Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Can you test a nuclear weapon without a fallout?

Transcript

Can you test a nuclear weapon without a fallout? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is stuff you should
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: not like it or not like it or not. People
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: are like tuning out now. Oh, man, I downloaded the
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: wrong one. I thought this is radio. I thought this
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: is w t F with Martin Marry H. What is
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: that stand for? What the heck? With an F? What
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: the heck? H? I probably shouldn't even say that. We'll
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: find out, Yeah, I guess so. Um if we get
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: censored or get an angry email, that's right. Um, how
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: you doing? Man? Good? Good, I'm glad. I'm well sir. Uh.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: This is gonna be a good one if you ask
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: me this this point. This goes in with our um
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: nuclear sweet which is pretty extensive by now. Yeah, we've
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: done quite a few steel steal a bomb. Yeah, who
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: won the Cold War? When the Cold War mutual issued destruction? Um?
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: What else have we done? Now? This one that seems
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: like there was one other one Star Wars had some
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: nuke stuff to it. Yeah, we've done some other stuff.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: So this is part of the nuclear nuclear sweet. Yes,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: as it were, the very sweet nuclear sweet. Um. And
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: we're talking today about whether or not it's possible to
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: detonate to test to um, it's a full extent apparently
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: I looked that at that's not the term. I think
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Julia Layton made it up. Term up full extent testing
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: a nuclear bomb. It's full extent, which means not Apparently,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: you can simulate a nuclear bomb by putting a bunch
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: of T and T together and going kaboom, but there's
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: no radiation. But it's really not quite the same as
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: testing a nuclear weapon by really blowing up the nuclear core,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: which we used to do a lot, a lot um
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: and most recently there's been a lot of nuclear tests, chuck.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: A total of two thousand and fifty three nuclear weapons
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: have been exploded on planet Earth, which is a big qualifier.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: It's crazy, um, But that was only eight countries that
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: did that. Yes, the US had one thousand, thirty two,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: North Korea, Russia's seven, France two d the UK and
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: China are tied at forty five apiece. India and Pakistan
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: each had to, and then North Korea had to as well,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: the most recent one to join the FRAY in two
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: thousand six and two thousand nine. I wonder if the
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: UK and China are kind of like do it. I
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: could think China doing it over Oak wouldn't do that.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: You never know, Okay, well they did it before. Yeah,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: but those are different days. But of course the U.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: S A leads the pack in detonating nuclear weapons on
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: planet Earth. Yeah, man by far desert out in the ocean, yeah,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: underground in the air. I sent Josh a video earlier
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: that Jonathan Strickland if tech Stuff sent me today by chance.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: I was like, dude, really, yeah, how crazy is it
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: that you sent this? And he didn't respond, but it
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: was a there's a video on the YouTube's of this. Uh,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: these five Army or Navy guys standing underneath this is
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: one of the aerial detonations of a nuclear bomb. I
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: think they were Air Force and they were the Air Force,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: and they just stood there and and watched. Basically they
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: stood at ground zero under the hypocenter. It is crazy
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: and like you can see it and hear it happen,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: and they're just like laughing and carrying on and talking
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: about how awesome it was. Well, there's so there's five
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: of them. Four were volunteers. The only one who wasn't
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: a volunteer was the photographer. They forced him to do it.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: But yeah, like, you see this light go off and
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: there's no sound, but they like kind of inch and
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: then one guy wearing like old timey nineteen forties sunglasses
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: like looks up and then you can hear the sound.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: It's pretty crazy. But that was again mentioned. Number two
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: of Radio Lab. That was Robert croll Witch's blog roll,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: which wonders. He's one of the hosts of Radio Lab
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: of course. Um and that was pretty awesome. And I
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: found another blog of his that we'll talk about later.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Did I send it to you? Yes, that was pretty sweet. Yeah.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: I think it's top the first one even But um
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: So Strickland's involved, the UK has involved Robert croll which
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: has already been mentioned. UM. Basically, this is gonna be
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: a big, sweeping, enormous epic podcast if you ask me.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Um So. Part of North Korea spiel after two dozen six,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: when it became officially a nuclear state was that um
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: a press release that said there was no nuclear fallout
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: from this test, it was totally contained. Well, it's kind
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: of unbelo lievable, you know. I mean, like one of
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: the things you think of with the nuclear weapon is radiation.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: That's one of the things that's designed to do, is
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: not just wipe out a population with the explosion, but
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: to really plague it for generations, you know. Um, But
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: it turns out that it is possible depending on the
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: type of test you conduct and the conditions and the
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: h if you carry the two, well, then you might
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: be able to conduct a nuclear test that doesn't have
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: any fallout, at least that atmospheric fallout. Is that true?
