Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
Speaker 1: My 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 as or are as haunting as those given
Speaker 1: by J. Robert Oppenheimer in nineteen sixty five on the
Speaker 1: television documentary The Decision to Drop the Bomb, broadcast as
Speaker 1: an NBC white Paper. 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 bomb is he's sometimes referred, shares the following
Speaker 1: regarding the first successful detonation of an atomic bomb at
Speaker 1: the Trinity Test in New Mexico on July six, nine,
Speaker 1: four five. He said, quote, we knew the world would
Speaker 1: not be the same. A few people laughed, a few
Speaker 1: people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line
Speaker 1: from the Hindu scripture the Bagavad Gita. Fish Knu is
Speaker 1: trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty,
Speaker 1: and to impress him, takes on his multi armed form
Speaker 1: and says, now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.
Speaker 1: I suppose we all thought that one way or another.
Speaker 1: It's a difficult thing to imagine working on that kind
Speaker 1: of research in a way feeling that it is your
Speaker 1: duty or your necessity to aid the Allied cause in
Speaker 1: World War Two, but at the same time knowing that
Speaker 1: you were working on something that that would unleash an
Speaker 1: age of terror in human history. Yeah, I mean absolutely
Speaker 1: a weapon that would as of this recording, UH, has
Speaker 1: only been used twice in war, which on one hand
Speaker 1: you can you can say, thankfully, has only been used
Speaker 1: twice in war, but in the same hand you can say,
Speaker 1: 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 of the bomb as we proceed here, and
Speaker 1: of course we've covered it on the show before to
Speaker 1: varying degrees. But I want to come back to the
Speaker 1: quote that that Oppenheimer is UM is deploying here. So
Speaker 1: if if you're not familiar with it, basically these are
Speaker 1: these are who the figures are in this. You've got Vishnu,
Speaker 1: one of the principal deities of Hinduism. UH. The Bugabad
Speaker 1: Gheita or the gutas it's sometimes just shortened to, is
Speaker 1: part of the Hindu epic, the Mahabarata. Technically it's books
Speaker 1: six in that and the prince in question is the
Speaker 1: hero Argina part of the Pandava. Finally that wages war
Speaker 1: against the Caravas. Uh. That that's the big struggle. That's uh,
Speaker 1: that's key to the Mahabarata. Anyway, at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the Geta, which Oppenheimer is um is quoting, here Aregenna
Speaker 1: rights his chariot onto the field of forthcoming battle between
Speaker 1: these two families. But he suddenly overcome by doubt and
Speaker 1: depression as he notes they're there on the other side,
Speaker 1: within the ranks of the enemy's he recognizes friends, relatives, teachers,
Speaker 1: and uh. And therefore has this this just immense so
Speaker 1: weight descend upon him. Um. This is a quote from it.
Speaker 1: This is as translated by Edwin Arnold in five and
Speaker 1: as as is always the case with translated works of
Speaker 1: literature and poetry, Uh, you know, the English is going
Speaker 1: to be approximate, and certainly with Hinduism there are many
Speaker 1: cases where particular ideas and phrases don't really have a
Speaker 1: parallel word in English. Um. Anyway, it goes as follows quote. Thus,
Speaker 1: if we slay kinsfolk and friends for love of earthly power,
Speaker 1: av what an evil fault? It were better I deem it.
Speaker 1: If my kinsmen strike to face them weaponless and bear
Speaker 1: my breast to shaft and spear, then answer blow with blow.
Speaker 1: So speaking in the face of those two hosts, Arginas
Speaker 1: sank 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 this was a nice
Speaker 1: write up he did for the American Philosophical Society in
Speaker 1: two thousand and He goes into greater depth, but he
Speaker 1: also summarizes Chrishna's counsel as follows He's He says, look,
Speaker 1: you're a soldier, Aregna. 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 Krishna is going to be what
Speaker 1: saves your soul, Aregenna, 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 Christiana's godlike form, and this site ultimately
Speaker 1: seals Argina'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 Argena. 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 and my present task destruction. Um.
Speaker 1: There's a translation by Arnold that says, VU 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. Van Bitten quote,
Speaker 1: I am time growing 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 one's role in history. You
Speaker 1: know that there is a kind of like a fate
Speaker 1: or world path that is executed through the passing of time,
Speaker 1: and what you are is someone who plays a role
Speaker 1: within it, not the shaper of it. Yeah. Absolutely, Um again,
Speaker 1: it is it is even in translation as it's it's
Speaker 1: this really perplexing and beautiful passage. Now, it should stress
Speaker 1: that Oppenheimer was not religiously Hindu, but he was interested
Speaker 1: in Hindu scripture, and clearly he found an association here
Speaker 1: between his role in the creation of the bomb and
Speaker 1: 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 fhere 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 the 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 Candlemaker, this embodiment of all of our apprehension, uh,
Speaker 1: surrounding nuclear annihilation that takes on this kind of godlike
Speaker 1: really almost kind of terrifying, Vishnu like appearance in the
Speaker 1: human psyche. Is this the guy who's made of wax?
Speaker 1: It is, and we'll have we'll have more to say
Speaker 1: about him in a forthcoming October episode of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind. Oh, that's right, it's almost October. It is.
