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Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with the text stop from host.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to text Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland and joining me

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Speaker 1: once again to conclude our two part series on the

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Speaker 1: Manhattan Project has been the books back then. Hey, thanks

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Speaker 1: for happy me back a forward. I'm glad that this

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Speaker 1: ended up being a two parter because there was there's

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Speaker 1: so much stuff that we we kind of have to

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Speaker 1: establish before we even really get into the nitty gritty

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Speaker 1: of the Manhattan Project. So so I'd like to say

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Speaker 1: all listeners, if you have not heard part one of

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Speaker 1: this product, of this podcast or this series, then I

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Speaker 1: implore you. Maybe maybe that's too strong a word. I

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Speaker 1: don't know. No, I think implore is a good word,

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Speaker 1: because otherwise there's gonna be a lot of player It's

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Speaker 1: gonna be like watching season four Lost. It'll be like

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Speaker 1: it'll be like if you if you've heard, hey, that

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Speaker 1: Game of Thrones show is supposed to be really good,

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Speaker 1: let me just watch this one episode. You won't know

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Speaker 1: who any of the people are or why they're doing

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Speaker 1: what they're doing. Uh So, here's a quick previously on

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Speaker 1: tech stuff. We ended up covering the physics that led

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Speaker 1: up to the discovery of fission. We also covered the

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Speaker 1: political landscape, the fact that World War two was well,

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Speaker 1: first it was building, you know, the world was building

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Speaker 1: up to World War two, and then World War two

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Speaker 1: breaks out, and how that ended up creating a fast

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Speaker 1: track in the United States for research into fission, specifically

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Speaker 1: in the weaponization of fission, using using atomic science to

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Speaker 1: create a weapon, because there was the very real threat

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Speaker 1: that the Nazis we're working on their own program for

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Speaker 1: such a thing, and even before the United States was

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Speaker 1: pulled into the war, UH, there was this this need.

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Speaker 1: Einstein himself had expressed concern. And we also talked about

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Speaker 1: sort of the the players that we're all doing various

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Speaker 1: lines of research into the separate separation of of ions

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Speaker 1: of uranium, because, as it turns out, you two thirty

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Speaker 1: five is really what you want if you're trying to

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Speaker 1: achieve nuclear fission, especially a sustainable chain reaction, but you

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Speaker 1: two thirty eight is overwhelmingly the more abundant version of

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Speaker 1: uranium that's found in nature, and separating the two is

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Speaker 1: not an easy task. So we have multiple areas of

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Speaker 1: research looking into ways to do that and also a

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Speaker 1: need to find a way to weaponize it. We concluded

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Speaker 1: Part one. This is just to set us up apart

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Speaker 1: to we concluded part one talking about how there was

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Speaker 1: the Army Corps of Engineers have become involved, and there

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Speaker 1: is a fellow named James C. Marshall who was initially

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Speaker 1: in charge. James C. Marshall's headquarters were located in Manhattan

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Speaker 1: and specifically was the Manhattan Energy District. Was the code

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Speaker 1: name for it, and the secret project, super secret project

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Speaker 1: to develop atomic weapons became known as the Manhattan Project,

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Speaker 1: even after those headquarters were no longer in Manhattan. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, if you find a name that works, you stick,

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Speaker 1: you stick with the name. And it's one of those

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Speaker 1: it's one of those common misconceptions because as as we've

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Speaker 1: mentioned on the previous episode, this uh Manhattan Project did

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Speaker 1: not occur, not only did not occur in just Manhattan

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Speaker 1: or just in Mexico, but it occurred in areas across

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Speaker 1: the across the US. There's some really cool stuff that's

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Speaker 1: going to happen. There are towns that only exist because

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Speaker 1: of the Manhattan Project. They would not have otherwise grown

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Speaker 1: up where they are. And to really get into this,

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Speaker 1: at this stage, the very early days of the Manhattan

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Speaker 1: Project as an official thing. There were some tensions that

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Speaker 1: were already building up between the scientific community, the various

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Speaker 1: research centers that were looking into this, and the army

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Speaker 1: that was more or less kind of facilitating it, you know,

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Speaker 1: sort of in charge. But also mainly their purpose was

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Speaker 1: to make sure that the scientists were going to have

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Speaker 1: the facilities and resources that they would need in order

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Speaker 1: to do what they needed to do, and also the

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Speaker 1: ones to crack the whip on the timeline. Yeah. Well,

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Speaker 1: as it turns out, the army moves a certain pace

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Speaker 1: that the scientists didn't find particularly helpful. That you know,

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Speaker 1: the essentially bureaucracy got in the way things. Things slowed down,

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Speaker 1: and the scientists were not entirely happy with the way

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Speaker 1: Marshall was running things. So in September nineteen forty two,

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Speaker 1: the Army decides to replace Mark Shoal with Colonel Leslie R. Groves, who, after,

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Speaker 1: you know, six days after becoming the head of the

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Speaker 1: Manhattan Project, was promoted to brigadier general. So calling him

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Speaker 1: colonel Groves is misleading since he was almost immediately a

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Speaker 1: brigadier general. Gross was instrumental in bringing the Pentagon or

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Speaker 1: building the Pentagon. He was he was one of the

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Speaker 1: people very much in charge of that project. And he

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Speaker 1: also had a background as an engineer, so he understood

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Speaker 1: the needs of building facilities, you know what, what actually

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Speaker 1: is required to do this, and he knew how to

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Speaker 1: work on this in a very uh aggressive timeline. I

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Speaker 1: guess it is the best way to put it. So

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Speaker 1: Groves moves in. And then there were all these different

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Speaker 1: sites that the scientists had identified as being potentially ideal

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Speaker 1: for the Manhattan Project, and Marshall had been very slowly

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Speaker 1: investigating them. Groves, on the other hand, said all right,

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Speaker 1: let's do it to get them, let's get her done.

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Speaker 1: Uh So Groves relok at the headquarters from Manhattan to

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Speaker 1: d C. But of course it was already known as

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Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project. It was not going to be called

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Speaker 1: the d C Project. It got stuck that way, and

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Speaker 1: he made Colonel Kenneth D. Nichols, who was James Marshall's deputy,

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Speaker 1: into his chief aid on the project. Marshall himself became

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Speaker 1: a district engineer within the program, and that's where he

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Speaker 1: really excelled within the Manhattan Project because his his talents

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Speaker 1: were considerable. It's just they were better suited for a different,

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Speaker 1: h different job than overseeing the entire project. I see

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Speaker 1: what you're saying. Yeah, because, as it turns out, you know,

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Speaker 1: you want someone who's aggressive so that things can get started,

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Speaker 1: but you also want people who observe the need for

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Speaker 1: caution when you're handling nuclear materials. It's important. Marshall was

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Speaker 1: not fired. No, he was just simply reassigned. It was

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Speaker 1: one of those things where the need for this project

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Speaker 1: was clear, but how to organize it was something that

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Speaker 1: was kind of up in the air for a little bit.

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Speaker 1: Is the first time anybody was doing something like this

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Speaker 1: as far as exactly, you know, the ancient Egyptians. No. Uh,

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Speaker 1: so at the same time that this is going on,

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Speaker 1: Vanavar Bush. If you don't know who that is, you

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Speaker 1: need to listen to our last episode. Yeah, I think

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Speaker 1: that's just gonna get more difficult from this point forward.

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Speaker 1: Uh set up the Military Policy Committee, which would be

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Speaker 1: made up of a representative from the Army, a representative

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Speaker 1: from the Navy, and one from the Office of Scientific

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Speaker 1: Research and Development. If you recall, Bush himself was the

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Speaker 1: head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, but

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Speaker 1: was constantly moving up because his considerable talents in also

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Speaker 1: getting things done. Bush I think was probably one of

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Speaker 1: the best at figuring out who would be ideal to

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Speaker 1: run certain parts of this project. Like he was really

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Speaker 1: good at matching the people with the parts of the

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Speaker 1: project that needed them. Um very visionary kind of guy.

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Speaker 1: Also very very effective at being a liaison between the

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Speaker 1: big the big machine and then these brilliant scientists. Uh yeah.

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Speaker 1: He seemed to know how to handle people no matter

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Speaker 1: what background they came from, and those folks are invaluable.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you can find people who are really smart

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Speaker 1: and really talented, but if they don't know how to

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Speaker 1: how to interact with other people, they don't go very far. Bush, however,

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Speaker 1: was not one of those guys. Um and Groves himself

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Speaker 1: made it clear that the pursuit of multiple lines of

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Speaker 1: research for that isotopes separation, that was something that could

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Speaker 1: not go on forever. That really what needed to happen

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Speaker 1: was the project needed to settle on the you know, one,

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Speaker 1: one line or maybe two lines of inquiry to really

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Speaker 1: concentrate their effort. Even if it turned out those were

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Speaker 1: not the most uh efficient, it would mean that they

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Speaker 1: could at least concentrate their their you know, their workforce

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Speaker 1: because at the time these scientists have their pet projects,

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Speaker 1: which some of them have, even if they some of

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Speaker 1: them already kind of indicate that this will be enormously

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Speaker 1: expensive unless there's some breakthrough. And and you had groups

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Speaker 1: that had very different views on the efficacy of various methodologies.

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Speaker 1: For example, the British loved the idea of gaseous diffusion

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Speaker 1: for isotope separation. Meanwhile, you have Oppenheimer who was demonstrating

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Speaker 1: that the electromagnetic version of isotope separation could be incredibly effective.

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Speaker 1: It's just that he was working on a smaller scale, right,

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Speaker 1: but the scale that he was working on, if he

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Speaker 1: could scale up, he was pretty sure this methodology would

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Speaker 1: be incredibly fruitful. So he was arguing quite strongly for that.

