Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/History of nuclear weapons/archive1

History of nuclear weapons

This page gives a lot of good information on the subject. This page seems like one of those pages that the Wikipedia community can brag about. Therefore I believe that this page could be a featured artice candidate.

• Support, somewhat long, but looks like featured material to me. I am not necessarily voting fot this article because this topic should be featured, but it is a good article. File:PhoenixSuns 100.pngPhoenix2 03:28, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Strong objection – 1) The article is too long and cries out for a summary. There is absolutely no need to go into detail and delve on Marie Curie, Earnest Walton, Hitler being appointed etc. The entire prelude is unnecessary and should be summarised into a small paragraph and merged with the section below. 2) The text details too much information on USA and USSR (especially the former); and just a whisper on the other countries' nuclear history. It should be balanced between the seven stated nuclear powers and others who have given up or have undeclared arms. 3) The text on the Cuban missile crisis is not only superfluous but heavily tilted to the US POV. 4) Non P-5 countries labelled under "nuclear proliferation", is another blatant POV. Countries like India and Pakistan haven't signed the NNPT and India's nuclear weapons are indigenous. 5) CNN has an informative interactive map. Replicating a similar map here would well illustrate all countries' arsenals. 6) There's hardly any information on nuclear disarmament and the treaties are given a fleeting mention. 7) Nothing is mentioned on each country's nuclear doctrine: first-use or no-first-use. 8) Information is also lacking on the number of tests each country has conducted and the size of their nuclear arsenal. 9) Latest developments in Libya and Iran are not covered. 10) The titles of each section 'knot of war', 'power of the sun' can be toned down. 11) Dirty-bombs and the Al Quaida's plans are also not covered. I strongly feel that this article should be worked on from scratch, and articles of this nature should be kept in Peer Review for at least a week before nominating it here. =Nichalp «Talk»= June 28, 2005 06:21 (UTC)

• Comment: Just on a few of these points (as you can see below I don't think the article is at all "finished"):

1. I disagree that the prelude is unnecessary -- the context out of which they were created was desperately important to later conceptions about them. But more importantly for the article, the section is designed so that somebody with absolutely no knowledge of basic nuclear physics can quickly be brought up to enough speed to understand the rest of the article without having to fish around a lot of science articles first. Sure -- it could probably be made more concise in places, but I think the point of the section is justified.

2. While I agree there should be a more "international" approach, most of that will be going into later sections, especially those on proliferation and the India/Pakistan arms race. But we should not be surprised if the US/USSR end up dominating a lot of this history; they were the engines that drove a good deal of the work done by other countries and the models they emulated (with a few interesting exceptions, but again, that's for the proliferation section).

3. The Cuban Missile Crisis was the closest point at which weapons were almost used in an all-out war between two nuclear armed nations. It could perhaps be edited down a bit but I think it was a fairly important episode in the overall history, and is the "concrete example" for the dangers of brinksmanship. It only takes up three paragraphs at that, one of which is a famous Khruschev quote which I think wonderfully reflects upon the gravity of it all. And I don't think it is from an extraordinarily US POV, honestly; I went to some trouble to make sure that nobody was painted as a villian or hero (because honestly, in my own POV of it, it wasn't the nations that were the problem, it was the whole system they had set up).

4. India's program was not completely indigenous but that is not really here or there. There should be more on the India/Pakistan as I noted but I don't think it's POV to classify their role in the overall history of nuclear weapons as proliferation. What would you suggest it be? I don't see how not signing the NPT gets one around of the fact that they are part of the weapons "proliferating" to other nations, whether or not they officially broke any treaties or not.

5. I agree about the map.

6. Yes, another section for that is in the works. International agreements, proliferation, etc.

7. There is a huge amount on nuclear doctrine in general -- I am not sure it is a good use of space to iterate each country's specific professed policies. I do not think it is the place of the article to necessary state how things "are now" -- that is for articles like Nuclear weapons and the United States which is a "current" rather than "historical" article.

8. Ditto, more or less. I feel like this sort of specific information should be relegated to other articles, such as List of countries with nuclear weapons and nuclear testing.

9. Proliferation section, again. Or do you find that term too POV? ;-)

10. Okay. You come up with good titles, I will use them. These things do not grow on trees.

11. Proliferation/terrorism/"the state of things today"/etc. section to be added. Though I don't know what Al Qaeda's plans are -- do you? I know of some people who'd be interested. ;-)

So yes -- I am trying to improve this article, though it takes a lot of TIME. Each of those large sections is about four hours worth of work to write from scratch, to source, to find all sorts of little details so that it is not just overly general. And then it will need editing to make it more concise again. Anyone who wants to help is most welcome. You can see the article's talk page for more of that. --Fastfission 29 June 2005 23:20 (UTC)

The page is a whopping 53kb. Parts of it have to be summarised. The prelude is unimportant. It details the history of radioactivity, not weapons. If I was interested in reading about nuclear technology, I would rather read the main nuclear article. Just mention here when radioactivity was discovered and who thought of the use in warfare. That's all that's needed here. That was paragraph 1. Paragraph 2 should detail the WW2 and the Manhattan project. It should be a summary. Hiroshima and Nagasaki should follow it. Then the rest of the article, summarise it. Details should be kept in sub articles.