Speaker 1: But to come back to the part of Oppenheimer's quote
Speaker 1: that is not part of on the of the Guida, Um,
Speaker 1: we knew the world would not be the same, uh,
Speaker 1: and that that is true. It wasn't it isn't, And
Speaker 1: you're you're probably aware of most of the reasons why.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, today's episode, we're going to look at
Speaker 1: some of the particular ways that it was changed, Uh,
Speaker 1: particularly regarding um, you know, a few environmental scenarios as
Speaker 1: well as the nature of steel. Yes, So getting into
Speaker 1: these lesser known environmental effects, I want to start with
Speaker 1: the fact that might seem extremely odd, which I was
Speaker 1: reading about in an article published in the journal Health
Speaker 1: Physics in two thousand seven by a health physicist named
Speaker 1: Timothy P. Lynch, and the articles called a historically significant
Speaker 1: shield for in vivo measurements, And the fact goes like this.
Speaker 1: In Richland, Washington, there is a research facility called the
Speaker 1: in Vivo Radio Bioassay and Research Facility. And within this
Speaker 1: facility there is a special room that is surrounded on
Speaker 1: all sides by thick plates of steel that was once
Speaker 1: part of a World War Two era battleship called the
Speaker 1: USS Indiana. This was a battleship that served in the war.
Speaker 1: It was launched in nineteen It was in a number
Speaker 1: of battles It served extensively in the Pacific theater during
Speaker 1: the war, and then after it was decommissioned, they took
Speaker 1: steel out of the ship to build this room. Why
Speaker 1: would anybody do that? Yeah, if you don't know the answer,
Speaker 1: it sounds a bit mysterious, right it all. It sounds
Speaker 1: like the kind of thing Grant Morrison would make up
Speaker 1: where you're having to engage in some sort of magical
Speaker 1: ritual involving steel from old ships. Oh yeah, yeah, it
Speaker 1: totally sounds like something magical, either kind of magical or
Speaker 1: symbolic thinking of like, you know, I'm gonna melt down
Speaker 1: the statue of the Golden Calf for the false title
Speaker 1: or king or whatever and and turn it into something holy.
Speaker 1: I'm going to make a throne out of all the
Speaker 1: swords of those who wants opposed my rule. Exactly. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is the iron throne. So this is the the
Speaker 1: iron throne of rooms. Now the room is again an
Speaker 1: in vivo radio bioassay detector, and Lynch tells us in
Speaker 1: the paper that quote the detection system is used to
Speaker 1: monitor workers for intakes of fission and activation products. So
Speaker 1: this means that it's used to check workers people to
Speaker 1: see if they have ingested tiny radioactive particles known as radionuclides.
Speaker 1: Radionuclides consist of atoms that can decay into different isotopes
Speaker 1: and emit radiation as they do so, and if you
Speaker 1: take them into your body, say by swallowing them or
Speaker 1: breathing them in, they can do this inside your body
Speaker 1: and provide internal radiation sources which you do not want.
Speaker 1: They can pose a serious health risk if enough of
Speaker 1: them accumulate in the body, A large dose could cause
Speaker 1: acute radiation syndrome. Prolonged exposure to even smaller doses over
Speaker 1: time could be a risk for damaging DNA and causing cancer.
Speaker 1: This is to use one example why you don't want
Speaker 1: to consume things that would come from a radioactively contaminated area,
Speaker 1: you know, somewhere around a nuclear meltdown. Why would you
Speaker 1: not want to, say, you know, roll around in the
Speaker 1: dirt near Chernobyl or drink the water there. It's because
Speaker 1: the the environment is contaminated with radio nuclides, these little
Speaker 1: particles that you don't want anywhere near your body. You
Speaker 1: do not want them going inside you. So people who
Speaker 1: get tested regularly in this room would include Department of
Speaker 1: Energy workers, but Lynch also mentions that the room has
Speaker 1: been used to test a helicopter pilot and some other
Speaker 1: workers from Chernobyl as well as children from Chernobyl I
Speaker 1: guess who lived nearby. So this has been in use
Speaker 1: for a long time and it's used to measure the
Speaker 1: radiation coming from living people. So somebody walks into the
Speaker 1: detector room, they get scanned for radio neew clides across
Speaker 1: the length of the body by accounting system that Lynch
Speaker 1: describes as comprised of five coaxial germanium detectors. And because
Speaker 1: the level of radiation emitted by these radio neew clides
Speaker 1: is usually very faint outside the body, you need an
Speaker 1: extremely sensitive detector. And here you hit another problem, which
Speaker 1: is interference from background levels of radiation coming from the
Speaker 1: rest of the world. So you've got cosmic sources, atmospheric sources,
Speaker 1: terrestrial sources. So in order to scan the body properly,
Speaker 1: you need a room with extremely tight radiation shielding and
Speaker 1: this is where the steel comes in. So the counting
Speaker 1: chamber here is surrounded by a thin layer of lead
Speaker 1: and then cadmium and then copper. This is what's known
Speaker 1: together as a graded Z shield. And then outside that
Speaker 1: you have thirty solid centimeters of steel that's all pre
Speaker 1: war battleship steel and This keeps the background radiation within
Speaker 1: the chamber within low minimum detectable activities. But the question remains, Okay,
Speaker 1: so you need thirty centimeters of steel, but why couldn't
Speaker 1: you just build your radiation shield out of any old steel, Like,
Speaker 1: if regular steel is good enough for your car and
Speaker 1: your appliances and your sky scrapers, why would you have
Speaker 1: to harvest the flesh of a decommissioned battleship in order
Speaker 1: to build this thick radiation shield. Yeah. Again, it's it's
Speaker 1: easy to sort of leap to magical conclusions. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like, well, we live in a we live in
Speaker 1: a sinful world. We have to build our sacred vessel
Speaker 1: out of wood from the garden of Eden. You know, um,
Speaker 1: you know, the the atomic age is so scarred our
Speaker 1: world that we have to we have to find artifacts
Speaker 1: from before that time. Yeah, it certainly does feel like that.
