Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is
Speaker 1: Robert Land and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. Time
Speaker 1: to go into the vault for an older episode of
Speaker 1: the show. This one originally aired September and was called
Speaker 1: the Atomic scar This one was about some of the
Speaker 1: after effects of nuclear testing. All right, let's dig right in.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Land and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: today we're going to be talking about nuclear weapons testing. Now,
Speaker 1: this is something that has come up on the show
Speaker 1: a good bit before. Obviously, we've had to talk many
Speaker 1: times about the very real, uh you know, danger potential
Speaker 1: civilization level threat and and the real human costs of
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons testing. But today I wanted
Speaker 1: to focus on a couple of interesting and lesser known
Speaker 1: environmental effects of nuclear weapons testing. Specifically something that I
Speaker 1: came across as it pertains to industrial metals, and then
Speaker 1: we're going to get into some other scientific territory as
Speaker 1: we go on. But quite apart from any straightforward chemical
Speaker 1: effects on the atmosphere, I think it is pretty fair
Speaker 1: to say that the the the human departure into the
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons testing era in nineteen forty five was really
Speaker 1: sort of a shift moment for for humankind as a species. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I feel like there there are very few things
Speaker 1: that have been said there are There are very few
Speaker 1: audio samples certainly that sum it up quite as well
Speaker 1: or or or are as haunting as those given by J.
Speaker 1: Robert Oppenheimer in nineteen sixty five on the television documentary
Speaker 1: The Decision to Drop the Bomb, broadcast as an in
Speaker 1: DC White Pay for I imagine most of you have
Speaker 1: heard this before. I've heard it's a sampled and used
Speaker 1: in music. It uh, it shows up in comic books, literature,
Speaker 1: um in it. The American theoretical physicist and father of
Speaker 1: the atomic bombs he's sometimes referred, shares the following regarding
Speaker 1: the first successful detonation of an atomic bomb at the
Speaker 1: Trinity Test in New Mexico on July six. He said, quote,
Speaker 1: we knew the world would not be the same. A
Speaker 1: few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent.
Speaker 1: I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture the Bagavad Gita.
Speaker 1: Fish Nu is trying to persuade the prince that he
Speaker 1: should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on
Speaker 1: his multi armed form and says, now I am become Death,
Speaker 1: the destroyer of worlds. I suppose we all thought that
Speaker 1: one way or another. It's a difficult thing to imagine
Speaker 1: working on that kind of research in a way, feeling
Speaker 1: that it is your duty or your necessity to aid
Speaker 1: the light cause in World War Two, but at the
Speaker 1: same time knowing that you were working on something that
Speaker 1: that would unleash an age of terror in human history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean absolutely, a weapon that would as of this recording, uh,
Speaker 1: has only been used twice in war, which on one
Speaker 1: hand you can you can say, thankfully has only been
Speaker 1: used twice in war, but on the the same hand
Speaker 1: you can say, tragically has been used twice in war. Um. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: we'll get into the just the destructive capabilities a bit
Speaker 1: of of the bomb as we proceed here, And of
Speaker 1: course we've covered it on the show before to varying degrees.
Speaker 1: But I want to come back to the quote that
Speaker 1: that Oppenheimer is um is deploying here. So if if
Speaker 1: you're not familiar with it, basically, these are these are
Speaker 1: who the figures are in this You've got Vishnu, one
Speaker 1: of the principal deities of Hinduism. Uh. The Bugabod Guetta
Speaker 1: or the gutas it's sometimes just short too, is part
Speaker 1: of the Hindu epic, the Mahabarata. Technically it's book six
Speaker 1: in that. And the prince in question is the hero Argina,
Speaker 1: part of the Pandava family that wages war against the Caravas. Uh.
Speaker 1: That that's the big struggle. That's uh, that's key to
Speaker 1: the Mahabarata. Anyway, at the beginning of the Gita, which
Speaker 1: Appenheimer is um is quoting here, Argena rides his chariot
Speaker 1: onto the field of forthcoming battle between these two families.
Speaker 1: But he suddenly overcome by doubt and depression as he notes,
Speaker 1: they're there on the other side, within the ranks of
Speaker 1: the enemy's he recognizes friends, relatives, teachers, and Uh. And
Speaker 1: therefore has this this just immense so weight descend upon him. Um.
Speaker 1: This is a quote from it. This is as translated
Speaker 1: by Edwin Arnold in five and as as is always
Speaker 1: the case with translated works of literature and poetry, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the English is going to be approximate, and
Speaker 1: certainly with Hinduism, they're many cases where particular ideas and
Speaker 1: phrases don't really have a parallel word in English. Um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it goes as follows quote. Thus, if we slay kinsfolk
Speaker 1: and friends for love of earthly power, avat, what an
Speaker 1: evil fault it were better? I deem it. If my
Speaker 1: kinsmen strike to face them, weaponless and bear my breast
Speaker 1: to shaft and spear, then answer blow with blow. So,
Speaker 1: speaking in the face of those two hosts, Arginas sank
Speaker 1: upon his chariot seat and let fall bow and arrows
Speaker 1: sick at heart. So the prospect of the forthcoming bloodshed
Speaker 1: is just too much for him. But what does he do?
Speaker 1: He turns to his charioteer UH for counsel, and luckily
Speaker 1: his charioteer is the blueskinned Krishna, the avatar of the
Speaker 1: mighty Vishnu, and he gives him his counsel. In fact,
Speaker 1: he gives him his counsel for eighteen chapters. That's that's
Speaker 1: what the Geta is is basically him providing all of
Speaker 1: this uh philosophical and spiritual advice on what it is
Speaker 1: to have to make these sorts of decisions and engage
Speaker 1: in war and duty and so forth. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like something like the Book of Job in the form
Speaker 1: we have it now, which you have a sort of
Speaker 1: small framing narrative that mainly contains a didactic discourse on
Speaker 1: theological matters, right and now if you want to like
Speaker 1: a really good breakdown all of this episode, uh, in
Speaker 1: the Mahabarata of the Gita, and especially as it relates
Speaker 1: to Oppenheimer in his life. There's a wonderful paper that
Speaker 1: you can find out there in full on the on
Speaker 1: the internet from James A. Hegi, a professor of history,
Speaker 1: University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Uh. He did. This was a
Speaker 1: nice write up he did for the American Philosophical Society
Speaker 1: in two thousand and He goes into greater death, but
Speaker 1: he also summarizes Chrishna's counsel as follows He's he says, look,
Speaker 1: you're a soldier, Arena. You have to fight. Fighting is
Speaker 1: your duty, so you need to do it. Um. He
Speaker 1: also says, look, Krishna, uh, you know this, this god
Speaker 1: who I also am, is going to be the one
Speaker 1: to determine who lives and who dies. It's not your
Speaker 1: place to mourn or rejoice over human loss. In this case,
Speaker 1: you should try to remain unattached from the outcome. And
Speaker 1: then also faith in Chrishna is going to be what
Speaker 1: saves your soul, Argenna. And this is the most important
Speaker 1: part of the whole scenario. But as Argina begins to
Speaker 1: metaphorically see the light or I suppose behold the true
Speaker 1: nature of the reality he's faced with, he asks if
Speaker 1: he can see Chrishna's godlike form, and this site ultimately
Speaker 1: seals Arginna's commitment to do his duty. And this occurs
Speaker 1: in chapter eleven, verse thirty two, where uh where the
Speaker 1: now cosmically embodied Vishnu speaks to Arginna. And what he
Speaker 1: exactly says of two English speaking ears is going to
Speaker 1: depend on the translation. But for instance, the writer translation
Speaker 1: has him say death, am I my present task destruction? Um.
Speaker 1: There's a translation by Arnold that says, thou seest me
Speaker 1: as Time, who kills Time, who brings all to doom,
Speaker 1: the slayer Time, ancient of days, come hither to consume.
