Latest / Be Amazed / This Is How a Nuclear Bomb Works

Transcript

This Is How a Nuclear Bomb Works · Be Amazed

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Since their first devastating use back in nineteen forty five nuclear weapons have been a huge source of anxiety and fear across the globe.
• 0:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: For almost a century now we've lived in the knowledge that our world leaders could plunge us into nuclear war with destruction on a scale never before seen in history.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: But how likely really is this scenario?
• 0:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: What was the biggest nuclear weapon ever dropped and how does a nuke even work anyway?
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Slip your hazmat suit on and brace yourself for impact because you're about to get hit with a fat knowledge bomb.
• 0:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's start with a little history and ask the question, why were nuclear bombs ever developed in the first place?
• 0:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: In nineteen thirty-eight just a year before the world was plunged into war, German scientist Otto Hahn was working in a lab in Berlin when he discovered something incredible.
• 1:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nuclear energy.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: By splitting the nucleus of an atom, the smallest unit of matter in the known universe, Hahn realized a monumental amount of energy was released.
• 1:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: After word got out about his findings, U.S.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: President Franklin D. Roosevelt was worried that the Germans would use this newfound energy to develop a superweapon.
• 1:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: So he tasked U.S.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: scientists to develop one first.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: When America joined World War II in December, in nineteen forty-one, these efforts were doubled, and Roosevelt established the Manhattan Project.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Based in Manhattan, New York, the project was a joint effort by the military and several hundred scientists to weaponize nuclear energy.
• 1:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just four years after its formation, its goal was met.
• 1:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: On sixteenth July, nineteen forty-five, the U.S.
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: conducted the first ever test of a nuclear bomb, codenamed the Trinity Test.
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: The bomb containing one kiloton of destructive power, that's the same as one thousand tons of conventional explosives, was dropped from a plane over Sekoro, New Mexico.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: The resulting explosions stunned the U.S.
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: military and left the bomb sites so irradiated that even today the area contains more than ten times the normal level of background radiation.
• 2:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: In other words, it was a resounding success.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Less than a month later, the US would put this terrifying new technology to horrific use.
• 2:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: With the war almost over, but Japan refusing to surrender, newly-instated President Harry S. Truman ordered the atomic bombing of the city of Hiroshima.
• 2:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: When the bomb named Little Boy was dropped, everything changed.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: The plane shows in for the mission of B. twenty nine super fortress bomber called the Anola Gay reached Hiroshima at nine fourteen a.m.
• 3:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: local time on the sixth of August nineteen forty five.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: The bomber deer, Thomas Fariby, dropped the nearly ten thousand pounds bomb, then the pilot, Paul Tibbetts, sharply turned and flew away from the city as fast as he could.
• 3:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Forty three seconds later, Little Boy exploded with the force of more than sixteen thousand five hundred tons of TNT.
• 3:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: The nuclear explosion instantly vaporized anyone at its center, scorched the ground around it to temperature's hotter than seven thousand degrees Fahrenheit, and sent a shockwave that smashed through buildings in a belittarated land for miles around.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was hell on Earth.
• 3:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: A daunting mushroom cloud sort in the air, twenty thousand feet above the city blocking out sunlight to those below.
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: But still, the Japanese Emperor Hirohito refused to back down.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Surprise, but unperturbed, Truman ordered the dropping of a second bomb this time over the city of Nagasaki.
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: This bomb named Fatman was even bigger and more powerful than its predecessor.
• 4:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, Fatman fell from a US plane and exploded over Nagasaki, obliterating over two and a half square miles of the city.
• 4:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: A second mushroom cloud was thrust high into the air, and radioactive rain burned down on anyone unfortunate enough to have survived the initial blast.
• 4:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you might have been better off being vaporized than being a little further out when the bomb went off.
• 4:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Those not in the immediate blast suffered all kinds of nasty maladies like burns internal injuries and blindness and many succumb to them.
• 4:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Emperor Hero Hito seeing such destruction finally announced the country's surrender.
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: At the cost of over two hundred thousand innocent lives the allies had won the war.
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps unsurprisingly, the newly formed United Nations made one of their first acts to call for the elimination of atomic weapons.
• 5:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And even less surprisingly, this was completely ignored.
• 5:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the years following the war, the U.S.
• 5:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: continued testing atom bombs, and the Soviet Union under Communist rule and firmly against the American way of life accelerated their own nuclear program.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: In nineteen forty nine the Soviet Union became the second nation to successfully detonate a nuclear bomb.