Speaker 1: But no, there is actually a very good physical, scientific
Speaker 1: reason for this, and maybe we should take a break
Speaker 1: and then get back into it when we come back.
Speaker 1: Than alright, we're back. So we've been talking about the
Speaker 1: idea of radiation shielding around a very sensitive radiation detector room,
Speaker 1: and the shielding was made out of steel that was
Speaker 1: harvested from a decommissioned World War Two battleship called the
Speaker 1: USS Indiana. So the question is, why would you need
Speaker 1: to get steel from a source like that, Why couldn't
Speaker 1: you just use regular steel. Well, so let's look at
Speaker 1: how you make steel. Steel is of course a mixture
Speaker 1: of iron and carbon and sometimes other additives to create
Speaker 1: alloys with special properties, and crucially for our purposes, the
Speaker 1: process for making steel involves the incorporation of atmospheric gases.
Speaker 1: I was reading about this in an article for Chemistry
Speaker 1: World by Kit Chapman. I think it was also a
Speaker 1: podcast episode of Their's talking about how they're There are
Speaker 1: two major industrial processes for making steel in the modern world.
Speaker 1: One is known as the Bessemer process, and this involves
Speaker 1: melting the iron in a furnace and then removing impurities
Speaker 1: by blowing air through the molten metal. The other is
Speaker 1: known as the bos process, and this is similar, but
Speaker 1: it uses pure oxygen instead of air, but that oxygen
Speaker 1: is still extracted from the atmosphere, and so the problem
Speaker 1: is that either way, the gas you're blowing through the
Speaker 1: molten iron to make your steel comes from the atmosphere
Speaker 1: from the air, and ever since nuclear your weapon tests
Speaker 1: began in nineteen forty five, that has not exactly been
Speaker 1: regular air. It is bomb air. Yeah. The the ghastly
Speaker 1: truth of it is, Yeah, we we find ourselves saying, oh,
Speaker 1: we need to use air in this is like, oh
Speaker 1: that the air, the air we breathe, that's where we
Speaker 1: set off, um, a whole lot of nuclear weapons. Um,
Speaker 1: and and therefore changed it. Um that air is not
Speaker 1: good enough for our steel, for for the special steel,
Speaker 1: at least, just for our breathing and our our food
Speaker 1: and our our children and so forth. Now we'll get
Speaker 1: a bit more into the history of the nuclear testing
Speaker 1: era in a second here, But in short, there was
Speaker 1: a period of time in the middle of the twentieth
Speaker 1: century when lots of nuclear weapons tests were conducted around
Speaker 1: the world, and these tests seeded the atmosphere with radioactive contamination. Now,
Speaker 1: the levels today are much lower than they were, say
Speaker 1: in the mid nineteen sixties, when these tests have been
Speaker 1: going on for a decade and a half, but even
Speaker 1: today the air still contain in some radioactive isotopes such
Speaker 1: as cobalt sixty and others. Uh that is left over
Speaker 1: from the hundreds of nuclear detonations that characterized the post
Speaker 1: war period. Now this had many effects, of course, the
Speaker 1: most important of which are probably like the health effects
Speaker 1: on humans and the effects on wildlife. But another one
Speaker 1: of the effects is that for a long time you
Speaker 1: couldn't make steel via normal processes without it being potentially
Speaker 1: contaminated with radioactive particles. Not so many radioactive particles that
Speaker 1: it would be unsafe for regular use, but enough that
Speaker 1: it would be unsuitable if you were trying to make
Speaker 1: a sensitive instrument. So if you needed to make a
Speaker 1: Geiger counter or shielding for a sensitive radio bioassay chamber.
Speaker 1: Uh so, what would you do. Well, it probably wasn't
Speaker 1: impossible to make steal without environmental contaminants from nuclear tests,
Speaker 1: but it would have been expensive and difficult. And another
Speaker 1: option presented itself, which is harvesting steel made before the
Speaker 1: Trinity test in nineteen forty five, and this precious material
Speaker 1: became known in the industry as low background steel. Low
Speaker 1: background because of its low background radiation and what would
Speaker 1: be a great source of huge quantities of pre bomb
Speaker 1: steel old naval vessels. So to come back to the
Speaker 1: 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 nine and then sold for scrap after it was
Speaker 1: taken off the navy list in on June one, nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two. And as the ship was dismantled, some parts
Speaker 1: were kept for ceremonial purposes, like the mainmast and a
Speaker 1: forty millimeter gun were put on display on the campus
Speaker 1: of India University, Bloomington. And I know some of its
Speaker 1: anchors were put on display at various museums and memorials.
