Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan's trick Land. I'm an executive producer
Speaker 1: and how Stuff Works in love all things to though
Speaker 1: maybe not this next topic. Maybe I should say I
Speaker 1: love most things tech. It's time for another classic episode,
Speaker 1: and this particular topic is a pretty tough one. It's
Speaker 1: about how nuclear weapons work. And it's not a topic
Speaker 1: that I necessarily wanted to jump on and cover, but
Speaker 1: I feel it's an important one. Nuclear weapons are frequently
Speaker 1: part of a discussion about global events and global politics,
Speaker 1: and so I thought it would be useful to revisit
Speaker 1: this classic episode where we talk about exactly how these
Speaker 1: weapons work. So enjoy Today. We wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: a subject that is, uh it's pretty terrifying. We're talking
Speaker 1: about nuclear weapons. Yes, yes, nuclear, not nuclear. He was.
Speaker 1: I was teasing him about this before and he said
Speaker 1: that I better not. I'm not gonna say nuclear. I
Speaker 1: mean other than just them. Um. Well, one of the
Speaker 1: reasons I wanted to uh to talk about this today
Speaker 1: is because it's been in the news a lot lately. Um.
Speaker 1: Of course, uh iran um is rumored or depending on
Speaker 1: whom you ask, more than rumored to be working on
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons program and um, you know that that's been
Speaker 1: a busy topic. I was about to say, a hot topic.
Speaker 1: Let's not go there um lately, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: you know, why don't we We've never really talked about, um,
Speaker 1: the technology that makes nuclear weapons possible. Um. And while
Speaker 1: I'm not particularly fond of things that cause death and destruction, uh,
Speaker 1: the the actual bombs themselves, how they make them work
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting, and it's it's important stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of there are a lot
Speaker 1: of discussions about nuclear arms races. You know, we had
Speaker 1: a famous nuclear arms race between the Soviet Union and
Speaker 1: the United States during the Cold War, which uh started
Speaker 1: to look like things were going to to improve, where
Speaker 1: you know, both nations were starting to dismantle a lot
Speaker 1: of their nuclear weapon programs. But then you've got other
Speaker 1: countries like China and India and Pakistan and other countries
Speaker 1: that are that have either have a nuclear weapons program
Speaker 1: or developing. North Korea is another good example. They either
Speaker 1: have a and a fully fledged out nuclear weapons program
Speaker 1: or they're working on it. And uh, it adds a
Speaker 1: lot of concern because these weapons potentially pack an enormous
Speaker 1: punch and it's the kind of weapon that you know,
Speaker 1: most weapons, you use them and then the uh, that
Speaker 1: immediate moment, the aftermath, that's that's all you're dealing with.
Speaker 1: And the aftermath is generally, you know, not not uh,
Speaker 1: something that is perpetual, right, I mean, I mean, you
Speaker 1: might have to do some massive clean up or whatever,
Speaker 1: but that's it. Nuclear weapons are different, and that the
Speaker 1: aftermath can be as destructive or maybe not as destructive,
Speaker 1: but but destructive on their own beyond the initial blast.
Speaker 1: And so plus plus it's possible that the uh, the
Speaker 1: effects of the nuclear blast can carry across the terrain
Speaker 1: to places that the US, as we'll find out in
Speaker 1: in our discussion, um that people may not necessarily have
Speaker 1: been planning on being affected. Yeah you might. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not just the immediate area. It's not a precision
Speaker 1: weapon and that Yeah, there's a precision blast area that
Speaker 1: you're that you can be pretty sure is going to
Speaker 1: be vaporized when you hit it, but then there's a
Speaker 1: large area around that. Depending upon the climate and you know,
Speaker 1: the specific weather conditions at that time, it could affect
Speaker 1: neighboring countries, you know, essentially innocent bystandards to whatever. So
Speaker 1: let's get into this. Let's talk first about atoms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you think about it that one of the
Speaker 1: fascinating things about this is that such a devastating reaction
Speaker 1: can be caused by something as tiny as an atom. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: And just so that we all have our little a
Speaker 1: little refresher course, even though I'm sure no one listening
Speaker 1: needs it. Your basic atom has a nucleus that is
Speaker 1: orbited by electrons. Now your electrons are you're negatively charged particles. Yes,
Speaker 1: your nucleus typically contains at least one proton. Actually it
Speaker 1: has to otherwise it's not an atom. So the proton
Speaker 1: is a positively charged particle, and the protons positive charge
Speaker 1: in the electrons negative charge are attracted to one another.
Speaker 1: It's pretty powerful. Now, there can also be in that
Speaker 1: nucleus a a particle that carries no charge at all,
Speaker 1: a neutron which has no charge, and neutrons kind of
Speaker 1: act like glue for protons, because you know, you've got
Speaker 1: this this nucleus that could have more than one proton. Well,
Speaker 1: the problem is that as similar charges repel one another.
Speaker 1: So if you have to possibly charged particles and try
Speaker 1: and put them close to each other, they're going to
Speaker 1: start repelling each other. Well, neutrons kind of act like
Speaker 1: a glue that that allows these protons to group together
Speaker 1: to form this nucleus. So, uh, if you've I'm getting
Speaker 1: out of here. No, no, don't No, it's all right.
Speaker 1: That's all right. Now you can change the number of
Speaker 1: neutrons that are within an atom. And if you do that, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, atoms have typically they have a number of
Speaker 1: neutrons that you will naturally find within the atoms of
Speaker 1: that element. Uh. If you find something that's outside of
Speaker 1: that that either is gut either has more fewer neutrons,
Speaker 1: it's an isotope. So isotopes of atoms are atoms that
Speaker 1: contain a different number of neutrons than you would typically
Speaker 1: find them in nature. Plus, isotopes are a baseball team
Speaker 1: in springfield. That's also true. Now this is not to
Speaker 1: be confused with ions. And ion is an atom that
Speaker 1: has either gained or lost in electron, and so it
Speaker 1: either has a positive charge or a negative charge because
Speaker 1: of that. So of course if it's gained an electron,
Speaker 1: then overall the atom has a negative charge if it's
Speaker 1: lost in electron and overall the atom has a positive charge.