Speaker 1: And there's another one I came across that I thought
Speaker 1: was pretty good. I am mighty Time, the source of
Speaker 1: destruction that comes forth to annihilate the world's And I've
Speaker 1: always loved this one by J. A. B. Then Bitinen quote,
Speaker 1: I am time grown old to destroy the world embarked
Speaker 1: on the course of world annihilation. I am time grown old.
Speaker 1: Always find that kind of there's something kind of perplexing
Speaker 1: about that phrasing that seems to befitting of this all
Speaker 1: powerful being that is, you know, that has taken on
Speaker 1: his true form to you. Yeah, there's something that comes
Speaker 1: in the fullness of time. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting the
Speaker 1: way the personification as time further serves that purpose of
Speaker 1: the kind of depersonalization of of one's role in history.
Speaker 1: You know that there is a kind of like a
Speaker 1: fate or world path that is executed through the passing
Speaker 1: of time, and what you are is someone who plays
Speaker 1: a role within it, not the shaper of it. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: Um again, it is it is even in translation as
Speaker 1: it's it's this really perplexing and beautiful passage. Now, it
Speaker 1: should stress that Oppenheimer was not religiously Hindu, but he
Speaker 1: was interested in Hindu scripture, and clearly he found an
Speaker 1: association here between his role in the creation of the
Speaker 1: bomb and the idea of duty performed regardless of potential outcome. Now,
Speaker 1: he certainly is bending the text here a bit, because
Speaker 1: in in the Gita Vishnu slash Krishna is saying, look,
Speaker 1: I'm the prime mover here, I'm the one who destroys you.
Speaker 1: Just do your duty. Oppenheimer seems to be implying the opposite,
Speaker 1: that there perhaps is no all powerful force that bears
Speaker 1: the burden of our deeds, that the burden is instead
Speaker 1: on the shoulders of those involved in the creation of
Speaker 1: such a weapon. You know, when he's saying, you know,
Speaker 1: now I am become death, and that we all felt
Speaker 1: that way one way way or another. I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: he is he is. He He's confronting the personal responsibility
Speaker 1: that seems to be there in the creation of such
Speaker 1: a weapon. But so it does seem that there's this
Speaker 1: this double terror in Oppenheimer's mind, like what if we fail?
Speaker 1: But also what if we succeed? Yeah? Yeah, that that
Speaker 1: that's something that Heggia gets into, you know, this this
Speaker 1: idea that there's this an immense fear of failure. You know,
Speaker 1: what if we don't develop the bomb as we've been
Speaker 1: tasked with, uh, and what will that mean for us.
Speaker 1: But then, yeah, well, how much mass human death will
Speaker 1: be brought into the world, even on the short term, Uh,
Speaker 1: if this is successful, without even getting into the way
Speaker 1: that it will change the landscape of of not only
Speaker 1: warfare and and potential warfare in global security, but just
Speaker 1: human civilization itself. Yeah, there's so many ways you can
Speaker 1: track the impact of the invention of nuclear weapons. Clearly
Speaker 1: one of them is a sort of like world psychological impact.
Speaker 1: You know, there's just there's bomb consciousness in the world
Speaker 1: now that that sort of will always be there unless
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons are entirely eliminated, But even even then they
Speaker 1: would they'll probably still be the knowledge that they could
Speaker 1: be built again. Yeah. This this reminds me of one
Speaker 1: of Grant Morrison's creations for the Doom Patrol comic book,
Speaker 1: the idea of the Candlemaker, This embodiment of all of
Speaker 1: our apprehension, uh, surrounding nuclear annihilation that takes on this
Speaker 1: kind of godlike really almost kind of terrifying, Vishnu like
Speaker 1: appearance in the human psyche. Is this the guy who's
Speaker 1: made of wax? It is, and we'll have we'll have
Speaker 1: more to say about him in a forthcoming October episode
Speaker 1: of stuff to pull your mind. Oh, that's right, it's
Speaker 1: almost October. It is. But to come back to the
Speaker 1: part of Openheimer's quote that is not part of on
Speaker 1: the of the guida, Um, we knew the world would
Speaker 1: not be this same, uh, and that that is true.
Speaker 1: It wasn't. It isn't. And you're you're probably aware of
Speaker 1: most of the reasons why. But but yeah, today's episode,
Speaker 1: we're going to look at some of the particular ways
Speaker 1: that it was changed, uh, particularly regarding um, you know,
Speaker 1: a few environmental scenarios as well as the nature of steel. Yes,
Speaker 1: So getting into these lesser known environmental effects, I want
Speaker 1: to start with the fact that might seem extremely odd,
Speaker 1: which I was reading about in an article published in
Speaker 1: the journal Health Physics in two thousand seven by a
Speaker 1: health physicist named Timothy P. Lynch. And the article is
Speaker 1: called a historically significant shield for in vivo measurements, And
Speaker 1: the fact goes like this. In Richland, Washington, there is
Speaker 1: a research facility called the in Vivo Radio Bioassay and
Speaker 1: Research Facility. And within this facility there is a special
Speaker 1: room that is surrounded on all sides by thick plates
Speaker 1: of steel that was once part of a World War
Speaker 1: two ERAB battleship called the USS Indiana. This was a
Speaker 1: battleship that served in the war. It was launched in
Speaker 1: nineteen It was in a number of battles It served
Speaker 1: extensively in the Pacific theater during the war, and then
Speaker 1: after it was decommissioned. They took steel out of the
Speaker 1: ship to build this room. Why would anybody do that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you don't know the answer, it sounds a bit mysterious,
Speaker 1: right it all. It sounds like the kind of thing
Speaker 1: Grant Morrison would make up where you're having to engage
Speaker 1: in some sort of magical ritual involving steel from old ships.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, it totally sounds like something magical, either
Speaker 1: kind of magical or symbolic thinking of like, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna melt down the statue of the Golden Calf
Speaker 1: for the false Sidle or king or whatever and and
Speaker 1: turn it into something holy. I'm gonna make a throne
Speaker 1: out of all the swords of those who once opposed
Speaker 1: my rule. Exactly. Yes, it is the iron throne. So
Speaker 1: this is the the iron throne of rooms. Now the
Speaker 1: room is again and in vivo radio bioassay detector, and
Speaker 1: Lynch tells us in the paper that quote, the detection
Speaker 1: system is used to monitor workers for intakes of fission
Speaker 1: and activation products. So this means that it's used to
Speaker 1: check workers people to see if they have ingested tiny
Speaker 1: radioactive particles known as radionuclides. Radionuclides consist of atoms that
Speaker 1: can decay into different isotopes and emit radiation as they
Speaker 1: do so. And if you take them into your body,
Speaker 1: say by swallowing them or breathing them in, they can
Speaker 1: do this inside your body and provide internal radiation sources
Speaker 1: which you do not want. They can pose a serious
Speaker 1: health risk. If enough of them accumulate in the body,
Speaker 1: a large dose could cause acute radiation syndrome. Prolonged exposure
Speaker 1: to even smaller doses over time could be a risk
Speaker 1: for damaging d n A and causing cancer. This is
Speaker 1: to use one example why you don't want to consume
Speaker 1: things that would come from a radioactively contaminated area, you know,
Speaker 1: somewhere around a nuclear meltdown. Why would you not want to, say,
Speaker 1: you know, roll around in the dirt near Chernobyl or
Speaker 1: drink the water there. It's because the the environment is
Speaker 1: contaminated with radio neuclides, these little particles that you don't
Speaker 1: want anywhere near your body. You do not want them
Speaker 1: going inside you. So people who get tested regularly in
Speaker 1: this room would include Department of Energy workers, but Lynch
Speaker 1: also mentions that the room has been used to test
Speaker 1: a helicopter pilot and some other workers from Chernobyl, as
Speaker 1: well as children from Chernobyl. I guess who lived nearby.
