Alex Wellerstein
@wellerstein.bsky.social
Nuclear historian. Professor at Stevens Institute of Technology. Visiting researcher at Nuclear Knowledges program, Sciences Po (Paris). Author of THE MOST AWFUL RESPONSIBILITY (2025). Creator of NUKEMAP. Blogging at https://doomsdaymachines.net.
Pinned
The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age by Alex Wellerstein
President Truman only received partial and misleading information ahead of the atomic bombing of Japan, according to this sensat...
www.publishersweekly.com
Publisher's Weekly has given THE MOST AWFUL RESPONSIBILITY a starred review: "It’s a remarkable act of reading between the lines and a dark warning about how decisions unfold in the halls of power." www.publishersweekly.com/9780063379435
Reposted by Alex Wellerstein
If it weren’t real life, “You didn’t give me a peace prize so now I’m declaring war on you” would be hilarious
Breaking News: President Trump told Norway’s prime minister that one reason he’s pushing to acquire Greenland is because he didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Denied Peace Prize, Trump Tells Norway He’ll Push for Greenland
In a text message, President Trump told Norway’s prime minister he no longer felt obliged to “think purely of Peace” and that the world would not be secure until America controlled the island.
nyti.ms
January 19, 2026 at 1:35 PM
If it weren’t real life, “You didn’t give me a peace prize so now I’m declaring war on you” would be hilarious
notice to Americans: the French are rapidly innovating in the burger space
January 18, 2026 at 3:50 PM
notice to Americans: the French are rapidly innovating in the burger space
"Wellerstein presents his story in clear, direct prose, ... 'The Most Awful Responsibility' is a well-written opus unpacking Truman’s—and America’s—complicated relationship with nuclear weapons." www.wsj.com/arts-culture...
‘The Most Awful Responsibility’ Review: Truman and the Nuclear Option
Harry Truman knew little about the plans to use atomic weapons when he took office. By that time there was little he could do but decide where to drop the first bomb.
www.wsj.com
January 16, 2026 at 6:54 PM
"Wellerstein presents his story in clear, direct prose, ... 'The Most Awful Responsibility' is a well-written opus unpacking Truman’s—and America’s—complicated relationship with nuclear weapons." www.wsj.com/arts-culture...
Here's another "book club" scam catering to authors. This one is superficially more compelling than the previous ones — it has the standard AI slop based on the book publicity, but it also links to a URL. Two things stick out. One is that all of the proposed dates are in the past...
January 16, 2026 at 11:05 AM
Here's another "book club" scam catering to authors. This one is superficially more compelling than the previous ones — it has the standard AI slop based on the book publicity, but it also links to a URL. Two things stick out. One is that all of the proposed dates are in the past...
Reposted by Alex Wellerstein
How much did Harry Truman actually know before the atomic bomb was first used in 1945? (Members Only)
Listen here: warontherocks.com/ep...
Listen here: warontherocks.com/ep...
January 14, 2026 at 5:00 PM
How much did Harry Truman actually know before the atomic bomb was first used in 1945? (Members Only)
Listen here: warontherocks.com/ep...
Listen here: warontherocks.com/ep...
Reposted by Alex Wellerstein
“The Most Awful Responsibility” and “American Experience: Bombshell”
"The Most Awful Responsibility" and "American Experience: Bombshell" - Lawyers, Guns & Money
Disclosure: Alex Wellerstein has been a friend for at least a decade. I followed the development of his ideas for “The Most Awful Responsibility” as he published them on his blog and elsewhere. I also discussed some aspects of them with him because of something I was writing at that time. “American Experience: Bombshell” overlaps […]
www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com
January 13, 2026 at 9:36 PM
these days, if it's not one thing it's another
January 13, 2026 at 9:31 PM
these days, if it's not one thing it's another
Reposted by Alex Wellerstein
OK, this is a rather long — but worth it!!! — post on DOOMSDAY MACHINES about perhaps one of the most amusingly bad books of Survivalist/Prepper fiction from the early 1980s. Get your flying car, cheetah, and Kearny fallout meter, and tuck in for some SURVIVAL… doomsdaymachines.net/p/you-too-ca...
You too can survive a nuclear war — if you have a flying car
The essential contradictions of Dean Ing’s Survivalist novel “Pulling Through” (1983)
doomsdaymachines.net
January 13, 2026 at 2:40 PM
OK, this is a rather long — but worth it!!! — post on DOOMSDAY MACHINES about perhaps one of the most amusingly bad books of Survivalist/Prepper fiction from the early 1980s. Get your flying car, cheetah, and Kearny fallout meter, and tuck in for some SURVIVAL… doomsdaymachines.net/p/you-too-ca...