Speaker 1: So that's the difference between ions and isotopes. Now isotopes
Speaker 1: really that's what ends up being important in these nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1: It's it's sort of a key feature. Um. Another thing
Speaker 1: that's that's important to note is that for the most part,
Speaker 1: atoms are pretty stable. Yes, I mean, once you get
Speaker 1: them in their natural state, they're unlikely to change all
Speaker 1: that much. They don't uh, randomly shed electrons or the
Speaker 1: things unless some force acts on them. They just sort
Speaker 1: of go along there about their business and stick to themselves, right,
Speaker 1: because if they were if they were unstable, they would
Speaker 1: very they would not necessarily very quickly. But if they
Speaker 1: were unstable, they would change to become more stable over time.
Speaker 1: That's what we call decay. So if you have an
Speaker 1: atom that is unstable, it will eventually change to a
Speaker 1: more stable form. And in the process of that, it's
Speaker 1: going to give up some energy, uh, and it can
Speaker 1: give up energy and in multiple ways. There's actually three
Speaker 1: main types of radioactive decay, that's right. There's alpha decay,
Speaker 1: which is where you've got your nucleus and it it's
Speaker 1: going to kick out two protons and two neutrons bound together,
Speaker 1: which is also called an alpha particle. Then you've got
Speaker 1: beta decay. And this is where a neutron actually changes
Speaker 1: becomes a proton. Uh. Then the neutron or the proton,
Speaker 1: and the an electron and an anti anti neutrino are
Speaker 1: all ejected together. That's the beta particle, or actually the
Speaker 1: ejected electron is the beta particles specifically UM. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: good all anti newtrinos I tell you they they go
Speaker 1: opposite the as the speed of light. So we talked
Speaker 1: about the whole new trinos whether or not they were
Speaker 1: going faster than the speed of light with a large
Speaker 1: hadron collider. Right now, it looks like they didn't. Looks
Speaker 1: like that was all due to uh, some some issues
Speaker 1: with the measuring technology looking at the scoreboard today, right,
Speaker 1: which could change by the time this podcast gets out.
Speaker 1: So the third type is spontaneous fission. Now, vision is
Speaker 1: where you have a nucleus split into two pieces. It's
Speaker 1: um the opposite of fusion. Fusion is where two nucleuses
Speaker 1: come together and join. And both vision and fusion you
Speaker 1: have a release of energy. Now for radioactive decay, we're
Speaker 1: specifically talking about fission, not fusion. So in this the
Speaker 1: nucleus splits and it might eject neutrons which can become
Speaker 1: neutron raise, and it also can emit electromagnetic energy called
Speaker 1: gamma raise, which do not talk about fantastic four. You're
Speaker 1: looking at me like I was talking about some or
Speaker 1: the Hulk. I was waiting for you to make that.
Speaker 1: Actually I think it was cosmic rays with the fantastic
Speaker 1: gamma radiation for the incredible Hulk. I don't want to
Speaker 1: get my science wrong. You're absolutely scientific. My air quotes
Speaker 1: science wrong. So yeah, gamma raise. It's interesting that they
Speaker 1: are the only type of nuclear radiation that comes from
Speaker 1: energy rather than particles. Yes, all right, I bet you
Speaker 1: learned that on how stuff Works dot com. Yes, there's
Speaker 1: a really good article about that. We we have. We
Speaker 1: have a couple of articles on how stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: Com that are going to be really useful as we
Speaker 1: talk about this, include how nuclear weapons work, how nuclear
Speaker 1: how nuclear radiation works, and also how there's an article
Speaker 1: about the Manhattan Project. We'll talk about the Manhattan Project
Speaker 1: in a little bit. So we've now got these three
Speaker 1: different forms of radioactive decay, and we know about this
Speaker 1: new the spontaneous fission. Well, what's interesting is that the
Speaker 1: fission doesn't necessarily have to be spontaneous. If you find
Speaker 1: the right kind of unstable atom and you are able
Speaker 1: to bombard it with neutrons, then sometimes those atoms will
Speaker 1: accept a neutron and in the process they will become
Speaker 1: so unstable as that the nucleus itself will split apart,
Speaker 1: and in that process the nucleus will release energy. It
Speaker 1: also may release other neutrons, which means that if you
Speaker 1: get a bunch of these unstable items together and you
Speaker 1: shoot a neutron at them, and then that first that
Speaker 1: first nucleus splits apart and more neutrons split off of it,
Speaker 1: it can cause more of these unstable atoms to do
Speaker 1: the same thing, and that's where you have a chain reaction.
Speaker 1: I can't remember who it was that had that the
Speaker 1: TV show where they had a clear plastic box and
Speaker 1: on the bottom of the box they had uh mouse traps,
Speaker 1: and each mouse traps, each mouse trap had two ping
Speaker 1: pong balls on and those represented um the stable. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's probably been done by five thousand people. Anyway. You
Speaker 1: can find clips of the same sort of thing on
Speaker 1: YouTube and then by lots of different people, and I
Speaker 1: enjoy watching it because it's really an excellent demonstration. So
Speaker 1: each of these these mouse trap atoms with its two
Speaker 1: ping pong balls represents these unstable atoms, and it's so
Speaker 1: and the ping pong balls represent the ejected neutrons exactly exactly,
Speaker 1: and so uh, somebody else will drop a ping pong
Speaker 1: ball inside a small hole in the box representing the
Speaker 1: neutron in this case that is bombarding these these atoms.
Speaker 1: And as soon as it hits one mouse trap and
Speaker 1: sets it off, the pong balls from that one fly
Speaker 1: in other directions, thereby setting off the other mouse traps.
Speaker 1: And it all happens in a very very short period
Speaker 1: of time. It takes almost no time at all for
Speaker 1: this thing for all the the mouse traps to release
Speaker 1: their part of ping pong balls. Yeah. Now, and in
Speaker 1: the case of a nuclear weapon, these reactions are happening
Speaker 1: in billions of a second. So now let's get to
Speaker 1: the actual elements that are used in nuclear weaponry. So
Speaker 1: one of them is an isotope of uranium, uranium two
Speaker 1: thirty five. That's a very complex atom. Yeah, it's got
Speaker 1: ninety two protons right, So, but it's got a hundreds
Speaker 1: forty three neutrons. And the thing about this is that
Speaker 1: it will accept a neutron. If if you bombard uranium
Speaker 1: two thirty five, it very easily will accept that neutron.
