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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. We've had a technical issue come up

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Speaker 1: that disrupted our plans for this week, so Oil and

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Speaker 1: Troubled Water Part two won't air until next Tuesday. Instead,

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Speaker 1: today's episode is one from the vaults, but an ideal

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Speaker 1: re listen given the recent release of Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer film,

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Speaker 1: The Atomic Scar opens with discussion of Oppenheimer and his

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Speaker 1: we knew the world would not be the same statement

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Speaker 1: to NBC in nineteen sixty five. We'll be back with

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Speaker 1: new content on Wednesday. As always, Thanks for your patience

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Speaker 1: and your listenership.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Your Mind. My name is Robert.

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Speaker 3: Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're going to

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Speaker 3: be talking about nuclear weapons testing. Now, this is something

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Speaker 3: that has come up on the show a good bit before. Obviously,

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Speaker 3: we've had to talk many times about the very real,

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Speaker 3: you know, danger, potential civilization level threat, and the real

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Speaker 3: human costs of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons testing. But

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Speaker 3: today I wanted to focus on a couple of interesting

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Speaker 3: and lesser known environmental effects of nuclear weapons testing, specifically

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Speaker 3: something that I came across as it pertains to industrial metals,

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Speaker 3: and then we're going to get into some other scientific

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Speaker 3: territory as we go on, but quite apart from any

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Speaker 3: straightforward chemical effects on the atmosphere, I think it is

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Speaker 3: pretty fair to say that the human departure into the

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Speaker 3: nuclear weapons testing era in nineteen forty five was really

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Speaker 3: sort of a shift to moment for humankind as a species.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And I feel like there are very few things

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Speaker 1: that have been said. There are very few audio samples,

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Speaker 1: certainly that sum it up quite as well or are

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Speaker 1: as haunting as those given by Jay Robert Oppenheimer in

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five on the television documentary The Decision to

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Speaker 1: Drop the Bomb, broadcast as an NBC white Paper. I imagine

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Speaker 1: most of you heard this before. I've heard it's sampled

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Speaker 1: and used in music, it shows up in comic books, literature.

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Speaker 1: In it, the American theoretical physicist and father of the

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Speaker 1: atomic bomb, as he sometimes referred shares the following regarding

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Speaker 1: the first successful detonation of an atomic bomb at the

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Speaker 1: Trinity Test in New Mexico on July sixteenth, nineteen forty five,

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Speaker 1: he said, quote, we knew the world would not be

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Speaker 1: the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried,

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Speaker 1: most people were silent. I remembered the line from the

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Speaker 1: Hindu scripture the Bagavad gitaw is trying to persuade the

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Speaker 1: prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him,

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Speaker 1: takes on his multi armed form and says, now, I

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Speaker 1: am become death, the destroyer of worlds. I suppose we

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Speaker 1: all thought that one way or another.

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Speaker 3: It's a difficult thing to imagine working on that kind

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Speaker 3: of research in a way, feeling that it is your

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Speaker 3: duty or your necessity to aid the Allied cause in

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Speaker 3: World War Two, but at the same time knowing that

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Speaker 3: you were working on something that would unleash an age

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Speaker 3: of terror in human history.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean absolutely, a weapon that would as of

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Speaker 1: this recording, has only been used twice in war, which

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Speaker 1: on one hand you can say, thankfully has only been

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Speaker 1: used twice in war, but at the same hand you

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Speaker 1: can say, tragically has been used twice in war. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: We'll get into the just the destructive capabilities a bit

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Speaker 1: of the bomb as we proceed here, and of course

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Speaker 1: we've covered it on the show before. To varying degrees.

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Speaker 1: But I want to come back to the quote that

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Speaker 1: that Oppenheimer is is deploying here, So if you're not

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Speaker 1: familiar with it, Basically, these are these are who the

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Speaker 1: figures are in this. You've got Vishnu, one of the

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Speaker 1: principal deities of Hinduism. Uh. The Blahabad Gita or the

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Speaker 1: Gita as it's sometimes just shortened to, is part of

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Speaker 1: the Hindu epic, the Mahabarata. Technically it's book six in that,

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Speaker 1: and the prince in question is the hero Arjina, part

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Speaker 1: of the Pandava family that wages war against the Kravas.

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Speaker 1: That's the big struggle, that's that's key to the Mahabarata. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: at the beginning of the Gita, which Oppenheimer is is

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Speaker 1: quoting here, Arjina rides his chariot onto the field of

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Speaker 1: forthcoming battle between these two families. But he suddenly overcome

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Speaker 1: by doubt and depression, as he notes there there on

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Speaker 1: the other side, within the ranks of the enemy, he

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Speaker 1: recognizes friends, relatives, teachers, and therefore has this just immense

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Speaker 1: weight descend upon him. This is a quote from it.

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Speaker 1: This is as translated by Edwin Arnold in eighteen eighty five.

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Speaker 1: And as as is always the case with translated works

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Speaker 1: of literature and poetry, you know the English is going

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Speaker 1: to be approximate, and certainly with Hinduism there are many

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Speaker 1: cases where particular ideas and phrases don't really have a

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Speaker 1: parallel word in English. Anyway, it goes as follows quote. Thus,

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Speaker 1: if we slay kinsfolk and friends for love of earthly power,

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Speaker 1: a vat, what an evil fault it were better? I

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Speaker 1: deem it? If my kinsmen strike to face them, weaponless

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Speaker 1: and bear my breast to shaft and spear, then answer

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Speaker 1: blow with blow. So speaking in the face of those

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Speaker 1: two hosts, Arginus sank upon his chariot seat and let

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Speaker 1: fall bow and arrows. Sick at heart, so the prospect

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Speaker 1: of the forthcoming bloodshed is just too much for him.

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Speaker 1: But what does he do? He turns to his chariot

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Speaker 1: tea for council, and luckily his charioteer is the blueskinned Krishna,

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Speaker 1: the avatar of the mighty Vishnu, and he gives him

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Speaker 1: his council. In fact, he gives him his council for

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Speaker 1: eighteen chapters. That's what the Gita is is basically him

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Speaker 1: providing all of this philosophical and spiritual advice on what

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Speaker 1: it is to have to make these sorts of decisions

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Speaker 1: and engage in war and duty and so forth.

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Speaker 3: So it's kind of like something like the Book of

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Speaker 3: Job in the form we have it now, which you

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Speaker 3: have a sort of small framing narrative that mainly contains

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Speaker 3: a didactic discourse on theological matters.

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Speaker 1: Right now, if you want to like a really good

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Speaker 1: breakdown of this episode in the Mahabarata of the Gita,

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Speaker 1: and especially as it relates to Oppenheimer in his life,

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Speaker 1: there's a wonderful paper that you can find out there

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Speaker 1: in full on the Internet from James A. Heiji, a

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Speaker 1: professor of history, University of Massachud's Dartmouth. This was a

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Speaker 1: nice write up he did for the American Philosophical Society

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Speaker 1: in two thousand and He goes into greater depth, but

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Speaker 1: he also summarizes Krishna's counsel as follows. He says, look,

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Speaker 1: you're a soldier, Argina. You have to fight. Fighting is

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Speaker 1: your duty, so you need to do it. He also says, look, Krishna,

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Speaker 1: you know this god who I also am is going

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Speaker 1: to be the one to determine who lives and who dies.

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Speaker 1: It's not your place to mourn or rejoice over human

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Speaker 1: loss in this case, you should try to remain unattached

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Speaker 1: from the outcome. And then also faith in Krishna is

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Speaker 1: going to be what saves your soul, Argina, And this

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Speaker 1: is the most important part of the whole scenario. But

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Speaker 1: as Argina begins to metaphorically see the light or I

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Speaker 1: suppose behold the true nature of the reality he's faced with,

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Speaker 1: he asks if he can see Krishna's god like form,

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Speaker 1: and this site ultimately seals Arjina's case commitment to do

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Speaker 1: his duty. And this occurs in chapter eleven, verse thirty two,

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Speaker 1: where where the now cosmically embodied Vishnu speaks to Arjina.

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Speaker 1: And what he exactly says to English speaking years is

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Speaker 1: going to depend on the translation, but for instance, the

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Speaker 1: writer translation has him say death, am I a my

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Speaker 1: present task destruction. There's a translation by Arnold that says,

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Speaker 1: thou seest me as Time, who kills Time, who brings

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Speaker 1: all to doom? The slayer Time, ancient of days, come

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Speaker 1: hither to consume. And there's another one I came across

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Speaker 1: that I thought was pretty good. I am mighty time,

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Speaker 1: the source of destruction that comes forth to annihilate the worlds.

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Speaker 1: And I've always loved this one by jab Van Bettinen quote,

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Speaker 1: I am time grown old to destroy the world embarked

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Speaker 1: on the course of world annihilation. I am time grown

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Speaker 1: Old'll always find that kind of there's something kind of

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Speaker 1: perplexing about that phrasing that seems to be fitting this

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Speaker 1: all powerful being that is, you know, that has taken

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Speaker 1: on his true form to you.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, there's something that comes in the fullness of time.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting the way the personification as time further

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Speaker 3: serves that purpose of the kind of depersonalization of one's

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Speaker 3: role in history. You know, there is a kind of

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Speaker 3: like a fate or world path that is executed through

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Speaker 3: the passing of time, and what you are is someone

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Speaker 3: who plays a role within it, not the shape or

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Speaker 3: of it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, Again, it is even in translation as it's

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Speaker 1: this really perplexing and beautiful passage. Now, I should stress

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Speaker 1: that Oppenheimer was not religiously Hindu, but he was interested

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Speaker 1: in Hindu scripture, and clearly he found an association here

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Speaker 1: between his role and the creation of the bomb, and

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Speaker 1: the idea of duty performed regardless of potential outcome. Now,

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Speaker 1: he certainly is bending the text here because in the

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Speaker 1: Gita Vishnu slash Krishna is saying, look, I'm the prime

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Speaker 1: mover here, I'm the one who destroys you. Just do

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Speaker 1: your duty. Oppenheimer seems to be implying the opposite, that

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Speaker 1: there perhaps is no all powerful force that bears the

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Speaker 1: burden of our deeds, that the burden is instead on

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Speaker 1: the shoulders of those involved in the creation of such

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Speaker 1: a weapon. You know, when he's saying, you know, now

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Speaker 1: I am become death, and that we all felt that

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Speaker 1: way one way way or another. I mean, I mean,

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Speaker 1: he is, he is. He seems he's confronting the personal

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Speaker 1: responsibility that seems to be there in the creation of

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Speaker 1: such a weapon.

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Speaker 3: But so it does seem that there's this this double

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Speaker 3: terror in Oppenheimer's mind, like what if we fail? But

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Speaker 3: also what if we succeed?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, that's something that Heigea gets into. You know,

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Speaker 1: this this idea that there's this immense fear of failure.

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Speaker 1: You know, what if we don't develop the bomb as

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Speaker 1: we've been tasked with and what will that mean for us?

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Speaker 1: But then, yeah, how much mass human death will be

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Speaker 1: brought into the world, even on the short term if

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Speaker 1: this is successful, without even getting into the way that

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Speaker 1: it will change the landscape of not only warfare and

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Speaker 1: potential warfare in global security, but just human civilization itself.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, there's so many ways you can track the impact

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Speaker 3: of the invention of nuclear weapons. Clearly one of them

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Speaker 3: is a sort of like world psychological impact. You know,

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Speaker 3: there's bomb consciousness in the world now that that sort

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Speaker 3: of will always be there unless nuclear weapons are entirely eliminated,

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Speaker 3: But even then they would there'd probably still be the

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Speaker 3: knowledge that they could be built again.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, this reminds me of one of Grant Morrison's creations

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Speaker 1: for the Doom Patrol comic book, the idea of the

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Speaker 1: candle Maker, this embodiment of all of our apprehension surrounding

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Speaker 1: nuclear annihilation that takes on this kind of godlike, really

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Speaker 1: almost kind of terrifying, Vishnu like appearance in the human psyche.