Speaker 1: You know, it's compasses, wheels and all that went to
Speaker 1: places where where you can honor the fallen ships. Well
Speaker 1: it this really drives home this metaphor of the ship
Speaker 1: is a fallen beast, like the warship is a thing
Speaker 1: that once dead. Uh. You know that certain parts are
Speaker 1: kept for like you said, ceremonial purposes or display purposes,
Speaker 1: magical purposes, and yet other things are harvested for for
Speaker 1: the raw meter bone of the creature, right, and the
Speaker 1: raw meter bone would be the steel here the smade
Speaker 1: up the bulk of the ship was put to low
Speaker 1: background uses. So in Indiana, VA Hospital got sixty five
Speaker 1: tons of low background steel from the Indiana and that
Speaker 1: was used for their own uh their own background radiation
Speaker 1: counting facilities. But then Lynch writes quote in addition to
Speaker 1: the VA Hospital facility, several large sections of the hull,
Speaker 1: weighing a total of two tons, were also fabricated into
Speaker 1: a room. These applications were probably never imagined by the
Speaker 1: original designers of the Indiana. These sections of the hull
Speaker 1: are still being used for the original purpose as a shield,
Speaker 1: but instead of protecting against artillery shells and torpedoes, the
Speaker 1: new purpose is to shield radiation detectors from the background
Speaker 1: radiations originating from cosmic, atmospheric, man made and terrestrial sources.
Speaker 1: So what was once armor again unitions is now armor
Speaker 1: against the entire universe and its radioactive contents. The room
Speaker 1: was first constructed at the University of Utah Medical Center
Speaker 1: in Salt Lake City, where it was used for many
Speaker 1: years in radio biology research, and then it was finally
Speaker 1: moved to the Richland Facility in nineteen and the Indiana
Speaker 1: was not the only battleship that became a source of
Speaker 1: low background steel. So after the Armistice in nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 1: at the conclusion of World War One, the German High
Speaker 1: Seas Fleet was ordered to report to an Allied base
Speaker 1: known as the Scapa Flow, where the naval vessels were
Speaker 1: supposed to be handed over to the British Royal Navy.
Speaker 1: But the German officers did not like that. They had
Speaker 1: a different idea, and they decided, sort of as a
Speaker 1: kind of last middle finger to the British, they scuttled
Speaker 1: their ships in the harbor. They sank their own ships
Speaker 1: on purpose so that the British couldn't have them. So
Speaker 1: now they're all those shipwrecks there. In fact, that the
Speaker 1: Scapa Flow is well known for its World War One
Speaker 1: era shipwrecks and has been exploited extensively as a source
Speaker 1: of low background steel. And though it's not known for sure,
Speaker 1: I've read rumors, unconfirmed rumors that some early spacecraft may
Speaker 1: have used low background steel from the Scapa Flow or
Speaker 1: other wrecks in radiation detectors. Interesting now, I mentioned this earlier,
Speaker 1: but it's worth pointing out again that the atmosphere is
Speaker 1: much less radioactive today than it was at the height
Speaker 1: of nuclear testing in in the middle of the century.
Speaker 1: For example, cobalt sixty has a half life of about
Speaker 1: five point three years, and there has been a lot
Speaker 1: less nuclear testing since the Partial Nuclear Test Band Treaty
Speaker 1: in nineteen certainly a lot less atmospheric testing. So the
Speaker 1: atmosphere should be reduced to um near pre war levels
Speaker 1: of background contamination within a reasonable amount of time. But
Speaker 1: but it took decades. So Robert, when reading about this,
Speaker 1: I came across a comic strip I thought you might like.
Speaker 1: It's one of the X K C D comics. And
Speaker 1: in it they build a time machine. But it turns
Speaker 1: out the time machine requires lead from sunken Roman warships
Speaker 1: and uh. This is of course hard to come by,
Speaker 1: so they determine they have enough lead for one trip
Speaker 1: into the past. And uh, and in this way through
Speaker 1: time travel, Greek Fire is born. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: the the You know, if you could you only had
Speaker 1: one wish from a genie, what do you do? Well?
Speaker 1: You wish for more wishes? Yeah, more wishes? Yeah. I
Speaker 1: love this little comic strip. I had not seen it
Speaker 1: before you I shared it with me. But it it's
Speaker 1: especially nice because I just started watching some nineties episodes
Speaker 1: of The Outer Limits, and this is the kind of
Speaker 1: sort of Outer limitsy sort of plot, maybe skewed a
Speaker 1: little bit for comedic purposes, you know, it's the it's
Speaker 1: the kind of twist you you expect in time travel fiction.
Speaker 1: I like it. Yeah, uh so if I wasn't totally
Speaker 1: clear and you didn't get they travel back in time
Speaker 1: and use their future weapons on Roman warships, and of
Speaker 1: course that becomes the legend of Greek fire. Yeah. They
Speaker 1: take out like a helicopter with a flamethrower back in
Speaker 1: time and uh and and set to light the Roman ships. Now,
Speaker 1: I guess we've made several references to this nuclear testing
Speaker 1: age in the middle of the twentieth century. Of course,
Speaker 1: this began in the nineteen forties. The first one was
Speaker 1: again the Trinity Test by the United States in July ninety.
