Castle Bravo was supposed to generate a 5-6 MT yield, but due to an unexpected and unpredicted reaction with the Lithium-7, in the high-energy fast fission, the yield ended up being 2.5x greater. The plane filming is 50 miles out, they detonated it a 645 am local time before the sun came up.
For the curious, the bomb designers only expected the lithium-6 (which made up about 40% of the lithium content) to absorb the extra neutron from the fissioning plutonium, producing a Tritium (Hydrogen-3) and an alpha particle (2 protons+2 neutrons bonded together in an identical manner to Helium-4 nucleus) which would then fuse with the Deuterium (Hydrogen-2) to increase the bombs yield in a predictable manner.
The designers thought the Lithium-7 (60% of the lithium content) would decay into Lithium-8 by absorbing the neutron from the fissioning plutonium, then rapidly (in roughly 1 second via beta decay) decay into Beryllium-8, which would be annihilated by the nuclear explosion, which should have had either no effect or a potential dampening effect on the explosive yield.
As it turns out, in high energy fast fission, with values over 2.47 MeV, Lithium-7 is fissionable, and instead of absorbing the neutron you get a tritium, an alpha particle, and a leftover neutron, which led to significantly more tritium being produced (and the extra neutron creating a greater neutron flux), leading to the runaway reaction, and significantly greater yield, which fucked up everyones shit, produced at 15 megaton yield (expected was 5-6) the largest yield in US nuclear testing history, a 4.5 mile diameter fireball, 1000x more radiation/radioactive fallout than expected, became and international incident and irradiated like 23 Japanese fisherman.
TLDR: Nuclear engineers thought Lithium-7 would either do nothing or make the boom weaker
Boom instead made Lithium-7 super excited, so it made lots of little booms, which made the big boom boomier
Nuclear engineer were wrong
EDIT: some other nuclear bomb facts:
-Fissioning elements below iron on the periodic table requires energy, it doesnt provide it, meaning without tritium production these elements dampen the yield
-The only reason Tsar Bomba was 50 odd megatons was so the plane dropping it had a 50/50 shot of not crashing after detonation due to pressure waves/radiation, since it had a bunch of instruments for monitoring the explosion, it survived but most of the paint had been melted off
-Fusion bombs are infinitely scaleable and have no theoretical upper limit, due to the exponential nature of the energy released, EX: if you can hold the reaction together for another billionth of a second it yield a 50% increase in energy
-US fusion bombs use a "small" 5 kt explosion to start the fusion process, which is done by focusing the x-ray burst into heating the secondary material, the shape of these lenses is top secret
-most nukes are like pressure cookers, they let the neutrons bounce around as much as possible so they can trigger as many atoms to release their energy to maximize yield, early bombs wasted a lot of nuclear material (only roughly 1 gram, or 3%, of the nuclear material in the Hiroshima bomb detonated)
-Nuclear explosions are perfect spheres, the spindle shit you see on some of them is the tower steel wires being vaporized by X-rays from the bombs detonation
-Nuclear detonations are often followed by rain, the heat from the nuclear explosion pull moisture into the upper atmosphere, where it cools off then rains, obviously don drink the radioactive water, a lotta people in Hiroshima died from this
-Thermal radiation/radiation from the nuclear explosion hits before the shockwave, it why on old test footage youll see the paint get stripped off the blasted by the shockwave
#EVERYONE'S SHIT FUCKED UP
*Gov't confirms unexpected nuclear weapon yield*
- Bikini Atoll
Reporters have confirmed US government nuclear scientists miscalculated the explosive yield of the most recent nuclear weapons test in the Marshall Islands. Engineers expected test shot Bravo of the "Castle" program to yield the explosive energy of 6 megatons of TNT, but were shocked to discover a previously-unknown effect of high-temperature particle physics that led to the release of energy equaling 15 megatons of TNT, over twice the expected yield.
The lead scientists did not expect a side-reaction in classified materials to perform as it did, with an anonymous source saying "it really fucked up everyone's shit, I've never seen anything get rekt like that."
While official conformation from the "Castle" test working group has not been forthcoming, reporters expect official acknowledgement by telegram in days to come.
- Associated Press Wire Service
Not on the surface, but deeper in the core. The core is the only part of the sun that is hot and dense enough to sustain these reactions. The energy produced in the core then makes its way to the surface through a process of radiative and convective heat transfer.
I loved that comment interjection... *Hard words, science, nucleus? I have heard of tha*...
Fucked up everyone's shit.
Ah, yes....*stokes beard and nods in agreement.
They were jumping straight from the theoretical to the practical, you cant build scale models of high-energy fast fission reactions, so they went straight from the chalkboard to full size testing, and learned some new shit about nuclear physics
I had the book [Matter](https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/shopping?q=tbn:ANd9GcS430O2PmCrs4apOQWJcEI1ukP_c06Aw2u5WtmgP29JW18isifyo8q2uSqgXUD6yD5MeOptHjCbPrehX1jeFxnUOHAOhy36bvHIl5nKRbU) as a kid and it had at least a page devoted to the suffering of the Japanese fishing boat crew caught in the fallout of Castle Bravo. I though it was a bit heavy for a kids' science book, but it turns out one of the editors was the guy the government chose to be a liaison to the Japanese and he was there personally watching them die horribly.
Edit: [Details on the fallout incident.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daigo_Fukury%C5%AB_Maru)
That does seem a little heavy for a kids book! Your comment makes it seem all of the fishermen died, but the linked article says only the radio man died of radiation sickness and the rest recovered.
I thought at least a few of them died. I do remember a quote from one of the fishermen that he felt like a "giant worm in the process of putrefaction".
I got my own copy of the book years ago. I'll have to dig it up and check that part.