• 5:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Cold War had officially begun.
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Two nations with wildly conflicting belief systems both harboring the most powerful weapons mankind had ever seen.
• 5:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: What could possibly go wrong?
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know where you can't go wrong though?
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Following my podcast, so you get amazing recommendations and content like this delivered to you every week.
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, back to blowing stuff up.
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: In nineteen fifty-two, three years after the Soviet Union's first successful nuclear test in, with Cold War tensions rising ever higher, the US took nuclear weaponry to a whole new level.
• 6:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: by detonating the first ever hydrogen bomb.
• 6:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Can you guess how much more powerful this hydrogen bomb was than the OG atom bombs?
• 6:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ten times?
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: One hundred times?
• 6:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nope.
• 6:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was one thousand times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
• 6:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: For when obliterating an entire city, just isn't enough.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: When the bomb exploded over a remote Pacific island, it did so with the monumental force of ten point four megatons of TNT that's over ten million tons of the stuff.
• 6:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: The colossal blast made a fireball at least four miles wide that by expert estimates, shown brighter than a thousand sons, and the heat was felt by observers standing as far as thirty miles away.
• 7:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the Soviets were hot on the American tail and if you thought that was big, strap yourselves in because you've seen nothing yet.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's put things into perspective for a moment.
• 7:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was fifteen kilotons.
• 7:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: The first hydrogen bomb was ten megatons.
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: But nine years later in nineteen sixty-one, the Soviets tested a hydrogen bomb that was an unbelievable fifty-seven megatons.
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's three thousand eight hundred times the power of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
• 7:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: The absolute behemoth of a weapon was called the Tsar Bomba, and measured in at twenty-six feet long as well as weighing twenty-seven metric tons about six times the weight of little boy and over twice the length.
• 7:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: The monster's super weapon was so big that it didn't even fit inside a plane and had to be carried underneath instead.
• 7:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: You've got to feel for the poor pilot.
• 8:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: He and his crew were only given a fifty percent chance of surviving the test.
• 8:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: On October thirty at nineteen sixty-one the plane carrying the bomb took off and flew towards the test site and island in the Arctic Ocean called Novaya Zemlia.
• 8:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Once over the island, the crew released the payload and got the hell out of there as fast as they could.
• 8:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: To give them more time, the enormous explosive had been fitted with a parachute to slow its descent.
• 8:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even so, when it detonated, the blast was so powerful that its shockwave slammed into the plane, sending it plummeting over three thousand feet.
• 8:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: The explosion annihilated everything within twenty-two miles and created a massive mushroom cloud over thirty-seven miles high.
• 8:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: The bomber's crew still hurtling away as fast as they could.
• 8:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Watched as the beautiful terrifying plume pierced the sky where they'd been mere moments before.
• 8:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: In reality, the test was nothing more than Soviet premiere, Nikita Krushchov, flexing his military muscle to show the US who was boss.
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the bomb itself, while undoubtedly impressive, was impractical and wasn't as effective as dropping several smaller bombs, so no attempt by either side was ever made to make one bigger.
• 9:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even today, the Zarbomba remains the biggest nuclear weapon ever created and used, though I came pretty close to topping it after last night's curry.
• 9:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Despite no single bomb ever matching the Tsar Bombas power between nineteen forty five and nineteen eighty a combined total of five hundred ten megatons of explosives were detonated around the world in nuclear tests.
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's one hundred and seventy times more blast power than was used in the whole of world war two.
• 9:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: And though easily the two biggest culprits it wasn't just the US and Soviet Union that were responsible for the barrage of blasts.
• 10:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: By the late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late
• 10:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, we can't be sure just how much radioactive material has been flung up into the atmosphere from the decades of testing, but we know it's a lot, like a lot, a lot, and what goes up must come down.
• 10:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Throughout the Cold War, one of the Soviets' favorite nuclear test sites was a patch of land in semi-Palatinsk, Kazakhstan, called the Polygon.
• 10:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even today, this area is one of the most radioactive places in the whole world.
• 10:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's been hit with about four hundred fifty nuclear explosions, and with every single one masses of radioactive dust and dirt were thrown into the air and carried across to the neighboring communities as toxic fallout.
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: A test in nineteen fifty six resulted in over six hundred residents of the city of Ustkomeno Gorsk being rushed to the hospital with radiation sickness and they were two hundred fifty miles away.
