Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that the looks of the future and says, do
Speaker 1: you hear the people see? I'm Jonathan stri I'm La,
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick, And today we're going to be
Speaker 1: looking into some excellent retro futurism. Yes, the future of
Speaker 1: the past. Yeah, what the past thought about the future?
Speaker 1: There you go, There we go. Do you remember those
Speaker 1: times when we looked at the advertisements for the kitchen
Speaker 1: of tomorrow from the nineteen fifties, where they thought we
Speaker 1: would have giant, you know, multi refrigerator sized machines that
Speaker 1: would automatically make meals for us that looked about the
Speaker 1: quality of a microwavable dinner. I remember the heavy dose
Speaker 1: a misogyny that went along with those advertisements. Yes, well,
Speaker 1: of course it's assumed the man would still stay in
Speaker 1: the kitchen because that's where she lives, that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so she didn't have to cook anymore, but she was
Speaker 1: still in the kitchen all the time. Yeah, but it
Speaker 1: appeared that she was also probably on like a lot
Speaker 1: of valumes, so she probably didn't mind. The nice thing
Speaker 1: is today we're going to talk about something much less offensive,
Speaker 1: the use of nuclear weapons. So yeah, this episode, you guys.
Speaker 1: So this was something that before we even get into it,
Speaker 1: I was on Reddit and I jumped into the futurism
Speaker 1: subreddit and one of the things someone shared was a video.
Speaker 1: It was an old film from the sixties about a
Speaker 1: government program called Project Plowshare, and I had somehow never
Speaker 1: really heard of this, and I'm amazed. I'm amazed I've
Speaker 1: never heard of it because it's terrific, like in the
Speaker 1: grammatical sense of the word, like it inspires terror and
Speaker 1: also awe. So this film was put up by the U.
Speaker 1: S A Tom Energy Commission circa nineteen sixty five, and uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's, you know, the full on nineteen sixties drama,
Speaker 1: you know, with all the really great music and all
Speaker 1: of the really great narrations. Peppy it was, And it's
Speaker 1: talking about using nuclear bombs to essentially make really big
Speaker 1: holes on purpose for because it's so much better. It's
Speaker 1: so much better than traditional explosives at making holes. It's
Speaker 1: really good at that. Yes, Um, so okay, So so
Speaker 1: if you do want to watch this, then you should
Speaker 1: totally should It's really great. Um It's it's labeled as
Speaker 1: being from nineteen sixty one, but I think that's inaccurate
Speaker 1: because in the film itself they reference events up to
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four. So at any rate, though, you can
Speaker 1: you can google it on it's on the YouTube's yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's a couple of different locations. Also, there's an
Speaker 1: entire report about Plowshare that's available on the Department of
Speaker 1: Energy's websites. You can actually go you can read about
Speaker 1: all the different tests they did. But before we into
Speaker 1: what it was specifically and how it came about, they've
Speaker 1: got to backtrack just a bit and talk about the
Speaker 1: events that led up to Project Plowshare becoming a thing. Yeah. Sure,
Speaker 1: because the question that I'm sure many of you, like
Speaker 1: we asked, is why would anyone decide that it was
Speaker 1: a good idea to try to use nuclear bombs to
Speaker 1: do stuff. It sounds like something that would come to
Speaker 1: mind if you had a bunch of extra nuclear bombs
Speaker 1: lying around and you were trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: to do with them. It's not like it's kale. It's
Speaker 1: not like, oh man, I didn't use all this kale.
Speaker 1: Still Joe is pretty right. Um. But but to me
Speaker 1: it sounds like the sort of thing that you would
Speaker 1: suggest before you had a full understanding of the implications
Speaker 1: of nuclear weaponry. But that's not the case. This was
Speaker 1: well after we understood at least a good amount about
Speaker 1: what nuclear weapons were capable of. So during World War Two,
Speaker 1: I'm sure everyone who's listening to this is aware of
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project, which was an R and D operation
Speaker 1: that the US government oversaw to develop atomic weaponry. And
Speaker 1: this was a very high importance to the US government
Speaker 1: because everyone knew that other world powers were also working
Speaker 1: on this, specifically the Germans. Early on, we're working on this,
Speaker 1: and in fact, some of the scientists we had working
Speaker 1: on the Manhattan Project were originally over in Germany, but
Speaker 1: then we got them and brought them here and then
Speaker 1: they worked for us. Some of them did. Some of
Speaker 1: them were more let's say pragmatic, right like they were
Speaker 1: working for one government in order to advance science, and
Speaker 1: then another government came along and said you're with us now,
Speaker 1: and they said, well, as long as I get to
Speaker 1: do the science, I will continue to do. So I
Speaker 1: wonder if some of them just kind of saw that
Speaker 1: the tides were turning and said, Hey, that other place,
Speaker 1: I mean place, sounds like a better place. To be fair,
Speaker 1: it was tough being a physicist in Germany during World
Speaker 1: War Two. Oh yeah, yeah, we we've talked. I can't
Speaker 1: remember whether it was on this show or on tech
Speaker 1: stuff about some of the really deep personal, impossible to retroactively.
Speaker 1: Uh suss out reasons that that people had, that scientists
Speaker 1: had for getting out of Germany. Yeah, of course there
Speaker 1: were Jewish scientists who wished to defect early on. There
Speaker 1: were other scientists who were not Jewish, but who sympathized
Speaker 1: with their Jewish counterparts and found themselves in a very
Speaker 1: delicate position because on the one hand they didn't want
Speaker 1: to have to pick up everything and leave that. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, they very much objected to what was
Speaker 1: going on. At any rate, the United States, their program,
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project, was successful before anyone else was able
Speaker 1: to develop a working atomic weapon, and once the bomb
Speaker 1: was developed, it was obviously put to devastating effect, and
Speaker 1: shortly after the conclusion of World War Two we enter
Speaker 1: it into the atomic age, that really the nuclear age,
Speaker 1: where we got into the Cold War between the United
Speaker 1: States and the then Soviet Union, and both countries began
Speaker 1: to build and stockpile nuclear weapons, and it was this
Speaker 1: idea of mutually assured destruction, the idea that if both
Speaker 1: parties had massive stockpiles of weapons, no one would dare
Speaker 1: use it because to do so would be pure madness. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's a philosophy that no one really wants to put
Speaker 1: to the test. Right, Well, putting it to the test
Speaker 1: would sort of defeat it, right, It would prove it wrong.
