Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome the Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb. I'm Julie Douglas. And you know, Julie,
Speaker 1: if we we travel back in time here and go
Speaker 1: back to early nineteen Las Vegas, Okay, totally different world,
Speaker 1: of course. All right, I'm getting my martini stirred right now. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Martini's mobsters running the place. Uh. You know, it's the
Speaker 1: the the age of you know, of black suits and
Speaker 1: smoking everywhere and uh uh and and you know, everybody
Speaker 1: was caught up in this this cold war feeling that
Speaker 1: it's you know, arms arms race is post War War two.
Speaker 1: US is a big dog and and it's uh and
Speaker 1: it's up against some pretty stiff competition on the other
Speaker 1: side of the globe and U and these you know
Speaker 1: war of idea, the cheese. But also you know, lots
Speaker 1: of good times and casinos, drinking martinis and smoking NonStop.
Speaker 1: And what would you add to that experience just to
Speaker 1: make it even more fantastic, Well, basically, you throw the
Speaker 1: ultimate party. I mean, you've got the mafia here, so
Speaker 1: we gotta go high, we gotta go big. Yeah, ultimate
Speaker 1: party thrown by the mafia with all of your you know, um,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever kind of music they had back in
Speaker 1: the day. I don't know if there wasn't electronics, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I just see like awkward, like um, shifting
Speaker 1: to the right and left with the hips, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that kind of dancing. I don't know. I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's a name for that. Yeah, early early nineteen fifty stuff.
Speaker 1: But you're staying up all night, staying up all night, partying,
Speaker 1: doing that weird dance, drinking m d drinking those weird drinks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: smoking NonStop, and then right around dawn, an atomic weapon
Speaker 1: goes off on the horizon for your pleasure, for your pleasure. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: a a nuclear explosion, and everybody you know cheers, you
Speaker 1: know USA at drink a little more, smoke a little more,
Speaker 1: party a little more, and then I guess you have
Speaker 1: you have brunch and then go home and go to sleep.
Speaker 1: This is not fiction. This this this was happening for
Speaker 1: twelve years, for twelve years and something in the neighborhood
Speaker 1: of Oh. I mean these parties ended, you know after
Speaker 1: a while, but um, you know, in between nine um,
Speaker 1: one thousand and twenty one nuclear detonations took place at
Speaker 1: the Nevada test site. So a lot of these are again,
Speaker 1: these are nuclear weapons. These are atomic bombs, the most
Speaker 1: powerful and dreaded uh weapon that we've been able to
Speaker 1: come up with yet. And you know, we'd previously dropped
Speaker 1: them to horrific results um in Japan on the Hiroshima
Speaker 1: and Nagasaki that was a like a third team kill
Speaker 1: a ton and a twenty kill a ton bomb. But
Speaker 1: then they're like the the like some of the first
Speaker 1: ones we were dropping in a lot in just outside
Speaker 1: of Las Vegas at the Nevada Proving Grounds were thirty
Speaker 1: one kiloton bombs, right and and and you wonder if
Speaker 1: anybody's such m hmm, I wonder if this is a
Speaker 1: good idea. Well apparently you had some people that were like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if we should should maybe maybe it's
Speaker 1: just a good idea. I don't But then but then
Speaker 1: the government was like, well, we're doing in two weeks,
Speaker 1: so make up your mind, uh, and know that it's
Speaker 1: an extremely patriotic thing for us to do. It's perfectly
Speaker 1: safe and uh, you know, so just you know, drinking
Speaker 1: Marquis Martiniz and keep smoking. The cigarettes are not going
Speaker 1: to kill you. And then I imagine them murmuring the
Speaker 1: side effects like sun effects include vomiting, headics, you know,
Speaker 1: and I want to stay forth so there. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: people are, you know, having their martinis and going, well, okay,
Speaker 1: maybe it's not such a bad idea. It will bring
Speaker 1: a lot of money into the area and we really
Speaker 1: need it. And the parties actually remind me. I've never
Speaker 1: been to one of these because I'm not that cool.
