AH Challenge Earliest Possible Nuclear weapon

POD has to occur at or after Janurary 1st 1900 12:00:01.1. I seriously doubt you could get a nation to have one before world war 2 but lets see how early we can get it.

Bonus Points if it's not America who gets it.
 
Have Hitler fall down some stairs or die in WWI and Germany might be able to get the Bomb a few months earlier than America got it OTL. I'm not putting any bets on it though, America threw a substantial portion of its GDP at the thing and it still took however many years it was.
 
a major central powers victory in ww1

france and germany united economically afterwards (germany forces france into a trade union with them?) and pool their sceintific resources. no discrimination against jews. maybe have it by 1940 with proper funding. not particularly asb
 
Have Hitler fall down some stairs or die in WWI and Germany might be able to get the Bomb a few months earlier than America got it OTL. I'm not putting any bets on it though, America threw a substantial portion of its GDP at the thing and it still took however many years it was.

They'd probably have to be pooling their resources with Austria-Hungary too, to accomplish this.
 
I suppose you could have some serious space monkey business and have the H.G. Wellian atomic bomb. At least I think it was him. Anyway, he wrote about an atomic bomb before the Great War. He described it not as a city-buster, but as a normal yield bomb that would detonate continuously for days on end.

Anyway, even if American scientists knew exactly which avenue of research to take to develop the bomb (instead of investing in all of them) I don't think they could get The Bomb much earlier than they did. Six months earlier maybe?
 
POD 1917 - No unrestricted warfare - Russia still collapses and goes communist. France loses in 1918 and goes communist over the next few years. Britain turns to their empire and remains largely as historical with the Germans keeping their colonies of course. Germany (exhausted) is content with peace and dominance of Central Europe. Both German and AH become focused on internal needs after the depression begins. 1925-30 sees the Central Powers facing an alliance of Communist Russia and Communist France. With Einstein living in Germany and Leo Szilard in Hungary (since both don't need to emigrate to the US) and probably many other scientists, the Intellectual capital exists to see a 1935-38 nuke if international threat is deemed large enough to justify the investment.
 
POD 1914. Einstein gets an unsusal patriotic urge and joins the Gemran Army, but ends up getitng captured by the British on the Western Front in 1915. Realising his potential, they is immediatley sent of to Britian to be forced to work on secret projects, including a rudimentory Atomic Bomb. In other events, the war continues longer, with many more men being killed than in OTL. Eager to end the war in thier favour, Britian forces Einstein to work double time on his Atomic Bomb Project. By 1920, with no end still in sight on the Western Frotn, Einstien delivers and presents a very basic Atomic Weapon (Bit smaller than OTL Hiroshima), which, along with a high altitude version of the Handley Page V/1500, the British nuke Berlin, killing the Kaiser and forcing the Germans to Capitualte.

What do you think?
 
Einstein is utterly unimportant. While OTL he did author a letter to Rosevelt which helped the project, he was not actually involved. The best POD would be somewhere before 1900, I think. Lorenz developing Special Relativity first might help, as might faster development of quantum physics (OTL a fair number of the relevant physicists were involved in quantum research before and after the war). Faster development of computers might help a lot. It's actually hard to imagine a way to do it faster than OTL--the people they assembled were really, really brilliant. Pretty much everyone who was anyone.
 
POD 1914. Einstein gets an unsusal patriotic urge and joins the Gemran Army, but ends up getitng captured by the British on the Western Front in 1915. Realising his potential, they is immediatley sent of to Britian to be forced to work on secret projects, including a rudimentory Atomic Bomb. In other events, the war continues longer, with many more men being killed than in OTL. Eager to end the war in thier favour, Britian forces Einstein to work double time on his Atomic Bomb Project. By 1920, with no end still in sight on the Western Frotn, Einstien delivers and presents a very basic Atomic Weapon (Bit smaller than OTL Hiroshima), which, along with a high altitude version of the Handley Page V/1500, the British nuke Berlin, killing the Kaiser and forcing the Germans to Capitualte.

What do you think?

It completely ignores the industrial development needed to refine the nuclear material. I doubt the British have the resources (money) to invest given the toll WWI has taken. With American intervention, conventional warfare won't last that long and without the US, the Germans likely win before any such single handed development occurs.