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Speaker 1: So you had all these different camps coming in, and

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Speaker 1: then you had other versions as well. There were just

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Speaker 1: two of them, and that's what Grows was saying, Okay, guys, really,

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Speaker 1: by the end of this year, by the end of

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Speaker 1: let's really settle on a specific one so that we

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Speaker 1: can actually make a weapon that will make a difference

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Speaker 1: in this war. Because at the rate we're going, by

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Speaker 1: the time we create a weapon, peace will have broken

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Speaker 1: out and then we'll just feel like jackasses, or it

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Speaker 1: would be a situation where if we don't get there,

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Speaker 1: someone is going to because the paranoid at that time

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Speaker 1: was so very high. Right Even first of all, there

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Speaker 1: was not really any There was no way of knowing

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Speaker 1: what was going on in the Nazi camps, so it

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Speaker 1: could very well be that Nazi scientists were much closer there.

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Speaker 1: That was legitimate fear. But beyond that, there were already

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Speaker 1: tensions between the United States and other nations, specifically the

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Speaker 1: Soviet Union, and so there was also a real fear

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Speaker 1: that Soviet Union could be investigating this as well. And

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Speaker 1: so even if the weapon weren't used in World War Two,

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Speaker 1: it would be really important for the United States interests

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Speaker 1: for there to be such a weapon period. In fact,

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Speaker 1: that's going to play apart when we get to the

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Speaker 1: point of actually deploying said weapon. But anyway, November uh

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Speaker 1: there was one of the methods of isotope separation that

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Speaker 1: just did not pan out, and that was using centricus centrifuges.

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Speaker 1: And it's because the centrifuge machines were not dependable. They

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Speaker 1: would break down too frequently, so it wasn't that the

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Speaker 1: methodology was bad, it was that the machinery itself was

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Speaker 1: not dependable. Yeah. So um, I mean if you remember

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Speaker 1: the stucks Net story, you know those were centrifuges that

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Speaker 1: were set to spend at the wrong speed which ended

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Speaker 1: up causing uh, some pretty big issues. Yeah. So you know,

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Speaker 1: it's it's something that we've known about for since the

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Speaker 1: nineteen forties, is that if you don't get the machinery

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Speaker 1: to work correctly, then you're not going to be producing

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Speaker 1: the you two thirty five that you need. So electromagnetic

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Speaker 1: separation was the big winner so far with you to

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Speaker 1: thirty five. Guess diffusion was promising enough to still be

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Speaker 1: in the running for consideration, and the Brits. The Brits

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Speaker 1: were still very much behind that. Plutonium, which was a

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Speaker 1: completely separate line of inquiry. Remember most of this was

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Speaker 1: focused on uranium. Plutonium was ended up getting a big

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Speaker 1: boost as well. The Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago, which had

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Speaker 1: just recently brought Enrico Fermi on. He had been working

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Speaker 1: at Columbia and he had moved over to the Metallurgical

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Speaker 1: Laboratory in Chicago. They produced a small amount of pure plutonium.

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Speaker 1: They had uranium piles and plutonium was a byproduct of

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Speaker 1: the process they were using, and so they were saying, well,

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Speaker 1: plutonium is a better Uh. It's it's more apt to

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Speaker 1: undergo fission than you is. The problem is making enough

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Speaker 1: plutonium for that to be effective. So it was promising.

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Speaker 1: But when we're talking small amount of pure plutonium, it's microscopic,

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Speaker 1: that's how small. So not useful for any sort of

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Speaker 1: practical Yeah. Nothing, nothing at all except for the fact

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Speaker 1: that saying we've proven that it works, so so if

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Speaker 1: we can, if we can scale this up, then it

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Speaker 1: could be a promising means of generating plutonium. And it

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Speaker 1: was Glenn Seaboards team. If you don't know who Seaboard is,

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Speaker 1: you need to listen to the last episode. Uh. Figured

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Speaker 1: out how to separate the plutonium from a radiated uranium. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And then you had the theoretical physicists. So these are

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Speaker 1: the guys who you know, You had the the experimental

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Speaker 1: ones who are actually making theory, you know, putting theory

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Speaker 1: too to the test. But the theoretical physicists, who are

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Speaker 1: led by Oppenheimer, we're refining their calculations to figure out

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Speaker 1: exactly how much fission norble material would be needed to

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Speaker 1: create a working bomb. Now, the Brits had come forward

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Speaker 1: and said probably between five to ten um After there

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Speaker 1: after they work with Oppenheimer and the other theorists, they said, yeah,

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Speaker 1: we think that might be an underestimation. Yeah, you might

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Speaker 1: need twice as much. By the way, they would change

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Speaker 1: this again later on, and each time the goalposts will

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Speaker 1: moved further outlet we need to we need we're going

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Speaker 1: to need more material based on our calculations to make

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Speaker 1: a truly UH reactive system where there is a sustainable

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Speaker 1: chain reaction. So Oppenheimer was recommending research into a fusion bomb,

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Speaker 1: not just fission. UH. Fusion bomb would actually be triggered

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Speaker 1: by initially a fission reaction, So you'd have to have

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Speaker 1: fissionable material first, and then you would the energy from

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Speaker 1: that That interact sin would provide the necessary energy to

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Speaker 1: facilitate a fusion reaction, which could be much more powerful.

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Speaker 1: This would be the super bomb. Hydrogen bomb was one

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Speaker 1: of those things that was bandied about quite a bit

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Speaker 1: in these early days. But frankly, everyone's like, let's let's

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Speaker 1: crack fission first. Finish your breakfast. Yeah, exactly, but but

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Speaker 1: s one, the Office of Science and Research authorize some

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Speaker 1: research into light materials, deuterium being the main one to

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Speaker 1: look into the possibility of a fusion bomb, so they

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Speaker 1: didn't want to discount it or dismiss it. But they

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Speaker 1: also didn't want to put all the eggs in the

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Speaker 1: fusion basket. Right. Well, it's you know, if you consider

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Speaker 1: just from what what you outlined earlier, it's at it's

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Speaker 1: complicating a process that we have yet to successfully do,

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Speaker 1: you know, or complete. Right, And so then Groves decides, Okay,

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Speaker 1: since peaches out, that's not gonna work. It's it's it

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Speaker 1: will take us too long to refine the process for

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Speaker 1: it to be practical. Let's focus right now on the

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Speaker 1: pile research that's what generates plutonium, the electromagnetic research, and

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Speaker 1: the gases diffusion research, and we're gonna skip the pilot

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Speaker 1: plant stage go straight to full scale production. In other words,

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Speaker 1: normally you would create a slightly larger pilot plant to

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Speaker 1: make certain that the things you had tested in the

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Speaker 1: laboratory still work at the plant stage. But if they

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Speaker 1: don't work, then you can tweak things. Because the pilot

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Speaker 1: plant isn't so large or so the infrastructure is not

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Speaker 1: so rigid that you can't shift things around. So the

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Speaker 1: idea being that you find the ideal operating conditions at

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Speaker 1: the pilot plant stage, then you scale up to full scale.

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Speaker 1: They're skipping pilot plant and saying we don't have time

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Speaker 1: for it, which is a dangerous Yeah, literally and figuratively right,

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Speaker 1: because figuratively you could say, well, we built this facility

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Speaker 1: based upon our best estimation and it turns out that

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Speaker 1: was off, and now we're stuck with it and we

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Speaker 1: have to use an unideal situation to do whatever it

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Speaker 1: is we need to do. Literally, you're dealing with radioactive

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Speaker 1: material and if it gets out of control, that would

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Speaker 1: be devastating. December second, nineteen forty two, Enrico Fermi and

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Speaker 1: his team demonstrate in front of a group of dignitaries

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Speaker 1: a nuclear chain reaction which lasted for twenty eight minutes

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Speaker 1: until firm me shut it down. So that was this

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Speaker 1: is where we get one of the most famous exchanges

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Speaker 1: from the Manhattan Project, and it was when Compton who

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Speaker 1: called Conant. Those names will be familiar, Yeah, So Compton

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Speaker 1: called Conan and they had the following exchange, up, who

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Speaker 1: do you want to be Do you want to be

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Speaker 1: Compton or Conan? I will you know what, I'll be

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Speaker 1: comfort cool? I go ahead, m ring ring, Hello, the

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Speaker 1: Italian navigator has landed in the New World. How were

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Speaker 1: the natives very friendly? And that was that was the

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Speaker 1: way of describing Not only was the the experiment of success,

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Speaker 1: but it it impressed the dignitaries who were there to

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Speaker 1: see it. So that was that was there coded some

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Speaker 1: semi coded, like improvised way of of saying what had

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Speaker 1: happened without you know, squeezing or or or or or

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Speaker 1: dropping information that might be you know, pretty sensitive over

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Speaker 1: a telephone line. No, you did. You did a bang

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Speaker 1: up job with these with these notes and UH when

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Speaker 1: I saw when I first saw this, it made me

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Speaker 1: want to go into a rabbit hole of finding all

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Speaker 1: of the recorded UH code word conversations of this time

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Speaker 1: because it must sound so bizarre because people are saying

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Speaker 1: it with gravity, but they're saying stuff like um, they're

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Speaker 1: saying stuff like the rabbit has left the hutch. The

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Speaker 1: rabbit has left the hutch. And then the person on

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Speaker 1: the other line is like green and someone goes and

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Speaker 1: hangs up, you know right, and you're like, does there

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Speaker 1: any record of what this actually meant. I mean, the

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Speaker 1: probably the most famous quote out of all of the

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Speaker 1: Manhattan Project, I would argue, comes from Oppenheimer absolutely and

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Speaker 1: spawned so many, um, so many things ranging from uh

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Speaker 1: out and out conspiracy theories to uh just fascinating biographies

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Speaker 1: to to spoil it because I mean, I'll forget about

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Speaker 1: time we get around for the part where the bomb

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Speaker 1: is being tested. Oppenheimer's famous quote, and you've probably heard

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Speaker 1: it before as I am become deaf, the destroyer of worlds. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and he um. He has a quotation where he explains

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Speaker 1: that because that's some ominous stuff, that's like a nick

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Speaker 1: even the bad Seed songs. Sure it, sure is. It

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Speaker 1: were there with red right hand, if I were, if

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Speaker 1: I were just hanging out, if you and I were

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Speaker 1: hanging out when when the bomb dropped and someone said

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Speaker 1: that they would immediately become a dangerous person, I would

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Speaker 1: seriously wonder like, should we have you around? Yeah, for

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Speaker 1: a moment I thought you were going to say, Like

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Speaker 1: if we were out and I just turned to you

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Speaker 1: and said, hey, Jonathan, I am become death of the

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Speaker 1: straight of worlds, I would take that as something to

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Speaker 1: really mull over and possibly start to look for the

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Speaker 1: nearest exit, especially if we were if we were just

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Speaker 1: going down the street to a food truck or something. Right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're just heading out to the one over in the

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Speaker 1: parking lot. Yeah, talking about tuoting your own horn. But

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Speaker 1: there is a context of this, so yeah, and we

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Speaker 1: can shut that. We'll get there a little bit later.