Speaker 1: So this has been in use for a long time,
Speaker 1: and it's used to measure the radiation coming from living people.
Speaker 1: So somebody walks into the detector room, they get scanned
Speaker 1: for radio neuclides across the length of the body by
Speaker 1: accounting system that Lynch describes is comprised of five coaxial
Speaker 1: germanium detectors, and because the level of radiation emitted by
Speaker 1: these radio newclides is usually very faint outside the body,
Speaker 1: you need an extremely sensitive detector. And here you hit
Speaker 1: another problem, which is interference from background levels of radiation
Speaker 1: coming from the rest of the world. So you've got
Speaker 1: cosmic sources, atmospheric sources, terrestrial sources. So in order to
Speaker 1: scan the body properly, you need a room with extremely
Speaker 1: tight radiation shielding. And this is where the steel comes in.
Speaker 1: So the counting chamber here is surrounded by a thin
Speaker 1: layer of lead and then cadmium and then copper. This
Speaker 1: is what's known together as a graded Z shield. And
Speaker 1: then outside that you have thirty solid cinameters of steel
Speaker 1: that's all pre war battleship steel, and this keeps the
Speaker 1: background radiation within the chamber within low minimum detectible activities.
Speaker 1: But the question remains, Okay, so you need thirty centimeters
Speaker 1: of steel, but why couldn't you just build your radiation
Speaker 1: shield out of any old steel, Like, if regular steel
Speaker 1: is good enough for your car and your appliances and
Speaker 1: your sky scrapers, why would you have to harvest the
Speaker 1: flesh of a decommissioned battleship in order to build this
Speaker 1: thick radiation shield. Yeah. Again, it's it's easy to sort
Speaker 1: of leap to magical conclusions. It's kind of like, well,
Speaker 1: we live in a we live in a sinful world.
Speaker 1: We have to build our sacred vessel out of wood
Speaker 1: from the garden of Eden. You know, um, you know,
Speaker 1: the the atomic age is so scarred our world that
Speaker 1: we have to we have to find artifacts from before
Speaker 1: that time. Yeah, it certainly does feel like that, but no,
Speaker 1: there is actually a very good physical, scientific reason for this,
Speaker 1: and maybe we should take a break and then get
Speaker 1: back into it when we come back. All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: So we've been talking about the idea of radiation shielding
Speaker 1: around a very sensitive radiation detector room, and the shielding
Speaker 1: was made out of steel that was harvested from a
Speaker 1: decommissioned World War Two battleship called the USS Indiana. So
Speaker 1: the question is, why would you need to get steel
Speaker 1: from a source like that, Why couldn't you just use
Speaker 1: regular steel. Well, so let's look at how you make steel.
Speaker 1: Steel is of course a mixture of iron and carbon
Speaker 1: and sometimes other additives to create alloys with special properties,
Speaker 1: and crucially for our purposes, the process for making steel
Speaker 1: involves the incorporation of atmospheric gases. I was reading about
Speaker 1: this in an article for Chemistry World by Kit Chapman.
Speaker 1: I think it was also a podcast episode of Their's
Speaker 1: talking about how they're There are two major industrial processes
Speaker 1: for making steel in the modern world. One is known
Speaker 1: as the Bessemer process, and this involves melting the iron
Speaker 1: in a furnace and then removing impurities by blowing air
Speaker 1: through the molten metal. The other is known as the
Speaker 1: bos process, and this is similar, but it uses pure
Speaker 1: oxygen instead of air, but that oxygen is still extracted
Speaker 1: from the atmosphere. And so the problem is that either way,
Speaker 1: the gas you're blowing through the molten iron to make
Speaker 1: your steel comes from the atmosphere, from the air. And
Speaker 1: ever since nuclear weapon tests began in nineteen that has
Speaker 1: not exactly been regular air. It is bomb air. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The the ghastly truth of it is, Yeah, we we
Speaker 1: find ourselves saying, oh, we need to use air in
Speaker 1: this is like, oh, that the air, the air we breathe,
Speaker 1: that's where we set off, um, a whole lot of
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons. Um. And and therefore changed it. Um that
Speaker 1: air is not good enough for our steel, for for
Speaker 1: the special steel, at least, just for our breathing and
Speaker 1: our our food and our our children and so forth.
Speaker 1: Now we'll get a bit more into the history of
Speaker 1: the nuclear testing era in a second here, but in short,
Speaker 1: there was a period of time in the middle of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century when lots of nuclear weapons tests were
Speaker 1: conducted around the world, and these tests seeded the atmosphere
Speaker 1: with radioactive contamination. Now, the levels today are much lower
Speaker 1: than they were, say in the mid nineteen sixties when
Speaker 1: these tests have been going on for a decade and
Speaker 1: a half, but even today the air still contains some
Speaker 1: radioactive isotopes such as cobalt sixty and others. Uh that
Speaker 1: is left over from the hundreds of nuclear detonations that
Speaker 1: characterized the post war period. Now this had many effects,
Speaker 1: of course, the most important of which are probably like
Speaker 1: the health effects on humans and the effects on wildlife.
Speaker 1: But another one of the effects is that for a
Speaker 1: long time you couldn't make steel via normal processes without
Speaker 1: it being potentially contaminated with radioactive particles. Not so many
Speaker 1: radioactive particles that it would be unsafe for regular use,
Speaker 1: but enough that it would be uns suitable if you
Speaker 1: were trying to make a sensitive instrument. So if you
Speaker 1: needed to make a Geiger counter or shielding for a
Speaker 1: sensitive radio bioassay chamber. Uh, So, what would you do? Well,
Speaker 1: it probably wasn't impossible to make steel without environmental contaminants
Speaker 1: from nuclear tests, but it would have been expensive and difficult.
Speaker 1: And another option presented itself, which was harvesting steel made
Speaker 1: before the Trinity Test in nineteen forty and this precious
Speaker 1: material became known in the industry as low background steel,
Speaker 1: low background because of its low background radiation and what
Speaker 1: would be a great source of huge quantities of pre
Speaker 1: bomb steel old naval vessels. So to come back to
Speaker 1: the Timothy Lynch article about the radio bioassay facility in Richland, uh,
Speaker 1: the USS Indiana was again the battleship that was sourced.