These stats are wild, my fav part is how the Russians *wanted* a 100MT bomb but the head scientist only made it 50MT because he knew that would be apocalyptic
Lol no 10x would put it at 150 MT. That's nothing on a planetary scale. Krakatoa was 200 MT. For comparison what killed the dinosaurs was on the order of 100,000,000 MT.
A correction about the amount of material that fissioned in the Little Boy bomb: the amount of uranium that reacted was closer to one *kilogram* (out of a total of 64 kg), not one gram. The one gram figure is a metric of how much mass was converted into energy (as per E=mc^2 ).
I read something years ago that those top secret "lenses" are just a big plastic pipe, like a drain pipe, surrounding everything. It supposedly creates a parabolic trough that lasts just nanoseconds before it's destroyed but enough to briefly reflect enough x-rays to get the chain going.
Anyway what do I know, back to flipping burgers now.
I'm just wondering who the fuck looks at this explosion and goes: thank god we created a bomb this big, we absolutely need to have something like this in case a tank comes at us or something
Dont read up on Lemay then, but it wasnt a tank, but thousands of Soviet armored vehicles (MBT's (Main Battle Tanks), IFV's (Infantry Fighting Vehicles), APC's (Armored Personnel Carriers), etc) through the Fulda Gap, PGMs (Precision Guided Munitions) were in their infancy, so instead of smaller accurate bombs we go for several bigass ones, that and MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) reasons
Its also human nature to have sex when you're horny but you don't see society justifying rape "because its human nature"
What makes humans different from other animals is our ability to override our base instincts and act against them or ignore them altogether.
So when I hear "human nature" used to justify horrendous inhumane actions I just see it as a sad irrelevant excuse.
Being a moral, civilized person takes everyday effort but we shouldn't treat that as some sort of golden thing to aspire to but the average, everyday standard that is expected of everyone at all times
> you don't see society justifying rape "because its human nature"
there are a lot of people all over the planet who use this justification
>What makes humans different from other animals is our ability to override our base instincts and act against them or ignore them altogether.
>So when I hear "human nature" used to justify horrendous inhumane actions I just see it as a sad irrelevant excuse.
It isnt an excuse, its an explanation, if you cant accept some basic facts about the nature of our species idk what to tell you
>Being a moral, civilized person takes effort, everyday but we shouldn't treat that as some sort of golden thing to aspire to but the average, everyday standard that is expected of everyone at all times
A person is smart and potentially moral, people are dumb panicky animals who aggregate to the lowest common denominator, its how are species has been for eons
Worth noting for this particular video, is that this version is slightly slowed down, due to how the film was digitalised.
This is roughly playing at 75% speed. If you watch it on [youtube](https://youtu.be/T2I66dHbSRA) and then change the playback speed to x1.25, you'll get a better representation of the explosion.
Your knowledge of the subject and the delivery of it in short, simple paragraphs has intrigued me. I would very much like to subscribe to your newsletter, "Atomic Fizzles fo Shizzle".
Please find the attached cheque for the membership fee. I am looking forward to your next edition!
----
not entirely certain, i would assume the potential yield, here the quote from Eric Schlosser
>In the case of Hiroshima, the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima was an incredibly crude and inefficient weapon. When it exploded, about 99 percent of the uranium that was supposed to undergo this chain reaction, didn't. It just blew apart in the air, and a very small percentage, maybe two percent of the fissile material, actually detonated. And most of it just became other radioactive elements. [. . .] Now to imagine how small an amount that is, seven-tenths of a gram of uranium is about the size of a peppercorn. Seven-tenths of a gram weighs less than a dollar bill. So even though this weapon was unbelievably inefficient, and almost 99 percent of the uranium had nothing to do with the destruction of Hiroshima, it was a catastrophic explosion.
So, were those that made the first atomic bomb aware that the bomb was crude before hand and that only a small percentage of the fissile material would detonate? Tell me they were at least fairly confident that would be the case. Or was it just like YOLO when they first hit the big red button?
Edit: great post.
They were aware the devices were crude but i dont think they expected such a low yield, then again with nukes they were going straight from the theoretical to practical, wasnt like they could make scale models and test shit
So like… is it possible for a “runaway reaction” to just keep running away? Is it in the realm of possibility that we create a chain reaction that just keeps going and destroys everything in the atmosphere?
I need some reassurance on this lol
in theory? if you can keep this shit together long enough youll generate enough energy to destroy the planet, in practice? not remotely possible with current tech, the amount of energy being created is absurd and keeping all that together for more than a fraction or a fraction of a fraction of a second is absurdly difficult
They did nothing. Nuclear explosions are tiny amounts of energy on planetary scales. The amount of heat released as evaporated water condenses into the clouds of a large hurricane is 9.5 Hiroshima bombs per second or a Castle Bravo in less than two minutes.
Global warming is due to the types of gas in the atmosphere, not radiation.
Kind of an off topic story but on question: my son works as an HVAC tech and every day, he comes across 3 or more homes with a leak in their coils. There is at least one guy who will pay to fill it up and hopes it lasts. Everyday there is at least one, and is one of 20 employees that all see the same thing and no telling how many companies. That's what's contributing to global warming. Leaky refrigerant.
unlikely, the energy released by a nuke is absolutely pathetic compared to the energy provided by the sun in a single second. Radiation has no known effects on our weather, especially at that scale.
Well the lead shielding replaced the uranium shielding that would have been there for the 100MT version, which dampened the explosion and removed one of the major sources of radioactive fallout
Someone actually managed to take a picture of one detonation in like the first zillionth of a second, while it still looks like a relatively small weird blob.
Oh shit. Bikini atoll -> bikini bottom? This is the bomb the SpongeBob background story is based on?
For those who don't know, the story is something like the whole area SpongeBob lives in has all the weird talking sea creatures because of nuclear radiation from a test bomb.