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Speaker 3: Is this the guy who's made of wax?

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Speaker 1: It is, and we'll have more to say about him

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Speaker 1: in a forthcoming October episode of Stuff to Blow Your mind.

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Speaker 3: Oh, that's right, it's almost October.

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Speaker 1: It is. But to come back to the part of

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Speaker 1: Oppenheimer's quote that is not part of the GETA, we

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Speaker 1: knew the world would not be the same, and that

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Speaker 1: that is true. It wasn't. It isn't, and you're probably

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Speaker 1: aware of most of the reasons why. But in today's episode,

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Speaker 1: we're going to look at some of the particular ways

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Speaker 1: that it was changed, particularly regarding you know, a few

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Speaker 1: environmental scenarios as well as the nature of steel.

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Speaker 3: Yes, So getting into these lesser known environmental effects, I

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Speaker 3: want to start with the fact that might seem extremely odd,

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Speaker 3: which I was reading about in an article published in

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Speaker 3: the journal Health Physics in two thousand and seven by

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Speaker 3: a health physicist named Timothy P. Lynch, and the articles

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Speaker 3: called a historically significant shield for in vivo measurements, And

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Speaker 3: the fact goes like this. In Richland, Washington, there is

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Speaker 3: a research facility called the in Vivo Radio bio Assay

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Speaker 3: and Research Facility. And within this facility there is a

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Speaker 3: special room that is surrounded on all sides by thick

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Speaker 3: plates of steel that was once part of a World

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Speaker 3: War Two era battleship called the USS Indiana. This was

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Speaker 3: a battleship that served in the war. It was launched

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Speaker 3: in nineteen forty one. It was in a number of

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Speaker 3: battles It served extensively in the Pacific theater during the war,

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Speaker 3: and then after it was decommissioned, they took steel out

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Speaker 3: of the ship to build this room. Why would anybody

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Speaker 3: do that?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, if you don't know the answer, it sounds a

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Speaker 1: bit mysterious, right all. It sounds like the kind of

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Speaker 1: thing Grant Morrison would make up where you're having to

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Speaker 1: engage in some sort of magical ritual involving steel from

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Speaker 1: old ships.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, it totally sounds like something magical, either

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Speaker 3: kind of magical or symbolic thinking of like, you know,

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Speaker 3: I'm gonna melt down the statue of the Golden Calf

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Speaker 3: for the false idol or king or whatever and turn

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Speaker 3: it into something holy.

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Speaker 1: I'm going to make a throne out of all the

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Speaker 1: swords of those who once opposed my rule.

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Speaker 3: Exactly. Yes, it is the iron throne. So this is

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Speaker 3: the iron throne of rooms. Now the room is again

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Speaker 3: an in vivo radio bioassay detector, and Lynch tells us

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Speaker 3: in the paper that quote the detection system is used

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Speaker 3: to monitor workers for intakes of fission and activation products.

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Speaker 3: So this means that it's used to check workers people

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Speaker 3: to see if they have ingested tiny radioactive particles known

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Speaker 3: as radionuclides. Radio nuclides consist of atoms that can decay

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Speaker 3: into different isotopes and emit radiation as they do so.

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Speaker 3: And if you take the into your body, say by

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Speaker 3: swallowing them or breathing them in, they can do this

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Speaker 3: inside your body and provide internal radiation sources which you

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Speaker 3: do not want. They can pose a serious health risk.

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Speaker 3: If enough of them accumulate in the body, a large

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Speaker 3: dose could cause acute radiation syndrome. Prolonged exposure to even

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Speaker 3: smaller doses over time could be a risk for damaging

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Speaker 3: DNA and causing cancer. This is to use one example

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Speaker 3: why you don't want to consume things that would come

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Speaker 3: from a radioactively contaminated area, you know, somewhere around a

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Speaker 3: nuclear meltdown. Why would you not want to, say, you know,

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Speaker 3: roll around in the dirt near Chernobyl or drink the

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Speaker 3: water there. It's because the environment is contaminated with radio nuclides,

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Speaker 3: these little particles that you don't want anywhere near your body.

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Speaker 3: You do not want them going inside you. So people

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Speaker 3: who get tested regularly in this room would include Department

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Speaker 3: of Energy workers. But Lynch also mentions that the room

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Speaker 3: has been used to test a helicopter pilot and some

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Speaker 3: other workers from Chernobyl, as well as children from Chernobyl

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Speaker 3: I guess who lived nearby, So this has been in

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Speaker 3: use for a long time and it's used to measure

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Speaker 3: the radiation coming from living people. So somebody walks into

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Speaker 3: the detector room, they get scanned for radio nuclides across

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Speaker 3: the length of the body by a counting system that

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Speaker 3: Lynch describes as comprised of five coaxial germanium detectors. And

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Speaker 3: because the level of radiation emitted by these radio nuclides

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Speaker 3: is usually very faint outside the body, you need an

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Speaker 3: extremely sensitive detector. And here you hit another problem, which

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Speaker 3: is interference from background levels of radiation coming from the

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Speaker 3: rest of the world. So you've got cosmic sources, atmospheric sources,

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Speaker 3: terrestrial sources. So in order to scan the body properly,

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Speaker 3: you need a room with extremely tight radiation shielding and

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Speaker 3: this is where the steel comes in. So the counting

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Speaker 3: chain here is surrounded by a thin layer of lead

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Speaker 3: and then cadmium and then copper. This is what's known

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Speaker 3: together as a graded Z shield. And then outside that

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Speaker 3: you have thirty solid centimeters of steel that's all pre

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Speaker 3: war battleship steel, and this keeps the background radiation within

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Speaker 3: the chamber within low minimum detectable activities. But the question remains, Okay,

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Speaker 3: so you need thirty centimeters of steel, but why couldn't

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Speaker 3: you just build your radiation shield out of any old steel, Like,

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Speaker 3: if regular steel is good enough for your car and

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Speaker 3: your appliances and your skyscrapers, why would you have to

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Speaker 3: harvest the flesh of a decommissioned battleship in order to

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Speaker 3: build this thick radiation shield.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Again, it's easy to sort of leap to magical conclusions.

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Speaker 1: It's kind of like, well, we live in a we

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Speaker 1: live in a sinful world. We have to build our

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Speaker 1: sacred vessel out of wood from the garden of Eden,

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Speaker 1: you know, you know, the atomic aid just so scarred

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Speaker 1: our world that we have to we have to find

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Speaker 1: artifacts from before that time.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it certainly does feel like that, but no, there

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Speaker 3: is actually a very good physical, scientific reason for this,

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Speaker 3: and maybe we should take a break and then get

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Speaker 3: back into it when we come back.

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Speaker 1: All right, we're back.

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Speaker 3: So we've been talking about the idea of a radiation

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Speaker 3: shielding around a very sensitive radiation detector room. And the

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Speaker 3: shielding was made out of steel that was harvested from

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Speaker 3: a decommissioned World War II battleship called the USS Indiana.

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Speaker 3: So the question is, why would you need to get

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Speaker 3: steel from a source like that, Why couldn't you just

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Speaker 3: use regular steel. Well, so let's look at how you

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Speaker 3: make steel. Steel is of course a mixture of iron

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Speaker 3: and carbon and sometimes other additives to create alloys with

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Speaker 3: special properties, and crucially for our purposes, the process for

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Speaker 3: making steel involves the incorporation of atmospheric gas. I was

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Speaker 3: reading about this in an article for Chemistry World by

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Speaker 3: Kit Chapman. I think it was also a podcast episode

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Speaker 3: of THEIRS talking about how there are two major industrial

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Speaker 3: processes for making steel in the modern world. One is

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Speaker 3: known as the Bessemer process, and this involves melting the

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Speaker 3: iron in a furnace and then removing impurities by blowing

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Speaker 3: air through the molten metal. The other is known as

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Speaker 3: the Bos process, and this is similar but it uses

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Speaker 3: pure oxygen instead of air, but that oxygen is still

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Speaker 3: extracted from the atmosphere, and so the problem is that

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Speaker 3: either way, the gas you're blowing through the molten iron

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Speaker 3: to make your steel comes from the atmosphere, from the air.

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Speaker 3: And ever since nuclear weapon tests began in nineteen forty five,

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Speaker 3: that has not exactly been regular air.

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Speaker 1: It is bomb air, yeah, the gasly truth of it is,

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Speaker 1: we find ourselves saying, oh, we need to use air

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Speaker 1: in this as like all that the air we breathe,

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Speaker 1: that's where we set off a whole lot of nuclear

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Speaker 1: weapons and therefore changed it.

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Speaker 3: That air is not good enough for our steel, for

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Speaker 3: the special steel, at least.

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Speaker 1: Just for our breathing and our food and our children

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Speaker 1: and so forth.

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Speaker 3: Now we'll get a bit more into the history of

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Speaker 3: the nuclear testing era in a second here, but in short,

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Speaker 3: there was a period of time in the middle of

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Speaker 3: the twentieth century when lots of nuclear weapons tests were

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Speaker 3: conducted around the world, and these tests seeded the atmosphere

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Speaker 3: with radioactive contamination. Now, the levels today are much lower

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Speaker 3: than they were, say in the mid nineteen sixties, when

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Speaker 3: these tests have been going on for a decade and

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Speaker 3: a half, But even today the air still contains some

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Speaker 3: radioactive isotopes such as cobalt sixty and others that is

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Speaker 3: left over from the hundreds of nuclear detonations that characterize

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Speaker 3: the post war period. Now this had many effects, of course,

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Speaker 3: the most important of which are probaly like the health

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Speaker 3: effects on humans and the effects on wildlife. But another

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Speaker 3: one of the effects is that for a long time

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Speaker 3: you couldn't make steel via normal processes without it being

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Speaker 3: potentially contaminated with radioactive particles. Not so many radioactive particles

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Speaker 3: that it would be unsafe for regular use, but enough

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Speaker 3: that it would be unsuitable if you were trying to

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Speaker 3: make a sensitive instrument. So if you needed to make

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Speaker 3: a Geiger counter or shielding for a sensitive radio bioassay chamber,

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Speaker 3: So what would you do. Well, it probably wasn't impossible

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Speaker 3: to make steel without environmental contaminants from nuclear tests, but

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Speaker 3: it would have been expensive and difficult. And another option

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Speaker 3: presented itself, which was harvesting steel made before the Trinity

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Speaker 3: test in nineteen forty five, and this precious material became

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Speaker 3: known in the industry as low background steel. Low background

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Speaker 3: because of its low background radiation, and what would be

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Speaker 3: a great source of huge quantities of pre bombed steel

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Speaker 3: old naval vessels. So, to come back to the Timothy

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Speaker 3: Lynch article about the radio bio assay facility in Richland,

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Speaker 3: the USS Indiana was again the battleship that was sourced

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Speaker 3: was the source here. It was decommissioned on September eleventh,

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Speaker 3: nineteen forty seven, and then sold for scrap after it

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Speaker 3: was taken off the navy list in June first, nineteen

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Speaker 3: sixty two. And as the ship was dismantled, some parts

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Speaker 3: were kept for ceremonial purposes, like the main mast and

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Speaker 3: a forty millimeter gun were put on display on the

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Speaker 3: campus of India University, Bloomington. And I know some of

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Speaker 3: its anchors were put on display at various museums and memorials.

