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Sharon Weinberger

Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld Hardcover – April 25, 2006

by Sharon Weinberger (Author)

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How did a fluke experiment in 1998, involving a used dental X-ray machine and a dubious sample of radioactive material, become the Pentagon’s pet weapons project? It had been rejected by one of the Pentagon’s most important advisory groups, but the Pentagon found an eccentric scientist who believed that a super “isomer” bomb could be built, and deliver the punch of a two-kiloton nuke packaged in a hand grenade. Ideologues at the Pentagon claimed that the Russians were in the process of building one of their own, and that the weapon was essential to the Pentagon’s arsenal.

Imaginary Weapons tells the story of the battle that ensued, pitting the nation’s leading nuclear physicists against the Pentagon’s top brass, and the military against nuclear arms control advocates, as funds and experiments for the “isomer weapon” miraculously reappeared even after the project had been shelved numerous times, even by Congress.

This book also illuminates the dangerous trend that the Bush administration continues to follow of putting politics before science. The bomb is imaginary, and the only explosion produced by the “isomer weapon” will leave a hole in the nation’s budget and a fallout of the nation’s best and brightest scientists.

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Print length

300 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Nation Books
Publication date

April 25, 2006
Dimensions

5.5 x 1 x 8.25 inches
ISBN-10

1560258497
ISBN-13

978-1560258490
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Sharon Weinberger
210
Hardcover
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3.8 out of 5

37 global ratings

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sav-e-buyer

Great read on a vital topic!

Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2014

Verified Purchase

Great book, both the science and tbe psudo-science are accurately described and engagingly presented. A perfect depiction of the waste and dangers when irrational belief trumps scientific consensus.

One person found this helpful

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Bob Miller

Fascinating Journey into Fringe Weapons

Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2014

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The book opened up a whole new world to me about fringe weapons and the crazy scientists who try to promote it. For some of these scientists, belief in their radical new weapons verges on religious belief-- despite evidence that the weapons won't ever work.
I think the author did a great job of describing these fantasy weapons that, if developed, would truly change the world.

2 people found this helpful

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Dave M.

Don't waste your time.

Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2006

Verified Purchase

I saw the author plugging the book on The Daily Show and she was quite engaging and the book sounded like a good read. But after reading the book I can't recommend it. It was very dry and reminded me of a college term paper that was very much padded for length. There is one central story and it's beaten to death over and over. This book would have made a very interesting magazine article, no doubt about that, but as a book there just wasn't enough of a story. And one other thing...the book is loaded with TYPOS!! Very distracting...I'd say I noticed six or seven typos and generally you shouldn't find ANY.

48 people found this helpful

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Eduardo

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2017

Verified Purchase

Excellent

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Gaston Marty

Very nice account of scientific failings

Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2013

Verified Purchase

I expected it would be about several weapons, but is basically only about one and the associated physics. Great read anyway.

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Howard Newcombe

Excellent portrayal of Defense Department nutjobs

Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2010

Ms. Weinberg's book is criticized in the one-star reviews as left-wing propaganda.
Well, let's get one thing straight: there are two distinct styles of investigative writing, the scholarly style and the journalistic style. The book is of the latter style, lacking notes and authoritative "sources". This is most likely why the book is decried as made-up. Not so.
In the prose itself, Weinberg names names and tells the facts straight as known to her. In the journalistic style there is not much that outside references can contribute because it is the author's credibility that undergirds the story's believeability. Basically, either you take her at her word, or you do not. And predictably, sadly, with such a political issue as the making of a new "superbomb" in the age of global terror, and with an ultra-right-wing administration of neocon zealots in control of the US federal governemnt, the believers and non-believers split along ideological lines.
So the two factions argue endlessly back-and-forth. One side must be right, the other must be wrong. And you can count on the black hats to obfuscate the issue with irrelevant minutae such that the impartial observer of the arguments goes mentally numb and unable to decide. It all comes down to who can bray the loudest and make the snappiest sound-bite.
Rather, I say, one should look for the "ring of truth" in the assertions made. For this, one would do well to review the existing literature and make comparative (and not associative) conclusions. One must gain an intuition as to the "look and feel" of what is generally regarded as truthful. To fairly judge "Imaginary Weapons" one must gain a sense of how these DoD people think and talk, and then determine if Weinberger's portrayal of these people seems plausible. If it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck, and quacks like a duck, well then it must be a duck!

