Jughead is Real: The Truth About Lost's H-Bomb

This article was co-authored by Alexandra Bell, Research Associate at Ploughshares Fund.

The giant hydrogen bomb detonated on the ABC hit show, Lost, in its season finale this week really existed. It really was called "Jughead." Constructed in 1954, it was never actually exploded, leaving space for Lost's writers to whisk it away to the mystery island.

As fans of Lost, we were amused to have the 40,000-pound thermonuclear device make its appearance in season five of the show. Jughead, first seen dangling from a tower early in the season, is detonated in the finale as the survivors attempt to change their history. The effect of a nuclear explosion on time travel is a bit outside our expertise, but Lost's writers got the basic facts of nuclear weapons right. These guys did their homework.

Jughead Dissected

The United States built thousands of hydrogen bombs in the 1950s. Each, many times more powerful that the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Unlike atomic bombs that get their energy from fission, or the splitting of atoms, hydrogen bombs get their energy from fusion of hydrogen atoms. This is the basic energy force in the universe. It is what powers the sun and all stars. There is no theoretical limit to how big we could make a hydrogen bomb. It is just a matter of how large a quantity of hydrogen isotopes we wants to fuse, though the logistics become more difficult. In 1961, the Soviets planned to test a 100-megaton bomb (equal to 100 million tons of TNT), but settled for the 50-megaton Tsar Bomba. It was the largest bomb ever tested, twice the size of the biggest U.S. test.

The real-life Jughead was indeed the hulking behemoth depicted in Lost. It was designed to explode with a force of 8 million tons of TNT, or over 500 times more force than the Hiroshima bomb.

As accurately depicted in Lost, a fusion weapon like Jughead has two or more nuclear components in the same device that are ignited in stages. As Princeton physicist Frank Von Hippel likes to say, "Within each big bomb is a little bomb."

Although it is not clearly explained in the show, the Lost character Sayid takes out what would be the smaller fission "primary" that would be used to create the heat, pressure and radiation necessary to compress and ignite the separate fusion secondary, vastly increasing the explosive yield. This is the bomb he takes to the Swan site.

Would it look as compact as the device Sayid tucks in his backpack? Probably not, but it would not be too much bigger. Could he actually carry it without fear of radiation? Yes. As physicist Ivan Oelrich, also a Lost fan, details:

"People think that the fuel that drives an atomic bomb must be intensely radioactive, but in fact it's not. It becomes radioactive after the reaction."

Of course, the story is not entirely accurate - you cannot trigger a chain reaction by beating an atomic bomb with a rock, though props to Juliet for really following through. We can grant the writers of Lost a little leeway, since time travel and smoke monsters are not exactly hard physics either.

Nuclear Nuts

The fantasy and reality of Jughead illuminate the absolute insanity of the Cold War arms race. (For the best historical account, check out the Richard Rhodes trilogy: The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Dark Sun and Arsenals of Folly.)

While Albert Einstein and some members of the Manhattan Project, like chief scientist Robert J. Oppenheimer, were appalled at what they had created, others like Edward Teller pushed to produce the H-bomb. Oppenheimer and the entire scientific General Advisory Committee saw it as a weapon of genocide. They told President Truman:

"The use of this weapon would bring about the destruction of innumerable human lives; it is not a weapon which can be used exclusively for the destruction of material installations or military or semi-military purposes. Its use therefore carries much further than the atomic bomb itself the policy of extermination of civilian populations."

Truman, fearful of the political reaction to a US decision not to build the new bomb if the Soviets did, overruled the scientists. That is how we (and the rest of the nuclear powers) came to create these colossal Jugheads, capable of obliterating entire cities.

We went nuclear nuts in the 1950s, increasing the U.S. arsenal from 200 atomic bombs in 1949 to over 20,000 mostly hydrogen bombs by 1960. The Soviets raced to catch up, with both countries peaking at about 65,000 bombs in 1986.

The good news: we have cut the number of nuclear weapons by 63 per cent since then. The bad news: we still have around 23,000 left. Lost, intentionally or not, gives us the essential problem: the longer the bomb hangs around the island, the more likely it is that someone's gonna use it.

We have been exceedingly lucky to get this far without an intentional or accidental use of nukes. So the next time you think about how crazy Lost is, just think about how insane our nuclear stockpiles are.

