IVY-MIKE: The 1st Hydrogen Bomb - Tapa dura

On Saturday, November 1, 1952, a momentous event in history took place in total secrecy - the United States detonated the world's first "Super Bomb" at Eniwetok Atoll, Marshall Islands. A thermonuclear device, codenamed Mike, demonstrated the capability of producing a fusion reaction on earth, a process similar to that which powers the sun. This book is a riveting historical account of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's involvement in that test, because of uncertainty that Mike might blow a section of the atoll away, thus generating a dangerous tsunami. Three days later, a natural earthquake generated a large tsunami in the northwestern Pacific. The author conjectures whether it would have been deemed coincidental had the real tsunami occurred three days earlier.

PREFACE On Saturday, 1 November 1952, at 0715 hours local time, and three days before General Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected President, the United States detonated the world's first "Super Bomb" at Eniwetok Atoll, Marshall Islands. This is an accurate historical account of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's participation in that test, an unpublicized event that changed for all time the lives of every person on earth. The first half of the book treats the conception and design of the Super at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, during which Scripps's assistance is sought when a late development indicates that the Mike's energy release might substantially exceed design expectations, thus mandating a drastic expansion of the Test Operation. The latter half describes the frantic efforts of 12,000 military and scientific personnel, living on a small Pacific atoll, to prepare for and conduct a test of Mike, the first thermonuclear device, to measure its effects, and to escape radioactive fallout from a mushroom cloud three times as large as the Atoll. The account is narrated by a fictitious participant who was in a position to know everything. But from this and future events, I came to know all of the players in this drama and the details of their experiences. I have preserved the names and titles of principal Task Force officers and scientists, and employed fictitious names for other participants. The entrapment of Jack Clark in the firing bunker actually occurred two years later during the BRAVO shot of Operation CASTLE. W. G. Van Dorn La Jolla, California


Book Review " IVY-MIKE is a remarkable book. William Van Dorn has managed to combine a comprehensive description of the major historical activities associated with the Mike test with enough fictional narrative to make it appealing to the non-scientist:"

-----Harold M. Agnew, Director, Los Alamos Nationa