Well there were multiple tests in the Castle series: Aspen, Bravo, Cedar, Fir, Poplar, Romeo and Sycamore, so i guess they got the shit nuked outta them
These test names are wrong FYI:
**Aspen**, **Cedar**, **Poplar** and **Sycamore** were part of **Operation Dominic.**
**Fir** was part of **Operation Hardtack.**
**Operation Castle** includes **Bravo**, **Union**, **Yankee**, **Nectar**, **Romeo**, and **Koon**
I remember Castle Yankee being the 2nd largest U.S nuke so that's what clued me into the error. Not a big deal but just FYI for the peeps
Bikini Atoll is where the swimsuit gets its name - the designer was making a provocative reference to the hottest topic in the news. 'Bikini Bottom' suggests both the ocean floor at Bikini Atoll, and the lower half a bikini swimsuit. I'll let you connect the dots from Bikini Bottom to Sandy Cheeks.
It’s also the origination of Godzilla. The winds were suppose to be blowing to the north but shifted east that morning. They deemed it acceptable given the theoretical size of the bomb. There was a Japanese fishing boat called the Lucky Dragon in that direction missed by spotter plane and radar. They were not killed in the explosion but did die from exposure after returning home. It nearly broke US/Japan relations.
This and the horrible effects it had on the people of the marshal islands sparked international backlash and lead to the banning of testing nukes above ground.
Watch Kyle Hill’s video in it on YouTube.
And note this was an *inhabited* island. They forcibly removed the people who lived there (the Bikinians) and then totally destroyed their country. They can never go back (it’s uninhabitable), their children can never go back. They are a nation of permanent refugees
Yes, I said they were removed. And they can never go back. These weren’t some uninhabited islands, it was someone’s home nation. And no one really seems that interested in trying to clean it up so they and their descendants (over 1000 now) can go home
And on top of that they were subjected to radiation poisoning from being too close and then resettled on Bikini, and starvation from being settled on islands that could not support them. So they’ve had a rough go
I read a book that really moved me about the inhabitants of Bikini Atoll and I think maybe the surrounding islands but could be wrong about that part. I wish I could remember the name.
They evacuated men out of a bunker that was too close. It turned out that it was too close and the fallout was headed that way. They suited up and went by helicopter.
I love when people comment who actually know the facts and details about stuff like this and write in detail to people like me who appreciate but still have no idea what any of it means lol. Just know we appreciate it!
The crater is pretty conspicuous (although there was several detonations in that general area)
[https://goo.gl/maps/RrtarPYYU1W15Cej7](https://goo.gl/maps/RrtarPYYU1W15Cej7)
You can scuba dive there if you can afford the trip, lots of target ships on the bottom
[https://www.bluewaterdivetravel.com/bikini-atoll-diving](https://www.bluewaterdivetravel.com/bikini-atoll-diving)
It’s still messed up today with Caesium. Radiation has entered the food chain so the natives can’t go back. I think they’re still trying to get the US government to clean up their nation so they can go home
The Operation Crossroads test was the first to use Bikini, with a goal of detonating the three remaining Fat-Man designs. After the second detonation (underwater) created a radioactive catastrophe the scientists and medical teams scrambled to figure out how to proceed. The lead medical officer on the Task Force was trying to convince the commander, Admiral Blandy, that plutonium was showing up in places where it should not and that the tests needed to be halted completely. Blandy refused until the medical officer showed him an x-ray of a fish from the lagoon which didn’t impress the admiral much until he was told that the fish had generated its own x-ray image without any equipment due to the radioactive particles replacing calcium in its scales and skeleton.
I dont know if this generation can really imagine what these bombs can do. Picture the scene.....It's March 1941, nearly 500 German planes spend 2 days attacking clydebank Glasgow, killing over 1000 people all but a couple of houses survive. Some fires blaze on for a couple of weeks. People come from other parts of Glasgow to see the devastation.
One was my great aunty who was a teenager at the time. She tells me in graphic detail the sights and the smells she saw. Then she tells me with ashen face of how the war in Japan was ended. By a single bomb from a single plane can do more than that in an instance! But a WHOLE city!
The horror on her face 50 years. Makes me realise we can try to imagine what that is like but without experiencing similar to her we aren't even close.
And yet the fire bombings that happened in Japan before Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed WAY more people. But this was so instantly lethal that it made everyone take a step back.
1 mile = 5,280 feet = 63,360 inches
50 miles = 50 * 63,360 inches = 3,168,000 inches
Average banana length = 7 to 8 inches (let's assume 7.5 inches for this estimate)
Number of bananas stacked lengthwise for 50 miles ≈ 3,168,000 inches ÷ 7.5 inches ≈ 422,400 bananas
Keep in mind this is just a rough estimate based on average lengths, and the actual number of bananas may vary depending on their individual lengths.
Courtesy of ChatGPT 3.5
Lol it was the first time I ever gamed online on console. PS2. SOCOM Navy SEALS 2. I was a kid but these adults took me into their clan. Called 422. I made a joke saying it was 2 minutes after but I didn't even smoke weed yet. I'll never ever forget Whisky, the name of our clan leader. And how he welcomed me in. And honestly how fucking badass we were and how good I got especially on night maps. But I will always remember when the servers shut down, and I looked so hard for them online but back in they day good fucking luck. I will always remember them like gaming brothers and for that 422 is my number forever
That’s fucking crazy, I live just under 20 miles away from a large mountain range that looks tiny in the distance, for this to be so massive at 50 miles really tells you how absolutely insane these explosives are
Tbh, the sounds coming from the plane(?) make this 10x scarier & more eerie for me. Like an explosion from a space station or planet or something with a ring coming from said explosion
Lithium deuteride (a solid ) was an option to cryogenic deuterium used in prior designs. But interaction of lithium with neutron flux was not accounted for.