Comments

[JGatsby]

Good article Mr. Cirincione. However, while I agree that we are lucky to have made it this far without an accidental use of nukes, I think your article doesn't go far enough in explaining just how lucky we have been. The fact is that the US has already lost several nuclear weapons resulting in significant damage to people and property. In some cases the primary non-nuclear explosive was triggered scattering radioactive material over the land and ocean. In other cases the weapons continue to this day to be lost, decaying and waiting for someone to stumble over them and steal them or inadvertently trigger them. Of course the pentagon has done everything possible to hush up these accidents. Here is an article by Jeremy St. Clair that describes these nuclear accidents: http://counterpunch.org/stclair05152009.html

[Da Centrist]

the problem isn't so much the nukes that we know about and have protected, it's the LOOSE nukes.

like the little reported on story of the Russian nuke suitcase that have a bomb big enough to blow up a city. it was reported a few years ago (i think it even make it to MSM for a moment, cause it's quite scary) that after the fall of the Soviet Union some of these suitcases just disappeared.

If that is the case where in the HE double hockey sticks are these things?

And why when asked in the presidential debate of 2004 Sen. John Kerry said the biggest threat to the world is loose nukes it was aggreed to by Bush and then again mentioned by President Obama in the last presiedntial debates. But no mention of $ being allocated or a program in place that is trying to secure them?

Keep talking about this subject so we can make the Gov't do their job.

BTW LOST is the best show ever!

[JGatsby]

Do you have any references to back up this suitcase bomb story? To my knowledge there is no such thing and this story was one of the many post-9/11 attempts to scare people.

[Da Centrist]

Like I said I don't know if it's true but there have been reports including 60 minutes - BEFORE 9/11 -
See for yourself

http://a.abcnews.com/WNT/LooseNukes/Story?id=1206659&page=2
http://cns.miis.edu/reports/lebedst.htm
http://www.milnet.com/nukeweap/suitbomb.htm
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,76990,00.html

[Norge]

Yes, no human act in the history of the human specie has been as dispicable as the invention and use of the nuclear bomb.

If the human specie actually survives long enough to see all nucs actually removed from the earth, then and only then will they as a specie be worthy of survival and perhaps the earth which is of the age of 4.5 billion years allow the specie to continue.

4.5 billion years allows much time for development and we humans live on an organism which we do not have a clue of what it actually is. We see it as water,. air and soil and recently electromagnetic systems which we define from our arcan mechanical model of the cosmos.

When nucs are finally removed from earth, perhaps earth will allow the human specie to survive.

[JGatsby]

"Yes, no human act in the history of the human specie has been as dispicable as the invention and use of the nuclear bomb. " Its easy in hindsight to look back on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and say we shouldn't have dropped the bomb. However, to appreciate the difficulty of the decision that Truman made you have to understand the fanatic mind set of the Japanese military. Even more so than the Germans the Japanese soldiers at that time mostly prefered death to surrender. In hindsight its pretty clear that without the bomb or an invasion of the mainland the Japanese were defeated and would have given in to our demands. But hind sight is always 20-20. Given that most of the US military believed an invasion of the Japanese mainland was necessary and from the smaller examples where the Japanese fought to the death on Okinawa and Iwo Jima it was clear that such an invasion would result in massive loss of life on both sides, I don't think its so easy to criticize Truman's decision.

[lletaa]

Why couldnt the bomb be dropped off shore? There were 9 elementary schools in Hiroshima. The leaders of our great species should just line up inocent children and use flamethrowers on them to solve international problems.

[sino53]

Nuclear weapons were not "insane." They made the Great Powers so afraid of war that they avoided it, for the first time in human history.

If nuclear weapons had not been invented, then it is highly likely that the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. would have gone to war over Berlin in the late 1940s, and that war would have gone on and on.

The U.S. could never invade the U.S.S.R. successfully, and the U.S.S.R. lacked any long-range capability to invade America. So a conventional (non-nuclear) war in Europe between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. would have gone on--and on--and on--until Europe would have been reduced to nothing.

Liberals hate to admit it, but nuclear deterrence as a strategy proved capable of preserving the peace, until the U.S.S.R. collapsed and peace broke out between Russia and America.

