Zachariah

Banned
With a POD no earlier than 1900, when's the earliest that you could, A), possibly, and B), plausibly, have a nation develop and detonate the world's first nuclear warhead? Would it be both possible and plausible for any nation to develop the world's first nuclear weapon quicker and earlier than the USA did IOTL? How much would it stretch plausibility to, let's say, have the world's first nuclear warhead detonated successfully a decade or earlier than OTL's Trinity test (July 1935 or earlier)? And if not the USA, who else could potentially pull this off?
 
Short answer: the US doing it 6 months earlier is 'easy'. One year earlier is probably possible. No one else has a chance. (if France doesn't fall, see Blunted Sickle, a Franco-British-Commonwealth bomb is possible in '46, say, but not earlier.)

Longer answer: yeah, you could move things forward a little, but there's so much physics that needs to be done first that it's really, really hard to move it forward much. You have to discover neutrons. Realize about isotopes. Find natural fission. Etc. Etc.

Longest answer: See some of the following
WI: Nuclear weapon in WW1 era?
WI france had developed nuclear bombs in the run up to the Second World War
WI: Nukes invented before WW2
Earliest possible use of nukes?
WI Nukes invented earlier?


Interestingly, I could have sworn there were even more threads on the topic, but I can't find them
 

Maoistic

Banned
No earlier than the 1930s. Even if quantum physics, the theory of relativity and the uses of uranium were known by the Victorian period some 60 years earlier, it still would have been impossible to build a nuclear bomb. You need mass industrialisation and a large working force in order to make the nuclear bomb possible.
 
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