• 11:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now trust me, you don't want to get radiation sickness.
• 11:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're ever subjected to a strong dose of radiation, the symptoms can be severe and quick to set in.
• 11:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: The invisible rays penetrate your body so they don't just damage your skin, but also your insides.
• 11:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: The cells that make your hair die off causing you to lose it, your disease-fighting white blood cells die too, crippling your immune system.
• 11:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even your very DNA is attacked causing it to break and mutate, you'll feel sick, weak, and disoriented.
• 11:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even if you survive the initial dose of radiation, years later you're more likely to develop life-threatening illnesses like leukemia or cancer.
• 12:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's exactly what happened with many of the residents of Ustkomenagorsk.
• 12:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the tests didn't just affect one generation of people.
• 12:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because DNA mutations are often passed on, pregnant women at the time were more likely to give birth to children with learning difficulties or physical impairments.
• 12:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Overall, the tests in semi-Palatinska loan are estimated to have affected over three hundred fifty thousand people across three generations.
• 12:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Jeez!
• 12:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what actually is it that makes these monstrous weapons so preposterously powerful?
• 12:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: How did we go from conventional bombs to colossal weapons of mass destruction in the space of just a few years?
• 12:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: to find out we need to return to our German scientist Otto Hahn back in nineteen thirty eight.
• 12:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: You see he didn't just discover nuclear energy, he discovered something called nuclear fission, and it's the entire reason that we're now capable of our own Armageddon.
• 13:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so here's the stitch, everything in the universe is made of atoms.
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: You, me, the chair you're sat on, even your grandma's false teeth.
• 13:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're so small you can't even see them with a microscope, but they're everywhere.
• 13:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And inside, every atom is a nucleus containing a load of protons which are positively charged and neutrons which have no charge.
• 13:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: These are bound together tightly to the nucleus which takes a great deal of energy to keep together because naturally, things that have the same charge repel one another, think about magnets.
• 13:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you try and push two magnets together, positive to positive, there's resistance.
• 13:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you then let go of those magnets they'd spring backwards, releasing kinetic energy as they did so.
• 13:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's the same principle here the protons are held together by a powerful force, but if that force is broken, all the energy being contained by it is released.
• 14:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: This process is called nuclear fission, and it's the principle behind both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombs.
• 14:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: To instigate fission, a neutron is fired at the nucleus of an atom.
• 14:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: When it hits the nucleus, it smashes it apart, forming two smaller nuclei, and releasing energy in the form of heat.
• 14:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: At the same time, some neutrons are flung from the nuclei entirely, and go on to hit other atoms, splitting their nuclei, and creating a chain reaction.
• 14:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: in this way a massive amount of heat energy is produced that increases exponentially in just a fraction of a second.
• 14:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: and it's all reliant on reactions in the nucleus.
• 14:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nucleus relates to nuclear.
• 14:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Get it?
• 14:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's the basic process that powers all nuclear weapons, and most nuclear power plants use it to generate electricity, too.
• 14:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, just to throw a spanner in the works, there is another way of creating nuclear energy called nuclear fusion.
• 15:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is much more powerful than fission, and is used to power hydrogen bombs.
• 15:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here, instead of splitting atoms apart, they're fused together.
• 15:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Fusion only works with small atoms, like hydrogen, the nucleus of which contains just one proton.
• 15:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Naturally, two hydrogen atoms repell one another, because they're both positively charged.
• 15:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if the force repelling them is overcome, they're impelled to fuse with one another, creating a bigger atom and releasing a huge amount of energy in the process.
• 15:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: So how do you overcome the powerful force repelling the atoms and fuse them together?
• 15:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, you need to compress them into a smallest space as you can, so they're more likely to collide and blast them with an absolute butt ton of heat.
• 15:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: This way, they're not only closer to one another, but the heat makes them move faster.
• 15:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when I say a butt ton of heat, I mean at least one hundred eighty million degrees Fahrenheit.
• 15:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's spicy.
• 16:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: For comparison, that's almost seven times hotter than the sun, which also runs off nuclear fusion.
• 16:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because of the immense gravitational pressure at the Sun's core, about two hundred billion times greater than the atmospheric pressure here on Earth, atoms are crushed so close together that it doesn't need to be so hot for fusion to occur.
• 16:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: On Earth, however, we need to make up for the lack of pressure by ramping up the heat.
