The sudden recovery is called the surge. It happens to a lot of people before death. It can last for an hour or years and is absolutely terrifying. Imagine thinking you got well when in reality it's the last of your life force burning out
Basically, after the blast of radiation destroyed his chromosomes, his body didn’t have a blueprint to build new cells from and so as his old cells would die, no new cells would replace them. So… he was practically already dead at that point in time, slowly decaying. What an awful way to go.
My father's first job as an engineer was at the Los Alamos Lab back in around 1952. White Sands was the testing area. He and his colleagues were rounded up to survey the epicenter of a nuclear detonation. I have no idea how 'fresh' this blast was, but every one of them died of cancer. He was one of the last of the group to succumb in 1986 with Multiple Myeloma [correction, thanks to user, abrox] (bone cancer). I have no idea if he was 'shadowed' by the government keeping tabs on his health. I doubt it. Needless to say, safety or even an understanding was not the Lab's highest priority.
Doug the blogger for Los Alamos was found of saying the smarter an asshat the more dangerous the asshat lol. Lets run a lot of computers crunching oh so very NDA numbers...with a frayed power coord neer some kind of leaky sink. what in the fuck? or sure lets create a some anti-matter to send on out to sweeden...without any protections at all.
Not too surprising. In the 1950s a movie called "The Conqueror" starring John Wayne and Susan Hayward was shot near St. George, Utah. A number of nuclear bombs were tested in the area at the time, but the Army assured all and sundry that it would be safe to film. As the years went by, at least half the cast and crew ended up dying of cancer, including both Wayne and Hayward. Yes, Wayne was a heavy smoker but the radiation exposures while filming "The Conqueror" certainly made a bad situation worse. But it wasn't just them. People were exposed in St. George as well and there is a whole roster of children who died of various cancers. I'm truly sorry about your father. You're right--safety wasn't a priority back then. It truly was a dark time. So many lives were sacrificed to gain knowledge of radiation and what it could do.
Same with my grandfather who worked a K-25 in Oakridge, TN. He worked at the plant where they built the nuclear bombs and he died of several cancers. They really didn't take much caution when it came to these things.
@@abysswalker1042 I'm sorry to hear that. May his soul rest in peace, and I pray that he is at rest knowing that his family as well as society has learned and will question our Government and will demand for safety.
I served with a fellow RN seaman in a Portsmouth shore base. He was permanently shore based because he needed a full body transfusion every two weeks. He had leukaemia. He had spent 18 months at Christmas Island in the Pacific. It was here that Britain developed its own nuclear deterrent. Very little was known about nuclear radiation’s effects on the human body in those days. The poor guy was a walking ghost and I felt that he was being hidden away so that no questions would be asked. This is true. He had come to the notice of one of the major newspapers and they had tried to contact him for an interview. He was threatened by the authorities and told that his income and support would stop if they managed to contact him. I was drafted away shortly after and I often think about him. I don’t think he survived very long after.
Remember the laboratory works we had to do when I studied physics. Before doing those in nuclear physics, where we handled the very tiniest amount of radioactive material, we got a long list of MUST NOTs and MUST DOs and I have a faint memory the we even to sign them. One such experiment involved neutrons and we picked up a microscopic amount of a neutron radiating material in the basement, carried it at the end of the feet stick to 3rd floor and our lab room. Our teachers often stressed that there probable weren’t any “safe levels”. And was stressed over and over again was to NEVER loose respect, be arrogant (“no one has died of a little radiation ….”) and start cutting corners. Watching videos on aircraft accidents I often hear that security instructions are written in blood. So true.
Bingo. I've only gotten to rudimentary college level (formally) read and listend to people who were their, either litterally or in the same erra. One of my physics profs described fision as chucking hyper kids into a room full of TNT. It MIGHT be ok. or shit goes so wrong that the only thing left is some teeth. I Where as fusion is more like a car engine that doesn't want to keep working.
Oh, that is so true, security instructions being written in blood. :/ I like to say that nothing happens until it does. But risk management is far from our nature. It's a dangerous bias humans share. You can see it with the covid vaccine and how a lot of people don't understand the concept of lowering their risk of infection by a couple percent with each measure (distancing, washing hands, testing, masks and vaccination). Non of those relieves you from doing the others imho. If your aim is to not get sick, which is what I'd like to achieve.
Oh I have to agree about safety instructions often being written in blood. When I was younger I’d sometimes watch Aircraft Investigation episodes and yeah the aviation industry is pretty much entirely written in blood. From some engineer taping up the places where the sensors used by the computer to detect height and speed to protect them during maintenance and forgetting to remove the tape afterwards bringing the plane crushing down because neither pilots nor computer could get accurate readings, to a tiny disc less than the size of a 50p coin used to prevent a screw in the tail section from flying off completely being accidentally removed and not put back on during maintenance, thus causing one of the flaps on the tail to lock in one position so the pilot can no longer control the plane, much of the safety systems in aviation are there literally because someone fucked up and hundreds of people died before the flaw was redesigned or safely procedures updated. Those episodes during my formative years and the knowledge above a certain height is unsurvivable if the cabin depressurises are probably the reasons I have this unreasonable fear of flying above the clouds. I seem to be okay in a helicopter or small plane for the most part. That being said I do think that I could fly without freaking out at all by ruthlessly clamping down on the part of me that’s doing the equivalent of Star Trek’s “red alert!” Inside my head, especially if I can distract or medicate but I still really hate flying.