Also, at some point I will need to do an entire post on post-apocalyptic toilets. There's something so... grounding in trying to talk about where you'd use the bathroom in a fallout shelter.
January 13, 2026 at 5:22 PM
Also, at some point I will need to do an entire post on post-apocalyptic toilets. There's something so... grounding in trying to talk about where you'd use the bathroom in a fallout shelter.
By the way, this post gave me the excuse to do something I'd been meaning to do, which was to throw together some code that will show you the dose rate (and doses) from fallout for a given point downwind of multiple (non-simultaneous!) detonations. Eventually NUKEMAP will do this, too...
January 13, 2026 at 5:02 PM
By the way, this post gave me the excuse to do something I'd been meaning to do, which was to throw together some code that will show you the dose rate (and doses) from fallout for a given point downwind of multiple (non-simultaneous!) detonations. Eventually NUKEMAP will do this, too...
OK, this is a rather long — but worth it!!! — post on DOOMSDAY MACHINES about perhaps one of the most amusingly bad books of Survivalist/Prepper fiction from the early 1980s. Get your flying car, cheetah, and Kearny fallout meter, and tuck in for some SURVIVAL… doomsdaymachines.net/p/you-too-ca...
You too can survive a nuclear war — if you have a flying car
The essential contradictions of Dean Ing’s Survivalist novel “Pulling Through” (1983)
doomsdaymachines.net
January 13, 2026 at 2:40 PM
OK, this is a rather long — but worth it!!! — post on DOOMSDAY MACHINES about perhaps one of the most amusingly bad books of Survivalist/Prepper fiction from the early 1980s. Get your flying car, cheetah, and Kearny fallout meter, and tuck in for some SURVIVAL… doomsdaymachines.net/p/you-too-ca...
So I get around 1 AI-slop e-mail per day praising my book and suggesting that they would LOVE to help promote it. The scumminess doesn't surprise me but the laziness does — clearly no human is checking these things to see if they're even for the right book/author. This one is pretty funny, though.
January 11, 2026 at 2:12 PM
So I get around 1 AI-slop e-mail per day praising my book and suggesting that they would LOVE to help promote it. The scumminess doesn't surprise me but the laziness does — clearly no human is checking these things to see if they're even for the right book/author. This one is pretty funny, though.
Reposted by Alex Wellerstein
Reposted by Alex Wellerstein
Curious about America’s nuclear missile silos?
Join our reporter @winkie.bsky.social and nuclear weapons historian @wellerstein.bsky.social for a Reddit AMA in r/Military, where they’ll answer your questions about their project “The Nuclear Sponge. Ask them anything here: bit.ly/3Z3w6Pi
Join our reporter @winkie.bsky.social and nuclear weapons historian @wellerstein.bsky.social for a Reddit AMA in r/Military, where they’ll answer your questions about their project “The Nuclear Sponge. Ask them anything here: bit.ly/3Z3w6Pi
January 8, 2026 at 5:38 PM
Curious about America’s nuclear missile silos?
Join our reporter @winkie.bsky.social and nuclear weapons historian @wellerstein.bsky.social for a Reddit AMA in r/Military, where they’ll answer your questions about their project “The Nuclear Sponge. Ask them anything here: bit.ly/3Z3w6Pi
Join our reporter @winkie.bsky.social and nuclear weapons historian @wellerstein.bsky.social for a Reddit AMA in r/Military, where they’ll answer your questions about their project “The Nuclear Sponge. Ask them anything here: bit.ly/3Z3w6Pi
I was going to post this French headline as an example of how the US is being seen from broad, but apparently they think of themselves as "predators," so it is not really editorializing
January 8, 2026 at 10:41 AM
I was going to post this French headline as an example of how the US is being seen from broad, but apparently they think of themselves as "predators," so it is not really editorializing
Aldrich Ames, C.I.A. Turncoat Who Helped the Soviets, Dies at 84
www.nytimes.com
January 7, 2026 at 6:36 PM
Reposted by Alex Wellerstein
Previously classified documents on US intelligence activities following #WorldWarII have emerged from decades of secrecy. Alex Wellerstein (@wellerstein.bsky.social), who studies the #history of #nuclearweapons, shares the fascinating insights he has uncovered through these unique primary sources.