Speaker 1: The Soviet Union first performed nuclear weapons tests in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty nine. Tests took place all, you know, all over
Speaker 1: the place. They were in the upper atmosphere, underground, in
Speaker 1: the ocean, and once several other The majority of the
Speaker 1: tests were by the United States and the Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: but several other countries eventually got involved, and there were
Speaker 1: a lot of bomb tests in the end. Yes, so
Speaker 1: you probably wonder, well, just how many? So I looked
Speaker 1: it looked around for a good, UH, good good total
Speaker 1: on this. I find that the estimates vary a little bit,
Speaker 1: I mean not a lot. But according to Darryl Kimball,
Speaker 1: executive director of the Arms Control Association, which is a
Speaker 1: great source for for the sort of UH information, this
Speaker 1: is what they had to say in a July report quote.
Speaker 1: Since the first nuclear test explosion on July six, ninety five,
Speaker 1: at least eight nations have detonated two thousand and fifty
Speaker 1: six nuclear test explosions at dozens of test sites, including
Speaker 1: Lopnore in China, the atolls of the Pacific, Nevada, Algeria,
Speaker 1: where France conducted its first nuclear device, Western Australia, where
Speaker 1: the UK exploded nuclear weapons, the South Atlantic Semipalatans in Kazakhstan,
Speaker 1: across Russia, and elsewhere. So that's over two thousand nuclear
Speaker 1: test explosions in total. And if you're looking specifically at
Speaker 1: atmospheric tests alone, which are often considered like the worst
Speaker 1: kind in terms of proliferating UH contaminants into the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: Of course those would be there. There were definitely more
Speaker 1: than five hundred atmospheric tests. Yeah, when you when you
Speaker 1: start breaking down the numbers, the US conducted most of
Speaker 1: these with let's see some two hundred fifteen atmospheric tests
Speaker 1: and eight hundred and fifteen underground tests. The USSR slash
Speaker 1: Russia ranks second with two hundred and nineteen atmospheric tests
Speaker 1: and four hundred nine underground test and the remaining ranking
Speaker 1: goes like this. You've got France, then the UK and China.
Speaker 1: They're tied UK and China with a total of forty
Speaker 1: five tests each. Then you have North Korea, India and Pakistan.
Speaker 1: The United States is of course responsible for the only
Speaker 1: wartime detonation of nuclear weapons as in utilized as weapons
Speaker 1: against another people. Two bombs deployed against the Japanese cities
Speaker 1: of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing between one hundred twenty nine
Speaker 1: thousand and two hundred twenty six thousand people, mostly civilians.
Speaker 1: Needles to say, those were both atmospheric detonations. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: of course with each of these tests there is going
Speaker 1: to be more radioactive contamination entering the atmosphere. Now in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, the Partial Nuclear Test Band Treaty managed
Speaker 1: to ban tests in the atmosphere and underwater, so basically
Speaker 1: it banned all except underground tests. It did not really
Speaker 1: stop nuclear proliferation, but it did massively decrease the dispersal
Speaker 1: of radio nuclides into the atmosphere. Now there's been another
Speaker 1: um perhaps unexpected, interesting environmental side effect of the nuclear
Speaker 1: testing age, which is how it has affected atmospheric levels
Speaker 1: of carbon fourteen and the way that this has turned
Speaker 1: into an unexpected number of scientific tools that can be
Speaker 1: used to study the natural world. So, in nature, carbon
Speaker 1: fourteen is a radioactive isotope of carbon that is generated
Speaker 1: in Earth's atmosphere every minute of every day. The Earth
Speaker 1: is of course bombarded by cosmic rays, and cosmic rays
Speaker 1: are charged particles, usually protons and atomic nuclei, which are
Speaker 1: emitted from high energy sources, including the Sun, but also
Speaker 1: places far away, usually traveling near the speed of light.
Speaker 1: And when one of these high energy particles enters the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: it sometimes strikes atoms to generate free neutrons, and a
Speaker 1: free neutron then combines with a regular atom of nitrogen
Speaker 1: fourteen to produce an atom of carbon fourteen, and this
Speaker 1: carbon fourteen then pairs up with oxygen to create carbon
Speaker 1: fourteen c O two, So there's a lot of carbon
Speaker 1: fourteen in the atmosphere is just produced at a steady
Speaker 1: rate naturally as the cosmic rays are coming in, and
Speaker 1: this carbon fourteen c O two gets into everything that
Speaker 1: ingests atmospheric carbon. So plants suck in c O two
Speaker 1: with a predictable amount of carbon fourteen and they use
Speaker 1: that carbon to make their bodies, and then the tree
Speaker 1: is in 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 the
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. Karl 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 how
Speaker 1: having 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 by sphere. Really, it's one of those you know,
Speaker 1: like the brain lights up with the sudden realization that, uh,
Speaker 1: to use a sort of stoner cliche, everything's connected, but
Speaker 1: 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, et cetera,
Speaker 1: which I know is something that everyone has heard so
Speaker 1: many times that even if you believe in it wholeheartedly,
Speaker 1: it can it can sound a little uh uh limp,
Speaker 1: you know, in in your ears. And yet like that's
Speaker 1: I mean, that is the reality that drives through and
Speaker 1: all of this science, and it stands in such harsh
Speaker 1: contrast to the way uh, certain individuals, uh in uh
Speaker 1: like the political and the military sphere view nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1: The idea that like, you know, certainly we can say
Speaker 1: a head of state using a nuclear weapon against the
Speaker 1: city within their own nation, that would be that would
Speaker 1: be ridiculous, that would be monstrous. But it's but but
Speaker 1: then the you know, people will say, oh, but do
Speaker 1: you use it against another nation? And other people that's
Speaker 1: less monstrous. But no, no, it's all interconnected in in
Speaker 1: a in in a in a scientifically verifiable way. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's one atmosphere at the very base level, without
Speaker 1: getting into um some of the other um issues we're
Speaker 1: going to explore, and just the basic ethical framework of
Speaker 1: the choice. Yeah, I mean it makes me think of
Speaker 1: that commonly sided thing about astronauts very often, you know,
Speaker 1: seeing the Earth from space and then suddenly feeling more
Speaker 1: of a kinship with all of humankind and not feeling
Speaker 1: nearly as much the uh, not feeling the reality of
Speaker 1: national borders and things like that, uh, nearly as much anymore. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's funny how easily those illusions can be dissolved just
Speaker 1: by a sort of a single vision, dual impression, or
Speaker 1: a single realization about saying how chemistry works, that you're
Speaker 1: suddenly like, oh, wait a minute, you know, there's just
Speaker 1: sort of earth life, and we we really need to
Speaker 1: make this work and not create problems that aren't necessary
Speaker 1: to begin with. Yeah, those are those lines and those naps.