Speaker 1: It was the source here. It was decommissioned on September
Speaker 1: eleven and then sold for scrap after it was taken
Speaker 1: off the navy list in on June one, nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 1: And as the ship was dismantled, some parts were kept
Speaker 1: for ceremonial purposes, like the mainmast and a forty millimeter
Speaker 1: gun were put on display on the campus of India University, Bloomington,
Speaker 1: and I know some of its anchors were put on
Speaker 1: display at various museums and memorials. You know, it's compasses,
Speaker 1: wheels and all that went to places where where you
Speaker 1: can honor the fallen ships. Well it this really drives
Speaker 1: home this metaphor of the ship is a fallen beast
Speaker 1: like the warship is a thing that once dead. Uh
Speaker 1: you know that certain parts are kept for like you said,
Speaker 1: ceremonial purposes, or display purposes, magical purposes, and yet other
Speaker 1: things are harvested for it for the raw meter bone
Speaker 1: of the creature, right, and the raw meter bone would
Speaker 1: be the steel here the snade up. The bulk of
Speaker 1: the ship was put to low background uses. So in Indiana,
Speaker 1: v A hospital got sixty five tons of low background
Speaker 1: steel from the Indiana and that was used for their own, uh,
Speaker 1: their own background radiation counting facilities. But then Lynch writes
Speaker 1: quote in addition to the VA hospital facility, several large
Speaker 1: sections of the hull, weighing a total of two tons,
Speaker 1: were also fabricated into a room. These applications were probably
Speaker 1: never imagined by the original designers of the Indiana. These
Speaker 1: sections of the hull are still being used for the
Speaker 1: original purpose as a shield, but instead of protecting against
Speaker 1: artillery shells and torpedoes, the new purpose is to shield
Speaker 1: radiation detectors from the background radiations originating from cosmic, atmospheric,
Speaker 1: man made and terrestrial sources. So what was once armor
Speaker 1: again unitions is now armor against the entire universe and
Speaker 1: its radioactive contents. The room was first constructed at the
Speaker 1: University of Utah Medical Center in Salt Lake City, where
Speaker 1: it was used for many years in radio biology research,
Speaker 1: and then it was finally moved to the Richland Facility
Speaker 1: in nine and the Indiana was not the only battleship
Speaker 1: that became a source of low background steel. So after
Speaker 1: the Armistice in nineteen eighteen, at the conclusion of World
Speaker 1: War One, the German High Seas Fleet was ordered to
Speaker 1: report to an Allied base known as the Skapa Flow,
Speaker 1: where the naval vessels were supposed to be handed over
Speaker 1: to the British Royal Navy. But the German officers did
Speaker 1: not like that. They had a different idea and they decided,
Speaker 1: sort of as a kind of last middle finger to
Speaker 1: the British, they scuttled their ships in the harbor. They
Speaker 1: sank their own ships on purpose so that the British
Speaker 1: couldn't have them. So now they're all those shipwrecks there.
Speaker 1: In fact that the Scapa Flow is well known for
Speaker 1: its World War One era shipwrecks, and it's been exploited
Speaker 1: extensively as a source of low background steel. And though
Speaker 1: it's not known for sure I've read rumors, unconfirmed rumors
Speaker 1: that some early spacecraft may have used low background steel
Speaker 1: from the Scapa flow or other wrecks in radiation detectors.
Speaker 1: Interesting now, I'm mentioned this earlier, but it's worth pointing
Speaker 1: out again that the atmosphere is much less radioactive today
Speaker 1: than it was at the height of nuclear testing in
Speaker 1: in the middle of the century. For example, cobalt sixty
Speaker 1: has a half life of about five point three years,
Speaker 1: and there has been a lot less nuclear testing since
Speaker 1: the Partial Nuclear Test Band Treaty in nineteen sixte certainly
Speaker 1: a lot less atmospheric testing, so the atmosphere should be
Speaker 1: reduced to um near pre war levels of background contamination
Speaker 1: within a reasonable amount of time. But but it took decades.
Speaker 1: So Robert, when reading about this, I came across a
Speaker 1: comic strip I thought you might like. It's one of
Speaker 1: the x K C D comics. And in it they
Speaker 1: build a time machine. But it turns out the time
Speaker 1: machine requires lead from sunken Roman warships and uh. This
Speaker 1: is of course hard to come by, so they determine
Speaker 1: they have enough lead for one trip into the past
Speaker 1: and uh, and in this way through time travel, Greek
Speaker 1: fire is born. It's kind of like the you know,
Speaker 1: if you could you only had one wish from a genie,
Speaker 1: what do you do, well, you wish for more wishes? Yeah,
Speaker 1: more wishes. Yeah. I love this little comic strip. I
Speaker 1: had not seen it before you I shared it with me,
Speaker 1: but it it's especially nice because I just started watching
Speaker 1: some nineties episodes of The Outer Limits, and this is
Speaker 1: the kind of sort of Outer Limits see sort of plot,
Speaker 1: maybe skewed a little bit for comedic purposes, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's the It's the kind of twist you you expect
Speaker 1: in time travel fiction. I like it. Yeah. Uh so
Speaker 1: if I wasn't totally clear and you didn't get they
Speaker 1: travel back in time and use their future weapons on
Speaker 1: Roman warships, and of course that becomes the legend of
Speaker 1: Greek fire. Yeah. They take out like a helicopter with
Speaker 1: a flamethrower back in time and uh and and set
Speaker 1: to light the Roman ships. Now, I guess we've made
Speaker 1: several references to this nuclear testing age in the middle
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. Of course, this began in the
Speaker 1: nineteen forties. The first one was again the Trinity Test
Speaker 1: by the United States in July nine. The Soviet Union
Speaker 1: first performed nuclear weapons tests in nineteen forty nine. Tests
Speaker 1: took place all, you know, all over the place. They
Speaker 1: were in the upper atmosphere, underground, in the ocean, and
Speaker 1: once several other The majority of the tests were by
Speaker 1: the United States and the Soviet Union, but several other
Speaker 1: countries eventually got involved, and there were a lot of
Speaker 1: bomb tests in the end. Yes, so you're probably wondering, well,
Speaker 1: just how many? So I looked at it, looked around
Speaker 1: for a good, uh, good total on this. I find
Speaker 1: that the estimates very a little bit, I mean not
Speaker 1: a lot. But according to Darryl Kimball, executive director of
Speaker 1: the Arms Control Association, which is a great source for
Speaker 1: for the sort of uh information, this is what they
Speaker 1: had to say in a July report quote. Since the
Speaker 1: first nuclear test explosion on July six, ninety, at least
Speaker 1: eight nations have detonated two thousand and fifty six nuclear
Speaker 1: test explosions at dozens of test sites, including Lopnore in China,
Speaker 1: the atolls of the Pacific, Nevada, Algeria, where France conducted
Speaker 1: its first nuclear device, Western Australia, where the UK exploded
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons, the South Atlantic semipalatans in Kazakhstan, across Russia
Speaker 1: and elsewhere. So that's over two thousand nuclear test explosions
Speaker 1: in total. And if you're looking specifically at atmospheric tests alone,
Speaker 1: which are often considered like the worst kind in in
Speaker 1: terms of proliferating UH contaminants into the atmosphere, of course
Speaker 1: those would be there. There were definitely more than five
Speaker 1: hundred atmospheric tests. Yeah, when you when you start breaking
Speaker 1: down the numbers, the US conducted most of these with
Speaker 1: let's see some two d fifteen atmospheric tests and eight
Speaker 1: hundred and fifteen underground tests. The ussr slash Russia ranks
Speaker 1: second with two hundred and nineteen atmospheric tests and four
Speaker 1: hundred nine underground test and the remaining ranking goes like this.
Speaker 1: You've got France, then the UK and China. They're tied
Speaker 1: UK and China with a total of forty five tests each.
Speaker 1: Then you have North Korea, India and Pakistan. The United
Speaker 1: States is of course responsible for the only wartime detonation
Speaker 1: of nuclear weapons as in utilized as weapons against another people.
Speaker 1: Two bombs deployed against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima, and Nagasaki,
Speaker 1: killing between one hundred nine thousand and two hundred twenty
Speaker 1: six thousand people, mostly civilians. Needless to say, those were
Speaker 1: both atmospheric detonations. Yeah, and of course with each of
Speaker 1: these tests there is going to be more radioactive contamination
Speaker 1: entering the atmosphere. Now, in nineteen sixty three, the Partial
Speaker 1: Nuclear Test Band Treaty managed to ban tests in the
Speaker 1: atmosphere and underwater, so basically it banned all except underground tests.
Speaker 1: It did not really stop nuclear proliferation, but it did
Speaker 1: massively decrease the dispersal of radio nuclides into the atmosphere. Now,
Speaker 1: there's been another, um perhaps unexpected, interesting environmental side effect
Speaker 1: of the nuclear testing age, which is how it has
Speaker 1: affected atmospheric levels of carbon fourteen and the way that
Speaker 1: this has turned into an unexpected number of scientific tools
Speaker 1: that can be used to study the natural world. So,
Speaker 1: in nature, carbon fourteen is the radioactive isotope of carbon
Speaker 1: that is generated in Earth's atmosphere every minute of every day.