Speaker 1: Take that neutron, yeah, and then it it makes the
Speaker 1: uranium unstable, and then it will split apart like I
Speaker 1: just said in and you'll get that energy and those
Speaker 1: other neutrons released. So that the problem the problem with this,
Speaker 1: many problems with this. One of the issues that the
Speaker 1: people who first started working on nuclear weapons technology encountered
Speaker 1: was that, first of all, they weren't sure which elements
Speaker 1: were going to react this way because not all of
Speaker 1: them do, so finding the right elements was tricky. The
Speaker 1: other part is that uranium two thirty five is relatively
Speaker 1: rare compared to other isotopes of uranium. Yeah, so when
Speaker 1: you find naturally occurring uranium, the uranium two thirty five
Speaker 1: in that deposit is going to be relatively sparse, and
Speaker 1: for a nuclear weapon to work, you need about uranium
Speaker 1: two thirty five so that you have the right amount
Speaker 1: of material to perpetuate this chain reaction. Otherwise, your your
Speaker 1: atoms that are unstable, maybe too far apart from each
Speaker 1: other for or that chine reaction to really take off.
Speaker 1: Note to all the nuclear physicists who are righting, who
Speaker 1: have paused to podcast and rode in to tell us
Speaker 1: that there are other types of fuel that can be
Speaker 1: used for nuclear weapons. Yes, we know that. However we're
Speaker 1: using we're starting here, starting with uranium because that's where
Speaker 1: that's where, that's where the scientists started. Yes, plutonium also used,
Speaker 1: as well as their hydrogen bombs that we'll talk about
Speaker 1: a little bit. But even hydrogen bombs use uranium and
Speaker 1: plutonium um. It's just that they're they're using a different mechanism.
Speaker 1: They're using confusion as opposed to vision. So uranium two
Speaker 1: thirty five, you have to actually refine your your right,
Speaker 1: your uranium. Wow, I can't talk today, but yes, you
Speaker 1: must take uranium your uranium, yeah, toy boat anyway, you
Speaker 1: have to take this uranium there we got that works
Speaker 1: and refine it so that you have a higher percentage
Speaker 1: of uranium two thirty five, which is what you hear
Speaker 1: about when you when you hear about these these nations
Speaker 1: like Iran with their nuclear program, you hear about are
Speaker 1: they making uranium for power facilities or are they trying
Speaker 1: to make weaponized uranium. This is talking about the enrichment process. Yes,
Speaker 1: so if you are enriching, if you're if you're creating
Speaker 1: uranium so that you've got a section of ranim that
Speaker 1: is uranium that's indicative of a weapon, it's not. You
Speaker 1: don't need that kind of concentration for a nuclear power facility.
Speaker 1: So that's one of those things that that inspectors try
Speaker 1: to determine when they go and look at a nuclear
Speaker 1: power facility to make sure that the uranium being produced
Speaker 1: is not weapons grade uranium. So anyway, that's the basis,
Speaker 1: that's the basic science behind the fission part of nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1: Will get into fusion in a second. So how did
Speaker 1: this all come about? Well, first we have to look
Speaker 1: at a fellow named Einstein. Now, Einstein came up with
Speaker 1: that famous equation E equals MC squared the theory of relativity,
Speaker 1: which states that energy is equal to mass times the
Speaker 1: speed of light squared the constant of the speed of
Speaker 1: light through a vacuum. As it turns out, so that
Speaker 1: means that you take the you take a unit of mass,
Speaker 1: you multiply it by the square of the speed of
Speaker 1: light speed light squared rather and and then that's how
Speaker 1: much energy you get from that mass. So this tells
Speaker 1: us that a tiny little bit of mass could equate
Speaker 1: to an enormous amount of energy because you're multiplying that
Speaker 1: that unit of mass against a huge number. Well, that
Speaker 1: starts leading people to think, well, this is true, then
Speaker 1: there should be some way to tap into the stuff
Speaker 1: that's around us and get at huge amounts of energy.
Speaker 1: And you had a lot of really really smart people
Speaker 1: working on this, and most of them were probably at
Speaker 1: least initially working on this is the way of finding
Speaker 1: a new energy source, not necessarily a weapon. However, World
Speaker 1: War Two really helped push the the the the research
Speaker 1: towards finding a way of using this in a military
Speaker 1: application as opposed to to just a power generation alternative.
Speaker 1: So then we go up to the nineteen thirties. You've
Speaker 1: got a fellow named Enrico firm me and he support
Speaker 1: on him in grade school. He's the one who discovered
Speaker 1: that if you were to shoot neutrons at atoms, you
Speaker 1: could sometimes form new elements, and they were including ones
Speaker 1: that just did not show up on the periodic table
Speaker 1: at all. So most of these are are atoms that
Speaker 1: are so unstable that you know, they almost immediately decay.
Speaker 1: But uh that he discovered that. And then a few
Speaker 1: years later a pair of German scientists Otto Han and
Speaker 1: Fritz straw Sman discovered that by bombarding uranium with neutrons
Speaker 1: that they could create cause the uranium atoms to split.
Speaker 1: So they're the ones who actually connected the concept of
Speaker 1: fission with shooting neutrons at an isotope and uh it
Speaker 1: actually created a radioactive barium isotope once they did that,
Speaker 1: and that's how they discovered, oh, you know, this is
Speaker 1: what happens if you do this, then you have a
Speaker 1: couple of other There are so many famous names that
Speaker 1: we could mention that worked on this, but Neil's Bore
Speaker 1: and John Wheeler started to theorize that if you were
Speaker 1: to create a fission reaction within enough of this material,
Speaker 1: you could cause a chain reaction, and if you were
Speaker 1: to contain this in some way, you could have a
Speaker 1: controlled nuclear reaction which would generate huge amounts of energy. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: a controlled nuclear reaction could allow you to have uh power,
Speaker 1: or a controlled nuclear reaction that then results in an
Speaker 1: un controlled explosion is a weapon, it's a bomb. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm sort of reminded of our our discussion of quantum computing,
Speaker 1: which also works with Adams UM. But the thing is
Speaker 1: that figuring out the predict predictability if you happen to
Speaker 1: listen to that podcast of where the particle will go
Speaker 1: and in what direction UM is not always possible. That's
Speaker 1: one of the things that makes quantum cryptography so useful.
Speaker 1: But yeah, in this case, UM, it's kind of scary
Speaker 1: because if you imagine that this this reaction is going
Speaker 1: to unleash a large amount of power, or maybe it won't.