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Speaker 3: You know, its compasses, wheels and all that went to

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Speaker 3: places where you can honor the fallen ships.

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Speaker 1: Wow, this really drives home this metaphor of the ship

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Speaker 1: is a fallen beast, like the warship is a thing

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Speaker 1: that once dead. You know that certain parts are kept

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Speaker 1: for like ceremonial purposes or display purposes, magical purposes, and

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Speaker 1: yet other things are harvested for the raw meter bone

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Speaker 1: of the.

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Speaker 3: Creature right, and the raw meter bone would be the steel.

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Speaker 3: Here the s made up the bulk of the ship

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Speaker 3: was put to low background uses. So in Indiana, VA

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Speaker 3: Hospital got sixty five tons of low background steel from

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Speaker 3: the Indiana and that was used for their own background

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Speaker 3: radiation counting facilities. But then lynch Write's quote. In addition

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Speaker 3: to the VA Hospital facility, several large sections of the hull,

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Speaker 3: weighing a total of two hundred and ten tons, were

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Speaker 3: also fabricated into a room. These applications were probably never

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Speaker 3: imagined by the original designers of the Indiana. These sections

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Speaker 3: of the hull are still being used for the original

399
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Speaker 3: purpose as a shield, but instead of protecting against artillery

400
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Speaker 3: shells and torpedoes, the new purpose is to shield radiation

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Speaker 3: detectors from the background radiations originating from cosmic, atmospheric, man

402
00:24:00,080 --> 00:24:03,680
Speaker 3: made and terrestrial sources. So what was once armour again

403
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Speaker 3: unitions is now armour against the entire universe and its

404
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Speaker 3: radioactive contents. The room was first constructed at the University

405
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Speaker 3: of Utah Medical Center in Salt Lake City, where it

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Speaker 3: was used for many years in radio biology research, and

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Speaker 3: then it was finally moved to the Richland facility in

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Speaker 3: nineteen eighty eight, and the Indiana was not the only

409
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Speaker 3: battleship that became a source of low background steel. So

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Speaker 3: after the Armistice in nineteen eighteen, at the conclusion of

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Speaker 3: World War One, the German High Seas Fleet was ordered

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Speaker 3: to report to an Allied base known as the Scapa Flow,

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Speaker 3: where the naval vessels were supposed to be handed over

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Speaker 3: to the British Royal Navy. But the German officers did

415
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Speaker 3: not like that. They had a different idea and they decided,

416
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Speaker 3: sort of as a kind of last middle finger to

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Speaker 3: the British, they scuttled their ships in the harbor. They

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Speaker 3: sank their own ships on purpose so that the British

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Speaker 3: couldn't have them. So now there are all those shipwrecks there.

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Speaker 3: In fact, the Scapa Flow is well known for its

421
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Speaker 3: World War One era shipwrecks and has been exploited extensively

422
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Speaker 3: as a source of low background steel. And though it's

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Speaker 3: not known for sure, I've read rumors, unconfirmed rumors that

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Speaker 3: some early spacecraft may have used low background steel from

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Speaker 3: the scap of Flow or other res in radiation detectors.

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Speaker 3: Interesting now I mentioned this earlier, but it's worth pointing

427
00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:26,320
Speaker 3: out again that the atmosphere is much less radioactive today

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Speaker 3: than it was at the height of nuclear testing in

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Speaker 3: the middle of the century. For example, cobalt sixty has

430
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Speaker 3: a half life of about five point three years, and

431
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Speaker 3: there has been a lot less nuclear testing since the

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Speaker 3: Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in nineteen sixty three, certainly

433
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Speaker 3: a lot less atmospheric testing. So the atmosphere should be

434
00:25:44,960 --> 00:25:50,320
Speaker 3: reduced to near pre war levels of background contamination within

435
00:25:50,359 --> 00:25:54,359
Speaker 3: a reasonable amount of time, but it took decades. So Robert,

436
00:25:54,400 --> 00:25:56,639
Speaker 3: when reading about this, I came across a comic strip

437
00:25:56,640 --> 00:25:59,680
Speaker 3: I thought you might like. It's one of the XKCD comics,

438
00:26:00,280 --> 00:26:02,600
Speaker 3: and in it they build a time machine. But it

439
00:26:02,640 --> 00:26:07,240
Speaker 3: turns out the time machine requires lead from sunken Roman warships,

440
00:26:07,960 --> 00:26:10,680
Speaker 3: and this is of course hard to come by, so

441
00:26:10,720 --> 00:26:13,840
Speaker 3: they determined they have enough lead for one trip into

442
00:26:13,880 --> 00:26:18,320
Speaker 3: the past, and in this way through time travel, Greek

443
00:26:18,440 --> 00:26:21,439
Speaker 3: Fire is born. It's kind of like the the You know,

444
00:26:21,560 --> 00:26:24,080
Speaker 3: if you could you only had one wish from a genie,

445
00:26:24,240 --> 00:26:26,200
Speaker 3: what do you do, well? You wish for more wishes?

446
00:26:26,440 --> 00:26:29,879
Speaker 1: Yeah, more wishes? Yeah. I love this little comic strip.

447
00:26:30,240 --> 00:26:32,399
Speaker 1: I had not seen it before you shared it with me.

448
00:26:32,760 --> 00:26:36,560
Speaker 1: But it's especially nice because I just started watching some

449
00:26:37,000 --> 00:26:40,040
Speaker 1: nineties episodes of The Outer Limits, and this is the

450
00:26:40,119 --> 00:26:43,800
Speaker 1: kind of sort of Outer limitsy sort of plot. Maybe

451
00:26:43,840 --> 00:26:46,240
Speaker 1: skewed a little bit for comedic purposes, but you know,

452
00:26:46,280 --> 00:26:49,600
Speaker 1: it's it's the kind of twist you expect in time

453
00:26:49,640 --> 00:26:50,960
Speaker 1: travel fiction. I like it.

454
00:26:51,320 --> 00:26:54,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, So if I wasn't totally clear and you didn't

455
00:26:54,400 --> 00:26:57,119
Speaker 3: get they travel back in time and use their future

456
00:26:57,160 --> 00:27:00,520
Speaker 3: weapons on Roman warships, and of course that was the

457
00:27:00,600 --> 00:27:01,560
Speaker 3: legend of Greek Fire.

458
00:27:01,960 --> 00:27:04,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, they take like a helicopter with a flamethrower back

459
00:27:04,520 --> 00:27:07,800
Speaker 1: in time and set to light the Roman ships.

460
00:27:08,080 --> 00:27:11,120
Speaker 3: Now, I guess we've made several references to this nuclear

461
00:27:11,160 --> 00:27:14,200
Speaker 3: testing age in the middle of the twentieth century. Of course,

462
00:27:14,359 --> 00:27:17,040
Speaker 3: this began in the nineteen forties. The first one was

463
00:27:17,080 --> 00:27:19,800
Speaker 3: again the Trinity Test by the United States in July

464
00:27:19,920 --> 00:27:24,360
Speaker 3: nineteen forty five. The Soviet Union first performed nuclear weapons

465
00:27:24,359 --> 00:27:28,840
Speaker 3: tests in nineteen forty nine. Tests took place all over

466
00:27:28,880 --> 00:27:32,159
Speaker 3: the place. They were in the upper atmosphere, underground, in

467
00:27:32,200 --> 00:27:36,000
Speaker 3: the ocean, and once several other The majority of the

468
00:27:36,040 --> 00:27:38,480
Speaker 3: tests were by the United States and the Soviet Union,

469
00:27:38,520 --> 00:27:41,160
Speaker 3: but several other countries eventually got involved, and there were

470
00:27:41,240 --> 00:27:43,840
Speaker 3: a lot of bomb tests in the end.

471
00:27:44,600 --> 00:27:47,879
Speaker 1: Yes, so you're probably wondering, well, just how many? So

472
00:27:48,160 --> 00:27:51,719
Speaker 1: I looked around for a good total on this. I

473
00:27:51,760 --> 00:27:54,640
Speaker 1: find that the estimates vary a little bit. I mean

474
00:27:54,640 --> 00:27:58,480
Speaker 1: not a lot. But according to Darryl Kimball, executive director

475
00:27:58,560 --> 00:28:01,040
Speaker 1: of the Arms Control Association, which is a great source

476
00:28:01,280 --> 00:28:04,439
Speaker 1: for the sort of information, this is what they had

477
00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:07,400
Speaker 1: to say in a July twenty twenty report. Quote. Since

478
00:28:07,440 --> 00:28:11,200
Speaker 1: the first nuclear test explosion on July sixteenth, nineteen forty five,

479
00:28:11,320 --> 00:28:15,000
Speaker 1: at least eight nations have detonated two thousand and fifty

480
00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:19,080
Speaker 1: six nuclear test explosions at dozens of test sites, including

481
00:28:19,160 --> 00:28:24,000
Speaker 1: Lopnor in China, the atolls of the Pacific, Nevada, Algeria,

482
00:28:24,080 --> 00:28:27,640
Speaker 1: where France conducted its first nuclear device, Western Australia, where

483
00:28:27,680 --> 00:28:33,160
Speaker 1: the UK exploded nuclear weapons, the South Atlantic Semipalitans in Kazakhstan,

484
00:28:33,400 --> 00:28:35,119
Speaker 1: across Russia, and elsewhere.

485
00:28:35,480 --> 00:28:39,440
Speaker 3: So that's over two thousand nuclear test explosions in total.

486
00:28:39,480 --> 00:28:43,160
Speaker 3: And if you're looking specifically at atmospheric tests alone, which

487
00:28:43,200 --> 00:28:46,960
Speaker 3: are often considered like the worst kind in terms of

488
00:28:47,000 --> 00:28:51,480
Speaker 3: proliferating contaminants into the atmosphere. Of course those would be

489
00:28:51,760 --> 00:28:55,240
Speaker 3: There were definitely more than five hundred atmospheric tests.

490
00:28:56,080 --> 00:28:58,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you start breaking down the numbers, the US

491
00:28:58,880 --> 00:29:02,320
Speaker 1: conducted most of these with let's see some two hundred

492
00:29:02,320 --> 00:29:06,040
Speaker 1: and fifteen atmospheric tests and eight hundred and fifteen underground tests.

493
00:29:06,520 --> 00:29:09,840
Speaker 1: The USSR slash Russia ranks second with two hundred and

494
00:29:09,920 --> 00:29:13,480
Speaker 1: nineteen atmospheric tests and four hundred and ninety six underground

495
00:29:13,480 --> 00:29:17,000
Speaker 1: test and the remaining ranking goes like this. You got

496
00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:20,560
Speaker 1: France than the UK and China. They're tied UK and

497
00:29:20,680 --> 00:29:23,640
Speaker 1: China with a total of forty five tests each. Then

498
00:29:23,640 --> 00:29:27,200
Speaker 1: you have North Korea, India and Pakistan. The United States

499
00:29:27,240 --> 00:29:30,080
Speaker 1: is of course responsible for the only wartime detonation of

500
00:29:30,160 --> 00:29:34,920
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons as in utilized as weapons against another people.

501
00:29:35,200 --> 00:29:39,040
Speaker 1: Two bombs deployed against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

502
00:29:39,200 --> 00:29:41,920
Speaker 1: killing between one hundred and twenty nine thousand and two

503
00:29:42,040 --> 00:29:46,640
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty six thousand people, mostly civilians. Needless to say,

504
00:29:46,680 --> 00:29:48,640
Speaker 1: those were both atmospheric detonations.