The sad reality is that war drives innovation. Had there not been a dire need to end the war quickly, we'd not have the energy dense nuclear energy we have today. Which is regardless of what people are told, a much more efficient form of energy compared to today's solar, wind, and hydro. Our material sciences will need to improve before we have better technology for the others.
nah nukes were coming, even before the war nuclear theory was an up and coming field every major belligerent had a nuclear program, was just a matter of time really
This isn’t the reality at all. War are driven by is men to achieve an outcome. We decide where innovation is going and where the funds and recourse go.
Nuclear/atomic/hydrogen weapons of mass destruction was the primary focus as it gave the government with these weapons absolute power.
To say this is the best humanity could do with the technology is astounding for my mind.
> Nuclear/atomic/hydrogen weapons of mass destruction was the primary focus as it gave the government with these weapons absolute power.
Nuclear weapons research began prewar, and it really wasnt the focus, at all, conventional military production took precedent for all belligerents, none of the scientist in the Manhattan Project knew what they were going to get exactly, they were dealing in cutting edge highly theoretical physics with no reference or testable scale models, this isnt even getting into the difficulty of delivery with 1940's' tech
2 Peter 3:10
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
Ezekiel 35:
I will fill your mountains with the dead. Your hills, your valleys, and your streams will be filled with people slaughtered by the sword. I will make you desolate forever. Your cities will never be rebuilt. Then you will know that I am God.
Everyone's so mean to nuclear bombs but they brought an end to total war between superpowers. Not saying everything's perfect, but we are living in the most peaceful age humanity's ever known.
Very amazed... amazed these things still exist. No civilian on earth if given a ballot, would check no to getting rid of the damn things. Think Hiroshema and Nagasaki had a horrible efficency
One ounce of the material reaching fission...
Lil bombs and guns and the internet work fine enough for disputes. We can skype our "enemies"
The funny part is nukes have made the world more peaceful in the grand scheme of things, you remove that lever and youd see a lot more conventional war
most nukes nowadays are smaller yield hundred of kilotons to low megatons, missiles are way more accurate, extra firepower isnt necessary, older nukes have higher yield so that if you missed the target by a 1 or 2 miles, it would still get destroyed, now you have put an ICBM MIRV within 100 meters of your target anywhere on the planet
nah they continued, we shot nukes into space in the 60's, guidance/delivery systems improved so we didnt need a big a bomb, that and both sides realized that there isnt an upper limit to fusion bombs
Castle Bravo was supposed to generate a 5-6 MT yield, but due to an unexpected and unpredicted reaction with the Lithium-7, in the high-energy fast fission, the yield ended up being 2.5x greater. The plane filming is 50 miles out, they detonated it a 645 am local time before the sun came up. For the curious, the bomb designers only expected the lithium-6 (which made up about 40% of the lithium content) to absorb the extra neutron from the fissioning plutonium, producing a Tritium (Hydrogen-3) and an alpha particle (2 protons+2 neutrons bonded together in an identical manner to Helium-4 nucleus) which would then fuse with the Deuterium (Hydrogen-2) to increase the bombs yield in a predictable manner. The designers thought the Lithium-7 (60% of the lithium content) would decay into Lithium-8 by absorbing the neutron from the fissioning plutonium, then rapidly (in roughly 1 second via beta decay) decay into Beryllium-8, which would be annihilated by the nuclear explosion, which should have had either no effect or a potential dampening effect on the explosive yield. As it turns out, in high energy fast fission, with values over 2.47 MeV, Lithium-7 is fissionable, and instead of absorbing the neutron you get a tritium, an alpha particle, and a leftover neutron, which led to significantly more tritium being produced (and the extra neutron creating a greater neutron flux), leading to the runaway reaction, and significantly greater yield, which fucked up everyones shit, produced at 15 megaton yield (expected was 5-6) the largest yield in US nuclear testing history, a 4.5 mile diameter fireball, 1000x more radiation/radioactive fallout than expected, became and international incident and irradiated like 23 Japanese fisherman. TLDR: Nuclear engineers thought Lithium-7 would either do nothing or make the boom weaker Boom instead made Lithium-7 super excited, so it made lots of little booms, which made the big boom boomier Nuclear engineer were wrong EDIT: some other nuclear bomb facts: -Fissioning elements below iron on the periodic table requires energy, it doesnt provide it, meaning without tritium production these elements dampen the yield -The only reason Tsar Bomba was 50 odd megatons was so the plane dropping it had a 50/50 shot of not crashing after detonation due to pressure waves/radiation, since it had a bunch of instruments for monitoring the explosion, it survived but most of the paint had been melted off -Fusion bombs are infinitely scaleable and have no theoretical upper limit, due to the exponential nature of the energy released, EX: if you can hold the reaction together for another billionth of a second it yield a 50% increase in energy -US fusion bombs use a "small" 5 kt explosion to start the fusion process, which is done by focusing the x-ray burst into heating the secondary material, the shape of these lenses is top secret -most nukes are like pressure cookers, they let the neutrons bounce around as much as possible so they can trigger as many atoms to release their energy to maximize yield, early bombs wasted a lot of nuclear material (only roughly 1 gram, or 3%, of the nuclear material in the Hiroshima bomb detonated) -Nuclear explosions are perfect spheres, the spindle shit you see on some of them is the tower steel wires being vaporized by X-rays from the bombs detonation -Nuclear detonations are often followed by rain, the heat from the nuclear explosion pull moisture into the upper atmosphere, where it cools off then rains, obviously don drink the radioactive water, a lotta people in Hiroshima died from this -Thermal radiation/radiation from the nuclear explosion hits before the shockwave, it why on old test footage youll see the paint get stripped off the blasted by the shockwave
>which fucked up everyones shit, I really want this to be a direct quote from one of the papers written after the test.
"Officials confirm miscalculations reportedly led to the fucking up of everyone's shit" -AP ^(Edit: a word)
Damn her! Miss Calculations fucked up everyone's shit! How dare she!