• 16:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you know what generates a lot of heat?
• 16:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 16:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: nuclear fission.
• 16:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Therefore hydrogen bombs, otherwise known as thermo nuclear weapons, explode using the heat from a fission reaction to kickstart a more powerful fusion reaction.
• 16:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: In other words, when a hydrogen bomb goes off, it burns seven times hotter than the sun.
• 16:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, if you're with me so far, give yourself a pat on the back.
• 16:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now we know the basic reaction powering the bombs, but how do the bombs themselves actually work?
• 16:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's start with the fuel inside them, which is either Uranium II III V or plutonium II III IX.
• 17:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: These are both radioactive metals, meaning their atoms have unstable nuclei, and unstable nucleus has too many neutrons or protons inside it, and will eject them to try and become stable.
• 17:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is called radioactive decay, and it produces energy in the form of radiation.
• 17:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Atoms with unstable nuclei are also easier to split with nuclear fission, hence why they're used in nuclear weapons.
• 17:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now little boys' design was very simple.
• 17:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: The bomb had two separate pieces of uranium, two, three, five inside it, the plug and the target.
• 17:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Upon detonation several thousand pounds of conventional explosive was set off inside the shell, which fired the plug down a barrel and into the target.
• 17:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: The two pieces of uranium smashed together, compressing the atoms close enough to instigate a fission reaction, which grew in power exponentially until it exploded out from the bombshell in a fearsome fireball.
• 18:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: All nuclear weapons produce this fireball, and it expands so fast that in a one megaton hydrogen bomb, which is far more powerful than little boy was, it can reach four hundred forty feet across, in less than a millisecond.
• 18:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: You see, little boy was actually pretty inefficient, which is why nobody ever made any bigger, more powerful versions of the weapon.
• 18:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Batman, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, had a very different design.
• 18:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Instead of uranium-II-Thirty-Five, Batman was powered by plutonium-II-Thirty-Nine.
• 18:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, the plutonium-II-Thirty-Nine used had trace amounts of plutonium-II-IV unit.
• 18:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is a different kind of plutonium called an isotope.
• 18:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Plutonium, two, forty has a higher fission rate than plutonium, two, thirty, nine, which means if the same gun type design as little boy was used, it would have begun fission before the two masses of plutonium had been brought together.
• 19:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: This would have made it so inefficient it wouldn't have been worth using, so another design was thought up.
• 19:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: For Fatman, one plutonium sphere was held in the center of the bomb.
• 19:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Around this, a layer of uranium was placed.
• 19:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: This layer of uranium held the plutonium in place and helped reflect neutrons back into the core, improving the efficiency of the fission reaction.
• 19:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Blocks of conventional explosives were then precisely placed around this to produce a symmetrical implosion when activated, which would compress the plutonium sphere.
• 19:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Once compressed, a device inside the plutonium was crushed and injected neutrons into the radioactive metal, kickstarting the fission reaction and setting off the nuke.
• 19:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: But there's one more thing that needed to be considered for both bombs, how the detonation would be triggered in the first place.
• 19:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Impact with the ground would have done the trick, but the ground would also have absorbed a lot of the explosion and limited its radius.
• 20:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Instead, for maximum destructive potential, the bombs had to be detonated in the air.
• 20:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: To do this, both were equipped with specialized circuitry that could detect their height from the ground and detonate at just the right moment.
• 20:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: as well as affecting more area and aerial explosions sends out a shockwave that smashes into the ground, rebounds, and then combines with the initial blast to form an even bigger shockwave.
• 20:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the crews of the planes dropping the bombs really had to skidaddle fast.
• 20:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, in the modern world, we don't have to drop these deadly destroyers from planes anymore.
• 20:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: We can fire them straight into the air on automated missiles.
• 20:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ballistic missiles are about twenty times faster than traditional bombers, and can carry hydrogen-powered nuclear warheads far deadlier than the atom bombs dropped on Japan.
• 20:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Luckily, we've also got some pretty nifty anti-missile defense systems.
• 21:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: So which countries have nukes today?
• 21:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Any guesses who has the most?
• 21:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because of how secretive the world's governments are about their nuclear stockpiles, we can't be one hundred percent sure on the exact figures.
• 21:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: But as of twenty twenty one estimates, Russia has the most nukes with a world ending six thousand two hundred fifty five.
• 21:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hot on their heels in second place, we have the USA with a considerable five thousand five hundred fifty.
