Nth Country Experiment
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The Nth Country Experiment was an experiment which began in May of 1964 and was conducted at the Livermore Radiation Lab in order to see if a few capable young physicists with no prior weapons experience would be able to develop a working nuclear weapon design using only unclassified research, and basic computational and technical support.
The experiment ended on April 10, 1967, after only three man-years of work over 2 and a half calendar years. It was deemed by weapons experts that the team had come up with a credible design for the technically more challenging implosion style nuclear weapon. It is likely that they would have been able to design a simpler gun combination weapon even more quickly.
Due to the increased amount of publicly available resources regarding nuclear weapons, it is reasonable to assume that a viable weapon design could be reached with even less effort today.
see also: nuclear proliferation, nuclear warfare, nuclear strategy, nuclear terrorism
External links
- Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, University of California, Livermore, "Summary Report of the NTH Country Experiment," (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/NC/nuchis.html) W. J. Frank, ed., March 1967. (copy of original report in PDF format) (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20030701/nth-country.pdf)
- Article from Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2003/ma03/ma03stober.html)
- Article from The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,983646,00.html)