Over an above that, the breakthroughs in the '20s and early '30s have not happened yet so I don't see that one man would know enough.
 

Germaniac

Donor
Nuclear fission wasn't even discovered until 1932 How an atomic could be built 1920 is quite ridiculous. Even the great Einstein couldn't do that.

Even if Germany looses the first world war they could considerably still gain an earlier bomb. ASB for a nazi Germany though. Germany had arguably the greatest single pile of Nuclear Physicists in the world. Lets say Germany goes Nationalist and begin rearming at a slower pace. More emphisis is placed on science and development and without the violent antisemitism Germany doesn't loose 14 of her best scientists they might have a chance. Although they still need to invade Czechoslovakia for the uranium.
 
Nuclear fission wasn't even discovered until 1932 How an atomic could be built 1920 is quite ridiculous. Even the great Einstein couldn't do that.

I agree - nobody could even imagine what they would have to work on at that time.

Even if Germany looses the first world war they could considerably still gain an earlier bomb. ASB for a nazi Germany though. Germany had arguably the greatest single pile of Nuclear Physicists in the world. Lets say Germany goes Nationalist and begin rearming at a slower pace. More emphisis is placed on science and development and without the violent antisemitism Germany doesn't loose 14 of her best scientists they might have a chance.

There has to be a VERY PRESSING need for the nuclear bomb project. A prospect (or at least fear) of losing a major war, for example, coupled with the right political input at the right place (like Einstein's letter). The trouble with 1940's Germany is geography: if they start losing any war with a neighbouring country in earnest they don't have the time nor ressources to complete the "Manhattan project" any more. This was the difference between Germany and USA in the WW2 context: USA, separated by oceans from any hostile power, had the luxury of both time and access to almost all crude materials within own territory.

Although they still need to invade Czechoslovakia for the uranium.

Why? There were significant deposit of Pechblende (uranium ore) both in Saxonia - OTL mostly depleted by the DDR - as well as in the southern Black Forest. In addition uranium-rich granite (up to commerciually extractable level) is found in Swiss Alps (Valais) and all over Sweden.
 
Anyway, even if American scientists knew exactly which avenue of research to take to develop the bomb (instead of investing in all of them) I don't think they could get The Bomb much earlier than they did. Six months earlier maybe?


Even after over 60 years, it's sad to see how little people actually understand about the Manhattan Project. :(

The scientists and engineers involved did know exactly what was required to build an uranium bomb. Some final calculations were needed regarding critical mass, but the uranium bomb was such a no-brainer that the design wasn't even tested before it was dropped on Hiroshima.

Manhattan Project invested all that time and all those resources in other avenues of research because they were profoundly aware of something of which too many people today have no clue: there wasn't enough U-235 on hand to make multiple bombs and there wasn't an "easy" way to get anymore.

In 1945, the Hiroshima bomb used something north of 95% of the world's then current supply of U-235.

The Manhattan Project primarily investigated and developed the production and use of fissionables other than uranium in weapons. Oak Ridge was built to produce the U-235 needed for Little Boy and the Hanford breeder reactors which produced the plutonium used in the Trinity and Nagasaki bombs. The "gun slug" mechanism used in the Hiroshima uranium weapon was quickly shown to be unsuited for plutonium, so the Project had to devise, develop, test, and produce another mechanism for plutonium use.

If the US foresaw the need for one bomb and wasn't interested in serial production of the weapons for years down the line, it's quite possible that an uranium bomb could have been dropped in late 1944.


Bill
 
Nuclear fission wasn't even discovered until 1932 How an atomic could be built 1920 is quite ridiculous. Even the great Einstein couldn't do that.

Perhaps a better WWI era POD would be the survival of Henry Moseley. As an experimental scientist, he could have done more to advance nuclear physics than Einsein. It's possible that if he had survived he could have discovered nuclear fission earlier than 1932.

Cheers,
Nigel.
 
Is it wrong to think that the ussr could have performed this if it had dedicated more of it's industry and scientists to the project earlier? Maybe if someone like Lenin or Bukharin keeps the NEP going resulting in a quicker economic growth for the USSR. I doubt the second world war would resemble anything in OTL though.
 
Top