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Speaker 1: In December two, the US government allocated half a billion dollars,

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Speaker 1: which would eventually grow to more than two billion dollars

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Speaker 1: dollars to fund further development. By the way, those costs,

336
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Speaker 1: that's just the official numbers. There could be tons and

337
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Speaker 1: tons that are tied into it in one way or another. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And and not to mention funds that didn't come directly

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Speaker 1: from the United States government, right, right, And that's that's

340
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Speaker 1: a huge part of this. The truth of the matter

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Speaker 1: is that we probably will never know for sure, but

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Speaker 1: we do know that two billion, although it may be

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Speaker 1: the sticker price was not, was not the the entirety

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Speaker 1: of it. Yeah. And in fact, when we say we

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Speaker 1: may never know, no one may might know. Right. It's

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Speaker 1: it's it's such a huge undertaking that it's very unlikely

347
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Speaker 1: there's a document anywhere that has the full tally. It's

348
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Speaker 1: just it's it's just too big. It's too big. Yeah,

349
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Speaker 1: So it's not it's not like a conspiracy as much

350
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Speaker 1: as it is a tremendously difficult calculation. Exactly, I've got

351
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Speaker 1: the I've got the inflation number too. There, what's that?

352
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Speaker 1: And so we said two billion in nineteen Okay, so

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Speaker 1: let's let just just do some math here. Let me

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Speaker 1: get my advocates out two billion. Oh, you have to

355
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Speaker 1: use smaller values. I was on a calculator. You have

356
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Speaker 1: to smaller values. So just a lot of money will

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Speaker 1: leave it. Okay, yes, a significant amount of cash. So

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Speaker 1: the money went on to establish full scale gaseous diffusion plants,

359
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Speaker 1: full scale plutonium plants, and smaller electro magnetic plants, power plants,

360
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Speaker 1: you know, like the manufacturing facilities, not not like biological plants.

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Speaker 1: That doesn't come along until much later. Yes, uh, and

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Speaker 1: vanavar Bush said the earliest a bomb could be expected

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Speaker 1: would be early nineteen forty five, and he was actually

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Speaker 1: trying to be a little conservative because the earlier reports

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Speaker 1: had suggested that if things worked out, there might be

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Speaker 1: a weapon ready as early as nineteen forty four. But

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Speaker 1: Bush was thinking, you know, I'm gonna pad that out

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Speaker 1: a little bit. And as it turns out, even that

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Speaker 1: was optimistic. Early optimistic. Plutonium was looking promising, but people

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Speaker 1: were worried that the the radioactive pile approach, which is

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Speaker 1: what for ME was using, wasn't going to be scalable.

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Speaker 1: That they'd be able to produce plutonium, but it would

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Speaker 1: be at such small amounts that it would take way

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Speaker 1: too long to have enough for it to be a weapon,

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Speaker 1: especially considering that they want to build more than one

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Speaker 1: because they have to test it and they're still not

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Speaker 1: absolutely sure how much they need per weapon. Right, and Uh,

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Speaker 1: the demonstrations for ME had shown revealed that there could

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Speaker 1: be a chain reaction, but the reaction was at too

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Speaker 1: slow a rate for it to be used potentially as

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Speaker 1: a weapon. Uh. The idea being that, yeah, you could

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Speaker 1: do this to to generate energy, like it could be

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Speaker 1: a nuclear power plant. The chain reaction would allow you

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Speaker 1: to to harness in that respect, but it wouldn't be

385
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Speaker 1: so fast to create an explosive event, so it would

386
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Speaker 1: not be useful as a weapon. Um. However, more research

387
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Speaker 1: would go into that. Also forms approach was at such

388
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Speaker 1: a slow rate of of energy release that they did

389
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Speaker 1: not need any sort of cooling system. So, um, there

390
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Speaker 1: was no need for the very advanced cooling systems that

391
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Speaker 1: you will find in nuclear power plants these days, which

392
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Speaker 1: was kind of interesting to me. And there were three

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Speaker 1: different competing designs for nuclear piles. One was water a

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Speaker 1: water cooled model which was developed by Gail Young and

395
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Speaker 1: Eugene Wigner. One was a liquid metal cooled approach headed

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Speaker 1: by our good friend Leo listened to the last, and

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Speaker 1: the last was a helium cooled pile, which was headed

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Speaker 1: by Thomas V. Moore who was an engineer. Yeah, I

399
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Speaker 1: had a great nickname. It is called may West, um

400
00:24:56,040 --> 00:24:59,720
Speaker 1: presumably because the design included spherical segments in the outer

401
00:24:59,760 --> 00:25:02,520
Speaker 1: show l of the facility and May West was built.

402
00:25:04,640 --> 00:25:06,680
Speaker 1: I don't mean the Actress. I mean I do mean

403
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Speaker 1: the Actress, but I really mean the the actual facility

404
00:25:10,520 --> 00:25:12,959
Speaker 1: name nicknamed may West. That was its official name, by

405
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Speaker 1: the way. Scale Yeah. Right, So Groves demanded that the

406
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Speaker 1: Metallurgical Lab come up with a unified approach. Uh not not.

407
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Speaker 1: You know, he wasn't gonna say, all right, look, let's

408
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Speaker 1: have all three of these progress at the same time.

409
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Speaker 1: Because he was already dealing with a branch further up right,

410
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Speaker 1: he was saying, plutonium is just one of the legs

411
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Speaker 1: of research they're already funding, the other two being electromagnetic

412
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Speaker 1: and gasees diffusion. So he didn't want plutonium research to

413
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Speaker 1: then split into three separate groups as well. That would

414
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Speaker 1: just become unmanageable. So UH, a small facility would be

415
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Speaker 1: headed by Fermi and shut down in ninety three. So

416
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Speaker 1: Fermi's research could end up informing the next stage UM.

417
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Speaker 1: They would then be able to decide if that was

418
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Speaker 1: in fact the way they wanted to go. Plus they

419
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Speaker 1: could take all the plutonium that was made by that

420
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Speaker 1: that's part of the research and set that aside. May

421
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Speaker 1: West would be built and ready for operation by March

422
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Speaker 1: ninety four, and its design would allow it to produce

423
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Speaker 1: a hundred grams of plutonium per day, which was significantly

424
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Speaker 1: more than firm's approach. UM and good old Leo was

425
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Speaker 1: allowed to continue research on liquid metal cooling systems kind

426
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Speaker 1: of on his own right because it wasn't as a priority, right, Yeah,

427
00:26:32,800 --> 00:26:35,439
Speaker 1: it wasn't. It didn't look as promising too, Grows, and

428
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Speaker 1: so even the Grows was like, look, you had to

429
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Speaker 1: settle on one. Technically, all three continued. UM Again, they

430
00:26:42,359 --> 00:26:45,720
Speaker 1: didn't want to draw any conclusions too early on, and

431
00:26:46,080 --> 00:26:49,760
Speaker 1: it turned out that they backed the wrong horse men. Meanwhile,

432
00:26:49,760 --> 00:26:53,040
Speaker 1: Glee Glenn Seaboard's work and plutonium extraction made it possible

433
00:26:53,080 --> 00:26:56,080
Speaker 1: to separate plutonium from a radiated uranium, which was an

434
00:26:56,119 --> 00:27:03,920
Speaker 1: important step because both plutonium and radiated uranium were byproducts

435
00:27:03,960 --> 00:27:06,399
Speaker 1: of this pile research, and you have to separate the

436
00:27:06,440 --> 00:27:09,879
Speaker 1: two if you want to get the fissionable material necessary

437
00:27:09,920 --> 00:27:14,840
Speaker 1: to create the chain reactions. UM. So S one felt

438
00:27:14,880 --> 00:27:19,639
Speaker 1: that the plutonium experiments could potentially be dangerous. Uh, and

439
00:27:19,720 --> 00:27:22,440
Speaker 1: so they were there's thinking, maybe we should, um, maybe

440
00:27:22,440 --> 00:27:25,600
Speaker 1: we should start separating out some of these facilities, like

441
00:27:25,640 --> 00:27:30,680
Speaker 1: maybe we shouldn't co locate the isaid the plutonium separation

442
00:27:30,720 --> 00:27:34,480
Speaker 1: facility with the nuclear pile facility. Let's go back to

443
00:27:34,560 --> 00:27:37,480
Speaker 1: your basket phrase. Let's know, why do we need to

444
00:27:37,520 --> 00:27:40,800
Speaker 1: keep all our disasters in one basket? And then and

445
00:27:40,840 --> 00:27:43,040
Speaker 1: then this also, you know, needs to be in an

446
00:27:43,080 --> 00:27:46,680
Speaker 1: unpopulated area. Yes, because if you recall from the first episode,

447
00:27:47,040 --> 00:27:50,120
Speaker 1: the nuclear pile research was largely taking place in an

448
00:27:50,160 --> 00:27:56,280
Speaker 1: old racket court underneath the grandstand at the University of Chicago.