We use to joke about not licking it. One thing I learned from observation is that radioactive substances are 1000X more deadly when you ingest them. Some of the people I use to work with were slobs and many would eat on the job and over a ten year period you could see how that impacted their health.
I was in Los Alamos for an internship in 2014. I used to work at LANSCE (where they have the neutron acceleration facility). I wasn't working with anything radioactive though. Anyway. There's a bridge that connects the Los Alamos national lab with the city area. Under this bridge, there's a road that goes down the canyon. I was one day hiking and decided to go down the bridge and go down that road. As soon as I passed under the bridge I saw one of those yellow radiation signs. Needless to say I turned around and went home. I asked my mentor about it. He said there was a facility down the road, called iced house. It turns out, the iced house is also the omega site, where the critical accident with the demon core happened for the first time, killing Daghlian. I'm glad I turned around. I don't think I would be able to go anywhere near it though, even if I wanted. It's probably a restricted area and most certainly fenced. My point is, anywhere you go in Los Alamos, every place blooms with history. It's crazy. I miss Los Alamos!
@@danielstudart2062 ah, ok. I was there for 6 months only as an international student. I'll go back one day, even if it is only to visit. I love that city
Whenever I see a topic I already know about, like this one, I roll my eyes, kind of like a repeat. But he seems to always do a better job telling the story, from angles other people haven't covered, and it's worth watching.
Interestingly, a lot of what we know about radiation poisoning comes from Slotin's journals. Before leaving the lab, he took careful measurements of where each scientist was standing in ralation to the core, worked out the relative radiation dosage each would have received, and started a journal of his own decline. He continued to work with doctors even knowing he was dying, because he knew the research would be used to save others.
I seem to recall reading about how he told no one to move because they were all probably dead anyway and they might as well get something out of this. Thankfully, only he suffered immediate issues (death).
FYI, getting blasted by a wave of radiation that strong would actually be the equivalent of deleting the main files from your dna. Since your dna can no longer multiply, you simply live until the remaining cells die off. It’s a brutal process, where the worst it’s ever gotten is a point of a man being forced to live until the entirety of his body was degloved from the skin dying and where his organs were hanging out in patches that had rotted away. The hospital deemed it a “rare experiment” but was obviously shut down afterwards. Edit: He wasn’t a test, his family wanted him alive so the doctors decided to also use him as a research study since he was a very rare chance.
I always though nuclear science was done through cameras via robotic hands from a controled building outside the test site. Never thought the scientists could be that stupid.
@@vinportobg ah yes, because nuclear test through camera via robotic hands that handled nuclear stuff existed before the 1960's, pfft, yeah those scientist r sooo dumb.
Nuclear radiation is all around us, all the time. It should not scare people - they should instead be knowledgeable enough to take precautions without fear. Like how we put on sunblock to protect from radiation already. Do we go outside into the sun with shaky knees?
@@delphicdescant No because the sun's radiation is safer than something that could literally rip you to pieces on a molecular level depending on how close you are to it. its two totally different radiation levels. you should be afraid of demon core type radiation especially if you are very close to it, telling people otherwise is like telling them that you shouldn't be afraid to poke a bear with a stick and should take precaution before doing so:, when in reality you shouldn't be doing it at all if it's not your profession.
"It's kind of terrifying to think what must have been going through Slotin's head in those frantic seconds..." Yeah, about 20,000 REM of ionizing gamma and neutron radiation.
Literally the closest thing we had to some kind of eldritch horror. It seems like just a ball of metal, but how many things on earth can kill you simply by existing in the same room as it for too long.
Earlier in WWII, there was also the fire bombing of Tokyo, claiming 120,000 lives in one night, yet the War Council, and Emperor of Japan were still embodied to fight on. So, we needed something drastic to convince the War Council and Emperor that we would fight until we bombed their land into the ocean. At that time, the Atom Bombs were needed, no matter what you think of them now.
The criticality experiments didn't deal with critical mass they dealt with reflecting enough neutrons (Neutron flux) to maintain a near-critical state. Critical mass is achieved inside the nuclear device by the means of conventional explosives. When the explosives detonate they compress the core into a critical mass after which the core promptly goes critical and explodes. The difference is the experiments were designed to ease up to criticality but when the reflector was removed the neutron flux dissipated and the reaction stopped (mostly). In a critical mass nothing can stop the reaction and it happens much faster, hence the explosion. Going critical doesn't necessarily mean an explosion however a critical mass will always result in an explosion. What happens in a nuclear explosion is called going "prompt critical" and is where the entire fissile mass goes critical almost instantly. Reflecting neutrons back at a core is more akin to what happens in a nuclear reactor where the criticality is metered. A core can only go prompt critical once it reaches a critical mass and in order to reach critical mass the core must be compressed by the conventional explosives.
Thank you for saving me the time I would have spent on a similar comment. )) I can only imagine just how many comments about overcoming the coloumb barrier or the interaction of the polystyrene plasma with the Plutionium sparkplug, and lithium-6 deuteride Thoughty's future video about thermonuclear weapons will produce, but they will be an absolute pleasure to read, simply due to knowing that such audience is still present among RU-vid viewers.
