As previously mentioned, I’d like to put together a book titled something like “A Guide to American Nuclear Explosive Devices.” It would include accurate diagrams of American nuclear bombs, RVs and warheads, along with pertinent information for each design. I’ve made a pretty good dent in the basic layout drawings, but there is more research to be done.

In order to get this done, there are a few places I need to visit. One of them is the National Museum of Nuclear Science & Industry in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It’s about an 11 hour drive from here, so  it’d be the better part of a work week to get down there, photograph *everything* (with scale references) and then get back. With gas, motels, cat boarding and the like, it’d be a fair chunk of change, but it also seems a pretty invaluable resource.

Sort of along the way is the Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos. A smaller museum, but it looks pretty good as far as nukes.

So, how about this: in order to pull this off, I’m looking for funding. RIGHT NOW THIS IS JUST THEORETICAL… don’t send money unless you really, really want to, or just for giggles, or you think your money would be better off with me than with you, whatever. So in the grand tradition of Kickstarter and the like, I’m thinking of three funding levels:

$10: You get a thank you email and a warm sense of accomplishment.

$50: I send you a DVD (or 2, or 3, or everything transferred via Dropbox or some such) with every single nuke-relevant photo I take on the trip.

$100: You get the DVD & a prototype edition version of the book, which won’t be otherwise available (I’m looking at 11X17 with old-school pressboard covers, like the BoMi, Dyna Soar & BWB booklets I recently made briefly available). The final book, whether self-published by me or – who knows – by an actual publisher, will almost certainly be formatted much smaller.

So… does this sound of interest? If I decide to pull the trigger on this, who would be willing to buy in? If interested at the $50 or $100 level, let me know either via commenting below, or by email.

If this happens, I’d like it to happen soon. Right now Utah can’t decide if it wants winter to be over… but soon enough, it will make that decision, and the nightmarish hellscape of a furnace that is the Utah/New Mexico summer will burst forth.

Shown below is an older version of the set of nukes I’ve drawn up. The final illustrations will generally have more than one view per bomb; three views should be standard, with cutaways where possible.