Speaker 1: You know, that's that can be a little scary because
Speaker 1: you don't know for sure exactly what's gonna happen when
Speaker 1: you do this. Is which is why UM. You know,
Speaker 1: they started doing experiments like you know, Columbia University in
Speaker 1: UM up in New York. They starting to mess around
Speaker 1: with this to see if they can make it work.
Speaker 1: University of Chicago squash court. Yes, yes, now that's funny
Speaker 1: because of underground underneath the fame stag field there at
Speaker 1: the University of Chicago. UM they were Enrico Fermi finally
Speaker 1: got it to work in controlled situation. UM. So you know, again,
Speaker 1: what what if it weren't controlled that might have been
Speaker 1: a little scary, but uh, you know, he got it
Speaker 1: to to to do what they thought. And this this
Speaker 1: was important because um again this is they realized that
Speaker 1: this could be a seriously potent weapon that they could
Speaker 1: be building. So um they realized that if they could
Speaker 1: harness this and do this in a controlled way, you know,
Speaker 1: then they could turn it to their advantage. Um. Around
Speaker 1: the same time that work was being done on uranium
Speaker 1: uh and and nuclear fission, scientists over at the University
Speaker 1: of California at Berkeley back in one discovered a new element,
Speaker 1: element ninety four uh and they thought that this could
Speaker 1: also work as a potential fuel for nuclear chain reactions.
Speaker 1: And this element they named plutonium and named for the dog. Yes,
Speaker 1: it was named for the dog the it took it
Speaker 1: took his name for the Roman god. But yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a year later they had actually produced enough plutonium
Speaker 1: to finally do some experiments on it, because it was
Speaker 1: not something that was easily found, which I guess we
Speaker 1: should all be thankful for. Um. And they they figured
Speaker 1: out that plutonium also would undergo fission when bombarded by neutrons.
Speaker 1: You know, we should talk about the criticality of about
Speaker 1: the of the the atoms themselves, because the thing is
Speaker 1: um say, say you have your your creative mousetratched and
Speaker 1: ping pong balls. You have to make sure that nothing
Speaker 1: is going to set it off before you mean to
Speaker 1: set it off. Yeah, you don't want to have something
Speaker 1: jostle that that's some and have it all go off prematurely.
Speaker 1: And of course with a nuclear bomb, this is truly
Speaker 1: important because of the the just the enormous amount of
Speaker 1: damage that it could it could, it could cause. We
Speaker 1: have more to say in this classic episode of tech stuff,
Speaker 1: but before we get into that, let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor. There's a couple different concepts here.
Speaker 1: There's a concept called critical mass, which is the minimum
Speaker 1: amount of mass necessary for you to have a sustain
Speaker 1: nuclear fission reaction. And then there's the subcritical mass, which
Speaker 1: is where you've got lower than that amount, And ideally
Speaker 1: what you want is to have lower than that amount
Speaker 1: up until the point where you actually want to detonate
Speaker 1: the bomb. Yes, because that's going to keep it as
Speaker 1: safe as you can you can get it. So there
Speaker 1: were a lot of challenges in trying to find a
Speaker 1: way to create a bomb where you had the material
Speaker 1: set up as subcritical until the moment of detonation where
Speaker 1: it would convert to a critical mass so that that
Speaker 1: nuclear reaction would remain sustained within it. Otherwise your bomb
Speaker 1: would still be dangerous. So it's still emit radiation. It
Speaker 1: was still a middle lot of energy. It just wouldn't
Speaker 1: cause as much damage as it was designed to do.
Speaker 1: Right now, now, critical mass is, as Jonathan said, the
Speaker 1: minimum amount needed to to achieve the fish and reaction. Now. Uh,
Speaker 1: ideally for a for a bomb condition, if you're you're
Speaker 1: trying to do this, um, you would want the fuel
Speaker 1: to be in a supercritical mass, which basically means there's
Speaker 1: more than enough necessary to achieve the fish and reaction.
Speaker 1: Um uh you know, because in this case it just
Speaker 1: applies and plenty. You want to make sure that it's
Speaker 1: going to happen. You don't wanna, you don't want to
Speaker 1: have it where through some weird set of circumstances, just
Speaker 1: some improbable but possible outcome that the bomb that as
Speaker 1: a smaller percentage of the reactions takes place than you
Speaker 1: had anticipated, because that means that the effect is going
Speaker 1: to be smaller than you had anticipated. And if you're
Speaker 1: gonna be building something as nasty and dangerous as a
Speaker 1: nuclear weapon, you kind of want it to be effective. Yes, Yeah.
Speaker 1: The point is again to to operate it when it's
Speaker 1: going to achieve the desired effect and not before, and
Speaker 1: which is really I mean, this is where it gets
Speaker 1: hard to talk about this, because the desired effect is
Speaker 1: so mind numbingly awful. I'm trying to speak of it
Speaker 1: in any scientific, clinical sense. Yeah, it's it's a little rough.
Speaker 1: So there there are two different ways to create a
Speaker 1: supercritical mass within a fission based bomb. Uh. And actually
Speaker 1: both of these ways were used in first two nuclear
Speaker 1: weapons ever actually used in battle. Um. One of the
Speaker 1: things that I think of is uh again in in
Speaker 1: a clinical sense, but it's it's still kind of amusing
Speaker 1: to me, is in reading about this. Um. The nuclear
Speaker 1: weapons that were detonated in Japan too, uh, or I
Speaker 1: should say over Japan to UM end the Second World
Speaker 1: War were really I mean, it seems like, well, they
Speaker 1: did what they were intended to do, but they were
Speaker 1: really more like lab experiments packed in a case and
Speaker 1: and and created. So I mean, now things are are
Speaker 1: pretty standardized. But the two those two weapons were very
Speaker 1: different and the way they did things and uh and
Speaker 1: really they the scientists weren't dent certain that they were
Speaker 1: going to do what they thought they were gonna do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and those two weapons were called going to do this,
Speaker 1: we're called Little Boy and fat Man. Yes, little Boy
Speaker 1: was the one that was dropped on Hiroshima on August six, nineteen,
Speaker 1: and Fat Man was dropped over Nagasaki on August nine, ninth.