@@shuruff904 Hahaha great pun. Doesn't need a rebuttal though. It's neither completely misleading nor completely false. "Everyone who touched it"? Sure that part is "a little" misleading, but it's things like that and clickbait thumbnails with people faking surprise or another strong feeling that ruined RU-vid. We're just champions and patron saints of lost causes here ;-)
@@Dethmeister Right but my point was why didn't they think to build spacers right into the sphere so that some dumbass didn't have the option of using a screwdriver? lol
Out of all topics related to nuclear and atomic disasters, both the Elephants Foot and the Demon Core remain my favorite subjects to learn about. I don't know why, cuz both are terrifying, but they're just so interesting to me! I guess it's cuz they show a more intimate look at the colossal danger of radiation, and how easily this energy can get out of control.
@@m-bronte Gentleman actually survived believe it or not. Unimaginably large dose but in a straight line. The amount of harm a given dosage is said to cause is calculated off of a whole body dose, like getting bathed in light from a flashlight. This was more like being hit by a laser and so full-body dose was minimal even though you'd expect horrific things to happen based on the number. "he left half of Bugorski's face swelled up beyond recognition and, over the next several days, the skin started to peel, revealing the path that the proton beam had burned through parts of his face, his bone, and the brain tissue underneath.[4] As it was believed that he had received far in excess of a fatal dose of radiation, Bugorski was taken to a clinic in Moscow where the doctors could observe his expected demise. However, Bugorski survived" -wiki page on Bugorski Radiation is weird.
"If you flew over that smoke I promise you tomorrow you'll be begging for that bullet" a quote by Valery Legasov in the series Chernobyl. I wonder if the victims of the demon core thought of the same thing.
when the British carried out their first atomic tests on the Australian mainland ( Totem 1 and Totem 2 ), at a place called Emu Field, which was before Maralinga, they also carried out experiments as a part of their tests. one of them was to ask for a pilot to fly a Canberra bomber straight the middle of the mushroom cloud after it had formed, and collect samples in wingtip canisters. surprisingly they had plenty of volunteers. the pilot who finally did it actually made 2 passes through the cloud, before flying off to a location to unload the samples and for him and the plane to be checked out.
@@catey62 any side effects by the pilot? was he fine afterwards? I think the radiation levels on a mushroom cloud is much "cleaner" than the radioactive carbon-filled smoke that was coming out of chernobyl reactor
@@jeromegaces6184 I dont know, as that wasnt mentioned in the book I read. I hope we was OK, I know I wouldnt be putting my hand up to do that. but, back then we didnt know half of what we do today about radiation/radioactivity and its effects on the human body, especially long term, as they were still learning and experimenting.
As an aside; the Japanese/American artist Masami Teraoka was a young boy living several miles outside Hiroshima. He was walking to school on the morning the bomb exploded and has said it looked like the sun was rising in two opposite directions.
It's so terrifying how relaxed we treated safety measures around radiation in the early days. It's equally terrifying that high doses literally rip apart your DNA so after a bit of time, your bone marrow cannot successfully copy your DNA since it's now broken up.. you slowly have body parts sluff apart, until you eventually can't even get a I.V. drip to maintain in a vein to help alleviate any pain or effects of the radiation sickness.. only most severe concentrated doses can effect the human body in such horrific ways... I really wish they thought out greater levels of safety measures around this type of science as they were beginning to learn about it's powers and effects if aimed in the wrong direction.. in the right direction it's the most helpful stuff we've so far discovered, but we must treat it with respect, thankfully science and technology has advanced so far sense those early sorta radioactive prehistoric era days.. for the sake of our climate I hope we heal our wounds from this era and transcend into a new age of resurgence of nuclear power to help us combat carbon emissions, green house gases and climate change and instead transition to a new age of much more advanced, safer, nuclear Energy. It's something we definitely should include in our life's. Its just very tough we had to go through such a harsh learning phase that also sadly synced up with war time but nuclear power can exist solely on its own for only a positive impact on our energy grid and advanced source of energy transmission. Especially in this modern day of advanced technology and understanding of the hazards and how to approach them so we are most unlikely to encounter those hazards. I strongly believe in the future of nuclear energy and it saving us from climate change.
It’s even more terrifying how we are so cavalier with Lithium Ion batteries which kill in five years more then all the nuclear power and weapon systems have ever killed.
I worked at a retirement home and I had the privilege of meeting a resident who lived there that was the safety director brought on after the demon core killed the person who touched it with a screwdriver. As an aspiring theoretical physicist, it was amazing to talk to him about his experience at los alamos
Got to learn alot, i did not think it was so simple to make radioactive core to go super critical, also got better understanding of the control rods in nuclear reactor.
I knew the story of the demon core (most physicists do) but you told it very well. Good idea to leave out Slotin's death--those 9 days were horrific. ✌️
@@RonBest damn....i guess my boy mcballen really is getting popular....(I keep seeing his name mentioned, I've been subbed to him since he only had like 20,000 subs, now he's blowing up)
Enrico Fermi, who was dismayed to see Slotin get rid of the shims between the beryllium spheres, and use a screwdriver instead, had warned him that he'd be dead within a year if he kept doing that experiment that way he did. Slotin kept doing it anyway, and Fermi's warning proved literally prophetic.
