I haven’t seen your videos recently so today when this one came up I immediately watched it. Such an interesting and informative discussion. Please keep them coming.

Iran’s nuclear program also hits delays because “tragic events” sponsored by other states that occur to people and material involved in the project

"And if you thought" the Chinese would test a nuke in Han China, a look up of the location of Lop Nur shows it is in the contested Xinjiang Uyghur "Autonomous" Region. Since it was worth pointing the locations of USSR, UK and French tests out, China should not be excluded as the current PRC ethnic Han dynasty China tends to count on our ignorance of the regions history to validate it's expansive and hegemonic claims.

Excellent work. I'm glad that I listened to the entire video. Very busy for me at the moment.

Just a note on Sweden: we had everything but the will when it comes to nukes, we also understood that having nukes would have made us a target. We had the plutonium, simulations on how they would work and a potential delivery-system. We turned all of our plutonium over to the brits/yanks back in 2012 IIRC.

Those maintenance and deployment costs are why there is a significant likelihood that Russia’s nuclear deterrent isn’t nearly what they claim it is.

A significant geopolitical rivalry, you say? Well, given its supply of free uranium, one wonders why Emutopia hasn't developed the bomb to keep Kiwiland in its place on the other side of the ocean. And also, why on earth have they allowed so many fifth columnists to enter with such ease? I mean, we've just seen the damage they've done to us from within demonstrated on the world stage in France.

I see that Swedish flag easter egg @0:48. Well done to include them there, as Sweden's reason for not getting nukes in the 60's/70's was basically "making the nuke itself is too expensive" (all other potential external political and economic sanctions aside).

Interesting topic, glad to see you talking about it ^^

When South Carolina seceded from the USA in 1860, there was a big dispute over how to handle "Federal Property" within the state's borders. I think that's a good analogy to Soviet weapons in Ukraine. Ukraine though was smart enough NOT to attack the facilities and start a war.

I really don't think anyone thought that the UK, a huge colonial empire at the time, would bomb their own small and densely populated island.

Just an interesting add-on about South African nuclear aspirations. America definitely knew of South Africa building a bomb and they wanted to test it in an underground location north of the western Cape, but the US had evidence of the hole being dug and pressured them not to test it as they would not be able to covertly support the regime any longer as the international community would become aware of it. The scientist working on it had to create an Afrikaans dictionary, just about, to be able to describe all the terminology relating to the development of the bomb. It was seen as a prestigious project to portray the Afrikaners as enlightened etc. Cape Town had a nuclear reactor in the 80's already, which I found to be curious given their pariah stature internationally, guess there must've been some dealing going on politically behind closed doors.

At 5:51 "Tube Alloys".... It may be boring, but let's not forget....the British came up with the name "tanks"for something that shoots things other than water!!

America was not cool about nuclear stuff with the uk. Our research was key at the start and then they cut us off lol, if we didn’t give them our stuff chances are UK possibly would have been first, although later on than 45

Tbf Britain's tendency to use dull names for projects is deliberate to protect against curious eyes. Unless that's what you meant by False Sense of Indifference.

"For one thing, welcome back to the channel." I chuckled probably harder than I should have ;)

thanks for doing this research, you winned a sub!

This could be a whole series, BRICS, EU, B&RI, WW2, etc.

One of these days, William is going to take over the world with the power of his lines on maps.

A small thing to add for France. The US and UK doctrine of using the nuclear bomb would only have been retaliatory, and the same was to be applied for USSR at the time. Thus, De Gaulle did not trust its allies to help them with the large numerical inferiority, and in many case also technical inferiority the west had (in the 60s the Russian armored designs were considered better than their western counterparts). The idea behind the French adoption of the nuclear weapon was to be the one to strike first in case of an invasions. 2 things popped out of this : firstly, the US refused to help france in the same way they helped tje british, as France did not follow their doctrine. secondly, when the USSR collapsed, it was found out that their invasions plans of Europe explicitly mentionned not crossing the french border to prevent their use of the nuclear weapon

High quality summary there, congrats

The Ukraine and Montana comparison was a great way to explain what happened to the nukes in Ukraine when the USSR collapsed.

I was also in the camp of Ukraine being really silly for giving up the nukes, since it seems it's the only guarantee that the US or the any other empire wouldn't attempt to invade, I suppose it's why I'm subscribed to this channel.

I love the bit at 17.11 where the guy holds the Uranium core in his hands - protected by washing-up gloves!

McArthur: Nuke em Truman: no McArthur: NUKE EM Truman: NO McArthur: aw come on Truman: Your fired

"Most of the cost of nukes is in maintenance. So you can reduce costs by using them." - Probably Ghandi

Very random comment. 28:21 seeing Abrams tanks painted in anything but desert just blew my mind.

Thank you! I'm glad Warpath sponsored you. I'll surely check their game out, but if they stop sponsoring then I'm leaving the game!