Speaker 1: So these two use two different methods to initiate this
Speaker 1: supercritical mass and begin the nuclear fission process. A Little
Speaker 1: Boy used what was was called a bullet. It's uh, you,
Speaker 1: in order to start this whole reaction, you have to
Speaker 1: have something that's going to create neutrons. And in this case,
Speaker 1: it actually was a bullet, although not you know, in
Speaker 1: the sense of a gun. The gun that fired it
Speaker 1: was not the kind of gun that we would think
Speaker 1: of necessarily, right, This was a So you take take
Speaker 1: a ball of uranium two thirty five, all right, and
Speaker 1: then you take a small amount of that two out
Speaker 1: as a bullet. It's a projectile. It's placed at one
Speaker 1: end of a long tube. It's got explosives, behind it.
Speaker 1: So when the explosives go off, it propels the bullet
Speaker 1: down the tube until it impacts the sphere of your
Speaker 1: aim two five at the other end. And uh so
Speaker 1: the here's how it. Here's what happens. The explosives fire,
Speaker 1: the bullet goes down the barrel, the bullet hits the sphere,
Speaker 1: and it hits a neutron generator. Like I said, you
Speaker 1: have to have neutrons to start this fission process. So
Speaker 1: just dropping uranium two thirty five, that's not that's not
Speaker 1: going to cause a huge explosion. But by creating these
Speaker 1: neutrons with this neutron generator, uh, it ends up starting
Speaker 1: off that that series of reactions within the bomb. So
Speaker 1: once those neutrons are generating, starts saying the uranium two
Speaker 1: thirty five, the fission reaction begins. The individual atoms of
Speaker 1: uranium two starts to split, and they too start to
Speaker 1: eject neutrons, which causes more uranium two thirty five to split,
Speaker 1: and that reaction continues and the energy builds up until
Speaker 1: the bomb explodes. So that was the little Boy version,
Speaker 1: by the way, in case you're wondering how little Little
Speaker 1: Boy was, uh it was. It well it was able
Speaker 1: to drop a bomb that was equivalent to fourteen point
Speaker 1: five kilo tons of TNT. Oh wait no, umah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: so little is a as a relative term. And then
Speaker 1: we have fat Man. Now fat Man used an implosion
Speaker 1: triggered bomb. Yes, this is this is different from the
Speaker 1: bullet method. And what happens here is you've got a
Speaker 1: sphere of the nuclear fuel. So in this case again
Speaker 1: uranium to thirty five and then you have plutonium to
Speaker 1: thirty nine core. Inside that and and and surrounding the
Speaker 1: two nine core are some explosives. So what happens is
Speaker 1: in this bomb, the the sequence of events is the
Speaker 1: explosives around the plutonium uh fires and that creates a
Speaker 1: shock wave. The shock wave ends up compressing that plutonium
Speaker 1: to thirty nine, and that compression is what triggers the
Speaker 1: fish and reaction within the plutonium. That reaction becomes a
Speaker 1: chain reaction again and the energy is build up and
Speaker 1: then the bomb explodes. So the whole way that this
Speaker 1: works is that it it creates and then directs that
Speaker 1: shock way from the uninitial explosion to generate that first
Speaker 1: fission reaction that becomes the chain reaction. So yeah, a
Speaker 1: little different from the bullet method. Uh, and it was
Speaker 1: it was interesting, you know, both of these methods were
Speaker 1: being worked on at the same time during the Manhattan Project.
Speaker 1: And uh, actually the implosion triggered bomb. As I understand,
Speaker 1: it was the very first method that was tested. Who's
Speaker 1: the trinity bomb that was tested, um back in Los Alamos,
Speaker 1: which was not a prime real estate if back in
Speaker 1: that time because of all the nuclear testing they did.
Speaker 1: In fact, back when they did that first nuclear bomb test,
Speaker 1: no one really knew what the result was going to be, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's just no way of knowing. And uh,
Speaker 1: it turned out that several of the scientists who are
Speaker 1: observing the nuclear bomb test back in Los Alamos temporarily
Speaker 1: lost their vision because the the explosion was so bright
Speaker 1: that it damaged their eyes. But they were able to
Speaker 1: recover their vision after a while. But people didn't know
Speaker 1: how powerful this was going to be, how intense the
Speaker 1: energy was going to be, and so they were viewing
Speaker 1: it with their naked eye, and that turned out to
Speaker 1: be a mistake, right. And of course, uh, an explosion
Speaker 1: of that magnitude also spreads radioactive material over a very large,
Speaker 1: uh physical space, so uh, you know, we were talking
Speaker 1: about that a few minutes ago. When there is a
Speaker 1: nuclear explosion like this, if there is UM, you know,
Speaker 1: it spreads nuclear material out over an area. Basically you
Speaker 1: could think of it in roughly if you're taking weather
Speaker 1: out of the picture. UM, you know, you would have
Speaker 1: a huge circular ish area over which this material is spread. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, if the wind is blowing um, you know,
Speaker 1: or you know, the temperature is right, the the material
Speaker 1: can drift along with the wind. It can uh, you know,
Speaker 1: get into water supplies, it can you know, cover it
Speaker 1: can move quite a bit UM. And you know, the
Speaker 1: the effects the physical effects of course, UM. You know,
Speaker 1: there's there can be a lot more than just h
Speaker 1: vision problems. I mean there's there's there's cancer has been
Speaker 1: attributed to it. UM. There have band cancers attributed to
Speaker 1: it UM and many many other physical conditions UM related
Speaker 1: to that. So it's not just the people who are atomized,
Speaker 1: if you will, by the bomb right as they are.
Speaker 1: They happen to being close enough proximity that it can
Speaker 1: have long lasting effects on on many many other people
Speaker 1: and can make the area radioactive for many many years
Speaker 1: to come. These these elements that are experiencing radioactive decay.
Speaker 1: They can be in this state for hundreds of years,
Speaker 1: depending on the materials. The Yeah, the essential if you
Speaker 1: are if you're at ground zero of a nuclear explosion,
Speaker 1: which is which is essentially right at the center of
Speaker 1: the explosion, the the the location of the detonation. Essentially, um.
Speaker 1: The the thing that would kill you be the heat.
Speaker 1: The heat would be so intense that you would you
Speaker 1: would be essentially vaporized. Um. But following the heat is
Speaker 1: the pressure that's created from the shock wave of the explosion.