505
00:29:48,840 --> 00:29:51,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, and of course with each of these tests there

506
00:29:51,320 --> 00:29:55,360
Speaker 3: is going to be more radioactive contamination entering the atmosphere. Now,

507
00:29:55,400 --> 00:29:59,520
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty three, the Partial Nuclear Test Ban treaty

508
00:30:00,320 --> 00:30:04,960
Speaker 3: to ban tests in the atmosphere and underwater, so basically

509
00:30:04,960 --> 00:30:08,640
Speaker 3: it banned all except underground tests. It did not really

510
00:30:08,960 --> 00:30:13,240
Speaker 3: stop nuclear proliferation, but it did massively decrease the dispersal

511
00:30:13,240 --> 00:30:19,360
Speaker 3: of radionuclides into the atmosphere. Now, there's been another perhaps unexpected,

512
00:30:19,920 --> 00:30:24,040
Speaker 3: interesting environmental side effect of the nuclear testing age, which

513
00:30:24,080 --> 00:30:28,320
Speaker 3: is how it has affected atmospheric levels of carbon fourteen

514
00:30:29,040 --> 00:30:31,640
Speaker 3: and the way that this has turned into an unexpected

515
00:30:31,760 --> 00:30:34,680
Speaker 3: number of scientific tools that can be used to study

516
00:30:34,680 --> 00:30:38,720
Speaker 3: the natural world. So, in nature, carbon fourteen is a

517
00:30:38,800 --> 00:30:43,080
Speaker 3: radioactive isotope of carbon that is generated in Earth's atmosphere

518
00:30:43,800 --> 00:30:45,840
Speaker 3: every minute of every day. The Earth is of course

519
00:30:45,920 --> 00:30:49,880
Speaker 3: bombarded by cosmic rays, and cosmic rays are charged particles,

520
00:30:49,960 --> 00:30:54,000
Speaker 3: usually protons and atomic nuclei, which are emitted from high

521
00:30:54,160 --> 00:30:57,600
Speaker 3: energy sources, including the Sun, but also places far away,

522
00:30:58,040 --> 00:31:01,440
Speaker 3: usually traveling near the speed of light. And when one

523
00:31:01,480 --> 00:31:04,840
Speaker 3: of these high energy particles enters the atmosphere, it sometimes

524
00:31:04,880 --> 00:31:09,600
Speaker 3: strikes atoms to generate free neutrons, and a free neutron

525
00:31:09,680 --> 00:31:13,960
Speaker 3: then combines with a regular atom of nitrogen fourteen to

526
00:31:14,040 --> 00:31:17,960
Speaker 3: produce an atom of carbon fourteen, and this carbon fourteen

527
00:31:18,120 --> 00:31:22,000
Speaker 3: then pairs up with oxygen to create carbon fourteen CO two,

528
00:31:22,640 --> 00:31:25,240
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of carbon fourteen in the atmosphere

529
00:31:25,280 --> 00:31:28,520
Speaker 3: is just produced at a steady rate naturally as the

530
00:31:28,520 --> 00:31:32,160
Speaker 3: cosmic rays are coming in, and this carbon fourteen CO

531
00:31:32,360 --> 00:31:38,040
Speaker 3: two gets into everything that ingests atmospheric carbon. So plants

532
00:31:38,280 --> 00:31:41,080
Speaker 3: suck in CO two with a predictable amount of carbon

533
00:31:41,120 --> 00:31:44,720
Speaker 3: fourteen and they use that carbon to make their bodies,

534
00:31:45,200 --> 00:31:47,520
Speaker 3: and then the trees and the grass and the corn

535
00:31:47,600 --> 00:31:50,200
Speaker 3: are all made out of carbon content that is retrieved

536
00:31:50,200 --> 00:31:52,640
Speaker 3: from the air and has a certain amount of carbon

537
00:31:52,640 --> 00:31:55,680
Speaker 3: fourteen in it. So if you do a molecular analysis

538
00:31:55,760 --> 00:31:58,480
Speaker 3: of a plant, you will have a certain proportion of

539
00:31:58,520 --> 00:32:02,240
Speaker 3: carbon fourteen in there, because cause the atmosphere does, about

540
00:32:02,280 --> 00:32:05,479
Speaker 3: one out of every trillion carbon atoms is a carbon

541
00:32:05,520 --> 00:32:08,880
Speaker 3: fourteen atom. But of course it doesn't stop at plants,

542
00:32:08,960 --> 00:32:13,200
Speaker 3: because we also exist in a carbon fourteen generating atmosphere.

543
00:32:13,240 --> 00:32:16,040
Speaker 3: You know, all the chemistry on Earth is sort of interconnected.

544
00:32:16,400 --> 00:32:20,239
Speaker 3: So we eat those plants, and we eat animals that

545
00:32:20,280 --> 00:32:23,760
Speaker 3: eat those plants, so our bodies also have a predictable

546
00:32:23,760 --> 00:32:27,360
Speaker 3: amount of carbon fourteen content. And as I said earlier,

547
00:32:27,400 --> 00:32:30,520
Speaker 3: carbon fourteen is radioactive, which is another way of saying

548
00:32:30,560 --> 00:32:34,160
Speaker 3: it's unstable. It has a known half life, so we

549
00:32:34,320 --> 00:32:37,880
Speaker 3: know that it decays into other isotopes at a regular,

550
00:32:38,080 --> 00:32:42,200
Speaker 3: predictable rate. So if you die and you stop breathing

551
00:32:42,280 --> 00:32:45,440
Speaker 3: and stop eating, the amount of carbon fourteen in your

552
00:32:45,480 --> 00:32:50,080
Speaker 3: body will steadily decrease over the years. And what scientists

553
00:32:50,080 --> 00:32:52,520
Speaker 3: figured out in the twentieth century was that you could

554
00:32:52,600 --> 00:32:56,520
Speaker 3: use the amount of carbon fourteen in a formerly living

555
00:32:56,560 --> 00:33:00,600
Speaker 3: object or an object formerly incorporating a known percentage of

556
00:33:00,680 --> 00:33:04,680
Speaker 3: atmospheric carbon, to see approximately how long it had been

557
00:33:04,760 --> 00:33:08,360
Speaker 3: since that organism stopped ingesting carbon from the environment, in

558
00:33:08,400 --> 00:33:12,280
Speaker 3: other words, when it died. And this has been amazingly

559
00:33:12,440 --> 00:33:16,040
Speaker 3: useful to the historical sciences. This has created the era

560
00:33:16,160 --> 00:33:21,040
Speaker 3: of carbon fourteen dating. It's been enormously useful to archaeologists

561
00:33:21,080 --> 00:33:23,720
Speaker 3: and all kinds of other scientists to analyze and date

562
00:33:23,920 --> 00:33:29,800
Speaker 3: organisms and substances from the past. But nuclear testing, beginning

563
00:33:29,800 --> 00:33:32,560
Speaker 3: in the nineteen forties and especially since the nineteen fifties,

564
00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:36,320
Speaker 3: has introduced new wrinkles into this. It has introduced new

565
00:33:36,440 --> 00:33:40,680
Speaker 3: layers of radiocarbon science, both some complications to the existing

566
00:33:40,800 --> 00:33:45,400
Speaker 3: radiocarbon science and new tools that scientists couldn't have predicted

567
00:33:45,440 --> 00:33:48,400
Speaker 3: at first that they would have. And so next, I

568
00:33:48,480 --> 00:33:50,640
Speaker 3: just wanted to talk a bit about a really, really

569
00:33:50,680 --> 00:33:54,800
Speaker 3: excellent article in The Atlantic by Carl Zimmer. Can we

570
00:33:54,840 --> 00:33:56,800
Speaker 3: say friend of the show? Carl Zimmer? He's a former

571
00:33:56,840 --> 00:33:58,240
Speaker 3: guest of the show, Carl Zimmer.

572
00:33:59,120 --> 00:34:01,640
Speaker 1: Well, let's see, we laid out specific rules for this

573
00:34:01,680 --> 00:34:04,160
Speaker 1: in the past, right if you're on the show once,

574
00:34:04,400 --> 00:34:08,400
Speaker 1: you're a former guest or a previous guest of the show. Okay,

575
00:34:08,400 --> 00:34:09,920
Speaker 1: I think you have to be on two times to

576
00:34:09,920 --> 00:34:11,440
Speaker 1: be a friend of the show, or is it three times?

577
00:34:11,480 --> 00:34:13,400
Speaker 1: I can't remember how that status.

578
00:34:13,040 --> 00:34:15,960
Speaker 3: Side delar, we break. We've been the rules all the time.

579
00:34:16,960 --> 00:34:20,120
Speaker 3: Carl's one of my favorite science writers. He wrote an

580
00:34:20,160 --> 00:34:22,360
Speaker 3: excellent book called She Has Her Mother's Laugh that we

581
00:34:22,360 --> 00:34:25,879
Speaker 3: talked about on the show. And this article is just fantastic.

582
00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:29,200
Speaker 3: But it's called nuclear Tests Marked Life on Earth with

583
00:34:29,280 --> 00:34:32,840
Speaker 3: a radioactive Spike, And this article, of course is worth

584
00:34:32,880 --> 00:34:35,279
Speaker 3: reading on its own. But I wanted to talk about

585
00:34:35,320 --> 00:34:38,640
Speaker 3: a few things that Carl gets into here about some

586
00:34:38,719 --> 00:34:42,799
Speaker 3: of the environmental effects of nuclear testing, specifically relating to

587
00:34:42,800 --> 00:34:43,640
Speaker 3: carbon fourteen.

588
00:34:44,080 --> 00:34:47,600
Speaker 1: So Carl Zimmer, in addition to having been a wonderful

589
00:34:47,680 --> 00:34:51,000
Speaker 1: and just cheerful guest of the show, is just a

590
00:34:51,440 --> 00:34:54,400
Speaker 1: wonderful writer. As always. I want to read just a

591
00:34:54,400 --> 00:34:57,560
Speaker 1: little bit from this article here to set the stage. Quote.

592
00:34:57,800 --> 00:35:01,480
Speaker 1: Carbon fourteen, produced by hydrogen bombs spread over the entire world.

593
00:35:01,640 --> 00:35:04,839
Speaker 1: It worked itself into the atmosphere, the oceans, and practically

594
00:35:04,880 --> 00:35:09,120
Speaker 1: every living thing. As it spread, it exposed secrets. It

595
00:35:09,160 --> 00:35:12,040
Speaker 1: can reveal when we were born. It tracks hidden changes

596
00:35:12,080 --> 00:35:14,760
Speaker 1: to our hearts and brains. It lights up the cryptic

597
00:35:14,840 --> 00:35:18,240
Speaker 1: channels that join the entire biosphere into a single network

598
00:35:18,280 --> 00:35:22,000
Speaker 1: of chemical flux. This man made burst of carbon fourteen

599
00:35:22,040 --> 00:35:24,680
Speaker 1: has been such a revelation that scientists referred to it

600
00:35:24,719 --> 00:35:28,319
Speaker 1: as quote the bomb spike. Only now is the bomb

601
00:35:28,400 --> 00:35:31,840
Speaker 1: spike close to disappearing, But as it vanishes, scientists have

602
00:35:31,840 --> 00:35:34,560
Speaker 1: found a new use for it to track global warming,

603
00:35:34,840 --> 00:35:37,640
Speaker 1: the next self inflicted threat to our survival.

