(Part 3) Top products from r/CatastrophicFailure

It's quite a lot to bite off, but everything you want is contained in these four books:

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-25th-Anniversary/dp/1451677618/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb-ebook/dp/B008TRUB6O/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/Arsenals-Folly-Richard-Rhodes-ebook/dp/B000W93DEO/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/Twilight-Bombs-Challenges-Dangers-Prospects-ebook/dp/B003F3PKXQ/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Rhodes is the guy for nuclear history. I've read all four, but the last two are, admittedly, somewhat forgettable. They deal with the continuing command issues surrounding nuclear arsenals and the eventual political movement to eradicate (or, as it happened, simply limit) strategic stockpiles.

That being said, the first two, Making of the Bomb and Dark Sun, are utterly indispensible. The Making of the Atomic Bomb is a Pulitzer Prize-winning, 1986 history of the scientific effort to elucidate the physical principles which led to bombs and of the miliitary-scientific-industrial effort to realize the possibility of a weapon. It discusses many interesting characters within this history, such as Ernest Lawrence, Leo Szilard, and of course, Oppenheimer.

I have to be honest with you - I've saved Dark Sun for last for a reason. This is one of the most phenomenally engaging books I've ever read. It has everything: the creation of doomsday weapons of, and I don't use this term loosely, unimaginable destructive potential and the obsessive quasi-fetishization of their refinement and testing on behalf of the United States' and Soviet militaries. Rhodes discusses the post-war split within the scientific community over whether to develop a hydrogen "Super" bomb, whether to share information relating to it with the Soviet Union, and the factional leveraging of security privileges and political favor to exclude those from research who did not take a sufficiently hard stand against cooperation with the USSR.

Dark Sun details bomb physics and the minutia of the testing program in just enough detail to remain compelling and accessible. Rhodes also does his best to humanize Soviet scientific personnel such as Igor Kurchatov, the father of the Soviet bomb, and the strained relationship they shared with their political patrons, such as the Darth Vader-esque Lavrenti Beria.

I hope this answers your question, and I hope that you enjoy these books as much as I did!

I'm with /u/Str8OuttaFlavortown on this not really fitting this subreddit's rules, but it really is a compelling story. If interested, check out Curse of the Narrows by Laura MacDonald.

You all might be interested in reading 'Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea' by Gary Kinder. It gets into how the SS Central America shipwreck was found.

I found it a spellbinding read.

Life In The Fast Lane

If you're a F1 fan from the before the current ESPN years, you know Matchett as the tech guy form SPEED/NBCSN's coverage of F1 for... since at least 2004, and probably before that.

Oh, and yes, Motorsport not Autosport. I'm an old man who can't remember where he read things an hour ago.

I did a report on our history of understanding of metal fatigue in commercial aviation during undergrad. This book by George Bibel was one that I relied on heavily for the section I wrote on United 232 for anyone who's interested in digging in even further.

It's also found in his book "The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime," which is a collection of his long-form Atlantic (but I repeat myself) articles on nautical topics, such as modern piracy, shipbreakers in Alang, and the like.

This one? I remember it being like what you're talking about.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/078688147X

If you want a classic example, use the shipping industry.

A->Z link: https://www.amazon.com/Tears-Soul-Hyun-Hee-Kim/dp/0688128335

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Tide-Great-Boston-Molasses/dp/0807050210
Great book on the tragedy

To help with your understanding try reading this

And this

That should get you started.

But for real though. They're talking about the cables that hold everything up. Specifically, someone mentioned they were using verlocks to level it out, and that's what gave way. This is what they're talking about. ...I think. In which case I think you're right about the price. Though they may have been talking about this: in which case $12 is a descent estimate.

Source: Fuck if I know I'm an electrician I just plug shit in. Don't listen to me.