January 7, 2026 at 11:14 AM
Previously classified documents on US intelligence activities following #WorldWarII have emerged from decades of secrecy. Alex Wellerstein (@wellerstein.bsky.social), who studies the #history of #nuclearweapons, shares the fascinating insights he has uncovered through these unique primary sources.
Reposted by Alex Wellerstein
Just finished the audio book for @wellerstein.bsky.social's magnificent new book The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age
share.google/0tQtmafnniWI....
Most unsettling to me was how normalized nuclear weapons appeared to be following WWII.
share.google/0tQtmafnniWI....
Most unsettling to me was how normalized nuclear weapons appeared to be following WWII.
The Most Awful Responsibility
\"I thought I knew the story but learned much that I didn’t know. Outstanding!\"— Richard Rhodes
“This is historical research at its best.” — Dan ...
share.google
January 6, 2026 at 5:55 PM
Just finished the audio book for @wellerstein.bsky.social's magnificent new book The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age
share.google/0tQtmafnniWI....
Most unsettling to me was how normalized nuclear weapons appeared to be following WWII.
share.google/0tQtmafnniWI....
Most unsettling to me was how normalized nuclear weapons appeared to be following WWII.
Reposted by Alex Wellerstein
Best podcast I've ever done. But that's because I interviewed @wellerstein.bsky.social!
January 6, 2026 at 5:13 PM
Best podcast I've ever done. But that's because I interviewed @wellerstein.bsky.social!
I had a really fun time working on the code that was used to make these fallout visualizations for this USA Today article. I will soon be incorporating some of it into the NUKEMAP and probably making a version of this "mass attack fallout mapper" for public use. www.usatoday.com/graphics/int...
Fallout maps show how an attack on nuclear silos would impact US cities
USA TODAY mapped the far-reaching potential consequences of a nuclear strike against America's 450 nuclear missile silos.
www.usatoday.com
January 6, 2026 at 5:11 PM
I had a really fun time working on the code that was used to make these fallout visualizations for this USA Today article. I will soon be incorporating some of it into the NUKEMAP and probably making a version of this "mass attack fallout mapper" for public use. www.usatoday.com/graphics/int...
I had a lot of fun working on this and being interviewed for it! Excited to see how the final product came together.
Coming on January 6 to American Experience on PBS: “Bombshell: The Fight to Control the A-Bomb’s Story,” about how the US news media worked with the government to manipulate the official narrative about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—and how a few journalists refused to play along.
Bombshell: Trailer | American Experience | PBS
Watch a preview of Bombshell.
www.pbs.org
January 5, 2026 at 7:09 PM
I had a lot of fun working on this and being interviewed for it! Excited to see how the final product came together.
Publisher's Weekly has given THE MOST AWFUL RESPONSIBILITY a starred review: "It’s a remarkable act of reading between the lines and a dark warning about how decisions unfold in the halls of power." www.publishersweekly.com/9780063379435
The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age by Alex Wellerstein
President Truman only received partial and misleading information ahead of the atomic bombing of Japan, according to this sensat...
www.publishersweekly.com
January 5, 2026 at 4:47 PM
Publisher's Weekly has given THE MOST AWFUL RESPONSIBILITY a starred review: "It’s a remarkable act of reading between the lines and a dark warning about how decisions unfold in the halls of power." www.publishersweekly.com/9780063379435
In 1867, Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico was executed by firing squad. His corpse was then embalmed and put on display.
I do not want to suggest that the people who did the embalming did a deliberately bad job. But they did not do what I would call a very good job. www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...
I do not want to suggest that the people who did the embalming did a deliberately bad job. But they did not do what I would call a very good job. www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...
January 5, 2026 at 4:16 PM
In 1867, Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico was executed by firing squad. His corpse was then embalmed and put on display.
I do not want to suggest that the people who did the embalming did a deliberately bad job. But they did not do what I would call a very good job. www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...
I do not want to suggest that the people who did the embalming did a deliberately bad job. But they did not do what I would call a very good job. www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
January 3, 2026 at 8:52 PM
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
Reposted by Alex Wellerstein
French Foreign Ministry: “The removal of Maduro from power and the violation of sovereignty constitute a serious act of aggression against the dignity of the Venezuelan people and their right to determine their own future.
January 3, 2026 at 3:02 PM
French Foreign Ministry: “The removal of Maduro from power and the violation of sovereignty constitute a serious act of aggression against the dignity of the Venezuelan people and their right to determine their own future.