At the top of the list is Teller's War by William Broad -- a chronicle of the tens-of-billion-dollar boondoggle that was Reagan's X-ray laser SDI "star wars" project. Next, The Pentagon's New Map by Thomas Barnett. While about policy rather than technology, this book provides a unique view into the dark world of Pentagon defense intellectuals. Evil yet strangely refined, making it yet eviler. Next, The truth about the neutron bomb by Sam Cohen. AKA the "Capitalist Bomb". A real eye-opener. Next, The Secret That Exploded by Howard Moreland. Goes to show how paranoid defense thinkers can get simply about the basic workings of their technologies of mass death. Next, Sacred Vessels: The Cult of the Battleship by Robert O'Connell. Demonstrates how organizational dogma can become entrenched over periods of decades by self-delusional feelings of grandeur. Last, Steven Weinberg's Glory and Terror: The Growing Nuclear Danger which shows how similar notions of nobility in military primacy led to the insanity of the superpower arms race.

Then there are the relevant topics in Defense Department idiocy for which books have yet to be written. Need I mention the "Men Who Stare at Goats" and the cold war research into "remote viewing" ? How about the $10 billion Project Lexington, the nuclear-powered bomber for which the simplest back-of-the-envelope calculations would have shown could not have possibly flown with adequate shielding for its crew? And then there's the "dust defense" of the 1960's in which we would detonate nukes on our own soil to throw up dust into the stratosphere to incinerate incoming warheads -- and carry downwind manyfold-lethal quantities of fallout on our own cities ?

The point of all this is -- if one cares to examine the total history of crank ideas produced by our defense thinkers, that one can gain an appreciation of Weinberger's contention that in the Cheney-Bush era of post-9/11 hysteria, DARPA did indeed spend our nation's money, time, and talent in pursuit of the crackpot idea of an isomer bomb. The book has the ring of truth, and so is to be believed.

3 people found this helpful

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Victor A. Vyssotsky

Hilarious, an atypical but not unique project account

Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2007

This book is in some ways unfair in its ridicule of the Defense Department's establishment, DARPA in particular. Unfortunately, the history of the quest for a hafnium isomer weapon is far from the only example of an ill-judged DoD project that proved hard to kill. In my own experience of dealing with various parts of DoD and the rest of the defense community for 40+ years, projects that are demonstrably unsound, either for scientific and technical reasons or because they would not meet the operational needs of our military, are proposed with some regularity. Most such are quickly killed; some are not. In the case of "hafnium isomer triggering", I believe the serious physicists who understood how flaky the idea and the evidence was failed to use the most effective ways of getting DoD to drop its support. To kill a project that's not worthwhile, one must be "inside the loop", having "paid one's dues" over a period of many years, so that one is trusted by reasonably senior members of the defense community. And then, if the people one needs to persuade are not themselves technically knowledgeable, one must explain the reasons the project is unwise by exposition couched in terms that fit the professional backgrounds and focus of the people one is addressing; not in technical or scientific discourse, unless one's audience is skilled in that domain, but rather in terms of military operational unlikelihood or unsuitability. I recall a case in which the deciding factor was the emphatic assertion by a 4-star who had previously had the command for which a proposed very expensive system feature was intended that he had not needed and could not and would not have used it if it were available. The only role that outside advisers played in killing that one was finding that individual and getting him to examine the proposal; once he had done that, he was indignant enough to carry the message to the top of the Pentagon hierarchy.

However, despite the fact that the hafnium isomer research is atypical in the kength of time during which a dubious idea is funded, there are various other projects that have a similar history. Indeed, perhaps the most unfair aspect of the book lies in its failure to emphasize that the amount of money involved was too small to get the top brass stirred up one way or the other. DARPA, in particular, has done some outstanding things and some very flaky things, and it's difficult to get anyone senior in DoD to come down hard on DARPA. But this book is well worth reading, because it is one of the few published case histories of how hard it is to get some DoD quest stopped if there are even a few "true believers" inside DoD supporting it. More spectacular examples exist, but for those it would probably be impractical to put the whole story together and get it published. So I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who is asked to provide outside advice on any visionary defense proposal; despite the book's defects, it offers valuable insight. While reading it, though, keep in mind the various changes in technology or in operational doctrine that have been rejected by the conventional wisdom of the "establishment" over the years, that have subsequently proved to be sound and necessary. Taking this into consideration can provide some perspective and a degree of humility to one's scientific or technical advice. If something is unsound, by all means say so, but think about whether a real need exists, and if it does, whether there is a way of meeting the need more likely to succeed.

10 people found this helpful

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Melanie T. Turner

just ok

Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2007

Verified Purchase

the subject matter was interesting

but i found the writer's attempts to create imagery and storytelling to be a little contrived and kind of a distraction.

also, when i first cracked the book open i was expecting a wide variety of diabolical weapons research, instead i got one weapon (albeit diabolical).

6 people found this helpful

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