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Because I didn't even gather that from this. I thought, well,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: we'll get into it. No, it can be totally contained. Really,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: I never drew that conclusion like that they have done
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: it and contained it completely. The Okay, then theoretically it can.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: I don't know if they if it can. But like
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: there's I saw this awesome article on the BBC that
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: even had an flash slide show, which is the mark
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: of quality, um, that showed how a an underground test
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: could be done. We just give it away. It's the
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: underground test that you can contain the fallout. But how
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: it could contain all the fallout, and that COREA supposedly
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: went to these links to do it, supposedly. So um, well,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: let's tuck real quick about what happens in a nuclear reaction. Chuckers, Yeah, Um,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: I guess we should define a couple of things, um,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: because we're gonna be thrown around some terminology that we
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: might understand, and you might be like, what's an isotope?
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: I forgot chemistry from high school. An isotope is basically
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: a different version of the same element, determined by the
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: number of neutrons. So like, if you've got hydrogen um,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: just a regular old hydrogen atom doesn't have neutrons. If
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: you add one neutron, it's tertium. If you have two neutrons,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: it's tritium. But they're all hydrogen. So they're just different
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: versions of that same element. Pretty easy. So fission happens
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: when scientists basically bombard a larger isotope with neutrons and
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: the collision basically is fission, and it produces like an
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: incredible amount of energy because of mass defect. So like
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: if you were to take if you were to write
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: out this formula for a nuclear fission reaction I have,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: and it was like really accurately measured um all the
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: mass of all the atoms and all these sub atomic
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: particles before and after you're gonna find a mass defect.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: You can find some missing mass, and that missing mass
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: is the energy, which is awesome if you're have a
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: nuclear reactor, because you're creating like tons and tons of energy,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: and I guess it's awesome if you want to make
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: the nuclear bomb. Bro it is. What you're talking about
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: is fission. So fishing is like when one of those
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: neutrons is picked up by an atom, that the additional
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: neutron just splits the atom and that releases more neutrons,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: which forms a chain reaction. Well, it's the key there
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: is that were uses. There's only two. It has to
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: release extra neutrons and there's only two main isotopes that
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: can do this they found out, which is uranium two
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: plutonium two thirty nine. I'm more a plutonium guy, are
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: you really? Um? So they're fissionable, which is kind of
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: an awkward word, right, but it's not suspiciona well, because
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, how we can split an atom if you want,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: let's do it right now. But we're just splitting one atom.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: The point to this is that there has to be
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: a sustainable chain reaction, so that when we split one atom,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: it causes another atom is splitting another atom to split
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: in another atom is splitting. As these splits are taking place, Um,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: a huge expansion is undergone. Right, it's growing and supposedly
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: at critical mass, which is like the full sustaining of
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: this chain reaction of nuclear fission among these atoms. Yeah,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: that's the minimum amount required to create that chain reaction.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: So the critical mass um the number of neutrons can
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: be doubled eighty times a micro second. A micro second
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: is a millionth of a second, So that means that
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: in one second the number of neutrons can have doubled
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: eighty million times. That's called yeah, something special. Yeah, and
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: that's not eighty million times two. That's the eighty million
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: power I believe, isn't it. It's exponential. Yeah, So it's
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: crazy big, right, you go from something very tiny to kaboom,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: where all of a sudden, an enormous mushroom cloud. That's right,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: And how you get that cloud? If you want to bomb,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: you're gonna have two subcritical. Subcritical means that hasn't reached
