Cruel Bombs
Cruel Bombs
Command And Control book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Command-Contr…
FOLLOW MICHAEL STEVENS: http://www.twitter.com/tweetsauce
music by / jakechudnow
and http://www.audionetwork.com
general info about nuclear weapons and testing: http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/20…
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/atomic/nu…
Nevada nuclear test footage: http://www.nv.doe.gov/library/films/t…
AMAZING channel with HD restored historical nuclear footage: / atomcentral
Edgerton detonation photos: http://roamaboutmike.com/2013/02/15/r…
Amazing shot of nuclear weapon test. notice it occured nearly past the horizon! http://i.imgur.com/BX2Cx.jpg
shot from Nagasaki: http://www.wired.com/science/discover…
North Carolina incident:
http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/07/0…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Gol…
Nuclear boyscout documentary: • วิดีโอ
Kokura spared:
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/07/wor…
http://elisson1.blogspot.co.uk/2008/0…
Feynman text: http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/f/…
Hiroshima bonsai: http://www.bonsai-nbf.org/site/japane…
Nuclear effects
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_…
isotopes put into atmosphere by nuclear testing have allowed historians to detect art forgeries: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/n…
The flag of Bikini Atoll has an interesting story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_…
Content
0.25 -> Hey, Vsauce. Michael here.
2.46 -> Every cloud
3.379 -> has a silver lining.
5.68 -> Except nuclear mushroom clouds,
which have a lining of Strontium-90,
10.73 -> Caesium-137 and other radioactive isotopes.
14.589 -> Upon detonation, atoms are literally gutted
18.15 -> and glutton at temperatures exceeding
that of the surface
21.84 -> of our Sun.
In the 1950s, Harold Edgerton's
25.869 -> rapatronic camera caught nuclear fireballs less than a
29.25 -> thousandth of a second after detonation.
Using a special magnetic shutter,
34.2 -> each exposure lasted only a billionth
of a second and captured
39.19 -> an other-worldly creature,
its energy vaporising the metal wires
44.86 -> supporting its tower into stringing legs
48.44 -> of plasma. Watch the target
51.66 -> on the ground.
Now, roughly visualized, here is a conventional
55.949 -> TNT explosion. Now, on the same spot,
59.51 -> a similarly sized bomb that uses nuclear
63.1 -> fission.
74.6 -> When 'Little Boy' was detonated over
77.54 -> Hiroshima only 1.38% of its uranium
81.83 -> actually fissioned.
The rest was blown away before
85.44 -> that could happen, which means, as
Eric Schlosser points out, the
89.32 -> fission of merely 0.7 grams
92.38 -> of uranium, that's less than the weight of
a banknote, was enough to kill
97.3 -> 80,000 people and destroy two-thirds
101.24 -> of city's buildings. When a country has
tens of thousands of nuclear weapons
107.8 -> ready to go,
108.64 -> accidents are a possibility.
112.05 -> This was a problem during the Cold War and it still
115.8 -> is a problem. What if there is a fire
or a miscommunication or a rogue
121.03 -> officer decides to
122.31 -> set one off. Or what if someone just drops
126.38 -> a warhead? How much risk
129.61 -> is too much, I asked Schlosser.
132.92 -> The acceptable probability of a nuclear weapon
136.38 -> accident? What is it now?
139.28 -> The acceptable probability
140.799 -> of the detonation of a nuclear weapon
in an accident is one in a million.
144.94 -> In 2012, the odds of your dying
148.459 -> in a commercial airliner accident
were about one in forty
152.23 -> million. So that's even more remote than
the accidental detonation of a nuclear weapon.
156.95 -> There have been 'oopsie daisy' moments
with nuclear weapons
161.15 -> on US soil. Luckily, none that
resulted in critical mass
165.48 -> but accidents nonetheless.
Just like when you
169.07 -> pee your pants, except your pants
are the entire planet
173.65 -> and the "P" stands for Plutonium.
178.3 -> Eureka comes from ancient
180.829 -> Greek, meaning "I have found it!" And in
184.41 -> Eureka, North Carolina you can find
187.489 -> it. A giant sign that says
190.75 -> "Nuclear mishap". On my birth date
194.41 -> the year my father was born,
a US B-52 bomber carrying
199.01 -> two 4 megaton thermonuclear bombs
202.56 -> over North Carolina tumbled
205.67 -> from the sky. A loose lanyard in the
cockpit snagged the bomb release
210.709 -> switch.
