title: Nuclear warfare

text: In 2014, when Russia-United States and Russia-NATO relations worsened over the Russo-Ukrainian War, the Russian state-owned television channel Russia 1 stated that "Russia is the only country in the world that is really capable of turning the USA into radioactive ash." U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter considered proposing deployment of ground-launched cruise missiles in Europe that could pre-emptively destroy Russian weapons.


title: Nuclear warfare

text: In August 2017, North Korea warned that it might launch mid-range ballistic missiles into waters within of Guam, following an exchange of threats between the governments of North Korea and the United States. Escalating tensions between North Korea and the United States, including threats by both countries that they could use nuclear weapons against one another, prompted a heightened state of readiness in Hawaii. The perceived ballistic missile threat broadcast all over Hawaii on 13 January 2018 was a false missile alarm.


title: Nuclear warfare

text: In October 2018, the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev commented that U.S. withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is "not the work of a great mind" and that "a new arms race has been announced".


title: Nuclear warfare

text: In early 2019, more than 90% of world's 13,865 nuclear weapons were owned by Russia and the United States.


title: Nuclear warfare

text: In 2019, Vladimir Putin warned that Russia would deploy nuclear missiles in Europe if the United States deployed intermediate-range nuclear missiles there. Journalist Dmitry Kiselyov listed the targets in the United States, which includes The Pentagon, Camp David, Fort Ritchie, McClellan Air Force Base, and Jim Creek Naval Radio Station. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov denies the existence of the target list.


title: Nuclear warfare

text: On February 24, 2022, in a televised address preceding the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Russia "is today one of the most powerful nuclear powers in the world... No one should have any doubts that a direct attack on our country will lead to defeat and dire consequences for any potential aggressor." Later in the same speech, Putin stated: "Now a few important, very important words for those who may be tempted to intervene in ongoing events. Whoever tries to hinder us, and even more so to create threats for our country, for our people, should know that Russia's response will be immediate and will lead you to such consequences that you have never experienced in your history." On February 27, 2022, Putin publicly put his nuclear forces on alert, stating that NATO powers had made "aggressive statements". On April 14, "The New York Times" reported comments by CIA director William Burns, who said "potential desperation" could lead President Putin to order the use of tactical nuclear weapons. On September 21, 2022, days before declaring the annexation of additional parts of Ukraine, Putin claimed in a national television address that high NATO officials had made statements about the possibility of "using nuclear weapons of mass destruction against Russia", and stated "if the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people... It's not a bluff." NBC News characterized Putin's statements as a "thinly veiled" threat that Putin was willing to risk nuclear conflict if necessary to win the war with Ukraine. Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, stated that "if you start detonating nuclear weapons in the [battlefield] you potentially get radioactive fallout that you can't control — it could rain over your own troops as well, so it might not be an advantage to do that in the field."


title: Nuclear warfare

text: According to a peer-reviewed study published in the journal "Nature Food" in August 2022, a full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia would kill 360 million people directly, with a further 5 billion people dying from starvation. More than 2 billion people would die from a smaller-scale nuclear war between India and Pakistan.


title: Nuclear warfare

text: The above examples envisage nuclear warfare at a strategic level, i.e., total war. However, nuclear powers have the ability to undertake more limited engagements.


title: Nuclear warfare

text: "Sub-strategic use" includes the use of either "low-yield" tactical nuclear weapons, or of variable yield strategic nuclear weapons in a very limited role, as compared to battlefield exchanges of larger-yield strategic nuclear weapons. This was described by the UK Parliamentary Defence Select Committee as "the launch of one or a limited number of missiles against an adversary as a means of conveying a political message, warning or demonstration of resolve". It is believed that all current nuclear weapons states possess tactical nuclear weapons, with the exception of the United Kingdom, which decommissioned its tactical warheads in 1998. However, the UK does possess scalable-yield strategic warheads, and this technology tends to blur the difference between "strategic", "sub-strategic", and "tactical" use or weapons. American, French and British nuclear submarines are believed to carry at least "some" missiles with dial-a-yield warheads for this purpose, potentially allowing a strike as low as one kiloton (or less) against a single target. Only the People's Republic of China and the Republic of India have declarative, unqualified, unconditional "no first use" nuclear weapons policies. India and Pakistan maintain only a credible minimum deterrence.


title: Nuclear warfare

text: Commodore Tim Hare, former Director of Nuclear Policy at the British Ministry of Defence, has described "sub-strategic use" as offering the Government "an extra option in the escalatory process before it goes for an all-out strategic strike which would deliver unacceptable damage". However, this sub-strategic capacity has been criticized as potentially increasing the "acceptability" of using nuclear weapons. Combined with the trend in the reduction in the worldwide nuclear arsenal as of 2007 is the warhead miniaturization and modernization of the remaining strategic weapons that is presently occurring in all the declared nuclear weapon states, into more "usable" configurations. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute suggests that this is creating a culture where use of these weapons is more acceptable and therefore is increasing the risk of war, as these modern weapons do not possess the same psychological deterrent value as the large Cold-War era, multi-megaton warheads.


title: Nuclear warfare

text: In many ways, this present change in the balance of terror can be seen as the complete embracement of the switch from the 1950s Eisenhower doctrine of "massive retaliation" to one of "flexible response", which has been growing in importance in the US nuclear war fighting plan/SIOP every decade since.


title: Nuclear warfare

text: For example, the United States adopted a policy in 1996 of allowing the targeting of its nuclear weapons at non-state actors ("terrorists") armed with weapons of mass destruction.


title: Nuclear warfare

text: Another dimension to the tactical use of nuclear weapons is that of such weapons deployed at sea for use against surface and submarine vessels. Until 1992, vessels of the United States Navy (and their aircraft) deployed various such weapons as bombs, rockets (guided and unguided), torpedoes, and depth charges. Such tactical naval nuclear weapons were considered more acceptable to use early in a conflict because there would be few civilian casualties. It was feared by many planners that such use would probably quickly have escalated into a large-scale nuclear war. This situation was particularly exacerbated by the fact that such weapons at sea were not constrained by the safeguards provided by the Permissive Action Link attached to U.S. Air Force and Army nuclear weapons. It is unknown if the navies of the other nuclear powers yet today deploy tactical nuclear weapons at sea.


title: Nuclear warfare

text: The 2018 US Nuclear Posture Review emphasised the need for the US to have sub-strategic nuclear weapons as additional layers for its nuclear deterrence.


title: Nuclear warfare

text: Nuclear terrorism by non-state organizations or actors (even individuals) is a largely unknown and understudied factor in nuclear deterrence thinking, as states possessing nuclear weapons are susceptible to retaliation in kind, while sub- or trans-state actors may be less so. The collapse of the Soviet Union has given rise to the possibility that former Soviet nuclear weapons might become available on the black market (so-called 'loose nukes').


title: Nuclear warfare

text: A number of other concerns have been expressed about the security of nuclear weapons in newer nuclear powers with relatively less stable governments, such as Pakistan, but in each case, the fears have been addressed to some extent by statements and evidence provided by those nations, as well as cooperative programs between nations. Worry remains, however, in many circles that a relative decrease in the security of nuclear weapons has emerged in recent years, and that terrorists or others may attempt to exert control over (or use) nuclear weapons, militarily applicable technology, or nuclear materials and fuel.


title: Nuclear warfare

text: Another possible nuclear terrorism threat are devices designed to disperse radioactive materials over a large area using conventional explosives, called dirty bombs. The detonation of a "dirty bomb" would not cause a nuclear explosion, nor would it release enough radiation to kill or injure a large number of people. However, it could cause severe disruption and require potentially very costly decontamination procedures and increased spending on security measures.


title: Nuclear warfare

text: Radioactive materials can also be used for targeted assassinations. For example, the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko was described by medical professionals, as "an ominous landmark: the beginning of an era of nuclear terrorism."


title: Nuclear warfare

text: The predictions of the effects of a major countervalue nuclear exchange include millions of city dweller deaths within a short period of time. Some 1980s predictions had gone further and argued that a full-scale nuclear war could eventually bring about the extinction of the human race. Such predictions, sometimes but not always based on total war with nuclear arsenals at Cold War highs, received contemporary criticism. On the other hand, some 1980s governmental predictions, such as FEMA's CRP-2B and NATO's Carte Blanche, have received criticism from groups such as the Federation of American Scientists for being overly optimistic. CRP-2B, for instance, infamously predicted that 80% of Americans would survive a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union, a figure that neglected nuclear war's impacts on healthcare infrastructure, the food supply, and the ecosystem and assumed that all major cities could be successfully evacuated within 3–5 days. A number of Cold War publications advocated preparations that could purportedly enable a large proportion of civilians to survive even a total nuclear war. Among the most famous of these is "Nuclear War Survival Skills".


title: Nuclear warfare

text: To avoid injury and death from a nuclear weapon's heat flash and blast effects, the two most far ranging prompt effects of nuclear weapons, schoolchildren were taught to duck and cover by the early Cold War film of the same name. Such advice is once again being given in case of nuclear terrorist attacks.


title: Nuclear warfare

text: Prussian blue, or "Radiogardase", is stockpiled in the US, along with potassium iodide and DPTA as pharmaceuticals useful in treating internal exposure to harmful radioisotopes in fallout.


title: Nuclear warfare

text: Publications on adapting to a changing diet and supplying nutritional food sources following a nuclear war, with particular focus on agricultural radioecology, include "Nutrition in the postattack environment" by the RAND corporation.