Speaker 1: And so let's say that you're far enough out where
Speaker 1: you're not going to be vaporized by that heat, that
Speaker 1: pressure could be enough to knock over the building you're
Speaker 1: in totally. It could crush you. So you have that
Speaker 1: to look forward to. Then you've got, like like Chris
Speaker 1: was saying, the radiation and the radioactive fallout, So you
Speaker 1: can think of that's sort of a bull sye target, right,
Speaker 1: Like the very center of that target is where the
Speaker 1: heat is going to be the most intense. Just outside
Speaker 1: of that is the general area where the pressure from
Speaker 1: the shock wave is going to be intense enough to
Speaker 1: be deadly. Just outside of that is the radiation where
Speaker 1: the radiation could be strong enough where you're you could
Speaker 1: suffer severe radiation sickness, uh, just from the exposure from that.
Speaker 1: And then the radioactive fallout could affect the largest area, right,
Speaker 1: And like you were saying, the weather can end up
Speaker 1: carrying particles that have uh this radioactivity to them and
Speaker 1: contaminate other areas miles and miles away from the site
Speaker 1: of the bombing. It can affect living cells, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: preventing them from behaving normally. I mean, they can cause
Speaker 1: birth defects in in future generations. UM. So this is
Speaker 1: this is very very serious stuff, of course. Um. Now
Speaker 1: later after the wasn't one of the things that they
Speaker 1: realized after uh using these weapons was these these fission
Speaker 1: bombs work very well. Obviously they're very effective. But um
Speaker 1: they began thinking that, uh, perhaps fusion would be a
Speaker 1: more effective or create a more effective weapon. And that's
Speaker 1: the course they began following, right, And they in some
Speaker 1: cases they first started looking at fusion. Back in n
Speaker 1: there was a physicist by the name of Edward Teller,
Speaker 1: and he came up with an idea called boosting. And
Speaker 1: this is a process where you create a fusion reaction
Speaker 1: in order to generate neutrons, and those neutrons then go
Speaker 1: on to create a fission reaction. So it's a hybrid really. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: like we said, fusion is where you've got the two
Speaker 1: atoms that combined together to form a heavier single atom,
Speaker 1: and in that process it gives off quite a bit
Speaker 1: of energy. Uh. And you can use different kinds of
Speaker 1: atoms to do this, but typically in a thermonuclear weapon
Speaker 1: where talking about hydrogen and hydrogen has different isotopes, right,
Speaker 1: there's uh, deuterium and tritium. Yes, and this is all talk.
Speaker 1: Normally a hydrogen atom uh just has the one proton, Yes,
Speaker 1: But if you add the if you start adding neutrons,
Speaker 1: then you get deuterium and tritium. And deuterium is stable.
Speaker 1: If you have a deuterium atom, it's stable. It's not
Speaker 1: gonna decay. You can actually create water with deuterium, but
Speaker 1: it will in in enough, in large enough amounts. Deuterium
Speaker 1: is toxic, so it's not something you want to have
Speaker 1: around you. Uh. Is that heavy water? Is that heavy?
Speaker 1: You know what I couldn't tell you I remember about
Speaker 1: heavy water? Is uh from Batman? It would it would,
Speaker 1: but then you think, you know, it would make sense
Speaker 1: in a in a in a sense because deuterium, you've
Speaker 1: got the neutron at it, which means that the actual
Speaker 1: atom itself is heavier, which means any molecule created out
Speaker 1: of that atom that would take the place of the
Speaker 1: normal isotope or the the the natural state of that
Speaker 1: atom would be intern heavier. Sorry, you can keep talking.
Speaker 1: This is one of those times when, uh, it's something
Speaker 1: didn't click to me until we were actually talking about it.
Speaker 1: I'll let's see if I can find something. And I'm
Speaker 1: not a nuclear physicist, so I honestly can't answer all
Speaker 1: those questions off top of my head. But tritium is
Speaker 1: not uh stable, it will it will decaytive relatively quickly.
Speaker 1: So it's a bit of a challenge. But what what
Speaker 1: is it, Chris, Yes, d t O deuterium. It's it's
Speaker 1: water made with deuterium. There you go. And so trying
Speaker 1: to create a effusion bomb is a little bit tricky
Speaker 1: because tritium is one of those elements that is typically
Speaker 1: used in these but it is not it's not easy
Speaker 1: to store, and it's uh got a very short half life.
Speaker 1: So so if you have the problem with storage and
Speaker 1: how do you keep tritium stable so that you can
Speaker 1: have a fusion reaction in order to start off the
Speaker 1: fission that's going to ultimately lead to this destructive force.
Speaker 1: Scientists came up with a fairly creative solution. First, they
Speaker 1: created a lithium deuter rate, which is a solid compound,
Speaker 1: and it does not have the problem of undergoing radioactive
Speaker 1: decay at room temperatures, at normal temperatures or even you know,
Speaker 1: normal operating temperatures of a nuclear bomb until you detonated.
Speaker 1: We've got a bit more to say about how nuclear
Speaker 1: weapons work, but before we jump into that last segment,
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor. With
Speaker 1: the tritium problem, they began to rely upon a reaction
Speaker 1: of fission reaction which will produced tritium from lithium. So
Speaker 1: first they have to induce a fission reaction with the lithium,
Speaker 1: and then the lithium in turn will produce tritium, and
Speaker 1: then you've got the uh chance, You've got the the
Speaker 1: the right elements in place to have the fusion reaction,
Speaker 1: so you have fission to fusion to fission again to boom. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's a little complicated, right, and uh, that fission reaction
Speaker 1: with lithium, it also gives off a lot of X rays,
Speaker 1: and the X rays are actually what allow uh. Well,
Speaker 1: the X rays end up increasing the temperature within the bomb,
Speaker 1: all right, And those that increased temperature and the pressures
Speaker 1: that are associated with it are the that's the energy
Speaker 1: that goes into the system that allows fusion to happen.
Speaker 1: Because this is one of the tricky things about fusion.