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: critical mass. You have two subcritical but fission norble isotopes,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: and you keep them separate. That's really key. And then
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: you combine them with a traditional explosive and it's all
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: over after that. And remember there's one of these just
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: sitting off the coast of Savanna somewhere a law. That's right,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: it's just sitting there. And there's like there was dynamite.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: There's forgot about that. They're not one the same. There's
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: a t NT detonator that's just aging terribly underwater. I
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: thought they found it. No, remember the this x AG
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, offered to locate it for a million
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: bucks very publicly. Well that was a long time ago.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: We talked about that. Yeah. I think that was the
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: maybe the steal the newke one. That was an early
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: one for sure. Wow. So that's another reason to be
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: scared all over again. Right, So, chuck, um, there's four
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: kinds of nuclear weapons testing, at least four that we've
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: come up with and carried out so far. Yes, there's
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: a high altitude space which I think we wondered like
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: what would happen in the Star Wars episode? Answered right here? Yeah, Um,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: underground underwater and atmospheric. Let's talk about these all right, Well,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: let's talk about atmospheric. Let's do this is the one
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: that I said. The YouTube of showed a plane flying
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: and shooting this bomb off. It wasn't like dropped, It
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: was like launched like a rocket and then exploded above
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: these dudes heads where they could see it. Um. Not
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: a good idea. I don't know why they ever thought
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: this is a good idea, even in the middle of
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: a desert. Um, it's gonna fall, It's gonna rain down.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: What happened upon the ground and whoever is down there
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: is Billy Idol put it, It's going to rain hell
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: from above that idol? Yeah, okay if the rebel yeo
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: was it? Yeah? I don't know all the words of
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: that song. Where where where does that come? I can't
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: remember what is the it's the it's the last rain
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: hell from a bow in the midnight man crop all.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: It's pretty good, Billy Idol. So the scariest thing about
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: when they do these tests out in the middle of
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: a desert is all they do basically is quote clear
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: the area, Like that's how they prepare the surround owning
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: area for a nuclear fallout. They just clear it as
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: best they can, which usually consists of clearing like one
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: or two micro nations consisting of one or two guys
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: who use like chocolate chip cookie dough is currency. Right, Yeah,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, what about all the animals, what about all
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: the vegetation and playing Stop thinking about them, hippie, we're
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: trying to test nukes here. Well, and that's why they
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: do it out like in the middle of the Nevada
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: desert is because they think, you know, like it's barely
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: needing alive out there still. Okay, Yeah, the ground groundhog
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: or no, the prairie dog populations have been decimated because
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: they were reduced by exactly time percent. Did you see
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: the guy that wrote in about that today? He says,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: by the way, when Josh said fact toy and decimate,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: he's both of them wrong. And I had the same reply.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: I was like, buddy, it's not ancient Rome anymore. Look
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: it up. Decimate means a completely different thing, though. Okay,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: at this actoid All right, so let's talk about um
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: A ground test, the castle bravo test. Well, hold on
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: real quick, the atmospheric test, he said, like you drop
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: it out of a plane. There's other ways you can
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: do it. You can also um launch it via weather balloon,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: and you can just put it on top of a
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: tall pole. But basically an atmospheric test is anything just
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: above ground. You could also detonate it on top of
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: the ground because it's atmospheric, there's nothing covering it. Right. Um,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Between that and say about two fifty miles, that's an
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: atmospheric test. Okay, two I believe so because two or
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: more is typically the high altitude test. How would they
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: do that on the ground though? It's like, get it?