title: Nuclear warfare

text: The British government developed a public alert system for use during a nuclear attack with the expectation of a four-minute warning before detonation. The United States expected a warning time of anywhere from half an hour (for land-based missiles) to less than three minutes (for submarine-based weapons). Many countries maintain plans for continuity of government following a nuclear attack or similar disasters. These range from a designated survivor, intended to ensure the survival of some form of government leadership, to the Soviet Dead Hand system, which allows for retaliation even if all Soviet leadership were destroyed. Nuclear submarines are given letters of last resort: orders on what action to take in the event that an enemy nuclear strike has destroyed the government.


title: Nuclear warfare

text: A number of other countries around the world have taken significant efforts to maximize their survival prospects in the event of large calamities, both natural and manmade. For example, metro stations in Pyongyang, North Korea, were constructed below ground, and were designed to serve as nuclear shelters in the event of war, with each station entrance built with thick steel blast doors. An example of privately funded fallout shelters is the Ark Two Shelter in Ontario, Canada, and autonomous shelters have been constructed with an emphasis on post-war networking and reconstruction.


title: Nuclear warfare

text: In Switzerland, the majority of homes have an underground blast and fallout shelter. The country has an overcapacity of such shelters and can accommodate slightly more than the nation's population size.


title: Nuclear warfare

text: While the nuclear fallout shelters described above are the ideal long-term protection methods against dangerous radiation exposure in the event of a nuclear catastrophe, it is also necessary to have mobile protection equipment for medical and security personnel to safely assist in containment, evacuation, and many other necessary public safety objectives which ensue as a result of nuclear detonation. There are many basic shielding strategies used to protect against the deposition of radioactive material from external radiation environments. Respirators that protect against internal deposition are used to prevent the inhalation and ingestion of radioactive material and dermal protective equipment which is used to protect against the deposition of material on external structures like skin, hair, and clothing. While these protection strategies do slightly reduce the exposure, they provide almost no protection from externally penetrating gamma radiation, which is the cause of acute radiation syndrome and can be extremely lethal in high dosages. Naturally, shielding the entire body from high-energy gamma radiation is optimal, but the required mass to provide adequate attenuation makes functional movement nearly impossible.


title: Nuclear warfare

text: Recent scientific studies have shown the feasibility of partial body shielding as a viable protection strategy against externally penetrating gamma radiation. The concept is based in providing sufficient attenuation to only the most radio-sensitive organs and tissues in efforts to defer the onset of acute radiation syndrome, the most immediate threat to humans from high doses of gamma radiation. Acute radiation syndrome is a result of irreversible bone marrow damage from high-energy radiation exposure. Due to the regenerative property of hematopoietic stem cells found in bone marrow, it is only necessary to protect enough bone marrow to repopulate the exposed areas of the body with the shielded supply. Because 50% of the body's supply of bone marrow is stored in the pelvic region which is also in close proximity to other radio-sensitive organs in the abdomen, the lower torso is a logical choice as the primary target for protection.


title: Psychedelic drug

text: Psychedelics are a subclass of hallucinogenic drugs whose primary effect is to trigger non-ordinary states of consciousness (known as psychedelic experiences or "trips"). This causes specific psychological, visual, and auditory changes, and often a substantially altered state of consciousness. Psychedelic states are often compared to meditative, psychodynamic or transcendental types of alterations of mind. The "classical" psychedelics, the psychedelics with the largest scientific and cultural influence, are mescaline, LSD, psilocybin, and DMT.


title: Psychedelic drug

text: Most psychedelic drugs fall into one of the three families of chemical compounds: tryptamines, phenethylamines, or lysergamides and many tend to act via serotonin 2A receptor agonism. When compounds bind to serotonin 5-HT receptors, they modulate the activity of key circuits in the brain involved with sensory perception and cognition, however, the exact nature of how psychedelics induce changes in perception and cognition via the 5-HT receptor is still unknown, although reduction in default mode network activity and increased functional connectivity between regions in the brain as a result may be one of the most relevant pharmacological mechanisms underpinning the psychedelic experience, particularly ego death. The psychedelic experience is often compared to non-ordinary forms of consciousness such as those experienced in meditation, mystical experiences, and near-death experiences, which also appear to be partially underpinned by altered default mode network activity. The phenomenon of ego death is often described as a key feature of the psychedelic experience.


title: Psychedelic drug

text: Many psychedelic drugs are illegal worldwide under the UN conventions, with occasional exceptions for religious use or research contexts. Despite these controls, recreational use of psychedelics is common. Legal barriers have made the scientific study of psychedelics more difficult. Research has been conducted, however, and studies show that psychedelics are physiologically safe and rarely lead to addiction. Studies conducted using psilocybin in a psychotherapeutic setting reveal that psychedelic drugs may assist with treating depression, alcohol addiction, and nicotine addiction. Although further research is needed, existing results suggest that psychedelics could be effective treatments for certain forms of psychopathology. Proponents believe that the increase in consumption of psychedelics in defiance of the law is likely to result in more widespread legalization and decriminalization of the substances (as was the case with cannabis). In 2022, 28% of Americans have tried psychedelics.


title: Psychedelic drug

text: The term "psychedelic" was coined by the psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond during written correspondence with author Aldous Huxley and presented to the New York Academy of Sciences by Osmond in 1957. It is irregularly derived from the Greek words ψυχή "psychḗ" 'soul, mind' and δηλείν "dēleín" 'to manifest', with the intended meaning "mind manifesting," the implication being that psychedelics can reveal unused potentials of the human mind. The term was loathed by American ethnobotanist Richard Schultes but championed by American psychologist Timothy Leary.


title: Psychedelic drug

text: Aldous Huxley had suggested his own coinage "phanerothyme" (Greek "phaneroein"- "visible" and Greek "thymos" "soul", thus "visible soul") to Osmond in 1956. Recently, the term entheogenic has come into use to denote the use of psychedelic drugs, as well as various other types of psychoactive substances, in a religious, spiritual, and mystical context.


title: Psychedelic drug

text: Robin Carhart-Harris and Guy Goodwin write that the term "psychedelic" is preferable to "hallucinogen" for describing classical psychedelics because of the term "hallucinogen"s "arguably misleading emphasis on these compounds' hallucinogenic properties."


title: Psychedelic drug

text: Psychedelics have a long history of use in traditional medicine and traditional religion, for their perceived ability to promote physical and mental healing. In this context, they are often known as entheogens. Native American practitioners using mescaline-containing cacti (most notably peyote, San Pedro, and Peruvian torch) have reported success in treating alcoholism, and Mazatec practitioners routinely use psilocybin mushrooms for divination and healing. The psychoactive brew ayahuasca is used in Peru and other parts of South America for spiritual and physical healing as well as in religious festivals.


title: Psychedelic drug

text: Psychedelic therapy (or psychedelic-assisted therapy) is the proposed use of psychedelic drugs to treat mental disorders. As of 2021, psychedelic drugs are controlled substances in most countries and psychedelic therapy is not legally available outside clinical trials, with some exceptions.


title: Psychedelic drug

text: The procedure for psychedelic therapy differs from that of therapies using conventional psychiatric medications. While conventional medications are usually taken without supervision at least once daily, in contemporary psychedelic therapy the drug is administered in a single session (or sometimes up to three sessions) in a therapeutic context. The therapeutic team prepares the patient for the experience beforehand and helps them integrate insights from the drug experience afterwards. After ingesting the drug, the patient normally wears eyeshades and listens to music to facilitate focus on the psychedelic experience, with the therapeutic team interrupting only to provide reassurance if adverse effects such as anxiety or disorientation arise.


title: Psychedelic drug

text: As of 2022, the body of high-quality evidence on psychedelic therapy remains relatively small and more, larger studies are needed to reliably show the effectiveness and safety of psychedelic therapy's various forms and applications. On the basis of favorable early results, ongoing research is examining proposed psychedelic therapies for conditions including major depressive disorder, and anxiety and depression linked to terminal illness. The United States Food and Drug Administration has granted "breakthrough therapy" status, which expedites the assessment of promising drug therapies for potential approval, to psilocybin therapy for treatment-resistant depression and major depressive disorder.


title: Psychedelic drug

text: Psychedelic microdosing is the practice of using sub-threshold doses (microdoses) of psychedelics in an attempt to improve creativity, boost physical energy level, emotional balance, increase performance on problems-solving tasks and to treat anxiety, depression and addiction. The practice of microdosing has become more widespread in the 21st century with more people claiming long-term benefits from the practice.


title: Psychedelic drug

text: Tryptamine, along with other trace amines, is found in the central nervous system of mammals. It is hypothesized to play a role as a neuromodulator on classical monoamine neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine (epinephrine). Tryptamine acts as a non-selective serotonin receptor agonist to activate serotonin receptors, and a serotonin–norepinephrine–dopamine releasing agent (SNDRA) to release more monoamine neurotransmitter, with a preference for evoking serotonin and dopamine release over norepinephrine (epinephrine) release. Psychedelic tryptamines found in nature include psilocin, DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, and tryptamines that have been synthesized in the laboratory include 4-HO-MET, 4-HO-MiPT, and 5-MeO-DALT.


title: Psychedelic drug

text: Phenethylamine is also a trace amine but to a lesser extent acts as a neurotransmitter in the human central nervous system (CNS). Phenethylamine instead regulates monoamine neurotransmission by binding to trace amine-associated receptor 1 (TAAR1), which plays a significant role in regulating neurotransmission in dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin neurons in the CNS and inhibiting vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2) in monoamine neurons. When VMAT2 is inhibited monoamine neurotransmitters such as dopamine cannot be released into the synapse via typical release mechanisms. Mescaline is a naturally occurring psychedelic protoalkaloid of the substituted phenethylamine class.