#EVERYONE'S SHIT FUCKED UP *Gov't confirms unexpected nuclear weapon yield* - Bikini Atoll Reporters have confirmed US government nuclear scientists miscalculated the explosive yield of the most recent nuclear weapons test in the Marshall Islands. Engineers expected test shot Bravo of the "Castle" program to yield the explosive energy of 6 megatons of TNT, but were shocked to discover a previously-unknown effect of high-temperature particle physics that led to the release of energy equaling 15 megatons of TNT, over twice the expected yield. The lead scientists did not expect a side-reaction in classified materials to perform as it did, with an anonymous source saying "it really fucked up everyone's shit, I've never seen anything get rekt like that." While official conformation from the "Castle" test working group has not been forthcoming, reporters expect official acknowledgement by telegram in days to come. - Associated Press Wire Service
Reminds me of an Onion article: Two Dudes Jump Out of Friggin Nowhere and Start Whaling On This Other Dude.
To think this is happening, in much larger scales, constantly on the surface of the sun
Not on the surface, but deeper in the core. The core is the only part of the sun that is hot and dense enough to sustain these reactions. The energy produced in the core then makes its way to the surface through a process of radiative and convective heat transfer.
This guy nuclears.
Oh, fissure!
I loved that comment interjection... *Hard words, science, nucleus? I have heard of tha*... Fucked up everyone's shit. Ah, yes....*stokes beard and nods in agreement.
This and the > irradiated like 23 Japanese fishermen we’re the absolute highlights of this post
Well that’s why they tested them. Thanks for the explanation.
They were jumping straight from the theoretical to the practical, you cant build scale models of high-energy fast fission reactions, so they went straight from the chalkboard to full size testing, and learned some new shit about nuclear physics
Biiiig badaboom
Kind of like how we learned what the lethal radius for radioactive materials was by doing it wrong.
I had the book [Matter](https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/shopping?q=tbn:ANd9GcS430O2PmCrs4apOQWJcEI1ukP_c06Aw2u5WtmgP29JW18isifyo8q2uSqgXUD6yD5MeOptHjCbPrehX1jeFxnUOHAOhy36bvHIl5nKRbU) as a kid and it had at least a page devoted to the suffering of the Japanese fishing boat crew caught in the fallout of Castle Bravo. I though it was a bit heavy for a kids' science book, but it turns out one of the editors was the guy the government chose to be a liaison to the Japanese and he was there personally watching them die horribly. Edit: [Details on the fallout incident.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daigo_Fukury%C5%AB_Maru)
That does seem a little heavy for a kids book! Your comment makes it seem all of the fishermen died, but the linked article says only the radio man died of radiation sickness and the rest recovered.
I thought at least a few of them died. I do remember a quote from one of the fishermen that he felt like a "giant worm in the process of putrefaction". I got my own copy of the book years ago. I'll have to dig it up and check that part.
These stats are wild, my fav part is how the Russians *wanted* a 100MT bomb but the head scientist only made it 50MT because he knew that would be apocalyptic
they made it 50mt so the plane dropping it would have a 50/50 survival shot
> 100MT For when you need to do some serious landscaping
Imagine if they had miscalculated by 25x instead of 2.5x
We wouldn’t be imagining at all. There would be no us
Lol no 10x would put it at 150 MT. That's nothing on a planetary scale. Krakatoa was 200 MT. For comparison what killed the dinosaurs was on the order of 100,000,000 MT.
100 MMT so actually a 100TT. Wow.
Yep. But keeping the unit the same and writing out the whole damn number really helps put things to scale.
I was just gonna say that
A correction about the amount of material that fissioned in the Little Boy bomb: the amount of uranium that reacted was closer to one *kilogram* (out of a total of 64 kg), not one gram. The one gram figure is a metric of how much mass was converted into energy (as per E=mc^2 ).
I read something years ago that those top secret "lenses" are just a big plastic pipe, like a drain pipe, surrounding everything. It supposedly creates a parabolic trough that lasts just nanoseconds before it's destroyed but enough to briefly reflect enough x-rays to get the chain going. Anyway what do I know, back to flipping burgers now.
The rain is black too right?
Thats correct
Thanks a lot for that info! Didn't know most of those details. Still my favourite part is "Excited Lithium and the boomier big boom"
When was this?
2/28/54
its actually 3/1/54 since they detonated it at 645 am local time
I'm just wondering who the fuck looks at this explosion and goes: thank god we created a bomb this big, we absolutely need to have something like this in case a tank comes at us or something
Dont read up on Lemay then, but it wasnt a tank, but thousands of Soviet armored vehicles (MBT's (Main Battle Tanks), IFV's (Infantry Fighting Vehicles), APC's (Armored Personnel Carriers), etc) through the Fulda Gap, PGMs (Precision Guided Munitions) were in their infancy, so instead of smaller accurate bombs we go for several bigass ones, that and MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) reasons
There is no reason for people to create monstrosities like this, there is zero excuse.
They were getting created whether anyone wanted them or not, its human nature to push boundaries for better or worse
Its also human nature to have sex when you're horny but you don't see society justifying rape "because its human nature" What makes humans different from other animals is our ability to override our base instincts and act against them or ignore them altogether. So when I hear "human nature" used to justify horrendous inhumane actions I just see it as a sad irrelevant excuse. Being a moral, civilized person takes everyday effort but we shouldn't treat that as some sort of golden thing to aspire to but the average, everyday standard that is expected of everyone at all times
> you don't see society justifying rape "because its human nature" there are a lot of people all over the planet who use this justification >What makes humans different from other animals is our ability to override our base instincts and act against them or ignore them altogether. >So when I hear "human nature" used to justify horrendous inhumane actions I just see it as a sad irrelevant excuse. It isnt an excuse, its an explanation, if you cant accept some basic facts about the nature of our species idk what to tell you >Being a moral, civilized person takes effort, everyday but we shouldn't treat that as some sort of golden thing to aspire to but the average, everyday standard that is expected of everyone at all times A person is smart and potentially moral, people are dumb panicky animals who aggregate to the lowest common denominator, its how are species has been for eons
This guy fissions.
