Today in 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, publicly issued a bold and unprecedented three-stage proposal for eliminating all nuclear weapons worldwide by 2000. Most of President Reagan’s advisers rejected it as propaganda.
Twenty-one days after first putting out his detailed proposal, Gorbachev purchased a full-page advertisement in the February 5 edition of the New York Times (see above) to help get the word out, because—as far as he could tell—no one in the US government was taking it seriously.
Here is Gorbachev’s January 14, 1986, letter to President Reagan laying out the the rationale and objectives for his sweeping nuclear disarmament plan, sent one day before the proposal appeared as an advertisement in the New York Times: nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/22092…
After reading the letter, then-Secretary of State George Shultz rushed to the White House to tell Reagan that Gorbachev had proposed the global elimination of nuclear weapons by 2000. Reagan responded, “Why wait until the year 2000?,” presaging the Reykjavik Summit that October.
At the time of this offer, the United States and the Soviet Union respectively possessed 23,317 and ~40,159 nuclear weapons. Thanks to significant bilateral and unilateral reductions starting in 1988, today the United States has 5,600 (76% less) and Russia has ~6,257 (84% less).
Globally, in 1986 eight states controlled an estimated 64,449 nuclear weapons. Today, nine states control an estimated 13,150 nuclear weapons—with the United States and Russia possessing 90 percent of those weapons. That’s an 80% reduction over 36 years.

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More from @AtomicAnalyst

17 Jan
This morning in 1966 over Palomares, Spain, a B-52G bomber on airborne alert collided with a KC-135 tanker during a routine high-altitude refueling operation, killing all 4 tanker crew members and 3 of the B-52’s crew, and causing 4 1.45-Megaton B28 H-bombs to fall to earth. Image
Conventional high explosives in two of the three bombs that hit land detonated on impact, contaminating local tomato fields with plutonium. US troops dug up 1,400 tons of radioactive soil and vegetation, which was buried in an AEC dump in South Carolina. But we didn't get it all. ImageImage
Decades later, many USAF veterans involved in that cleanup effort are suffering and dying from a variety of ailments they link to being ordered to clean up the radioactive debris in Palomares without any protection. They seek recognition and medical care. nytimes.com/video/us/10000…
Read 11 tweets
16 Jan
Seventy years ago today, President Truman secretly approved the congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy’s so-called 50-150 expansion program, directing the Atomic Energy Commission to arbitrarily increase production of plutonium by 50% and highly enriched uranium by 150%. Image
Thus a decade later, the US nuclear stockpile soared from 841 bombs to 25,540 bombs/warheads. The JCAE—with the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s approval—urged an expansion in May 1951. AEC objected to an open-ended plan, arguing for specific military requirements. JCAE and DOD won out. Image
Although the 50-150 program was highly-classified information, JCAE chairman Senator Brien McMahon (D-Connecticut) infuriated the Atomic Energy Commission and President Truman by leaking word of it to the press immediately after meeting with Truman about it on January 17. Image
Read 5 tweets
15 Jan
Today in 1965, the USSR conducted the Chagan test, its first “peaceful nuclear explosion,” detonating a 140-kiloton device 584 feet beneath the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan that blasted a crater 1,339-feet wide and 328-feet deep, which it turned into a lake.
This official Soviet-era film documented the preparations for and execution of the Chagan test and the subsequent filling of the artificial lake. Be sure to watch for a close-up view of the device (at 0:21-0:42) and a man jumping in for a swim (at 4:00).
Here is a captioned HD excerpt of that same film courtesy of @atomicarchive.
Read 4 tweets
14 Jan
Today in 1986, Barbara Donachy’s art installation “Amber Waves of Grain”—depicting in ~35,000 ceramic miniatures every bomber, missile, submarine, warhead, and bomb in the US nuclear arsenal—opened in Boston after prior showings in New York, Washington, DC, Colorado, and Berlin.
Here is a short video about the installation:
And here is an article about it in the New York Times:
Read 5 tweets
13 Jan
About 1:40am today in 1964, a B-52D flying from Westover AFB, MA, to Turner AFB, GA, following a diversion from a CHROME DOME airborne alert mission, encountered severe turbulence in a blizzard, lost its tail section, and crashed on Big Savage Mt., ~17 mi. SW of Cumberland, MD. Image
The aircraft carried two war reserve 9-Mt B53 thermonuclear bombs. Pilot Maj. Thomas W. McCormick (42), ejected and trudged six hours through deep snow to a farmhouse. Co-pilot Capt. Parker Peedin (29) also ejected and was found by searchers more than 36 hours after the crash. ImageImage
Navigator Robert L. Payne (41) and tailgunner Melvin Wooten (27) also ejected but succumbed to sub-freezing temperatures attempting to find shelter. Bombardier Robert. L. Townley (42) did not eject and died on impact. The two bombs were recovered damaged but relatively intact.
Read 5 tweets
29 Dec 21
A view of the “Big Board” at Strategic Air Command, Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s.
You can see the “Big Board” in action in the special 1958 USAF film “Power of Decision” (starting at 4:06), which may be the first and only government film depicting the devastating mechanics of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union:
Read more about this unusual and little-known film here: nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb3…
Read 4 tweets

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