449
00:27:56,920 --> 00:28:00,800
Speaker 1: UM so not you know, they're they're the facility or

450
00:28:00,840 --> 00:28:04,439
Speaker 1: the The department actually was saying, yeah, we kind of

451
00:28:04,480 --> 00:28:06,800
Speaker 1: wish you had come to us before you decided to

452
00:28:06,880 --> 00:28:11,960
Speaker 1: use that area because this is kind of scary. Um.

453
00:28:12,119 --> 00:28:16,120
Speaker 1: So they started looking around for potential partners to help

454
00:28:16,240 --> 00:28:21,040
Speaker 1: build the facility and it Uh, there was one specifically

455
00:28:21,080 --> 00:28:23,080
Speaker 1: that they looked at, and they required a lot of

456
00:28:23,320 --> 00:28:28,760
Speaker 1: um oh, corsion is the wrong word, but convincing for

457
00:28:28,800 --> 00:28:30,920
Speaker 1: them to take part in it. It was a DuPont

458
00:28:31,640 --> 00:28:35,160
Speaker 1: um and DuPont was not super keen on doing this.

459
00:28:35,240 --> 00:28:37,439
Speaker 1: It actually did take quite a few conversations before they

460
00:28:37,440 --> 00:28:42,000
Speaker 1: came on board, but they would ultimately build the facility. UM.

461
00:28:42,080 --> 00:28:47,200
Speaker 1: And also in two Oppenheimer suggested the location of Los Alamos,

462
00:28:47,280 --> 00:28:49,880
Speaker 1: New Mexico, as one of the three sites the Manhattan

463
00:28:49,880 --> 00:28:52,160
Speaker 1: Project would use to pursue the effort of building an

464
00:28:52,160 --> 00:28:57,520
Speaker 1: atomic bomb. Very remote location. Oppenheimer himself owned a ranch

465
00:28:57,680 --> 00:29:00,880
Speaker 1: that was neighboring Los Alamos, so he thought of it

466
00:29:00,960 --> 00:29:04,840
Speaker 1: as being remote enough for it to be a useful

467
00:29:05,080 --> 00:29:08,960
Speaker 1: test site and development site. Also, there were very few

468
00:29:09,000 --> 00:29:11,560
Speaker 1: people who were there uh, and the ones who were

469
00:29:11,600 --> 00:29:14,959
Speaker 1: there could be convinced to move by offering them a

470
00:29:15,160 --> 00:29:18,720
Speaker 1: decent amount of money for their their land, especially considering

471
00:29:18,720 --> 00:29:21,280
Speaker 1: that the value of the land at the time was

472
00:29:21,440 --> 00:29:25,680
Speaker 1: pretty low because like what's out there, very little. Yeah,

473
00:29:25,680 --> 00:29:28,080
Speaker 1: there was a boys school that was out there, but

474
00:29:28,160 --> 00:29:30,720
Speaker 1: Groves went up and offered to buy it from from

475
00:29:30,800 --> 00:29:33,200
Speaker 1: the schools, offered to buy the land, and they said,

476
00:29:33,200 --> 00:29:36,040
Speaker 1: all right, we'll relocate and they left UM. So in

477
00:29:36,120 --> 00:29:41,040
Speaker 1: ninety three in eastern Tennessee, work was well underway on

478
00:29:41,560 --> 00:29:45,120
Speaker 1: several facilities. There was the plutonium plant that was designated

479
00:29:45,440 --> 00:29:49,560
Speaker 1: X ten. That was the electromagnetic facility which was Y twelve,

480
00:29:49,720 --> 00:29:52,840
Speaker 1: and a Ghasius diffusion plant which was called K twenty

481
00:29:52,960 --> 00:29:56,800
Speaker 1: five UH. And this was a site that was located

482
00:29:57,600 --> 00:30:00,240
Speaker 1: west of Knoxville, Tennessee. It was nineties square my miles

483
00:30:00,320 --> 00:30:03,960
Speaker 1: or fifty nine thousand acres and it became a military

484
00:30:04,000 --> 00:30:08,200
Speaker 1: reservation with the official name of Clinton Engineer Works UM.

485
00:30:08,240 --> 00:30:11,760
Speaker 1: By the summer nine three, the Manhattan Project headquarters would

486
00:30:11,800 --> 00:30:16,160
Speaker 1: move from Washington to the site in Tennessee, and eventually

487
00:30:16,320 --> 00:30:20,680
Speaker 1: that that military site grew into a full fledged town

488
00:30:20,800 --> 00:30:23,440
Speaker 1: that today is called Oak Ridge. Got A got a

489
00:30:23,440 --> 00:30:27,880
Speaker 1: little tangent for you here, what's happen. So my my family,

490
00:30:28,160 --> 00:30:33,240
Speaker 1: my extended family, is from the Tri Cities area, which

491
00:30:33,280 --> 00:30:37,880
Speaker 1: is uh in the very very tip of Tennessee, up

492
00:30:37,880 --> 00:30:41,720
Speaker 1: in the mountains, and for a time members of my

493
00:30:41,760 --> 00:30:46,320
Speaker 1: family lived and worked around the area that would be

494
00:30:46,440 --> 00:30:49,560
Speaker 1: known as Oak Ridge. And it was sort of an

495
00:30:49,560 --> 00:30:53,160
Speaker 1: open secret that something was going on, but people really

496
00:30:53,200 --> 00:30:58,480
Speaker 1: didn't have any any idea that um any idea how

497
00:30:58,640 --> 00:31:01,560
Speaker 1: big oak Ridge would actually become, to the point where

498
00:31:01,560 --> 00:31:04,240
Speaker 1: I think at some point it was power providing like

499
00:31:04,320 --> 00:31:08,000
Speaker 1: power to one seven of the power it was actually

500
00:31:08,040 --> 00:31:13,960
Speaker 1: drawing one one some of the power of the entire country,

501
00:31:14,040 --> 00:31:17,680
Speaker 1: not of Tennessee, of the entire United States. One seventh

502
00:31:17,720 --> 00:31:20,000
Speaker 1: of the power being generated in the United States was

503
00:31:20,280 --> 00:31:25,000
Speaker 1: dedicated to powering the facilities at what would become Oak Ridge.

504
00:31:25,040 --> 00:31:27,680
Speaker 1: That it was never called oak Ridge during the duration

505
00:31:27,720 --> 00:31:31,200
Speaker 1: of the Manhattan Project that would come later, but eventually

506
00:31:31,280 --> 00:31:34,640
Speaker 1: it did grow into a full fledged town because they

507
00:31:34,480 --> 00:31:38,040
Speaker 1: these projects were enormous and needed a huge variety of

508
00:31:38,200 --> 00:31:42,280
Speaker 1: workers to make things run, everything from administrative staff to

509
00:31:42,280 --> 00:31:46,600
Speaker 1: the people who actually operated the machinery and the controls,

510
00:31:47,400 --> 00:31:50,920
Speaker 1: the people who were transporting materials, that there was support

511
00:31:51,040 --> 00:31:54,360
Speaker 1: staff to support all of that. It just it quickly

512
00:31:54,440 --> 00:31:58,640
Speaker 1: grew into and a full fledged town. Um. And so

513
00:31:59,000 --> 00:32:00,720
Speaker 1: this was and a lot of people didn't know what

514
00:32:00,720 --> 00:32:03,400
Speaker 1: they were working on and beyond like their actual day

515
00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:06,080
Speaker 1: to day jobs, they didn't know what the end goal was, right,

516
00:32:06,120 --> 00:32:09,040
Speaker 1: And it's something that happens today even in other large

517
00:32:09,040 --> 00:32:14,160
Speaker 1: scale projects that it's the compartmentalization of information and one

518
00:32:14,200 --> 00:32:16,800
Speaker 1: of the you know, it's kind of an ugly truth

519
00:32:16,840 --> 00:32:19,200
Speaker 1: that gets sensationalized a lot, but I think we'll we'll

520
00:32:19,200 --> 00:32:23,040
Speaker 1: explore it later on in the show. Uh. The primary

521
00:32:23,080 --> 00:32:29,640
Speaker 1: reason for this at this time was the complete, completely

522
00:32:29,720 --> 00:32:33,400
Speaker 1: consuming paranoia on the part of the military of spine

523
00:32:33,480 --> 00:32:39,040
Speaker 1: and espionage and not you know, this wasn't some um

524
00:32:39,720 --> 00:32:43,200
Speaker 1: hair brained fantastical thing. This was a valid concern. Yea.