You know when you get right down to it, the first nukes are hilariously simple in concept though I'm sure extremely complex in practice. The Fat Man is literally, take a fuck load of C4, make it into a sphere of shape charges so the explosive force goes inward and stuff an unstable material core in the center. The Thin Man is, you take an unstable core, stick it into a lead half sphere and set the other half to slam down on it, that's it. Again I'm sure making these are far more complex than the concept suggests but damn.

It took canada 40 years to forgive India about them using our reactor for nuclear enrichment.

William, if we could focus US foreign policy on blosoming Iran's "Persian-ness", their penchant for some modern stature may rule the day. Its a neat culture occluded by revisionism.

Very interesting all your videos! 😄👏👏👏😄

The fact that you even have a vaguely definited process of how to weaponize those elements is a tribute to how no one else wants that particular smoke.

Great video. I'd add that for South Africa, the reasons for giving up the bomb were more out of practical than political reasons. The South African economy that Nelson Mandela inherited was a complete mess, ruined by PW Botha's excessive spending. The nukes were a part of that. Additionally, democratic South Africa had no serious nearby threats to its homeland, making defensive nukes entirely useless. The thing is, the MIC, intelligence apparatus, etc were transfered over to the ANC government. I think the Mandela government also knew the international community would not tolerate any nukes in South Africa no matter who was running the country.

Remember, Israel has never confirmed or denied they have a nuke but have implied it

Please keep making more videos!! They are so interesting! 😅

I would've liked to see the Palomares incident related here, in which a nuclear bomber crashed in Spain during the cold war. For context, there has been an US air and naval nuclear base in Rota, Southern Spain since the end of WW2. The B-52 lost many bombs, one of those even disintegrated irradiating the area, but miraculously none fissioned. During that incident Spanish and US militaries conducted searches and cleaning of the area until the bombs were recovered, but the Spanish authority found one and the dictatorial government kept it secret, reverse engineered it and concluded the country couldn't sustainably copy and maintain that kind of weapon so they returned it.

8:49 And if you thought China would conduct this test in the Han Chinese heartland, guess again.

South Africa and Israel jointly developed their nukes. South Africa being very good at getting 4 grams of what they want from a ton of what they don't and has mines producing uranium and Israel has a lot of nuclear physicists.

there are a couple of glaring errors and inconsistencies in this video but overall it was pretty informative. good job

In Australia, between 1952 and 1963, the British performed 12 Atomic tests. 3 in the Monte Bello Islands. 2 at Emu Fields and 7 at Maralinga. This was in agreement with the Governments of the day.

I want to mention when it comes to South Agrica dismantling their Nuclear arsenal, alot of that pressure came directly from the USA, who didn't want the successor government to have nuclear weapons

Amusingly, these nuclear white elephants not only haven’t been used (recently), but are so costly to maintain that anyone who has them has value in them as a hollow threat more than actual use. Meanwhile, it’s the cheap disposable “made in your garage” drones that have played out in actual warfare. I’m sure drones will be regularly used in all those wars in the various Wherever East countries.

The flag stretch graphic at 14:57 was absolutely brilliant.

The Israeli and South African governments actually *did* perform a joint nuclear test together (ironic, now. Isn’t it?) It was done in the Prince Edward’s islands on Sep 22nd, 1979. They (still have) never officially announced nor claimed responsibility for the test. But the explosion in the southwest Indian Ocean was detected by seismographs across the regional coasts as well as by a US satellite, Vela Hotel. Thus the event was named “the vela incident” The Carter Administration held a press conference stating that the detection was a solar interference and not an actual nuclear test. This was because -at the time- both South Africa and Israel were key strategic allies for the US in their respective regions. To this date, it remains the only unregistered rogue nuclear test in history. Some MGSV fans might recognize this event with a little kojima-ification.

Anyone else satisfied by Ghandi being the Indian leader who developed nukes?

Correction regarding India: India didn't decide to develop its own nuclear weapons due to border conflicts with Pakistan and China. China never threatened India with nukes. India developed its nukes due to American threat. This one has a bit of history. India was engaged in a war with Pakistan in 1971. Pakistani army was carrying out a genocide of ethnic Bengali people in East Pakistan resulting in a refugee exodus to India. India decided to step in and end that. US decided to poke its nose(no surprises there), take Pakistan's side and threaten India by sending its nuclear armed 7th fleet to Indian ocean, Bay of Bengal. India went ahead to win the war anyway and then it was time for evaluation. Looking at the fact that nuclear weapons were sent to the Indian ocean, India decided to develop its own nuclear capabilities. After three years, India conducted its first nuclear test, in 1974. Development of its the Indian GPS, cryogenic engines have similar stories. US sanctioned - India developed its own.

