No nuclear bomb

[zeppelin247]

I was wondering what would happen if people like Einstein and all the other original nuclear scientists never came up with the theories needed to create a nuclear bomb?
Would the USA have needed to invade Japan?
How would the cold war go with no nukes? Would it go hot?
What about India and Pakistan with no nukes to stop further wars?
What about the Iraq war with no nukes to worry about and no Iran crisis at the moment?

This is my first forum sorry if it is a bit ASB

 

[Blair152]

I was wondering what would happen if people like Einstein and all the other original nuclear scientists never came up with the theories needed to create a nuclear bomb?
Would the USA have needed to invade Japan?
How would the cold war go with no nukes? Would it go hot?
What about India and Pakistan with no nukes to stop further wars?
What about the Iraq war with no nukes to worry about and no Iran crisis at the moment?

This is my first forum sorry if it is a bit ASB

There was a story in Astounding Science Fiction, now Analog, that could be
called alternate history today. I forget the title of the story but its premise was that a very conservative, and religious, America, didn't allow the Bomb
to be built, and World War II ended in the same bloody way in the Pacific.

 

[Workable Goblin]

No worries mate, it's a reasonable enough question. After all, nuclear weapons have probably been one of the most influential developments of the last 60 years.

However, I'm afraid it's not very likely that Einstein, Bohr, Meitneir, etc. wouldn't come up with the ideas needed for a nuclear weapon. Oh sure, those people specifically might not, but like most scientific breakthroughs there were many groups racing for the same goal at the same time. If they didn't, someone else would have, and then it's obvious enough to most every nuclear physicist that a bomb is possible--they just need to figure out how to build it.

Now, you could have nuclear weapons not developed in time for World War II (perhaps a slightly slower development of the pre-war theories and research), which could lead to an interesting TL; reactors before bombs, which would have a lot of ramifications. Not to mention, of course, the ramifications on World War II itself and the immediate post war world! Depending on how long it takes in the peacetime environment to get everything together, you might (say) see a Soviet invasion of Western Europe...they won't be secure until they dominate Europe utterly, after all...and the Westerners aren't any big military challenge compared to Mother Russia, as long as the coast can be secured before the US shows up in force.

 

[Astrodragon]

I was wondering what would happen if people like Einstein and all the other original nuclear scientists never came up with the theories needed to create a nuclear bomb?
Would the USA have needed to invade Japan?
How would the cold war go with no nukes? Would it go hot?
What about India and Pakistan with no nukes to stop further wars?
What about the Iraq war with no nukes to worry about and no Iran crisis at the moment?

This is my first forum sorry if it is a bit ASB

Unfortunately it has to be ASB, as the bomb possibilites come directly out of the laws of physics.
The only way to stopping bombs (not delaying them a bit, thats possible), is to change the whole idea of Physics research from 1900 onwards (maybe even earlier), basically stopping nearly all of it. I just cant see that hapenning worldwide, short of a close-ELV of some sort

 

[The Kiat]

The physicists could sabotage it, but that would only delay it.

As for how would a Cold War work without The Bomb. It wouldn't. The Soviets never bothered invading Western Europe because they knew some cowboy in the White House would go bananas. Without the threat of being wiped out, they could have gone ahead with attacking West Germany if they saw reason to do so.

No nukes would screw up <insert shadow government here>'s plans for the region.

Pakistan is unstable enough that extremists have a slight chance of pulling off a coup, and they would attack India with or without nukes. Or they would give them to terrorists, and that would not end well, especially for Pakistan.

 

[AmIndHistoryAuthor]

The only way I could see is if somehow the Earth simply doesn't contain much in the way in nuclear material, or it's all very inaccessible. And not being a geologist, I couldn't tell you if that idea is itself utterly ASB or not.

You might then see chemo and bio weapons taking nukes' place. And then proliferation would be much harder to stop. Imagine a Cold War where not just the USSR and China but even small powers like N Vietnam and Cuba have them.

