I bought this thinking that I would be reading a history of atomic weaponry. I suppose that is what I got but this book has given me so much more. You see PD Smith has written a history of all things radioactive. From the discovery of radiation, to the location of the first atomic reactor (a squash court at the University of Chicago) right through to... well I don't know yet. I've been reading this book for months now and I'm only two hundred pages in. I read many books at once and this one is a slow-burner. It is so laden with new information that I can only do a maximum of ten pages at once. That's why, 200 pages in and I'm reading about Einstein in Berlin in the 1920s, a time when the city was the cultural capital of Europe and also chock full with physicists theorising about splitting the atom.
In many ways this book is a magical mystery tour. It is completely different to what I was expecting but nonetheless is extremely readable, amusing, accessible, and contains a veritable font of knowledge and research.
As to what a doomsday weapon is. Nevil Shute wrote about the world after the detonation of a doomsday bomb in his seminal misery book, "On the Beach" which tells the tale of survivors of a nuclear war in Australia awaiting the inevitable, as a cloud of deadly radiation spreads across the world following the detonation of a cobalt bomb. Cobalt is highly radioactive and kills everything it touches and has a half-life of forever or something equally doom like. A doomsday bomb is a hydrogen bomb wrapped in cobalt. When the bomb detonates, the cobalt is thrown into the atmosphere and then carried around the world until everything dies. This can take a bit of time hence "On the Beach" which I can assure you is short on laughs. Nothing like a book where everyone dies.
Why would I want to read about this? Maybe to get an answer as to what is it that drives people to create weapons like these.
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