title: Psychedelic drug

text: Amides of lysergic acid are collectively known as lysergamides, and include a number of compounds with potent agonist and/or antagonist activity at various serotonin and dopamine receptors. Lysergamides contain both Tryptamine and Phenethylamine structure although it is class as a complex Tryptamine. LSD (Lysergic Acid Diethylamide) is one of many lysergamides. A wide range of lysergamides have emerged in recent years, inspired by existing scientific literature. Others, have appeared from chemical research. 1P-LSD is a derivative and functional analogue of LSD and a homologue of ALD-52. It modifies the LSD molecule by adding a propionyl group to the nitrogen molecule of LSD's indole.


title: Psychedelic drug

text: Although several attempts have been made, starting in the 19th and 20th centuries, to define common phenomenological structures of the effects produced by classic psychedelics, a universally accepted taxonomy does not yet exist. At lower doses, features of psychedelic experiences include sensory alterations, such as the warping of surfaces, shape suggestibility, and color variations. Users often report intense colors that they have not previously experienced, and repetitive geometric shapes are common. Higher doses often cause intense and fundamental alterations of sensory perception, such as synesthesia or the experience of additional spatial or temporal dimensions.


title: Psychedelic drug

text: Classic psychedelics are considered to be those found in nature like psilocybin, DMT, mescaline, and LSD which is derived from naturally occurring ergotamine, and non-classic psychedelics are considered to be newer analogs and derivatives of pharmacophore lysergamides, tryptamine, and phenethylamine structures like 2C-B. Many of these psychedelics cause remarkably similar effects, despite their different chemical structure. However, many users report that the three major families have subjectively different qualities in the "feel" of the experience, which are difficult to describe. Some compounds, such as 2C-B, have extremely tight "dose curves", meaning the difference in dose between a non-event and an overwhelming disconnection from reality can be very slight. There can also be very substantial differences between the drugs; for instance, 5-MeO-DMT rarely produces the visual effects typical of other psychedelics. Tryptamines are well documented to cause classic psychedelic states, such as increased empathy, visual distorsions (drifting, morphing, breathing, melting of various surfaces and objects), auditory hallucinations, ego dissolution or ego death with high enough dose, mystical and spiritual experiences, closed eye hallucinations and complete detachment from reality with a high enough dose.


title: Psychedelic drug

text: Despite the contrary perception of much of the public, psychedelic drugs are not addictive and are physiologically safe. As of 2016, there have been no known deaths due to overdose of LSD, psilocybin, or mescaline.


title: Psychedelic drug

text: Risks do exist during an unsupervised psychedelic experience, however; Ira Byock wrote in 2018 in the "Journal of Palliative Medicine" that psilocybin is safe when administered to a properly screened patient and supervised by a qualified professional with appropriate set and setting. However, he called for an "abundance of caution" because in the absence of these conditions a range of negative reactions is possible, including "fear, a prolonged sense of dread, or full panic." He notes that driving or even walking in public can be dangerous during a psychedelic experience because of impaired hand-eye coordination and fine motor control. In some cases, individuals taking psychedelics have performed dangerous or fatal acts because they believed they possessed superhuman powers.


title: Psychedelic drug

text: The usage of most psychedelics entails some risk of eliciting flashbacks of the drug experience even after the effects have worn off, albeit rarely. HPPD or other after-effects may also occur. Psilocybin-induced states of mind share features with states experienced in psychosis, and while a causal relationship between psilocybin and the onset of psychosis has not been established as of 2011, researchers have called for investigation of the relationship. Many of the persistent negative perceptions of psychological risks are unsupported by the currently available scientific evidence, with the majority of reported adverse effects not being observed in a regulated and/or medical context. A population study on associations between psychedelic use and mental illness published in 2013 found no evidence that psychedelic use was associated with increased prevalence of any mental illness.


title: Psychedelic drug

text: Psychedelic substances which may have therapeutic uses include psilocybin, LSD, and mescaline. During the 1950s and 1960s, lack of informed consent in some scientific trials on psychedelics led to significant, long-lasting harm to some participants. Since then, research regarding the effectiveness of psychedelic therapy has been conducted under strict ethical guidelines, with fully informed consent and a pre-screening to avoid people with psychosis taking part. Although the history behind these substances has hindered research into their potential medicinal value, scientists are now able to conduct studies and renew research that was halted in the 1970s. Some research has shown that these substances have helped people with such mental disorders as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), alcoholism, depression, and cluster headaches.


title: Psychedelic drug

text: It has long been known that psychedelics promote neurite growth and neuroplasticity and are potent psychoplastogens. There is evidence that psychedelics induce molecular and cellular adaptations related to neuroplasticity and that these could potentially underlie therapeutic benefits. Psychedelics have also been shown to have potent anti-inflammatory activity and therapeutic effects in animal models of inflammatory diseases including asthma, and cardiovascular disease and diabetes.


title: Psychedelic drug

text: A number of frequently mentioned or traditional psychedelics such as "Ayahuasca" (which contains DMT), "San Pedro" (which contains mescaline), "Psilocybe mushrooms" (which contain psilocin/psilocybin) and "Tabernanthe iboga" (which contains the unique psychedelic ibogaine) all have a long and extensive history of spiritual, shamanic and traditional usage by indigenous peoples in various world regions, particularly in Latin America but in the case of iboga, Gabon, Africa.


title: Psychedelic drug

text: Different countries have come to be associated with particular psychedelic entheogens such as ayahuasca's spiritual importance in regions of Peru near the Amazon Basin and the entheogenic use of psilocybe mushrooms by the native Mazatec people of Oaxaca, Mexico.


title: Psychedelic drug

text: Psychedelic culture includes manifestations such as psychedelic music, psychedelic art, psychedelic literature, psychedelic film, and psychedelic festivals. Examples of psychedelic music would be rock bands like the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. Many psychedelic bands and elements of the psychedelic subculture originated in San Francisco during the mid to late 1960s


title: Psychedelic drug

text: Many psychedelics are classified under Schedule I of the United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971 as drugs with the greatest potential to cause harm and no acceptable medical uses. In addition, many countries have analogue laws; for example, in the United States, the Federal Analogue Act of 1986 automatically forbids any drugs sharing similar chemical structures or chemical formulas to illicit or prohibited substances if sold for human consumption.


title: Psychedelic drug

text: U.S. states such as Oregon and Colorado have also instituted decriminalization and legalization measures of psychedelics and states like New Hampshire and others are attempting to do the same.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: In computer science, a sorting algorithm is an algorithm that puts elements of a list into an order. The most frequently used orders are numerical order and lexicographical order, and either ascending or descending. Efficient sorting is important for optimizing the efficiency of other algorithms (such as search and merge algorithms) that require input data to be in sorted lists. Sorting is also often useful for canonicalizing data and for producing human-readable output.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: For optimum efficiency, the input data should be stored in a data structure which allows random access rather than one that allows only sequential access.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: From the beginning of computing, the sorting problem has attracted a great deal of research, perhaps due to the complexity of solving it efficiently despite its simple, familiar statement. Among the authors of early sorting algorithms around 1951 was Betty Holberton, who worked on ENIAC and UNIVAC. Bubble sort was analyzed as early as 1956. Asymptotically optimal algorithms have been known since the mid-20th century new algorithms are still being invented, with the widely used Timsort dating to 2002, and the library sort being first published in 2006.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: Comparison sorting algorithms have a fundamental requirement of Ω("n" log "n") comparisons (some input sequences will require a multiple of "n" log "n" comparisons, where n is the number of elements in the array to be sorted). Algorithms not based on comparisons, such as counting sort, can have better performance.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: Sorting algorithms are prevalent in introductory computer science classes, where the abundance of algorithms for the problem provides a gentle introduction to a variety of core algorithm concepts, such as big O notation, divide-and-conquer algorithms, data structures such as heaps and binary trees, randomized algorithms, best, worst and average case analysis, time–space tradeoffs, and upper and lower bounds.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: Sorting small arrays optimally (in fewest comparisons and swaps) or fast (i.e. taking into account machine specific details) is still an open research problem, with solutions only known for very small arrays (<20 elements). Similarly optimal (by various definitions) sorting on a parallel machine is an open research topic.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: Stable sort algorithms sort equal elements in the same order that they appear in the input. For example, in the card sorting example to the right, the cards are being sorted by their rank, and their suit is being ignored. This allows the possibility of multiple different correctly sorted versions of the original list. Stable sorting algorithms choose one of these, according to the following rule: if two items compare as equal (like the two 5 cards), then their relative order will be preserved, i.e. if one comes before the other in the input, it will come before the other in the output.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: Stability is important to preserve order over multiple sorts on the same data set. For example, say that student records consisting of name and class section are sorted dynamically, first by name, then by class section. If a stable sorting algorithm is used in both cases, the sort-by-class-section operation will not change the name order; with an unstable sort, it could be that sorting by section shuffles the name order, resulting in a nonalphabetical list of students.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: More formally, the data being sorted can be represented as a record or tuple of values, and the part of the data that is used for sorting is called the "key". In the card example, cards are represented as a record (rank, suit), and the key is the rank. A sorting algorithm is stable if whenever there are two records R and S with the same key, and R appears before S in the original list, then R will always appear before S in the sorted list.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: When equal elements are indistinguishable, such as with integers, or more generally, any data where the entire element is the key, stability is not an issue. Stability is also not an issue if all keys are different.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: Unstable sorting algorithms can be specially implemented to be stable. One way of doing this is to artificially extend the key comparison, so that comparisons between two objects with otherwise equal keys are decided using the order of the entries in the original input list as a tie-breaker. Remembering this order, however, may require additional time and space.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: One application for stable sorting algorithms is sorting a list using a primary and secondary key. For example, suppose we wish to sort a hand of cards such that the suits are in the order clubs (♣), diamonds (♦), hearts (♥), spades (♠), and within each suit, the cards are sorted by rank. This can be done by first sorting the cards by rank (using any sort), and then doing a stable sort by suit:


title: Sorting algorithm

text: Within each suit, the stable sort preserves the ordering by rank that was already done. This idea can be extended to any number of keys and is utilised by radix sort. The same effect can be achieved with an unstable sort by using a lexicographic key comparison, which, e.g., compares first by suit, and then compares by rank if the suits are the same.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: In these tables, is the number of records to be sorted. The columns "Best", "Average" and "Worst" give the time complexity in each case, under the assumption that the length of each key is constant, and therefore that all comparisons, swaps and other operations can proceed in constant time. "Memory" denotes the amount of extra storage needed additionally to that used by the list itself, under the same assumption. The run times and the memory requirements listed are inside big O notation, hence the base of the logarithms does not matter. The notation means .