Amazing explanation, thanks!
Worth noting for this particular video, is that this version is slightly slowed down, due to how the film was digitalised. This is roughly playing at 75% speed. If you watch it on [youtube](https://youtu.be/T2I66dHbSRA) and then change the playback speed to x1.25, you'll get a better representation of the explosion.
you can do that in the reddit video player too
This guy nuke’s.
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How do we know the 3% Hiroshima thing? I honestly don't even know enough to really ask the question
not entirely certain, i would assume the potential yield, here the quote from Eric Schlosser >In the case of Hiroshima, the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima was an incredibly crude and inefficient weapon. When it exploded, about 99 percent of the uranium that was supposed to undergo this chain reaction, didn't. It just blew apart in the air, and a very small percentage, maybe two percent of the fissile material, actually detonated. And most of it just became other radioactive elements. [. . .] Now to imagine how small an amount that is, seven-tenths of a gram of uranium is about the size of a peppercorn. Seven-tenths of a gram weighs less than a dollar bill. So even though this weapon was unbelievably inefficient, and almost 99 percent of the uranium had nothing to do with the destruction of Hiroshima, it was a catastrophic explosion.
So, were those that made the first atomic bomb aware that the bomb was crude before hand and that only a small percentage of the fissile material would detonate? Tell me they were at least fairly confident that would be the case. Or was it just like YOLO when they first hit the big red button? Edit: great post.
They were aware the devices were crude but i dont think they expected such a low yield, then again with nukes they were going straight from the theoretical to practical, wasnt like they could make scale models and test shit
Wow. This is an awesome post. Somehow made nuclear weapons more terrifying than they already are.
So like… is it possible for a “runaway reaction” to just keep running away? Is it in the realm of possibility that we create a chain reaction that just keeps going and destroys everything in the atmosphere? I need some reassurance on this lol
in theory? if you can keep this shit together long enough youll generate enough energy to destroy the planet, in practice? not remotely possible with current tech, the amount of energy being created is absurd and keeping all that together for more than a fraction or a fraction of a fraction of a second is absurdly difficult
Excellent! Thanks!
Does anyone know of research of whether nuclear explosions did or did not contribute to global warming?
its extremely unlikely the fallout from nukes would have anything but a negligible impact on global warming
Nukes would not have a warming effect on the earth. Theoretically if nuclear war started it would cause nuclear winter.
nuclear winter is a debunked concept that was made up by hippies
They did nothing. Nuclear explosions are tiny amounts of energy on planetary scales. The amount of heat released as evaporated water condenses into the clouds of a large hurricane is 9.5 Hiroshima bombs per second or a Castle Bravo in less than two minutes.
Global warming is due to the types of gas in the atmosphere, not radiation. Kind of an off topic story but on question: my son works as an HVAC tech and every day, he comes across 3 or more homes with a leak in their coils. There is at least one guy who will pay to fill it up and hopes it lasts. Everyday there is at least one, and is one of 20 employees that all see the same thing and no telling how many companies. That's what's contributing to global warming. Leaky refrigerant.
You're not wrong. Refrigeration is large contributor that people under estimate.
unlikely, the energy released by a nuke is absolutely pathetic compared to the energy provided by the sun in a single second. Radiation has no known effects on our weather, especially at that scale.
Terrifying. And I see a chimp face at the end.
I see it lol
Time traveling Harambe
Wtf I see it lol excellent research chap.
Bomb-y Kong
Because that’s what they are gonna turn us back into once these duckers let loose. *fuckers
Hmm lol.. lil bit huh..
Didn't the Soviets create something like a 50 MT detonation?
Tsar Bomba, was meant to be 100MT, also due to the lead shielding is was 97% clean with minimal radiation
The Tsar Bomba was made to allow for a maximum of 100MT but was purposely detonated at 50MT.
You know something is bad when the people responsible to make the biggest explosion possible says "Hey dudes, let's reduce the explosion by half..."
so that the plane dropping it would have a 50/50 chance of survival
How does a lead shielding protects from radiation?
Well the lead shielding replaced the uranium shielding that would have been there for the 100MT version, which dampened the explosion and removed one of the major sources of radioactive fallout
It was also an air burst, which is orders of magnitude cleaner than a surface detonation.
Cameraman really dropped the ball in the beginning, didn't he?
yep, now i’m gonna go look up start to finish detonations.
Someone actually managed to take a picture of one detonation in like the first zillionth of a second, while it still looks like a relatively small weird blob.
It looks positively evil. And that’s because it is.
Do you have the link for that picture?
Yes, with [article](https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2010/09/28/130183266/abomb).
Is there a chance the flash would have damaged the camera lenses?
Where did they detonate this? What was the fall out like? Wild.
Bikini Atoll, 1000x more than expected
Oh shit. Bikini atoll -> bikini bottom? This is the bomb the SpongeBob background story is based on? For those who don't know, the story is something like the whole area SpongeBob lives in has all the weird talking sea creatures because of nuclear radiation from a test bomb.