604
00:35:37,840 --> 00:35:39,640
Speaker 3: The part of this that sticks with me the most

605
00:35:39,760 --> 00:35:44,000
Speaker 3: is where he talks about how looking at carbon fourteen

606
00:35:44,040 --> 00:35:48,080
Speaker 3: in the way it penetrates the whole biosphere. Really, it's

607
00:35:48,120 --> 00:35:51,000
Speaker 3: one of those you know, like the brain lights up

608
00:35:51,040 --> 00:35:54,680
Speaker 3: with the sudden realization that, to use a sort of

609
00:35:54,920 --> 00:35:59,760
Speaker 3: stoner cliche, everything's connected. But it really is, like literally

610
00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:03,120
Speaker 3: an scientific way is there is a single sort of

611
00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:07,760
Speaker 3: chemical flux that takes place all throughout this planet.

612
00:36:08,120 --> 00:36:11,520
Speaker 1: Yeah. I keep coming back to this, this basic like this,

613
00:36:11,520 --> 00:36:14,880
Speaker 1: this this sort of you know, arguably hippie notion, this

614
00:36:14,920 --> 00:36:17,840
Speaker 1: everything's connected, We're all one world, one people, et cetera,

615
00:36:18,040 --> 00:36:19,840
Speaker 1: which I know is something that everyone has heard so

616
00:36:19,880 --> 00:36:22,359
Speaker 1: many times that even if you believe in it wholeheartedly,

617
00:36:22,440 --> 00:36:27,200
Speaker 1: it can it can sound a little limp, you know,

618
00:36:27,280 --> 00:36:30,400
Speaker 1: in your ears. And yet like that's I mean, that

619
00:36:30,560 --> 00:36:33,120
Speaker 1: is the reality that drives through in all of this science,

620
00:36:33,120 --> 00:36:37,000
Speaker 1: and it stands in such harsh contrast to the way

621
00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:43,600
Speaker 1: certain individuals in like the political and the military sphere

622
00:36:43,880 --> 00:36:47,560
Speaker 1: view nuclear weapons. The idea that like, you know, certainly

623
00:36:47,560 --> 00:36:49,520
Speaker 1: we can say a head of state using a nuclear

624
00:36:49,560 --> 00:36:52,319
Speaker 1: weapon against a city within their own nation, that would

625
00:36:52,360 --> 00:36:55,560
Speaker 1: be that would be ridiculous, that would be monstrous. But

626
00:36:56,040 --> 00:36:59,120
Speaker 1: it's but but then those you know, people will say, oh,

627
00:36:59,160 --> 00:37:01,719
Speaker 1: but do you use it again to another nation and

628
00:37:01,760 --> 00:37:04,319
Speaker 1: other people that's less monstrous. But no, no, it's all

629
00:37:04,360 --> 00:37:09,319
Speaker 1: interconnected in a scientifically verifiable way. I mean, it's one

630
00:37:09,360 --> 00:37:14,640
Speaker 1: atmosphere at the very base level, without getting into some

631
00:37:14,680 --> 00:37:18,040
Speaker 1: of the other issues we're going to explore, and just

632
00:37:18,120 --> 00:37:20,720
Speaker 1: the basic ethical framework of the choice.

633
00:37:20,920 --> 00:37:23,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it makes me think of that commonly

634
00:37:23,200 --> 00:37:26,480
Speaker 3: sided thing about astronauts very often, you know, seeing the

635
00:37:26,520 --> 00:37:29,120
Speaker 3: Earth from space and then suddenly feeling more of a

636
00:37:29,200 --> 00:37:33,120
Speaker 3: kinship with all of humankind and not feeling nearly as much,

637
00:37:34,400 --> 00:37:38,000
Speaker 3: not feeling the reality of national borders and things like

638
00:37:38,040 --> 00:37:42,680
Speaker 3: that nearly as much anymore. It's funny how easily those

639
00:37:42,760 --> 00:37:45,760
Speaker 3: illusions can be dissolved just by sort of a single

640
00:37:45,880 --> 00:37:50,720
Speaker 3: visual impression or a single realization about, say, how chemistry works,

641
00:37:51,160 --> 00:37:54,080
Speaker 3: that you're suddenly like, oh, wait a minute, you know,

642
00:37:54,120 --> 00:37:57,080
Speaker 3: there's just sort of earth life, and we really need

643
00:37:57,120 --> 00:37:59,919
Speaker 3: to make this work and not create problems that aren't

644
00:38:00,040 --> 00:38:01,120
Speaker 3: necessary to begin with.

645
00:38:01,520 --> 00:38:04,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, those lines on those maps, they really do nothing

646
00:38:04,480 --> 00:38:10,239
Speaker 1: against radioactive particles and certainly concepts such as nuclear fallout

647
00:38:12,120 --> 00:38:13,320
Speaker 1: or a climate change.

648
00:38:13,520 --> 00:38:16,239
Speaker 3: So going into Carl Zimmer's article, as I said, it's

649
00:38:16,239 --> 00:38:18,960
Speaker 3: worth reading the article in full. It's really fantastic. He

650
00:38:19,000 --> 00:38:21,480
Speaker 3: begins by telling the story of the castle Bravo test

651
00:38:21,520 --> 00:38:26,359
Speaker 3: in nineteen fifty four, which is both awe inspiring and

652
00:38:26,480 --> 00:38:30,839
Speaker 3: horrifying and heartbreaking. But later on, when he's getting into

653
00:38:30,880 --> 00:38:35,080
Speaker 3: the scientific history of carbon fourteen, he talks about the

654
00:38:35,160 --> 00:38:38,640
Speaker 3: Chicago physicist Willard Libby, who is a Nobel Prize winning

655
00:38:38,920 --> 00:38:40,759
Speaker 3: or did I say physicist, I think he would be

656
00:38:40,840 --> 00:38:44,400
Speaker 3: called a physical chemist. He was somebody who studied radioactive

657
00:38:44,440 --> 00:38:47,840
Speaker 3: elements and was one of the major developers of carbon

658
00:38:47,880 --> 00:38:50,880
Speaker 3: fourteen dating. And one of the really interesting things that

659
00:38:50,960 --> 00:38:55,080
Speaker 3: Libby does is that Libby ends up comparing measurements of

660
00:38:55,239 --> 00:39:00,439
Speaker 3: methane from say living current sources. Say methane comeing off

661
00:39:00,480 --> 00:39:03,000
Speaker 3: of a sewage plant, so this is going to be

662
00:39:03,080 --> 00:39:07,200
Speaker 3: sewage from things that are currently alive, versus methane coming

663
00:39:07,280 --> 00:39:11,040
Speaker 3: off of fossil fuels like oil that has been there

664
00:39:11,040 --> 00:39:14,480
Speaker 3: for millions of years. And what he showed was that, say,

665
00:39:14,520 --> 00:39:18,920
Speaker 3: the methane coming off of the excrita produced by living

666
00:39:19,000 --> 00:39:24,279
Speaker 3: humans is something close to about the atmospheric level. Meanwhile,

667
00:39:24,480 --> 00:39:28,319
Speaker 3: what's coming the methane coming off of fossil fuels, coming

668
00:39:28,320 --> 00:39:30,839
Speaker 3: off of say oil that's been there for millions of years,

669
00:39:30,840 --> 00:39:34,200
Speaker 3: has essentially no carbon fourteen in it right, because it's

670
00:39:34,239 --> 00:39:36,640
Speaker 3: been there for so long that all of the radioactive

671
00:39:36,640 --> 00:39:39,920
Speaker 3: isotopes of carbon have decayed, so it's just got regular

672
00:39:39,960 --> 00:39:42,480
Speaker 3: carbon in it. And there was some other really interesting

673
00:39:42,800 --> 00:39:45,120
Speaker 3: experiments too, but one of the things I wanted to

674
00:39:45,120 --> 00:39:49,279
Speaker 3: focus on was Carl's profiling of the New Zealand physicist

675
00:39:49,640 --> 00:39:53,880
Speaker 3: Ethyl Rafter. So Rafter was picking up on Libby's research

676
00:39:53,920 --> 00:39:57,040
Speaker 3: and he was interested in radiocarbon dating. In its early days,

677
00:39:57,040 --> 00:39:59,960
Speaker 3: he used it to test the bones of extinct birds

678
00:40:00,239 --> 00:40:03,480
Speaker 3: and ancient volcanic eruptions. But he also tried to help

679
00:40:03,600 --> 00:40:07,200
Speaker 3: refine the technique itself by performing measurements of the radio

680
00:40:07,280 --> 00:40:09,480
Speaker 3: carbon in the atmosphere. And he would do this by

681
00:40:09,880 --> 00:40:12,400
Speaker 3: setting out a tray of lye on top of it

682
00:40:12,640 --> 00:40:15,879
Speaker 3: on a hilltop, and the lye would capture CO two

683
00:40:15,920 --> 00:40:18,200
Speaker 3: from the air, and then he would measure the atmospheric

684
00:40:18,320 --> 00:40:21,480
Speaker 3: levels of carbon fourteen or the ratio. Of course, whenever

685
00:40:21,480 --> 00:40:23,799
Speaker 3: we're talking about the levels of carbon fourteen, we're talking

686
00:40:23,800 --> 00:40:27,040
Speaker 3: about the ratio of carbon fourteen to regular carbon. And

687
00:40:27,080 --> 00:40:29,200
Speaker 3: so Rafter would have been doing his research in the

688
00:40:29,280 --> 00:40:32,640
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties and what he expected was that levels of

689
00:40:32,760 --> 00:40:35,360
Speaker 3: radio carbon in the atmosphere would sort of bounce up

690
00:40:35,400 --> 00:40:38,160
Speaker 3: and down, there'd just be sort of a natural fluctuation

691
00:40:38,360 --> 00:40:43,280
Speaker 3: around a baseline. But instead he found an extremely steady trend.

692
00:40:43,760 --> 00:40:47,520
Speaker 3: The level of carbon fourteen was just continually going up.

693
00:40:47,960 --> 00:40:50,360
Speaker 3: And what was the reason. Well, it was the nineteen fifties,

694
00:40:50,600 --> 00:40:54,320
Speaker 3: So to quote from the article, the Castle Bravo test

695
00:40:54,360 --> 00:40:56,800
Speaker 3: and the ones that followed had to be the source.

696
00:40:57,239 --> 00:41:01,560
Speaker 3: They were turning the atmosphere upside down. Instead of cosmic

697
00:41:01,680 --> 00:41:06,080
Speaker 3: rays falling from space, they were sending neutrons up to

698
00:41:06,320 --> 00:41:10,719
Speaker 3: the sky, creating a huge new supply of radiocarbon. In

699
00:41:10,800 --> 00:41:14,760
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty seven, Rafter published as results in the journal Science.

700
00:41:15,120 --> 00:41:19,800
Speaker 3: The implications were immediately clear and astonishing. Man made carbon

701
00:41:19,840 --> 00:41:23,279
Speaker 3: fourteen was spreading across the planet from test sites in

702
00:41:23,320 --> 00:41:26,279
Speaker 3: the Pacific and the Arctic. It was even passing from

703
00:41:26,320 --> 00:41:30,640
Speaker 3: the air into the oceans and trees. And when they checked,

704
00:41:30,680 --> 00:41:34,960
Speaker 3: they found increasing levels of radiocarbon in everything, in tree

705
00:41:35,040 --> 00:41:39,400
Speaker 3: rings in Texas, in snails in Holland, in the lungs

706
00:41:39,400 --> 00:41:42,440
Speaker 3: of recently deceased people from New York, even in the

707
00:41:42,480 --> 00:41:47,279
Speaker 3: blood of living people. There's just extra carbon fourteen in everything.