Speaker 1: But uh, like in places like Ibiza, they have like
Speaker 1: these parties where people party all night somehow, um and uh,
Speaker 1: perhaps through a natural means. And then when the sun
Speaker 1: comes up, like the DJ does like a a special
Speaker 1: mix so that his mix corresponds with the rising of
Speaker 1: the sun. Of course, they didn't have DJs back then,
Speaker 1: so weren't able to really get that that the same
Speaker 1: effect with the to correspond with the detonation. I'm sure
Speaker 1: Frank Sinatra probably did some little ditty DJ Frank Sinatra
Speaker 1: pick the old days. Um. But but this is just
Speaker 1: part of like like Vegas was crazy with it. Like
Speaker 1: Vegas was ready to run with anything that would come
Speaker 1: along that they could market. So they're like, uh, They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: Atomic Bomble were the Atomic City. Wait, and you know
Speaker 1: they the Atomic Cocktail became big, which, according to Esquire magazine,
Speaker 1: is one and half ounces of vodka, one and half
Speaker 1: ounces of brandy, a teaspoon and sherry, and one and
Speaker 1: a half ounces of dry champagne. My favorite UM was
Speaker 1: a still from that time of Miss Atomic Usa, I believe,
Speaker 1: and she's um, it just imagined an atomic plume. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the mushroom cloud. The mushroom cloud that is the actual
Speaker 1: like her her outfit, right, and it almost looks like
Speaker 1: it's a sandwich board. Maybe. Yeah, it's hard to say
Speaker 1: exactly what it is, um, but she she's made to
Speaker 1: look naked behind this atomic plume and she's you know,
Speaker 1: this um belonde with this big bouffant out in the
Speaker 1: desert with clouds behind her. It's pretty great. And I
Speaker 1: think the show girls would have head dresses. It looked
Speaker 1: like mushroom cloud. Um. The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce
Speaker 1: issued a calendar for tourists with the scheduled detonation times
Speaker 1: and the best places to view them. Right for this
Speaker 1: twelve years, right, Yeah, for twelve years. People would like
Speaker 1: the desert end marketed at Skyroom. It's the perfect place
Speaker 1: to you know, guzzle down some martinis and smoke and
Speaker 1: watch a bomb light up the horizon. Um. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: of course the good times had to end, and they
Speaker 1: because you know, people in northeastern Nevada in southern Utah
Speaker 1: began complaining that their pets in their livestocks were suffering
Speaker 1: from beta particle burns. This is from a PBS documentary
Speaker 1: about the Strange Side of Las Vegas, and they suffered
Speaker 1: other ailments. So by nine three, the limited test band
Speaker 1: was in effect and effectively that just shut down all
Speaker 1: above grown tests, which it was not a bad thing
Speaker 1: to do, as as exciting as these u little parties were.
Speaker 1: It's sort of horrific now thinking back now knowing what
Speaker 1: we know. Yeah, it's kind of like if you if
Speaker 1: you are or if you know somebody who's ever had
Speaker 1: like that crazy boyfriend or girlfriend and at the time
Speaker 1: they're like, this person is awesome. I want to spend
Speaker 1: the rest of my life with this person. And then
Speaker 1: and then later they looked back, and then they look
Speaker 1: back and they're like, Wow, that person was crazy. What
Speaker 1: was I thinking? That was? That was? That was dumb?
Speaker 1: And you know, so the behindsight is sort of so
Speaker 1: you know, it's easy to look back now and say, wow,
Speaker 1: these people were stupid throwing parties and watching a nuclear
Speaker 1: weapon light up the horizon. But but like I said,
Speaker 1: they were caught up in in patriotism. They didn't know
Speaker 1: what the effects were, and I guess they didn't, you know,
Speaker 1: really heed the whole uh anal I have become death
Speaker 1: at a story of world type thing. You know, they
Speaker 1: know it was this shiny atomic age, right, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it was it was just all new and exciting,
Speaker 1: new frontier. But you know there's there's the dark side
Speaker 1: of course, so so yeah, there's where the music doesn't right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the record scratching another detail reference. N This is
Speaker 1: we're of course talking about nuclear fallout, and I think
Speaker 1: everyone is at least familiar with the idea of nuclear
Speaker 1: fallout in the in the sense that it's it's just
Speaker 1: become part of our our language. And you talk about
Speaker 1: the fall out of something about the uncomfortable or terrible
Speaker 1: um circumstances that can occur after an event has transpired, right,
Speaker 1: and of course especially after Japan, which is it's been
Speaker 1: a horrific event, um and it's been really heartbreaking, UM,
Speaker 1: and it's sad, but it's it's interesting to look at
Speaker 1: fallout and see how that's affected people, and also to
Speaker 1: try to understand UM Japan in the context of Chernobyl
Speaker 1: and see if we've learned anything. UM. So you know,
Speaker 1: we should probably talk a little bit about thought exactly
Speaker 1: what it is and what that mushroom cloud is doing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this is what happens in a nuclear explosion.