title: Sorting algorithm

text: The following table describes integer sorting algorithms and other sorting algorithms that are not comparison sorts. As such, they are not limited to "Ω"("n" log "n"). Complexities below assume items to be sorted, with keys of size , digit size , and the range of numbers to be sorted. Many of them are based on the assumption that the key size is large enough that all entries have unique key values, and hence that , where ≪ means "much less than". In the unit-cost random-access machine model, algorithms with running time of formula_1, such as radix sort, still take time proportional to , because is limited to be not more than formula_2, and a larger number of elements to sort would require a bigger in order to store them in the memory.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: Samplesort can be used to parallelize any of the non-comparison sorts, by efficiently distributing data into several buckets and then passing down sorting to several processors, with no need to merge as buckets are already sorted between each other.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: Some algorithms are slow compared to those discussed above, such as the bogosort with unbounded run time and the stooge sort which has "O"("n") run time. These sorts are usually described for educational purposes in order to demonstrate how run time of algorithms is estimated. The following table describes some sorting algorithms that are impractical for real-life use in traditional software contexts due to extremely poor performance or specialized hardware requirements.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: Theoretical computer scientists have detailed other sorting algorithms that provide better than "O"("n" log "n") time complexity assuming additional constraints, including:


title: Sorting algorithm

text: While there are a large number of sorting algorithms, in practical implementations a few algorithms predominate. Insertion sort is widely used for small data sets, while for large data sets an asymptotically efficient sort is used, primarily heapsort, merge sort, or quicksort. Efficient implementations generally use a hybrid algorithm, combining an asymptotically efficient algorithm for the overall sort with insertion sort for small lists at the bottom of a recursion. Highly tuned implementations use more sophisticated variants, such as Timsort (merge sort, insertion sort, and additional logic), used in Android, Java, and Python, and introsort (quicksort and heapsort), used (in variant forms) in some C++ sort implementations and in .NET.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: For more restricted data, such as numbers in a fixed interval, distribution sorts such as counting sort or radix sort are widely used. Bubble sort and variants are rarely used in practice, but are commonly found in teaching and theoretical discussions.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: When physically sorting objects (such as alphabetizing papers, tests or books) people intuitively generally use insertion sorts for small sets. For larger sets, people often first bucket, such as by initial letter, and multiple bucketing allows practical sorting of very large sets. Often space is relatively cheap, such as by spreading objects out on the floor or over a large area, but operations are expensive, particularly moving an object a large distance – locality of reference is important. Merge sorts are also practical for physical objects, particularly as two hands can be used, one for each list to merge, while other algorithms, such as heapsort or quicksort, are poorly suited for human use. Other algorithms, such as library sort, a variant of insertion sort that leaves spaces, are also practical for physical use.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: Two of the simplest sorts are insertion sort and selection sort, both of which are efficient on small data, due to low overhead, but not efficient on large data. Insertion sort is generally faster than selection sort in practice, due to fewer comparisons and good performance on almost-sorted data, and thus is preferred in practice, but selection sort uses fewer writes, and thus is used when write performance is a limiting factor.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: "Insertion sort" is a simple sorting algorithm that is relatively efficient for small lists and mostly sorted lists, and is often used as part of more sophisticated algorithms. It works by taking elements from the list one by one and inserting them in their correct position into a new sorted list similar to how we put money in our wallet. In arrays, the new list and the remaining elements can share the array's space, but insertion is expensive, requiring shifting all following elements over by one. Shellsort is a variant of insertion sort that is more efficient for larger lists.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: "Selection sort" is an in-place comparison sort. It has O("n") complexity, making it inefficient on large lists, and generally performs worse than the similar insertion sort. Selection sort is noted for its simplicity, and also has performance advantages over more complicated algorithms in certain situations.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: The algorithm finds the minimum value, swaps it with the value in the first position, and repeats these steps for the remainder of the list. It does no more than "n" swaps, and thus is useful where swapping is very expensive.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: Practical general sorting algorithms are almost always based on an algorithm with average time complexity (and generally worst-case complexity) O("n" log "n"), of which the most common are heapsort, merge sort, and quicksort. Each has advantages and drawbacks, with the most significant being that simple implementation of merge sort uses O("n") additional space, and simple implementation of quicksort has O("n") worst-case complexity. These problems can be solved or ameliorated at the cost of a more complex algorithm.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: While these algorithms are asymptotically efficient on random data, for practical efficiency on real-world data various modifications are used. First, the overhead of these algorithms becomes significant on smaller data, so often a hybrid algorithm is used, commonly switching to insertion sort once the data is small enough. Second, the algorithms often perform poorly on already sorted data or almost sorted data – these are common in real-world data, and can be sorted in O("n") time by appropriate algorithms. Finally, they may also be unstable, and stability is often a desirable property in a sort. Thus more sophisticated algorithms are often employed, such as Timsort (based on merge sort) or introsort (based on quicksort, falling back to heapsort).