Speaker 1: They really do nothing against radioactive particles and certainly concepts
Speaker 1: such as nuclear fallout or um or a climate change.
Speaker 1: So going into Karl Zimmer's article. As I said, it's
Speaker 1: worth reading the article in full. It's really fantastic. He
Speaker 1: begins by telling the story of the Castle Bravo test
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty four, which is uh, both all inspiring
Speaker 1: and horrifying and heartbreaking. Um. But later on, when he's
Speaker 1: getting into the scientific history of of carbon fourteen, he
Speaker 1: talks about the Chicago physicist Willard Libby, who was a
Speaker 1: Nobel prize winning or did I say physicist, I think
Speaker 1: he would be called a physical chemist. Uh. He was
Speaker 1: somebody who studied radioactive elements and and one of those
Speaker 1: was one of the major developers of carbon fourteen dating.
Speaker 1: And one of the really interesting things that Libby does
Speaker 1: is that Libby ends up comparing measurements of methane from
Speaker 1: say living current sources, say methane coming off of a
Speaker 1: sewage plant, So this is going to be sewage from
Speaker 1: things that are currently alive, versus methane coming off of
Speaker 1: fossil fuels like oil that has been there for millions
Speaker 1: of years. And what he showed was that, say, the
Speaker 1: methane coming off of the excreta produced by living humans
Speaker 1: is something close to about the atmospheric level. Meanwhile, what's
Speaker 1: coming the methane coming off of fossil fuels, coming off
Speaker 1: of say, oil that's been there for millions of years,
Speaker 1: has essentially no carbon fourteen in it, right, because it's
Speaker 1: been there for so long that all of the radioactive
Speaker 1: isotopes of carbon have decayed, so it's just got regular
Speaker 1: carbon in it. And there was some other really interesting
Speaker 1: experiments too, but one of the things I wanted to
Speaker 1: focus on was uh Karl's profiling of the New Zealand
Speaker 1: physicist Ethel Rafter. So Rafter was picking up on Libby's research,
Speaker 1: and he was interested in radiocarbon dating. In its early days,
Speaker 1: he used it to test the bones of extinct birds
Speaker 1: and ancient volcanic eruptions. But he also tried to help
Speaker 1: refine the technique itself by performing measurements of the radio
Speaker 1: carbon in the atmosphere. And he would do this by
Speaker 1: setting out a tray of LIE on top of it
Speaker 1: on a hilltop, and the LIE would capture c O
Speaker 1: two from the air, and then he would measure the
Speaker 1: atmospheric levels of carbon fourteen or the ratio of course,
Speaker 1: and whenever we're talking about levels of carbon fourteen, we're
Speaker 1: 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 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 tenually
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 as
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 snails,
Speaker 1: in Holland, in the lungs of recently deceased people from
Speaker 1: New York, even in the blood of living people. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's just extra carb and fourteen and everything. And as
Speaker 1: bomb radiocarbon, So the bomb radio carbon would be would
Speaker 1: be up in the upper atmosphere, and as it settles
Speaker 1: back down to Earth, it becomes a sort of tracer
Speaker 1: molecule that can be used as a scientific tool. So
Speaker 1: Carl quotes from somebody named Steve Beauprey who's an oceanographer
Speaker 1: at Stony Brook University, and he's quoted in the article
Speaker 1: saying that carbon fourteen is inextricably linked to our understanding
Speaker 1: of how water moves. And so I thought this was
Speaker 1: so interesting. So in the nineteen seventies, oceanographers found that
Speaker 1: there was bomb radio carbon that was distributed throughout the
Speaker 1: top one thousand meters of the ocean's water column. So
Speaker 1: if you go down a thousand meters, you're going to find,
Speaker 1: you know, atmospheric radiocarbon the elevated levels that you'd get
Speaker 1: from a bomb. But then if you go down below
Speaker 1: that suddenly not so much anymore. And this became a
Speaker 1: really important piece of evidence in estimating the or in
Speaker 1: establishing that the ocean, like the atmosphere, had layers, and
Speaker 1: that water was primarily circulated within rather than between these layers.
Speaker 1: Carl Wright's quote, the warm, relatively fresh water on the
Speaker 1: surface of the ocean glides over the cold, salty depths.
