Testing the First H-Bomb

On This Day in History: November 1, 1952

The most immediate threat faced by humanity is still nuclear obliteration. Yeah, climate change is a clusterfuck, but that’s a slow death that we might get our shit together enough to ameliorate and even recover from. Nukes, though? They could fly today, because fascist fucknuts have control over enough of them with sufficient radioactive explodey power to render much of the planet a glow-in-the-dark wasteland.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: November 1, 1952--

Anyway, on August 6, 1945, there was a pretty big kaboom over Hiroshima, but the scientists at Los Alamos, New Mexico—where they created the first atomic bomb—knew they could build something way bigger. They called it “The Super,” and it was a fusion bomb built by a dick. He was a Hungarian-born scientist named Edward Teller, and yeah, he was totally a dick with a volatile personality who stabbed “father of the atomic bomb” Robert Oppenheimer in the back. They’d worked together on the Manhattan Project, and in 1954, during the height of the anti-communist Second Red Scare, Teller testified at a hearing of the Atomic Energy Commission that Oppenheimer collaborated with communists and shouldn’t be given back his security clearance. It was a baseless accusation, yet it contributed to the loss of Oppenheimer’s clearance and the death of his career.

In turn, Teller was ostracized by the scientific community for being a fucking rat, but the government still liked Teller’s style. See, Teller was the one pushing for creation of a “thermonuclear” weapon—the aforementioned Super—because fusion goes boom much bigger than regular ol’ fission. And the United States was all oh hey that sounds awesome please make us one of those.

And so, Teller did make such a bomb, leading the team that created “Ivy Mike,” the first-ever thermonuclear device to be tested. They blew up the Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands on November 1, 1952, with over 10 megatons of big-ass kerblammo. That’s about five hundred times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Japan.

Teller was in California at the time of the test, and knew it was successful because he detected it via a seismometer. In celebration he decided to send an unclassified telegram to his colleague Liz Graves, a group leader at Los Alamos, letting her know of the success hours before any word came from the test site. The telegram was only three words: “It’s a boy.”

On October 30, 2025, President AssFace announced plans for the United States to resume testing nuclear weapons, which it has not done since 1992.

Those who cannot remember the past need a history teacher who says “fuck” a lot. Get both volumes of On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down. The story you just read is from Volume II (cover image below). And don’t forget to …