Granted, the two superpowers dominated the scene in the cold war, but extraneous details from the two should be summarised, and other countries' coverage increased.

The Cuban Missile Crisis: Refer to this phrase: On October 28, the Soviet ships stopped at the quarantine line and, after some hesitation, turned back towards the Soviet Union. Khrushchev announced that he had ordered the removal of all missiles in Cuba, and U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk was moved to comment, "We went eyeball to eyeball, and the other fellow just blinked.". It’s a clear US POV. The article on the Cuban Missile Crisis is much more neutral. This text gives a reader that the Soviets chickened out, when that was not the case. It was Kennedy who accepted the deal to remove the Jupiter missiles before Khrushchev called back the ships. No doubt the CMC is a very important point, but it should be a summary, again.

India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea's programmes: adequate coverage should be given to all nations.

Put details of the tests conducted & total warheads into a simple table. Basic doctrine can also be included. Eg. USA, Russia and Pak have first-use. India has no-first-use.

Yes, I find the term proliferation a POV.

Al-Quida plans to make use of dirty bombs. Local area, max damage. Iran's recent developments should also be included.

Cut the length of the article. Its too long. You can take your time, but this needs to go through the Peer review first. Its a little to hasty to feature this in the current draft. =Nichalp «Talk»= June 30, 2005 09:18 (UTC)

Listen, I am not going to write long replies here anymore, go to the article's talk page if you are interested in helping out or being the critic. I think my idea for the article will produce a far superior piece of work once it has all been put together and edited down. Yours would be a list of facts. I prefer coherent narrative history in "History of..." articles. It is meant to be able to be read straight through by someone with only a minimal knowledge of the subject, they will not have to scurry around Wikipedia for all of the explanations unless they want details. Wait until the page is done, or help with it, before you comment on what is or is not there. It is incomplete, as I have said. Proliferation simply means the acquisition of nuclear weapons -- I don't see the POV. When the UK got weapons, it was proliferation. When Pakistan got weapons, it was proliferation. No difference in my mind. I've never seen someone object to it as POV before, it is a common scholarly term. --Fastfission 30 June 2005 17:49 (UTC)

That's Ok. Just address my concerns and let me know once you've finished. =Nichalp «Talk»= July 1, 2005 13:36 (UTC)

• Comment: Currently the article says "See the main articles at History of physics, Nazi Germany, and World War II." Isn't "Main articles: History of physics, Nazi Germany, and World War II." the standard? - Mgm|^(talk) June 28, 2005 07:25 (UTC)
• Object the article is deeply Amerocentric. There is virtually nothing on the French, Chinese, and British nuclear programs. There is some good content on the Soviet program, but much less than on the American one. The section title ==Red cloud on the horizon== is also clearly expressing a Western POV. - SimonP June 28, 2005 15:12 (UTC)

• Ah yes, a section on these will be added. I am not sure why "Red cloud on the horizon" expresses a Western POV -- do you mean a non-Russian one? Why not? They too saw the idea of a Red Bomb as being on the horizon -- they just thought it was a positive thing! I think it is a Western POV which interprets a sentence like that as POV, but anyway, if you have a better title that is not something bland ("Soviet bomb") and does a little better for the narrative structure of the article, please feel free to add it. The article is meant to be able to read straight through, or in individual sections, which are thematic while also being chronological. But yes, the British, Chinese, French, etc. Except that on at least two of these not much is known, and how they have played out in the overall history in other than a relatively minor role is not clear to me (they don't embody any of the "big themes" in my reading of it, but I'm open to suggestions). The British are interesting because they wanted an independent deterrent from the U.S. The French are interesting because they felt it necessary to join the club also, and also because they tested quite a lot. The Chinese are interesting because they wanted to join the club and thought they could get help from the USSR but then they couldn't and so they just made it independently, more to ward off the USSR than the USA, but eventually also with the ability to ward off the USA. These are my readings, anyway -- all of which would fit under a "proliferation" section, i.e. "who else makes weapons and why", which is always a "reactive" sort of action (they make one, so we make one, so they make one, etc.). So anyway, any thoughts on that would be appreciated on the talk page. --Fastfission 29 June 2005 23:26 (UTC)

• Object. Per Nichalp and SimonP above. Phils 28 June 2005 19:35 (UTC)
• Comment. The article is still in progress, though I haven't had time to work on in awhile. Hence it immediately drops you off into nothing in the last two sections. And yes, it needs to be edited down a bit in places. It'll get there, but it's not there yet... if you look at the talk page, you can see my overall plan for it (I have been rewriting it from scratch over time) -- I'd love for contributors willing to help write new copy! --Fastfission 29 June 2005 23:20 (UTC)
• Neutral. Good article in whole, but some parts and pictures are redundant. --Deryck C. 2005-06-30 15:43:14 (UTC)