Speaker 1: The Earth is of course bombarded by cosmic rays, and
Speaker 1: cosmic rays are charged particles, usually protons and atomic nuclei,
Speaker 1: which are emitted from high energy sources including the Sun,
Speaker 1: but also places far away, usually traveling near the speed
Speaker 1: of light. And when one of these high energy particles
Speaker 1: enters the atmosphere, it sometimes strikes atoms to generate free neutrons,
Speaker 1: and a free neutron then combines with a regular atom
Speaker 1: of nitrogen fourteen to produce an atom of carbon fourteen,
Speaker 1: and this carbon fourteen then pairs up with oxygen to
Speaker 1: create carbon fourteens CEO two. So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: carbon fourteen in the atmosphere is just produced at a
Speaker 1: steady rate naturally as the cosmic rays are coming in,
Speaker 1: and this carbon fourteen c O two gets into everything
Speaker 1: that ingests atmospheric carbon. So plants suck in c O
Speaker 1: two with a predictable amount of carbon fourteen and they
Speaker 1: use that carbon to make their bodies, and then the
Speaker 1: trees and the grass and the corn are all made
Speaker 1: out of carbon content that is retrieved from the air
Speaker 1: and has a certain amount of carbon fourteen in it.
Speaker 1: So if you do a molecular analysis of a plant,
Speaker 1: you will have a certain proportion of carbon fourteen in there,
Speaker 1: because the atmosphere does about one out of every trillion
Speaker 1: carbon atoms is a carbon fourteen atom but of course
Speaker 1: it doesn't stop at plants, because we also exist in
Speaker 1: a carbon fourteen generating atmosphere. You know, all the chemistry
Speaker 1: on Earth is sort of interconnected. So we eat those plants,
Speaker 1: and we eat animals that eat those plants, so our
Speaker 1: bodies also have a predictable amount of carbon fourteen content.
Speaker 1: And as I said earlier, carbon fourteen is radioactive, which
Speaker 1: is another way of saying it's unstable. It has a
Speaker 1: known half life, so we know that it decays into
Speaker 1: other isotopes at a regular predictable rate. So if you
Speaker 1: die and you stop breathing and stop eating, the amount
Speaker 1: of carbon fourteen in your body will steadily decrease over
Speaker 1: the years. And what scientists figured out in the twentieth
Speaker 1: century was that you could use the amount of carbon
Speaker 1: fourteen in a formerly living object or an object formerly
Speaker 1: incorporating a known percentage of atmospheric carbon, to see approximately
Speaker 1: how long it had been since that organism stopped ingesting
Speaker 1: carbon from the environment, in other words, when it died.
Speaker 1: And this has been amazingly useful to the historical sciences.
Speaker 1: This this has created the era of carbon fourteen dating.
Speaker 1: It's been enormously useful to archaeologists and all kinds of
Speaker 1: other scientists to analyze and date organisms and substances from
Speaker 1: the past. But nuclear testing, beginning in the nineteen forties
Speaker 1: and especially since the nineteen fifties, has introduced new wrinkles
Speaker 1: into this. It has introduced new layers of radio carbon science,
Speaker 1: both some complications to the existing radio carbon science and
Speaker 1: new tools that scientists couldn't have predicted at first that
Speaker 1: they would have. Uh. And so next, I just wanted
Speaker 1: to talk a bit about a really, really excellent article
Speaker 1: in the Atlantic by by Carl Zimmer. Can we say
Speaker 1: a friend of the show? Carl Zimmer? He's a former
Speaker 1: guest of the show, Carl Zimmer. Um, let's see what
Speaker 1: we had. We laid out specific rules for this in
Speaker 1: the past. Right, if you're on the show once, you're
Speaker 1: a former guest or a previous guest of the show. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think you have to be on two times to
Speaker 1: be a friend of the show or is it three times?
Speaker 1: I can't remember how that status we break. We've been
Speaker 1: the rules all the time. Uh. Carl is one of
Speaker 1: my favorite science writers. He wrote an excellent book called
Speaker 1: She Has Her Mother's Laugh that we talked about on
Speaker 1: the show, and and this article is just fantastic. But
Speaker 1: it's called nuclear tests marked life on Earth with a
Speaker 1: radioactive spike. And this article of course is worth reading
Speaker 1: on its own, but I wanted to talk about a
Speaker 1: few things that Carl gets into here about some of
Speaker 1: the environmental effects of of nuclear testing, specifically relating to
Speaker 1: carbon fourteen. So Carl, Carl Zimmer, in addition to having
Speaker 1: been a wonderful and just cheerful guest of the show,
Speaker 1: is just all a wonderful writer. As always, I want
Speaker 1: to read just a little bit from this article here
Speaker 1: to to set the stage. Quote, carbon fourteen, produced by
Speaker 1: hydrogen bombs spread over the entire world. It worked itself
Speaker 1: into the atmosphere, the oceans, and practically every living thing.
Speaker 1: As it spread, it exposed secrets. It can reveal when
Speaker 1: we were born. It tracks hidden changes to our hearts
Speaker 1: and brains. It lights up the cryptic channels that joined
Speaker 1: the entire biosphere into a single network of chemical flux.
Speaker 1: This man made burst of carbon fourteen has been such
Speaker 1: a revelation that scientists referred to it as quote the
Speaker 1: bomb spike. Only now is the bomb spike close to disappearing,
Speaker 1: But as it vanishes. Scientists have found a new use
Speaker 1: for it to track global warming, the next self inflicted
Speaker 1: threat to our survival. The part of this that sticks
Speaker 1: with me the most is where he talks about how
Speaker 1: looking at carbon fourteen in the way it penetrates the
Speaker 1: whole biosphere. Really, it's one of those you know, like
Speaker 1: the brain lights up with the sudden realization that uh,
Speaker 1: to use a sort of stone or cliche, everything's connected,
Speaker 1: but it really is it like literally in a scientific way,
Speaker 1: is there is a single sort of chemical flux that
Speaker 1: that takes place all throughout this planet. Yeah. I keep
Speaker 1: coming back to this, this basic like this this uh,
Speaker 1: this sort of you know, arguably hippie notion, this everything
Speaker 1: is connected, we're all one world, on people, etcetera, which
Speaker 1: I know is something that everyone has heard so many
Speaker 1: times that even if you believe in it wholeheartedly, it
Speaker 1: can it can sound a little uh uh limp, you know,
Speaker 1: in in your ears. And yet like that's I mean,
Speaker 1: that is the reality that drives through and all of
Speaker 1: this science, and it stands in such harsh contrast to
Speaker 1: the way uh, certain individuals uh in uh like the
Speaker 1: political and the military sphere view nuclear weapons the idea
Speaker 1: that like, you know, certainly we can say a head
Speaker 1: of state using a nuclear weapon against the city within
Speaker 1: their own nation, that would be that would be ridiculous,
Speaker 1: that would be monstrous. But it's but but then the
Speaker 1: you know, people will say, oh, but you use it
Speaker 1: against another nation and other people, that's less monstrous. But no, no,
Speaker 1: it's all interconnected in in a in in a in
Speaker 1: a scientifically verifiable way. I mean, it's it's one atmosphere
Speaker 1: at the very base level without getting into, um, some
Speaker 1: of the other um issues we're going to explore, and
Speaker 1: just the basic ethical framework of the choice. Yeah. Mean,
Speaker 1: it makes me think of that commonly sided thing about
Speaker 1: astronauts very often, you know, seeing the Earth from space
Speaker 1: and then suddenly feeling more of a kinship with all
Speaker 1: of humankind and not feeling nearly as much the uh,
Speaker 1: not feeling the reality of national borders and things like that, uh,
Speaker 1: nearly as much anymore. Uh. It's funny how easily those
Speaker 1: illusions can be dissolved just by a sort of a
Speaker 1: single visual impression or a single realization about saying how
Speaker 1: chemistry works, that you're suddenly like, oh, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: you know, there's just sort of earth life, and we
Speaker 1: we really need to make this work and not create
Speaker 1: problems that aren't necessary to begin with. Yeah, those are
Speaker 1: those lines and those naps. They really do nothing against
Speaker 1: a radioactive particles and certainly concepts such as nuclear fallout
Speaker 1: or um or a climate change. So going into Karl
Speaker 1: Zimmer's article, as I said, it's worth reading the article
Speaker 1: in full. It's really fantastic. He begins by telling the
Speaker 1: story of the Castle Bravo tests in nineteen fifty four,
Speaker 1: which is uh, both all inspiring and horrifying and heartbreaking. Um.