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: Two nine miles up is what I say. I mean
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: they were standing underneath the hypoth drop, two of them
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: on Japan. People were a little more reckless with nuclear
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: weapons back then, all right, so the Castle Bravo test. Yeah,
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: So basically the reason we talk about this is things
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: back then at least they would clear the area for
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: what they thought was gonna happen. But when you miscalculate, uh,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: and you make an error in your math, bad things
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: can happen, which is what happened in nine at the
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Bikinia Toll. That's right, and that's uh, that's actually where
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: the bikini swimsuit is named after. That's right. There was
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: nuclear fever around the world and some French designer made
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: the Bikini in honor of nuclear testing in Paradise, and
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: they said, how about some midriff fellas, and the guys went,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: all right, I love the atomic age. Let's screw up
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: this big test. Yeah. So um. Basically, what they were
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: trying out was a new type of fuel core made
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: of lithium lithium fifteen I believe, And they had not
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: carried the two And we're estimating a six megatime detonation explosion. Yeah,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: I as low as four. So they were off by
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: almost three times. Yeah. It turned out to be a
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: fifteen megaton explosion, which means that the blast radius, the
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: the area where it's still safe just from the explosion,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: was expanded tremendously, or should have been expanded tremendously. There
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: was a group of Japanese fishermen on a boat that
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: in English translates the name of which translates to lucky dragon.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: And they were not so lucky because they were just
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: outside of the blast zone and um of the original
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: blast zone, and all of a sudden, all this stuff
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: starts raining down and like one of them is like
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: sticking at his tongue trying to taste it. It's all
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: nuclear fallout, and uh, the whole boat came down with
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: with sickness. And actually the one fatality from the Castle
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: Bravo test was on that boat. But people, Yeah, there
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: was a lot of like cancer birth effects, second generation
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: birth effect. Yeah, there was a lot of It was
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: a huge screw up, to say the least. I got
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: some stats on that. They produced a four and a
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: half mile wide fireball four and a half miles dude
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: left a crater feet in diameter and two fifty ft deep,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: and in the end it was a thousand times more
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: powerful than either one of the bombs we dropped on Japan,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: and it's still the largest nuclear detonation by the United
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: States ever. Yeah, I think Russia topped that, of course.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: And they basically just put the device out on top
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: of this a toll and like ran away, like setting
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: off a firework or something like that. Yeah, that was
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: pretty nuts, very sad. Um. Shall we go underwater if
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: you're interested in this at all, especially like the Bikinia
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Tall there's footage in this awesome documentary from called Atomic Cafe.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: I think I've seen that it's it's it's just like
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: newsreel footage and basically it's like cold war nuclear hysteria
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: and um love and reasons behind hya. But there's a
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: there's a news reel clip of like the King of
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: I can't remember, but the Marshall Islands. Basically the indigenous
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: king um stands up, He's like, we're really excited to
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: evacuate our home for you guys to do nuclear testings,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: so let's go. And it's really just awkward and staged
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: and it's something else. Or the people all behind him
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: going did he just say what I think he said? Yeah,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: They're like, what did he say? That actually sucks? Yeah? So, um,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: it's a good movie. The whole thing is, Yeah, that's
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: a documentary. I think there's a movie called The Atomic
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Cafe too. That's it. Oh, I didn't think it was
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: a documentary. It's a documentary. It's by two brothers and
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: a friend, a lady friend. Really is there a person
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: on the bicycle on a bike on the cover? There
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: may be. I believe there's definitely a mushroom cloud. I
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: might be thinking of something altogether different. You're thinking of
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: fables of the reconstruction, all right, so now, Mr Zusu,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: can we go under water? Yes, that's all right. Um,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: underwater is gonna have less fall out obviously because you're underwater.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: So that's good. But and you don't see a lot
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: of this. It's hard to get a lot of information
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: on this, but obviously you're gonna destroy any kind of
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: marine life, coral reefs that we've talked about, and basically
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: anything else that it comes into contact with, not to
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: mention fishing villages and basically these these people that depend
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: on fishing to live. Yeah, it's not just the um,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: it's not just the immediate impacts, which is basically blowing
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: up tons of dolphins and whales and stuff like that. Um,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: it has a long sustained impact. Like think about it.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: That just from Fukushima. That's another one in our nuclear
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: suite how nuclear meltdown works. That's right, Fukushima. Um, there's
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: people who like won't touch any kind of seafood from
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Japan now because they're afraid to fall out. Whether that's
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: correct or not, at the very least in the public opinion.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: You can't just blow up a nuclear weapon underwater and
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: expect everything to be okay. Well, yeah, and the economic
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: impact that has on the fisherman, of course, it's huge. Uh.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: And the three eyed fish like the Simpsons, Blinkie was that?
