Nookyooler! Yea, go ahead and make fun of the Philly accent... But let's get serious - We really did make it through the 20th Century without a nuclear war.... But we are still living in the Atomic Age... and a new wave of proliferation is ahead that still hangs over us all for remainder of the 21st Century and beyond.
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#film #Atomic #nuclear
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#film #Atomic #nuclear
- Intro Music by Fran Blanche -
Fran's Science Blog - http://www.frantone.com/designwritings/design_writings.html
FranArt Website - http://www.contourcorsets.com
Hey, Fran. The Tsar Bomba was actually designed to be ~100 MT. The version Russia tested was "only" ~50 MT. The bomber crew survived, but their experience was dicey, as you suggest. The high-altitude atmospheric test, Starfish Prime, over the Pacific, caused an EMP that knocked out part of the power grid and telephone system 1000 miles away in Hawaii. It also damaged several orbiting satellites, including Telstar, the first communications satellite.
I guess E. Teller thought that if the 'genie' was out of the bottle, you better have the best wish you could come up with (the most knowledge)…cause someone else would certainly figure it out, and hold it over our heads. (Can't say I liked Teller, he seemed so 'glib' about how much destructive force he could come up with)… But anyway….I feel if any country ever actually used any nuke, I would hope that the entire world would come down on them hard, but a full exchange won't happen (I pray)….. so, maybe the ultimate use of such high explosive power may be to save the earth from some imminent catastrophe….such as a rogue asteroid or something…. who knows….
The nuclear stalemate has created the momentum to seek advantage in space, bio-weapons and other esoteric so called defence projects. The threat has not gone away just morphed and what goes around may well come around. Have a nice day Fran – that's all us ordinary life loving people can do.
Growing up in Omaha during the Cold War we were all aware that SAC headquarters a couple of miles south of the city would be the first target of the Warsaw Pact ICBMs inside the US mainland. USSTRATCOM which replaced SAC is still here and still is in charge of the control and usage of the nukes, so we'll be toast in a conflict.
China shouldn't have any nuclear weaponry. They are an evil, dishonest, oppressive communist country that only seeks to conquer and enslave the entire world (I don't mean the good people of China, only the people who are part of or support communism). America is still the last bastion of freedom and we do need defense against a nation like China. Like Kennedy said, "…give me absolute power to destroy all other nations, under the absolute control of all nations."
Feynman told me directly, over lunch in the late 80s, that "scientists don't bear any responsibility for the use of the atomic weapons they create". I simply don't believe he regretted his (very minor) role in the Manhattan project.
I suggest you and everyone else here read "The Doomsday Machine," written by Daniel Ellsberg, who is perhaps best known for the Pentagon Papers. It details the buildup of nuclear capability without an accompanying buildup of safety practices for dealing with them in the US military. It's a frightening and enlightening read.
Andrei Sakharov was the creator of the Tsar Bomb which was built according to what the Soviets called the "layer cake" design. It was originally supposed to be 100 megatons, but Sakharov thought that was crazy and changed the TB's design so its yield was "only" 50 megatons. Not long after that, Sakharov became disillusioned with the Soviet nuclear program and all nuclear weapons in general. He became a pariah within the USSR and was one of the first, and also leading, major political dissidents and suffered accordingly for his beliefs for many years until he was allowed to emigrate to Israel. The same couldn't be said about Edward Teller, who was an advocate for large-yield thermonuclear weapons for the rest of his life. Teller's last big idea that he convinced President Reagan was an orbital X-ray laser as part of the president's nebulous "Star Wars" anti-ICBM program. Teller's X-ray laser consisted of a hydrogen bomb inside a special capsule that had several tubes sticking out in several directions. Upon detonation of the bomb, in the milliseconds that followed the tubes would focus and direct beams of X-rays in the belief that any Soviet ICBMs or warheads in the vicinity during their coast phase would be fried and destroyed or disabled by the directed energy beams. In theory, Teller's new weapon had potential, but early research was inconclusive and the program was eventually set aside in favor of other technologies such as the Brilliant Pebbles kinetic impactor system. As for Stanley Kubrick's famed movie Dr. Strangelove, according to popular lore the titular character was based on Henry Kissinger, who, like Teller, was infamous then for his hawkish attitude towards the Soviet Union. But the Strangelove character could've just as well have been based on Teller, since there was more than enough war mongering to go around back then in American government and political circles – sufficient material for Kubrick, along with co-screenwriter Terry Southern and star Peter Sellers, to create an insane character like Dr. Strangelove. Thanks for the great and thoughtful video, Fran. You're the best. <3
I grew up in the 80s around 20 miles from Atlanta and fully expected one day to see the bright flash off to the west and know it was all about to be over soon. It was weird, but just the way it was! We had a great time in the meantime though, eh?
To put a fine point on it, I'd argue that there's no such thing as a nuclear war. Depending, of course, on how you define war. To my mind, calling a full nuclear exchange a "war" is a bit like calling blowing up a stadium a football game.
In the mind all things are possible. The practical application is the question. Mao's initiative to reduce the population of nuisance sparrows which lead to the explosion of insects destroying crops, leading to famine. Nuclear energy is inevitable and necessary to sustain the standard of living we are accustomed to.
i advocate for using nukes for civilian purposes, digging canals, oil fracking, so on, and more modern bomb designs have very little fallout, on the scale of 2-3x background radiation, being in a plane exposes you to 30x background, we could denuclearize, get rid of the stockpile, and make good use of them without harming people
hydrogen bombs on the other hand are simply too big, they're nearly impossible to use for civilian purposes beyond extreme terraforming of mars or something of that nature
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the destructive power increase non-linear with the atomic yield. So a 2 ton bomb is even more than twice as destructive as a one ton bomb. So a gigaton explosive would be unfathomable! Mythbusters showed this with match heads. The more match heads the reaction got faster and more destructive beyond what was linearly assumed.
I've got two civil defense Geiger counters sitting behind me. One of them is very sensitive and a smoke detector can be detected with it. The other requires radiation levels unseen in our world outside labs with nuclear sources. The day that detector sees anything is the day life in this area ceases to exist. Both of these detectors were handed out to schools in America while you were in elementary school. The construction quality of these Geiger counters is such that they work to this very day. It speaks volumes about the fear surrounding you as a child.
WHOW – HANG ON I live in Europe and WE are not getting news about China wanting a new arms race.
From our vantage point over here it very much looks like AMERICA is the one wanting the arms race and China and Russia are reacting…
WHEN I WAS ABOUT 11 THERE WAS A COLOSSAL EXPLOSION I knew with absolute certainty that it was a nuclear bomb going off and I waited to die – frozen to the spot.
It never occurred to me to run to my mother or scream or anything – I just knew I was about to be vaporised. After a few minutes and no vaporisation I was confused, I went to find my mother and it turned out that a large propane tank at a nearby brick-works had exploded. A news worthy event in its self. But the automatic reaction in 1981 was "NUCLEAR WAR".
China's weapons programs are extra scary because they all revolve around first strike capability. They aren't set up for MAD, they're set up to take the first shot. Hypersonic glide vehicles that can come in over the south pole where we have no early warning, not that it would help us anyways.
War… War never changes.
No matter how much harm has been done in the last century, you'll always find some greedy and power-hungry people who will stop at nothing to do some more.
With China on the rise and developing their nuclear weapons, the threat of nuclear apocalypse is here again. When will it happen, and what will be left after it's done? No one can be sure.