525
00:32:43,240 --> 00:32:45,280
Speaker 1: As it turns out, it was so valid that it

526
00:32:45,600 --> 00:32:49,760
Speaker 1: ended up not being paranoid enough. In Washington State, we

527
00:32:49,840 --> 00:32:52,960
Speaker 1: have the third of the three sites. The projects set

528
00:32:53,040 --> 00:32:57,200
Speaker 1: up headquarters in Hanford, and they created another boom town,

529
00:32:57,400 --> 00:33:01,360
Speaker 1: another town that was specifically meant to help push the

530
00:33:01,360 --> 00:33:05,560
Speaker 1: the goals of the Manhattan Project. UH. Hanford would become

531
00:33:05,560 --> 00:33:08,400
Speaker 1: home to the water cooling pile facilities and the chemical

532
00:33:08,440 --> 00:33:12,080
Speaker 1: separation plants, which were called the Queen Mary's And that

533
00:33:12,160 --> 00:33:13,920
Speaker 1: only really makes sense if you see a picture of them,

534
00:33:14,640 --> 00:33:18,440
Speaker 1: because it looks almost like the shape of the stuff

535
00:33:18,480 --> 00:33:21,120
Speaker 1: that's above ground looks like it's in the shape of

536
00:33:21,120 --> 00:33:25,360
Speaker 1: an old ocean liner, as if you had taken a

537
00:33:25,560 --> 00:33:28,480
Speaker 1: Queen Mary ocean liner and buried it in the ground,

538
00:33:28,560 --> 00:33:32,040
Speaker 1: so only the very top is visible. That's why they

539
00:33:32,040 --> 00:33:34,600
Speaker 1: were called that. Uh So, in the in the spring

540
00:33:34,600 --> 00:33:38,080
Speaker 1: of Oppenheimer had another lab set up in Los Alamos,

541
00:33:38,160 --> 00:33:40,440
Speaker 1: New Mexico. He began to suspect that it might take

542
00:33:40,960 --> 00:33:44,000
Speaker 1: three times as much material, not two times as much

543
00:33:44,000 --> 00:33:46,800
Speaker 1: as they had previously estimated, to make a working bomb.

544
00:33:47,600 --> 00:33:50,120
Speaker 1: By the way, part of the reason why the atomic

545
00:33:50,160 --> 00:33:54,240
Speaker 1: bombs ended up being so incredibly devastating is because they

546
00:33:54,320 --> 00:33:55,960
Speaker 1: kept on thinking that they were going to need more

547
00:33:56,000 --> 00:33:58,520
Speaker 1: and more visionable material, and it turned out that some

548
00:33:58,600 --> 00:34:01,280
Speaker 1: of the earlier estimations might have been a little more

549
00:34:01,360 --> 00:34:06,560
Speaker 1: on the dot than they had worried about. Nine. Both

550
00:34:06,640 --> 00:34:10,160
Speaker 1: the Y twelve, which was that electromagnetic plant, and the

551
00:34:10,360 --> 00:34:14,840
Speaker 1: K twenty five, that's the gasiest diffusion plant, experienced problems uh.

552
00:34:14,880 --> 00:34:19,640
Speaker 1: They were having issues all the way from too and

553
00:34:19,760 --> 00:34:22,680
Speaker 1: project scientists decided to take a look at another method

554
00:34:22,680 --> 00:34:26,719
Speaker 1: of isotope separation called thermal diffusion, which had previously been

555
00:34:26,800 --> 00:34:29,480
Speaker 1: under consideration but kind of dismissed as being too slow

556
00:34:29,560 --> 00:34:33,960
Speaker 1: and too poorly understood to rely upon as a reliable

557
00:34:34,000 --> 00:34:38,520
Speaker 1: means of getting a weapon built, because you know, they

558
00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:41,400
Speaker 1: it might pan out in the long run, but in

559
00:34:41,520 --> 00:34:45,000
Speaker 1: wartime consideration, it's not practical. At this point, they started

560
00:34:45,040 --> 00:34:48,200
Speaker 1: to revisit it UM and with both of those facilities

561
00:34:48,200 --> 00:34:50,600
Speaker 1: having issues, there was a lot of incentive to look

562
00:34:50,719 --> 00:34:54,840
Speaker 1: at it again because if either the other two didn't

563
00:34:54,840 --> 00:34:58,400
Speaker 1: pan out because of technical difficulties, because because of skipping

564
00:34:58,400 --> 00:35:01,560
Speaker 1: that pilot plant step, they needed to have a fallback plan.

565
00:35:02,400 --> 00:35:04,880
Speaker 1: So Oppenheimer suggested to Grows that they build a thermal

566
00:35:04,880 --> 00:35:08,279
Speaker 1: diffusion plant at Oak Ridge, and Grows agreed and co

567
00:35:08,440 --> 00:35:11,560
Speaker 1: located it with the power plant for the K twenty

568
00:35:11,680 --> 00:35:15,160
Speaker 1: five UM, which the reason for that was the K

569
00:35:15,400 --> 00:35:18,759
Speaker 1: The power plant would create steam, which would turn turbines

570
00:35:18,800 --> 00:35:24,160
Speaker 1: that generates electricity basic power plant design. So they decided, well,

571
00:35:24,280 --> 00:35:26,960
Speaker 1: that steam is really hot, we can then use that

572
00:35:27,160 --> 00:35:29,799
Speaker 1: as part of the thermal diffusion process to provide the

573
00:35:29,800 --> 00:35:33,520
Speaker 1: heat and the thermal meaning heat. Uh, this would be

574
00:35:33,680 --> 00:35:35,440
Speaker 1: the best way of doing it. We wouldn't have to

575
00:35:35,480 --> 00:35:38,239
Speaker 1: build another facility to generate steam. We could just co

576
00:35:38,360 --> 00:35:40,600
Speaker 1: locate it with this other one. So we've got all

577
00:35:40,600 --> 00:35:43,280
Speaker 1: the science about the fissionable materials, but there's a whole

578
00:35:43,719 --> 00:35:46,880
Speaker 1: other section we got to talk about two, the actual

579
00:35:47,080 --> 00:35:51,239
Speaker 1: development of the bomb itself. Oh yes, that is. That

580
00:35:51,400 --> 00:35:53,240
Speaker 1: is going to be an important part of this story,

581
00:35:53,280 --> 00:35:56,240
Speaker 1: isn't it. So so you've got you've got the science

582
00:35:56,280 --> 00:35:58,759
Speaker 1: going on about how do we create this chain reaction?

583
00:35:59,200 --> 00:36:01,600
Speaker 1: But then you think, well, what about the actual device

584
00:36:01,680 --> 00:36:07,040
Speaker 1: that's going to hold this material and initiate that chain relation? Uh?

585
00:36:07,040 --> 00:36:10,319
Speaker 1: And there were some different approaches for that too. So

586
00:36:10,440 --> 00:36:14,120
Speaker 1: they started working on the ordinance aspects. That's essentially the

587
00:36:14,120 --> 00:36:17,920
Speaker 1: physical manifestation of this bomb, like the physical parts. They

588
00:36:17,920 --> 00:36:23,600
Speaker 1: called it the gadget um. So in order to do this, uh,

589
00:36:23,640 --> 00:36:27,520
Speaker 1: they were looking at multiple methods. One was this creating

590
00:36:27,520 --> 00:36:31,560
Speaker 1: two subcritical masses of ficionable material that would come together

591
00:36:32,800 --> 00:36:35,520
Speaker 1: so that you know, when they're separated, everything's kosher. You

592
00:36:35,560 --> 00:36:38,759
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about it blowing up. Relatively for

593
00:36:39,040 --> 00:36:42,360
Speaker 1: purposes and then bringing them together. That's what would allow

594
00:36:42,680 --> 00:36:48,400
Speaker 1: the very rapid fission process to occur, releasing enormous amounts

595
00:36:48,400 --> 00:36:51,919
Speaker 1: of energy in the process. Thus you get the big boom. Uh.

596
00:36:51,960 --> 00:36:54,319
Speaker 1: So they started looking into ways they could do this,

597
00:36:54,440 --> 00:36:55,920
Speaker 1: and they had to figure out how to do it

598
00:36:56,160 --> 00:36:59,480
Speaker 1: precisely at a high speed, and they had to make

599
00:36:59,480 --> 00:37:03,360
Speaker 1: sure that at whatever they did would not cause a predetonation,

600
00:37:04,040 --> 00:37:07,280
Speaker 1: because that would be bad. You don't want your bomb

601
00:37:07,280 --> 00:37:10,880
Speaker 1: going off before you you planned on it going off. Um.

602
00:37:10,960 --> 00:37:14,000
Speaker 1: So one of the things they were looking at was

603
00:37:14,440 --> 00:37:18,759
Speaker 1: the gun method, which was essentially firing a plug of

604
00:37:18,800 --> 00:37:25,359
Speaker 1: fissionable material into a subcritical mass, turning it into critical um. So,

605
00:37:26,200 --> 00:37:28,759
Speaker 1: think of it as it's a bomb has within it

606
00:37:28,840 --> 00:37:31,960
Speaker 1: an actual gun. There's a barrel, it's got a plug

607
00:37:32,120 --> 00:37:35,960
Speaker 1: of this stuff. When the trigger is pulled, essentially it

608
00:37:36,160 --> 00:37:39,280
Speaker 1: fires that plug into the subcritical mass and then starts

609
00:37:39,360 --> 00:37:45,320
Speaker 1: the the chain reaction. All this happens in a second.

