WEBVTT - That's the Bomb 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.160 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.360 --> 0:00:15.280 Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:17.959 podcast that the looks of the future and says, do 0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:21.239 you hear the people see? I'm Jonathan stri I'm La, 0:00:22.000 --> 0:00:24.520 and I'm Joe McCormick, And today we're going to be 0:00:24.560 --> 0:00:29.440 looking into some excellent retro futurism. Yes, the future of 0:00:29.480 --> 0:00:34.760 the past. Yeah, what the past thought about the future? 0:00:34.800 --> 0:00:36.640 There you go, There we go. Do you remember those 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:39.839 times when we looked at the advertisements for the kitchen 0:00:39.880 --> 0:00:43.400 of tomorrow from the nineteen fifties, where they thought we 0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:47.240 would have giant, you know, multi refrigerator sized machines that 0:00:47.280 --> 0:00:51.240 would automatically make meals for us that looked about the 0:00:51.320 --> 0:00:55.520 quality of a microwavable dinner. I remember the heavy dose 0:00:55.560 --> 0:00:58.560 a misogyny that went along with those advertisements. Yes, well, 0:00:58.600 --> 0:01:01.080 of course it's assumed the man would still stay in 0:01:01.080 --> 0:01:04.800 the kitchen because that's where she lives, that's right. Yeah, 0:01:04.840 --> 0:01:06.840 so she didn't have to cook anymore, but she was 0:01:06.840 --> 0:01:09.640 still in the kitchen all the time. Yeah, but it 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:12.360 appeared that she was also probably on like a lot 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:15.240 of valumes, so she probably didn't mind. The nice thing 0:01:15.280 --> 0:01:17.560 is today we're going to talk about something much less offensive, 0:01:17.600 --> 0:01:23.680 the use of nuclear weapons. So yeah, this episode, you guys. 0:01:24.880 --> 0:01:28.280 So this was something that before we even get into it, 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:31.600 I was on Reddit and I jumped into the futurism 0:01:32.000 --> 0:01:35.760 subreddit and one of the things someone shared was a video. 0:01:35.920 --> 0:01:39.880 It was an old film from the sixties about a 0:01:40.000 --> 0:01:45.400 government program called Project Plowshare, and I had somehow never 0:01:45.640 --> 0:01:48.920 really heard of this, and I'm amazed. I'm amazed I've 0:01:48.960 --> 0:01:52.000 never heard of it because it's terrific, like in the 0:01:52.000 --> 0:01:55.400 grammatical sense of the word, like it inspires terror and 0:01:55.480 --> 0:01:59.520 also awe. So this film was put up by the U. 0:01:59.640 --> 0:02:03.800 S A Tom Energy Commission circa nineteen sixty five, and uh, 0:02:03.880 --> 0:02:07.120 it's it's, you know, the full on nineteen sixties drama, 0:02:07.240 --> 0:02:09.200 you know, with all the really great music and all 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:12.639 of the really great narrations. Peppy it was, And it's 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:17.800 talking about using nuclear bombs to essentially make really big 0:02:17.840 --> 0:02:22.120 holes on purpose for because it's so much better. It's 0:02:22.120 --> 0:02:25.679 so much better than traditional explosives at making holes. It's 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:28.920 really good at that. Yes, Um, so okay, So so 0:02:28.960 --> 0:02:30.440 if you do want to watch this, then you should 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:33.440 totally should It's really great. Um It's it's labeled as 0:02:33.480 --> 0:02:36.040 being from nineteen sixty one, but I think that's inaccurate 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:38.760 because in the film itself they reference events up to 0:02:38.840 --> 0:02:42.280 nineteen sixty four. So at any rate, though, you can 0:02:42.360 --> 0:02:45.720 you can google it on it's on the YouTube's yeah, 0:02:45.960 --> 0:02:49.440 and there's a couple of different locations. Also, there's an 0:02:49.560 --> 0:02:53.720 entire report about Plowshare that's available on the Department of 0:02:53.800 --> 0:02:56.640 Energy's websites. You can actually go you can read about 0:02:56.639 --> 0:03:00.400 all the different tests they did. But before we into 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:04.160 what it was specifically