Speaker 1: Just very briefly. You have a certain abount amount of
Speaker 1: nuclear mass, and we transfer that nuclear mass into energy. Right,
Speaker 1: So you have an explosion, an enormous fireball, and inside
Speaker 1: that firebell everything is vaporized, and this fireball rises rapidly, uh,
Speaker 1: and it it ends up pulling in soil and water
Speaker 1: and then expands and cools and loses buoyancy and the
Speaker 1: radioactive debris and soil and all this stuff UH that's
Speaker 1: initially swept upwards by the explosion then disperses with the wind. UM.
Speaker 1: So you get this fallout, which is a fallout is
Speaker 1: basically microscopic particles UM in the air. Uh. The end
Speaker 1: up being to posited on the ground or on buildings
Speaker 1: or on you know, just everywhere, and uh, and they're radioactive.
Speaker 1: So think of like a like you see footage of
Speaker 1: like a volcanic eruption where everything is coated in ash,
Speaker 1: and that's pretty destructive. But imagine if the ash in
Speaker 1: this case is radioactive and when I mean radioactive, like
Speaker 1: it doesn't even need to touch you to be harmful. Um.
Speaker 1: But we'll get to that in just a second. Um.
Speaker 1: So you have this mushroom cloud radioactive um particles rising up,
Speaker 1: and that the as a cloud reaches its stabilization height,
Speaker 1: it moves down wind and and you have the things.
Speaker 1: You don't just have one wind speed or one you
Speaker 1: know direction, It varies with altitude. So you'll see you'll
Speaker 1: look at that. There's some interesting charts out there that
Speaker 1: that show, um um, how nuclear fallout has moved, say
Speaker 1: just from from some of these test detonations in Nevada,
Speaker 1: and one in particular I was looking at looked at
Speaker 1: the fallout from a ninette kiloton test um of a
Speaker 1: bomb by the name of Simon in Nevada, and depending
Speaker 1: on the altitude, like, the course was drastically different. Like um,
Speaker 1: the particles that made it up to eighteen thousand feet
Speaker 1: they cut through New Mexico and Texas and then shot
Speaker 1: north through Arkansas as far north is Pennsylvania. At thirty
Speaker 1: thousand feet, it cut through through the top of New Mexico.
Speaker 1: This is just this path of you know, radioactive materials
Speaker 1: traveling across the country. And then then it went down
Speaker 1: through Texas, Southern Louisiana, middle Florida. But then at forty
Speaker 1: thousand it goes more or less straight through Texas and
Speaker 1: then shoots north on a tour of New England on
Speaker 1: up into Canada. So and then if it gets high enough,
Speaker 1: you get into the into the stratosphere and you have
Speaker 1: global fallout where it can these particles from can pretty
Speaker 1: much go all over the globe. Yeah. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: I think that's probably important to talk about. How you've
Speaker 1: got localized fallout, right, which is you know, by far
Speaker 1: that most dangerous. Yeah, we're talking this is a local
Speaker 1: faud is within fifty to five hundred kilometers from ground zero,
Speaker 1: that's between thirty one miles. That's where all the large
Speaker 1: particles are gonna come down. And then you've got regional fallout, right,
Speaker 1: and that's five d three thousand kilometers, Okay, and then
Speaker 1: you've got the global, which you were talking. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's more than three thousand kilometers or more than one Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the CBTV, that is the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Um Treaty.
Speaker 1: They have a global network of air samples to which
Speaker 1: detect traces of radiation. Uh. And they've actually detected traces
Speaker 1: from the Fukushima radioactive fallout as far Afield as Sacramento.