610
00:37:45,360 --> 00:37:48,120
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's incredible how fast it happens. But

611
00:37:49,200 --> 00:37:51,839
Speaker 1: there are some things that can go wrong. Yes, there

612
00:37:51,880 --> 00:37:53,759
Speaker 1: are things that can go wrong, and one of those

613
00:37:53,760 --> 00:37:56,040
Speaker 1: things is it maybe that it doesn't start the reaction

614
00:37:56,120 --> 00:37:59,960
Speaker 1: fast enough. So that was one of the deals. They

615
00:38:00,080 --> 00:38:03,880
Speaker 1: wanted to test this theory both with you two thirty

616
00:38:03,920 --> 00:38:08,040
Speaker 1: five and with plutonium approaches. And there was another approach

617
00:38:08,080 --> 00:38:11,120
Speaker 1: that was looked at as well, not just using the gun,

618
00:38:11,280 --> 00:38:15,839
Speaker 1: but what if you were to create an implosion. Uh

619
00:38:15,920 --> 00:38:18,840
Speaker 1: So an implosion would be too you would create shock

620
00:38:18,920 --> 00:38:23,439
Speaker 1: waves that would then uh end up instigating this this

621
00:38:24,200 --> 00:38:28,160
Speaker 1: chain reaction. Um. And the person who started looking at

622
00:38:28,480 --> 00:38:33,719
Speaker 1: implosion tests first really was Seth H Neddermeyer uh and

623
00:38:33,760 --> 00:38:36,160
Speaker 1: he was kind of left to his own devices to

624
00:38:36,400 --> 00:38:41,360
Speaker 1: look into this, and um he uh ended up looking

625
00:38:41,440 --> 00:38:45,239
Speaker 1: at it along with John von Neumann, who was Hungarian

626
00:38:45,480 --> 00:38:50,759
Speaker 1: refugee who visited Los Alumos late. He was looking at

627
00:38:51,760 --> 00:38:55,359
Speaker 1: various ways to create a reliable bomb as well. So

628
00:38:55,600 --> 00:38:59,600
Speaker 1: you've got the nuclear physicists all working on the fuel

629
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:03,040
Speaker 1: and uh fissionable material side, and then you have the

630
00:39:03,080 --> 00:39:05,799
Speaker 1: other like mechanical engineers looking at well, how can we

631
00:39:05,800 --> 00:39:09,040
Speaker 1: make this a practical weapon. So so sort of like

632
00:39:09,080 --> 00:39:15,160
Speaker 1: two parallel versions of research. Also, there was some friction

633
00:39:15,520 --> 00:39:19,400
Speaker 1: between net or Meyer and Navy captain named William S.

634
00:39:19,480 --> 00:39:22,279
Speaker 1: Dieck Parsons. He was actually in charge of ordinance So

635
00:39:22,320 --> 00:39:24,440
Speaker 1: when you've got a guy who's working on one of

636
00:39:24,480 --> 00:39:27,360
Speaker 1: the methods, the implosion method and the guy was in

637
00:39:27,440 --> 00:39:31,560
Speaker 1: charge of it not getting along that was an issue. Uh.

638
00:39:31,600 --> 00:39:34,040
Speaker 1: And so you had to have kind of liaisons with

639
00:39:34,080 --> 00:39:36,400
Speaker 1: that as well, so that you did have some ego

640
00:39:36,880 --> 00:39:40,600
Speaker 1: battles going on. UM people who thought that things needed

641
00:39:40,600 --> 00:39:42,640
Speaker 1: to go a certain way and other folks who felt

642
00:39:42,760 --> 00:39:46,160
Speaker 1: very strongly that that was not the appropriate direction. So

643
00:39:46,200 --> 00:39:48,520
Speaker 1: a lot of drama going on behind the scenes as well,

644
00:39:48,960 --> 00:39:51,919
Speaker 1: not just with the technology and the science, but with personalities,

645
00:39:51,960 --> 00:39:56,120
Speaker 1: which is always kind of interesting. Ah. Then you had

646
00:39:56,160 --> 00:40:00,080
Speaker 1: the Army Air Force involved there. You've got like so

647
00:40:00,160 --> 00:40:04,799
Speaker 1: many different departments that there's departmental issues as well. Uh.

648
00:40:05,840 --> 00:40:10,160
Speaker 1: Parsons group was developing two bomb models by March nineteen

649
00:40:10,600 --> 00:40:12,840
Speaker 1: four and to test he wanted to test these with

650
00:40:12,960 --> 00:40:18,160
Speaker 1: B twenty nines. These are essentially the methodology without the

651
00:40:18,239 --> 00:40:23,920
Speaker 1: actual bomb materials and UM and they named them thin Man,

652
00:40:24,040 --> 00:40:28,000
Speaker 1: which was named after President Roosevelt. That used the plutonium

653
00:40:28,040 --> 00:40:34,160
Speaker 1: gun design, so firing a plug plutonium into fissionable material. Yes.

654
00:40:34,600 --> 00:40:36,839
Speaker 1: And then you had fat Man, which was named after

655
00:40:36,920 --> 00:40:41,520
Speaker 1: Winston Churchill, that was an implosion prototype. So you had

656
00:40:42,040 --> 00:40:45,360
Speaker 1: the implosion one needed a larger form factor, thus fat Man,

657
00:40:45,880 --> 00:40:48,319
Speaker 1: and then you had thin Man. Uh. You also had

658
00:40:48,400 --> 00:40:53,800
Speaker 1: a smaller uranium gadget called Little Boy, which was using

659
00:40:53,920 --> 00:40:57,919
Speaker 1: a uranium gun. So so you had the plutonium gun

660
00:40:57,920 --> 00:41:01,960
Speaker 1: and the uranium gun. Uh. The plutonium gun eventually was

661
00:41:02,000 --> 00:41:04,920
Speaker 1: abandoned because it turned out that plutonium to thirty nine

662
00:41:04,960 --> 00:41:07,839
Speaker 1: could pick up a neutron and become plutonium to forty

663
00:41:07,920 --> 00:41:10,800
Speaker 1: and increase the chances of predetonation, which we have already

664
00:41:10,920 --> 00:41:14,160
Speaker 1: established is a bad thing. So they said, well, if

665
00:41:14,160 --> 00:41:17,320
Speaker 1: we're going to use plutonium, we can't use the gun method.

666
00:41:17,360 --> 00:41:20,640
Speaker 1: It would only really work with the implosion method. So

667
00:41:20,680 --> 00:41:24,520
Speaker 1: the thin Man variation on these bombs that was abandoned.

668
00:41:24,800 --> 00:41:27,680
Speaker 1: So you had a fat Man and Little Boy versions

669
00:41:27,719 --> 00:41:31,280
Speaker 1: and that was it because otherwise it was too dangerous.

670
00:41:32,239 --> 00:41:37,640
Speaker 1: But this this also meant that the approaches were requiring

671
00:41:37,840 --> 00:41:41,799
Speaker 1: the the timeline to extend a bit. They were not

672
00:41:41,840 --> 00:41:45,480
Speaker 1: going to make that early deadline of a working bomb,

673
00:41:45,920 --> 00:41:51,040
Speaker 1: and at this point in the war, the the tiger

674
00:41:51,120 --> 00:41:54,680
Speaker 1: is turning yes yeah. And in fact, on the Army

675
00:41:54,719 --> 00:41:57,560
Speaker 1: Corps of Engineer's side, you had Groves and Marshall meeting

676
00:41:57,600 --> 00:42:01,799
Speaker 1: together and discussing what's happening, and their estimation was that

677
00:42:02,560 --> 00:42:04,960
Speaker 1: by the time a bomb would be ready, they were

678
00:42:04,960 --> 00:42:08,560
Speaker 1: being quoted that on August one would be the earliest

679
00:42:08,600 --> 00:42:12,040
Speaker 1: that a bomb would be available. They were pretty sure

680
00:42:12,120 --> 00:42:16,080
Speaker 1: that by then Germany was going to have surrendered. The

681
00:42:16,160 --> 00:42:18,839
Speaker 1: tides were turning enough where it looked like it was

682
00:42:18,880 --> 00:42:22,480
Speaker 1: just Germany was on borrowed time, however, and the Pacific

683
00:42:22,520 --> 00:42:27,160
Speaker 1: theater Japan would likely fight to the very end. The

684
00:42:27,280 --> 00:42:32,200
Speaker 1: Japanese culture was such that there was very little chance

685
00:42:33,520 --> 00:42:38,040
Speaker 1: of Japan's government reconciling, at least in a way that

686
00:42:38,080 --> 00:42:42,560
Speaker 1: the West found um acceptable, because the West was going

687
00:42:42,600 --> 00:42:46,839
Speaker 1: to demand that Japan dismantled its empirical system, and that

688
00:42:46,920 --> 00:42:51,080
Speaker 1: was so deeply ingrained in Japanese culture it was unlikely

689
00:42:51,120 --> 00:42:57,839
Speaker 1: to happen until just catastrophic losses were experienced on Japan's side.

690
00:42:58,480 --> 00:43:02,920
Speaker 1: The economies of well, the economies of all all the

691
00:43:02,960 --> 00:43:06,799
Speaker 1: countries involved at some point shifted greatly, as they do

692
00:43:06,920 --> 00:43:09,600
Speaker 1: during times of war, but the Japanese economy at the

693
00:43:09,640 --> 00:43:15,440
Speaker 1: time was a war powered economy, like it was necessary

694
00:43:15,520 --> 00:43:20,719
Speaker 1: to keep the cycle going. Yeah, so pretty grim, uh,

695
00:43:20,800 --> 00:43:24,440
Speaker 1: and but it became more and more apparent to the

696
00:43:24,520 --> 00:43:27,799
Speaker 1: Army Corps of Engineers that, in fact, if they were

697
00:43:27,800 --> 00:43:31,160
Speaker 1: able to produce a working bomb, the target was not

698
00:43:31,280 --> 00:43:33,480
Speaker 1: going to be Germany, it was going to be Japan.

699
00:43:33,560 --> 00:43:37,560
Speaker 1: They knew this in early ninety five. They were pretty sure.

