North Korea Designed A Nuke. So Did This Truck Driver
It took decades, but John Coster-Mullen has pieced together specs for America's first nuclear bombs. Some believe his odyssey says something about North Korea's rapid nuclear progress.
by Geoff Brumfiel
Dec 26, 2017
4 minutes
This year, deep inside a mountain, North Korea detonated a giant nuclear bomb.
The weapon was powerful; at least ten times more destructive than the bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II. The North claimed it was an advanced, thermonuclear design. The test came just months after a report that some intelligence officials believed North Korea had successfully "miniaturized" some of its nukes in order to fit them on top of missiles.
The apparently rapid progress alarmed politicians and pundits, and worried average Americans, many of whom hadn't thought much about nuclear weapons since the end of the Cold War.
But a
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