Those who’ve seen Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” might remember Edward Teller. Teller wasn’t satisfied with a regular ‘ole atomic bomb and wanted to go the extra step and make a hydrogen bomb. He got vetoed, thankfully, because everyone involved knew it was overkill — an atomic bomb is bananas enough. And besides, in a practical warfare scenario, conventional explosions are easy to use and will do the job, anyway. Humans are made of flesh and bone, right?
Eventually though, as the Atomic Heritage Foundation explains, Teller got his chance to do his experiments. And just like how a hydrogen bomb’s construction builds on an atomic bomb, Teller’s experiments built on the work of the Manhattan Project – it even used some of the same physicists still at Los Alamos following the end of World War II. All those involved worked bit by bit from 1946 to 1949 even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been bombed. President Harry Truman decided to accelerate the development of the hydrogen bomb come 1950, to the dismay of the Atomic Energy Commission.
Teller and company turned their attention towards isolated Pacific Ocean islands to conduct their tests. The small hydrogen bomb called the “George” proved successful in 1951, and got its sequel with the “Mike shot” in 1952 in the Marshall Islands. Finally, 1954 saw Operation CASTLE drop six hydrogen bombs in succession, including the largest, Bravo. One by one, other countries followed suit, including Israel, the U.S.S.R., The U.K, China, France, Pakistan, India, and North Korea.
