Summary of Annie Jacobsen's The Pentagon's Brain

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 On March 1, 1954, a group of American scientists entered a time when a machine they had created could trigger the end of the world. The most powerful bomb in the history of the world was about to be detonated just nineteen miles away. No human being had ever before been this close to the kind of power this bomb was expected to deliver.

#2 The men on the USNS Ainsworth heard O’Keefe’s voice loud and clear outside, standing beside Freedman. These were the physicists who had designed and built the bomb. They were here to witness the results of their engineered creation.

#3 The Teller-Ulam scheme meant that the hydrogen bomb was designed to hold itself together for an extra hundred-millionth of a second, allowing its hydrogen isotopes to fuse and create a chain reaction of nuclear energy, called fusion, producing a potentially infinite amount of power.

#4 The scientists were shocked by the size of the explosion. The mushroom cloud was forty miles wide, and the fallout was headed in an easterly direction, directly for Enyu Island.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jul 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822543591

IRB Media

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Insights on Annie Jacobsen's The Pentagons Brain

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 13

Insights from Chapter 14

Insights from Chapter 15

Insights from Chapter 16

Insights from Chapter 17

Insights from Chapter 18

Insights from Chapter 19

Insights from Chapter 20

Insights from Chapter 21

Insights from Chapter 22

Insights from Chapter 23

Insights from Chapter 24

Insights from Chapter 25

Insights from Chapter 26

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

On March 1, 1954, a group of American scientists entered a time when a machine they had created could trigger the end of the world. The most powerful bomb in the history of the world was about to be detonated just nineteen miles away. No human being had ever before been this close to the kind of power this bomb was expected to deliver.

#2

The men on the USNS Ainsworth heard O’Keefe’s voice loud and clear outside, standing beside Freedman. These were the physicists who had designed and built the bomb. They were here to witness the results of their engineered creation.

#3

The Teller-Ulam scheme meant that the hydrogen bomb was designed to hold itself together for an extra hundred-millionth of a second, allowing its hydrogen isotopes to fuse and create a chain reaction of nuclear energy, called fusion, producing a potentially infinite amount of power.

#4

The scientists were shocked by the size of the explosion. The mushroom cloud was forty miles wide, and the fallout was headed in an easterly direction, directly for Enyu Island.

#5

The bunker began to move, and O’Keefe and his colleagues could feel the air escaping. It was soon discovered that the water was coming from burst water pipes. When O’Keefe turned on his Geiger counter to check for radiation, the needle spiked.

#6

The Castle Bravo test was the first thermonuclear bomb test, and it was extremely destructive. It was 250 percent more powerful than the scientists who had designed it. It became known as the worst radiological disaster in history.

#7

The secret decision to engineer the thermonuclear, or hydrogen, bomb began five years earlier when, on August 29, 1949, the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb. Suddenly, the United States lost the nuclear monopoly it had maintained since World War II.

#8

There was a group of American nuclear scientists who were committed to engineering a hydrogen bomb. They were led by Edward Teller and his mentor, the American-born Ernest O. Lawrence. They had extraordinary power and influence in Washington, at the Pentagon and the Atomic Energy Commission.

#9

In January 1950, President Truman authorized a crash program to build the hydrogen bomb. The Joint Committee on Atomic Energy decided that a second national nuclear weapons laboratory was needed now, in order to foster competition with Los Alamos.

#10

The first three tests at the Nevada Test Site were failures, and it looked like the Livermore laboratory might be closed down.

#11

The American scientists at the Radiation Laboratory were given the task of creating a 10,000-megaton bomb. They were required to compete against equally brilliant men, and that is what made America great.

Insights from Chapter 2

#1

John von Neumann, a defense scientist, was the superstar of the 1950s. He was a gentle and kind man, and loved to drink, play loud music, attend parties, and collect toys.

#2

John von Neumann