708
00:41:47,840 --> 00:41:51,920
Speaker 3: And as bomb radiocarbon. So the bomb radiocarbon would be

709
00:41:52,440 --> 00:41:55,279
Speaker 3: would be up in the upper atmosphere, and as it

710
00:41:55,400 --> 00:41:58,759
Speaker 3: settles back down to Earth, it becomes a sort of

711
00:41:58,960 --> 00:42:03,640
Speaker 3: tracerle that can be used as a scientific tool. So

712
00:42:04,120 --> 00:42:08,319
Speaker 3: Carl quotes from somebody named Steve Beauprey, who's an oceanographer

713
00:42:08,320 --> 00:42:12,560
Speaker 3: at Stonybrook University, and he's quoted in the article saying

714
00:42:12,560 --> 00:42:17,120
Speaker 3: that carbon fourteen is inextricably linked to our understanding of

715
00:42:17,200 --> 00:42:21,280
Speaker 3: how water moves. So I thought this was so interesting.

716
00:42:21,320 --> 00:42:24,360
Speaker 3: So in the nineteen seventies, oceanographers found that there was

717
00:42:24,440 --> 00:42:29,000
Speaker 3: bomb radiocarbon that was distributed throughout the top one thousand

718
00:42:29,080 --> 00:42:32,080
Speaker 3: meters of the ocean's water column. So if you go

719
00:42:32,120 --> 00:42:35,839
Speaker 3: down one thousand meters, you're going to find atmospheric radiocarbon

720
00:42:35,880 --> 00:42:38,560
Speaker 3: the elevated levels that you'd get from a bomb. But

721
00:42:38,600 --> 00:42:41,040
Speaker 3: then if you go down below that suddenly not so

722
00:42:41,160 --> 00:42:44,120
Speaker 3: much anymore. And this became a really important piece of

723
00:42:44,160 --> 00:42:47,760
Speaker 3: evidence in estimating the or in establishing that the ocean,

724
00:42:47,960 --> 00:42:51,920
Speaker 3: like the atmosphere, had layers, and that water was primarily

725
00:42:51,960 --> 00:42:57,280
Speaker 3: circulated within rather than between these layers. Carl writes, quote

726
00:42:57,400 --> 00:43:00,239
Speaker 3: the warm relatively fresh water on the surface of the

727
00:43:00,280 --> 00:43:04,880
Speaker 3: ocean glides over the cold, salty depths. These surface currents

728
00:43:04,880 --> 00:43:08,600
Speaker 3: become saltier as they evaporate, and eventually, at a few

729
00:43:08,640 --> 00:43:12,080
Speaker 3: crucial spots on the planet, these streams get so dense

730
00:43:12,160 --> 00:43:14,440
Speaker 3: that they fall to the bottom of the ocean. The

731
00:43:14,480 --> 00:43:18,759
Speaker 3: bomb radiocarbon from Castle Bravo didn't start plunging down into

732
00:43:18,800 --> 00:43:22,400
Speaker 3: the depths of the North Atlantic until the nineteen eighties,

733
00:43:22,840 --> 00:43:25,680
Speaker 3: when John Clark this character from the Castle Bravo test

734
00:43:25,800 --> 00:43:29,480
Speaker 3: was two decades into retirement. It's still down there where

735
00:43:29,480 --> 00:43:32,240
Speaker 3: it will be carried along the seafloor by bottom hugging

736
00:43:32,280 --> 00:43:36,040
Speaker 3: ocean currents for hundreds of years before it rises to

737
00:43:36,080 --> 00:43:39,359
Speaker 3: the light of day. And he points out also that

738
00:43:39,400 --> 00:43:42,840
Speaker 3: lots of ocean life bears the seal of the bomb spike. Again,

739
00:43:42,920 --> 00:43:45,919
Speaker 3: this is from atmospheric tests, so this is not even

740
00:43:46,040 --> 00:43:50,120
Speaker 3: underwater test. This is atmospheric tests coming down into the ocean.

741
00:43:50,680 --> 00:43:55,080
Speaker 3: Bomb radiocarbon falls into the ocean. It infiltrates everything from

742
00:43:55,200 --> 00:43:59,240
Speaker 3: algae to the rings of calcium carbonate within coral growth,

743
00:43:59,840 --> 00:44:04,560
Speaker 3: and then it forms this kind of slime so quote.

744
00:44:04,719 --> 00:44:07,320
Speaker 3: The living things in the upper reaches of the ocean

745
00:44:07,400 --> 00:44:11,719
Speaker 3: release organic carbon that falls gently to the seafloor, a

746
00:44:11,880 --> 00:44:17,919
Speaker 3: jumble of protoplasmic goo, dolphin droppings, starfish eggs, and all

747
00:44:17,960 --> 00:44:23,120
Speaker 3: manner of detritus that scientists call marine snow. In recent decades,

748
00:44:23,280 --> 00:44:27,880
Speaker 3: that marine snow has become more radioactive. In the article,

749
00:44:27,880 --> 00:44:31,360
Speaker 3: he also profiles a researcher named Mary Gaylord who works

750
00:44:31,400 --> 00:44:36,120
Speaker 3: at the National Ocean Science's Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Facility, which

751
00:44:36,160 --> 00:44:39,080
Speaker 3: is known as no SAMs for short, and that's at

752
00:44:39,120 --> 00:44:42,160
Speaker 3: the woods Hull, which is where Hooper comes from in Jaws,

753
00:44:42,680 --> 00:44:46,600
Speaker 3: Oh huh. And she measures radiocarbon and everything from bat

754
00:44:46,680 --> 00:44:49,200
Speaker 3: guano to fish eyes. There's a lot about fish eyes

755
00:44:49,239 --> 00:44:52,040
Speaker 3: in this article, which is more interesting than you'd think

756
00:44:52,360 --> 00:44:57,040
Speaker 3: because surprisingly the study of radiocarbon and fish eye lenses

757
00:44:57,120 --> 00:44:59,640
Speaker 3: can tell us a lot like the cores of fish

758
00:44:59,680 --> 00:45:03,320
Speaker 3: eye land lenses have the same levels of carbon fourteen

759
00:45:03,520 --> 00:45:06,239
Speaker 3: as the fish did when they were still egg So

760
00:45:06,239 --> 00:45:08,800
Speaker 3: it's a really good age indicator. And this knowledge was

761
00:45:08,880 --> 00:45:12,359
Speaker 3: used by Danish researchers in twenty sixteen to create an

762
00:45:12,400 --> 00:45:17,520
Speaker 3: aging metric for these cold bottom dwelling animals, the greenland sharks,

763
00:45:17,920 --> 00:45:20,000
Speaker 3: which you might have read about them because they grow

764
00:45:20,080 --> 00:45:23,160
Speaker 3: so old. This helped confirm the discovery that these animals

765
00:45:23,200 --> 00:45:26,319
Speaker 3: could live to be almost four hundred years old. So

766
00:45:26,400 --> 00:45:29,680
Speaker 3: a lot of these are pre bomb sharks. And actually

767
00:45:29,719 --> 00:45:32,359
Speaker 3: this also applies to humans. People born in the early

768
00:45:32,440 --> 00:45:35,879
Speaker 3: nineteen sixties have more radiocarbon in the lenses in their

769
00:45:35,920 --> 00:45:39,360
Speaker 3: eyes than people born before the nuclear testing age, and

770
00:45:39,400 --> 00:45:42,200
Speaker 3: people born in the years since then have less and

771
00:45:42,320 --> 00:45:46,160
Speaker 3: less as time passes since the Partial Test Ban Treaty.

772
00:45:46,719 --> 00:45:49,480
Speaker 3: Bomb radiocarbon can also be used to date human teeth.

773
00:45:49,920 --> 00:45:52,440
Speaker 3: But there's a very sobering fact that's discussed at the

774
00:45:52,520 --> 00:45:55,080
Speaker 3: end of Zimmer's article, which is that the proportion of

775
00:45:55,120 --> 00:45:59,439
Speaker 3: carbon fourteen currently in the atmosphere is actually a bit

776
00:45:59,640 --> 00:46:03,160
Speaker 3: lower than would be predicted by the known nuclear tests

777
00:46:03,200 --> 00:46:05,680
Speaker 3: and the known rate of decay and absorption by the

778
00:46:05,719 --> 00:46:09,560
Speaker 3: Earth and seas. So what makes the difference, Like why

779
00:46:09,640 --> 00:46:12,759
Speaker 3: is there less carbon fourteen than we think there should be?

780
00:46:13,400 --> 00:46:15,319
Speaker 3: And it turns out there's an answer to that. The

781
00:46:15,360 --> 00:46:18,759
Speaker 3: answer is fossil fuels. Remember how I mentioned earlier that

782
00:46:18,800 --> 00:46:22,480
Speaker 3: the methane coming off of oil had basically no carbon

783
00:46:22,520 --> 00:46:24,960
Speaker 3: fourteen in it because the oil is so old. All

784
00:46:25,000 --> 00:46:29,000
Speaker 3: of the carbon fourteen has already decayed. It's gone. So

785
00:46:29,360 --> 00:46:34,160
Speaker 3: as we release carbon from these ancient carbon sources into

786
00:46:34,200 --> 00:46:37,840
Speaker 3: the atmosphere, we're putting a much higher percentage than normal

787
00:46:38,160 --> 00:46:41,720
Speaker 3: of regular carbon up there, which actually dilutes what carbon

788
00:46:41,800 --> 00:46:46,479
Speaker 3: fourteen there is. Carlzember points out that in nineteen fifty four,

789
00:46:46,520 --> 00:46:49,280
Speaker 3: which was the year of the Castle Bravo test, humans

790
00:46:49,280 --> 00:46:54,160
Speaker 3: emitted six billion tons of carbon dioxide that year. Quote,

791
00:46:54,239 --> 00:46:59,440
Speaker 3: in twenty eighteen, humans emitted about thirty seven billion tons,

792
00:47:00,440 --> 00:47:03,880
Speaker 3: which is more than six times more as Willard Libby

793
00:47:03,920 --> 00:47:07,839
Speaker 3: first discovered. This fossil fuel has no radiocarbon left. By

794
00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:11,000
Speaker 3: burning it, we are lowering the level of radiocarbon in

795
00:47:11,040 --> 00:47:15,360
Speaker 3: the atmosphere like a bartender watering down the top shelf liquor,

796
00:47:15,760 --> 00:47:19,959
Speaker 3: which is so strange. So the remaining signature of humanity's

797
00:47:20,000 --> 00:47:24,680
Speaker 3: first great sort of civilization level threat technology is being

798
00:47:24,719 --> 00:47:27,799
Speaker 3: diluted by the ever increasing mark of our other one,

799
00:47:28,040 --> 00:47:30,880
Speaker 3: by the second one. Wow, all right, I guess we

800
00:47:30,960 --> 00:47:32,640
Speaker 3: need to take a quick break, but we'll be right

801
00:47:32,680 --> 00:47:33,279
Speaker 3: back with more.

