The US launched an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base on 5 February in what’s shaping up to be a busy week of missile tests around the world. Much like other recent launches, the US military insists that this latest test has nothing to do with current events, as military tensions rise in the US, Russia, and China. Read More >>
You may have thought, “Hey, if we’re threatened by an incoming asteroid, we should just nuke it!” You’re not alone: a team of Russian scientists are working on a plot to do so, by detonating miniature asteroids in a lab. Read More >>
In mid-January, the Hawaiian state Emergency Management Agency sent out an erroneous text to all cell phones in the state warning of a “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII,” sending many residents into an hour-long panic as they ran for cover from what they feared was a North Korean nuclear bomb. Though it first appeared that bad design in the EMA computer system which sent out the alert was to blame, federal investigators later said the alert was intentionally sent by a now-fired employee who mistook an ongoing drill for a real attack. Read More >>
North Korea has one-upped President Donald Trump’s infamous diet Coke button—the one he uses to ensure he gets his reported 12 cans a day—by providing Kim Jong Un with a similar button that can launch nukes at anywhere in the US on his desk. Read More >>
North Korea’s infamous nuclear test site, a facility in Punggye-ri in Kilju County, has long been reported to maintain the standards one might expect for a pariah government low on everything but zeal and weaponry. Outsiders can only get a limited picture of the country, let alone the test site, thanks to its isolation from the rest of the world. But concerns have included tunnel collapses at the facility and the possibility Mount Mantap, where it is located, could implode under stress from repeated nuclear tests and release large amounts of radiation. Read More >>
Tensions on the Korean peninsula between North Korea and virtually every other country in the region continue to escalate in the wake of its possible detonation of a hydrogen bomb this weekend. Now the situation seems poised to escalate even further, with South Korean Defence Minister Song Young-moo investigating the possibility of having the US plant its nukes back on the demilitarised zone’s doorstep. Read More >>
Is America on the brink of all-out nuclear war with North Korea? Experts say no, probably not. But according to a new technical analysis of North Korea’s missile technology in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, even if it did come to that, the closest to the US heartland Kim Jong Un can strike is Anchorage, Alaska. Read More >>
In the last few months, North Korea’s ability to launch a warhead beyond its backyard has improved exponentially. Its rapid development of intercontinental ballistic missile tech has left many confused. Now a researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies claims he might have solved the mystery. North Korea may have received its new souped up ICBM tech from a factory in the Ukraine, and it probably did so very illegally. Read More >>
With the Cold War a fading memory, some nuclear powers have adopted strategies allowing for limited nuclear strikes. But a disturbing new study shows that even small batches of nukes can have disastrous environmental consequences on a global scale. Read More >>
Perth, Australia is the most remote major city on the planet. Which is apparently why it appealed to legendary director Stanley Kubrick. New research reveals that Kubrick was so concerned with the possibility of nuclear war that he actually planned to move to Perth in 1962. Read More >>
Bomb threats have been a part of American life since at least the 19th century. But in the 1970s the types of threats shifted dramatically. The people making bomb threats in the US started to claim their bombs had nuclear materials. By 1975, the US started a new task force to deal with the threats, and we at Gizmodo got our hands on a film that explains what this secret group of nuke-hunting police did. Read More >>
From 1945 until 1962, the United States conducted 210 atmospheric nuclear tests — the kind with the big mushroom cloud and all that jazz. Above-ground nuke testing was banned in 1963, but there are thousands of films from those tests that have just been rotting in secret vaults around the country. But starting today you can see many of them on YouTube. Read More >>
Hooray. If you live south of the Equator or in any of the countries that light up green in the map above, you’re good. Keep on living there because you don’t squat next to any nuclear weapons. But if you’re in the countries painted red — like the United States, Germany, Russia, China, India, etc. — you might live closer to a nuclear bomb than you think. Read More >>
A commercial diver working near Haida Gwaii off Canada’s west coast has spotted a strange object on the seafloor that bears a striking resemblance to a nuclear device lost from a US B-36 bomber that crashed in the area 66 years ago. The Canadian government is sending naval ships to investigate. Read More >>
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