Are you suggesting that nuclear reactors could have never been developed independently, and that the nuclear bomb was a necessary precursor? It sounds almost as if you're giving these deadly, weaponized drone swarms a pass because it's possible to do non-deadly things with drone swarms as well.

> Are you suggesting that nuclear reactors could have never been developed independently, and that the nuclear bomb was a necessary precursor

An uncontrolled nuclear reaction is significantly simpler than a controlled one. We still don't have fusion reactors, while fusion bombs were developed 10 years after fission bombs.

That's a very unconventional use of the words "uncontrolled" and "simple". The reaction inside a nuclear bomb (fission or fusion) has to be incredibly tightly choreographed down to the microsecond in order to work as intended, whereas a fission reactor is (egregiously oversimplifying) put some fissile stuff next to some other fissile stuff for a while and let it get warm.

The Chicago Pile came way before Trinity. Rock formations have even been known to come together accidentally to form natural nuclear reactors, but I think it will be a very long while before the first natural nuclear bomb.

Not op but: I wouldn’t say they couldn’t have been invented, but it’s unlikely they would have for economic reasons. Controlled Fission almost had to be done by government due to the resources required and uncertainty of the payout. It seems unlikely any private company would have done what the Manhattan project did just to get a small cost savings over burning fossil fuels

To a degree they would not have been invented with out the weapon. For example thorium reactors are designed in the 60s. The US ignored them because we couldn’t make weapons from their waste. The only reason thorium even got started was we thought it could be a weapon.

I feel like you're over focused on the repercussions of the swarm technology, but not the murder bit.

The first nuclear reactor predates the first nuclear test, so I'm afraid not.

Anything goes as long as we get cheap energy, right? /s