and how it came about, they've 0:03:04.200 --> 0:03:06.480 got to backtrack just a bit and talk about the 0:03:06.480 --> 0:03:11.520 events that led up to Project Plowshare becoming a thing. Yeah. Sure, 0:03:11.600 --> 0:03:15.200 because the question that I'm sure many of you, like 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:19.200 we asked, is why would anyone decide that it was 0:03:19.240 --> 0:03:23.800 a good idea to try to use nuclear bombs to 0:03:24.000 --> 0:03:26.360 do stuff. It sounds like something that would come to 0:03:26.400 --> 0:03:28.680 mind if you had a bunch of extra nuclear bombs 0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:30.400 lying around and you were trying to figure out what 0:03:30.440 --> 0:03:32.919 to do with them. It's not like it's kale. It's 0:03:32.919 --> 0:03:35.320 not like, oh man, I didn't use all this kale. 0:03:35.600 --> 0:03:40.000 Still Joe is pretty right. Um. But but to me 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:41.960 it sounds like the sort of thing that you would 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:46.080 suggest before you had a full understanding of the implications 0:03:46.120 --> 0:03:49.240 of nuclear weaponry. But that's not the case. This was 0:03:49.320 --> 0:03:53.120 well after we understood at least a good amount about 0:03:53.160 --> 0:03:57.000 what nuclear weapons were capable of. So during World War Two, 0:03:57.000 --> 0:03:59.320 I'm sure everyone who's listening to this is aware of 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:03.880 the Manhattan Project, which was an R and D operation 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:09.160 that the US government oversaw to develop atomic weaponry. And 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:12.800 this was a very high importance to the US government 0:04:12.800 --> 0:04:16.200 because everyone knew that other world powers were also working 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:19.359 on this, specifically the Germans. Early on, we're working on this, 0:04:19.520 --> 0:04:22.799 and in fact, some of the scientists we had working 0:04:22.800 --> 0:04:26.479 on the Manhattan Project were originally over in Germany, but 0:04:26.560 --> 0:04:29.560 then we got them and brought them here and then 0:04:29.560 --> 0:04:35.520 they worked for us. Some of them did. Some of 0:04:35.520 --> 0:04:39.480 them were more let's say pragmatic, right like they were 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:42.960 working for one government in order to advance science, and 0:04:43.000 --> 0:04:45.800 then another government came along and said you're with us now, 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:47.120 and they said, well, as long as I get to 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:49.279 do the science, I will continue to do. So I 0:04:49.279 --> 0:04:50.960 wonder if some of them just kind of saw that 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:54.599 the tides were turning and said, Hey, that other place, 0:04:55.040 --> 0:04:57.200 I mean place, sounds like a better place. To be fair, 0:04:57.240 --> 0:05:01.440 it was tough being a physicist in Germany during World 0:05:01.440 --> 0:05:03.479 War Two. Oh yeah, yeah, we we've talked. I can't 0:05:03.480 --> 0:05:05.400 remember whether it was on this show or on tech 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:11.080 stuff about some of the really deep personal, impossible to retroactively. 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:15.839 Uh suss out reasons that that people had, that scientists 0:05:15.839 --> 0:05:20.200 had for getting out of Germany. Yeah, of course there 0:05:20.200 --> 0:05:24.080 were Jewish scientists who wished to defect early on. There 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:28.480 were other scientists who were not Jewish, but who sympathized 0:05:28.800 --> 0:05:31.960 with their Jewish counterparts and found themselves in a very 0:05:32.000 --> 0:05:34.800 delicate position because on the one hand they didn't want 0:05:34.839 --> 0:05:37.680 to have to pick up everything and leave that. On 0:05:37.680 --> 0:05:40.240 the other hand, they very much objected to what was 0:05:40.279 --> 0:05:43.720 going on. At any rate, the United States, their program, 0:05:43.760 --> 0:05:48.640 the Manhattan Project, was successful before anyone else was able 0:05:48.680 --> 0:05:52.679 to develop a working atomic weapon, and once the bomb 