title: Sorting algorithm

text: "Merge sort" takes advantage of the ease of merging already sorted lists into a new sorted list. It starts by comparing every two elements (i.e., 1 with 2, then 3 with 4...) and swapping them if the first should come after the second. It then merges each of the resulting lists of two into lists of four, then merges those lists of four, and so on; until at last two lists are merged into the final sorted list. Of the algorithms described here, this is the first that scales well to very large lists, because its worst-case running time is O("n" log "n"). It is also easily applied to lists, not only arrays, as it only requires sequential access, not random access. However, it has additional O("n") space complexity, and involves a large number of copies in simple implementations.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: Merge sort has seen a relatively recent surge in popularity for practical implementations, due to its use in the sophisticated algorithm Timsort, which is used for the standard sort routine in the programming languages Python and Java (as of JDK7). Merge sort itself is the standard routine in Perl, among others, and has been used in Java at least since 2000 in JDK1.3.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: "Heapsort" is a much more efficient version of selection sort. It also works by determining the largest (or smallest) element of the list, placing that at the end (or beginning) of the list, then continuing with the rest of the list, but accomplishes this task efficiently by using a data structure called a heap, a special type of binary tree. Once the data list has been made into a heap, the root node is guaranteed to be the largest (or smallest) element. When it is removed and placed at the end of the list, the heap is rearranged so the largest element remaining moves to the root. Using the heap, finding the next largest element takes O(log "n") time, instead of O("n") for a linear scan as in simple selection sort. This allows Heapsort to run in O("n" log "n") time, and this is also the worst case complexity.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: "Quicksort" is a divide-and-conquer algorithm which relies on a "partition" operation: to partition an array, an element called a "pivot" is selected. All elements smaller than the pivot are moved before it and all greater elements are moved after it. This can be done efficiently in linear time and in-place. The lesser and greater sublists are then recursively sorted. This yields average time complexity of O("n" log "n"), with low overhead, and thus this is a popular algorithm. Efficient implementations of quicksort (with in-place partitioning) are typically unstable sorts and somewhat complex, but are among the fastest sorting algorithms in practice. Together with its modest O(log "n") space usage, quicksort is one of the most popular sorting algorithms and is available in many standard programming libraries.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: The important caveat about quicksort is that its worst-case performance is O("n"); while this is rare, in naive implementations (choosing the first or last element as pivot) this occurs for sorted data, which is a common case. The most complex issue in quicksort is thus choosing a good pivot element, as consistently poor choices of pivots can result in drastically slower O("n") performance, but good choice of pivots yields O("n" log "n") performance, which is asymptotically optimal. For example, if at each step the median is chosen as the pivot then the algorithm works in O("n" log "n"). Finding the median, such as by the median of medians selection algorithm is however an O("n") operation on unsorted lists and therefore exacts significant overhead with sorting. In practice choosing a random pivot almost certainly yields O("n" log "n") performance.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: If a guarantee of O("n" log "n") performance is important, there is a simple modification to achieve that. The idea, due to Musser, is to set a limit on the maximum depth of recursion. If that limit is exceeded, then sorting is continued using the heapsort algorithm. Musser proposed that the limit should be formula_6, which is approximately twice the maximum recursion depth one would expect on average with a randomly ordered array.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: "Shellsort" was invented by Donald Shell in 1959. It improves upon insertion sort by moving out of order elements more than one position at a time. The concept behind Shellsort is that insertion sort performs in time, where k is the greatest distance between two out-of-place elements. This means that generally, they perform in "O"("n"), but for data that is mostly sorted, with only a few elements out of place, they perform faster. So, by first sorting elements far away, and progressively shrinking the gap between the elements to sort, the final sort computes much faster. One implementation can be described as arranging the data sequence in a two-dimensional array and then sorting the columns of the array using insertion sort.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: The worst-case time complexity of Shellsort is an open problem and depends on the gap sequence used, with known complexities ranging from "O"("n") to "O"("n") and Θ("n" log "n"). This, combined with the fact that Shellsort is in-place, only needs a relatively small amount of code, and does not require use of the call stack, makes it is useful in situations where memory is at a premium, such as in embedded systems and operating system kernels.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: Bubble sort, and variants such as the Comb sort and cocktail sort, are simple, highly inefficient sorting algorithms. They are frequently seen in introductory texts due to ease of analysis, but they are rarely used in practice.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: "Bubble sort" is a simple sorting algorithm. The algorithm starts at the beginning of the data set. It compares the first two elements, and if the first is greater than the second, it swaps them. It continues doing this for each pair of adjacent elements to the end of the data set. It then starts again with the first two elements, repeating until no swaps have occurred on the last pass. This algorithm's average time and worst-case performance is O("n"), so it is rarely used to sort large, unordered data sets. Bubble sort can be used to sort a small number of items (where its asymptotic inefficiency is not a high penalty). Bubble sort can also be used efficiently on a list of any length that is nearly sorted (that is, the elements are not significantly out of place). For example, if any number of elements are out of place by only one position (e.g. 0123546789 and 1032547698), bubble sort's exchange will get them in order on the first pass, the second pass will find all elements in order, so the sort will take only 2"n" time.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: "Comb sort" is a relatively simple sorting algorithm based on bubble sort and originally designed by Włodzimierz Dobosiewicz in 1980. It was later rediscovered and popularized by Stephen Lacey and Richard Box with a "Byte" Magazine article published in April 1991. The basic idea is to eliminate "turtles", or small values near the end of the list, since in a bubble sort these slow the sorting down tremendously. ("Rabbits", large values around the beginning of the list, do not pose a problem in bubble sort) It accomplishes this by initially swapping elements that are a certain distance from one another in the array, rather than only swapping elements if they are adjacent to one another, and then shrinking the chosen distance until it is operating as a normal bubble sort. Thus, if Shellsort can be thought of as a generalized version of insertion sort that swaps elements spaced a certain distance away from one another, comb sort can be thought of as the same generalization applied to bubble sort.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: "Exchange sort" is sometimes confused with bubble sort, although the algorithms are in fact distinct. Exchange sort works by comparing the first element with all elements above it, swapping where needed, thereby guaranteeing that the first element is correct for the final sort order; it then proceeds to do the same for the second element, and so on. It lacks the advantage which bubble sort has of detecting in one pass if the list is already sorted, but it can be faster than bubble sort by a constant factor (one less pass over the data to be sorted; half as many total comparisons) in worst case situations. Like any simple O("n") sort it can be reasonably fast over very small data sets, though in general insertion sort will be faster.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: "Distribution sort" refers to any sorting algorithm where data is distributed from their input to multiple intermediate structures which are then gathered and placed on the output. For example, both bucket sort and flashsort are distribution based sorting algorithms. Distribution sorting algorithms can be used on a single processor, or they can be a distributed algorithm, where individual subsets are separately sorted on different processors, then combined. This allows external sorting of data too large to fit into a single computer's memory.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: Counting sort is applicable when each input is known to belong to a particular set, "S", of possibilities. The algorithm runs in O(|"S"| + "n") time and O(|"S"|) memory where "n" is the length of the input. It works by creating an integer array of size |"S"| and using the "i"th bin to count the occurrences of the "i"th member of "S" in the input. Each input is then counted by incrementing the value of its corresponding bin. Afterward, the counting array is looped through to arrange all of the inputs in order. This sorting algorithm often cannot be used because "S" needs to be reasonably small for the algorithm to be efficient, but it is extremely fast and demonstrates great asymptotic behavior as "n" increases. It also can be modified to provide stable behavior.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: Bucket sort is a divide-and-conquer sorting algorithm that generalizes counting sort by partitioning an array into a finite number of buckets. Each bucket is then sorted individually, either using a different sorting algorithm, or by recursively applying the bucket sorting algorithm.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: A bucket sort works best when the elements of the data set are evenly distributed across all buckets.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: "Radix sort" is an algorithm that sorts numbers by processing individual digits. "n" numbers consisting of "k" digits each are sorted in O("n" · "k") time. Radix sort can process digits of each number either starting from the least significant digit (LSD) or starting from the most significant digit (MSD). The LSD algorithm first sorts the list by the least significant digit while preserving their relative order using a stable sort. Then it sorts them by the next digit, and so on from the least significant to the most significant, ending up with a sorted list. While the LSD radix sort requires the use of a stable sort, the MSD radix sort algorithm does not (unless stable sorting is desired). In-place MSD radix sort is not stable. It is common for the counting sort algorithm to be used internally by the radix sort. A hybrid sorting approach, such as using insertion sort for small bins, improves performance of radix sort significantly.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: When the size of the array to be sorted approaches or exceeds the available primary memory, so that (much slower) disk or swap space must be employed, the memory usage pattern of a sorting algorithm becomes important, and an algorithm that might have been fairly efficient when the array fit easily in RAM may become impractical. In this scenario, the total number of comparisons becomes (relatively) less important, and the number of times sections of memory must be copied or swapped to and from the disk can dominate the performance characteristics of an algorithm. Thus, the number of passes and the localization of comparisons can be more important than the raw number of comparisons, since comparisons of nearby elements to one another happen at system bus speed (or, with caching, even at CPU speed), which, compared to disk speed, is virtually instantaneous.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: For example, the popular recursive quicksort algorithm provides quite reasonable performance with adequate RAM, but due to the recursive way that it copies portions of the array it becomes much less practical when the array does not fit in RAM, because it may cause a number of slow copy or move operations to and from disk. In that scenario, another algorithm may be preferable even if it requires more total comparisons.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: One way to work around this problem, which works well when complex records (such as in a relational database) are being sorted by a relatively small key field, is to create an index into the array and then sort the index, rather than the entire array. (A sorted version of the entire array can then be produced with one pass, reading from the index, but often even that is unnecessary, as having the sorted index is adequate.) Because the index is much smaller than the entire array, it may fit easily in memory where the entire array would not, effectively eliminating the disk-swapping problem. This procedure is sometimes called "tag sort".


title: Sorting algorithm

text: Another technique for overcoming the memory-size problem is using external sorting, for example one of the ways is to combine two algorithms in a way that takes advantage of the strength of each to improve overall performance. For instance, the array might be subdivided into chunks of a size that will fit in RAM, the contents of each chunk sorted using an efficient algorithm (such as quicksort), and the results merged using a "k"-way merge similar to that used in merge sort. This is faster than performing either merge sort or quicksort over the entire list.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: Techniques can also be combined. For sorting very large sets of data that vastly exceed system memory, even the index may need to be sorted using an algorithm or combination of algorithms designed to perform reasonably with virtual memory, i.e., to reduce the amount of swapping required.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: Related problems include approximate sorting (sorting a sequence to within a certain amount of the correct order), partial sorting (sorting only the "k" smallest elements of a list, or finding the "k" smallest elements, but unordered) and selection (computing the "k"th smallest element). These can be solved inefficiently by a total sort, but more efficient algorithms exist, often derived by generalizing a sorting algorithm. The most notable example is quickselect, which is related to quicksort. Conversely, some sorting algorithms can be derived by repeated application of a selection algorithm; quicksort and quickselect can be seen as the same pivoting move, differing only in whether one recurses on both sides (quicksort, divide-and-conquer) or one side (quickselect, decrease-and-conquer).


title: Sorting algorithm

text: A kind of opposite of a sorting algorithm is a shuffling algorithm. These are fundamentally different because they require a source of random numbers. Shuffling can also be implemented by a sorting algorithm, namely by a random sort: assigning a random number to each element of the list and then sorting based on the random numbers. This is generally not done in practice, however, and there is a well-known simple and efficient algorithm for shuffling: the Fisher–Yates shuffle.


title: Sorting algorithm

text: Sorting algorithms are ineffective for finding an order in many situations. Usually when elements have no reliable comparison function (crowdsourced preferences like voting systems), comparisons are very costly (sports), or when it would be impossible to pairwise compare all elements for all criteria (search engines). In these cases, the problem is usually referred to as "ranking" and the goal is to find the "best" result for some criteria according to probabilities inferred from comparisons or rankings. A common example is in chess, where players are ranked with the Elo rating system, and rankings are determined by a instead of a sorting algorithm.


title: Cambridge Five

text: The Cambridge Spy Ring was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and was active from the 1930s until at least into the early 1950s. None of the known members were ever prosecuted for spying. The number and membership of the ring emerged slowly, from the 1950s onwards. The general public first became aware of the conspiracy after the sudden flight of Donald Maclean (cryptonym: Homer) and Guy Burgess (cryptonym: Hicks) to the Soviet Union in 1951. Suspicion immediately fell on Harold "Kim" Philby (cryptonyms: Sonny, Stanley), who eventually fled the country in 1963. Following Philby's flight, British intelligence obtained confessions from Anthony Blunt (cryptonym: Johnson) and then John Cairncross (cryptonym: Liszt), who have come to be seen as the last two of a group of five. Their involvement was kept secret for many years: until 1979 for Blunt, and 1990 for Cairncross. The moniker Cambridge Four evolved to become the Cambridge Five after Cairncross was added.