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Who was? And it blinked on in succession? Right? Yeah,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: that's pretty funny. Yeah. Um, and you just confirmed that
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: it was a bicycle in the front of the Atomic Cafe, right, yeah,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: that's Atomic Cafe, all right. I've always wanted to see that,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: and I never knew it was a documentary. It's very good.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: I always associated with Attack of the Killer Tomatoes because
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: I think they came out at about the same time
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: and they both seem to have like the same kind
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: of thrilling poster. Okay, shall we go into outer underground
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: or should we say that for last and do outer space? Uh? Well,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: let's go underground because this is the winner as far
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: as the only way theoretically took taine fully a nuclear blast.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: But you gotta go down really really really deep, like
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: eight which is a half a mile about feet and
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: for that's that's a bomb of what size? Uh? I
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: don't know, Chuck, Well, Okay, this can put it into
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: into comparison. At least three hundred feet down you could
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: contain a one kiloton bomb. That's kiloton. You gotta remember
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: that Castle Bravo was fifteen mega tons. So yeah, there's
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: some math involved there somewhere, But I imagine eight hundred
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: eight hundred feet you said, um, And supposedly, even though
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: they do point out in this article, you never really
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: know until you do it because it can be unpredictable,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: obviously in the case of of the Bikini Atoll. But um,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: it's worst case scenario if it does go above ground,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: because then it's raining down radioactive soil and lots and
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: lots of radio ative soil. So UM. To to outfit
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: the best case scenario, um, basically, you want to dig
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: this eight D you want to bore an eight hundred hole,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: and you've hit subtraine in rock like the mantle of
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: the earth at this point, depending on where you are,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: but most likely you have because you're half a mile
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: into the earth. You put your little nuclear bomb in there. Um.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: And it says here also that North Korea's it's done
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: something like four to five mega tons. Yeah, Um in
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: in the chamber, which is like the bottom of the hole,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: and you backfill it with like gravel, gypsum, like this
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: composite of all these different solid materials that are gonna
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: pack that whole solid to absorb the shock wave the
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: blast um. So that means that it can go up,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: but it's not going to go up very far. What
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: it's gonna do is go out. So you set the
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: thing off and it goes out and down and it
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: actually the blast vaporizes the mantle of the earth around it,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: which then eventually, after probably a few seconds, cools into
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: molten rock. And after that sits there in stews for
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: a couple of minutes. The um the the whole above
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: it where the it can't support the earth above it
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: any longer, and so it collapses. And then what you
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: have is called a subsistence creator. Subsidence creator cannot be
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: good for the Earth. It's not. But there's YouTube lousy
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: with like underground tests where these creators just form. It's nuts,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: But that supposedly contains the fallout. Supposedly, that's what I hear,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: that's what the BBC says. But that's how if you
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: if you're ever interested, that's how you perform an underground
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: nuclear test. If you have a nuclear bomb and an
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: eight D boer. Yeah, that's I mean, that's got to
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: be some high engineering right there to get down there
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: and not have a cave in on itself. And it's
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: not just a hole either. Probably, Hey, Kim jong Ill
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: knew what to pull the stops one. That's right, all right.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: So now outer space, which is one of the dumbest ideas.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: Actually they're all pretty dumb if he asked me. But
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: we did it, and so did Russia, and we would
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: um to see basically if we could kill satellites with
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: nuclear bombs in space. Um. One of the problems is
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: it kills a lot of satellites and possibly your own
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: important satellites. So they just discovered the Van Allen Belt
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: of nuclear radiation around the Earth, and they figured out
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: that if they blew up a nuclear bomb in the
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: Van Allen Belt, they could create an electromagnetic pulse that
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: would wipe out satellites. But it wiped out more than
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: two stars, and it actually created that. This is where
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: we hit Robert Krolwitz again, who apparently shares the same
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: interest in nuclear history cold war nuclear history that we do,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: because this is the second blog of his on this topic.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: But UM, I would definitely recommend looking this up. It's
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: called um a very scary fireworks show and it's about
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: this um US launch of nuclear weapons into space. It
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: was called Starfish Prime was the operation. It's a pretty
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: cool name. M Starfish Prime PRIMU School. Starfish not so much.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: I think it's cool. But they were publicizing it was
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: all over the newspapers. It was like, look for a
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: great fireworks is playing the sky and you could see
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: it looked like the Northern lights up in space when
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: this thing was exploded two miles up. Well, the good
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: news there is there's not gonna be any fallout because
