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