Speaker 1: It gets into Dr Strangelove territory. Right. So, Uh, during
Speaker 1: this time of tension in the Cold War, which some
Speaker 1: of us in this room are all enough to remember
Speaker 1: what it was like, I'm assuming me I was alive then.
Speaker 1: I mean I remember a little bit of that, Like
Speaker 1: I remember when it was over, and not really understanding
Speaker 1: fully why all of my you know, grown ups were
Speaker 1: so emotional about it, but you know, but I remember it.
Speaker 1: Did the Soviet Unions still exist when the first teenage
Speaker 1: mutant Ninja Turtles movie came out, the first movie, I
Speaker 1: don't think so that was that? Was that ninety one? Anyway,
Speaker 1: this is a tangent well at any rate, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: remember from the Reagan years specifically, how there was still
Speaker 1: a very anti Russian kind of mentality and a lot
Speaker 1: of US culture, So this was something that was deeply
Speaker 1: ingrained in the US and presumably in the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: or the then Soviet Union, I should say. So. One
Speaker 1: of the things that came up during this process of
Speaker 1: building up this stockpile of weapons was an idea of
Speaker 1: what if we could utilize nuclear explosions not as weaponry,
Speaker 1: not as a bomb, but as a tool. So we've
Speaker 1: used explosives as tools for ages, drilling, tunneling well I
Speaker 1: guess not drilling wells sort of in aid of drilling unembin,
Speaker 1: and so the thought was, well, these nuclear explosions have
Speaker 1: potentially thousands of times the power or or even more
Speaker 1: than conventional high explosives. So if you could figure out
Speaker 1: a way of channeling that properly, then you could find
Speaker 1: peaceful uses for this technology and do much more work
Speaker 1: on a much faster scale than you would using older methods.
Speaker 1: From that perspective, you could say, all right, well that
Speaker 1: makes sense, but there are some other big questions we
Speaker 1: have to answer, things like what do you do about
Speaker 1: fallout and stuff like that. So early on, back in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three, so not that long after the conclusion
Speaker 1: of World War Two, President Dwight Eisenhower actually proposed looking
Speaker 1: into that sort of use for nuclear technology, not just
Speaker 1: nuclear explosions, but nuclear technology in general. And he called
Speaker 1: his idea Atoms for Peace. Okay, but wouldn't this include
Speaker 1: just standard nuclear power, that was nuclear fission reactors of
Speaker 1: the kind we have today, Yeah, exactly, because he was thinking, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we've demonstrated that splitting an atom results in
Speaker 1: the release of a massive amount of energy. If we
Speaker 1: can do a controlled version of that, as opposed to, um,
Speaker 1: you know, a release of that energy, if we could
Speaker 1: channel that energy somehow, then that would be a great
Speaker 1: boon for mankind. So the way you said that made
Speaker 1: it sound kind of like it was Eisenhower's idea to
Speaker 1: use fission power. No, he was. He was simply it
Speaker 1: was simply a champion of it in the Yeah. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: his simpolitical implementing, Yeah exactly, which with scientists designing the
Speaker 1: reactor might have been sitting around one day going like, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: you guys. The point being that without the political there
Speaker 1: is no movement because there's no money. Very good point.
Speaker 1: So the Atomic Energy Commission ended up taking over this idea. Now,
Speaker 1: the Atomic Energy Commission would later um would dissolve back
Speaker 1: in nine. It would be eventually be replaced by the
Speaker 1: Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Energy Research and Development Administration, and
Speaker 1: then later still the Department of Energy. And then you
Speaker 1: also had another party that was involved in this, the
Speaker 1: University of California Radiation Laboratory, which today we call the
Speaker 1: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Oh man, the Radiation Laboratory is
Speaker 1: a good name. Yeah, well, gosh, I can't imagine. So
Speaker 1: they got together and launched this new program, the Plowshare Program,
Speaker 1: on June nineteenth, nineteen fifty seven. The Radiation Laboratory was
Speaker 1: in charge of administering the program. The Atomic Energy Commission
Speaker 1: was in charge of making sure they could fund the program,
Speaker 1: so that they were the department that the money came from.
Speaker 1: So probably the most notable personality attached to this was
Speaker 1: Dr Edward Teller uh the father of the bomb, right,
Speaker 1: fusion bomb? Yeah, yeah, specifically the few Jian bomb. He
Speaker 1: hated that term. From what I understand, he did not
Speaker 1: like being called the father of the fusion bomb, which
Speaker 1: I guess made everyone call him that even more, or
Speaker 1: father of the hydrogen bomb is also the way that
Speaker 1: it has been worded, So the distinction there being between
Speaker 1: the hydrogen fusion bomb and the types of atomic bombs
Speaker 1: we dropped in World War Two, yes, which were fission
Speaker 1: not fusion. So the operation actually takes its name plowshare
Speaker 1: from a biblical verse Isaiah, chapter two, verse four. May
Speaker 1: I read it you may ah? It is that they
Speaker 1: shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into
Speaker 1: pruning hooks. Nations shall not lift up their sword against nation,
Speaker 1: neither shall they learn war anymore. Yeah. A lovely sentiment, yes,
Speaker 1: turning the weapons of war into tools of agriculture and
Speaker 1: peaceful use, which is exactly what the the outspoken philosophy
Speaker 1: plow Share was. You could argue that perhaps the motivations
Speaker 1: weren't quite so altruistic in the Cold War. Was any
Speaker 1: stated motivation the actual motivation, Yeah, I mean we've talked
Speaker 1: about this with the space race, right, Like the space
Speaker 1: race was largely in fact primarily fueled by the Cold War,
Speaker 1: right right, because it was all about like, hey guys,
Speaker 1: check out these really big rockets. Yeah, we could use
Speaker 1: these really big rockets to go to the moon or
Speaker 1: bomb the crap out of your country. Yeah, it's essentially
Speaker 1: what was going on now. Granted, scientists were taking advantage
Speaker 1: of that situation in order to advance our knowledge, and
Speaker 1: we're very thankful for it. It's unfortunate that the Cold
Speaker 1: War was the the factor that actually got literally the
Speaker 1: space race off the ground. But at any rate, same
Speaker 1: thing here, yeah. Yeah. So one of the things that
Speaker 1: people have pointed out is that Operation Plowshare would allow
Speaker 1: for national security measures to be strengthened by saying, look
Speaker 1: at all these other countries that are trying to rush
Speaker 1: toward developing nuclear technology. Because by the nineteen sixties you
Speaker 1: had several nations that had developed at least some level
Speaker 1: of nuclear power, including China. So the USSR in China
Speaker 1: being to two nations that the US was not terribly comfortable,
Speaker 1: uh having, as nuclear power peers. There was a worry
Speaker 1: that other nations would also rush to develop this technology,
Speaker 1: and and many of the nations stated officially that their
Speaker 1: interest in nuclear technology wasn't in nuclear weapons, but rather
Speaker 1: to use nuclear power in positive ways. And so the
Speaker 1: US folks in Plowshares said, Hey, if we create a
Speaker 1: program where we can do we can put nuclear explosions
Speaker 1: to peaceful use, and we control those nuclear devices, and
Speaker 1: we essentially allow other countries to make use of that
Speaker 1: technology with our supervision. They don't have to go out
Speaker 1: and develop it themselves, making ourselves sort of the gate
Speaker 1: keepers of nuclear technology very much so. So, you know,
Speaker 1: the way I worded this in our notes, in a
Speaker 1: kind of snarky way, was like like the US saying, oh,
Speaker 1: you want a bomb so that you can make a canal, Well,
Speaker 1: it just so happens we can do that for you.