0:05:52.720 --> 0:05:56.080 was developed, it was obviously put to devastating effect, and 0:05:56.480 --> 0:05:59.880 shortly after the conclusion of World War Two we enter 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:03.719 it into the atomic age, that really the nuclear age, 0:06:04.040 --> 0:06:07.840 where we got into the Cold War between the United 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:12.159 States and the then Soviet Union, and both countries began 0:06:12.279 --> 0:06:16.480 to build and stockpile nuclear weapons, and it was this 0:06:16.560 --> 0:06:22.200 idea of mutually assured destruction, the idea that if both 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:26.680 parties had massive stockpiles of weapons, no one would dare 0:06:26.800 --> 0:06:30.719 use it because to do so would be pure madness. Uh, 0:06:30.800 --> 0:06:33.440 that's a philosophy that no one really wants to put 0:06:33.480 --> 0:06:36.440 to the test. Right, Well, putting it to the test 0:06:36.480 --> 0:06:38.960 would sort of defeat it, right, It would prove it wrong. 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:43.680 It gets into Dr Strangelove territory. Right. So, Uh, during 0:06:43.720 --> 0:06:47.520 this time of tension in the Cold War, which some 0:06:47.600 --> 0:06:49.279 of us in this room are all enough to remember 0:06:49.320 --> 0:06:52.920 what it was like, I'm assuming me I was alive then. 0:06:53.040 --> 0:06:54.960 I mean I remember a little bit of that, Like 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:58.400 I remember when it was over, and not really understanding 0:06:58.480 --> 0:07:02.840 fully why all of my you know, grown ups were 0:07:02.920 --> 0:07:06.360 so emotional about it, but you know, but I remember it. 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:08.840 Did the Soviet Unions still exist when the first teenage 0:07:08.880 --> 0:07:11.960 mutant Ninja Turtles movie came out, the first movie, I 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:14.840 don't think so that was that? Was that ninety one? Anyway, 0:07:14.840 --> 0:07:17.000 this is a tangent well at any rate, Yeah, I 0:07:17.040 --> 0:07:21.600 remember from the Reagan years specifically, how there was still 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:25.760 a very anti Russian kind of mentality and a lot 0:07:25.800 --> 0:07:28.800 of US culture, So this was something that was deeply 0:07:28.960 --> 0:07:32.840 ingrained in the US and presumably in the Soviet Union 0:07:33.400 --> 0:07:37.360 or the then Soviet Union, I should say. So. One 0:07:37.360 --> 0:07:40.440 of the things that came up during this process of 0:07:40.440 --> 0:07:44.320 building up this stockpile of weapons was an idea of 0:07:44.440 --> 0:07:49.000 what if we could utilize nuclear explosions not as weaponry, 0:07:49.120 --> 0:07:52.800 not as a bomb, but as a tool. So we've 0:07:52.920 --> 0:07:58.640 used explosives as tools for ages, drilling, tunneling well I 0:07:58.680 --> 0:08:02.960 guess not drilling wells sort of in aid of drilling unembin, 0:08:05.080 --> 0:08:08.480 and so the thought was, well, these nuclear explosions have 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:12.960 potentially thousands of times the power or or even more 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:17.640 than conventional high explosives. So if you could figure out 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:21.760 a way of channeling that properly, then you could find 0:08:21.840 --> 0:08:26.280 peaceful uses for this technology and do much more work 0:08:26.320 --> 0:08:30.480 on a much faster scale than you would using older methods. 0:08:30.840 --> 0:08:32.960 From that perspective, you could say, all right, well that 0:08:33.040 --> 0:08:35.560 makes sense, but there are some other big questions we 0:08:35.600 --> 0:08:37.760 have to answer, things like what do you do about 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:42.640 fallout and stuff like that. So early on, back in 0:08:42.760 --> 0:08:46.200 nineteen fifty three, so not that long after the conclusion 0:08:46.200 --> 0:08:51.080 of World War Two, President Dwight Eisenhower actually proposed looking 0:08:51.120 --> 0:08:53.960 into that sort of use for nuclear technology, not just 0:08:54.160 --> 0:08:58.640 nuclear explosions, but nuclear technology in general. And he called 0:08:58.679 --> 0:09:03.240 his idea Atoms for Peace. Okay, but wouldn't this include 0:09:03.280 --> 0:09:07.559 just