Speaker 1: But later on, when he's getting into the scientific history
Speaker 1: of of carbon fourteen, he talks about the Chicago physicist
Speaker 1: Willard Libby, who was a Nobel Prize winning or did
Speaker 1: I say physicist, I think he would be called a
Speaker 1: physical chemist. Uh. He was somebody who studied radioactive elements
Speaker 1: and and one of was one of the major developers
Speaker 1: of carbon fourteen dating. And one of the really interesting
Speaker 1: things that Libby does is that Libby ends up comparing
Speaker 1: measurements of methane from say living current sources, say methane
Speaker 1: coming off of a sewage plant. So this is going
Speaker 1: to be sewage from things that are currently alive, versus
Speaker 1: methane coming off of fossil fuels like oil that has
Speaker 1: been there for millions of years. And what he showed
Speaker 1: was that, say, the methane coming off of the excreta
Speaker 1: produced by living humans is something close to about the
Speaker 1: atmospheric level. Meanwhile, what's coming the methane coming off of
Speaker 1: fossil fuels, coming off of say oil that's been there
Speaker 1: for millions of years, has essentially no carbon fourteen in it, right,
Speaker 1: because it's been there for so long that all of
Speaker 1: the radioactive isotopes of carbon have decayed, so it's just
Speaker 1: got regular carbon in it. And there was some other
Speaker 1: really interesting experiments too, but one of the things I
Speaker 1: wanted to focus on was Karl's profiling of the New
Speaker 1: Zealand physicist Ethel Rafter. So Rafter was picking up on
Speaker 1: Libby's research and he was interested in radiocarbon dating. In
Speaker 1: its early days, he used it to test the bones
Speaker 1: of extinct birds and ancient volcanic eruptions, but he also
Speaker 1: tried to help refine the technique itself by performing measurements
Speaker 1: of the radio carbon in the atmosphere. And he would
Speaker 1: do this by setting out a tray of lie on
Speaker 1: top of it on a hilltop, and the lie would
Speaker 1: capture c O two from the air, and then he
Speaker 1: would measure the atmospheric levels of carbon fourteen or the ratio.
Speaker 1: Of course, whenever we're talking about levels of carbon fourteen,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the ratio of carbon fourteen to regular carbon.
Speaker 1: And so Rafter would have been doing his research in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, and what he expected was that levels
Speaker 1: of radio carbon in the atmosphere would sort of bounce
Speaker 1: up and down. There'd just be sort of a natural
Speaker 1: fluctuation around a baseline. But instead he found an extremely
Speaker 1: steady trend. The level of carbon fourteen was just continually
Speaker 1: going up. And what was the reason. While it was
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, so to quote from the article, the
Speaker 1: Castle Bravo test and the ones that followed had to
Speaker 1: be the source. They were turning the atmosphere upside down.
Speaker 1: Instead of cosmic rays falling from space, they were sending
Speaker 1: neutrons up to the sky, creating a huge new supply
Speaker 1: of radio carbon. In nineteen fifty seven, Rafter published his
Speaker 1: results in the journal Science. The implications were immediately clear
Speaker 1: and astonishing. Man made carbon fourteen was spreading across the
Speaker 1: planet from test sites in the Pacific and the Arctic.
Speaker 1: It was even passing from the air into the oceans
Speaker 1: and trees. And when they checked, they found increasing levels
Speaker 1: of radiocarbon in everything, in tree rings in Texas, in
Speaker 1: snails in Holland, in the lungs of recently deceased people
Speaker 1: from New York, even in the blood of living people. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's just extra carbon fourteen in everything. And as bomb radiocarbon,
Speaker 1: So the bomb radio carbon would be would be up
Speaker 1: in the upper atmosphere, and as it settles back down
Speaker 1: to Earth, it becomes a sort of tracer molecule that
Speaker 1: can be used as a scientific tool. So Carl quotes
Speaker 1: from somebody named Steve Beauprey who's an oceanographer at Stony
Speaker 1: Brook University, and he's quoted in the article saying that
Speaker 1: carbon fourteen is inextricably linked to our understanding of how
Speaker 1: water moves. And so I thought this was so interesting.
Speaker 1: So in the nineteen seventies, oceanographers found that there was
Speaker 1: bomb radio carbon that was distributed throughout the top one
Speaker 1: thousand meters of the ocean's water column. So if you
Speaker 1: go down a thousand meters you're going to find, you know,
Speaker 1: atmospheric radiocarbon, the elevated levels that you'd get from a bomb.
Speaker 1: But then if you go down below that suddenly not
Speaker 1: so much anymore. And this became a really important piece
Speaker 1: of evidence in estimating the or in establishing that the ocean,
Speaker 1: like the atmosphere, had layers, and that water was primarily
Speaker 1: circulated within rather than between these layers. Carl Wright's quote,
Speaker 1: the warm, relatively fresh water on the surface of the
Speaker 1: ocean glides over the cold, salty depths. These surface currents
Speaker 1: become saltier as they evaporate, and eventually, at a few
Speaker 1: crucial spots on the planet, these streams get so dense
Speaker 1: that they fall to the bottom of the ocean. The
Speaker 1: bomb radio carbon from Castle Bravo didn't start plunging down
Speaker 1: into the depths of the North Atlantic until the night
Speaker 1: teen eighties, when John Clark this character from the Castle
Speaker 1: Bravo test was two decades into retirement. It's still down
Speaker 1: there where it will be carried along the sea floor
Speaker 1: by bottom hugging ocean currents for hundreds of years before
Speaker 1: it rises to the light of day. Uh And he
Speaker 1: points out also that lots of ocean life bears the
Speaker 1: seal of the bomb spike. Again, this is from atmospheric
Speaker 1: tests and so this is not even underwater tests. This
Speaker 1: is atmospheric tests coming down into the ocean. Bomb radio
Speaker 1: carbon falls into the ocean. It infiltrates everything from algae
Speaker 1: to the rings of calcium carbonate within coral growth, and
Speaker 1: then it forms this kind of slime, so uh quote,
Speaker 1: the living things in the upper reaches of the ocean
Speaker 1: release organic carbon that falls gently to the sea floor
Speaker 1: a jumble of protoplasmic goo, dolphin droppings, starfish eggs, and
Speaker 1: all manner of detritus that scientists call marine snow. In
Speaker 1: recent decades that marine snow has become more radioactive. And
Speaker 1: the article he also profiles a researcher named Mary gay
Speaker 1: Lord who works at the National Ocean Science is Accelerator
Speaker 1: Mass Spectraumetry Facility, which is known as No Sam's for short,
Speaker 1: and that's at the Woods Hole, which is where Hooper
Speaker 1: comes from in Jaws, and she measures radiocarbon and everything
Speaker 1: from bat guano to fish eyes. There's a lot about
Speaker 1: fish eyes in this article, which is more interesting than
Speaker 1: you think because surprisingly the study of radio carbon and
Speaker 1: fish eye lenses can tell us a lot like the
Speaker 1: cores of fish eye lenses have the same levels of
Speaker 1: carbon fourteen as the fish did when they were still
Speaker 1: egg so it's a really good age indicator. And this
Speaker 1: knowledge was used by Danish researchers in to create an
Speaker 1: aging metric for these cold bottom dwelling animals, the greenland sharks,
Speaker 1: which you might have read about them because they grow
Speaker 1: so old. This helped confir arm the discovery that these
Speaker 1: animals could live to be almost four hundred years old,
Speaker 1: so a lot of these are pre bomb sharks. And
Speaker 1: actually this also applies to humans. People born in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen sixties have more radio carbon in the lenses
Speaker 1: in their eyes than people born before the nuclear testing age,
Speaker 1: and people born in the years since then have less
Speaker 1: and less as time passes since the since the Partial
Speaker 1: Test Band Treaty. Bomb radio carbon can also be used
Speaker 1: to date human teeth. But there's a very sobering fact
Speaker 1: that's discussed at the end of Zimmer's article, which is
Speaker 1: that the proportion of carbon fourteen currently in the atmosphere
Speaker 1: is actually a bit lower than would be predicted by
Speaker 1: the known nuclear tests and the known rate of decay
Speaker 1: and absorption by the Earth and seas. So what makes
Speaker 1: the difference, Like why is there less carbon fourteen than
Speaker 1: we think there should be? And it turns out there's
Speaker 1: an answer to that. The answer is fossil fuels. Remember
Speaker 1: how I mentioned earlier that the methane coming off of
Speaker 1: oil had all been basically no carbon fourteen in it
Speaker 1: because the oil is so old, all of the carbon
Speaker 1: fourteen has already decayed, it's gone. Uh So, as we
Speaker 1: release carbon from these ancient carbon sources into the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: we're putting a much higher percentage than normal of regular
Speaker 1: carbon up there, which actually dilutes what carbon fourteen there is.