Each bomb contained a greater explosive yield
215.41 -> than all munitions ever detonated by mankind
218.79 -> combined.
Lieutenant Jack ReVell discovered that only
223.29 -> one safety mechanism didn't fail that day.
226.739 -> A single low voltage arming switch remained
230.25 -> untouched during the crash.
And that one switch is why,
234.28 -> he explained in 2011, we don't have
237.31 -> a bay where North Carolina is today.
240.73 -> The bombs were recovered... mostly.
244.43 -> The uranium-rich Secondary
of one of the bombs was
248.23 -> never found. To this day it remains buried
251.83 -> underground in North Carolina.
Here's something you can try
257.34 -> at home.
259.33 -> Build a nuclear reactor.
262.14 -> In 1994, a 17-year-old David Han attempted to build
267.47 -> a nuclear reactor in his mother's backyard
270.7 -> in Michigan. It wasn't that difficult. For instance,
274.12 -> common everyday smoke detectors
contain small amounts of
278.08 -> radioactive Americium.
And old glow in the dark paint
282 -> contains Radium. His reactor never
reached critical mass but it did succeed
287.14 -> in exposing his neighborhood
289.01 -> to 1000 times the regular dosage
292.5 -> of background radiation. It was declared a
Superfund hazardous materials cleanup
297.76 -> site
298.28 -> and all of his work was confiscated by
authorities and buried
301.99 -> in Utah. It didn't end
305.12 -> there. In 2007 David Hahn was
308.92 -> arrested for stealing smoke detectors
from an apartment building.
313.23 -> His face was covered with sores believed
to be caused by constant exposure to
319.01 -> radioactive materials.
320.81 -> Three days after Little Boy was dropped
on Hiroshima by the Enola Gay
326.08 -> Charles Sweeney was ordered to drop Fatman
329.64 -> on Kokura. He flew boxcar over the city for nearly an
333.39 -> hour with the bomb bay doors open,
but it was cloudy.
336.91 -> Sweeney couldn't achieve visual
confirmation of the target and was
340.74 -> forced
341.54 -> to go to the secondary target - Nagasaki,
344.76 -> where 75,000 people died instead.
348.97 -> Kokura was spared because of the clouds.
352.23 -> We can build a weapon
355.35 -> that mimics the furnace of our Sun
and the winds of Neptune but yet we can't
361.15 -> predict the weather more than
a few minutes ahead of time.
366.71 -> During World War 2
Japanese soldiers spot for their
370.36 -> emperor in ways that made allied troops speechless.
374.49 -> Kamikaze planes and torpedoes,
driven by a single pilot,
378.68 -> lost after use. When outnumbered,
382.31 -> without hope, Japanese soldiers were
reported to have thrown themselves
386.44 -> off clips or swam out to sea to drown
390.52 -> rather than surrendered. Even after two
393.759 -> atomic bomb attacks,
the Japanese Minister of War
396.93 -> urged his people to continue fighting.
400.05 -> But on August 14th, 1945, the Emperor of Japan
404.56 -> overruled that decision and unconditionally
407.96 -> surrendered. Men had leapt of off cliffs
411.87 -> for him, but in his own words,
the enemy has for the first time
416.479 -> used cruel bombs.
419.509 -> The heavy casualties are beyond measure.
422.78 -> Richard Feynman received
the Nobel Prize in Physics
427.099 -> in 1965. He also helped develop
the first atomic bomb
431.97 -> at Los Alamos.
In "The Meaning of It All," he wrote
436.07 -> "Is science of any value?"
439.139 -> And below that,
"I think a power to do something
443.4 -> is of value." He elaborates by talking
446.979 -> about keys. Everything we learned about
the universe, everything we invent or
452.15 -> discover within it,
453.56 -> is a key to the gates of heaven.
457.449 -> But the same key will
460.75 -> also open the gates to hell.
464.009 -> The Titan II Missile is great for delivering
467.06 -> lethal nuclear warheads.
469.74 -> But it also sent Gemini astronauts to space,
472.97 -> preparing us for a mission to the Moon.
476.229 -> Science doesn't tell us how to use
479.53 -> keys. It finds them or predicts them.
482.889 -> How we use keys is up to us.
487.73 -> And as always,
488.92 -> thanks for watching.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHZAaGidUbg