What if nuclear weapons never existed?

[no one]

Haven't you forgotten what would make TTL a dystopia? NO FALLOUT!!!

 

[trurle]

Maybe if Japan doesn't get nuked, they don't start pumping out all that wierd anime and convoluted-ass video game plot lines

It started from 17th century already. No relation to nukes at all.

Seriously speaking, no nukes mean likely no nuclear reactors, and no Solar System exploration beyond Jupiter. Solar panels are somewhat limited.

 

[Arkenfolm]

Maybe if Japan doesn't get nuked, they don't start pumping out all that wierd anime and convoluted-ass video game plot lines

Nah, it's mostly a product of the Westernisation of Japan accelerated by Japan's defeat in WWII. As long as Japan surrenders in a way that avoids a Decisive Darkness-type worst case scenario of Operation Downfall, Japan could easily still be the "weird Japan" we know.

Say Chicago suffers a runaway nuclear accident in 1942 and the US halts its nuclear research at that point. Every major power was working on it at that point so the USSR still develops them no latee than 1960. It also means the USSR potentially has two weapons the West can not counter without biological agents - nukes and the ICBMs to deliver them with.

Either way, simultaneous demonstrations, especially as part of the same weapons system, will make OTL's Sputnik scare look like Disney's Haunted Mansion. Look for biological weapons to be a primary emphasis in the West until we can catch up in a few years, though without as much of a reason to develop heavy bombers as OTL there may be problems for 5-7 years while everything catches up. Assuming the USSR does not explout the advantage, the West is more paranoid with R&D getting a -lot- more funding in the 60s and 70s. NASA certainly gets a Mars mission if not a Jupiter trip, maybe 2001 looks more like the movie of OTL in some ways but with better tech. It might also pish into popular culture to make academics and STEM programs more acceptable to the general populace given their now more obviously vital role in national defense.

We could easily still get ICBMs, it isn't a difficult technology since it's just bigger rockets. Maybe here we focus on space and get a network of space satellites able to rain death onto Soviet cities? They're just as deadly as heavy bombers and are impossible to intercept unless you shoot down the satellite itself, and too much of that would cause Kessler syndrome which would destroy both your own satellites and the enemy's satellites. This assumes the USSR would create their own satellite network as well. The amount of satellites to build that network (and supply it with projectiles to launch) might take some super-heavy launch vehicles like Sea Dragon to cost-effectively create (as Sea Dragon now has something to launch unlike OTL). It certainly isn't as good in terms of destruction as OTL's nuclear weapons, but combined with bioweapons, would be a pretty effective deterrent and at the same time, advances mankind's spacefaring capability quite a deal. Especially once you decide that it might be better to resupply the satellites from space resources and mine asteroids/the moon to get the metals to process into the projectiles fired by the satellites.

Not sure why this means you'd get a Mars mission from it, much less a Jupiter mission. Although with Sea Dragon type rockets being common, you certainly have a lot more capability than OTL.

 

[longsword14]

As I understand it until a calculation by some refugee physicists it was thought that the quantity of material needed for an A Bomb was seen as being too huge for it to be a practical option.

That is not true. The size of material could be calculated using feasible calculations, which I know the Germans did early on so I believe the rest could do too.
It might have been the question of using pure U 235 vs the yet not named Plutonium which was undecided.

 

[Dynasoar]

Longsword14,

In response to #18 by Derek Jackson, Longsword14 wrote:

That is not true. The size of material could be calculated using feasible calculations, which I know the Germans did early on so I believe the rest could do too.
It might have been the question of using pure U 235 vs the yet not named Plutonium which was undecided.

As late as July 1945 Heisenberg (Farm Hall Transcripts) indicated that he believed that the critical mass of U-235 could be as much as. several tons. In 1942 a German physicist calculated that the CM was much lower, but Heisenberg's erroneous estimate prevailed. Please click here for the Stanford report: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph241/wendorff2/CM which documents the foregoing. Nowhere was I able to locate German discussion of implosion, either to reduce the actual minimum U-235 CM of about 140 pounds for gun assembly (which was the only German method I could find) or to permit use of Pu-239, which was mentioned as a potential fissionable.

Dynasoar

 

[longsword14]

As late as July 1945 Heisenberg (Farm Hall Transcripts) indicated that he believed that the critical mass of U-235 could be as much as. several tons.

A quote in Walker's book (pg. 216)on the amount of critical mass required, which was supposed to be between 10 to 100 kg according the Farm Hall transcripts, and Army Ordnance Report, 1942.
Whether this estimate was made by the interned men before news of Hiroshima is something that I have not checked.
I made the mistake of taking at face value Walker's claim that it may have been Heisenberg. Not that any of it matters, unless they were gunning for the bomb around 1940-41, the industrial work was never going to be done.

That the Germans did not "get" the science behind the bomb is something that I have seen being repeated based on claims made by Goudsmit. A friend of mine showed me the back and forth in journals between Walker and Rose over this issue. Seems to me that getting the theoretical work done in the beginning was the easiest part.
A lot of questions could not be answered unless significant amount of engineering was done, something only the Americans did. This makes me think that the British were not getting the Bomb either. Their pushing the US for a practical bomb seems the biggest contribution they made.
How long do you think it would all have been delayed without Oliphant ?

Could you re-link the document please ? This one seems dead.
One of Walker's, has good information on how we know what the Germans knew :
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bewi.201701817/pdf

 

[Perkeo]

Seriously. Unless you totally stop all physics research in ALL educated countries, nukes WILL be developed.

Absolutely true. However, the question is not only if but also when.
The OTL timing of less than a decade between the basic scientific discovery and an actually functional device - that ‘s as implausible as the unmentionable sea mammal except that it happens to be OTL.
I guess that merely applying the rules by which technology normally works moves them into the 1960s, and further delays are all but impossible.

 

[Dynasoar]

Gentlemen,

I tried the link I presented in #25 and it didn't work for me either. Please try a search for "German nuclear program before and during WW 2". The Stanford U report comes up for me.

The Heisenberg estimate of CM prior to the Hiroshima drop is discussed. It appears that the powerful effect of implosion/compression on the reduction of CM was also not anticipated.

Dynasoar