standard nuclear power, that was nuclear fission reactors of 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:10.760 the kind we have today, Yeah, exactly, because he was thinking, well, 0:09:10.840 --> 0:09:14.880 you know, we've demonstrated that splitting an atom results in 0:09:14.880 --> 0:09:17.080 the release of a massive amount of energy. If we 0:09:17.160 --> 0:09:21.000 can do a controlled version of that, as opposed to, um, 0:09:21.040 --> 0:09:23.200 you know, a release of that energy, if we could 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:26.120 channel that energy somehow, then that would be a great 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:29.480 boon for mankind. So the way you said that made 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:32.400 it sound kind of like it was Eisenhower's idea to 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:35.880 use fission power. No, he was. He was simply it 0:09:35.920 --> 0:09:38.880 was simply a champion of it in the Yeah. Well yeah, 0:09:38.920 --> 0:09:43.320 his simpolitical implementing, Yeah exactly, which with scientists designing the 0:09:43.320 --> 0:09:48.040 reactor might have been sitting around one day going like, hey, hey, 0:09:48.120 --> 0:09:50.920 you guys. The point being that without the political there 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:54.839 is no movement because there's no money. Very good point. 0:09:55.400 --> 0:10:01.120 So the Atomic Energy Commission ended up taking over this idea. Now, 0:10:01.200 --> 0:10:04.640 the Atomic Energy Commission would later um would dissolve back 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:07.600 in nine. It would be eventually be replaced by the 0:10:07.679 --> 0:10:11.400 Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Energy Research and Development Administration, and 0:10:11.400 --> 0:10:14.480 then later still the Department of Energy. And then you 0:10:14.679 --> 0:10:17.520 also had another party that was involved in this, the 0:10:17.600 --> 0:10:20.880 University of California Radiation Laboratory, which today we call the 0:10:20.920 --> 0:10:24.839 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Oh man, the Radiation Laboratory is 0:10:24.880 --> 0:10:29.440 a good name. Yeah, well, gosh, I can't imagine. So 0:10:30.200 --> 0:10:34.760 they got together and launched this new program, the Plowshare Program, 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:39.959 on June nineteenth, nineteen fifty seven. The Radiation Laboratory was 0:10:40.000 --> 0:10:43.480 in charge of administering the program. The Atomic Energy Commission 0:10:43.520 --> 0:10:46.400 was in charge of making sure they could fund the program, 0:10:46.480 --> 0:10:49.920 so that they were the department that the money came from. 0:10:49.960 --> 0:10:53.880 So probably the most notable personality attached to this was 0:10:53.960 --> 0:10:57.360 Dr Edward Teller uh the father of the bomb, right, 0:10:57.480 --> 0:11:00.720 fusion bomb? Yeah, yeah, specifically the few Jian bomb. He 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:03.600 hated that term. From what I understand, he did not 0:11:03.760 --> 0:11:06.720 like being called the father of the fusion bomb, which 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:09.720 I guess made everyone call him that even more, or 0:11:09.800 --> 0:11:12.360 father of the hydrogen bomb is also the way that 0:11:12.920 --> 0:11:15.920 it has been worded, So the distinction there being between 0:11:16.000 --> 0:11:19.320 the hydrogen fusion bomb and the types of atomic bombs 0:11:19.320 --> 0:11:22.000 we dropped in World War Two, yes, which were fission 0:11:22.080 --> 0:11:26.920 not fusion. So the operation actually takes its name plowshare 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:31.320 from a biblical verse Isaiah, chapter two, verse four. May 0:11:31.360 --> 0:11:33.640 I read it you may ah? It is that they 0:11:33.679 --> 0:11:37.079 shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into 0:11:37.080 --> 0:11:40.760 pruning hooks. Nations shall not lift up their sword against nation, 0:11:41.120 --> 0:11:45.640 neither shall they learn war anymore. Yeah. A lovely sentiment, yes, 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:49.080 turning the weapons of war into tools of agriculture and 0:11:49.120 --> 0:11:54.920 peaceful use, which is exactly what the the outspoken philosophy 0:11:55.360 --> 0:11:59.080 plow Share was. You could argue that perhaps