The A-Bomb Kid

The Village Voice -- "Suppose an average—or below-average in my case—physics student at a university could design a working atomic bomb on paper."

The premise was not fanciful. The author had done it. In 1977, John Aristotle Phillips found worldwide fame as the Princeton junior who designed a working Nagasaki-class weapon the size of a beach ball.

"I would never have thought that we'd have gone 25 years without a terrorist getting a nuclear device," Phillips admits today. "I'm surprised it hasn't happened. I still do expect it." He's in formidable company. Even in 1947, one physicist foresaw how, without careful diplomacy and monitoring, our secrecy laws and crummy fallout shelters served little purpose.

"There is no secret," Einstein wrote, "—and there is no defense."