@@johnedwards3621 As far as I know, it was just an ordinary, carbon steel screwdriver. It was being used to hold two subcritical masses of plutonium far enough apart that they didn't go critical, and to measure the increase in radiation as the distance decreased. The purpose of this experiment was to calculate critical mass, but doing it by this "fly by the seat of the pants" method was inherently risky, and that was what Fermi was warning Slotin about. And sure enough, when Slotin's screwdriver slipped, the two masses came together, went critical, and started a chain reaction, and resulting heavy burst of ionizing radiation. Slotin, standing right next to that mass, received a fatal dose.
They thought X-ray treatments could cure acne back in the 1920s and 30's. My poor father in law got locked in the X-ray treatment room for a whole hour by an inept operator. . When he reached 40 years old , leukemia took him out in a couple months !
I broke a lot of bones when I was younger and had a lot of X-rays. I clearly remember someone saying in front of me "I hope she doesn't get cancer". Sure enough when I was 53 I got a goiter that was diagnosed as a very malignant thyroid cancer. Fortunately they caught it extremely early and just took it out. Ten years later, I'm still here (though I have to take a stupid pill every morning).
@@melissapinol7279 I still have my thyroid but it isn't working right ( according to the numbers) In the last 6 months the synthetic thyroid I've been taking started causing horrible panic attacks. I had to stop taking it and now I'm noticing I'm more tired than before. I guess that's just the way you go out when you hit 70 .
Fission of 1kg of uranium = burning 4,000,000,000kg of coal … I had to let that one sink in for a minute. Me thinks we long ago should have put ALL our scientific effort into becoming Master Ticklers of that goddamn dragon’s tail. No??
Hi, I'm familiar with these stories from books about the Manhattan Project. Yet just as you noted, it was the horror of how they must have felt upon realising that they would be dead soon, but for a small seemingly insignificant movement of their hands. The first fellow was also noted for his foolhardiness in particular. At one stage a problem happened inside a nuclear pile, and he stripped off his clothes and dived into the cooling water and repaired the fault.
@@mc.2737 Sounds familiar, but it was the same guy who bungled the demon core. Some things you cannot be sloppy or clumsy with. Being fully at ease with deadly things is a fool's errand every time.
When I was a kid I went on a school field trip to a museum. They had 3 panels from a concrete wall that appeared to show the shadows of 2 kids and a man walking. The tour guide explained that the shadows were from people hit by radiation from the nuclear blast and they absorbed the radiation before it hit the wall. As a kid with no concept of death yet it was as fascinating as the dinosaur skeletons we had passed earlier in the tour. But looking back on it as an adult that is well versed in the battles of WWII, it’s frightening to think that I can be disintegrated in the blink of an eye while simply crossing the street. Even Darth Vader isn’t a fan of disintegrations, so it’s definitely a bad way to go.
@@missyounorm33 Seems you were sleeping when USA ,Australia New Zealand poured millions of gallons of petrol on woman and children to burning them to death then sprayed them e with chemicals Causing the new born to be inflicted With terrible deformities How many Jewish children Born today suffered this Affliction due tipi he HOLOCAUST The Europeans Happy to turn a blind eye scream RUSSIA EVIL Sadam Gaddaffi evil Colonial evil propaganda lies HE OR SHE WHO SOWS THE SEEDS OF MURDER AND HATE SHALL NEVER REAP THE EXPERIENCE OF LOVE❤️OR JOY 🎉 🇺🇸a Judas to the world order 3 letter prevails in his name 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸
Your's is some of the best most polished and professional content on this platform. This was an incredible story, the delivery was perfect, as usual :) I hope you're well Thoughty.
My dad was there at Bikini Atoll when this thing went off . If I remember right he was ether 17 or 27 miles out . I think he said 27 miles . He was on the bridge . He was the signal man for the day . He told me that he could feel the heat from where he was at . He is still alive at 94 . I always remember him blinking all the time . About 4 years ago the VA discovered a chip of paint inbreeded into his eye . The paint chip turned out to be radio active . It just amazed me even at that distance of 27 miles a vary small chip could travel that fare and impale it self into the eyeball . But it did . I have not seen my dad ever sense I left home at the age of 13 . He was a drunk a whore monger and was mean . He hated me the worst from the other of my siblings . I still carry the scars that he put on me . I know this is not about me or my dad but about how much energy this puts out .
@@alybot2.059 go through what? he said his dad liked whores (so he was probably single and that's what whores are for) and that he was mean. big fucking deal. most dads are mean. we don't live in a perfect world and there are reason people become mean. grow up and talk to your dad before he dies. dad was probably disappointed his son never learned English while he went through engineering school just to get cancer from his lame government.
Your father was morally damaged after experiencing Bikini. That blast was several times greater than expected because of an oversite in its design. The intense heat from that Bomb kept rising long after it was supposed to have stopped. Reflecting on that experience would be more than enough to account for his behavior. There was a year when 90 tornados ripped up the country and spread into Canada. Major flooding. It was probably the year of the Bikini tests. Cause and affect unrelated?? Scientists have been playing with the Earth, believing its so big that it can absorb any insult to it. Plastic patches in the ocean. CO2 levels rising, Polar ice caps melting. Superfund sites. Corporate irresponsibility. Degredation of our political system. 500,000 homeless people being forced to leave the sidewalk and find a new home -- without money, or realtor assistence. Deterioration of families leads to deterioration of common sense. -- what we know of life and of our own value. People may question Religion, but it exists to transfer wisdom & useful experience across succeeding generations. It has been failing steadily as people seem the meaning of life, which is pretty obvious - to help improve the quality of the world we live in - together. King Richard 2 abused his people. He left England briefly, and Henry 1 was welcomed in his place. Richard returned and was imprisoned. He asked for food and was given a plate full of what satisfied his greatest desire. Gold. He slowly starved to death.