Speaker 1: And of course that's that's no reason for everybody to
Speaker 1: get up in arms and you know, start taking iodine
Speaker 1: because really these are just minute traces. But yeah, they
Speaker 1: basically played like these sensors are used to say, find
Speaker 1: out if somebody is doing a nuclear test somewhere in
Speaker 1: the world, because that's the thing. You can't really have
Speaker 1: a secret nuclear test because the world is going to
Speaker 1: notice because it's that kind of activity is going to
Speaker 1: affect global radioactive levels, which again just nit drives home
Speaker 1: how destructive and irresponsible. Uh, these weapons are. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: you can get into issues of of nuclear power, is
Speaker 1: it clean, is it dangers, um, et cetera. But but
Speaker 1: when it comes down to nuclear weapons, it's pretty I
Speaker 1: think it's pretty cut and dry. Well, especially if you
Speaker 1: think about this storehouses of enriched uranium chickuling this of
Speaker 1: it union UM and the amount of thefts that we
Speaker 1: know have gone on also with plutonium. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is there are many other issues that spiral out from
Speaker 1: this UM. But yeah, I mean it's it's dangerous stuff
Speaker 1: at any level and hard to keep keep tabs on.
Speaker 1: But we should probably talk about some of the more
Speaker 1: specific dangers of fallout UM and actually, like what is
Speaker 1: an acceptable amount of radigation? Which which I feel like
Speaker 1: I cannot get a firm answer on. Yeah, well, let's
Speaker 1: let's get into this right ature a quick break. This
Speaker 1: presentation is brought to you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow
Speaker 1: and we're back. Hello, So what is an acceptable amount
Speaker 1: of radiation? Well, I mean it's kind of a moving target.
Speaker 1: Jury's definitely still out UM. There's a mathematical model known
Speaker 1: as the linear non threshold dose response model LNT model
Speaker 1: for short, that helps agencies set levels of acceptable radiation
Speaker 1: level UM. So, for example, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Speaker 1: sets an acceptable level at one milli ram a year.
Speaker 1: And just to put that into context, there are actual
Speaker 1: cities where the background radiation level is really high, like Denver,
Speaker 1: and those citizens are exposed to fifty milli rams a year.
Speaker 1: And as a side note though that the rate of
Speaker 1: cancer is pretty low there, so that's something to consider. Um.
Speaker 1: But um, you know, the average level of natural background
Speaker 1: radiation in the United States is about three hundred fifty
Speaker 1: milli ram a year. So that's that's everything in concert.
Speaker 1: So that's if you take a transatlantic flight, you're going
Speaker 1: to be exposed to thirty five miller ram. If you
Speaker 1: get a full body scan, you're gonna have one or
Speaker 1: two Miller rams, so that you know, accumulatively, they're looking
Speaker 1: at more like three hundred and fifty milli ramps. So
Speaker 1: in theory, we're all getting zapped way too much with radiation.
Speaker 1: But you say that and that's just one agency's um
Speaker 1: thoughts on it, or you know, that's that's what they
Speaker 1: think is acceptable. You can go to a multitude of
Speaker 1: agencies in a multitude of countries and everybody has a
Speaker 1: different goal or even moving the goalposts right now because
Speaker 1: they're not really sure, um, if radiation is that bad
Speaker 1: at low dostitches. So that's why I get a little
Speaker 1: bit frustrated because I don't feel like there's us that
Speaker 1: I still don't feel like people have a good grasp
Speaker 1: of of what radiation means and Chernobyl. Obviously, there were
Speaker 1: a lot of horrible things that went on in Chernobyl.
Speaker 1: One of the biggest problems we've had long term is
Speaker 1: that there was no one foundation that got together and said,
Speaker 1: let's study this in earnest The results are Chernobyl. So
Speaker 1: while we know that there were six thousand cases of
Speaker 1: thyroid cancer as a result of fallout from there and
Speaker 1: exposure to to irradiated um iodine, we don't really know
Speaker 1: fully you know, the six thousand inhabitants around there, how
Speaker 1: that actually affected their lives because nobody really followed up
Speaker 1: on it. Yeah, just to touch base on how this
Speaker 1: radiation ends up affecting the body, how the particles in
Speaker 1: nuclear fallout end up harming people. There are two ways
Speaker 1: that it enters the body through external and internal means. External.