I give history tours in Savannah and on my Civil War Tour always end up using the term materiel…I don’t know if I like it more when people know what I mean (which they all should) or if I like it more when they look at me and laugh thinking I just butchered the word material.

A very interesting review of nuclear weapons acquisition. Thank you. Whilst a basic grasp of the physics of nuclear weapons is easy the costs of maintaining such an arsenal isn't immediately understandable. I would welcome a follow up on this. How well can Russia maintain it's stockpile? Might it's ICBM turn out to be as good as its conventional arms??

I believe Australia is definitely one of the most capable countries when it comes to building a nuclear weapon. For one we have a lot of uranium deposits so much that we export it to other countries, we also are close to china and asia, with tense geopolitcal rivalries in the area making it ever so likely, as well as the "acquisition" of nuclear submarines.

Today I found out you are a professor at Pitt. Just cool to have the Lines on Map professor in your home city.

That mushroom cloud cake really blew my mind.

That’s not an oil rig it was an anti air WW2 British fort.

Damn, spotted that sea land flag when you said "there's an Easter egg in this thumbnail", obviously doesn't count but still

Great channel love this big time.👌 A question why is it that wars and military conflicts are the only thing that pushes technology to the heights we have today as I am sure is all the best scientists from around the world come together with limitless amounts of money could use it to make things we only see in sci-fi movies 👍

The pun in the title of your co-authored paper:

As I understand it projects and major military operations are generally given code names using names from a predetermined list. Operation Market Garden, Operation Overlord, the Manhattan Project, and Ultra could really have been named anything. Now their names are well known, but there must have been hundreds of projects where the code names never became public knowledge, even when the project or results became (more or less) well known over time.

The likely location of the Israeli nuclear test was off Bouvet Island. There was a flash caught by a satellite that could only be a nuke or a meteor breaching the atmosphere, and no meteor was detected. I always found it ironic that the US picked a perfectly nice set of tropical islands for our testing, where it would have been equally easy to conduct testing in a place that nobody wants to visit.

So, I'm not sure if you've ever looked at a WW1 battle plan but there are TONS of lines on those maps. Figured you might enjoy the rabbit hole sometime.

JFK was definitely working on Strangereal logic. He would be one hell of an NCD poster.

why William hasn't built a slave army out of his viewers yet

Congrats on the sponsorship!

Your ever so slightly accelerated voice when reading the War Path commercial script EFFECTIVELY makes you sound like AI🤣

BTW, while that Winston Churchill quote about Americans is wonderful... it's also something he never said.

This is fascinating! It would also be interesting to learn about which countries threatened to build nuclear weapons but never did, I know Poland made that threat in order to blackmail themselves into NATO for instance.

24:28 I would like to know why you decided to highlight Latvia as state that has capability to make nuclear weapons.

11:17 so this is where the "Ghandi Nukes Everything" that Civ5 had comes from

Sweden actually was the fourth country/power to develop a nuclear bomb. Sweden did not test its bombs until much later though, since Sweden used data from other countries using spies. The only test that was ever made was an underground test of a very small device.

I don't know if there's any truth to this or not thought I was kidding I'd ask about this my mother would say: "We don't have nukes in Canada, we just have all the pieces in a room together waiting to be assembled"

Glad you're tearing down the myth that technical ability is the main barrier to a nuclear arsenal

Thanks!

The main reason most countries haven't build a nuclear weapon is because the US doesn't want them to do so , and they have tons of ways of preventing it .

Ukraine has ore deposits suitable for making weapons. Ukraine has a nuclear power plant and many scientists. Ukraine has extensive experience in the production of rockets and rocket engines. The only thing stopping Ukraine from creating nuclear weapons is the United States. But why create it if Kalinovsky’s regiment can seize Russian weapons located in Belarus?

13:28 that has to be the most hilarious peace price in the history of mankind 😂😂😂

quite possibility the best channel on youtube

The video is good, but there is a number of inaccuracies, particularly pertaining Ukraine. 1. It is true that Ukraine didn't have control of the strategic stockpiles, but reprogramming them or even producing their own copies wouldn't have been difficult as many components of those missiles were already being manufactured in Ukraine, with many minds behind the program also being Ukrainian. Heck, the first successful split of an atom in USSR was in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Ukraine always has been the scientific and engineering hub of the Soviet Union, most of the cool tech was invented and manufactured here. 2. The stockpiles of tactical nuclear weapons required no such authorization, nor the long-ranged missiles and bombers that Ukraine also gave up as part of the deal. All of those could have been used quite easily, and the small number of Moscowites wouldn't have been able to stop Ukrainians from getting their hands on a sufficient number of such weapons to deter russia from invading to stop them from taking the rest. So the narrative everyone is spreading isn't false, Ukraine really could have been a nuclear state, and only the combined pressure and bribes from both moscow and the US stopped them. Well, that, and the first president being a moscow puppet since his pro-Ukrainian opponent was assassinated during the election campaign :(