Speaker 1: These surface currents becomes saltier as they evaporate, and eventually,
Speaker 1: at a few crucial spots on the planet, these streams
Speaker 1: get so dense that they fall to the bottom of
Speaker 1: the ocean. The bomb radio carbon from Castle Bravo didn't
Speaker 1: start plunging down into the depths of the North Atlantic
Speaker 1: until the nineteen eighties, when John Clark this character from
Speaker 1: the Castle Bravo test was two decades into retirement. It's
Speaker 1: still down there where it will be carried along the
Speaker 1: seafloor by bottom hugging ocean currents for hundreds of years
Speaker 1: before it rises to the light of day. Uh. And
Speaker 1: he points out also that lots of ocean life bears
Speaker 1: the seal of the bomb spike. Again, this is from
Speaker 1: atmospheric tests, and so this is not even underwater test.
Speaker 1: This is atmospheric tests coming down into the ocean. Bomb
Speaker 1: radiocarbon 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 seafloor, a
Speaker 1: jumble of protoplasmic goo, dolphin droppings, starfish eggs, an all
Speaker 1: manner of detritus that scientists call marine snow. In recent decades,
Speaker 1: that marine snow has become more radioactive. In the article,
Speaker 1: he also profiles a researcher named Mary gay Lord who
Speaker 1: works at the National Ocean Science is Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Facility,
Speaker 1: which is known as No Sam's for short, and that's
Speaker 1: at the Woods Hole, which is where Hooper comes from
Speaker 1: in Jaws, and she measures radiocarbon and everything from bat
Speaker 1: guano to fish eyes. There's a lot about fish eyes
Speaker 1: in this article, which is more interesting than you think
Speaker 1: because surprisingly the study of radio carbon and fish eye
Speaker 1: lenses can tell us a lot, like the cores of
Speaker 1: fish eye lenses have the same levels of carbon fourteen
Speaker 1: as the fish did when they were still egg so
Speaker 1: it's a really good age indicator. And this knowledge was
Speaker 1: used by Danish researchers in to create an aging metric
Speaker 1: for these cold bottom dwelling animals, the greenland sharks, which
Speaker 1: you might have read about them because they grow so old.
Speaker 1: This helped confirm the discovery that these animals could live
Speaker 1: to be almost four hundred years old, So a lot
Speaker 1: of these are pre bomb sharks. And actually this also
Speaker 1: applies to humans. People born in the early nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: have more radio carbon in the lenses in their eyes
Speaker 1: than people born before the nuclear testing age, and people
Speaker 1: born in the years since then have less and less
Speaker 1: as time passes since the since the partial test band
Speaker 1: treat bomb. Radio carbon can also be used to date
Speaker 1: human teeth. But there's a very sobering fact that's discussed
Speaker 1: at the end of Zimmer's article, which is that the
Speaker 1: proportion of carbon fourteen currently in the atmosphere is actually
Speaker 1: a bit lower than would be predicted by the known
Speaker 1: nuclear tests and the known rate of decay and absorption
Speaker 1: by the Earth and seas. So what makes the difference,
Speaker 1: Like why is there less carbon fourteen than we think
Speaker 1: there should be? And it turns out there's an answer
Speaker 1: to that. The answer is fossil fuels. Remember how I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier that the methane coming off of oil had
Speaker 1: basically no carbon fourteen in it, because the oil is
Speaker 1: so old, all of the carbon fourteen has already decayed.
Speaker 1: It's gone. Uh. So, as we release carbon from these
Speaker 1: ancient carbon sources into the atmosphere, we're putting a much
Speaker 1: higher percentage than normal of regular carbon up there, which
Speaker 1: actually dilutes what carbon fourteen there is. Uh Carl Carl
Speaker 1: Zimmer points out that a nineteen f d four, which
Speaker 1: was the year of the Castle Bravo test, humans emitted
Speaker 1: six billion tons of carbon dioxide that year uh. Quote
Speaker 1: in humans emitted about thirty seven billion tons, which is
Speaker 1: 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 civilization level threat technology is being deluded
Speaker 1: by the ever increasing mark of our other one, by
Speaker 1: the second one. All right, I guess we need to
Speaker 1: take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more.