Speaker 1: This mainly means, like like I said, um, the particles
Speaker 1: come down, they're laying everywhere, and they're emitting radiation, so
Speaker 1: they you end up absorbing it because it's emitted from
Speaker 1: the particles. And this is why um like shielding of
Speaker 1: buildings becomes important. The idea of remaining indoors in the
Speaker 1: event of a nuclear detonation. Yeah, because because the particles
Speaker 1: are emitting this radiation and if you get if something
Speaker 1: is between you and the particle, then well that's gonna help.
Speaker 1: But then there's internal and this is when you're inhaling
Speaker 1: the particles or you're absorbing it through intact or injured
Speaker 1: skin or and this this is a big one, you're
Speaker 1: consuming it um through contaminated foods. And this can be
Speaker 1: as simple as all right, I eat a carrot and
Speaker 1: the carrot has particles of radioactive particles on it from
Speaker 1: the fallout, or I eat um, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: eat the rabbit that ate the carrot. See, it ends
Speaker 1: up impacting the entire food chain of which we are
Speaker 1: apart um. It ends up and it gets involved in
Speaker 1: like dairy too. I mean, there's just you know, because
Speaker 1: if you drink the milk that came from the cow
Speaker 1: that ate the grass that the fallout fell on, right,
Speaker 1: then you're you're going to have some possible health problems there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And um, you should also again talk about Chernobyl when
Speaker 1: that happened, uh, when the fallout from that happened, that
Speaker 1: the government actually didn't say to its citizens quit eating
Speaker 1: UH contaminated food or telling them it's contaminated, or telling
Speaker 1: them not to drink the water. Um. So again this
Speaker 1: is another reason why people were exposed to it so readily,
Speaker 1: and all that we know in Japan that they warn
Speaker 1: the citizens to quit eating and drinking UH water sources there.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to talk a little bit about two
Speaker 1: volatile elements cassium one thirty seven and iodine one thirty one.
Speaker 1: Those we know bubbled off the damaged fuel in Japan,
Speaker 1: and iodine is rapidly absorbed by the thyroid and it
Speaker 1: leaves only as it decays radioactively with half life of
Speaker 1: eight days, while cassium is absorbed by muscles, where it's
Speaker 1: half life of thirty years means that it remains until
Speaker 1: it's excreted by the body. So it takes between ten
Speaker 1: and one days to excrete half of what has been consumed.
Speaker 1: So that's why these these two things are problematic because
Speaker 1: they're they're absorbed very easily by the body. Um. Now
Speaker 1: we know that Japan's followed near chernobyls levels. But again
Speaker 1: we know that that there's a big difference here because
Speaker 1: Japan took you know, some precautions and warning their citizens
Speaker 1: and also giving them iodine. And the whole reason that
Speaker 1: you would give someone an iodine is that if you
Speaker 1: were to take all the iodine, your body would absorb
Speaker 1: that and then in theory, absorbed less of that your
Speaker 1: radiated iodine, and then you know, your thyroid wouldn't be
Speaker 1: stuck there with a bunch of irradiated It would be
Speaker 1: like adding like eating eating a healthy dinner before going
Speaker 1: to the tow or the Twinkie factory. It's like fold up.
Speaker 1: You know, I couldn't possibly eat eight free twinkies. I'd
Speaker 1: probably just eat one. I'll just have one, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: twinkie analogy. So that's that's what we know about some
Speaker 1: of the fallout and how it affects you. And of
Speaker 1: course we know that thyroid cancer is is a big
Speaker 1: one that develops as a result of exposure. And we
Speaker 1: should probably talk just a little bit about environmental fluid dynamics.
Speaker 1: Don't turn off the podcast. It's not really scary thing.