Speaker 1: Uh Carl Carl Zimmer points out in the nineteen fifty four,
Speaker 1: which was the year of the Castle Bravo test, humans
Speaker 1: emitted six billion tons of carbon dioxide that year uh
Speaker 1: quote in humans emitted about thirty seven billion tons, which
Speaker 1: is more than six times more as Willard Libby first discovered,
Speaker 1: this fossil fuel has no radiocarbon left. By burning it,
Speaker 1: we are lowering the level of radiocarbon in the atmosphere
Speaker 1: like a bartender watering down the top shelf. Liquor, which
Speaker 1: is so strange. So the remaining signature of humanity's first
Speaker 1: great sort of civilis s ation level threat technology is
Speaker 1: being deluded by the ever increasing mark of our other one,
Speaker 1: by the second one. Wow. Alright, I guess we need
Speaker 1: to take a quick break, but we'll be right back
Speaker 1: with more than thank So. I have another example of
Speaker 1: a specific resulting scientific discovery from a nuclear test that
Speaker 1: that I ran across UM and it it concerns uh.
Speaker 1: The test known as Starfish Prime. So this was a
Speaker 1: one point for megaton thermonuclear device launched two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty miles or four hundred kilometers into the sky near
Speaker 1: Johnston A Tall. So it is the largest outer space
Speaker 1: nuclear detonation ever committed. It occurred around eleven pm local time. Uh,
Speaker 1: this would be um you know, in the in that region,
Speaker 1: and the thermonuclear sphere burned like a new sun in
Speaker 1: the night sky. And if you look up Starfish Prime
Speaker 1: online you can you can see photos that were taken
Speaker 1: from Honolulu, Hawaii at the time, and it does look
Speaker 1: like like a sun in the sky. Wow. Afterwards, an
Speaker 1: aura could be seen as well for thousands of kilometers.
Speaker 1: It it also resulted, and this kind of comes down
Speaker 1: to one of the key findings. It resulted in an
Speaker 1: electromagnetic pulse or an e MP, something that had been
Speaker 1: suspected by scientists, but this was really the proof in
Speaker 1: the pudding. It ended up disrupting the flow of electricity
Speaker 1: for hundreds of kilometers around it, with its most of
Speaker 1: its disruptions felt in Hawaii itself. It also damaged six
Speaker 1: satellites which ultimately failed, and other failures might be linked
Speaker 1: to starfish prime as well. So this was this was
Speaker 1: ended up being an effect that was far stronger than anticipated.
Speaker 1: Now now that that's all interesting, but obviously a test
Speaker 1: like this expand is going to expand on our understanding
Speaker 1: of the weapon technology being tested. But the side effect
Speaker 1: here is that the CD one O nine tracers released
Speaker 1: by the detonation allowed science just to work out some
Speaker 1: of the seasonal mixing rate of polar and tropical air masses.
Speaker 1: So again comes down to the fluid dynamics of of
Speaker 1: in our earlier example the ocean, and here with atmospheric movement.
Speaker 1: This also touches on something that comes up with the
Speaker 1: Castle Bravo test and a number of other tests. You know,
Speaker 1: the Castle Bravo being the hydrogen bomb that turned out
Speaker 1: to be a much bigger explosive yield than was predicted.
Speaker 1: And this is not just a scientific curiosity, and this
Speaker 1: is something that that had tragic consequences for real people
Speaker 1: like the people of the wrong gelop atoll, who were
Speaker 1: pretty nearby where the Castle Bravo test was conducted, were
Speaker 1: affected horribly with by like fallout from the test just
Speaker 1: because it was so much bigger than the scientists thought
Speaker 1: it was gonna be. Yeah, you see this this trend
Speaker 1: with a number of the earlier tests, um, where they
Speaker 1: they don't get quite what they were expecting or you know,
Speaker 1: it's larger, or it doesn't go off exactly the way
Speaker 1: it was planned and and and indeed, uh, in many
Speaker 1: cases it means people were were sickened, people's health suffered
Speaker 1: because of these tests. Environments were um, we're tainted by
Speaker 1: the radiation, are still tainted. In some case cases people
Speaker 1: have been dislocated and have not yet been able to return. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, we believe we're calling this episode the atomic scar.
Speaker 1: But a scar to we tend to think of as
Speaker 1: something that is visible but is fully healed. And the
Speaker 1: thing about a lot of these these tests is that
Speaker 1: it's it's not so much a scar, but it is like, um,
Speaker 1: a thick scab, and if we're to to pick at
Speaker 1: it again, uh, we may bleed. In fact, we may
Speaker 1: we may bleed um for the duration of our lives
Speaker 1: sort of situations. So um uh so so yeah, these
Speaker 1: uh kind of comes back to what we said earlier about,
Speaker 1: you know, about the world in which we conduct these tests.
Speaker 1: You know, we we might think, oh, we're not setting
Speaker 1: this off in the house, We're setting off in the backyard,
Speaker 1: you know. But but ultimately, you know, the wilds of Nevada,
Speaker 1: or are some islands you know off the coast of Australia,
Speaker 1: these are these are part of the world we live in,
Speaker 1: as part of the atmosphere that we all breathe, part
Speaker 1: of the ocean that we all depend on. And even
Speaker 1: underground tests are not without some environmental consequences. I mean,
Speaker 1: not nearly as much as a atmospheric or underwater tests,
Speaker 1: but underground tests two can can produce leakages. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: on the subject of underwater tests, I was reading a
Speaker 1: little bit more about these and these were banned by
Speaker 1: the Partial Nuclear Test Band Treaty in nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: but the US, the UK, and the uss ARE managed
Speaker 1: to conduct a total of nine before that that that
Speaker 1: band came into place, and these included UM shallow detonations
Speaker 1: to see how the the the the weapon would impact ships,
Speaker 1: as well as deep detonations to see how they might
Speaker 1: be used against submarines or how they would impact submarines.