While on the other hand, all the treaties feverishly enacted after World War I proved totally incapable of preventing World War II. (Ever heard of the Kellogg-Briand Pact? It was supposed to outlaw war. Whatever happened to that, I wonder?)

If human history has taught us anything, it is this:

No peace of paper in history has ever stopped a bullet.

[eatyourveggies]

You are wrong. In a world ruled by rationalists, we would not only destroy all nuclear weapons, we would destroy the so-called conventional arms.

We would have no use for weapons at all, if not for the irrationalists -- those who think they are:
1. Better than others
2. Greedier than others
3. More righteous than others

All of which are irrational.

[kapalabhati]

Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD, no more apt acronym ever, except perhaps KAOS) presumes that those who hold the devices respect and understand their magnitude. As Sting once wrote, "I hope the Russians love their children, too." We are in a whole new ballgame with players whose worldviews defy rationality. If and when they obtain nuclear material, it won't be a question of if it is used but when. I am a liberal and studied mid/late 20th century military policy and politics alongside longhairs and ROTC guys alike. I certainly understand MAD; however, it is a model whose time is most regrettably up.

[carolr51]

I have been watching Lost from the beginning and am seeing more and more political messages in the plot. Doesn't the whole thing with Sayid torturing Sawyer with Jack's permission sound hauntingly familiar? Then we had Rousseau torturing Sayid to get info he did not have.

I still think blowing up the bomb was a bad idea. Guess we'll find out in eight months.

[carolr51]

Because of nuclear weapons, we all live our lives with the threat of annihilation. I have always felt this to be so monstrous and I never could understand the kind of thinking that lead to this abomination. President Obama at least wants to do something about it, but I doubt I will see the end of nuclear weaponry in my lifetime. Whose idea was it to make so many of those bombs? And how did they ever get away with it?

[cdub1991]

Once upon a time, back in the 1950's bad/false (?) intelligence was used to convince us to do something stupid. Sound familiar? We were told there was a "missile gap" and the Russians were way ahead of the US. In fact the reverse was the case. The Soviets had few missiles with guidance systems so bad they probably couldn't have hit Texas. The U.S. however rushed to close the "gap" and built up it's nuclear forces. The Soviets saw this and said, "Crap--we have to catch-up." Then someone came up with the doctrine of M.A.D. (Mutual Assured Destruction) as the only way to prevent nuclear war. Strangely enough, it probably worked or we would have blown up ourselves by now. (Came close a few time.) The doctrine required more and more missile systems, however, since it relied on absorbing a first strike and still having enough weapons to assure the enemy's destruction. And the race was on...

That's it in a nutshell. The stockpiles are smaller and we aren't on a hair trigger anymore, but we are essentially still in a state of M.A.D.ness. Modern missiles are so accurate that you don't need as many to accomplish the same goal. Thus ends the lesson on how the irrational takes on a logic of its own if you allow yourself to get sucked into it. Judging from Iraq, there's an element of our leadership that never learned the lesson.

[carolr51]

So basically we were tricked into "the arms race", why does that not surprise me?

Thanks, that was a great answer.

[rnorthro14]

Dude????? Spoiler alert anyone???????

[Bruupo]

"Although it is not clearly explained in the show, the Lost character Sayid takes out what would be the smaller fission "primary" that would be used to create the heat, pressure and radiation necessary to compress and ignite the separate fusion secondary, vastly increasing the explosive yield. This is the bomb he takes to the Swan site."

Actually, my only real issue with the writer's "homework" was the line they wrote for Sayid in regard to that core. He describes it as "still a thermonuclear device", which it technically isn't- since it is a fission device and only -part- of a thermonuclear device. But that is kind of nit-picking given the context.

[jsarets]

A fission bomb is also a thermonuclear device. It converts nuclear energy into thermal energy.

[Bruupo]

No, it isn't.

A thermonuclear device is one in which thermal energy enables nuclear fusion.

A fission device is one in which kinetic energy enables nuclear fission.

They both produce all different kinds of energy, the "thermo" refers to what creates the reaction.

[Bruupo]

"Would it look as compact as the device Sayid tucks in his backpack? Probably not, but it would not be too much bigger."

I suspect a device as large as Jughead might well require an enormous primary fission core, and not the kind of reduced-criticality cores that were developed as H-bombs became miniaturized into MIRV's.