• 21:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: The other seven nuclear capable nations have a lot less, with North Korea owning the least, somewhere between forty and fifty.
• 21:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And though forty nukes doesn't sound like much compared to over six thousand, that's still enough firepower to completely wipe New York City off the map, and then some.
• 22:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Which makes me wonder, what would it be like if the unthinkable happened and the world really did descend into full-blown nuclear warfare?
• 22:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: As a global community, we're currently sitting on over thirteen thousand nuclear warheads.
• 22:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, this number is a little misleading due to disarmament efforts only three thousand of four thousand are actually active and the rest are decommissioned.
• 22:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is relatively low compared with the nineteen eighty six when the total number of active warheads hit a whopping world high of seventy thousand three hundred.
• 22:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Of course four thousand nuclear missiles could still do a pretty hefty amount of damage.
• 22:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: If even a tenth of them found their target, the loss of human life would be catastrophic.
• 22:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And not just from the explosions and radiation from huge firestorms too.
• 22:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, as if nuclear weapons weren't bad enough.
• 22:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: At Hiroshima, all the individual fires caused by the explosion amalgamated into one terrible tempest of flames.
• 23:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hot air rose and created burning hurricane strength winds that turned inward towards the fire and fan did.
• 23:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: This made it rage even harder, destroying everything in its path for almost four and a half square miles before eventually dying out.
• 23:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: One apocalyptic theory called nuclear winter claims that if enough bombs went off, thousands of these furious firestorms would burn their way across the globe, kicking up hundreds of millions of tons of smoke and ash as they did so.
• 23:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: This would form a thick belt of particles encircling the northern hemisphere, plunging our world into darkness.
• 23:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Black of sunlight would cause dramatic falls and temperatures and destroy much of Earth's vegetation and animal life.
• 23:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: With crops failing animals dying in cities and infrastructure destroyed, surviving humans would be left in a cold or radiated wasteland.
• 23:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: and the dark clouds could remain for a whole decade.
• 24:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: In other words, it wouldn't be very fun.
• 24:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hold on though, before you go and spend your life savings on a fallout shelter in a thousand tens of beans, you should know that we're probably not heading into Armageddon anytime soon.
• 24:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Man kind is possessed the power to destroy itself since the end of World War II.
• 24:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Despite this, no nuclear weapon has ever been used outside of a test since nineteen forty five.
• 24:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why?
• 24:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, nuclear warfare doesn't benefit anyone.
• 24:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: If one country launches a nuclear attack on another, the defending country is likely to launch a counter nuclear attack in response, and both parties would be sent to their doom.
• 24:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: We call this mutually assured destruction, and it's not ideal.
• 24:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: This worked pretty well during the Cold War, but today it's a bit more complex.
• 24:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: With countries around the world developing blisteringly fast hypersonic missiles, conventional defense systems just won't cut it anymore.
• 24:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not only do hypersonic missiles fly faster than a mile a second, they're also more maneuverable than their ballistic counterparts, making them supremely tough to defend against.
• 25:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even so mutually assured destruction still applies, the US, Russia and China are all developing the technology alongside a number of other countries.
• 25:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because of this, ironically, an attack is far less likely than if just one country had the power.
• 25:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I know that's not the most comforting thing to hear, but hey, weapons of mass destruction aren't very comforting.
• 25:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: I guess it's why you never see any cuddly nuked toys and kids stores.
• 25:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, the modern world is much more focused on using nuclear energy for constructive uses rather than destructive.
• 25:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, about ten percent of the whole world's electricity is now nuclear.
• 25:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's a good thing.
• 25:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't pollute the atmosphere, and it's about ten million times more efficient than burning fossil fuels.
• 25:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nuclear research has also helped doctors in the fight against cancer, allowing them to predict the amount of radiation needed to kill tumors without damaging healthy cells.
• 26:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: We even use radiation to kill harmful bacteria on our food.
• 26:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, it's not all doom and gloom, and thanks to nuclear technology, we're actually taking some steps towards creating a better world.
• 26:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's just hope we don't blow that world into smithereens before we get there, right?
• 26:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, what do you think of all this?
• 26:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Would we be better off if we'd never discovered nuclear energy?
• 26:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or has the threat of nuclear weaponry actually prevented another global scale conflict?
• 26:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Come back next episode for another Knowledge Bomb.
• 26:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is a crappy paste.