Speaker 1: The deepest was the nineteen fifty five Wigwam test at
Speaker 1: a depth of two thousand feet six d and ten.
Speaker 1: Now an author by the name of Sarah Laskal Roda
Speaker 1: a really good article about about the US tests for
Speaker 1: Atlas Obscura, pointing out that the water is what really
Speaker 1: made the tests more problematic because because instead of spreading
Speaker 1: radioactive particles through a wider atmospheric region, it instead released
Speaker 1: an immediate radioactive water cloud. So the ships used in
Speaker 1: these tests were highly radiated and impossible to clean, so
Speaker 1: they were just towed out to the deep and scuttled.
Speaker 1: Now Alascow rights that quote. The Atomic Energy Commission would
Speaker 1: not sign off on it until it was clear that
Speaker 1: no one in the United States or Mexico was at
Speaker 1: risk and that the test area was relatively free of
Speaker 1: marine life. UM but but the tests certainly killed fish
Speaker 1: and other organisms. UM. I read an account by a
Speaker 1: UK veteran who was of course working with some of
Speaker 1: those UK UH tests, claims that men were sent out
Speaker 1: in boats to collect dead irradiated fish after after the
Speaker 1: test was conducted. And this particular test would have been
Speaker 1: uh the ninth two hurricane test in the Montebello Islands,
Speaker 1: as this was the only UK underwater nuclear test that
Speaker 1: was conducted, and of course in a lot of these
Speaker 1: like tests in the Pacific Islands and stuff, even when
Speaker 1: the explosion was carried out in the atmosphere, it was
Speaker 1: still extremely damaging to marine life. Like yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: part in uh Karl Simmer's article that we were talking
Speaker 1: about earlier where he talks about with the Castle Bravo
Speaker 1: test in fifty four quote, within seconds, the fireball had
Speaker 1: lofted ten million tons of pulverized coral reef coated in
Speaker 1: radioactive material. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean, these these atmospheric tests
Speaker 1: were also devastating to these areas. One area that frequently
Speaker 1: comes up is is Bikini at all, this is where
Speaker 1: the first underwater test was was was conducted Baker, but
Speaker 1: also you had many other atmospheric tests that took place
Speaker 1: there as well. And what's interesting here is that there's
Speaker 1: been there's some studies in in over the past decade
Speaker 1: or so that have really looked at how the local
Speaker 1: environ has has bounced back, and indeed it does show
Speaker 1: that nature can be very resistant to even this kind
Speaker 1: of you know, intense damage. Uh that they say that
Speaker 1: the corals have recolonized bomb craters. Other life forms are
Speaker 1: doing well, even if there are some curious mutations like
Speaker 1: sharks missing their second dorsal fin that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: The general belief is that UM, at least with the
Speaker 1: with Bikini, that the worst affected fish died off decades ago,
Speaker 1: and today's fish populations are only exposed to low radiation
Speaker 1: levels as they frequently swim in and out. Plus, these
Speaker 1: are also areas that have been left alone by humans,
Speaker 1: they've more so than other marine areas. Now. One should
Speaker 1: also note that the occupants of the area around Bikini
Speaker 1: Atoll and the Marshall Islands were displaced by the test,
Speaker 1: some one seven people, I believe, and they've never been
Speaker 1: able to return. That their dislocation was supposed to be temporary. UM.
Speaker 1: But but then on top of that children in the
Speaker 1: Marshall Islands uh were observed to experience thyroid problems long
Speaker 1: after nuclear tests ended. Now we've thus far been talking
Speaker 1: about nuclear testing, and and of course beyond that we
Speaker 1: we can, I think we can. We can hardly talk
Speaker 1: about nuclear testing without at least briefly discussing the prospect
Speaker 1: of nuclear war itself, because that is ultimately what the
Speaker 1: testing is all about. Now you can make the argument
Speaker 1: that ultimately it's about preventing uh that's sort of warfare
Speaker 1: from taking place by making sure you have uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a terrifying number of of of nuclear weapons in your armament,
Speaker 1: or you know, the reverse is true, that you are
Speaker 1: developing these weapons which may potentially be used. Any nuclear
Speaker 1: weapon is a potential holocaust, uh you know, contained within
Speaker 1: the warhead, right, I mean, I think I guess the
Speaker 1: advocates of the pro nuclear armament theory would say, well,
Speaker 1: what we did is that we did these tests so
Speaker 1: that we wouldn't have to have actual wars, and the
Speaker 1: uts discourage say the United States and the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: from actually ever initiating a real, you know, shooting war
Speaker 1: with each other. Of course, there are plenty of proxy
Speaker 1: conflicts and all that. I mean in a way you
Speaker 1: can only you know, you can never know how sure
Speaker 1: to be about counterfactuals like that. People are saying, well,
Speaker 1: things would have been worse if we hadn't had the
Speaker 1: nuclear threat looming over us to discourage us from going
Speaker 1: to war. I guess it's hard to know whether that's
Speaker 1: true or not. But I guess it's also though, it's
Speaker 1: just hard to calculate costs and benefits when you're thinking
Speaker 1: about when you know the potential cost is like a
Speaker 1: civilization ending worldwide calamity. Yeah, and and that indeed, you know,
Speaker 1: to come back to the the idea of the world
Speaker 1: changing forever. I mean that is one of the frequently
Speaker 1: touched upon aspects of the whole scenario, is that it
Speaker 1: is humanity's ability to to truly destroy itself and and
Speaker 1: ultimately within a very short period of time. Now, I
Speaker 1: know that this kind of brings as to a kind
Speaker 1: of a dark corner for the end of the podcast.
Speaker 1: And I know a lot of you don't like considering
Speaker 1: such possibilities. I don't like considering such possibilities either. If
Speaker 1: you are troubled by such possibilities, I would urge you
Speaker 1: to consider following UH a group like the Arms Control
Speaker 1: Association at Arms Control about org or any number of
Speaker 1: other anti nuclear weapon or nuclear weapon control or disarmament groups.
Speaker 1: And if you're in a position to use your vote
Speaker 1: to favor candidates political candidates who take nuclear testing and
Speaker 1: nuclear war seriously and are committed to certainly not testing them,
Speaker 1: but even you know, not even raising the question of
Speaker 1: their deployment or questioning why they shouldn't be used and
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, then you should you should do so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, the Cold War may be over, but there
Speaker 1: are still lots and lots of nuclear weapons out there,
Speaker 1: and UH, and fantasizing about nuclear escalation is not a joke.
Speaker 1: It's not It's not something to play around with, absolutely,
Speaker 1: especially since I think we've ted on some of this
Speaker 1: on the show before. Like the the the barriers between
Speaker 1: our our current world and one of nuclear warfare, those
Speaker 1: those barriers are not as thick as as sometimes we
Speaker 1: might think they are, Like the safeguards in place are
Speaker 1: are not that robust. We we need to do everything
Speaker 1: we can to to to to to lessen the possibility, UH,
Speaker 1: that such a thing could come to pass, either in
Speaker 1: a in a large scale certainly, but even at a
Speaker 1: quote unquote small scale. Alright, On that note, we're gonna
Speaker 1: go and close it out. In the meantime, we would
Speaker 1: of course love to hear from you, oh your thoughts
Speaker 1: about nuclear testing, nuclear weaponry, etcetera, or just so do
Speaker 1: the overall impact on all of this on on our
Speaker 1: our world and our culture in the many ways that
Speaker 1: the world would not be the same in the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you want to check out other episodes of our show,
Speaker 1: you can do so by finding us wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts and wherever that happens to be. We just
Speaker 1: asked that you rate, review, and subscribe. Hich Thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic
Speaker 1: for the future, just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 1: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
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