Speaker 1: We just hold onto the keys for the bomb. How
Speaker 1: we just will hold onto those and you just show
Speaker 1: us where you want the canal to go. And uh.
Speaker 1: And so you know, I don't know how sincere the
Speaker 1: actual stated motto of Plowshare was. However, I know that
Speaker 1: there were plenty of people working earnestly to try and
Speaker 1: find real practical ways to use nuclear explosions in peaceful applications.
Speaker 1: So it's not like everyone there was snightly whiplash secretly
Speaker 1: working on an evil scheme. That's not the case at all. Sure,
Speaker 1: there was probably minimal mustache twirling, at least on the
Speaker 1: science level. I'd imagine the threat of nuclear war made
Speaker 1: everybody a little crazy. Yeah, definitely, there were certain days
Speaker 1: when I was I was just not having any of it. Joe,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna tell seven year old me very little
Speaker 1: tolerance for the threat of nuclear annihilation, right, uh okay,
Speaker 1: So so what what are some of these scientific proposals
Speaker 1: for how we can peacefully use nuclear weapons? Okay, I've
Speaker 1: got one about in cooking, you know, like industrial cooking,
Speaker 1: Like we really need to cook a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: chickens at once to make a bunch of stow first dinner. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, no, totally. I mean you know this
Speaker 1: is like like you know, your Thanksgiving, your your around Thanksgiving,
Speaker 1: your a restaurant that does catering. You've got like a
Speaker 1: hundred and forty birds to cook. Come on, man, I've
Speaker 1: got I've got an even an even better example for you.
Speaker 1: Refrigerator delivery, as seen in Indiana Jones in the Kingdom
Speaker 1: of the Crystal Skull got to deliver a refrigerator by
Speaker 1: you dare not speak its name. Alright, So all joking
Speaker 1: aside and painful memories of terrible franchise entries, we can
Speaker 1: talk about some actual projects that were underneath Project plowshare. Well,
Speaker 1: we already mentioned basically digging. Yeah, an excavation was originally
Speaker 1: thought of as the most promising of all the potential uses. Uh.
Speaker 1: It certainly was viewed as the one that would be
Speaker 1: likely to be the most beneficial, the quickest, meaning that, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we already knew that an explosion could move
Speaker 1: a lot of earth, so and we already had used
Speaker 1: high explosives to do this, so presumably it would not
Speaker 1: be that difficult to figure out a way to use
Speaker 1: nuclear explosions to do a similar thing. However, the projects
Speaker 1: started to encounter problems other than the technical variety at early.
Speaker 1: Early example was a project called Project Chariot, which was
Speaker 1: supposed to take place in Alaska near an area called
Speaker 1: Cape Thompson. The site was at the mouth of a
Speaker 1: body of water, the the Ogatoric Creek, and it was
Speaker 1: about thirty miles from a village called Point Hope. It
Speaker 1: was a in u piat Eskimo village, and I apologize
Speaker 1: for completely butchering pronunciation, by the way, but it included
Speaker 1: land that had previously been requested by the natives under
Speaker 1: the Alaska Native Allotment Act, so it was already something
Speaker 1: that was going to run into problems even without the
Speaker 1: nuclear part of this issue. UH. In the summer nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty eight, Native Eskimos heard rumors that the Atomic Energy
Speaker 1: Commission planned to detonate a two point for mega ton
Speaker 1: nuclear bomb, which is a bomb that would be a
Speaker 1: hundred times more powerful than the one that was dropped
Speaker 1: on Hiroshima, and it was scheduled for detonation in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two if they were to stay on schedule. The
Speaker 1: reason for it being pushed back to sixty two was
Speaker 1: that there was going to be a lot of construction
Speaker 1: that would be required up to the point of detonating
Speaker 1: this bomb, and the whole purpose of it was to
Speaker 1: dig out a harbor off the coast of this part
Speaker 1: of Alaska in order to allow for an easy access
Speaker 1: way for transportation that would be shipping stuff like non
Speaker 1: renewable resources you know, coal and oil from Alaska to
Speaker 1: other locations. Also would include another explosion that would dig
Speaker 1: out an ocean trench way to connect the harbor to
Speaker 1: the actual ocean. So the rumors were true. UH, it
Speaker 1: was absolutely what the Atomic Energy Commission was planning on doing,
Speaker 1: and so the negatives began to protest this and to
Speaker 1: ask for more information. Meanwhile, the government was actually getting
Speaker 1: a little bit of local support, particularly from the media
Speaker 1: in Alaska, but financial leaders were not so quick to
Speaker 1: jump on board. They were starting to ask very difficult questions, likeviously,
Speaker 1: the development of a nuclear explosive is an expensive endeavor.
Speaker 1: It's not like these things are cheap to to create,
Speaker 1: especially the whole R and D process of making sure
Speaker 1: whatever casing you create actually gives you the effect you need.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously you're not just hoping that an uncontrolled
Speaker 1: explosion is going to do what you want it to do.