Speaker 1: Thank So, I have another example of a specific resulting
Speaker 1: scientific discovery from a nuclear test that that I ran
Speaker 1: across UM and it it concerns UH, the of a
Speaker 1: test known as Starfish Prime. So this was a one
Speaker 1: point for megaton thermonuclear device launched two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: miles or four hundred kilometers into the sky near Johnston
Speaker 1: A Tall. So it is the largest outer space nuclear
Speaker 1: 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 in 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. Now,
Speaker 1: now that that's all interesting, but obviously a test like
Speaker 1: this expand is going to expand on our understanding of
Speaker 1: the weapon technology being tested. But the side effect here
Speaker 1: is that the CD one O nine tracers released by
Speaker 1: the detonation allowed scientists to work out some of the
Speaker 1: seasonal mixing rate of polar and tropical air masses. So
Speaker 1: again comes down to the fluid dynamics of of in
Speaker 1: our earlier example of 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 and indeed, uh, in many
Speaker 1: cases it means people were were sick and people's health
Speaker 1: suffered because of these tests. Environments were um, we're tainted
Speaker 1: by the radiation, are still tainted. In some case cases
Speaker 1: people have been dislocated and have not yet been able
Speaker 1: to return. Um. You know, we believe we're calling this
Speaker 1: episode the atomic scar. But a scar to we tend
Speaker 1: to think of as something that is visible but is
Speaker 1: fully healed. And the thing about a lot of these
Speaker 1: these tests is that it's it's not so much a scar,
Speaker 1: but it is like um, a thick scab, and if
Speaker 1: we are to to pick at it again, uh, we
Speaker 1: may bleed. In fact, we may we may bleed um
Speaker 1: for the duration of our lives. Sort of situations. So
Speaker 1: um uh so yeah, the these uh kind of comes
Speaker 1: back to what we said earlier about, you know, about
Speaker 1: the world in which we conduct these tests. You know,
Speaker 1: we we might think, oh, we're not setting this off
Speaker 1: in the house, We're setting it off in the backyard,
Speaker 1: you know. But but ultimately you know, the wilds of
Speaker 1: Nevada or 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 too can can produce leakages. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: on the subject of underwater tests, I was reading a
Speaker 1: little bit more about the EASE and these were banned
Speaker 1: by the Partial Nuclear Test Band Treaty in nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: but the U, S, the UK and the uss ARE
Speaker 1: managed to conduct a total of nine before that that
Speaker 1: that band came into place, and these included um, shallow
Speaker 1: detonations to see how the the the weapon would impact
Speaker 1: ships as well as deep detonations to see how they
Speaker 1: might 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 and tens now
Speaker 1: an author by the name of Sarah Lascau wrote a
Speaker 1: really good article about about the US tests for Atlas Obscura,
Speaker 1: pointing out that the water is what really made the
Speaker 1: tests more problematic because instead of spreading radioactive particles through
Speaker 1: a wider atmospheric region, it instead released an immediate radioactive
Speaker 1: water cloud. So the ships used in these tests were
Speaker 1: highly radiated and possible to clean, so they were just
Speaker 1: towed out to the deep and scuttled. Now Alascow rights
Speaker 1: that quote. The Atomic Energy Commission would not sign off
Speaker 1: on it until it was clear that no one in
Speaker 1: the United States or Mexico was at risk and that
Speaker 1: the test area was relatively free of marine life. Um.
Speaker 1: But but the test certainly killed fish and other organisms. UM.
Speaker 1: I read an account by a UK veterrian, who was
Speaker 1: of course working with some of those UK UH tests,
Speaker 1: claims that men were sent out in boats to collect
Speaker 1: dead irradiated fish after after the test was conducted. And
Speaker 1: this particular test would have been uh the nineteen two
Speaker 1: hurricane test in the Montebello Islands, as this was the
Speaker 1: only UK underwater nuclear test that was conducted, and of
Speaker 1: course in a lot of these like tests in the
Speaker 1: Pacific Islands and stuff, even when the explosion was carried
Speaker 1: out in the atmosphere, it was still extremely damaging to
Speaker 1: marine life. Like, Yeah, there's a part in uh Karl
Speaker 1: Simmer's article that we were talking about earlier where he
Speaker 1: talks about with the Castle Bravost four quote, within seconds
Speaker 1: the fireball had lofted ten million tons of pulverized coral
Speaker 1: reef coated in radioactive material. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean, these
Speaker 1: these atmospheric tests were also devastating to these areas. One
Speaker 1: area that frequently comes up is is Bikini at all.
Speaker 1: This is where the first underwater test was was was
Speaker 1: conducted Baker, but also you had many other atmospheric tests
Speaker 1: that took place there as well. And what's interesting here
Speaker 1: is that there's been there's some studies in in over
Speaker 1: the past decade or so that have really looked at
Speaker 1: how the local environment has has bounced back, and indeed
Speaker 1: it does show that nature can be very resistant to
Speaker 1: even this kind of you know, intense damage. That they
Speaker 1: say that corals have recolonized bomb craters. Other life forms
Speaker 1: are doing well, even if there are some curious mutations
Speaker 1: like sharks missing their second dorsal fin, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: The general belief is that um at least with with Bikini,
Speaker 1: that the worst affected fish died off decades ago, and
Speaker 1: today's fish populations are only exposed to low radiation levels
Speaker 1: as they frequently swim in and out. Plus, these are
Speaker 1: also areas that have been left alone by humans, they've
Speaker 1: more so than other marine areas. Now one should also
Speaker 1: note that the occupants of the area around Bikini Atoll
Speaker 1: and the Marshall Islands were displaced by the test, some
Speaker 1: one seven people, I believe, and they've never been able
Speaker 1: to return their 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, we're 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: it that ultimately it's about preventing uh that's sort of
Speaker 1: warfare from taking place by making sure you have uh
Speaker 1: you know, a terrifying number of of of nuclear weapons
Speaker 1: in your armament, or you know, the reverse is true,
Speaker 1: that you are developing these weapons which may potentially be used.
Speaker 1: Any nuclear weapon is a potential holocaust, uh you know,
Speaker 1: contained within the warhead, right, I mean, I think, I
Speaker 1: guess the 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: tests discouraged, 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 us 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 dot 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 said 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 touched 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 lessen the possible ability, 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. Huge 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 a
Speaker 1: topic for the future, just to say hello, you can
Speaker 1: email us at contact that Stuff to Blow your Mind
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