You can't really complain when a article in the non-specialist press uses popular rather than specialist terminology. "Hydrogen bomb" is a term that's been bandied about for about as long as nuclear bombs have existed and the article properly points out that there isn't actually any clear definition of the term so I don't think we have anything to complain about.

The New Yorker has many luxuries, but not that which lets them be ignorant. There's an old saying about the New Yorker's fact checking, that if they were to do a story about the Empire State Building, the first thing they would do is dispatch someone to see if it were still standing.

All it takes is just enough ignorant simplicity and a dash of sensationalism to go from New Yorker to New York Post.

If the New Yorker had used the term uncritically then I would agree with you. But they didn't, they carefully laid out why the term isn't clearly defined and hence why it isn't in common use among professionals. That's exactly what I would hope any publication would do when a term has currency in the news but the reading public might not know why it's a flawed term.

There's nothing ignorant about using the term "hydrogen bomb." It's a perfectly acceptable and relatively common term used to describe what they're using it to describe.

The only thing that's ignorant here is commenters insisting that "hydrogen bomb" is somehow wrong.

I understand that, I merely intended to demonstrate that ignorant simplicity is not a preferred quality of the New Yorker among its readers.

Why is that a point worth making in reply to a comment that is merely defending simplicity, not ignorant simplicity?

To separate the criticisms regarding simplicity generally and the nomenclature specifically. I was downvoted for what I said and I need imaginary internet points to feel like my life has meaning.

From what I can tell, you were downvoted because you either didn't read and understand the article, or you didn't understand the context in which it was written.

1. N. Korea claims it has a "Hydrogen Bomb".

2. The U.S. and others respond skeptically.

3. The New Yorker points out that the U.S. has made this response before (earlier in the cold war) and that the term itself has some ambiguity because of the different types of weapons that could have a fusion based element. Readers learn more about cold war history and the differences in different types of atomic weapons.

4. You make a snide comment that doesn't seem to register the entire context of all this, and get downvoted.

Aren't they the same thing?

Not precisely. Most of the energy of a thermonuclear bomb comes from fission, the fusion reaction mostly serves as a booster for neutron flux, escalating the fission reaction further than in a pure fission weapon. Even more so when the enclosing capsule (The tamper) is made of U238 instead of lead, as the high neutron flux leads to fission in the tamper (The Tsar Bomb would have had a yield of 100MT instead of 50MT had it's tamper not been replaced by lead, an intentional restriction).

A proper hydrogen bomb would be purely fusion.

The term "hydrogen bomb" has been used to describe thermonuclear bombs more or less since they were invented. Given that background, it makes no sense to me to insist that a "proper hydrogen bomb" would refer to a pure fusion design, especially since nobody has ever come anywhere close to figuring out how to build such a thing.

> A proper hydrogen bomb would be purely fusion.

But a fission device is used to get the fusion reaction going in all practical designs, I think.

The fine article describes the design of the US's actual hydrogen bombs as follows - I don't know if you'd count them as 'proper':

> So there are really three stages of nuclear reaction in such a bomb: the primary (fission), the secondary’s internal fuel (fusion), and the secondary’s casing (more fission).