One would have thought that small feet would have been added to the beryllium lid to automatically create a space, thereby eliminating clumsy spacers or screwdrivers.
He knew what he was doing. He was making rapid progress with his experiments and understood the risks. He was using the screw driver like a volume knob and making rapid micro adjustments to make daily discoveries. Other scientists took months or years to accomplish the same tasks. He was absolutely not a fool or idiot although it’s often implied. He was like a soldier who charged a machine gun nest to save his fellow soldiers who were pinned down. We call those guys heroes. (Still, it’s a shame he didn’t have at least a couple of toothpicks there as a safety margin).
@@john-paulsilke893 He could still use a screw driver or something else to change the gap size but small feet to maintain a minimum safe gap would have reduced the risk of completely closing it accidentally.
"Urgency allows for certain corners to be cut..." A very dangerous truth. Very easy to follow proper procedures when there is no urgency, very difficult when there is sufficient urgency.
Very brave, not to insta suicide after getting a lethal dose of radiation. I mean, the second guy who made a mistake knew exactly, how terrible he would die and yet he chose to suffer a few days before he went rip.
not sure of the difference, but the phosphorous bombs dropped in civilian areas in Germany during WW2 are also said to have caused massive fires. War is hell. Be careful before you start one. On a human-to-human level, I am always amazed by how many idiots pick fights without considering what countermoves (consequences) their opponent might have. They always seem so SHOCKED when they get struck in return in one way or another. Some have said part of the reason the USA/allies wanted Japan subdued was because of central banking (money, greed).
Yeah, the fire bombings were technically deadlier, but it was an ongoing burn process... Even that Japan was SO susceptible to fire and the chaos from such bombings and raids... The emperor wouldn't back down for even a treaty. He and his advisors were still sure they had a chance. The nuclear bombs were instantly a magnitude above ANYTHING Japan or anyone else had even seen before, let alone what they could face or handle... AND with the second strike on Nagasaki, it was absolutely confirmed that the U.S. hand't just enjoyed "a huge freak accident of luck"... It was NO fluke. That's why Japan finally surrendered. Up until that point, they'd have strung it out to the very last syllable of breath in the very last dying woman or child... In that era, the Japanese regarded any kind of surrender as less than human. That included being taken alive as a prisoner. It's why they treated their POW's so horribly. They were less than human, and thus, deserved everything they got... From Cannibalism to Torture and Experimentation even beyond what the Nazi's had considered "reasonable"... Yeah, war sucks... AND in our current day and age with nuclear war so easily and readily at hand throughout so much of the world, war MUST be considered "Enemy #1"... BUT before you go passing judgment on the past, it's important to reach toward understanding just how different people thought and acted... and why they subscribed to such propaganda back in the day... Some little nasty corners of the world, even today, there are people that aren't so different. We MUST be more cautious and careful about how we dehumanize or label and lay blame on different cultures, lest we simply and mindlessly pave our OWN roads to Hell, itself, in our best and most sincere intentions. ;o)
This demon core experiment gives me story ideas of a weapon made to inflict incurable pain and suffering instead of insta kill, this weapon is valued base on how much longer the suffering can be prolonged before death. That would probably be a weapon from the 40k universe since it's all going to shits in that story.
Absolutely not true. When the bombs were used NO ONE knew the long-term effects of the bombs since there was no data as only one bomb had ever been detonated. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were purposely detonated at about 1900 feet above the ground for two reasons. First, the amount of damage from the shock waves would be increased, and secondly because the amount of radiation would be decreased. So, your reasoning is total fiction invented by you to fit a particular agenda.
Well in the 40k universe they do have bio bombs that basically turn all of a planets biomass into ingnitable gas. And then it burns. That process probably also takes some time and is probably also a not so great way to go.
Thank you Thoughty2 for bringing Op. Crossroads to light. My Marshallese ancestors have suffered from the effects of the 67 nuclear bombs that were detonated in Bikini and Enewetak conducted by the Americans. A miscalculation in reading the weather caused radioactive ashes from the blasts to drift towards the inhabited islands. The innocent children thought the ashes were snow but little did they know, it would bring them misery in the next couple of days. America owes us at least 4 billion USD in damages but have only given us 2 million USD. All the dangerous radioactive waste was then collectively put in a crater caused by one of the bombs on Bikini Atoll and the Americans had a cement dome built over it all. Over the years, the ocean being the ocean, has degraded the dome and cracks were seen forming near the edge facing towards the water. This meant that all the radioactive waste (which is still active) has been leaking for almost two decades at this point and the US Govt. has done nothing to restore/repair the dome. The residents of Rongerik, Rongelap, and Utirik atolls that came into contact with the fallen ash were suddenly showing signs of thyroid and skin cancer and pregnant women that were affected soon gave birth to "jellyfish babies," "These babies are born without bones in their bodies and with transparent skin. We can see their brains and their hearts beating. They have no legs, no arms, no head, no nothing." -Lijon Eknilang (digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1444&context=sjsj) Even today, there are people who still suffer from the effects of the tests. Although it may not be direct radiation, the cancers are hereditary. There is so much more about the tests that I could write about but we have access to information on the internet for a reason. Rest in peace to my ancestors who have suffered the horrors for the sake of the American dream.