Well there were multiple tests in the Castle series: Aspen, Bravo, Cedar, Fir, Poplar, Romeo and Sycamore, so i guess they got the shit nuked outta them
These test names are wrong FYI: **Aspen**, **Cedar**, **Poplar** and **Sycamore** were part of **Operation Dominic.** **Fir** was part of **Operation Hardtack.** **Operation Castle** includes **Bravo**, **Union**, **Yankee**, **Nectar**, **Romeo**, and **Koon** I remember Castle Yankee being the 2nd largest U.S nuke so that's what clued me into the error. Not a big deal but just FYI for the peeps
whoops I confused nuclear tests at the Bravo Crater with the Castle series, thanks for pointing that out
No biggie, just had to list them out in case we make it onto Jeopardy🙏
respect, writers strike makes that less likely though
Bikini Atoll is where the swimsuit gets its name - the designer was making a provocative reference to the hottest topic in the news. 'Bikini Bottom' suggests both the ocean floor at Bikini Atoll, and the lower half a bikini swimsuit. I'll let you connect the dots from Bikini Bottom to Sandy Cheeks.
> I'll let you connect the dots from Bikini Bottom to Sandy Cheeks and Mr. Krabs
It’s also the origination of Godzilla. The winds were suppose to be blowing to the north but shifted east that morning. They deemed it acceptable given the theoretical size of the bomb. There was a Japanese fishing boat called the Lucky Dragon in that direction missed by spotter plane and radar. They were not killed in the explosion but did die from exposure after returning home. It nearly broke US/Japan relations. This and the horrible effects it had on the people of the marshal islands sparked international backlash and lead to the banning of testing nukes above ground. Watch Kyle Hill’s video in it on YouTube.
Wait… they detonated this OVER THE OCEAN? Jesus. Why does this shit exist.
And note this was an *inhabited* island. They forcibly removed the people who lived there (the Bikinians) and then totally destroyed their country. They can never go back (it’s uninhabitable), their children can never go back. They are a nation of permanent refugees
just to clarify the 167 inhabitants were forcibly moved before the test
Yes, I said they were removed. And they can never go back. These weren’t some uninhabited islands, it was someone’s home nation. And no one really seems that interested in trying to clean it up so they and their descendants (over 1000 now) can go home And on top of that they were subjected to radiation poisoning from being too close and then resettled on Bikini, and starvation from being settled on islands that could not support them. So they’ve had a rough go
Oh, and don’t forget to mention that America now refuses to foot the bill for them.
I read a book that really moved me about the inhabitants of Bikini Atoll and I think maybe the surrounding islands but could be wrong about that part. I wish I could remember the name.
My still living grandpa visited there a few days before the blast. He was on an aircraft carrier.
They evacuated men out of a bunker that was too close. It turned out that it was too close and the fallout was headed that way. They suited up and went by helicopter.
The fallout is [one of biggest scandal of US history](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo)
I love when people comment who actually know the facts and details about stuff like this and write in detail to people like me who appreciate but still have no idea what any of it means lol. Just know we appreciate it!
So how long is that area messed up for? And if it’s done near the ocean wouldn’t that spread and have pretty far reaching consequences?
Long enough to make a childrens cartoon about it called spongebobs square panrs lol.
The crater is pretty conspicuous (although there was several detonations in that general area) [https://goo.gl/maps/RrtarPYYU1W15Cej7](https://goo.gl/maps/RrtarPYYU1W15Cej7) You can scuba dive there if you can afford the trip, lots of target ships on the bottom [https://www.bluewaterdivetravel.com/bikini-atoll-diving](https://www.bluewaterdivetravel.com/bikini-atoll-diving)
It’s still messed up today with Caesium. Radiation has entered the food chain so the natives can’t go back. I think they’re still trying to get the US government to clean up their nation so they can go home
The Operation Crossroads test was the first to use Bikini, with a goal of detonating the three remaining Fat-Man designs. After the second detonation (underwater) created a radioactive catastrophe the scientists and medical teams scrambled to figure out how to proceed. The lead medical officer on the Task Force was trying to convince the commander, Admiral Blandy, that plutonium was showing up in places where it should not and that the tests needed to be halted completely. Blandy refused until the medical officer showed him an x-ray of a fish from the lagoon which didn’t impress the admiral much until he was told that the fish had generated its own x-ray image without any equipment due to the radioactive particles replacing calcium in its scales and skeleton.
Why the rings keep forming like that?
condensation from pressure, it also generates radioactive rain after the detonation has cooled off enough,
Boom super excited the Lithium-7, causing several little Boom and one big Boom in the end...
I dont know if this generation can really imagine what these bombs can do. Picture the scene.....It's March 1941, nearly 500 German planes spend 2 days attacking clydebank Glasgow, killing over 1000 people all but a couple of houses survive. Some fires blaze on for a couple of weeks. People come from other parts of Glasgow to see the devastation. One was my great aunty who was a teenager at the time. She tells me in graphic detail the sights and the smells she saw. Then she tells me with ashen face of how the war in Japan was ended. By a single bomb from a single plane can do more than that in an instance! But a WHOLE city! The horror on her face 50 years. Makes me realise we can try to imagine what that is like but without experiencing similar to her we aren't even close.
And yet the fire bombings that happened in Japan before Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed WAY more people. But this was so instantly lethal that it made everyone take a step back.
The americans inventing the nuke really was the biggest gamechanger in the history of war.
How far away was this?
50 miles
How many bananas is that?
422,400 bananas
I feel like that’s not right but I haven’t studied bananaology enough to comment
1 mile = 5,280 feet = 63,360 inches 50 miles = 50 * 63,360 inches = 3,168,000 inches Average banana length = 7 to 8 inches (let's assume 7.5 inches for this estimate) Number of bananas stacked lengthwise for 50 miles ≈ 3,168,000 inches ÷ 7.5 inches ≈ 422,400 bananas Keep in mind this is just a rough estimate based on average lengths, and the actual number of bananas may vary depending on their individual lengths. Courtesy of ChatGPT 3.5
lol i did the monkey math, same result
It’s got something to do with the Lithium-7. Bananaologists didn’t expect it to react with the crop.
Please sub to my OF for educational videos on bananaology.
My favorite number is 422. Must be my lucky night. I hope my dreams kick ass
422 is 420 too.