Speaker 1: You have to design the device so it directs the
Speaker 1: energy in the proper way. Right. It can't just go
Speaker 1: outward in all directions equally if you want to do
Speaker 1: a specific not for most tasks, right, So the idea
Speaker 1: being to build a kind of rifle barrel for a nuke,
Speaker 1: or yes, some sort of some sort of device where
Speaker 1: it directs the explosion initially in the way that whatever
Speaker 1: you're intended outcome is is the one that's most likely
Speaker 1: to happen. Keeping in mind, yeah, instead of just like
Speaker 1: a pile of gunpowder, right, which obviously doesn't explode, but
Speaker 1: you get what I'm saying. So the the people who
Speaker 1: were in the financial world in this part of Alaska,
Speaker 1: we're saying, I don't know that this makes any more
Speaker 1: sense than conventional methods of excavation. It may very well
Speaker 1: be that we could just use normal construction and save
Speaker 1: money and also not put anything at risk. Sure well,
Speaker 1: and and furthermore, one of the other arguments was that,
Speaker 1: you know, no one was sure at that point whether
Speaker 1: the resources that they were looking for in that area
Speaker 1: of Alaska were present, yeah, or at least not even
Speaker 1: not present in numbers worth you know, doing all that work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: If you're talking about a multimillion dollar risky endeavor and
Speaker 1: there's no guarantee that the resources you would be able
Speaker 1: to ship are actually in that part of Alaska, at
Speaker 1: least in numbers worthy of you know, this kind of
Speaker 1: of work, it becomes a question of, hey, what's the
Speaker 1: return on investment? Forget the fallout issue, forget the radiation issue.
Speaker 1: If it doesn't make financial sense, why would we support this?
Speaker 1: And in fact, this led to the Atomic Energy Commission
Speaker 1: changing its proposal in June of ninety nine because they
Speaker 1: could not find a customer for the harbor. The folks
Speaker 1: in Alaska. We're saying, like, even if you put it here,
Speaker 1: it's not really you're not going to use it. We're
Speaker 1: not there for shipping, and the stuff might not be there.
Speaker 1: And and then of course there were also the other
Speaker 1: protesters who were saying, we don't know how this is
Speaker 1: going to affect the environment. We don't know how it's
Speaker 1: going to affect the wildlife, we don't know how it's
Speaker 1: going to affect the people who live thirty miles away.
Speaker 1: And without any of that knowledge, how can you go forward?
Speaker 1: And thus the a e C Comes up with a
Speaker 1: brilliant idea of reframing this as an experiment to see, um,
Speaker 1: what a nuclear explosive could do with the geophysical, environmental,
Speaker 1: and health impacts in the area, so including health impacts
Speaker 1: on human beings. In other words, the concerns that people
Speaker 1: had about the environment and health impact that became the focus.
Speaker 1: Now like we're worried about what this will do. Is
Speaker 1: you know what, that's a good idea, Let's find out
Speaker 1: what it will do. It sounds like some maleficent momentum. Well,
Speaker 1: and it gets a little worse really. In March nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty uh, the atomic energy Commission sent representatives to Point
Speaker 1: Hope to talk to the natives there and address concerns.
Speaker 1: And by address concerns you mean lie. Yeah, they lied,
Speaker 1: or at least they stretched the truth. No, they lied.
Speaker 1: I can't get around this like you would have to
Speaker 1: be overly generous to say they stretched the truth. According
Speaker 1: to a report filed by Don Charles Foot, who was
Speaker 1: a geographer who actually was present, he filed a report
Speaker 1: with the Atomic Energy Commission, and his his report actually
Speaker 1: contains this quote. He says that there would not be
Speaker 1: quote any danger to anyone. This is what the representatives
Speaker 1: were saying, any danger to one if the fish were utilized.
Speaker 1: That the effects of nuclear weapons testing never injured any people.
Speaker 1: That's a lie anywhere. That once the severely exposed Japanese
Speaker 1: people recovered from radiation sickness, there were no side effects.
Speaker 1: Also all that the residents of Point Hope would not
Speaker 1: feel any seismic shock at all from Project Chariot, and
Speaker 1: that copies of the environmental program studies would be made
Speaker 1: immediately available to the Point Hope Council. Upon the return
Speaker 1: of the a e C officials to California, the village
Speaker 1: council unanimously voted to oppose the detonation. You could say
Speaker 1: they were skeptical of the a C representatives. So ultimately
Speaker 1: the a C canceled this particular part of Project Plowshare
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty two. Uh and uh, the Plowshare overall continued.
Speaker 1: That wasn't like the beginning of end. That was one
Speaker 1: project under this umbrella operation. So other proposals besides using
Speaker 1: it for excavation, and there were lots of excavation proposals
Speaker 1: for canals and that sort of stuff included, um, well,
Speaker 1: there was one that was a sea level canal across Panama.
Speaker 1: That was one of the proposals that was left, but
Speaker 1: they were never actually developed into actual projects. There were
Speaker 1: other ones too, not just digging canals. There was also
Speaker 1: tunneling possibility, blowing up holes in the sides of mountains
Speaker 1: and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, you know, if you need if
Speaker 1: you need a road to go somewhere and there's a
Speaker 1: pesky mountain in the way, then why not use a
Speaker 1: nuclear bomb to just blow in the mountain. I can't
Speaker 1: I can't think of any reason why you wouldn't want
Speaker 1: I mean, it would probably work, yeah, I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, you definitely make an impact, that's for certain. Um,
Speaker 1: I think think of the gas mileage you would save
Speaker 1: on alone find not having to make cars go all
Speaker 1: the way up the mountain and all the way back down.
Speaker 1: Right right, Yeah, you've sold me. And another potential use
Speaker 1: was using nuclear explosions for underground engineering, which is similar
Speaker 1: to tunneling, but in this case specifically with the goal
Speaker 1: of increasing permeability and porosity of rocks through breaking and
Speaker 1: fracturing them. Oh, this is like accessing tight gas and
Speaker 1: stuff like. Yes, yes, so if you were to discover
Speaker 1: that there's a deposit natural gas, but the rock that
Speaker 1: is between you and the natural gas is not particularly
Speaker 1: permeable or porous, is very difficult to get at the
Speaker 1: natural gas. Yeah, this is like nuclear fracking basically. Like
Speaker 1: it's it's saying that if you just break up that
Speaker 1: pesky rock with a nuclear explosion, then you can extract
Speaker 1: the stuff inside it that you want to with all
Speaker 1: the with all the opposition people have to fracking, can
Speaker 1: you imagine what it would be if they were saying
Speaker 1: we're going to use some nuclear bombs. I honestly cannot.