Invasion of Japan in WWII? Well, there are already very long threads in here on the topic, and pretty much each side is very set in their opinions. But my own, like much of the US military leaders at the time, is that an invasion of Japan isn't even needed, and other than conventional weapons esp aren't. It's a bunch of islands with no oil, and no navy or air force by that time, with a peace faction within the govt.

And in Iraq, as most of us know or should, the threat of either nukes or chemo or bio weapons was pure hype designed (successfully) to use fearmongering to get us to go to war.

 

[Workable Goblin]

The only way I could see is if somehow the Earth simply doesn't contain much in the way in nuclear material, or it's all very inaccessible. And not being a geologist, I couldn't tell you if that idea is itself utterly ASB or not.

It's probably not totally ASB that a lot more of the Earth's uranium is isolated in the lower mantle, but it would have some pretty severe butterflies associated.

 

[zeppelin247]

yes i do know they were not real but that was the pre text used to invade si what else would they have done

 

[CalBear]

I believe that this has been discussed a number of times. You may want to search for the different threads. There are, IIRC, some pretty good conversations with a LOT of detailed analysis.


At the time (June 1945 onward) there was a growing consensus that actually invading Japan would be a REALLY bad idea. About the only major player who was still in favor was, of course, MacArthur. The Navy was against it, as were the Marines, and General Marshall was leaning strongly away from the invasion option. Okinawa had been a bloody mess, and the Japanese were known to have prepared the same sort of defenses on Kyushu, including a rather astounding 11,000 Kamikaze aircraft.

What is most probable, although MacArthur's ability to get his way can not be discounted, is that the Japanese are permitted to starve while being mercilessly bombed by everything from B-29's to Hellcats. Japan winds up much more damaged by the time she falls over, with many times the number of dead and maimed civilians that existed IOTL.

 

[DuQuense]

I started a No A-Bomb Tread in ASB's once, POD, all Uranium changes to lead on Septembre 1 1939 [Odd date]
While I had no problem with the Japanese Invasion [March 1946]. I couldn't figure out the politics of Eastern Europe. With a Russia still involved in the Pacific war.

 

[Eurofed]

What is most probable, although MacArthur's ability to get his way can not be discounted, is that the Japanese are permitted to starve while being mercilessly bombed by everything from B-29's to Hellcats. Japan winds up much more damaged by the time she falls over, with many times the number of dead and maimed civilians that existed IOTL.

My expectation as well.

 

[Dan Reilly The Great]

The thing about atomic weapons is that the only reason why they were developed when they were was as a result of allied fear of the possibility that the Germans would get them first which was largely unfounded. If you remove this fear you could effectively postpone the developement of nukes well into the sixties, maybe even early seventies.

 

[Zacoftheaxes]

Just get a good alternative and maybe people can forget about it. Maybe the Bat Bomb gets produced faster and proves highly sucessful?

 

[juanml82]

Thande wrote a good post in another thread about how unlikely the nuclear bombs development actually was.
Just by removing WWII, the development of nuclear bombs can easily be delayed for more than 20-30 years. Delay another little bit the theorical advances in that field, maybe with a wrong theory which goes along for too much time and, who knows, you may end up with a first nuke in the '80s

 

[StevoJH]

There was a story in Astounding Science Fiction, now Analog, that could be
called alternate history today. I forget the title of the story but its premise was that a very conservative, and religious, America, didn't allow the Bomb
to be built, and World War II ended in the same bloody way in the Pacific.

What, so the british don't send their data and scientists to the US and finish the program themselves?

Maybe the UK drops the bomb on Japan and ends the war.

 

[CalBear]

What, so the british don't send their data and scientists to the US and finish the program themselves?

Maybe the UK drops the bomb on Japan and ends the war.

The UK simply didn't have the $40 billion dollars lying around that was needed to develop the bomb (not to mention the almost unlimited electrical power required, hydro-electric dams are a GOOD thing).