the motivations 0:11:59.120 --> 0:12:03.199 weren't quite so altruistic in the Cold War. Was any 0:12:03.240 --> 0:12:07.360 stated motivation the actual motivation, Yeah, I mean we've talked 0:12:07.360 --> 0:12:09.559 about this with the space race, right, Like the space 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:14.400 race was largely in fact primarily fueled by the Cold War, 0:12:14.840 --> 0:12:17.040 right right, because it was all about like, hey guys, 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:20.000 check out these really big rockets. Yeah, we could use 0:12:20.040 --> 0:12:22.840 these really big rockets to go to the moon or 0:12:23.000 --> 0:12:26.040 bomb the crap out of your country. Yeah, it's essentially 0:12:26.080 --> 0:12:31.000 what was going on now. Granted, scientists were taking advantage 0:12:31.240 --> 0:12:34.079 of that situation in order to advance our knowledge, and 0:12:34.120 --> 0:12:37.720 we're very thankful for it. It's unfortunate that the Cold 0:12:37.720 --> 0:12:42.080 War was the the factor that actually got literally the 0:12:42.160 --> 0:12:44.920 space race off the ground. But at any rate, same 0:12:44.960 --> 0:12:48.120 thing here, yeah. Yeah. So one of the things that 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:51.400 people have pointed out is that Operation Plowshare would allow 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:55.320 for national security measures to be strengthened by saying, look 0:12:55.360 --> 0:12:58.000 at all these other countries that are trying to rush 0:12:58.040 --> 0:13:02.240 toward developing nuclear technology. Because by the nineteen sixties you 0:13:02.320 --> 0:13:05.560 had several nations that had developed at least some level 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:11.120 of nuclear power, including China. So the USSR in China 0:13:11.360 --> 0:13:15.719 being to two nations that the US was not terribly comfortable, 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:21.520 uh having, as nuclear power peers. There was a worry 0:13:21.600 --> 0:13:24.640 that other nations would also rush to develop this technology, 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:29.520 and and many of the nations stated officially that their 0:13:29.559 --> 0:13:32.920 interest in nuclear technology wasn't in nuclear weapons, but rather 0:13:33.040 --> 0:13:36.200 to use nuclear power in positive ways. And so the 0:13:36.280 --> 0:13:39.280 US folks in Plowshares said, Hey, if we create a 0:13:39.280 --> 0:13:43.960 program where we can do we can put nuclear explosions 0:13:44.000 --> 0:13:49.360 to peaceful use, and we control those nuclear devices, and 0:13:49.400 --> 0:13:52.440 we essentially allow other countries to make use of that 0:13:52.480 --> 0:13:56.440 technology with our supervision. They don't have to go out 0:13:56.480 --> 0:14:00.280 and develop it themselves, making ourselves sort of the gate 0:14:00.360 --> 0:14:05.040 keepers of nuclear technology very much so. So, you know, 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:09.320 the way I worded this in our notes, in a 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:12.000 kind of snarky way, was like like the US saying, oh, 0:14:12.160 --> 0:14:14.160 you want a bomb so that you can make a canal, Well, 0:14:14.200 --> 0:14:16.160 it just so happens we can do that for you. 0:14:16.200 --> 0:14:18.640 We just hold onto the keys for the bomb. How 0:14:18.840 --> 0:14:22.120 we just will hold onto those and you just show 0:14:22.240 --> 0:14:25.760 us where you want the canal to go. And uh. 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:29.680 And so you know, I don't know how sincere the 0:14:29.720 --> 0:14:34.280 actual stated motto of Plowshare was. However, I know that 0:14:34.320 --> 0:14:37.640 there were plenty of people working earnestly to try and 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:44.960 find real practical ways to use nuclear explosions in peaceful applications. 