How Do Nuclear Bombs Work?

Extreme Tech: Explaining the unimaginable: How do nuclear bombs work?

So, this is a bit of a touchy question. From the beginning, even before the true destructive and killing power of The Bomb was clear to its own creators, one thing was certain: Nobody should ever acquire nuclear weapons if those who do have them can help it. That may be a hypocritical stance for current nuclear powers to take — but they’re live hypocrites, so whatever.

The justified fear over nuclear technology led to the creation of one of the weirder bits of legislation: the classification of “born secret.” This refers to the fact that, under a certain reading of the law, information on the design and function of nuclear weapons is considered stolen classified information even if you come up with it yourself.

As a result of this and more reasonable secrecy plans, the fine details of all but the earliest nuclear weapons are still unknown to the public. To be fair, those details wouldn’t help anyone but a state actor, one with access to nuclear material, enrichment facilities, tons of money, and at least a few world-class engineers, but it’s still probably for the best. So rather than learning how to actually build nuclear weapons (darn…), we’ll have to settle for a basic conceptual understanding of the two basic nuclear weapon types: the old, and the new.

WNU Editor: It is not as easy as most people would like to believe it is.