Speaker 1: You gotta pour energy into the system in order diffused
Speaker 1: two atoms together, right, And the components of the bomb
Speaker 1: are separated by casings that prevent accidental or or or
Speaker 1: maybe premature detonation, so that that initial explosion uh and
Speaker 1: causing the X rays basically uh causes the deterioration of
Speaker 1: those materials and allows the bomb to continue detonating. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So let's it's it's it's a little competed to talk
Speaker 1: about this without an illustration. Yes, But the way this
Speaker 1: fusion bomb would work is that you've got an implosion
Speaker 1: fission bomb with the cylinder casing of uranium two thirty eight,
Speaker 1: which is acting as a tamper. A tamper is the
Speaker 1: thing that is controlling this reaction so that you get
Speaker 1: as much energy involved before it actually unleashes an energy
Speaker 1: um The within inside that that tamper of uranium two
Speaker 1: thirty eight is the lithium deuteride, and there's also a
Speaker 1: hollow rod of plutonium two thirty nine in the very
Speaker 1: center of all that. And then separating this this cylinder
Speaker 1: of a tamper of the the uranium two eight from
Speaker 1: the implosion bomb is the shield of uranium and some
Speaker 1: plastic foam. And this is what once you start detonating
Speaker 1: at the sequence of events, is that the fission bomb.
Speaker 1: So that first explosion goes off and this generates the
Speaker 1: really intense X rays which increased the temperature and the
Speaker 1: pressure within the bomb. Uh the shield, that uranium two
Speaker 1: thirty shield with the foam, it actually is what keeps
Speaker 1: that contains that that explosion so that it does not
Speaker 1: prematurely detonate the rest of the fuel. But the heat
Speaker 1: causes the tamper, that cylinder of the uranium two thirty
Speaker 1: eight to start to expand and it begins to burn away.
Speaker 1: It starts to put more pressure on the lithium deuterate,
Speaker 1: which is squeezed so hard that it causes shock waves
Speaker 1: that initiate fission within the plutonium rod. So here's you
Speaker 1: got your second fission reaction. So you've got the first
Speaker 1: fission reaction which causes the shock wave. Ultimately that begins
Speaker 1: a second fission reaction within the plutonium rod. Now that
Speaker 1: reaction starts to give off radiation, so it begins to
Speaker 1: to expel neutrons, and it also gives off a lot
Speaker 1: of heat, So now you've got even more heat in
Speaker 1: addition to the heat that was generated by the X rays.
Speaker 1: The neutrons go into the lithium deuterate, which then combine
Speaker 1: with the lithium and that makes tritium. So now you've
Speaker 1: got this environment of incredibly high temperature, this incredible pressure,
Speaker 1: and it allows the tritium and deuterium and also deuterium
Speaker 1: deuterium fusion reactions to occur. So you've got tritium combining
Speaker 1: with deuterium and deuterium combining with itself in these reactions,
Speaker 1: which produces even more heat, more radiation, more neutrons. Those
Speaker 1: neutrons from those fusion reactions induce a final fission reaction
Speaker 1: in the uranium. Two pieces that are making up that
Speaker 1: tamper and the the shield that's around the whole thing,
Speaker 1: which of course creates even more radiation and hate, and
Speaker 1: then the bomb goes boom. So you've got these this
Speaker 1: series of explosions going on in a fusion bomb, several
Speaker 1: which are fission, one of which is fusion. The reason
Speaker 1: for that, you may wonder, well, why do you need
Speaker 1: so many reactions to go on for a bomb to explode? Well,
Speaker 1: when we were talking about Little Boy, Uh, the interesting
Speaker 1: thing to me about Little Boy is that it was
Speaker 1: incredibly destructive weapon, but only one point five percent of
Speaker 1: the material, the fission norble material within that bomb actually
Speaker 1: underwent fission one five percent, So it could have been
Speaker 1: even more destructed. Yes, the energy it unleashed could have
Speaker 1: been orders of magnitude larger than it was. So a
Speaker 1: fusion one, a fusion bomb is designed in part to
Speaker 1: try and create as efficient a series of explosions and reactions, really,
Speaker 1: we shouldn't even say explosions, reactions within the bomb, um
Speaker 1: as as many as possible, are as much of that
Speaker 1: material as possible, so that what it does detonate and
Speaker 1: unleashes the largest amount of energy it possibly can for
Speaker 1: the the amount of payload that it has. Now, this
Speaker 1: also means that we have been able to reduce the
Speaker 1: size of the actual payloads because we can create just
Speaker 1: as an effective and explosion but with a smaller amount
Speaker 1: of material as we could from several decades ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the weapons these days are far more reliable than than
Speaker 1: those early ones. UM. And we've gone from dropping them
Speaker 1: from planes to mounting them on cruise missiles and i
Speaker 1: c b ms intercontinental ballistic missiles UM. And of course, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, these these weapons now travel under their own
Speaker 1: power at a certain point anyway, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: the the i c b ms can they actually leave
Speaker 1: the atmosphere and re enter the atmosphere, so they can
Speaker 1: travel very very long distances that way. UM. And we
Speaker 1: we wouldn't really be able to to accomplish that if
Speaker 1: we hadn't moved to a fusion method where we could
Speaker 1: be so efficient with the way that we eliminate the
Speaker 1: existence of other people on the planet. I hate to
Speaker 1: put it that way, but you know, ultimately, even though
Speaker 1: we're talking about something that's really scientific, the application of
Speaker 1: this is absolutely horrifying. But it's not able to get
Speaker 1: away from that. But the uh, yeah, because if if
Speaker 1: we hadn't done that, if we hadn't come up with
Speaker 1: the fusion process, then it would be much less efficient
Speaker 1: and we might not have the option of putting something
Speaker 1: on a missile because it would the payload could be
Speaker 1: too great for for a missile to be uh practical,
Speaker 1: because at that point you would have to build a
Speaker 1: missile that would be able to carry enough fuel so
Speaker 1: that could propel both the missile itself and payload to
Speaker 1: wherever it is you're going to send it, and it
Speaker 1: could just become a matter of scale and and it
Speaker 1: just would not be It would be possible, but not practical. Uh.
Speaker 1: By making it way more efficient, we can now put
Speaker 1: it on top of lots of stuff, including you know,
Speaker 1: not just missiles, but weapons aboard submarines. I mean that's
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff, right, So terrifying in a way,
Speaker 1: but yeah, we we have we have Einstein a thing
Speaker 1: for it. So the next time you see that guy. Well, um,
Speaker 1: one of the things that I wanted to mention too,
Speaker 1: And we don't have to get into it in great
Speaker 1: depth because we're getting there as far as time goes.
Speaker 1: But um is the testing of these these weapons traditionally. UM.