Only a demonic race of people can conjure up an evil imagination of an invention. As you can see their signs of recompense is near the horizon. The devils who walked to and fro upon the earth believe the laws of karma doesn't apply to them.
@@xSnowscopes you think thats horrible? Boy what would be your reaction when you know the US dropped some millions of tons of chemical weapons in Vietnam
Horrific. I saw a documentary in which people involved in the tests said that the miscalculation was the official version but in actuality, there was no miscalculation. The American government just wanted to go ahead anyway and "see what happens" to the people exposed, in the long term. Don't know if it is true or just a conspiracy theory, but honestly, given what we know governments are ok with when it comes to even their own people, it wouldn't surprise me if it was true.
I mean, let's be honest. What are you going to do with 4B in the Marshall Islands? The total value of everything including the land is about 6B (yen not $) so about $9 in silver quarters. So, since that 2M is about 100,000* more than everything's worth, you guys actually owe us. Sorry, the truth hurts.
Correction: he said, around 16;00, that no one aside from Louis Slotin got radiation sickness. The guy 2nd closest to the Demon Core got a high but not lethal dose of radiation; he certainly got radiation sickness but survived.
That was an amazing presentation! I mean, theyre always thoughtyfull and well done. Maybe it was the topic, or the great use of animation and narration, but i really enjoyed this a lot. Was a roller coaster ride! I laughed, i cringed, clenched my teeth, covered my mouth wide browed... predicted the next words at intense times....wow. definitely intense! The range of emotions in less than 20mins was crazy. Bravo! Well done, as always. Thoughty2 is the only channel when i see a new video, im deterred from whatever i wanted to watch or from browsing any further. You know its going to enjoyable and informative everytime, with above standard production. This one in particular though.....just a wild ride. Respect
Another interesting accident happened at the Idaho Nat. Lab. in 1961, killing 3 men.Three night workers starting up the SL-1 reactor pulled a stuck control rod out to far, causing the reactor to go critical and creating a steam burst. That steam burst drove the control rod they were working on out of the reactor, pinning a worker to the ceiling of the room.
My grandfather was supposed to work that shift but swapped with the CE1 to be home with his family. He also worked on PM-1, he can be seen in control room footage from that time as he was an Air Force tech sergeant.
I love the British sense of humor. The Demon Core, obviously is the one who killed two scientists. The other two had funny names with Little and Fat. Bravo Tougthy well contextualised.
Seeing their incompetence in handling radioactive materials, I half expected one of these scientists to have gotten hold of three demon cores and start juggling! The "special effects" would have been wild!
Probably mentioned here already but for anyone who hasn't seen it the 1989 film 'Fat Man and Little Boy' is a good dramatisation of the work done during the Manhattan Project. There is a character played by John Cusack who is a simile of Louis Slotin and it portrays a chilling representation of his accident. In reality the guy who was stood closest to him would have got a similarly fatal dose but he was partially shielded by Slotins body. For the morbid ones among us, HBOs 'Chernobyl' miniseries contains the most graphic and accurate representation of what massive doses of ionising radiation does to a human body. Thankfully you only really get a few glimpses. It damages your DNA, so with a high enough dose, your cells just stop dividing. When they die, they are no longer replaced. Tissues made from fast dividing cells die first. The lining of your intestines, and your bone marrow. Your bone marrow produces all your blood cells and immune cells, so you lose your immune system almost immediately, and your blood gets thinner and thinner as the red cells die and break down. Your skin turns black like gangrene or frostbite and starts to detach from the flesh underneath. Every tissue that makes up your organs, and the rest of your body starts to rot away while you are still alive. Your Neurons are some of the slowest dividing cells in your body, so your brain is relatively unnaffected in the timescales it takes the rest of your body to die. You experience all of it. The pain is described as 'unimaginable' and as you die, your destroyed DNA robs you of the very thing that makes you the unique human being you are. Your features dissolve away. Got to be one of the worst possible fates a human being can suffer.
Yes. Chernobyl and Fat Man and Little Boy were very good shows. Anyone interested in this thoughty video would be on the edge of their seat during them. That was a very good description of the aftermath of that high of a dose. 😬😬
Ooh Thoughty2, I’d forgotten this channel existed. Praise be to the RU-vid algorithm that brought this video to me! Even though I already knew the story due to my fascination with radiation and nuclear reactors, less so with weapons but I’m familiar with much of the history of radiation. A couple of them genuinely made me uncomfortable such as the Radium girls and that Japanese guy who got hit by 17 sieverts of gamma radiation when 1 is survivable yet because of doctors with questionable ethics he survived a horrific 86 days.
It is astounding how casually these plutonium masses were handled. According to some details of how they were handled, it appears they were pushed around just using pencils to manipulate them…and obviously paid the price.