700
00:43:38,400 --> 00:43:43,760
Speaker 1: Um by mid expenditures were around a hundred million dollars

701
00:43:43,800 --> 00:43:47,279
Speaker 1: per month, and in late nineteen In early ninety five,

702
00:43:47,360 --> 00:43:50,880
Speaker 1: progress at oak Ridge meant that the August first deadline

703
00:43:50,920 --> 00:43:53,879
Speaker 1: actually started to look realistic. It didn't, you know. At

704
00:43:53,920 --> 00:43:57,239
Speaker 1: first they were they were worried that even August first

705
00:43:57,360 --> 00:44:01,000
Speaker 1: might be too aggressive. But the early problems that have

706
00:44:01,080 --> 00:44:04,440
Speaker 1: been plaguing the facilities had largely been worked out, and

707
00:44:04,520 --> 00:44:07,880
Speaker 1: now all the different lines of research were starting to

708
00:44:08,320 --> 00:44:12,640
Speaker 1: be fruitful. So at this point they weren't even saying

709
00:44:12,840 --> 00:44:15,200
Speaker 1: which version is going to work. They were they were

710
00:44:15,200 --> 00:44:17,200
Speaker 1: pretty sure there was going to be at least two.

711
00:44:17,840 --> 00:44:21,160
Speaker 1: The plutonium implosion bomb like it was very promising, and

712
00:44:21,160 --> 00:44:25,080
Speaker 1: the uranium gadget bomb, the the gun method look like

713
00:44:25,120 --> 00:44:29,440
Speaker 1: it was very promising. So, uh, then they started looking

714
00:44:29,440 --> 00:44:33,440
Speaker 1: into how they were going to to actually build these. Meanwhile,

715
00:44:33,520 --> 00:44:37,760
Speaker 1: Hanford up in Washington, their plutonium facilities had some problems

716
00:44:37,880 --> 00:44:41,480
Speaker 1: early there was an issue with what was called zenon poisoning,

717
00:44:41,800 --> 00:44:46,080
Speaker 1: which was not for the employees. They were this was

718
00:44:46,120 --> 00:44:50,120
Speaker 1: the this was the nuclear fuel. Yeah, the xenon um.

719
00:44:50,160 --> 00:44:53,640
Speaker 1: The process was producing xenon, and the problem was that

720
00:44:53,680 --> 00:44:55,920
Speaker 1: the way the chain reaction works, if you remember from

721
00:44:55,920 --> 00:45:00,880
Speaker 1: our our previous episode, AH, these radioactive elements when they decay,

722
00:45:00,960 --> 00:45:05,520
Speaker 1: give off fast moving neutrons which can then trigger another

723
00:45:06,800 --> 00:45:12,399
Speaker 1: another particle to to undergo fission. And thus it ends

724
00:45:12,480 --> 00:45:15,880
Speaker 1: up reducing fast moving neutrons. And as long as it's reduced,

725
00:45:15,920 --> 00:45:18,400
Speaker 1: it's as long as it's producing more than one of

726
00:45:18,440 --> 00:45:23,239
Speaker 1: those fast moving neutrons, this becomes a a an expanding

727
00:45:23,320 --> 00:45:26,320
Speaker 1: chain reaction. It's like you know, you tell two friends

728
00:45:26,360 --> 00:45:30,160
Speaker 1: and they tell two friends and they that sort of thing. Um. So,

729
00:45:30,520 --> 00:45:33,399
Speaker 1: the problem was that xenon, which was being produced by

730
00:45:33,440 --> 00:45:38,319
Speaker 1: this uh, this process, could accept neutrons so readily that

731
00:45:38,440 --> 00:45:42,400
Speaker 1: it would end up preventing a chain reaction from happening,

732
00:45:42,800 --> 00:45:45,680
Speaker 1: essentially like come on over here, boys were good. And

733
00:45:45,680 --> 00:45:48,879
Speaker 1: then because the neutrons were being accepted by zenon, they

734
00:45:48,880 --> 00:45:53,560
Speaker 1: were not triggering further fission. And so once they figured

735
00:45:53,600 --> 00:45:57,000
Speaker 1: that out, they were able to take advantage of something

736
00:45:57,080 --> 00:46:01,640
Speaker 1: DuPont had absolutely insisted upon when it agreed to build

737
00:46:01,640 --> 00:46:05,600
Speaker 1: the facilities. UH, they had designed the facility to allow

738
00:46:05,640 --> 00:46:08,880
Speaker 1: for operation at greater power levels, which originally the scientists

739
00:46:08,880 --> 00:46:11,520
Speaker 1: were saying we don't or actually is really the Army

740
00:46:11,520 --> 00:46:14,560
Speaker 1: Corps of Engineers saying we don't want this. It's too expensive,

741
00:46:14,600 --> 00:46:16,960
Speaker 1: it's it's not necessary. We've been told that it should

742
00:46:16,960 --> 00:46:19,960
Speaker 1: work at these lower power levels, and DuPont said, no,

743
00:46:20,440 --> 00:46:24,759
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to insist, and as it turns out,

744
00:46:24,800 --> 00:46:27,640
Speaker 1: that was the right decision. So by operating at the

745
00:46:27,640 --> 00:46:30,919
Speaker 1: greater power levels, that overwhelmed the xenon. So, in other words,

746
00:46:30,920 --> 00:46:33,520
Speaker 1: it was generating neutrons at a rate so fast that

747
00:46:33,560 --> 00:46:35,600
Speaker 1: the xenon was not going to be able to accept

748
00:46:35,719 --> 00:46:38,520
Speaker 1: them at the rate they were coming out, so it

749
00:46:38,560 --> 00:46:41,319
Speaker 1: was allowing that chain reaction to occur after all, So

750
00:46:41,360 --> 00:46:45,400
Speaker 1: the Hanford facility began producing plutonium and significant amounts and

751
00:46:45,440 --> 00:46:49,920
Speaker 1: sent the first shipment to Los Alamos in February. So

752
00:46:50,920 --> 00:46:53,960
Speaker 1: the plutonium gun method of bomb design did not work.

753
00:46:54,120 --> 00:46:57,120
Speaker 1: The only way the plutonium was going to be useful

754
00:46:57,160 --> 00:47:00,360
Speaker 1: is if they could prove the implosion method would work.

755
00:47:00,960 --> 00:47:04,120
Speaker 1: So that's where the focus shifted at that point. They

756
00:47:04,160 --> 00:47:06,400
Speaker 1: knew the gun design was a bust, so they started

757
00:47:06,400 --> 00:47:12,000
Speaker 1: looking significantly into implosion. So by late nine they were

758
00:47:12,040 --> 00:47:16,040
Speaker 1: pretty sure that the uranium gun method was viable, so

759
00:47:16,120 --> 00:47:20,399
Speaker 1: that was gonna be the little boy version of the bomb. Uh.

760
00:47:20,440 --> 00:47:23,120
Speaker 1: They froze that design, meaning they said, all right, this

761
00:47:23,200 --> 00:47:26,640
Speaker 1: is definitely what we are going to build. They froze

762
00:47:26,640 --> 00:47:31,239
Speaker 1: it in February. Plutonium. Uh, their work with that was

763
00:47:31,280 --> 00:47:34,120
Speaker 1: obviously taking a little longer. They knew the gun design

764
00:47:34,160 --> 00:47:37,120
Speaker 1: wasn't going to work. But once they figured out the

765
00:47:37,120 --> 00:47:41,360
Speaker 1: implosion design, that got approved in March, and they scheduled

766
00:47:41,360 --> 00:47:46,279
Speaker 1: a test for the fourth of July, the biggest fireworks

767
00:47:46,320 --> 00:47:51,080
Speaker 1: you'd ever see. However, they actually moved it back to

768
00:47:51,239 --> 00:47:55,640
Speaker 1: July because of weather actually, and they named it the

769
00:47:55,680 --> 00:47:58,600
Speaker 1: Trinity Test, and it happened at five thirty in the morning.

770
00:47:59,200 --> 00:48:04,000
Speaker 1: So interesting thing they the uranium gun method was so

771
00:48:04,080 --> 00:48:08,319
Speaker 1: certain they didn't test it. They never they never, they

772
00:48:08,360 --> 00:48:12,239
Speaker 1: never tested the bomb before they used it. But the

773
00:48:12,239 --> 00:48:15,760
Speaker 1: plutonium method, they weren't sure. So they build this plutonium bomb,

774
00:48:15,880 --> 00:48:19,200
Speaker 1: the implosion based bomb. At five thirty in the morning

775
00:48:19,200 --> 00:48:23,920
Speaker 1: on July, they fire it. They used a firing tower

776
00:48:24,360 --> 00:48:28,480
Speaker 1: to hold the bomb and to to kind of approximate

777
00:48:28,520 --> 00:48:31,400
Speaker 1: where the bomb would be before it detonated, because the

778
00:48:31,400 --> 00:48:34,000
Speaker 1: bombs detonate before they hit the ground. Yeah. Yeah, it's

779
00:48:34,000 --> 00:48:37,640
Speaker 1: not like there's a tip on the bomb that hits

780
00:48:37,840 --> 00:48:41,680
Speaker 1: the ground. Their their program to get to a certain elevation,

781
00:48:42,200 --> 00:48:44,640
Speaker 1: built to get to a certain elevation and then explode

782
00:48:44,719 --> 00:48:50,080
Speaker 1: above the ground because it maximizes the damage. Yeah. This

783
00:48:50,120 --> 00:48:52,440
Speaker 1: is where this, by the way, is also where our

784
00:48:52,560 --> 00:48:57,040
Speaker 1: conversation it's gonna get pretty heavy because we're now talking

785
00:48:57,080 --> 00:49:00,839
Speaker 1: about actual physical damage and the law of human life.

786
00:49:01,040 --> 00:49:05,439
Speaker 1: So while we were maybe a little cavalier, I don't

787
00:49:05,480 --> 00:49:08,640
Speaker 1: know even if cavaliers word, but we were playful at points.

788
00:49:08,680 --> 00:49:11,240
Speaker 1: This is where this show is really going to get serious,

789
00:49:11,280 --> 00:49:14,880
Speaker 1: because we're talking about real human beings. So this test

790
00:49:15,160 --> 00:49:21,439
Speaker 1: was phenomenally impressive and successful from a weaponization point of view.