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:49.680 So it's not like everyone there was snightly whiplash secretly 0:14:49.760 --> 0:14:53.000 working on an evil scheme. That's not the case at all. Sure, 0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:56.000 there was probably minimal mustache twirling, at least on the 0:14:56.040 --> 0:14:59.680 science level. I'd imagine the threat of nuclear war made 0:14:59.680 --> 0:15:04.080 everybody a little crazy. Yeah, definitely, there were certain days 0:15:04.080 --> 0:15:06.560 when I was I was just not having any of it. Joe, 0:15:06.760 --> 0:15:10.680 I'm just gonna tell seven year old me very little 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:15.680 tolerance for the threat of nuclear annihilation, right, uh okay, 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:19.440 So so what what are some of these scientific proposals 0:15:19.520 --> 0:15:23.840 for how we can peacefully use nuclear weapons? Okay, I've 0:15:23.840 --> 0:15:27.920 got one about in cooking, you know, like industrial cooking, 0:15:27.960 --> 0:15:29.920 Like we really need to cook a whole bunch of 0:15:30.000 --> 0:15:33.600 chickens at once to make a bunch of stow first dinner. Yeah, yeah, 0:15:33.640 --> 0:15:35.120 no, no no, no, no, totally. I mean you know this 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:37.960 is like like you know, your Thanksgiving, your your around Thanksgiving, 0:15:38.000 --> 0:15:40.040 your a restaurant that does catering. You've got like a 0:15:40.120 --> 0:15:43.120 hundred and forty birds to cook. Come on, man, I've 0:15:43.160 --> 0:15:46.520 got I've got an even an even better example for you. 0:15:47.080 --> 0:15:50.280 Refrigerator delivery, as seen in Indiana Jones in the Kingdom 0:15:50.280 --> 0:15:54.040 of the Crystal Skull got to deliver a refrigerator by 0:15:55.080 --> 0:16:00.880 you dare not speak its name. Alright, So all joking 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:05.160 aside and painful memories of terrible franchise entries, we can 0:16:05.200 --> 0:16:10.680 talk about some actual projects that were underneath Project plowshare. Well, 0:16:10.680 --> 0:16:16.400 we already mentioned basically digging. Yeah, an excavation was originally 0:16:16.440 --> 0:16:20.440 thought of as the most promising of all the potential uses. Uh. 0:16:20.480 --> 0:16:23.440 It certainly was viewed as the one that would be 0:16:24.000 --> 0:16:28.480 likely to be the most beneficial, the quickest, meaning that, uh, 0:16:28.520 --> 0:16:31.320 you know, we already knew that an explosion could move 0:16:31.600 --> 0:16:34.640 a lot of earth, so and we already had used 0:16:34.720 --> 0:16:38.640 high explosives to do this, so presumably it would not 0:16:38.760 --> 0:16:41.000 be that difficult to figure out a way to use 0:16:41.080 --> 0:16:45.520 nuclear explosions to do a similar thing. However, the projects 0:16:45.520 --> 0:16:50.080 started to encounter problems other than the technical variety at early. 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:53.880 Early example was a project called Project Chariot, which was 0:16:54.040 --> 0:16:57.200 supposed to take place in Alaska near an area called 0:16:57.280 --> 0:17:00.560 Cape Thompson. The site was at the mouth of a 0:17:00.880 --> 0:17:04.879 body of water, the the Ogatoric Creek, and it was 0:17:04.920 --> 0:17:08.359 about thirty miles from a village called Point Hope. It 0:17:08.400 --> 0:17:12.879 was a in u piat Eskimo village, and I apologize 0:17:12.920 --> 0:17:17.760 for completely butchering pronunciation, by the way, but it included 0:17:18.200 --> 0:17:23.760 land that had previously been requested by the natives under 0:17:23.800 --> 0:17:27.600 the Alaska Native Allotment Act, so it was already something 0:17:27.600 --> 0:17:30.639 that was going to run into problems even without the 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:35.600 nuclear part of this issue. UH. In the summer nineteen 0:17:35.640 --> 0:17:38.520 fifty eight, Native Eskimos heard rumors that the Atomic Energy 0:17:38.560 --> 0:17:41.800 Commission planned to detonate a two point for mega ton 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:44.760 nuclear bomb, which is a bomb that would be a 0:17:44.840 --> 0:17:47.000 hundred times more powerful than the one that was dropped 0:17:47.000 --> 0:17:50.639 on Hiroshima, and it was scheduled for detonation in nineteen 0:17:50.840 --> 0:17:54.000 sixty two if they were to stay on schedule. The 0:17:54.040 --> 0:17:56.520 reason for it being pushed back to sixty two was 0:17:56.560 --> 0:17:58.320 that there was going to be a lot of construction 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:02.200 that would be required up to the point of detonating 0:18:02.240 --> 0:18:05.720 this bomb, and the whole purpose of it was to 0:18:05.960 --> 0:18:09.880 dig out a harbor off the coast of this part 0:18:09.920 --> 0:18:15.040 of Alaska in order to allow for an easy access 0:18:15.080 --> 