Speaker 1: We're going to call it e d F just to
Speaker 1: make a little bit more edgy. It sounds like it
Speaker 1: doesn't sound edgy to me as much as it sounds
Speaker 1: like some sort of like digestion disorder like he's got to. Also,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be e d F. It would be e
Speaker 1: f d oh e f d oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's all right. Well, I like, well e F D
Speaker 1: acronyms are not my strong point. Let's talk about the
Speaker 1: fluid dynamics a fallout, all right. So fluid dynamics is
Speaker 1: basically about how fluids moves, how the air moves, how
Speaker 1: the water moves, and these are complex systems. Uh. If
Speaker 1: you if you've ever looked at how the weather work works. Um,
Speaker 1: and we have a really cool article on the side.
Speaker 1: How we write that, right, I wrote that, which I
Speaker 1: mean it's cool because you know I wrote it, so
Speaker 1: it's cool, but it's also I feel like it's good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a good article, I feel like. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the weather is a complex system, a very chaotic system. Uh.
Speaker 1: The whole idea of like the butterfly effect comes out
Speaker 1: and uh and uh and chaos theory comes out of
Speaker 1: studying the weather and realizing that how difficult it is
Speaker 1: to to predict what it's gonna do, even with complicated
Speaker 1: mathematical models. Um. I mean, and that's why you the
Speaker 1: farther off a a weather forecast, the less you can
Speaker 1: rely on it because it's just such a chaotic system.
Speaker 1: So you have, you know, different movements that are like
Speaker 1: I said, one UH nuclear detonation, you'll see fallout move
Speaker 1: in like four different patterns UH, and it and and
Speaker 1: it just it gets so the distribution of fallout becomes
Speaker 1: very complicated when you're looking at how it affects UH
Speaker 1: a regional or you know, global scenario. Yeah, and our
Speaker 1: understanding of fallout and the earlier years UM was modeled
Speaker 1: after flat terrain right where all the tests were taking place,
Speaker 1: so we thought the fallout would you act in a
Speaker 1: certain way, And then it was only until we started say, oh,
Speaker 1: but then there's this whole weather thing, and there's geography
Speaker 1: and there's urban environment. Yeah. Yeah, because like the city
Speaker 1: example is pretty cool. UM. In fact, there was a
Speaker 1: study in two thousand nine UM from the Los Almos
Speaker 1: National Laboratory where they use computer models of cities and
Speaker 1: and use flood dynamic models to see how a large
Speaker 1: metropolitan area UH would tamper with local wind patterns and
Speaker 1: effect the way fallout is distributed. And you have things
Speaker 1: like UM, I mean just the cities really messed with
Speaker 1: with climate anyway you know you have like like a
Speaker 1: sun heated parking lot creates a localized updraft, drawing in
Speaker 1: air from surrounding areas, and skyscrapers work like artificial mountains.
Speaker 1: So of a plume of radiated debris were to blow
Speaker 1: against a tall building, physicists predict that that the flow
Speaker 1: would launch skyword in what they call a fountain effect,
Speaker 1: resulting in a wider distribution of radiated particles. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: just keep when whenever I think about the fountain fact,
Speaker 1: I think of it just like spraying off of the building.
Speaker 1: To Wright, like you can sort of think of it
Speaker 1: like a motorcycle hitting like a launch ramp, where it
Speaker 1: just launches it straight up into the air. Yeah, isn't
Speaker 1: the idea to take these mathematical models and then try
Speaker 1: to use them to to predict real time to people
Speaker 1: so that if you were in this sort of situation
Speaker 1: that you might be able to communicate with people I
Speaker 1: don't like via their smartphones and say, you know, it's
Speaker 1: moving in this direction, take cover and move east, and
Speaker 1: just generally be able to plan better for one of
Speaker 1: these scenarios. Because you know, this is especially relevant, is
Speaker 1: especially relevant, not just in the use of actual nuclear detonations,
Speaker 1: but also in the use of you know, so called
Speaker 1: dirty bombs, where you would have a you know, a
Speaker 1: standard detonation like a stick of dye to minor C
Speaker 1: four spreading radioactive material. So yeah, I mean, and it
Speaker 1: does make it not only can you just warn someone,
Speaker 1: but you can also yourself probably use some of information
Speaker 1: and say, Okay, so I know that radiation is um
Speaker 1: shielded by tall building, so I'm gonna get behind this building,
Speaker 1: and I know the wind is coming this way, and
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. Um. So do you think
Speaker 1: it's it's obviously you're really helpful. Um. And I did
Speaker 1: want to mention too that if you ever just want
Speaker 1: to scare the pants off of yourself, that you should
Speaker 1: check out a guy named Bruce Shiner s h and
Speaker 1: E I E er and he has a talk on
Speaker 1: ted dot com about how to survive a nuclear attack.
