60 yrs ago today, “The War Game”—the shocking docudrama written/directed/produced by Peter Watkins—had the first of four invitation-only screenings at the British Film Institute’s National Film Theatre in London for members of the establishment after the BBC banned its broadcast on October 6, 1965.
For DOOMSDAY MACHINES this week, a post that has in some sense been in the making for something like a decade. It is a very close look at the "war plan," QUICK STRIKE, featured in the formerly classified 1958 film "The Power of Decision," produced for the USAF. doomsdaymachines.net/p/a-long-loo...
What a nuclear crisis looks like in NUKEMAP logs... these are hourly unique visitors over the last 24 hours, via Cloudflare.
Still, Alex Wellerstein, a historian who studies nuclear conflicts, said that even if Mr. Trump does not carry out the extent of his threat, the president’s violent rhetoric damages his credibility as a negotiator and his country’s standing in the world.
This is pretty much the mildest thing I said about the current situation... perhaps for the best, though... every time I talk to a reporter I come away feeling totally unhinged, because I'm being asked "normal" questions about totally insane things.
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/u...
The reason that the US President has the exclusive authority to order the use of nuclear weapons is because Truman set up the system along those lines after WWII. This is often depicted as either a power grab, or because in the nuclear age such decisions "must" be made quickly. This is false.
Image of a space launcher leaving a launch pad.
New Meridian-M communication satellite is in orbit russianforces.org/blog/2026/04... Substack: open.substack.com/pub/russianf...
A good take on the context of the war in Iran by Sara Al-Sayed for @ucs.org - The US–Israeli History Behind Their War Against Iran blog.ucs.org/sara-al-saye...
1. Hitting civilian power plants is a war crime
2. The US has been committing this war crime, to my knowledge, at least since the raid on Hanoi in which John McCain was shot down, which targeted an electric power plant in a dense urban setting giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
Post on the website: russianforces.org/blog/2026/03... and on Substack: open.substack.com/pub/russianf... (Subscribe to get these updates by email. It's free). 2/2
A shot of the Karelia submarine in 2019
Karelia Project 667BDRM/Delta IV submarine is preparing to resume service after a medium overhaul that included refueling (previous one in 2009). 16 Sineva/R-29RM missiles with up to 4 warheads each. (h/t @mrfrantarelli.bsky.social and @thelookout.bsky.social). Links follow 1/2
Uranium enriched to 60% is, of course, already a weapon-grade material in that it does not require further enrichment. A relevant paper from Science & Global Security. Lower enrichments, even HALEU, will work too. And design doesn't have to be implosion. scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/2025...
The Program on Science and Global Security invites applications for the Princeton School on Science and Global Security to be held July 27-31, 2026 at the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. Applications close on April 17, 2026 sgs.princeton.edu/school2026
The Russian way of war is not working either. Maybe it's war that is the problem?
"If the American way of war can’t work against Iran, a weak regime with a middling military, there is no chance that it will work in a much harder case — China, say." Excellent piece by Jacquelyn Schneider www.ft.com/content/9fae...
Satellite company @planet.com has announced a *14 day delay* to the release of imagery in the MidEast.
This will be a huge setback for those trying to verify events in the region.
Billions of dollars, decades of progress spent eliminating devastating diseases may be lost with undoing of USAID.
theconversation.com/billions-of-...
The British press, especially Daily Mail etc are best to be avoided. I had something like that (on a smaller scale) a couple of years ago. And they didn't even contact me...
Sorry, no. I haven't seen anything
Quote from a book (in Russian) that describes ethanol quotas in the Soviet military industry
It's only partially a joke that the entire Soviet military industrial complex was a ploy to get access to a legal source of ethanol... (From elib.biblioatom.ru/text/tremaso...)
In January @russianforces.org pointed out odd behaviour from the Russian ELS/TUNDRA satellite early warning system. The co-ordinated westward drift in apogee longitude appears to have ended in a co-ordinated manner. 🧵⬇️
bsky.app/profile/coas...
Apply now to the Scoville Fellowship! ⤵️
bsky.app/profile/scov...
The French nuclear test on May 1, 1962. It is known as the Béryl incident - apparently, there was serious release of radioactivity. But the film does not mention it at all. Maybe that was why it was made www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHMr... The explosion is at 11:45.
Of course. But it would be okay to say "at Lop Nur site" then. I wouldn't make much of it, but I thought it's interesting to note.
Note that Yeaw said "right near to Lop Nur site" www.youtube.com/live/LHEdJ5e... cc: @stevenjgibbons.bsky.social
There is a reason "only" is in parentheses.
Surprise, surprise--the military say that they are the (only) people to deal with the threat that they have identified.
There are some interesting details, like people in Morocco(?) watching B-52s. Or the idea of rescue missions in the enemy territory. Or "We failed in our mission. 60 million casualties."
Wouldn't it be correct to say that the war in Ukraine has shown that Russian "escalate to de-escalate" is not a thing?
A fascinating film from 1958, originally classified (h/t @wellerstein.bsky.social). The insanity of the scenario is staggering. Not to mention that the Soviet Union had, like, one and a half bomber. (In a way, it's anti-House of Dynamite, everybody is very calm.) youtu.be/jbSI6Tyc6AQ?...