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: our atmosphere is going to deflect that. The bad news though, is,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: like we said, it's not exactly it's not an exact science.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: You're not sharp shooting, so you can take out all
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: kinds of satellites. And I think there was an electromagnetic
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: pulse that actually can wipe out electrical systems here on Earth,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: and it did in a big way. Um. And then
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: of course radiation in space, who knows what that means,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: you know, to like man space flights. Yeah, you don't
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: want that stuff out there, which is strange because I
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: thought there was a lot of radiation already in space
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: from well just solar radiation. Um, there's tons of isotopes
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: up there. Man, I don't even get me started. So
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: is that it underground? Is that our consensus? It seems
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: to be the way to go. How about no more
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: nuclear weapons testing of any kind? That's that's what I'm
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: getting behind. Um Man, there's tons of cool stuff on
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: the internet. Uh. If you want to check out those
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: five crazy guys standing beneath the hypocenter of a new
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: nuclear blast and I think two. Um, you can check
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: out five men agree to stand directly under an exploding
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: nuclear bomb on coral which is blog. Also check out
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: this very scary fireworks display while you're there. Um, I
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: would strongly recommend atomic cafe and radio lab and tech
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: stuff yep. Um. And there's this really cool time laps
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: video of the two thousand and fifty three nuclear nuclear
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: bombs exploded on Earth. Ever um by a Japanese artist
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: named Sayo Hashimoto is a cool name. Um. It's called
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: nuclear Testing dot w m V on YouTube. It's it's
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: worth checking out. Yeah, it's cool. It's it represents them
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: by just little flashes instead Like I thought I was
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: expecting something different, but did you see like it had?
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: Like it looked like an old Atari game, like yeah,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: it looks sort of like missile Command, but it had
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: the years. As the years tick by, it shows when
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: they were in, when and where they're detonated, and it's
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: funny to see the heyday of when they're going off
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: a lot more and that great cream hey day. Um.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: And if you want to learn more about nuclear weapons testing,
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: you can type in nuclear weapon radioactive fall out. It'll
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: bring up this, uh, excellent article on how stuff works
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: dot com. And uh, I don't think I said search
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: bars the search bar. And now it's time for listener.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: Now I'm gonna call this farmer Garrett rights in my
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: favorite farmer. Um. Hi, guys in Jerry, I just want
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: to take this time and say how much I enjoy
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: the show. Without you, I would not know what to
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: do with myself for hours on end. Literally, my friend
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: and I often find ourselves having nerd rampages where we
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: talk endlessly or debate about something you've covered in the show.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: First started listening when my cousin introduced me to the
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: ten Strange Death podcast, and I was hooked, immediately subscribed,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: been listening ever since. And without you, I would be
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: working in silence right now. You see, I work on
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: a farm, and most of the farm work has done
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: at night. Where I live. We have to wait for
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: the moisture to be just right before we can work
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: in the fields. So it's two fifty am according to
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: my clock right now, and I'll be heading out to
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: work shortly. So this is from Garrett Massey, and I
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: wrote Garrett back and I was like, dude, what kind
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: of farming are you doing at two fifteen in the morning.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: I don't know anything about warming and he said we
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: actually our family worked with corn and hay and uh,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: the reason we get up so early is so there's
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: plenty of moisture in the hay leaves before you rake
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: and bail them. So that's what I've been doing. I
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: started to thirty get home around ten am in the morning.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: His work day is done. We live in New York,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry. We live in New Mexico, not New York,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: very different and it gets really hot and dry here,
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: which is why we have to work at night when
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: it's coolest and most humid. So I learned a little
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: something from that one. And since he brings up New Mexico,
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: that raises an excellent point. Just two days ago is
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: the sixties seventh anniversary of the very first nuclear weapons test,
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Alma Gordo, New Mexico, the Trinity Test. It's all coming together. Yeah,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: almost like we planned this stuff out. It's crazy, but
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: we don't. Strickland sending Land. I know, farmer Garrett sending
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: that time time. We're Jerry. Yeah. Well, if you want
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: to send us something that blows our minds, we're always
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: looking for that kind of thing. Um And we're not
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: even stuff to blow your mind, but we're we can
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: appreciate its. Um. You can tweet to us at s
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: dot com slash stuff you Should Know, and you can
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: send us a good old fashioned electronic email. Uh to
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com for more on this
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Does it how Stuff works
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: dot Com Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: twelve camera. It's ready, are you