Speaker 1: And it's really helpful, but it's also just so frightening.
Speaker 1: I mean, just bring some popcorn and a blanket because
Speaker 1: you're gonna, you know, you're gonna want to hide under
Speaker 1: it off to I have to I haven't seen that
Speaker 1: one off to look at it. UM, I have an
Speaker 1: old mutual of Omaha poster somewhere around here that you
Speaker 1: know from back in the fifties. It tells you how
Speaker 1: to survive a nuclear detonation. Is this the turtle? No,
Speaker 1: there's something like yeah, there's some like um, there's some
Speaker 1: old film footage that they used to run, particularly like
Speaker 1: in the in the forties, right, that would show like
Speaker 1: the turtle duck and cover, and it's the The idea
Speaker 1: is that you would create a shell for yourself and
Speaker 1: get as small in in tiny and um as possible
Speaker 1: in order to survive a nuclear attack. But that was
Speaker 1: like the extent of the instruction that was who is
Speaker 1: this turtle named duck and cover? I remember hearing to
Speaker 1: the idea of like covering yourself in wet newspapers. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure where I picked that one up, possibly from
Speaker 1: the nineteens fifties sci fi films, So that might not
Speaker 1: be yeah yeah that yet, that may not be uh
Speaker 1: full proof there. But the brooch liner is it's really
Speaker 1: interesting because it does. He talks a lot about this too,
Speaker 1: um in terms of mathematical models and where the wind
Speaker 1: is blowing and buildings and how all this factors into
Speaker 1: someone's ability to perhaps survive a nuclear attack. It's good
Speaker 1: times watching. Well, yeah, there you go. It's uh, this
Speaker 1: is a good podcast because we start with the party
Speaker 1: and then we end with the downer, you know. So
Speaker 1: I hope that you know, if you're listening to this,
Speaker 1: congratulations because you stayed well past the point where the
Speaker 1: party ended and helped clean up a little. So hey,
Speaker 1: it's part of the cleanup, and it's part of the reward,
Speaker 1: I guess for making it through the dispressing stuff. We
Speaker 1: do have some listener mail here. Um, let's see, we
Speaker 1: have a listener by the name of Eric. I think
Speaker 1: it's a different Erics, and I don't know someone who
Speaker 1: had an Eric and want to that. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the the knocking boots kicking boots area. Maybe it's the
Speaker 1: same Eric. Maybe it's a different Erica. Don't let me see.
Speaker 1: Oh it might be the same moment, it might be.
Speaker 1: Oh well, now I feel weird like we're giving preferential
Speaker 1: treatment to our Erics. But at any rate, Eric writes
Speaker 1: in with some interesting comments on our pulsebo podcast, and
Speaker 1: let's see, I'm gonna be a little a nice, long,
Speaker 1: thoughtful email, but I'm going to skip in part which
Speaker 1: is a real cool nugget of thought provoking material. Uh,
Speaker 1: he says. Julie said that placebos can't shrink a tumor,
Speaker 1: but there are cases of this happening. Along with spontaneous remission.
Speaker 1: A lot of the traditional medicine seems to work because
Speaker 1: in the vast majority of cases, a sick person will
Speaker 1: get better no matter what you do, assuming you don't
Speaker 1: hurt them. Further, I heard a story that said many
Speaker 1: Chinese people will bang pots during a solar eclipse to
Speaker 1: scare away the dragon that is eating the sun. It
Speaker 1: works perfectly every time, even when the dragon completely swallows
Speaker 1: the sun, as long as everybody bangs their pots loudly enough,
Speaker 1: the dragon will always fit it out again. So it's uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, a very simplified example, but you know,
Speaker 1: that is something to keep in mind. I think it's
Speaker 1: an incredible example of how we fictionalize our reality, right.
