Trailer-Motherboard Meets the Atomic Trucker

Tags:: Vice Motherboard Vbs John Coster Mullen Atomic Trucker Henry Frisch

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Updated: 05-Oct-09
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Added: 24-Jun-09

SERIES STARTS ON VBS TV: 6/29

Despite the fact that even Pakistan has worked out how to make their own nukes by this point, the blueprints for America's first atomic bombs remain a closely guarded state secret, available only to high-ranking officials in the Department of Energy. At least they were until a truck driver from Waukesha, Wisconsin figured them out on his own and built an exact replica of the bomb that leveled Hiroshima in his garage. Working from old photos and the recollections of aging Manhattan Project workers, John Coster-Mullen somehow managed to piece together the exact specifications of Robert Oppenheimer's famous Fat Man and Little Boy. Then he did what any reasonable person would do with said info: He put it in a book and sold it over the internet. If you ever find yourself on the business end of a mushroom cloud, odds are you've got John and his spare time to thank. In this edition of Motherboard we follow the country's leading amateur nuke expert to Chicago to discuss his "hobby" with the research scientists of the Fermi Research Lab. And we should probably point out that he didn't finish college.