Speaker 1: That is literally beyond my imagination. And I deal with
Speaker 1: people on the Internet every day. I like that They
Speaker 1: called it gas production stimulation. Yeah, well, I mean that's
Speaker 1: exactly that's pretty much what people say about fracking, right,
Speaker 1: you want to stimulate the well. I mean the problem
Speaker 1: is people have this idea that when you when you're
Speaker 1: accessing oil or natural gas, it's always just going to
Speaker 1: be like a big lake underground, you can just stick
Speaker 1: a straw in it. But instead it's it's locked up
Speaker 1: in porous rocks and sometimes it's hard to get at. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing is that this became the most promising
Speaker 1: of all the proposed uses of nuclear bombs during the
Speaker 1: testing phase. None of it was ever actively incorporated into
Speaker 1: a civilian use or anything along those lines, but there
Speaker 1: were a lot of tests that were part of the
Speaker 1: Operation Plowshare, and uh, out of all of them, a
Speaker 1: excavation stuff was not nearly as promising as the gas
Speaker 1: productions to nuclear fracking. Yeah yeah, yeah. Another idea that
Speaker 1: was floated at the very least in the video was
Speaker 1: the thought that these explosions would be creating huge numbers
Speaker 1: of the ray you active isotopes that were being used
Speaker 1: in science. We're short on isotopes. Blow up another ball. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean that is, it's not true. We certainly have
Speaker 1: made an impact on the chemical signature of the surface
Speaker 1: of the Earth since the advent of the atomic age, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've introduced things to planet Earth that you wouldn't expect
Speaker 1: to find in nature. Oh yeah, And and there are
Speaker 1: some really scientifically interesting results of the amount, the sheer
Speaker 1: amount of atmosphere nuclear testing that we're done back in
Speaker 1: these sorts of times, because every single thing on this
Speaker 1: planet that's carbon based has enough of this nuclear fallout
Speaker 1: in their cellular systems that you can put a pretty
Speaker 1: accurate date on how old the cells in like your
Speaker 1: body are. Yeah, it actually ends up so that's cool,
Speaker 1: actually ends up being something that should take into account
Speaker 1: when you're carbon dating something. Yeah. Yeah, we've screwed up
Speaker 1: carbon dating whatever. Guys, it's good future generation if you
Speaker 1: if you happen to know the general era and you're
Speaker 1: just trying to narrow things down a bit, you can
Speaker 1: account for it. But for a major dark age and
Speaker 1: then there's a resurgence and they're like future paleontologists trying
Speaker 1: to understand things, it's going to be really confusing. Why
Speaker 1: just leave random things around just in case you know,
Speaker 1: so that way I can really confuse the future paleontologists, Like,
Speaker 1: here's where they kept their ovens in the middle of
Speaker 1: this field. For some reason, I just like doing that.
Speaker 1: That was the field where we test nuclear cooking, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: as opposed to the great Great refrigerator graveyard from all
Speaker 1: the failed delivery tests. Uh so you know, you might
Speaker 1: be curious, like did they actually detonate any nuclear bombs
Speaker 1: as part of Operation Plowshare in the I'm curious they
Speaker 1: did a lot, Yeah, quite a few. Um, technically they
Speaker 1: had twenty seven nuclear explosive tests with thirty five individual
Speaker 1: detonations because some tests had multiple debtonations as part of
Speaker 1: the test. For example, when they were talking about doing
Speaker 1: the harbor excavation, they were thinking about doing two different
Speaker 1: detonations at one point, one for carving out the harbor
Speaker 1: and one for carving that trench to the ocean. Um
Speaker 1: and tests were mainly conducted at the Nevada test site,
Speaker 1: so we're not talking about going out into the field
Speaker 1: and testing it there from most of them, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so this was an area that had already been designated
Speaker 1: like this is where we test these. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: they were down in like the Everglades in Florida, like
Speaker 1: like like trying to dig out canals there these things
Speaker 1: alligators to rock it off. Yeah, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: that would explain a lot about Florida having grown up there.
Speaker 1: So wait, we're talking about this in the past tense.
Speaker 1: When did this stop? Yeah, so nine was when it stopped.
Speaker 1: I'll talk a little more about what happened with that.
Speaker 1: But uh So, some of the the projects that were
Speaker 1: codenamed like like you know, we had Chariot earlier, but
Speaker 1: at the Nevada Test Site, you had projects named things
Speaker 1: like Sedan Click a tat hand car, and Sulky that's
Speaker 1: my favorite of Sulky Templar, which is a close handsome cab.
Speaker 1: They did not they did have some other ones that
Speaker 1: were kind of similar. They also had Vulcan Project Vulcan. Uh.
Speaker 1: These were all nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site,
Speaker 1: but they also had non nuclear tests, in other words,
Speaker 1: high explosive tests using conventional explosives to sort of measure
Speaker 1: the difference between the two, kind of get an idea
Speaker 1: of of explosive design so that you could again get
Speaker 1: the effect that you really wanted. And those included project
Speaker 1: names like Toboggan, Hobo, Stagecoach, and Scooter. Meanwhile, Plowshare also
Speaker 1: had other projects. One was called Project Gnome, which was
Speaker 1: a test of underground explosives that took place in Carl's
Speaker 1: b add New Mexico. I I play, I play a
Speaker 1: gnome in D and D in the game that I'm
Speaker 1: currently playing. So that that was that was what that
Speaker 1: giggle an explusive temper. She does, she could very well
Speaker 1: fit in with with Project plow Share. She she could
Speaker 1: just be would actually totally approve of that. She doesn't
Speaker 1: hold very high regard for so much. How much are
Speaker 1: gnomes in D and D like David the Gnome? Very little?
Speaker 1: I would say that David the Gnome was closer to
Speaker 1: what D and D would consider a halfling. Okay, that's fair,
Speaker 1: Thank you Joe for allowing me to continue the show.
Speaker 1: Uh that so Project Nome was going to be a
Speaker 1: actually was a three kiloton test in an underground salt
Speaker 1: bed deposit. Now, the main purpose of that one was
Speaker 1: to study isotope and energy production from an explosion to
Speaker 1: better understand how nuclear explosions might be used for peaceful purposes.
Speaker 1: So a lot of these tests weren't let's just see
Speaker 1: if we can dig a canal. It was really examining
Speaker 1: this release of energy and figuring out how best to
Speaker 1: put it to use. It wasn't you know. I know,
Speaker 1: we're being a little cavalier with the description of the program,
Speaker 1: but they really were trying to understand this from a
Speaker 1: scientific perspective. Oh yeah, yeah, no, I didn't. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: hope that we're not putting off the concept in any
Speaker 1: way that you know. It's a bunch of kids going like, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's see what happens if we explode what over there? Hey, y'all,
Speaker 1: I got some M E. D s. Let's go put
Speaker 1: them in the trash can. Yeah, that's my youth, all right.
