I Never Had One Atom Bomb

At 13 I moved to Rome. It was a paradise for me. There was gelato, there were comic books, and some had a few pages in color. Donald Duck was my fave. I lived on Via Appia Antica. That street goes back to early Rome. It leads into Rome from the East. Later I lived in the Parioli district in Rome. Rome is where I lived before I moved to Switzerland to attend Institut Le Rosey in Rolle and Gstaad. When I first got to Gstaad I lived in the Park Hotel (not as grand as the Palace Hotel, but good enough). I saw a partial eclipse of the sun from the Park Hotel. I ran up a flight of stairs, passed out cold, and slipped down the whole flight on my back, head first. But I did not break my neck. I was collected by the folks at the front desk, and taken to my room. Rosey was OK enough. There were 2 other Americans, the Gill Brothers. I read all the Tintin comics, and Asterix at Rosey. I blew up one small building. They forgave me for it. They were just glad to find that I did not have an atom bomb — most of the Seniors told the Headmaster that I did. But I didn’t. I was skilled with TNT and Nitroglycerine. But I had no fissile matter. Today I could build an atom bomb quite easily, but again, no U-238 and no Pu-239. If you melt and blend Pu-240 with Pu-239, it is impossible to get them separated again. And the Pu-240 releases an early neutron that totally makes a fission bomb impossible. The early neutron causes a nuclear fizzle, where the core blows itself to small pieces before any significant number of splitting steps can occur for the total m that turns into E is way less than 0.01%.