Speaker 1: Of course, as Jonathan mentioned earlier, in the very very
Speaker 1: early days before they had been actually used. UH, scientists
Speaker 1: wanted to test them to to find out if it
Speaker 1: was even possible to make uh the weapon of mass
Speaker 1: destruction they envisioned to to to see exactly what it
Speaker 1: would do, how well it would work. UM. So they
Speaker 1: did all this testing outside UM and above ground. Now
Speaker 1: they've a lot in a lot of cases they've done well.
Speaker 1: They've done tests pretty much in all sorts of forms.
Speaker 1: I mean, they still do them outside, but UH in
Speaker 1: a lot of cases now they UH weapons engineers do
Speaker 1: this underground UM in an attempt to contain the reaction.
Speaker 1: Of course, although it UH a nuclear reaction can produce
Speaker 1: such force that it can vaporize large amounts of rock,
Speaker 1: so they have to be very careful where they do this. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, for a long time, many governments around the
Speaker 1: world would use UH islands to to test their their weapons,
Speaker 1: places that they felt were uh somewhat unoccupied. UM. And
Speaker 1: for for example, UH actually that inspired uh the Godzilla
Speaker 1: series of movies, UM, where they a lizard irradiated on
Speaker 1: an island. Where. It's a great series of documentary documentaries
Speaker 1: where UH, the the the the one, the one, lizard
Speaker 1: who was irradiated by this this nuclear explosion turns into
Speaker 1: Godzilla and not you know, all of the other animals
Speaker 1: that happened to be living there. Um, he got just
Speaker 1: the right amount of dust, apparently. So UM. They've tested
Speaker 1: weapons underwater, UM, you know, and in space, but people
Speaker 1: are gradually moving to computer testing, UM, which allows scientists
Speaker 1: to get a much better idea of how things might
Speaker 1: work without having to actually blow something up, actually blow
Speaker 1: something up, uh and create the environmental conditions UM, the
Speaker 1: the fallout and and reactions that would follow UM. And
Speaker 1: they've found that this can be actually beneficial. I was
Speaker 1: reading an article I believe it was in the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: It was saying that uh uh computer modeling had allowed
Speaker 1: engineers to discover problems that they hadn't realized existed with
Speaker 1: the weapons system that they built, UM, and uh prevented
Speaker 1: it from becoming you know, they re engineered the weapons
Speaker 1: that were in existence because there was a possibility that
Speaker 1: it may not then it may cause problems and wouldn't
Speaker 1: be a stable um. And uh, you know, it's it's interesting.
Speaker 1: But of course they've found out through testing that that
Speaker 1: fall out can travel UM through air currents and water.
Speaker 1: And Uh, I think that's one of the things that
Speaker 1: leads to um fear that keeps people from using nuclear
Speaker 1: weapons more freely because people really understand now more than
Speaker 1: they did um years ago that you know, this is
Speaker 1: not something that should be done casually. Yeah, there's also
Speaker 1: the fear the hypothetical nuclear winter, yes, which you know,
Speaker 1: the particulate matter from multiple explosions basically causing clouds above
Speaker 1: the earth right, which would block the sun's light from
Speaker 1: reaching the ground, thus killing off a lot of the
Speaker 1: plant life that depends upon sunlight. And then that ends
Speaker 1: up that ends up killing off the species that all
Speaker 1: depend on plants, humans being one of them. So it
Speaker 1: could end up being a global extinction event. It could
Speaker 1: also be something where it just changes the climate globally
Speaker 1: where you know, we actually do have a really harsh
Speaker 1: winter because the sun's light just isn't hitting the surface
Speaker 1: and warming it the way it usually would. Uh. And
Speaker 1: we see we see things that could point us into
Speaker 1: like suggest that that's true by by things like like
Speaker 1: a volcanic eruptions where a lot of matters is ejected
Speaker 1: into the atmosphere and it can affect uh, local weather patterns. Now,
Speaker 1: when we're talking about a nuclear winter, we're talking about
Speaker 1: something that would last longer than a you know, just
Speaker 1: a month or two. So it's pretty it's a it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's one of those doomsday scenarios. It's a sobering thought,
Speaker 1: to be sure. Um. And uh, you know, it's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons I'm interested in this is, you know,
Speaker 1: to see the flip side, you know, the idea that
Speaker 1: that nuclear energy can be used as a very efficient
Speaker 1: and clean source of power. Of course, we saw we
Speaker 1: we talked about the Fukushima um reactor last year right
Speaker 1: after it happened. Um, but that's not the same as
Speaker 1: an intentionally intentionally using nuclear power to cause the destruction
Speaker 1: of many people. So um, it's it's amazing to me
Speaker 1: personally that a little tiny atom can be used to
Speaker 1: do these amazing things, whether they're you know, and I
Speaker 1: mean amazing and instructive or destructive. Uh, it's it's amazing.
Speaker 1: It is amazing, And we'll probably I think what we'll
Speaker 1: need to do is in a future podcast, we'll have
Speaker 1: to do a full episode just on the Manhattan Product Act.
Speaker 1: Because the if you look at a list of names
Speaker 1: of the people associated with it. If you've ever taken
Speaker 1: any any classes in physics, you're going to recognize a
Speaker 1: lot of those names. I mean, the era that the
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project existed in was remarkable in the sense of
Speaker 1: it was it was an unprecedented era of scientific exploration
Speaker 1: and innovation. UM. One of those where you just it
Speaker 1: was phenomenal the amount of of UH work and scientific
Speaker 1: discovery that went on at that time. UH and in
Speaker 1: no small part that was due to things like World
Speaker 1: War And that concludes this classic episode How Nuclear Weapons Work.
Speaker 1: Chris and I originally recorded that episode on April fourth,
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, and obviously the world has continued to
Speaker 1: depend upon the threat of nuclear weapons since then. We
Speaker 1: have not been able to get rid of them all.
Speaker 1: We haven't had a magical Superman for incident where a
Speaker 1: super powerful alien comes down to Earth and throws all
Speaker 1: of them into the sun. So again, I think it's
Speaker 1: important to just know how these things work and hopefully
Speaker 1: we never ever have to worry about it in a
Speaker 1: more practical sense. If you guys have any suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech stuff, maybe it's a technology, maybe
Speaker 1: it's a company, maybe it's a personality. And tech send
Speaker 1: me a message. The email address is tech Stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, or you can drop me
Speaker 1: a line on Facebook or Twitter. To handle at both
Speaker 1: of those is tech Stuff H s W. Don't forget.
Speaker 1: You can also follow us on Instagram and I'll talk
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