Speaker 1: So there were also a nuclear test near Grand Valley, Colorado,
Speaker 1: and Farmington, New Mexico, and the final detonation. You know,
Speaker 1: I said that the program ended in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: but the final detonation actually happened on in May nine
Speaker 1: seventy three. It's called Rio Blanco and it was a
Speaker 1: three explosive test with each explosive at thirty three kilo
Speaker 1: tons uh, And it was a natural gas stimulation experiment
Speaker 1: near Rifle Colorado and um killo tons. By the way,
Speaker 1: when we saykill a ton in Megatan, in case you
Speaker 1: don't know, that's the equivalent amount of TNT that would
Speaker 1: create a similar explosion. So obviously one of the big
Speaker 1: advantages of a nuclear explosion because you have a much
Speaker 1: smaller compact package in the explosive device than you would
Speaker 1: if you had to use a comparable amount of t
Speaker 1: n T. Man. Yeah, it is a pain to shift
Speaker 1: thousands of killo tons of t n T to a
Speaker 1: test site in the desert. Yeah. Well, I mean if
Speaker 1: you're if you're using it to actually do something, like
Speaker 1: you really want to dig a canal, and you're figuring out, oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna need ten tons of of TNT to do this,
Speaker 1: or we could use one ten kill a ton nuclear bomb.
Speaker 1: Then you're like, well, I can see where the practical
Speaker 1: side it's like building a better battery out of radioactive
Speaker 1: material that will mess up your world for generations to come. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, we make a lot of jokes as if
Speaker 1: it's just kind of ridiculous to think that nuclear nuclear
Speaker 1: explosions could be used for any purpose other than warfare weaponry.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if that actually is a ridiculous idea,
Speaker 1: because I think there are perhaps some cases we can
Speaker 1: think of where we would want a ton of energy
Speaker 1: released very quick for a non killing purpose. Sure, And
Speaker 1: and to be fair, there was a lot of research
Speaker 1: into how to create a nuclear explosion and control the
Speaker 1: issue of fallout so that you don't have an ongoing
Speaker 1: problem that continues well after the explosion. Yeah, that seems
Speaker 1: like one of the biggest drawbacks exactly. Well, and also,
Speaker 1: you know, to put all of this a little bit
Speaker 1: into perspective, it wasn't until the nineteen nineties that that
Speaker 1: wartime nuclear testing was discontinued in many countries. And I
Speaker 1: mean North Korea is still doing it sure today. So
Speaker 1: there was a moratorium that happened briefly at the very
Speaker 1: beginning of Operation Plowshare, like right nineteen sixty one, but
Speaker 1: it ended in nineteen sixty It might have even been
Speaker 1: late nineteen sixty one or early nineteen sixty two, and
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union started doing underground tests in the usaid
Speaker 1: all right, games on, right, yeah, yeah, And and and
Speaker 1: for furthermore, I don't think it was until the or
Speaker 1: the first decade of the two thousands that we started
Speaker 1: really getting reports back on exactly how damaging even that
Speaker 1: kind of testing can be. Yeah, we didn't have the science.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was no way of knowing, right, That's
Speaker 1: the kind of knowledge that you gain only through the
Speaker 1: passage of time, and that's unfortunate if it's a negative
Speaker 1: impact in the case of fallout, that's obviously the case.
Speaker 1: Um Well, by the early nineteen seventies, it was pretty
Speaker 1: clear to the U. S. Government that Plowshare was not
Speaker 1: going to be able to continue. It was not receiving
Speaker 1: very much support, certainly not from the public and also
Speaker 1: not from politicians. And since it's a government agency and
Speaker 1: against its money from the government, that translated into a
Speaker 1: lack of funds, which meant that projects were getting cance
Speaker 1: Like some of the projects that had been planned never
Speaker 1: went through, not because anyone protested them, but because there
Speaker 1: was not enough money to actually do them in the
Speaker 1: first place. So by nine the program was completely discontinued. Also,
Speaker 1: the Atomic Energy Commission dissolved by the end of nineteen So, uh.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing to me is that the idea, and
Speaker 1: you were kind of alluding to this, Joe, the idea
Speaker 1: of using nuclear explosions to do to do constructive work
Speaker 1: in some way, or at least to do non weapon
Speaker 1: work in some way. Isn't gone. There's still suggestions that
Speaker 1: helped pop up today. Now, I bet some of these
Speaker 1: suggestions are still stupid, some some of them are at
Speaker 1: least some of them are met with critical skepticism. Let
Speaker 1: us say that you have an example I do, I do,
Speaker 1: and then and there were some that didn't include in
Speaker 1: this layout that we could have talked about, like the
Speaker 1: idea of using nuclear explosions to propel spacecraft into space.
Speaker 1: We I think we may have mentioned that in the
Speaker 1: previous episode, but that we're really looking at other stuff here,
Speaker 1: like uh, in two thousand ten, there was a CNN
Speaker 1: reporter named John Roberts who was covering the British Petroleum
Speaker 1: Deepwater Horizon crisis. You guys remember that obviously right offshore
Speaker 1: oil drill that that you know, there was a terrible
Speaker 1: failure and we were having oil just uh leak into
Speaker 1: the ocean and it was just directly from the well
Speaker 1: and it was a huge pr disaster for BP as
Speaker 1: well as a true environmental disaster. So John Roberts at
Speaker 1: one point and kind of in an offhand way, and
Speaker 1: and not necessarily in a serious way, said drill a hole,
Speaker 1: drop a nuke, and seal seal up the well. So
Speaker 1: use a nuclear explosion, uh to collapse the well in
Speaker 1: on itself and thus stop the oil from leaking into
Speaker 1: the ocean. Uh. There was some opposition to this proposal.
Speaker 1: You could explain it out that there were a few issues.
Speaker 1: There was one that, um, you couldn't really be sure
Speaker 1: that this wouldn't make things worse, Like it wouldn't just
Speaker 1: open the well up even more and create an even
Speaker 1: greater problem that would be harder to fix environmentally. No
Speaker 1: one was really sure how that might impact the area
Speaker 1: the ecosystem, and keep in mind the explosion and also
Speaker 1: the residual radioactivity. Yeah, and ecosystems are connected to other ecosystems, right,
Speaker 1: It's not like an ecosystem is a self contained static
Speaker 1: environment that nothing ever enters into or leaves. So unless
Speaker 1: you're talking about maybe like a terrarium, yeah, or maybe
Speaker 1: an entire like if you're looking at a global ecosystem, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the global ecal ecosystem is pretty well contained. Yeah. You
Speaker 1: don't tend to see like dolphins fly off into space
Speaker 1: except in Douglas Adams novels. So at any rate, people
Speaker 1: were saying, you know this, we we don't know what
Speaker 1: could happen as a result of this, either from technical
Speaker 1: or health standard. It would be monumentally shortsighted to try
Speaker 1: this approach. And also politically, this was during a time
Speaker 1: when President Barack Obama was arguing for global nuclear disarmament.