802
00:47:36,640 --> 00:47:40,440
Speaker 1: So I have another example of a specific resulting scientific

803
00:47:40,440 --> 00:47:43,759
Speaker 1: discovery from a nuclear test that I ran across and

804
00:47:43,800 --> 00:47:50,000
Speaker 1: it concerns the test known as Starfish Prime. So this

805
00:47:50,280 --> 00:47:55,040
Speaker 1: was a one point for megaton thermonuclear device launched two

806
00:47:55,080 --> 00:47:57,400
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty miles or four hundred kilometers into the

807
00:47:57,400 --> 00:48:01,160
Speaker 1: sky near Johnston A Tall. So it is the largest

808
00:48:01,200 --> 00:48:06,000
Speaker 1: outer space nuclear detonation ever committed. It occurred around eleven

809
00:48:06,080 --> 00:48:11,680
Speaker 1: pm local time, this would be in that region, and

810
00:48:11,760 --> 00:48:15,000
Speaker 1: the thermonuclear sphere burned like a new sun in the

811
00:48:15,080 --> 00:48:17,680
Speaker 1: night sky. And if you look up Starfish Prime online

812
00:48:17,800 --> 00:48:21,360
Speaker 1: you can see photos that were taken from Honolulu, Hawaii

813
00:48:21,680 --> 00:48:24,400
Speaker 1: at the time, and it does look like a sun

814
00:48:24,640 --> 00:48:29,360
Speaker 1: in the sky. Wow. Afterwards, an aura could be seen

815
00:48:29,960 --> 00:48:34,200
Speaker 1: as well for thousands of kilometers. It also resulted, and

816
00:48:34,280 --> 00:48:37,000
Speaker 1: this kind of comes down to one of the key findings.

817
00:48:37,280 --> 00:48:41,400
Speaker 1: It resulted in an electromagnetic pulse or an EMP, something

818
00:48:41,440 --> 00:48:44,480
Speaker 1: that had been suspected by scientists, but this was really

819
00:48:44,520 --> 00:48:46,759
Speaker 1: the proof in the pudding. It ended up disrupting the

820
00:48:46,760 --> 00:48:50,840
Speaker 1: flow of electricity for hundreds of kilometers around it, with

821
00:48:50,960 --> 00:48:55,560
Speaker 1: its most of its disruptions felt in Hawaii itself. It

822
00:48:55,600 --> 00:48:59,560
Speaker 1: also damaged six satellites which ultimately failed, and other failures

823
00:48:59,640 --> 00:49:02,400
Speaker 1: might be link to Starfish Prime. As well, so this

824
00:49:03,080 --> 00:49:05,400
Speaker 1: was ended up being an effect that was far stronger

825
00:49:05,440 --> 00:49:10,040
Speaker 1: than anticipated. Now, now that's all interesting, but obviously a

826
00:49:10,080 --> 00:49:12,520
Speaker 1: test like this expand is going to expand on our

827
00:49:12,600 --> 00:49:16,120
Speaker 1: understanding of the weapon technology being tested. But the side

828
00:49:16,120 --> 00:49:19,320
Speaker 1: effect here is that the CD one oh nine tracers

829
00:49:19,360 --> 00:49:22,640
Speaker 1: released by the detonation allowed scientists to work out some

830
00:49:22,680 --> 00:49:26,560
Speaker 1: of the seasonal mixing rate of polar and tropical air masses.

831
00:49:26,600 --> 00:49:30,120
Speaker 1: So again comes down to the fluid dynamics of in

832
00:49:30,160 --> 00:49:34,840
Speaker 1: our earlier example, the ocean, and here with atmospheric movement.

833
00:49:35,480 --> 00:49:37,759
Speaker 3: This also touches on something that comes up with the

834
00:49:37,800 --> 00:49:40,319
Speaker 3: Castle Bravo test and a number of other tests, you know,

835
00:49:40,320 --> 00:49:43,080
Speaker 3: the Castle Bravo being the hydrogen bomb that turned out

836
00:49:43,120 --> 00:49:46,799
Speaker 3: to be a much bigger explosive yield than was predicted.

837
00:49:47,280 --> 00:49:50,080
Speaker 3: And this is not just a scientific curiosity, and this

838
00:49:50,160 --> 00:49:53,359
Speaker 3: is something that had tragic consequences for real people like

839
00:49:53,840 --> 00:49:56,640
Speaker 3: the people of the wrongolap Atoll, who were pretty nearby

840
00:49:56,680 --> 00:50:00,440
Speaker 3: where the Castle Bravo test was conducted, were affected horribly

841
00:50:00,719 --> 00:50:03,440
Speaker 3: with by like fallout from the test just because it

842
00:50:03,480 --> 00:50:06,160
Speaker 3: was so much bigger than the scientists thought it was

843
00:50:06,200 --> 00:50:06,560
Speaker 3: going to be.

844
00:50:07,320 --> 00:50:09,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, you see this trend with a number of the

845
00:50:09,880 --> 00:50:14,799
Speaker 1: earlier tests where they don't get quite what they were expecting,

846
00:50:14,960 --> 00:50:16,839
Speaker 1: or you know, it's larger, or it doesn't go off

847
00:50:16,840 --> 00:50:20,560
Speaker 1: exactly the way it was planned. And and indeed, in many

848
00:50:20,560 --> 00:50:26,120
Speaker 1: cases it means people were sickened, people's health suffered because

849
00:50:26,120 --> 00:50:30,120
Speaker 1: of these tests. The environments were tainted by the radiation

850
00:50:30,239 --> 00:50:32,920
Speaker 1: are still tainted in some cases the cases people have

851
00:50:33,000 --> 00:50:36,000
Speaker 1: been dislocated and have not yet been able to return.

852
00:50:37,480 --> 00:50:40,359
Speaker 1: You know, we believe we're calling this episode the atomic scar.

853
00:50:41,400 --> 00:50:43,600
Speaker 1: But a scar, we tend to think of is something

854
00:50:43,640 --> 00:50:46,520
Speaker 1: that is visible but is fully healed. And the thing

855
00:50:46,560 --> 00:50:49,919
Speaker 1: about a lot of these tests is that it's it's

856
00:50:49,960 --> 00:50:52,480
Speaker 1: not so much a scar, but it is like a

857
00:50:52,560 --> 00:50:56,320
Speaker 1: thick scab, and if we are to pick at it again,

858
00:50:57,560 --> 00:51:01,239
Speaker 1: we may bleed. In fact, we may bleed for the

859
00:51:01,320 --> 00:51:06,680
Speaker 1: duration of our lives sort of situations. So so yeah,

860
00:51:06,680 --> 00:51:09,520
Speaker 1: these kind of coming back to what we said earlier about,

861
00:51:09,560 --> 00:51:13,120
Speaker 1: you know, about the world in which we conduct these tests.

862
00:51:13,640 --> 00:51:15,400
Speaker 1: You know, we might think, oh, we're not setting this

863
00:51:15,440 --> 00:51:17,160
Speaker 1: off in the house, We're setting it off in the backyard,

864
00:51:17,520 --> 00:51:20,640
Speaker 1: you know, but but ultimately, you know, the wilds of

865
00:51:20,680 --> 00:51:24,640
Speaker 1: Nevada or some islands you know off the coast of Australia.

866
00:51:24,680 --> 00:51:27,040
Speaker 1: These are these are part of the world we live

867
00:51:27,040 --> 00:51:29,080
Speaker 1: in and it's part of the atmosphere that we all breathe,

868
00:51:29,280 --> 00:51:30,960
Speaker 1: part of the ocean that we all depend on.

869
00:51:31,520 --> 00:51:35,200
Speaker 3: And even underground tests are not without some environmental consequences.

870
00:51:35,200 --> 00:51:37,719
Speaker 3: I mean not nearly as much as say atmospheric or

871
00:51:37,760 --> 00:51:41,520
Speaker 3: underwater test, but underground tests too can can produce leakages.

872
00:51:42,080 --> 00:51:44,879
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, on the subject of underwater tests, I was

873
00:51:44,920 --> 00:51:48,799
Speaker 1: reading a little bit more about these and these were

874
00:51:48,840 --> 00:51:51,880
Speaker 1: banned by the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in nineteen

875
00:51:51,920 --> 00:51:54,719
Speaker 1: sixty three, but the US, the UK, and the USSR

876
00:51:54,840 --> 00:51:58,400
Speaker 1: managed to conduct a total of nine before that that

877
00:51:58,560 --> 00:52:02,960
Speaker 1: band came into place, and these included shallow detonations to

878
00:52:03,000 --> 00:52:07,480
Speaker 1: see how the weapon would impact ships, as well as

879
00:52:07,520 --> 00:52:09,920
Speaker 1: deep detonations to see how they might be used against

880
00:52:09,920 --> 00:52:13,120
Speaker 1: submarines or how they would impact submarines. The deepest was

881
00:52:13,120 --> 00:52:16,319
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifty five Wigwam test at a depth of

882
00:52:16,320 --> 00:52:19,360
Speaker 1: two thousand feet six hundred and ten meters. Now, an

883
00:52:19,360 --> 00:52:22,000
Speaker 1: author by the name of Sarah Lascal wrote a really

884
00:52:22,000 --> 00:52:26,160
Speaker 1: good article about the US tests for Atlas Obscura pointing

885
00:52:26,160 --> 00:52:29,040
Speaker 1: out that the water is what really made the tests

886
00:52:29,080 --> 00:52:33,360
Speaker 1: more problematic, because instead of spreading radioactive particles through a

887
00:52:33,760 --> 00:52:39,960
Speaker 1: wider atmospheric region, it instead released an immediate radioactive water cloud.

888
00:52:41,560 --> 00:52:45,319
Speaker 1: So the ships used in these tests were highly radiated

889
00:52:45,440 --> 00:52:48,080
Speaker 1: and impossible to clean, so they were just towed out

890
00:52:48,400 --> 00:52:52,040
Speaker 1: to the deep and scuttled. Now Lascal writes that quote,

891
00:52:52,040 --> 00:52:54,560
Speaker 1: the Atomic Energy Commission would not sign off on it

892
00:52:54,640 --> 00:52:56,200
Speaker 1: until it was clear that no one in the United

893
00:52:56,239 --> 00:52:58,560
Speaker 1: States or Mexico was at risk and that the test

894
00:52:58,600 --> 00:53:03,160
Speaker 1: area was relatively free of marine life. But the test

895
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:06,480
Speaker 1: certainly killed fish in other organisms. I read an account

896
00:53:06,560 --> 00:53:10,080
Speaker 1: by a UK veteran who was of course working with

897
00:53:10,120 --> 00:53:13,560
Speaker 1: some of those UK tests, claims that men were sent

898
00:53:13,600 --> 00:53:17,560
Speaker 1: out in boats to collect dead irradiated fish after the

899
00:53:17,600 --> 00:53:20,480
Speaker 1: test was conducted. And this particular test would have been

900
00:53:21,000 --> 00:53:25,200
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifty two Hurricane test in the Montebello Islands,

901
00:53:25,239 --> 00:53:28,840
Speaker 1: as this was the only UK underwater nuclear test that

902
00:53:28,920 --> 00:53:30,040
Speaker 1: was conducted.

903
00:53:29,880 --> 00:53:32,400
Speaker 3: And of course in a lot of these tests in

904
00:53:32,400 --> 00:53:35,520
Speaker 3: the Pacific Islands and stuff, even when the explosion was

905
00:53:35,520 --> 00:53:38,480
Speaker 3: carried out in the atmosphere, it was still extremely damaging

906
00:53:38,520 --> 00:53:41,759
Speaker 3: to marine life. Like yeah, there's a part in Carl

907
00:53:41,800 --> 00:53:44,279
Speaker 3: Zimmer's article that we were talking about earlier where he

908
00:53:44,360 --> 00:53:47,719
Speaker 3: talks about with the Castle Bravo test in fifty fourte

909
00:53:47,719 --> 00:53:51,560
Speaker 3: within seconds, the fireball had lofted ten million tons of

910
00:53:51,640 --> 00:53:55,280
Speaker 3: pulverized coral reef coated in radioactive material.

