The hoax that denies nuclear bombs and now has its own club

The hoax that denies nuclear bombs and now has its own club

A back-of-the-envelope calculation, a uranium nucleus of 7.4 femtometers and a conclusion that writes itself: the chain reaction is impossible. That is how the thesis now circulating on forums and messaging groups begins: that Little Boy and Fat Man did not explode by fission, that Hiroshima and Nagasaki burned just like Tokyo with phosphorus bombs, and that the so-called nuclear club is a lie shared among the great powers. The timing of the discussion, amid the hangover from official narratives, is no coincidence.

The central argument is geometric. A neutron is placed at the center of a fuel rod 1.5 meters long and 0.5 centimeters in radius, the solid angle offered by each nucleus at each distance is calculated, and an impact probability of 1.65% is reached with 5% enrichment. With 100% U-235, the figure rises to 33%. With the 15% of a bomb, 5-6%. Still far, they say, from self-sustainability.

From Fermi to Byrnes: the chain of suspicion

The story does not stop at the fuel rod. It goes back to 1942 and denies that Fermi demonstrated a sustained reaction. It cites James F. Byrnes, senator and later Secretary of State, to claim that in March 1945 the Senate heard that there was material but no way to make it explode. And it adds the polonium-berillium of Fat Man as a supposed neutron gun which, according to this version, would not have sufficed either.

There is one detail worth not losing: the text itself acknowledges that Byrnes's exact quote does not appear documented in accessible sources. In other words, the key piece of the story rests on an attribution its own author cannot verify. The rest is syllogism: if the probability is low, the bomb does not exist; if the bomb does not exist, the geopolitics of the last century was built on a stage set.

The mushroom is not nuclear and other substitute explanations

The question hovering over the conversation is that of megaton tests. Could they have been chemical? The answer offered is yes: extremely powerful explosives, with their corresponding mushroom —the mushroom is not exclusive to nuclear blasts— and a load of radioactive contaminant to fake it. Appearing to have the bomb would amount to having it.

The problem with that hypothesis is one of scale, not imagination. A multi-megaton chemical explosion would require logistics and a volume of material that no photograph of atmospheric tests suggests. But the argument does not need to be true to work: it is enough that it be hard to refute for someone who will not look at the data.

The spread of the hoax: from uranium to Einstein

The conversation drifts, as it usually does, into broader territory. Le Sage and his gravity by particle impact appears, the formula E=mc² is attributed to an Italian engineer named Olinto di Pretto, and Einstein is accused of copying it. The gentleman scientist is championed against subsidized science. And climate denial slips in, without transition, as an example of a media narrative.

That is the pattern to watch for: an apparently rigorous technical core —here, the solid angle calculation— onto which layers of suspicion are attached until the whole no longer stands on physics but on distrust. The conclusion is not an experimental result, it is a sarracena stance: if they lie to me about this, they lie to me about everything.

Can a nuclear bomb be faked?

The most repeated objection is the absence of a public, verifiable demonstration. No one has seen a nuclear bomb work in person, and the tests of the mid-twentieth century are known through footage and measurements. That distance between the fact and the testimony is the gap through which skepticism enters.

Against it, the counterargument is one of incentives: a hoax of that magnitude would require the sustained complicity of dozens of countries, rival intelligence services and verification bodies for eight decades. The history of intelligence shows the opposite: big secrets leak, and the ones that leak rarely match the official version. No defector has ever said the bomb was a stage set.

The ending that does not close

One disconcerting fact remains. The very calculation that denies fission holds that a sphere with a radius of 37.5 centimeters would contain more uranium than the critical mass of a bomb, about 61 kilos, and that even so there would be no reaction. In other words: the same exercise that dismantles the weapon describes a reactor that, by its own numbers, should not work either. And yet there are reactors running, ships sailing with them, and enriched uranium bills paid every month.

The conversation ends, as expected, with a farewell over the shoulder and the certainty of having seen what no one else sees. There is no possible refutation when the disagreement is not about the numbers but about trust in whoever produces them. And there, physics is no longer of use.