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Dukasaur wrote:As we covered in History of Nuclear War I, U.S. government participation in nuclear research began in 1939, only two months after the Einstein-Szilard letter was written. Sufficient impetus to spend the enormous funds required to develop a practical nuclear weapon didn't materialize until after the Pearl Harbour attack brought the U.S. officially into WW II.
By June of 1942, the effort was centralized under the U.S. Army. Its initial budget was $54 million, but eventually ballooned to two billion dollars by the end of the war. The first headquarters of the project was at 270 Broadway in Manhattan, and it became known as the Manhattan Engineering District, or "Manhattan Project."
Phase 1
40 players in 5 groups will play 8-player games on the New York City map. The first player eliminated in each game is out of the tournament. The remainder will go on to the next round.
darkbluesky wrote:My vote change SUN
On December 2nd, 1942, the world's first self-sustaining nuclear reaction was created at the University of Chicago. Enrico Fermi, the designer of the experiment, was finally able to demonstrate the power of nuclear fission, which he had predicted almost 20 years earlier. A now-famous indicator of the urgency in the effort is that Fermi's reactor was located under the bleachers in the University's football field, because a permanent facility being build for him in the Argonne Forest wasn't ready.
Although the University of Chicago was a major star in the early days of the Manhattan project, it was soon eclipsed. Being focused on mainly theoretical and scientific questions, it steadily lost influence in a Manhattan Project that was mainly concerned with the practical engineering issues involved in building bombs. After the war, the Argonne lab would regain prominence, as a leader in peaceful applications of nuclear energy.
Phase 2
35 players in 5 groups will play 7-player games on the Chicago map. The first player eliminated in each game is out of the tournament. The remainder will go on to the next round.
Silvanus wrote:perch is a North Korean agent to infiltrate south Korean girls
perchorin wrote:looks like i forgot to vote. I'll vote for sunny, it's always a thrill to see the destruction nukes cause.
By far the largest facility run under the umbrella of the Manhattan Project was the Clinton Engineer Works at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Here, Uranium-235 was separated from Uranium-238 by a variety of processes, all of which were experimental and needed to be developed and improved "on the fly." The centrifuge method was a failure and was soon abandoned, but electromagnetic separation, gasseous diffusion, and thermal diffusion were all successful to some degree and contributed to the final stockpile of fissionable uranium. By 1945 there were 75,000 people working at Oak Ridge, and the K-25 gasseous diffusion plant was the single largest building on the planet.
Phase 3
30 players in 5 groups will play 6-player games on the USA Southeast map. The first player eliminated in each game is out of the tournament. The remainder will go on to the next round.
Dukasaur wrote:Phase 3 casualties are Soldier4Christ, uk massive, Leverpuller, mickunited333, and arno30.
Absolutely Amazing!!!
Three of the deceased were no votes, and two were FOG votes. So, the SUN lovers have achieved what looked impossible. I don't know if it was by design or by luck, but you have managed to kill off enough FOGeys that, starting from an 11-4 blowout in favour of fog at the beginning of the tournament, you have gotten the vote to 6-5 for sun!
Amazing job of pushing your faction forward, I must say!
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Silvanus wrote:perch is a North Korean agent to infiltrate south Korean girls
Dukasaur wrote:The British nuclear effort codenamed "Tube Alloys" was centred at Manchester and Birmingham Universities, but to protect the laboratories from the threat of German bombing, they were moved overseas to Montreal.
The relationship between the Allied efforts went through three phases. Before 1942, there was pretty much open communication between the two teams. In 1942, when the U.S. Army took over the American effort, a portcullis of secrecy slammed down and no communication with the British team was permitted. Then, in 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill signed the Quebec Agreement and full co-operation resumed.
Tube Alloys had absorbed fleeing French scientists, as well as Jewish scientists from Germany, Poland, and Hungary, all fleeing Nazi persecution. It thus had a brilliant talent pool, but what it lacked was resources. Fighting for its life, Britain simply didn't have the cash to mount a programme like the Manhattan Project, or anything remotely close to it in magnitude. Slowly but surely, despite a brilliant start, Tube Alloys became a mere auxiliary to the much larger Manhattan Project.
The ZEEP reactor at Chalk River north of Ottawa was built to produce plutonium for the American bombs, but it was completed too late to perform that role, first going online on September 5th 1945, a week after the war ended. ZEEP did become a world leader in peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and was the prototype for the successful CANDU nuclear design.
Phase 4
25 players in 5 groups will play 5-player games on the Canada map. The first player eliminated in each game is out of the tournament. The remainder will go on to the next round.
Dukasaur wrote:Phase 5 While possibly 90% of the expenditure and employment of the Manhattan project was devoted to the manufacture and refining of fissionable materials, the crucial remaining 10% was devoted to the construction and delivery of the bombs themselves. Most of this was done in New Mexico at Los Alamos, the "city in the desert" codenamed Project Y.
The gun-type uranium-based bomb (eventually used at Hiroshima) was considered too simple to fail, and therefore not tested at all prior to use. The implosion-type plutonium based bomb (like the one eventually used at Nagasaki) was far more complex, and the bomb designers felt it had to be tested. Thus, on July 16th, 1945, the worlds first man-made nuclear detonation occurred at the Alamogordo Bombing Range near San Antonio.
Phase 5
20 players in 4 groups will play 5-player games on the USA Southwest map. The first player eliminated in each game is out of the tournament. The remainder will go on to the next round.
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