An elixir to alter the fate of the world
Lars and his teenage friends could never have imagined how their little Norwegian valley would come to play a pivotal role in the new science that would determine the outcome of the world’s greatest conflict. The sedate town of Rjukan in the narrow and picturesque Vestfjord Valley was a fine place to come of age, as was all of Norway, a peaceful nation trying to maintain nonalignment in a world of increasing turmoil and conflict. After the winds of war had shredded Norway’s neutrality, the country became a backwater of German occupation in the titanic armed struggle of World War Two. But in that picturesque valley lurked a special water, accumulating drop by precious drop. Once the Germans gained control of it, accumulating sufficient quantity to enable uranium fission was all that stood between Hitler’s scientists and a nuclear reactor leading to an atomic bomb. All, that is, except for the Norwegian underground and a brave band of resourceful resistance commandos dedicated to thwarting the atom-splitting ambitions of the Nazi war machine. Special Water is the saga of a substance critical to creation of a nuclear weapon–how it was made and how it very nearly changed the outcome of the war and the course of human history.