0:18:19.000 way for transportation that would be shipping stuff like non 0:18:19.040 --> 0:18:22.679 renewable resources you know, coal and oil from Alaska to 0:18:22.760 --> 0:18:27.160 other locations. Also would include another explosion that would dig 0:18:27.160 --> 0:18:31.000 out an ocean trench way to connect the harbor to 0:18:31.240 --> 0:18:35.679 the actual ocean. So the rumors were true. UH, it 0:18:35.800 --> 0:18:39.080 was absolutely what the Atomic Energy Commission was planning on doing, 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:44.840 and so the negatives began to protest this and to 0:18:44.920 --> 0:18:48.399 ask for more information. Meanwhile, the government was actually getting 0:18:48.440 --> 0:18:51.679 a little bit of local support, particularly from the media 0:18:51.960 --> 0:18:55.800 in Alaska, but financial leaders were not so quick to 0:18:55.880 --> 0:19:00.399 jump on board. They were starting to ask very difficult questions, likeviously, 0:19:00.400 --> 0:19:03.800 the development of a nuclear explosive is an expensive endeavor. 0:19:03.880 --> 0:19:06.720 It's not like these things are cheap to to create, 0:19:07.520 --> 0:19:10.840 especially the whole R and D process of making sure 0:19:11.240 --> 0:19:14.960 whatever casing you create actually gives you the effect you need. 0:19:15.000 --> 0:19:18.199 I mean, obviously you're not just hoping that an uncontrolled 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:20.440 explosion is going to do what you want it to do. 0:19:20.520 --> 0:19:23.840 You have to design the device so it directs the 0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:26.439 energy in the proper way. Right. It can't just go 0:19:26.600 --> 0:19:29.440 outward in all directions equally if you want to do 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:34.359 a specific not for most tasks, right, So the idea 0:19:34.440 --> 0:19:37.000 being to build a kind of rifle barrel for a nuke, 0:19:37.760 --> 0:19:40.080 or yes, some sort of some sort of device where 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:44.359 it directs the explosion initially in the way that whatever 0:19:44.480 --> 0:19:48.600 you're intended outcome is is the one that's most likely 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:53.600 to happen. Keeping in mind, yeah, instead of just like 0:19:53.640 --> 0:19:58.119 a pile of gunpowder, right, which obviously doesn't explode, but 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:02.640 you get what I'm saying. So the the people who 0:20:02.640 --> 0:20:05.560 were in the financial world in this part of Alaska, 0:20:05.600 --> 0:20:08.560 we're saying, I don't know that this makes any more 0:20:08.600 --> 0:20:12.440 sense than conventional methods of excavation. It may very well 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:15.959 be that we could just use normal construction and save 0:20:16.080 --> 0:20:19.880 money and also not put anything at risk. Sure well, 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:22.800 and and furthermore, one of the other arguments was that, 0:20:23.400 --> 0:20:25.720 you know, no one was sure at that point whether 0:20:25.800 --> 0:20:28.080 the resources that they were looking for in that area 0:20:28.160 --> 0:20:31.359 of Alaska were present, yeah, or at least not even 0:20:31.400 --> 0:20:35.120 not present in numbers worth you know, doing all that work. Yeah, 0:20:35.119 --> 0:20:39.200 If you're talking about a multimillion dollar risky endeavor and 0:20:39.320 --> 0:20:43.680 there's no guarantee that the resources you would be able 0:20:43.720 --> 0:20:46.239 to ship are actually in that part of Alaska, at 0:20:46.320 --> 0:20:49.359 least in numbers worthy of you know, this kind of 0:20:49.359 --> 0:20:52.040 of work, it becomes a question of, hey, what's the 0:20:52.080 --> 0:20:56.560 return on investment? Forget the fallout issue, forget the radiation issue. 0:20:56.920 --> 0:21:00.800 If it doesn't make financial sense, why would we support this? 0:21:01.480 --> 0:21:03.960 And in fact, this led to the Atomic Energy Commission 0:21:04.080 --> 0:21:09.360 changing its proposal in June of ninety nine because they 0:21:09.400 --> 0:21:13.680 could not find a customer for the harbor. The folks 0:21:13.720 --> 0:21:16.200 in Alaska. We're saying, like, even if you put it here, 0:21:16.560 --> 0:21:19.280 it's not really you're not going to use it. We're 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:23.160 not there for shipping, and the stuff might not be there. 