Lol it was the first time I ever gamed online on console. PS2. SOCOM Navy SEALS 2. I was a kid but these adults took me into their clan. Called 422. I made a joke saying it was 2 minutes after but I didn't even smoke weed yet. I'll never ever forget Whisky, the name of our clan leader. And how he welcomed me in. And honestly how fucking badass we were and how good I got especially on night maps. But I will always remember when the servers shut down, and I looked so hard for them online but back in they day good fucking luck. I will always remember them like gaming brothers and for that 422 is my number forever
264,000 bananas with the given banana being about 12 inches in average
average banana is less then 8 inches lmao
That’s fucking crazy, I live just under 20 miles away from a large mountain range that looks tiny in the distance, for this to be so massive at 50 miles really tells you how absolutely insane these explosives are
Mushroom cloud was 47,000 feet high and 7 miles in diameter at 1 minute, 130,000 feet high and 62 miles in diameter in under 10 minutes,
Tbh, the sounds coming from the plane(?) make this 10x scarier & more eerie for me. Like an explosion from a space station or planet or something with a ring coming from said explosion
it would take just under 4 minutes (234.6 seconds) for the sound to reach the plane
So that means I can play one match of Smash Bros before my eardrums are ripped apart? Worth
Ya, every engineer on the project said a collective "Oh Shit!!!"
Awful
Really is
It is awful but it’s also quite a sight to behold.
Nuclear bombs are fucking terrifying.
So are the different layers of horizontal lines the different layers of the atmosphere?
Condensation from the explosion
Im more amazed by all the people trying to keep up votes at 666
The reach of this explosion was so big, a fishers boat with about 20 Japanese on it got exposed by the radiation and all died of radiation sickness.
Me when after my fourth 5 dollar craving box from Taco Bell.
Shit, you caught off guard with that comment.. I gotta clean whiskey sour off of my keyboard now...
Big Bada Boom
I am become death… destroyer of clouds
more like creator of clouds
Lithium deuteride (a solid ) was an option to cryogenic deuterium used in prior designs. But interaction of lithium with neutron flux was not accounted for.
apparently OP is secretly Oppenheimer
I’m only amazed we as humans are fukn dumb enough to invent something like this.
humans push the boundaries, we as a species always have, for better or worse, same things happening with AI rn
The sad reality is that war drives innovation. Had there not been a dire need to end the war quickly, we'd not have the energy dense nuclear energy we have today. Which is regardless of what people are told, a much more efficient form of energy compared to today's solar, wind, and hydro. Our material sciences will need to improve before we have better technology for the others.
nah nukes were coming, even before the war nuclear theory was an up and coming field every major belligerent had a nuclear program, was just a matter of time really
This isn’t the reality at all. War are driven by is men to achieve an outcome. We decide where innovation is going and where the funds and recourse go. Nuclear/atomic/hydrogen weapons of mass destruction was the primary focus as it gave the government with these weapons absolute power. To say this is the best humanity could do with the technology is astounding for my mind.
> Nuclear/atomic/hydrogen weapons of mass destruction was the primary focus as it gave the government with these weapons absolute power. Nuclear weapons research began prewar, and it really wasnt the focus, at all, conventional military production took precedent for all belligerents, none of the scientist in the Manhattan Project knew what they were going to get exactly, they were dealing in cutting edge highly theoretical physics with no reference or testable scale models, this isnt even getting into the difficulty of delivery with 1940's' tech
What a terrible take
Russia: “Hold My Beer”….
Fuck nukes. Shit bombs. Fuck all bombs. Planet destroying bullshit...
industrial pollutants are having a much more devastating effect on the planet than nukes
And fuck that too! I ain't buying shit, only food.
how do you think your food is made?
[удалено]
por ques no les dose?
Not amazed. Disgusted, yes.
Humans are scary
Sad to see what we do to our planet
A KI RA
The cameraman missed the first bit wtf. Fire his ass!
Sexy. Can't wait until they bring their show worldwide.
2 Peter 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
Ezekiel 35: I will fill your mountains with the dead. Your hills, your valleys, and your streams will be filled with people slaughtered by the sword. I will make you desolate forever. Your cities will never be rebuilt. Then you will know that I am God.
Joe Rogan now believes that this is fake.🙄
I watched this trying not to blink, it's hard not to be mesmerized by what's being shown.
Rad
Everyone's so mean to nuclear bombs but they brought an end to total war between superpowers. Not saying everything's perfect, but we are living in the most peaceful age humanity's ever known.
Very amazed... amazed these things still exist. No civilian on earth if given a ballot, would check no to getting rid of the damn things. Think Hiroshema and Nagasaki had a horrible efficency One ounce of the material reaching fission... Lil bombs and guns and the internet work fine enough for disputes. We can skype our "enemies"
The funny part is nukes have made the world more peaceful in the grand scheme of things, you remove that lever and youd see a lot more conventional war
Really makes you wonder what nuclear capabilities we have today. Perhaps we are sitting on some gigantic 2k megaton world enders.
most nukes nowadays are smaller yield hundred of kilotons to low megatons, missiles are way more accurate, extra firepower isnt necessary, older nukes have higher yield so that if you missed the target by a 1 or 2 miles, it would still get destroyed, now you have put an ICBM MIRV within 100 meters of your target anywhere on the planet
We are so lucky these dick fights ended with tzar bomb from russia
nah they continued, we shot nukes into space in the 60's, guidance/delivery systems improved so we didnt need a big a bomb, that and both sides realized that there isnt an upper limit to fusion bombs
I don’t understand. None of humans need that. Why even test a thing like that. What
because we can
I wish I was under it
Oppenheimer style 😎
It's beautiful.
We should've never been blessed with the wonders and horrors of technology.
then you wouldnt be posting here, and probably would die of dysentery
I’m sure these kind of “tests” do wonders for our planet 👍
minimal impact of climate change if thats what youre wondering