Meteorite the old weapon destroyed life 3 times In 2 billion yrs Australian aboriginals survived 2 70 thousand yr old culture destroyed by a gun 200 yrs ago as in USA Canada africa We are still in the colonial empire an is disintegrating Roman Empire in history books LATIN dead English next for the history books 🇬🇧🇺🇸🇬🇧🇺🇸🤮🤮🤮🤮🇺🇸🇺🇸🇬🇧🇬🇧🤮🤮🇬🇧🇬🇧😱👑👑💀🔫
“Curiosity killed the cat”, when your a nerd that is very true. As a very curious person, sometimes I tend to put my safety at risk just to know something, so I relate to the scientists who continued their research even after a peer had passed.
It is difficult to understand the complete disregard for safety, negligence and incompetence being described here. It is not unsurprising that with such dangerous work practices people died. These people had no excuse for taking these unnecessary risks, by the 1940s everyone was fully aware of the dangers involved in being exposed to radiation. The additional risk of an explosion which could have killed many makes the negligence even worse. It is because of this kind of mentality which not only takes risks with their own lives, but with the lives of others, that it has proved necessary to bring in the kind of health and safety legislation which today people grumble about. They have a lot more to grumble about when negligent people kill their colleagues or injure them.
There is a mistake here. The bombs were dropped on the 6th and 9th of August 1945 respectively. However the war was over during the overnight period between May 7th and May 8th. They used those bombs to end fighting in the Pacific war which continued as Japan refused to surrender. Even after the two bombs they refused to surrender and only did so when the Soviet Union declared it's intention to join and fight. Knowing they could not sustain a war against a closer and much larger enemy in the USSR, they had to relent. It's believed in some circles that the justification of the two atomic bombs was not morally backed up and that they were used to test the human effects, doing very little to manage any battles or take out significant targets. Yet often it is shown that these bombs ended World War 2.
Then there are the following facts. Stalin knew of the atomic bomb and its successful test while he was at the Potsdam Conference. What he did not know was how many additional bombs the Allies had and whether they could be delivered by an airplane. When Stalin was pressed by Truman at Potsdam as to when Russia would enter the Pacific War, Stalin was non-commital as to an exact date but said it would be before the end of August. The Hiroshima bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945, and Stalin learned of the bomb being used on August 7, 1945. When Stalin learned of the Hiroshima bombing, he could see his leverage being eroded in getting Korean and Japanese war spoils as part of his price for invading China. He had envisioned dividing Japan like Germany had been divided. He could see that with the atomic bomb, the Allies could potentially end the war without Russian assistance. Stalin ordered Molotov to deliver a declaration of war to the Japanese Ambassador Sato in Moscow on August 8, 1945. At the same time, he ordered the Army to invade Manchuria on August 9, 1945. A few minutes after midnight on August 8 (early morning August 9) - the Russian army entered Manchuria. So it could then be said that the atomic bomb caused the Russian invasion of China and is still the reason the bomb could be credited with ending the war. If you want to credit the Russians, you have to understand the impetus for their invasion - the use of the atomic bomb. While the Russians creating a two-front war for the Japanese is a factor, no matter how you want to parse the information - the atomic bomb directly affected both the Japanese and the Russians and their decisions in the closing month of the War.
My brain is getting near full of "useless" information thanks to Thoughty2! I can just picture myself in old age... rambling on and on with no one understanding what the heck I'm talking about. 🤪 P.S. I love your videos!
Nuclear reactions are always Fascinating, atleast for me, I just wanna build some Satallites to drop bombs. In order to "protect" my Nation someday lol
Absolutely agree. His 83 days would have been hell on earth. Literally. Bringing him back from death over and over was the worst thing they could have done. I believe it was 5 times. They were trying to learn but it was an awful thing to do though. The pain had to be extraordinary. Poor man.
Just on the phone with my Daughter whom I constantly remark about your deep dives into Interesting and well-presented, documentaries. I particularly remember the one about the War and the use of tunnelling, and explosives. Riveting. And jealousy issues because my few attempts at a YouTub are without merit. Thank you for the time well spent, and I will Join as soon as I am able to. PEACE
Another great video Thoughty2, I can never get enough of these. Always something interesting in them, something to learn in them, and always something to confirm the truth of things already learned. It even gives a bit of a insight into the mind of the people who create such deadly weapons, promote them, why and what consequences it leads to. Something of great value to learn leaders in this world keep unleasing deadly weapons on all of us.
The Biden administration is working on it, give them another 3 months. If they can't provoke a nuclear war with Russia in that time, they'll try for a nuclear war with China.
This has always been a chain of events that fascinated me. It always blew my mind that even after the previous accident he still didn't use the spacers and used a screwdriver. The SL-1 reactor accident is also an interesting event though a bit more instant and grizzly.
I always wondered how these pretty much unknown materials get worked on safely as further research and development is made. The more I learn about it, the more I know safety was never an option.
The problem is they were working with the knowledge of the subject up to that time. Much like Madame Curie handled radium for years with her hands because she didn't know how dangerous the radiation could be.
It makes me sad that when I saw this title in my recommended, this is the first thing I thought of. The scientists were divided on if using it would ignite the earth's atmosphere or not. They did it anyway. That is way too much power for a small group of people to control.
