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Worldbuilding

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    $\begingroup$ Don't forget that for a small self sufficient island nation a conventional military is likely to be far more cost effective at discouraging invasion than developing a secret nuclear program plus enough nukes to destroy multiple invasion fleets. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 15, 2025 at 7:44
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    $\begingroup$ Add to this the fact that the world had been able to detect seismic activity, acoustics, and even unusual amounts of radiation (though not well) by that time. It's believable that scientists across the world would be wondering "what on Earth was THAT?" $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 15, 2025 at 18:14
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    $\begingroup$ And the possibility of a nuclear bomb was known as early as 1939, so the response would not be just "what on earth was that?" but "could that have been one of these nuclear bombs people are talking about?". And how did this nation get enough brilliant physicists to develop a bomb without any of the other brilliant physicists knowing who they were and where they were? The American (and other Allied) nuclear physicists know pretty much all the German physicists who were capable of developing a bomb, and the German ones knew who the Allied ones were. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 15, 2025 at 18:27
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    $\begingroup$ in 1945 when USA started it's testing, Geologists across the world were wondering "What on Earth was THAT?". Once the general public knew that Nuclear bombs existed, that same year, then geologists could pretty accurately pinpoint all nuclear tests around the world, and could immediately pinpoint every nuclear test that had taken place. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 16, 2025 at 0:25
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    $\begingroup$ @user71659 "You want to make people think that you might have a nuclear weapon..." Israel definitely wanted people to think they had nuclear weapons, whether they did or not. That's quite a bit different from hoping people don't think you have nuclear weapons, despite actually using them. Thus, while your point should be interesting to Dmyt, it's not an answer to L.Dutch's point #1. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 16, 2025 at 0:59