Declassified: The DIY Nuclear Weapon – The 'Nth Country Experiment'

The National Security Archive has released declassified documents detailing the 'Nth Country Experiment,' a secret mid-1960s project at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. A small team of physicists, using only publicly available information, designed a functional nuclear weapon in just three years. This 'do-it-yourself' project demonstrated the feasibility of nuclear weapon development with limited resources, highlighting the dangers of nuclear proliferation. The released documents, while heavily redacted, reveal insights into the experiment's methodology and conclusions, sparking renewed discussion about the protection of nuclear weapons design information and the threat of nuclear terrorism.