Speaker 1: So to say like, hey, everyone needs to get rid
Speaker 1: of their nuclear bombs. By the way, we're totally going
Speaker 1: to use one right now. Um that it's probably not
Speaker 1: the most prudent political approach. And um. Also there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of treaties about the use of nuclear weapons,
Speaker 1: mostly say hey, don't do it. Uh, so that would
Speaker 1: also be an issue. So people were essentially saying it's
Speaker 1: practically politically mostly do some of the treaties say I
Speaker 1: don't do it unless you're real mad, you know. I
Speaker 1: just I hate to speak in absolutes. I like to
Speaker 1: give myself a wiggle room, just in case. Somewhere in
Speaker 1: tiny little print, it's like, okay, if you if you
Speaker 1: super pinky swear that it's not for destructive use, is well,
Speaker 1: I mean, if someone pulls out your controller chord when
Speaker 1: you're playing Super Mario Brothers. That is justification for nuclear attack. Absolutely, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree with that, you know any rate, Uh that
Speaker 1: that's that's these problems are best solved by a cup
Speaker 1: of mountain due to the face. That's one example of
Speaker 1: someone suggesting using nuclear explosions for something other than as
Speaker 1: a weapon. Surely there's a more interesting one than that.
Speaker 1: There's one that was very recent. It was back in
Speaker 1: um when Elon Musk, one of our our favorite folks
Speaker 1: to talk about on the podcast. He was on an
Speaker 1: appearance of U at the Late Show with Stephen Colbert
Speaker 1: and UH. In the midst of a discussion, conversation turned
Speaker 1: toward Mars, as it always does, and Musk kind of
Speaker 1: casually said that one way we could try and tear
Speaker 1: a for Mars is by detonating some nuclear bombs over
Speaker 1: the polls. Colbert's response was, you're talking like a supervillain.
Speaker 1: This is what supervillains say, which was not inaccurate. It's
Speaker 1: not incorrect. Yeah. He later clarified that he wasn't talking
Speaker 1: about like dropping a bomb on the pole, but rather
Speaker 1: detonating them above the poles in the Martian atmosphere, which
Speaker 1: is already pretty thin. Uh. The idea being that using
Speaker 1: fusion based nuclear weaponry, you could create miniature pulsing stars,
Speaker 1: and you'd have to do a series of these explosions
Speaker 1: to continue uh having a star present at the polls.
Speaker 1: But these stars would heat up the planet enough to
Speaker 1: melt some of the frozen carbon dioxide to turn it
Speaker 1: into gas form. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, So
Speaker 1: if you if you flooded the Martian atmosphere with greenhouse gas,
Speaker 1: then at least in theory, it would trap some of
Speaker 1: that heat and help the planet go on a warming trend. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like like a relatively rapid climate change trend tore something
Speaker 1: more habitable. But yeah, they also said that you know,
Speaker 1: after a century or so, you would probably have safe
Speaker 1: levels of radiation around the polar regions. Um so yeah,
Speaker 1: just within a century you would be able to actually
Speaker 1: put stuff there. But in any rate that well, I
Speaker 1: mean it kind of makes sense because terraforming is a many,
Speaker 1: many years project anyway, It's not like you started one
Speaker 1: year and move in three years later. Look, I saw
Speaker 1: Star Trek to Wratha con and the Genesis project. I
Speaker 1: know that it only takes a day. No, I I
Speaker 1: agree with you entirely, so when we say rapid terraforming,
Speaker 1: we're talking obviously relatively so, because any any other approach
Speaker 1: would take much more time, like only a couple of
Speaker 1: centuries rather than a couple of millennia. There are people
Speaker 1: who have maybe not dismissed this idea, but at least
Speaker 1: expressed concern about such an approach. James Lewis for the
Speaker 1: Center of the Center Forced Tegic and International Studies, said
Speaker 1: that any idea that sounds like a scene from a
Speaker 1: Schwarzenegger movie is open to question um, which is fairly comedic,
Speaker 1: but there were more specifics. Uh. Michael Mann, who is
Speaker 1: the director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn
Speaker 1: State University, said that a nuclear explosion could force a
Speaker 1: lot of particles up into the atmosphere. Uh that would
Speaker 1: block sunlight from reaching the surface of Mars from penetrating
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. This is the old nuclear winter hypothesis exactly so,
Speaker 1: which is the opposite of warming a planet up. Exactly so.
Speaker 1: So you would end up either preserving or making Mars
Speaker 1: even colder than it already is. You make it even
Speaker 1: more difficult for you to achieve the goal of terraforming it.
