“In God We Trust, All Others We Monitor”: Seismology, Surveillance, and the Test Ban Negotiations

  • Simone Turchetti
Chapter
Part of the Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology book series (PSHST)

Abstract

During the second half of the twentieth century, seismologists gained a greater understanding of how waves produced by seismic events travel across the inner earth and reach distant places. Stations devoted to detection and recording of these events grew in number and the sensitivity of monitoring instrumentation like seismometers increased considerably. Yet the object of enquiring that allowed this considerable expansion was not the seismologist’s traditional focus of research, the earthquake, but rather new and problematic: the nuclear weapons test (see Figure 4.1). Gazing through seismograms, experts now analyzed the characteristics of seismic movements produced by nuclear weapons, thus gaining new knowledge on their yield and location. Seismological studies thus featured in surveillance operations distinctive of the Cold War conflict and coupled with the gathering of “atomic” intelligence (intelligence on foreign atomic weapons programs).1

Keywords

Nuclear Weapon Nuclear Explosion Atomic Energy Commission Nuclear Test Seismic Monitoring 
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Notes

  1. 1.
    On atomic intelligence see: Jeffrey Richelson, Spying on the Bomb. American Nuclear Intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006);Google Scholar
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© Simone Turchetti and Peder Roberts 2014

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  • Simone Turchetti

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