Speaker 1: And that's what it was so interesting about finding out
Speaker 1: about the plus, because again, it came down to that
Speaker 1: whole thing like, do we have to tell ourselves a
Speaker 1: story in order to survive life? Um? Where can we
Speaker 1: just sort of peel away the layers and and um
Speaker 1: and not have to trick ourselves into healing. Is it
Speaker 1: possible on a sort of like evolutionary level that we've
Speaker 1: been hardwired to do this? Tell ourselves stories and um oh,
Speaker 1: and then the second part is not actually a a
Speaker 1: letter from anybody, But I just wanted to follow up
Speaker 1: on our Bone Wars podcast because I forgot to mention
Speaker 1: on like one particularly cool example that I came across,
Speaker 1: which is another weird example of um, like life imitating
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat or something, because you had this guy by
Speaker 1: the name of paleontologers by the name of Gideon Mantell
Speaker 1: who named the Iguanadon. That's his big, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: contribution contribution to paleontology. But in eighty eight, uh he,
Speaker 1: like some of these other guys, he fell into poverty.
Speaker 1: It sells fossil collection to the British Museum, and he
Speaker 1: had a long illness and sadly ended up communic suicide
Speaker 1: in two um. But weirdly enough, one of his rivals,
Speaker 1: like I'm in the name of Richard Owen, managed to
Speaker 1: get ahold of Mantell's spine, his pickled spine after his death.
Speaker 1: Now that I don't have the details on that, but
Speaker 1: how how does that happen? How do you just like,
Speaker 1: how did your spine end up pickled? And then in
Speaker 1: the public market. I don't know. I think that while
Speaker 1: you're picking up a body, perhaps to do some experiments on,
Speaker 1: you just slip that other person twenty box and say, hey,
Speaker 1: can I have that spleen? So Owen has Mantel's pickled
Speaker 1: spine and and then displays it in his own museum
Speaker 1: next to his various fossil exhibits, which is pretty brazen
Speaker 1: and kind of insane. I would love to see the
Speaker 1: label on it. I mean, does it say like my
Speaker 1: nemesis is spine? Yeah? I mean how does he explain that?
Speaker 1: Or maybe he doesn't and it's just always his little secret,
Speaker 1: like that's spine was my nemesis? Would have you incorporated
Speaker 1: into a dinosaur? In speaking of you saw a Fiji mermaid? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I did. I was. I was out of town went
Speaker 1: to this uh little museum in Louisiana and they had
Speaker 1: all these weird freak show things and they had a
Speaker 1: Fiji mermaid, not asid Fiji mermaid. I don't know. This
Speaker 1: may have been a very recent creation, but it was
Speaker 1: still interesting to see one and I also ran I
Speaker 1: went to a wedding there and I ran into somebody
Speaker 1: who's a fan of the show. So just let everybody
Speaker 1: know that if you encounter me at a wedding, uh,
Speaker 1: you can approach me and talk to me and uh
Speaker 1: and then we'll discuss the show and then we can
Speaker 1: run into each other awkwardly throughout the rest of the
Speaker 1: at the wedding. So um, but anyway, but it was
Speaker 1: great to run into somebody who to run into a listener.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and see the Fiji Mermaid and see the
Speaker 1: Fiji Mermaid. Yes, a good weekend if you ask me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So hey, if you see the Fiji Mermaid in reality
Speaker 1: or in your dreams or or wherever, you can let
Speaker 1: us know. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter.
Speaker 1: We're blow the mind on both of those. And and
Speaker 1: I'm very interested to hear uh, you know, if anybody
Speaker 1: has any uh like family history from from Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: uh in the Broada area, like any like personal accounts
Speaker 1: of what or maybe not personal account but at least
Speaker 1: you know, family family tales of what it was like
Speaker 1: to live in the Vada in the fifties. I mean,
Speaker 1: we'd be very interested to hear about that, you know,
Speaker 1: read your account on the air and all unless you're
Speaker 1: in a witness relocation program. Yeah, you know the hold
Speaker 1: the Mafia times. We don't want you to, but I
Speaker 1: guess you could go understood in. And you could also
Speaker 1: send us an email. Yes, yeah, and hey, you can
Speaker 1: send that email to blow the mind at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To learn
Speaker 1: more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in
Speaker 1: the upper right corner of our homepage. The how stuff
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