0:21:23.240 --> 0:21:25.400 And and then of course there were also the other 0:21:25.440 --> 0:21:28.119 protesters who were saying, we don't know how this is 0:21:28.160 --> 0:21:30.680 going to affect the environment. We don't know how it's 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:33.120 going to affect the wildlife, we don't know how it's 0:21:33.119 --> 0:21:36.600 going to affect the people who live thirty miles away. 0:21:36.840 --> 0:21:40.719 And without any of that knowledge, how can you go forward? 0:21:40.920 --> 0:21:43.679 And thus the a e C Comes up with a 0:21:43.720 --> 0:21:48.800 brilliant idea of reframing this as an experiment to see, um, 0:21:48.960 --> 0:21:52.480 what a nuclear explosive could do with the geophysical, environmental, 0:21:52.480 --> 0:21:55.320 and health impacts in the area, so including health impacts 0:21:55.320 --> 0:21:59.440 on human beings. In other words, the concerns that people 0:21:59.440 --> 0:22:03.240 had about the environment and health impact that became the focus. 0:22:03.440 --> 0:22:06.119 Now like we're worried about what this will do. Is 0:22:06.280 --> 0:22:08.400 you know what, that's a good idea, Let's find out 0:22:08.440 --> 0:22:14.200 what it will do. It sounds like some maleficent momentum. Well, 0:22:14.280 --> 0:22:17.800 and it gets a little worse really. In March nineteen 0:22:17.880 --> 0:22:21.600 sixty uh, the atomic energy Commission sent representatives to Point 0:22:21.640 --> 0:22:25.840 Hope to talk to the natives there and address concerns. 0:22:26.600 --> 0:22:31.320 And by address concerns you mean lie. Yeah, they lied, 0:22:31.680 --> 0:22:34.359 or at least they stretched the truth. No, they lied. 0:22:34.680 --> 0:22:37.080 I can't get around this like you would have to 0:22:37.119 --> 0:22:40.240 be overly generous to say they stretched the truth. According 0:22:40.280 --> 0:22:43.200 to a report filed by Don Charles Foot, who was 0:22:43.200 --> 0:22:47.760 a geographer who actually was present, he filed a report 0:22:47.800 --> 0:22:51.879 with the Atomic Energy Commission, and his his report actually 0:22:51.880 --> 0:22:53.679 contains this quote. He says that there would not be 0:22:54.000 --> 0:22:57.920 quote any danger to anyone. This is what the representatives 0:22:57.960 --> 0:23:02.120 were saying, any danger to one if the fish were utilized. 0:23:02.280 --> 0:23:06.080 That the effects of nuclear weapons testing never injured any people. 0:23:06.240 --> 0:23:10.440 That's a lie anywhere. That once the severely exposed Japanese 0:23:10.440 --> 0:23:13.400 people recovered from radiation sickness, there were no side effects. 0:23:13.560 --> 0:23:16.880 Also all that the residents of Point Hope would not 0:23:17.040 --> 0:23:20.879 feel any seismic shock at all from Project Chariot, and 0:23:20.920 --> 0:23:23.560 that copies of the environmental program studies would be made 0:23:23.600 --> 0:23:26.560 immediately available to the Point Hope Council. Upon the return 0:23:26.600 --> 0:23:29.920 of the a e C officials to California, the village 0:23:30.080 --> 0:23:35.120 council unanimously voted to oppose the detonation. You could say 0:23:35.160 --> 0:23:39.840 they were skeptical of the a C representatives. So ultimately 0:23:39.960 --> 0:23:43.679 the a C canceled this particular part of Project Plowshare 0:23:43.720 --> 0:23:49.040 in nineteen sixty two. Uh and uh, the Plowshare overall continued. 0:23:49.400 --> 0:23:51.320 That wasn't like the beginning of end. That was one 0:23:51.480 --> 0:23:57.960 project under this umbrella operation. So other proposals besides using 0:23:57.960 --> 0:24:01.280 it for excavation, and there were lots of excavation proposals 0:24:01.320 --> 0:24:05.480 for canals and that sort of stuff included, um, well, 0:24:05.520 --> 0:24:07.960 there was one that was a sea level canal across Panama. 0:24:08.000 --> 0:24:10.560 That was one of the proposals that was left, but 0:24:10.600 --> 0:24:13.120 they were never actually developed into actual projects. There were 0:24:13.119 --> 0:24:17.600 other ones too, not just digging canals. There was also 0:24:17.840 --> 0:24:22.280 tunneling possibility, blowing up holes in the sides of mountains 0:24:22.320 --> 0:24:24.919 and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, you know, if you need if 0:24:24.920 --> 0:24:27.320 you need a road to go somewhere and there's a 0:24:27.359 --> 0:24:29.920 pesky mountain in the way, then why not use a 0:24:30.000 --> 0:24:35.240