911
00:53:55,800 --> 00:53:59,080
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, I mean these atmospheric tests were also devastating

912
00:53:59,080 --> 00:54:02,200
Speaker 1: to these areas. One area that frequently comes up is

913
00:54:02,840 --> 00:54:06,120
Speaker 1: Bikini Atoll. This is where the first underwater test was

914
00:54:07,719 --> 00:54:11,799
Speaker 1: conducted Baker, but also you had many other atmospheric tests

915
00:54:11,840 --> 00:54:15,200
Speaker 1: that took place there as well. And what's interesting here

916
00:54:15,320 --> 00:54:18,080
Speaker 1: is that there have been some studies over the past

917
00:54:18,120 --> 00:54:20,680
Speaker 1: decade or so that have really looked at how the

918
00:54:20,760 --> 00:54:25,600
Speaker 1: local environment has bounced back, and indeed it does show

919
00:54:25,640 --> 00:54:28,920
Speaker 1: that nature can be very resistant to even this kind of,

920
00:54:29,480 --> 00:54:33,440
Speaker 1: you know, intense damage. That they say that corals have

921
00:54:33,520 --> 00:54:37,560
Speaker 1: recolonized bomb craters. Other life forms are doing well, even

922
00:54:37,600 --> 00:54:40,359
Speaker 1: if there are some curious mutations like sharks missing their

923
00:54:40,400 --> 00:54:43,720
Speaker 1: second dorsal fin that sort of thing. The general belief

924
00:54:43,800 --> 00:54:47,360
Speaker 1: is that at least with Bikini, that the worst affected

925
00:54:47,400 --> 00:54:50,880
Speaker 1: fish died off decades ago, and today's fish populations are

926
00:54:50,880 --> 00:54:53,680
Speaker 1: only exposed to low radiation levels as they frequently swim

927
00:54:53,719 --> 00:54:56,960
Speaker 1: in and out. Plus, these are also areas that have

928
00:54:57,040 --> 00:55:01,160
Speaker 1: been left alone by humans, they more so than other

929
00:55:01,719 --> 00:55:05,279
Speaker 1: marine areas. Now one should also note that the occupants

930
00:55:05,280 --> 00:55:08,360
Speaker 1: of the area around Bikini Atoll and the Marshall Islands

931
00:55:08,400 --> 00:55:10,600
Speaker 1: were displaced by the test, some one hundred and sixty

932
00:55:10,680 --> 00:55:13,800
Speaker 1: seven people, I believe, and they've never been able to return.

933
00:55:14,320 --> 00:55:18,560
Speaker 1: Their dislocation was supposed to be temporary. But then on

934
00:55:18,600 --> 00:55:22,720
Speaker 1: top of that, children in the Marshall Islands were observed

935
00:55:22,760 --> 00:55:27,880
Speaker 1: to experience thyroid problems long after nuclear tests ended. Now

936
00:55:28,640 --> 00:55:32,719
Speaker 1: we've thus far been talking about nuclear testing, and of

937
00:55:32,760 --> 00:55:35,919
Speaker 1: course beyond that, I think we can hardly talk about

938
00:55:35,960 --> 00:55:40,239
Speaker 1: nuclear testing without at least briefly discussing the prospect of

939
00:55:40,360 --> 00:55:44,280
Speaker 1: nuclear war itself, because that is ultimately what the testing

940
00:55:44,440 --> 00:55:46,319
Speaker 1: is all about. Now you can make the argument that

941
00:55:46,600 --> 00:55:50,760
Speaker 1: ultimately it's about preventing that sort of warfare from taking

942
00:55:50,760 --> 00:55:54,640
Speaker 1: place by making sure you have a terrifying number of

943
00:55:55,840 --> 00:55:59,279
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons in your armament, or the reverse is true,

944
00:55:59,480 --> 00:56:01,960
Speaker 1: that you were to developing these weapons which may potentially

945
00:56:02,000 --> 00:56:07,719
Speaker 1: be used. Any nuclear weapon is a potential holocaust, you know,

946
00:56:07,800 --> 00:56:10,799
Speaker 1: contained within the warhead, right.

947
00:56:10,840 --> 00:56:14,960
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess the advocates of the pro nuclear

948
00:56:15,040 --> 00:56:17,440
Speaker 3: armament theory would say, well, what we did is that

949
00:56:17,480 --> 00:56:19,840
Speaker 3: we did these tests so that we wouldn't have to

950
00:56:19,920 --> 00:56:23,959
Speaker 3: have actual wars, and the tests discouraged, say the United

951
00:56:24,000 --> 00:56:27,640
Speaker 3: States and the Soviet Union from actually ever initiating a real,

952
00:56:28,000 --> 00:56:30,560
Speaker 3: you know, shooting war with each other. Of course, there

953
00:56:30,560 --> 00:56:33,600
Speaker 3: were plenty of proxy conflicts and all that. I mean,

954
00:56:34,120 --> 00:56:36,040
Speaker 3: in a way you can only you know, you can

955
00:56:36,080 --> 00:56:38,640
Speaker 3: never know how sure to be about counterfactuals like that.

956
00:56:38,880 --> 00:56:41,400
Speaker 3: People are saying, well, things would have been worse if

957
00:56:41,440 --> 00:56:44,200
Speaker 3: we hadn't had the nuclear threat looming over us to

958
00:56:44,640 --> 00:56:48,080
Speaker 3: discourage us from going to war. I guess it's hard

959
00:56:48,120 --> 00:56:50,839
Speaker 3: to know whether that's true or not. But I guess

960
00:56:50,840 --> 00:56:53,759
Speaker 3: it's also though, it's just hard to calculate costs and

961
00:56:53,800 --> 00:56:57,359
Speaker 3: benefits when you're thinking about when you know, the potential

962
00:56:57,440 --> 00:57:01,480
Speaker 3: cost is like a civilization ending worldwide calamity.

963
00:57:02,320 --> 00:57:04,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that indeed, you know, to come back to

964
00:57:04,760 --> 00:57:07,400
Speaker 1: the idea of the world changing forever, I mean that

965
00:57:07,520 --> 00:57:10,120
Speaker 1: is one of the frequently touched upon aspects of the

966
00:57:10,120 --> 00:57:14,000
Speaker 1: whole scenario is that it is humanity's ability to truly

967
00:57:14,239 --> 00:57:19,960
Speaker 1: destroy itself and ultimately within a very short period of time. Now,

968
00:57:20,040 --> 00:57:21,880
Speaker 1: I know that this kind of brings us to a

969
00:57:22,200 --> 00:57:24,520
Speaker 1: kind of a dark corner for the end of the podcast,

970
00:57:24,880 --> 00:57:27,640
Speaker 1: And I know a lot of you don't like considering

971
00:57:27,720 --> 00:57:31,080
Speaker 1: such possibilities. I don't like considering such possibilities either. If

972
00:57:31,120 --> 00:57:35,520
Speaker 1: you are troubled by such possibilities, I would urge you

973
00:57:35,560 --> 00:57:39,480
Speaker 1: to consider following a group like the Arms Control Association

974
00:57:39,640 --> 00:57:43,000
Speaker 1: at Armscontrol dot org or any number of other anti

975
00:57:43,080 --> 00:57:47,960
Speaker 1: nuclear weapon or nuclear weapon control or disarmament groups. And

976
00:57:48,040 --> 00:57:50,160
Speaker 1: if you're in a position to use your vote to

977
00:57:50,240 --> 00:57:54,040
Speaker 1: favor candidates political candidates who take nuclear testing and nuclear

978
00:57:54,080 --> 00:57:58,560
Speaker 1: war seriously and are committed to certainly not testing them,

979
00:57:58,560 --> 00:58:00,680
Speaker 1: but even you know, not even raising the question of

980
00:58:00,720 --> 00:58:03,200
Speaker 1: their deployment or questioning why they shouldn't be used and

981
00:58:03,240 --> 00:58:05,520
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, then you should you should do so.

982
00:58:06,120 --> 00:58:08,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, the Cold War may be over, but

983
00:58:08,960 --> 00:58:12,000
Speaker 3: there are still lots and lots of nuclear weapons out there,

984
00:58:12,080 --> 00:58:16,560
Speaker 3: and and fantasizing about nuclear escalation is not a joke.

985
00:58:16,760 --> 00:58:18,760
Speaker 3: It's not it's not something to play around with.

986
00:58:19,320 --> 00:58:21,880
Speaker 1: Absolutely, especially since I think we've touched on some of

987
00:58:21,920 --> 00:58:25,040
Speaker 1: this on the show before. Like the the the the

988
00:58:25,080 --> 00:58:30,920
Speaker 1: barriers between our current world and one of nuclear warfare.

989
00:58:31,600 --> 00:58:34,200
Speaker 1: Those those barriers are not as thick as as sometimes

990
00:58:34,240 --> 00:58:37,280
Speaker 1: we might think they are. Like the safeguards in place

991
00:58:37,520 --> 00:58:41,680
Speaker 1: are are not that robust. We need to do everything

992
00:58:41,720 --> 00:58:47,320
Speaker 1: we can to to to to lessen the possibility that

993
00:58:47,560 --> 00:58:50,840
Speaker 1: such a thing could come to pass, either in a

994
00:58:51,160 --> 00:58:54,800
Speaker 1: large scale, certainly, but even at a quote unquote small scale.

995
00:58:55,320 --> 00:58:56,680
Speaker 1: All right, on that note, we're going to go ahead

996
00:58:56,640 --> 00:58:59,560
Speaker 1: and close it out. In the meantime, we'd of course

997
00:58:59,600 --> 00:59:03,080
Speaker 1: love to hear from you your thoughts about nuclear testing,

998
00:59:03,320 --> 00:59:06,560
Speaker 1: nuclear weaponry, et cetera, or just sort of the overall

999
00:59:07,000 --> 00:59:09,960
Speaker 1: impact on all of this on our world and our

1000
00:59:10,000 --> 00:59:13,440
Speaker 1: culture in the many ways the world would not be

1001
00:59:13,560 --> 00:59:15,440
Speaker 1: the same. In the meantime, if you want to check

1002
00:59:15,440 --> 00:59:17,160
Speaker 1: out other episodes of our show, you can do so

1003
00:59:17,240 --> 00:59:19,560
Speaker 1: by finding us wherever you get your podcasts and wherever

1004
00:59:19,640 --> 00:59:21,680
Speaker 1: that happens to be. We just asked the U rate,

1005
00:59:21,720 --> 00:59:22,800
Speaker 1: review and subscribe.

1006
00:59:23,080 --> 00:59:25,800
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth

1007
00:59:25,880 --> 00:59:28,080
Speaker 3: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch

1008
00:59:28,080 --> 00:59:30,200
Speaker 3: with us with feedback on this episode or any other

1009
00:59:30,600 --> 00:59:33,040
Speaker 3: to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello.

1010
00:59:33,160 --> 00:59:35,800
Speaker 3: You can email us at contact That's Stuff to Blow

1011
00:59:35,800 --> 00:59:42,919
Speaker 3: Your Mind dot com.

1012
00:59:44,600 --> 00:59:47,480
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1013
00:59:47,600 --> 00:59:50,360
Speaker 2: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1014
00:59:50,520 --> 00:59:53,240
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.

1015
01:00:04,240 --> 01:00:05,280
Speaker 1: Rattator