The Nuclear Express, Thomas Reed. The story of how the countries that have nuclear weapons got them. US, USSR, UK, France, Israel, China, India, South Africa, Pakistan, North Korea. France struggled. Israel was ingeniously desperate. South Africa may have exploded a weapon in the deep South Atlantic in a typhoon to evade detection. China, snubbed by the USSR who promised them a bomb, started from scratch and chose the Uranium enrichment route rather than follow everyone else with the plutonium weapon. Pakistan and what became the "Khan Network".