But even if it was that small in volume, I wonder about how much it would weigh, all told. These are some of the most dense elements that can sustain existence, after all. The "generic" critical mass required for plutonium 239 is about 10kg, or 22lbs, and that only represents the fuel. Add on the weight of conventional explosives, very heavy metal casing elements, necessary electronics components and their housings (very large capacitors are required, I believe), and that backpack could easily end up weighing 50lbs, probably a good deal more.

Even as little as 50lbs would be harder to lug around than that backpack appeared to be.

[kapalabhati]

This is Sayid we're talking about. He'd be able to carry the whole Jughead. Come on!

[SuperSam]

Best Show Ever.

[tomasedison]

In 2008 the United States reduced its nuclear stockpile to 5,400 warheads.
While in 1987 we had about 24,000 warheads in our arsenal.

The good news: YES we are making progress and Russia has made similar cuts.

[tomasedison]

As of January 2008, the U.S. stockpile
contained an estimated 5,400 nuclear
warheads: approximately 4,075 operational
warheads comprised of 3,575 strategic
and 500 nonstrategic warheads; and
about 1,260 additional warheads held in
the responsive force or inactive stockpile.
1 The Defense Department removed
an additional 5,150 warheads from the
stockpile for future dismantlement, a
consequence of the administration’s December
18, 2007 announcement to reduce
the stockpile by “nearly 50 percent” by
the end of 2007.2 An additional 15-percent
reduction will be achieved by 2012, leaving
a stockpile of nearly 4,500 warheads.

[oldster1]

You gotta' remember...all that a reactor does is boil water! There are much less expensive and much less dangerous methods to do this. Solar arrays are doing it right now.

[SeanOcali]

I saw this debate about the show. Only the core was detonated, and it was at the bottom of a very deep shaft. Let's imagine that Faraday's "change the past, change the future" theory doesn't work and everyone is still there in 1970. What would the effects be? How deep would that shaft have to be so that nobody on the island (except Juliette) is harmed?

[Bruupo]

I truly have no business trying to answer this, but just for fun:

If it was a plutonium fission core that was detonated, and we assume for the sake of argument that it was not much above critical mass (a Jughead-sized primary core might well be much greater than critical mass) it could yield an explosive force as small as the sub-kiloton range.

That would put the "boom" around the scale of a tactical nuke, enough to vaporize the shaft and send a shockwave that wouldn't be very destructive too far beyond the immediate area. But since it would be plutonium, it would not only make the immediate surroundings radioactive for decades, and rain down large radioactive particles as far as the wind could carry them, but I suspect it could potentially contaminate the fresh water aquifers of the entire island.

Of course, depending on the depth of the shaft and the local geology, I suppose it could also have some degree of seismic impact, depending on how much underground water was vaporized and the relative stability of the island's bedrock. So the shaft being sufficiently deep enough to protect the island's inhabitants from the immediate explosion or radiation might actually help trigger any preexisting seismic instability, which would seem a plausible danger for any volcanic island created along the tectonic borders in the Pacific Ocean "ring of fire".

But I'm pulling this out of...you know where, the other debaters may well know better.

[SeanOcali]

So it's safe to say season six will not be everyone still on an radioactive island with Jack saying "Darn, I guess that didn't work!"

[eatyourveggies]

all good speculation. hmmm, this time travel stuff is tricky.

One possibility: it works and the survivors' joint experience gets "erased." Then given the relatively small size of the weapon, presumably the island and the forces and politics that influence it still exists, in some form. So the next season traces the survivors as they go about their lives without the crash having taken place, but inevitably it is this group of people's fate to go to the island to fulfill the roles written for them.

Another possibility: the small weapon does not wipe out the island, and does not erase what happened. Then if it does release energy from the island's mysterious energy source, would this be the release that brought down Rosseau's party -- what caused them to crash near the island hasn't been explained.

Problem is I need a timeline to keep this stuff straight, but it seems to be about the same time frame, does it not?

[BetterDays105]

Thank you Mr. Cirincione for the work you have done over the years to teach us about the danger of nuclear weapons. It was your appearances on television in 2002 that convinced me of the insanity of Bush II's push for the Iraq War. I called, wrote, and emailed the Congress and protested and vigiled. We may not have been successful in preventing this insanity but it is nice to know you are still out there speaking and educating us.