Speaker 1: That as a possible outcome. Um and others pointed out
Speaker 1: that it also might be a little premature to talk
Speaker 1: about terraforming another planet when we still haven't figured out
Speaker 1: how to take care of the one we're on. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know that that sounds like what about is
Speaker 1: um um? Maybe? I mean, I'm not saying we shouldn't
Speaker 1: figure out how to take care of the one we're on,
Speaker 1: but it's not an either or Well, I think I
Speaker 1: think the I think it's moral on the lines of
Speaker 1: how can we be sure we can fix the problems
Speaker 1: of another planet when we haven't been able to fix
Speaker 1: the problems that we're on now? Right, So the idea
Speaker 1: being that when's that tipping point, like there's too many
Speaker 1: problems here, Well, well those other problems are way more
Speaker 1: fun to work on. Let's just go there. Plus if
Speaker 1: we screw up, there aren't any people there, So yeah,
Speaker 1: well that that is one thing I would propose, is
Speaker 1: it's possible that before we start terraforming Mars, we need
Speaker 1: to spend more time looking for signs of life and
Speaker 1: previous life on Mars to make sure that we don't
Speaker 1: erase evidence of the most interesting thing we might find
Speaker 1: in the interstellar So that was that was another argument
Speaker 1: that other scientists were proposing as well, saying, yeah, like
Speaker 1: if we we could, we could kill whatever is left there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if we're if we're trying, I mean, like, if it's
Speaker 1: to the point where we're trying not to like make
Speaker 1: rovers move so fast that they'll upset the Martian dust,
Speaker 1: then probably a nuclear explosion in the atmosphere might be
Speaker 1: a bit much. It would also cause an e MP
Speaker 1: surge that could destroy Martian technology. I mean, we supposed
Speaker 1: to find that Martian time machine, leave it working, all
Speaker 1: those Martian soap operas will go off the air. Uh Well,
Speaker 1: and more seriously, I mean we've already talked about in
Speaker 1: previous episodes the difficulty and in figuring out whether or
Speaker 1: not there are any signs of life on Mars because
Speaker 1: of the chance that we could ourselves contaminate the samples
Speaker 1: just by bringing along microbes from Earth that then could
Speaker 1: be interpreted as being a microbe from Mars. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was just a hitchecker the whole time. Um, if
Speaker 1: we drop a couple of nuclear bombs that in some
Speaker 1: areas on Mars, there's a good chance that we could
Speaker 1: eliminate any possibility of finding anything, and then we're even
Speaker 1: more uncertain in the future when we send rovers or
Speaker 1: other devices to the planet to look for signs of
Speaker 1: life if in fact that was there already, or if
Speaker 1: we brought it there accidentally. On the positive side, something
Speaker 1: like that would absolutely kill off the Mars one project.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure, And I would be real excited about that.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't have to we wouldn't have to wait for
Speaker 1: a reality TV show to fl I'm I am confident
Speaker 1: that that is not going to go anywhere. I from
Speaker 1: what I understand, they are well behind any of their
Speaker 1: fundraising goals. Yeah. Odd that people aren't aren't lining up
Speaker 1: to pay for a what seems like a practically impossible project.
Speaker 1: I think. I think you guys, we've found the two
Speaker 1: things that I feel like real comfortable being snarky about
Speaker 1: on air, and that's casual use of nuclear weapons and
Speaker 1: Mars one. So I'm glad that we got to talk
Speaker 1: about them both in the same episode. And and of course,
Speaker 1: like I said, there were other potential uses for nuclear explosions,
Speaker 1: covering like the idea of nuclear propulsion for spacecraft. I
Speaker 1: think this is not something that is completely off the table.
Speaker 1: For future US there there have been designs in the past.
Speaker 1: In the past, like Project to Ryan was a proposal
Speaker 1: for nuclear nuclear thrust propelled spacecraft, so you detonate a
Speaker 1: nuclear device and then you would capture that energy and
Speaker 1: with I think there have been different kinds of designs,
Speaker 1: some involved like a uh spacecraft with a sling shotting
Speaker 1: kind of back and forth motion with a parachute that
Speaker 1: would catch the explosion, and then there are other designs too.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it seems like that could be a very
Speaker 1: interesting option, especially if you're talking about a very long
Speaker 1: mission that you want to accelerate to very fast speeds
Speaker 1: to to shorten the length of the trip. Obviously, it
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense if you're going to the Moon, but
Speaker 1: it might make sense if you're trying to go to Saturn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does cause people to voice concern and legitimately so
Speaker 1: about what happens in the event of a launch failure
Speaker 1: and you happen to have what is equivalent to a
Speaker 1: nuclear bomb on board that rocket that would otherwise be
Speaker 1: launching into space and uh that I mean, that's one
Speaker 1: of the things that people have have brought up as
Speaker 1: an objection to this kind of approach, I think quite obviously,
Speaker 1: the solution is we build our new production facility in
Speaker 1: orbit so that we're making the bombs in a space station, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: because blowing up the space station, it's basically okay, blowing
Speaker 1: up Cape Canaveral would suck. I don't mean the space
Speaker 1: station like the I s s like a fully fully
Speaker 1: automated space station. This is reminding me of a terrible
Speaker 1: asylum movie I watched called The Terminators, and uh and
Speaker 1: and so I'm having flashbacks to that. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to wrap this up. It was a really interesting kind
Speaker 1: of way of looking back at what was I would
Speaker 1: argue in timistic, even set aside the cynical, uh underbelly
Speaker 1: of whatever the motivations might have been, there was an
Speaker 1: optimistic view of what can we do with this technology
Speaker 1: that isn't destructive. Let's try and find a way of
Speaker 1: making use of this in a way, in a way
Speaker 1: that's not about ending the lives of thousands of people.
Speaker 1: And uh, I like that, even if ultimately it was
Speaker 1: not a fruitful effort. You know another thing that that
Speaker 1: does occur to me in terms of peaceful uses of
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons will weapon right there in the title peaceful
Speaker 1: uses of nuclear explosions would be that might become a
Speaker 1: more useful thing once our society grows to something more
Speaker 1: like the next level of the Cardashov scale, Because when
Speaker 1: you're talking about the surface of the Earth, there are
Speaker 1: just not many things that you need that much energy
Speaker 1: that fast for, especially with all the risks associated. But
Speaker 1: when you're when you're talking about engineering gigantic projects in space, uh,
Speaker 1: then then I can maybe see more what's going on,
Speaker 1: maybe stellar engineering, stellar engineering, or planetary engineering. If we
Speaker 1: want to get all the elements in place for our
Speaker 1: own dicensphere, then we're gonna be nukes might be useful.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I think I can see where
Speaker 1: Elon Musk is going with this. Yeah, I mean it'll
Speaker 1: you know. I can definitely understand the critics as well.
Speaker 1: But if we can find ways of making a responsible
Speaker 1: use of this possible, where we have minimized risk and
Speaker 1: we have maximize return, then I don't necessarily have an
Speaker 1: objection to it, apart from my initial emotional reaction, which
Speaker 1: is always gonna be please don't. That's always gonna be
Speaker 1: my initial emotional reaction to this um partly because I
Speaker 1: grew up during the Cold War, so uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's one of those things that's kind of deeply
Speaker 1: ingrained in my brain. But maybe one day we will
Speaker 1: figure it out and be able to put it to
Speaker 1: use in a way that no one really has. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a credible objection to time will tell. But
Speaker 1: something I want you guys out there to think about is, Hey,
Speaker 1: you've got ideas for episodes that we should cover here
Speaker 1: on We're thinking of topics for our episodes or ways
Speaker 1: that we could use nuclear weapons and peaceful Sure if
Speaker 1: you if you're like, you know, I like that fried
Speaker 1: chicken idea. Yeah, you let us know. Our email addresses
Speaker 1: FW thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or you
Speaker 1: can drop us a line on Twitter or Facebook. At
Speaker 1: Twitter we are FW thinking, and on Facebook search FW
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Speaker 1: You can leave us a message there and we will
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