Then there is the addtional $40 billion needed to develop a B-29 so the RAF could cart the weapon 1,500 miles one way to the target (and then fly back an addtional 1,500 miles).

Only country on the Planet that could afford both projects was the United States.

 

[StevoJH]

The UK simply didn't have the $40 billion dollars lying around that was needed to develop the bomb (not to mention the almost unlimited electrical power required, hydro-electric dams are a GOOD thing).

Then there is the addtional $40 billion needed to develop a B-29 so the RAF could cart the weapon 1,500 miles one way to the target (and then fly back an addtional 1,500 miles).

Only country on the Planet that could afford both projects was the United States.

On #1
Any money spent in the UK, Canada or Australia could probably effectively be written off, at least until after the war. If it was done in Australia, bring forward the Snowy River Scheme.

On #2.
Avro Lincoln?
If worst comes to worst, is it possible to aerial refuel one of these things from a probe forward of the cockpit or just above and behind?

 

[Astrodragon]

The UK simply didn't have the $40 billion dollars lying around that was needed to develop the bomb (not to mention the almost unlimited electrical power required, hydro-electric dams are a GOOD thing).

Then there is the addtional $40 billion needed to develop a B-29 so the RAF could cart the weapon 1,500 miles one way to the target (and then fly back an addtional 1,500 miles).

Only country on the Planet that could afford both projects was the United States.

It was $20B for both the Uranium and Plute bombs, Calbear.
Just the Plute bomb could have been done for around $500M

And I suspect a Lanc could have been modded to carry one as far as germany (if not East Germany/Poland). Or there is the air-air refuelling option tried out in 1939...

 

[f1b0nacc1]

The Minsky option...

We have discussed the possibilities of the Bomb either being delayed in development (no WWII = no Manhattan Project, etc.) or actively supressed, but what about a simpler option that doesn't require ASB?

In the field of AI, there is a great story about Marvin Minsky, one of the giants of the field, who concluded that neural networks were not practical. Without getting too deeply into the weeds, Minsky was utterly wrong (and to his credit, acknowleged this much later), but such was his reputation and the force of his argument, that no serious research occurred in the field for decades. Minsky wasn't trying to supress anything, but that was the effect of his error...

Now AI uses reasonably cheap hardware, and testing the propositions is easy and can be done by almost anyone. The propositions behind most nuclear physics are insanely expensive to test, particularly if they are somewhat subtle. Keep in mind that the most expensive part of the Manhattan project was not building the bomb (and by the way Astrodragon, the Uranium bombs were MUCH cheaper to build than Plutonium ones...I believe you have your cost estimates reversed), but figuring out whether it could be built in the first place, and if so, what would critical mass be. Hence if there was reason to believe that nuclear bombs were a dead end, it is possible that (absent some incredibly compelling motivation) anyone would be willing to commit the resources necessary to find out that this assumption was mistaken and that a bomb COULD be built.

To make an (already far too long) story short...what if one of the 'giants' of nuclear physics simply made a (convincing) error and concluded that nuclear bombs couldn't be built? Heisenberg came close to this (and it crippled the German program, though there is some reason to believe that this was more misdirection on his part than a mistake), and it isn't impossible to imagine Fermi or Mertiner making the same sort of error. Remember, the mistake could be a subtle one, and the impact might be that the belief was reactors would work, but bombs wouldn't, or something of that sort.

This gives us a world with the laws of physics and geology untouched, no conspiracy, and no bombs for a very long time, if ever....

 

[CalBear]

It was $20B for both the Uranium and Plute bombs, Calbear.
Just the Plute bomb could have been done for around $500M

And I suspect a Lanc could have been modded to carry one as far as germany (if not East Germany/Poland). Or there is the air-air refuelling option tried out in 1939...

A Lancaster could have carried it to Berlin. Except the idea I was responding to was to drop it on Japan.