What Nuclear Weapons Look Like
There are big bombs and little ones. Some float down on parachutes, some lie on the ground, some burrow into the Earth, some shoot up out of the ocean, while some arc through outer space. There are nuclear bombs and missiles but there are also artillery shells, depth charges, torpedos, rockets, and a demolition explosive worn as a backpack.
I’ve criss-crossed the country for over two years, driving over 25,000 miles to thirty-five states, to make photographs of nuclear weapons, to see what they look like, to learn about them, to try to understand the perils they present.
Click below to see my photographs and to learn about the weapons—or make plans to visit them yourself.
A New Kind of Weapon
From the first atomic explosion, to Hiroshima and Nagsaki, and the post-WWII years.

A Better Bomb
Thermonuclear weapons change everything, again.

Coming soon
Recent Updates
American Nukes is an ongoing project and is updated “live,” with new pages being added every week. Click here for a complete list of updates.
Rewrote intro text on Home page to make the site more inviting, less ponderous. Adjust spacing between blocks on Home page. Should look about right now. Added the Further Reading section for the Honest John. Also, another hour or two trying to cull down my collection of Honest John images. There are more Honest Johns on display than any other nuclear weapon and I didn’t even go to them all!
Corrected a few typos and added the “Recent Updates” section at the bottom of the Home page. Additional work on the Honest John page. Corrected a few typos and preparing to go back and copyedit all text once I post Honest John. Also exploring interactive map plug-ins to display nuclear weapons locations.
Further work on the essay for Honest John. Redesigned the main page–hopefully, more attractive and easier to navigate.
The page for the Corporal missile is up. That’s the eighth weapons page–so many more to go! But still, good progress. Next up is, I think, the Honest John rocket. I’ve already put together a few ideas for the essay in my head this morning while I was in the shower…
Today I selected/photoshopped the images for the Corporal missile and built all of the web page except for the essay. I was about to go to bed (it’s after midnight as I write this) but then had an idea for a note or two to leave myself that I would read in the morning on what the essay might say and, one thing led to another, I have a solid semi-draft ready for the morning.