I don't know about any other of you who have watched this, but this announcer, or emcee, or whatever they call them now is the greatest. This guy has more charisma in his little finger than all of the other announcers combined. He is just great!
Thoughty2 has always voiced and personally presented his videos since the very beginning. His great delivery and dapper WWI era British Officer attire (when you see you’ll understand the reference lol) are definitely unique and he seems like a genuinely good bloke.
As far as the nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll goes, when I was in high school we covered this in History class. I asked the teacher, Mr. Davidson, why the bomb was detonated in the Marshall Islands, wouldn't it be more practical to detonate it in the States, so the affects would be easier to measure? He laughed and said "You don't think the government would conduct multiple nuclear weapons tests where white people live do you?" The implications of his answer bothered me for months and to this day I do not trust any media outlet, nor the government. I later learned that the Marshallese people were treated horribly by the Japanese during WW2 and hated them, so when U.S. Marines liberated the Atolls they considered the U.S. as their saviors. Which is why they allowed the government to conduct tests there. For permitting the tests the Marshallese were granted a "Compact of Free Association" allowing them to come to the U.S. and work as nonimmigrants for an unlimited length of time with no Visa requirement. They are not considered citizens but can stay for life and their children will be citizens of course. There is a fairly large Marshallese community in Arkansas right now. I just thought the way they were treated was abysmal. But considering the way the government treated African Americans and Native Americans it isn't surprising.
@@themonk3407 And it was impossible to see what a nuclear bomb would do to Naval vessels 150 miles off the Florida coast? No, because fallout from the tests might drift over land occupied by white people. The military found using an area occupied by brown people to be totally acceptable.
And the point of Bikini Atoll was to test how it affects water life and how they would affect the navy boats. The very bare minimal research would tell you all of this. Like with what you said you didn’t even scratch the surface.
Don’t know if I’m in the minority, but I, without a single doubt, expect scientists (in that era) to see their fellow scientist die. Then decided that more experiments are needed.
YES. Exactly! They were like soldiers charging a machine gun nest to save other who were pinned down. They knew exactly what they were doing and made these ludicrous shortcuts to speed the process up. The screwdriver trick was to act like a volume knob and allowed rapid discovery and information gathering. It wasn’t any more foolish then the aforementioned soldier saving his comrades. They were desperate to learn more faster so they could save their country.
@@john-paulsilke893 "save their country" lol let me remember how much INNOCENT lives were taken by the bombs and not a single criminal touched, but of course maybe russia needs some bombs to save their people from those bad americans, lets build some a-bombs in case they need to bomb John-Pauls mother's house and "save" their comrades hahaha
I used to set headstones , my coworker and I werent as careful as we could or should be , we used a wedge that was too small for many stones but allowed us to move faster. I got a 2,600 lb stone gently set on the ends of 2 of my fingers when it slid like 1/8th of an inch. I imagine it was a lesser but similar feeling to when his screwdriver slipped.
@@KRAFTWERK2K6 it wasn't the number so much as the specific one we used. It was a small wooden one that was easier to to just barely move it like 1/16 of an inch with. We were nearly done , just getting it perfect as we could. The customer was a damn engineer who insisted on looking over our shoulders and measuring shit himself the whole time. I was pulling the plastic sticks out from under it and dabbing the putty together to seal the bottom when it's set when it slid off the wedge. It wouldn't have happened with the metal wedge but it's a pain in a tight space and harder to just move the stone a tiny bit with. Just barely got the tips of my pointer and middle fingers , squirted them out from under like toothpaste.
I really like how in Fat Man and Little Boy, John Cusack's character (who was a composite of Daghlian and Slotten) after the accident he gets everyone to mark their positions down on the floor with chalk and leave. Then it shows him writing out the calculations and sweating. Then he says "Everyone should be fine. Except me. I'm dead." Great movie, I suggest you all watch it.
It really is a great movie. His character was what I instantly thought of during this video. I never knew it was actually 2 scientists who died. I never really researched it.
Nice try but you 2 are wrong. Dropping those bombs saved lives. Besides, in the end Japan won the economic war until Reagan and Clinton saw an opportunity to sell Americans out to china
I've been watching heaps of SCP related videos, so upon seeing the thumbnail my first thought was that this was another one of them 😅😬. Sometimes truth is so much more strange and scary than fiction.
Yeah... In fact, a LOT of what we know about the "Reverse Square Rule" regarding radiation toxicity and proximity is because of Slotin's quick thinking and selfless enthusiasm to preserve as much information about the incident as possible... Sure, we've had other incidents, all investigated to the best of possible technology and people's skills at the times... BUT it largely started with Slotin, his group, and quick action to preserve that information... The other scientists and technicians present were seriously fearful for their lives, and were studied greatly. BUT the fact they were imminently treatable or unscathed (as much as could be told then) was very useful in later investigations and even in establishing early safety protocols. ;o)
Not true. The accident report is contained in the book "Atomic Bombs: The Top Secret Inside Story of Little Boy and Fatman." The Slotin accident report is pages 377 - 384. Page 379, "A few seconds after the accident only Slotin, myself, and Graves were in the room. Perlman had run up the corridor a few steps and was waiting, the other four had gone out the east door or up the corridor. The rest of us left immediately, going up the corridor."
2 года назад
Are you doing all of these animations yourself? they are pretty nice :)