title: Cambridge Five

text: The term "Cambridge" refers to the recruitment of the group during their education at the University of Cambridge in the 1930s. Debate surrounds the exact timing of their recruitment by Soviet intelligence. Blunt claimed that they were not recruited as agents until after they had graduated. A Fellow of Trinity College, Blunt was several years older than Burgess, Maclean, and Philby; he acted as a talent-spotter and recruiter.


title: Cambridge Five

text: All of the five were convinced that the Marxism–Leninism of Soviet Communism was the best available political system, and especially the best defence against the rise of fascism. All pursued successful careers in branches of the British government. They passed large amounts of intelligence to the Soviet Union, so much so that the KGB became suspicious that at least some of it was false. Perhaps as important as the intelligence they passed was the demoralizing effect to the British Establishment of their slow unmasking, and the mistrust in British security this caused in the United States.


title: Cambridge Five

text: Many others have also been accused of membership in the Cambridge ring. Blunt and Burgess were both members of the University Pitt Club, as well as the Cambridge Apostles, exclusive secret societies at Cambridge University. Other Apostles accused of having spied for the Soviets include Michael Straight and Guy Liddell.


title: Cambridge Five

text: The following five supplied intelligence to the Soviets under their controller Yuri Modin who later defected to the West. Modin said that Moscow did not really trust the Cambridge double agents during WWII. The KGB had difficulty believing that the men would have access to top secret documents; they were particularly suspicious of Philby, wondering how he could have become an agent given his Communist past. One report later stated that "About half the documents the British spies sent to Moscow were never even read" due to the paranoia. Nonetheless, the Soviets accepted a great deal of secret information, 1,771 documents from Blunt, 4,605 from Burgess, 4,593 from MacLean and 5,832 from Cairncross, during 1941 to 1945.


title: Cambridge Five

text: Donald Maclean studied at the University of Cambridge in the early 1930s where he met Guy Burgess. They both disagreed with the idea of capitalism. Later they were both recruited by Soviet intelligence operatives and became undercover agents for the Soviet Union. Maclean began delivering information to the Soviet intelligence operatives as a member of the British Foreign Office in 1934. Soon after, Burgess also began supplying information to the Soviet Union in 1936 from his position as a BBC correspondent up until 1938, then as an active member of MI6 intelligence continued to supply classified information up until 1941, and then finally as a member of the British Foreign Office up until 1944.


title: Cambridge Five

text: Maclean and Burgess were reportedly seen by their Soviet handlers as the "hopeless drunks" due to the fact that they had a hard time keeping their secret occupations to themselves. It is said that one time, while highly intoxicated, Burgess risked exposing his second identity. He was leaving a pub where he accidentally dropped one of the secret files he had taken from the Foreign Office. Maclean was also known to have loose lips and said to have leaked information about his secret duties to his brother and close friends. Although they struggled to keep secrets, that did not stop them from delivering information. It is said that Burgess handed over about 389 top secret documents to the KGB within the early part of 1945 along with an additional 168 documents in December of 1949.


title: Cambridge Five

text: Between 1934 and 1951 Maclean passed numerous secrets to Moscow. The lack of detection was due to the refusal of the Secret Service to listen to warnings from the US, "even after the FBI had established that an agent code-named Homer had been operating inside the British embassy in Washington during the war", according to a review of MacLean's biography (in 2018) by author Roland Philipps.


title: Cambridge Five

text: Philby, when he was posted in the British embassy in Washington, DC, after the war, learned that US and British intelligence were searching for a British embassy mole (cryptonym Homer) who was passing information to the Soviet Union, relying on material uncovered by the Venona project.


title: Cambridge Five

text: Philby learned one of the suspects was Maclean. Realizing he had to act fast, he ordered Burgess, who was also on the embassy staff and living with Philby, to warn Maclean in England, where he was serving in the Foreign Office headquarters. Burgess was recalled from the United States due to "bad behaviour" and upon reaching London, warned Maclean.


title: Cambridge Five

text: In early summer 1951, Burgess and Maclean made international headlines by disappearing (they had taken a ship from Southampton to St. Malo, France, a train to Paris, and a flight to Moscow). In 1952-1955 they lived covertly in Kuybyshev. However, their whereabouts were unclear for some time and the suspicion that they had defected to the Soviet Union turned out to be correct later (that did not become public knowledge until 1956 when the two appeared at a press conference in Moscow). A warrant was not issued for their arrest until 1962.


title: Cambridge Five

text: It was obvious they had been tipped off, and Philby quickly became the prime suspect due to his close relation with Burgess. Though Burgess was not supposed to defect at the same time as Maclean, he went along. It has been claimed that the KGB ordered Burgess to go to Moscow. This move damaged Philby's reputation, with many speculating that had it not occurred, Philby could have climbed even higher in the Secret Intelligence Service.


title: Cambridge Five

text: In 2019, Russia honoured Burgess and Maclean in a ceremony; a plaque was attached to the building where they had lived in the 50s. The head of the SVR foreign intelligence service, praised the duo on social media for "having supplied Soviet intelligence with the most important information for more than 20 years, [making] a significant contribution to the victory over fascism, the protection of our strategic interests and ensuring the safety of our country".


title: Cambridge Five

text: A book review in "The Guardian" of Stewart Purvis and Jeff Hulbert's biography of Guy Burgess included this conclusion: "[leaving] us all the more astonished that such a smelly, scruffy, lying, gabby, promiscuous, drunken slob could penetrate the heart of the establishment without anyone apparently noticing that he was also a Soviet masterspy".


title: Cambridge Five

text: Andrew Lownie's biography of Burgess "Stalin's Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess" argues that he was perhaps the most influential of all the members of the Cambridge Five.


title: Cambridge Five

text: Harold "Kim" Philby was a senior officer in Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, who began his work for the Soviet Union as a spy in 1934. He went on to serve the KGB for 54 years. He was known for passing more than 900 British documents over to the KGB. He served as a double agent.


title: Cambridge Five

text: Investigation of Philby found several suspicious matters but nothing for which he could be prosecuted. Nevertheless, he was forced to resign from MI6. In 1955 he was named in the press, with questions also raised in the House of Commons, as chief suspect for "the Third Man" and he called a press conference to deny the allegation. That same year, Philby was ruled out as a suspect when British Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan cleared him of all charges.


title: Cambridge Five

text: In the later 1950s, Philby left the secret service and began working as a journalist in the Middle East; both "The Economist" and "The Observer" provided his employment there. MI6 then re-employed him at around the same time, to provide reports from that region.


title: Cambridge Five

text: In 1961, defector Anatoliy Golitsyn provided information which pointed to Philby. An MI6 officer and friend of Philby from his earlier MI6 days, John Nicholas Rede Elliott, was sent in 1963 to interview him in Beirut and reported that Philby seemed to know he was coming (indicating the presence of yet another mole). Nonetheless, Philby allegedly confessed to Elliott.


title: Cambridge Five

text: Shortly afterwards, apparently fearing he might be abducted in Lebanon, Philby defected to the Soviet Union under cover of night, aboard a Soviet freighter. For the first seven years in Moscow, he was under virtual house arrest since the Soviets were concerned that he might defect to the West. According to an article in "The New York Times", he was given no rank nor an office. In fact, "for the most part, Philby was frozen out, his suggestions ignored" ... This ruined his life". After his death, however, Philby was awarded a number of medals by the Soviets.


title: Cambridge Five

text: Anthony Blunt was a former Surveyor of the King's Pictures and later Queen's Pictures for the royal art collection. He served as an MI5 member and supplied secret information to the KGB, while also providing warnings to fellow agents of certain counterintelligence that could potentially endanger them.


title: Cambridge Five

text: In 1964, MI5 received information from the American Michael Whitney Straight pointing to Blunt's espionage; the two had known each other at Cambridge some thirty years before and Blunt recruited Straight as a spy.


title: Cambridge Five

text: Blunt was interrogated by MI5 and confessed in exchange for immunity from prosecution. As he was—by 1964—without access to classified information, he had secretly been granted immunity by the Attorney General, in exchange for revealing everything he knew. Peter Wright, one of Blunt's interrogators, describes in his book "Spycatcher" how Blunt was evasive and only made admissions grudgingly, when confronted with the undeniable.


title: Cambridge Five

text: By 1979, Blunt was publicly accused of being a Soviet agent by investigative journalist Andrew Boyle, in his book "Climate of Treason". In November 1979, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher admitted to the House of Commons that Blunt had confessed to being a Soviet spy fifteen years previously.


title: Cambridge Five

text: The term "Five" began to be used in 1961, when KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn named Maclean and Burgess as part of a "Ring of Five", with Philby a 'probable' third, alongside two other agents whom he did not know.


title: Cambridge Five

text: Of all the information provided by Golitsyn, the only item that was ever independently confirmed was the Soviet affiliation of John Vassall. Vassall was a relatively low-ranking spy who some researchers believe may have been sacrificed to protect a more senior one.


title: Cambridge Five

text: At the time of Golitsyn's defection, Philby had already been accused in the press and was living in Beirut, Lebanon, a country with no extradition agreement with Britain. Select members of MI5 and MI6 already knew Philby to be a spy from Venona project decryptions. Golitsyn also provided other information, such as the claim that Harold Wilson (then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom) was a KGB agent.


title: Cambridge Five

text: Golitsyn's reliability remains a controversial subject and as such, there is little certainty of the number of agents he assigned to the Cambridge spy ring. To add to the confusion, when Blunt finally confessed, he named several other people as having been recruited by him.


title: Cambridge Five

text: Blunt wrote his memoirs but insisted they not be released until 25 years after his death. They were made public by the British Museum in 2009. The manuscript indicated that he regretted having passed information to the Soviets because of the way it eventually affected his life, that he believed that the government would never reveal his treachery and that he had dismissed suicide as "cowardly". Christopher Andrew felt that the regret was shallow, and that he found an "unwillingness to acknowledge the evil he had served in spying for Stalin".


title: Cambridge Five

text: John Cairncross was known as a British literary scholar until he was later identified as a Soviet atomic spy. While a civil servant in the Foreign Office, he was recruited in 1937 by James Klugmann to become a Soviet spy. He moved to the Treasury in 1938 but transferred once again to the Cabinet office in 1940 where he served as the private secretary of Sir Maurice Hankey, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster at that time. In May 1942, he transferred to the British cryptanalysis agency, the Government Code and Cypher School, at Bletchley Park and then, in 1943, to MI6. Following World War II, it is said that Cairncross leaked information regarding the new NATO alliance to the Soviets.


title: Cambridge Five

text: On the basis of the information provided by Golitsyn, speculations raged on for many years as to the identity of the "Fifth Man". The journalistic popularity of this phrase owes something to the unrelated novels "The Third Man" and "The Tenth Man", written by Graham Greene who, coincidentally, worked with Philby and Cairncross during the Second World War.


title: Cambridge Five

text: Cairncross confessed to having been a spy for the Soviets, in a 1964 meeting with MI6 that was kept secret for some years. He was given immunity from prosecution.


title: Cambridge Five

text: The public became aware of his treachery in December 1979, however, when Cairncross made a public confession to journalist Barrie Penrose. The news was widely publicized leading many to surmise that he was in fact the "fifth man"; that was confirmed in 1989 by KGB agent Oleg Gordievsky who had defected to Britain.


title: Cambridge Five

text: His designation as the fifth man was also confirmed in former KGB agent Yuri Modin's book published in 1994: "My Five Cambridge Friends: Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt, and Cairncross".


title: Cambridge Five

text: Cairncross is not always deemed to have been part of the 'Ring of Five'. Though a student at the University of Cambridge, he only knew Blunt, who was by then teaching modern languages. By 1934, when Cairncross arrived at Cambridge, the other three members of the ring had already graduated.


title: Cambridge Five

text: A few sources, however, believe that the "fifth man" was Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild. In his book "The Fifth Man", Roland Perry asserts this claim. After the book was published, former KGB controller Yuri Modin denied ever having named Rothschild as "any kind of Soviet agent". Modin's own book's title clarifies the name of all five of the Cambridge spy group: "My Five Cambridge Friends: Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt, and Cairncross by Their KGB Controller". Since Rothschild had died prior to publication of the Perry book, the family was unable to start a libel action.


title: Cambridge Five

text: In a 1991 interview with "The Mail on Sunday", Cairncross explained how he had forwarded information to Moscow during WWII and boasted that it "helped the Soviets to win that battle (the Battle of Kursk) against the Germans". Cairncross did not view himself as one of the Cambridge Five, insisting that the information he sent to Moscow was not harmful to Britain and that he had remained loyal to his homeland. Unlike many other spies, he was never charged for passing information to Moscow.


title: Cambridge Five

text: For unknown reasons, Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home was not advised of Anthony Blunt's spying, although the Queen and Home Secretary Henry Brooke were informed. It was only in November 1979 that then-PM Margaret Thatcher formally advised Parliament of Blunt's treachery and the immunity deal that had been arranged 15 years earlier.


title: Cambridge Five

text: A 2015 article in "The Guardian" discussed "400 top-secret documents which have been released at the National Archives" and indicated that MI5 and MI6 had worked diligently to prevent information about the five from being disclosed, "to the British public and even to the US government". A 2016 review of a new book about Burgess added that "more than 20% of files relating to the spies, most of whom defected more than 50 years ago, remain closed". In conclusion, the review stated that "the Foreign Office, MI6 and MI5 all have an interest in covering up, to protect themselves from huge embarrassment" and that "more taxpayers' money is spent by Whitehall officials in the futile attempt to keep the files under lock and key for ever".


title: Cambridge Five

text: Under the 30-year rule, the 400 documents should have been made available years earlier. It was particularly surprising that 20 per cent of the information was redacted or not released. A news item at the time stated that "it is clear the full story of the Cambridge Spies has not yet emerged". A summary of the documents indicated that they showed that "inaction and incompetence on the part of the authorities enabled Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean to make their escape to Moscow".


title: Cambridge Five

text: Additional secret files were finally released to the National Archives in 2020. They indicated that the government had intentionally conducted a campaign to keep Kim Philby's spying confidential "to minimise political embarrassment" and prevented the publication of his memoirs according to a report by "The Guardian". Nonetheless, the information was publicized in 1967 when Philby granted an interview to journalist Murray Sayle of "The Times". Philby confirmed that he had worked for the KGB and that "his purpose in life was to destroy imperialism". This revelation raised concerns that Blunt's spying would also be revealed to the public.


title: Cambridge Five

text: Some researchers believe the spy ring had more than five, or different, members. Several of the following have been alleged to be possible Soviet spies:


title: American Idiot

text: American Idiot is the seventh studio album by American rock band Green Day, released on September 21, 2004, by Reprise Records. The album was produced by Rob Cavallo in collaboration with Green Day, an arrangement the group have been using since they signed with a major label. Recording sessions for "American Idiot" were made at Studio 880, in Oakland and Ocean Way Recording in Hollywood, both in California, between 2003 and 2004. A concept album, dubbed a "punk rock opera" by the band members, "American Idiot" follows the story of Jesus of Suburbia, a lower-middle-class American adolescent anti-hero. The album expresses the disillusionment and dissent of a generation that came of age in a period shaped by tumultuous events such as 9/11 and the Iraq War. In order to accomplish this, the band used unconventional techniques for themselves, including transitions between connected songs and some long, chaptered, creative compositions presenting the album themes.


title: American Idiot

text: Following the disappointing sales of their previous album "Warning" (2000), the band took a break and then began what they had planned to be their next album, "Cigarettes and Valentines". However, recording was cut short when the master tapes were stolen; following this, the band made the decision to start their next album from scratch. The result was a more societally critical, politically charged record which returned to the band's punk rock sound following the more folk- and pop-inspired "Warning", with additional influences that were not explored on their older punk albums. Additionally, the band underwent an "image change", wearing red and black uniforms onstage, to add more theatrical presence to the album.


title: American Idiot

text: "American Idiot" became one of the most anticipated releases of 2004. It marked a career comeback for Green Day, charting in 27 countries, reaching for the first time the top spot on the "Billboard" 200 for the group and peaking at number one in 18 other countries. It has sold over 16 million copies worldwide, making it the second best-selling album for the band (behind their 1994 major-label debut, "Dookie") and one of the best-selling albums of the decade. It was later certified 6× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America in 2013. The album spawned five successful singles: the titular track, "American Idiot", "Holiday", "Wake Me Up When September Ends", "Jesus of Suburbia" and the Grammy Award for Record of the Year winner "Boulevard of Broken Dreams".


title: American Idiot

text: "American Idiot" was very well received critically. It was nominated for Album of the Year and won the Award for Best Rock Album at the 2005 Grammy Awards. It was also nominated for Best Album at the Europe Music Awards and the Billboard Music Awards, winning the former. Its success inspired a Broadway musical, a documentary and a planned feature film adaptation. "Rolling Stone" placed it at 225 on their 2012 list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time", and again in 2020, at 248.


title: American Idiot

text: Green Day was one of the most popular rock acts of the 1990s. However, their 2000 album "Warning" was a commercial disappointment despite largely positive reviews. In early 2002, they embarked on the Pop Disaster Tour, headlining with Blink-182. The tour created momentum for the band, who were earning a reputation as "elder statesmen" of the pop punk scene, which consisted of bands like Good Charlotte, Sum 41, and New Found Glory.


title: American Idiot

text: Things had come to a point regarding unresolved personal issues between the three band members. The band was argumentative and miserable, according to band member Mike Dirnt, and needed to "shift directions". In addition, the band released a greatest hits album, "International Superhits!", which they felt was "an invitation to midlife crisis". Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong called Dirnt and asked him, "Do you wanna do [the band] anymore?" He felt insecure, having become "fascinated and horrified" by his reckless lifestyle, and his marriage was in jeopardy. Dirnt and Tré Cool viewed the frontman as controlling, while Armstrong feared to show his bandmates new songs. Beginning in January 2003, the group had weekly personal discussions, which resulted in a revitalized feeling among the musicians. They settled on more musical input from Cool and Dirnt, with "more respect and less criticism".


title: American Idiot

text: Green Day had spent much of 2002 recording new material at Studio 880 in Oakland, California for an album titled "Cigarettes and Valentines", creating "polka songs, filthy versions of Christmas tunes, [and] salsa numbers" for the project, hoping to establish something new within their music. After completing 20 songs, the demo master tapes were stolen that November. In 2016, Armstrong and Dirnt said that they eventually recovered the material and were using it for ideas.


title: American Idiot

text: After the theft, the band consulted longtime producer Rob Cavallo. Cavallo told them to ask themselves if the missing tracks represented their best work. Armstrong said that they "couldn't honestly look at ourselves and say, 'That was the best thing we've ever done.' So we decided to move on and do something completely new." They agreed and spent the next three months writing new material.


title: American Idiot

text: The members of Green Day individually crafted their own ambitious 30-second songs. Armstrong recalled, "It started getting more serious as we tried to outdo one another. We kept connecting these little half-minute bits until we had something." This musical suite became "Homecoming", and the band wrote another suite, "Jesus of Suburbia". It changed the development of the album, and the band began viewing songs as more than their format—as chapters, movements, or potentially a feature film or novel. Soon afterward, Armstrong penned the title track, which explicitly addresses sociopolitical issues. The group then decided that they would steer the development of the album toward what they dubbed a "punk rock opera."


title: American Idiot

text: Prior to recording, Green Day rented rehearsal space in Oakland. Armstrong invited Cavallo to attend the sessions and help guide their writing processes. Cavallo encouraged the idea of a concept album, recalling a conversation the two had a decade prior, in which Armstrong expressed his desire for their career to have a "Beatles-like arc to their creativity." During the sessions at Studio 880, Green Day spent their days writing material and would stay up late, drinking and discussing music. The band set up a pirate radio station from which it would broadcast jam sessions, along with occasional prank calls. The band demoed the album sufficiently so that it would be completely written and sequenced before they went to record.


title: American Idiot

text: Hoping to clear his head and develop new ideas for songs, Armstrong traveled to New York City alone for a few weeks, renting a small loft in the East Village of Manhattan. He spent much of this time taking long walks and participating in jam sessions in the basement of Hi-Fi, a bar in Manhattan. He began socializing with songwriters Ryan Adams and Jesse Malin. Many songs from the album were written based on his time in Manhattan, including "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" and "Are We the Waiting". While there, he also formulated much of the album's storyline, about people "going away and getting the hell out, while at the same time fighting their own inner demons."


title: American Idiot

text: With demos completed, Green Day relocated to Los Angeles. They first recorded at Ocean Way Recording, then moved to Capitol Studios to complete the album. Cool brought multiple drum kits, including over 75 snares. Drum tracks were recorded on two-inch tape to produce a compressed sound and were transferred to Pro Tools to be digitally mixed with the other instruments. All drum tracks were produced at Ocean Way Studio B, picked for its high ceiling and acoustic tiling, which produced better sound. The songs were recorded in order as they appear on the track listing, a first for Green Day. Each song was recorded in its entirety before proceeding to the next. They reversed the order in which they recorded guitars and bass (recording the guitars first), as they heard that was how the Beatles recorded songs. Armstrong said that at points he expressed fear at the amount of work before him, likening it to climbing a mountain.


title: American Idiot

text: The band took a relaxed approach to recording. For five months, they stayed at a Hollywood hotel during the recording sessions, where they would often play loud music late at night, prompting complaints. The band admitted to partying during the L.A. sessions; Armstrong had to schedule vocal recording sessions around his hangovers. Armstrong described the environment: "For the first time, we separated from our pasts, from how we were "supposed" to behave as Green Day. For the first time, we fully accepted the fact that we're rock stars." "American Idiot" took 10 months to complete, at a cost of $650,000. By the end of the process, Armstrong felt "delirious" regarding the album: "I feel like I'm on the cusp of something with this. [...] I really feel […] like we're really peaking right now."


title: American Idiot

text: "American Idiot" was inspired by contemporary American political events, particularly 9/11, the Iraq War, and the presidency of George W. Bush. There are only two overtly political songs on the album ("American Idiot" and "Holiday"), but the album "draws a casual connection between contemporary American social dysfunction […] and the Bush ascendancy." While the content is clearly of the times, Armstrong hoped it would remain timeless and become more an overarching statement on confusion.


title: American Idiot

text: Armstrong expressed dismay at the then-upcoming presidential election. He felt confused by the country's culture war, noting the particular division among the general public on the Iraq War. Summing up his feelings in an interview at the time, he said, "This war that's going on in Iraq [is] basically to build a pipeline and put up a fucking Wal-Mart." Armstrong felt a duty to keep his sons away from violent images, including video games and news coverage of the war in Iraq and the 9/11 attacks. Armstrong noted divisions between America's "television culture" (which he said only cared about cable news) versus the world's view of America, which could be considered as careless warmongers. Dirnt felt similarly, especially so after viewing the 2004 documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11". "You don't have to analyze every bit of information in order to know that something's not fucking right, and it's time to make a change." Cool hoped the record would influence young people to vote Bush out, or, as he put it, "make the world a little more sane." He had previously felt that it was not his place to "preach" to kids, but felt there was so much "on the line" in the 2004 election that he must.


title: American Idiot

text: The album also takes aim at giant corporations putting small companies out of business. Cool made an example out of record shops closing when a national retailer makes it to town. "It's like there's just one voice you can hear," he said. "Not to sound like a preachy person, but it's getting towards the Big Brother of George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four"— except here you have two or three corporations running everything."


title: American Idiot

text: Speaking on the album's musical content, Armstrong remarked, "For us, "American Idiot" is about taking those classic rock and roll elements, kicking out the rules, putting more ambition in, and making it current." Part of recording the album was attempting to expand their familiar punk rock sound by experimenting with different styles such as new wave, Latin, and polka music. The band listened to various rock operas, including the Who's "Tommy" (1969) and David Bowie's "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars" (1972). Armstrong was particularly inspired by the Who's "Quadrophenia", finding more in common with its "power chord mod-pop aesthetic" than other concept records, such as "The Wall" by Pink Floyd. In addition, they listened to the cast recordings of Broadway musicals "West Side Story", "The Rocky Horror Show", "Grease", and "Jesus Christ Superstar", and they let contemporary music influence them, including rappers Eminem and Kanye West, as well as rock band Linkin Park. Armstrong considered rock music a "conservative" business with regard to the rigidity in which a band must release a single, create a music video, or head out on tour. He felt groups like hip hop duo OutKast were "kicking rock's ass, because there's so much ambition."


title: American Idiot

text: The band used more loud guitar sounds for the record. Armstrong said "We were like, 'Let's just go balls-out on the guitar sound—plug in the Les Pauls and Marshalls and let it rip'". Armstrong added tracks of acoustic guitar-playing throughout the record to augment his electric guitar rhythms and Cool's drumming.


title: American Idiot

text: For most of the record, Dirnt used an Ampeg SVT bass amplifier, recording with his signature Fender Precision Bass. For the album, he and Cavallo strived for a "solid, big, thunderous" bass sound as opposed to one centered on countermelodies. Dirnt ran his bass guitar through an Evil Twin direct box, a staple of his recording methods since "Dookie". Cool also employs unorthodox instruments for punk music—timpani, glockenspiel, and hammer bells—which he received out of a promotional deal with Ludwig. These instruments are especially evident on "Homecoming" and on "Wake Me Up When September Ends", the latter of which includes an African bead gourd that was welded to a remote hi-hat pedal for future live performances. "Extraordinary Girl", originally titled "Radio Baghdad", features tablas in the intro performed by Cool. For "Whatsername", Cool recorded drums in a room designed to record guitars to achieve a dry sound. With all these techniques and influences considered, critics have called the album pop-punk and alternative rock, but primarily the aforementioned punk rock.


title: American Idiot

text: "American Idiot" is a concept album that describes the story of a central character named Jesus of Suburbia, an anti-hero created by Billie Joe Armstrong. It is written from the perspective of a lower-middle-class suburban American teen, raised on a diet of "soda pop and Ritalin." Jesus of Suburbia hates his town and those close to him, so he leaves for the city. The second character introduced in the story is St. Jimmy, a "swaggering punk rock freedom fighter par excellence." Whatsername, "a 'Mother Revolution' figure," is introduced as a nemesis of St. Jimmy in the song "She's a Rebel". The album's story is largely indeterminate, because the group was unsure of where to lead the plot's third quarter. In this sense, Armstrong decided to leave the ending up to the listeners' imagination. The two secondary characters exemplify the record's main theme—"rage versus love"—in that while St. Jimmy is driven by "rebellion and self-destruction," Whatsername is focused on "following your beliefs and ethics." Jesus of Suburbia eventually decides to follow the latter, resulting in the figurative suicide of St. Jimmy, which is revealed to be a facet of his personality. In the album's final song, Jesus of Suburbia loses his connection with Whatsername as well, to the point in which he can't even remember her name.


title: American Idiot

text: Through the story, Armstrong hoped to detail coming of age in America at the time of the album's release. While he considered their previous record heartfelt, he felt a more instinctual feeling to speak for the time period in which the album was released. He had felt the desire to increase the amount of political content in his lyricism as he grew into adulthood, noting that the "climate" surrounding his aging produced feelings of responsibility in the songs he wrote. Armstrong said, "As soon as you abandon the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge song structure ... it opens up your mind to this different way of writing, where there really are no rules." In addition to the album's political content, it also touches on interpersonal relationships and what Dirnt labeled "confusion and loss of individuality."


title: American Idiot

text: "American Idiot" contends that mass media has orchestrated paranoia and idiocy among the public, particularly cable news, which Armstrong felt had crossed the line from journalism to reality television, only showcasing violent footage intercut with advertisements. The song emphasizes strong language, juxtaposing the words "faggot" and "America" to create what he imagined would be a voice for the disenfranchised. "Holiday" took two months to finish writing, because Armstrong continually felt his lyrics were not good enough. Encouraged by Cavallo, he completed the song. He later characterized the song as an outspoken "fuck you" to Bush. "Give Me Novacaine" touches on American reality television of that time, which Armstrong likened to "gladiators in the coliseum." "She's a Rebel" was inspired by Bikini Kill's "Rebel Girl".