791
00:49:21,719 --> 00:49:25,600
Speaker 1: It vaporized the firing tower, it turned asphalt into sand,

792
00:49:25,719 --> 00:49:29,880
Speaker 1: and it turned sand into glass. Uh. The explosion knocked

793
00:49:29,880 --> 00:49:33,480
Speaker 1: over a two hundred tons steel container that was a

794
00:49:33,480 --> 00:49:38,239
Speaker 1: half mile from ground zero. The steel container had been

795
00:49:38,320 --> 00:49:42,640
Speaker 1: built and designed and put down as part of the test,

796
00:49:43,320 --> 00:49:45,920
Speaker 1: but they didn't intend to actually use it. On the

797
00:49:46,000 --> 00:49:49,520
Speaker 1: July sixte test, it was literally just standing where they

798
00:49:49,719 --> 00:49:53,279
Speaker 1: had left it, and it knocked it over. Um. The

799
00:49:53,280 --> 00:49:56,640
Speaker 1: explosion was bright enough to cause temporary blindness and observers,

800
00:49:56,680 --> 00:49:59,600
Speaker 1: even those who were wearing goggles with smoke glass lenses,

801
00:50:00,320 --> 00:50:01,759
Speaker 1: they knew it was going to be bright, they had

802
00:50:01,840 --> 00:50:03,359
Speaker 1: no idea how bright it was going to be, and

803
00:50:03,400 --> 00:50:06,560
Speaker 1: some of them lost their vision for a while. Glass

804
00:50:06,600 --> 00:50:11,000
Speaker 1: would shatter and houses a hundred twenty five miles from

805
00:50:11,040 --> 00:50:14,840
Speaker 1: the explosion point, and it was equivalent to fifteen thousand

806
00:50:14,920 --> 00:50:18,319
Speaker 1: to twenty thousand tons of T and T they had

807
00:50:18,440 --> 00:50:22,040
Speaker 1: estimated it would be about equivalent to five thousand tons.

808
00:50:22,120 --> 00:50:25,000
Speaker 1: And this goes back to the earlier statements with this. Also,

809
00:50:25,080 --> 00:50:28,760
Speaker 1: by the way, the day that Oppenheimer creeps out everyone

810
00:50:28,760 --> 00:50:33,120
Speaker 1: but uh and and the where it was whoops instead

811
00:50:33,160 --> 00:50:36,320
Speaker 1: of whoops, he says, I become of the death destroyer

812
00:50:36,400 --> 00:50:41,000
Speaker 1: of world. Yeah, and just just briefly on that the

813
00:50:41,000 --> 00:50:44,320
Speaker 1: the reason that he said that. There's a great quotation

814
00:50:44,400 --> 00:50:46,520
Speaker 1: from him here says we knew the world would not

815
00:50:46,520 --> 00:50:49,080
Speaker 1: be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried,

816
00:50:49,360 --> 00:50:52,000
Speaker 1: most people were silent. I remember the line from the

817
00:50:52,080 --> 00:50:55,200
Speaker 1: Hindu scripture the Bahagavad Gita. Visi Nu was trying to

818
00:50:55,239 --> 00:50:58,120
Speaker 1: persuade the prince that he should do his duty, and

819
00:50:58,360 --> 00:51:01,359
Speaker 1: to impress him, takes on his multi armed form and says,

820
00:51:01,640 --> 00:51:04,520
Speaker 1: now I've become Death, the destroyer of worlds. I suppose

821
00:51:04,600 --> 00:51:07,120
Speaker 1: we all thought that one way or another. You know,

822
00:51:07,480 --> 00:51:10,759
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I'm not sure if they did. But this,

823
00:51:11,239 --> 00:51:14,560
Speaker 1: uh yeah, in this, in this day, um, you know,

824
00:51:14,640 --> 00:51:17,960
Speaker 1: you have to think about how how you would feel

825
00:51:18,160 --> 00:51:22,560
Speaker 1: a hundred miles away this thing blows up and the

826
00:51:23,360 --> 00:51:25,279
Speaker 1: I don't know blame is the right word, but because

827
00:51:25,280 --> 00:51:28,520
Speaker 1: they kept upping the amount they thought they needed, that's

828
00:51:28,560 --> 00:51:32,440
Speaker 1: what happened. And those people who witnessed the detonation and

829
00:51:32,480 --> 00:51:36,680
Speaker 1: participated in it were very lucky to survive. And and

830
00:51:36,760 --> 00:51:38,879
Speaker 1: you think about this, like, you know, they didn't have

831
00:51:39,840 --> 00:51:43,200
Speaker 1: a full understanding of what the long term effects were

832
00:51:43,239 --> 00:51:45,440
Speaker 1: going to be of this, not just you know, the

833
00:51:45,480 --> 00:51:48,640
Speaker 1: initial effects are devastating enough, but the long term effects

834
00:51:49,520 --> 00:51:53,360
Speaker 1: continue to end up, you know, causing damage and killing

835
00:51:53,640 --> 00:51:56,640
Speaker 1: years after the initial explosion. We'll get into some figures

836
00:51:56,640 --> 00:52:00,480
Speaker 1: a little bit, so, uh. I think this is also

837
00:52:00,520 --> 00:52:04,359
Speaker 1: one of those points where there's that moment of realization

838
00:52:04,440 --> 00:52:07,120
Speaker 1: that the thing you've been working so hard, the thing

839
00:52:07,160 --> 00:52:11,600
Speaker 1: that previously had just been theory that you had based

840
00:52:11,600 --> 00:52:14,279
Speaker 1: it upon observations of the energy that was released in

841
00:52:14,320 --> 00:52:18,960
Speaker 1: these nuclear reactions, something that you knew was possible but

842
00:52:19,239 --> 00:52:24,239
Speaker 1: had not actually seen for yourself, now is reality. It

843
00:52:24,360 --> 00:52:28,960
Speaker 1: is no longer abstract thought, is no longer the realm

844
00:52:29,239 --> 00:52:32,359
Speaker 1: of calculations on a sheet of paper. Now it's real.

845
00:52:33,320 --> 00:52:38,800
Speaker 1: And that's got to be a heavy, heavy moment, Yeah,

846
00:52:39,000 --> 00:52:43,080
Speaker 1: especially when you consider what the intended purposes. On April,

847
00:52:44,480 --> 00:52:47,480
Speaker 1: President Roosevelt dies and Vice President Harry S. Truman is

848
00:52:47,520 --> 00:52:51,440
Speaker 1: sworn in as president. Here's how secret the Manhattan Project was,

849
00:52:52,120 --> 00:52:55,440
Speaker 1: despite the fact that it employed around a hundred thirty

850
00:52:55,560 --> 00:52:59,680
Speaker 1: thousand people at one time or another, Truman didn't know

851
00:52:59,719 --> 00:53:03,120
Speaker 1: about on it detonated a nuclear weapon. Yeah, and the

852
00:53:03,200 --> 00:53:06,200
Speaker 1: vice president didn't know about it. He didn't know about No.

853
00:53:06,560 --> 00:53:10,600
Speaker 1: At this point in April, they hadn't quite hadn't done so.

854
00:53:10,760 --> 00:53:13,040
Speaker 1: But in April they hadn't happened yet. But Truman, they

855
00:53:13,040 --> 00:53:15,960
Speaker 1: were well on their way to the test. Truman had

856
00:53:15,960 --> 00:53:18,920
Speaker 1: no idea. He was briefed on it as part of

857
00:53:19,000 --> 00:53:23,400
Speaker 1: becoming president during war, which is, you know, a pretty

858
00:53:23,400 --> 00:53:26,560
Speaker 1: tough gig, no matter how you look at it. But

859
00:53:26,560 --> 00:53:30,440
Speaker 1: Truman understood the relevance of the project and he supported it. Uh.

860
00:53:30,520 --> 00:53:33,040
Speaker 1: You know. Plus it's pretty late in the game. They

861
00:53:32,560 --> 00:53:35,120
Speaker 1: were they had built the thing pretty much there, just

862
00:53:35,120 --> 00:53:37,759
Speaker 1: just needed a tested at that point. Um. So on

863
00:53:37,800 --> 00:53:40,959
Speaker 1: the political side, Germany had surrendered and it was clear

864
00:53:40,960 --> 00:53:43,920
Speaker 1: that Japan was going to lose the conflict, but it

865
00:53:44,080 --> 00:53:47,239
Speaker 1: was probably going to fight until the very end. So

866
00:53:47,280 --> 00:53:50,560
Speaker 1: it was going to require a massive invasion of Japan

867
00:53:50,880 --> 00:53:54,920
Speaker 1: using you know, a coordinated effort with the Allied forces

868
00:53:55,920 --> 00:53:58,759
Speaker 1: in order to make it happen. No telling how many

869
00:53:58,760 --> 00:54:01,920
Speaker 1: people would die on both sides of that, uh, and

870
00:54:02,160 --> 00:54:05,000
Speaker 1: it was going to be it was going to to

871
00:54:05,080 --> 00:54:09,319
Speaker 1: extend the war even further. And so there was a

872
00:54:09,440 --> 00:54:13,000
Speaker 1: very serious discussion about what do we do. Do we

873
00:54:13,320 --> 00:54:15,960
Speaker 1: go forward with invasion plans or do we actually use

874
00:54:16,000 --> 00:54:18,000
Speaker 1: this weapon we have this we have designed now. The

875
00:54:18,080 --> 00:54:22,640
Speaker 1: US informed Churchill of the success of the the test,

876
00:54:23,520 --> 00:54:27,319
Speaker 1: and Churchill was all for it until he found out

877
00:54:27,320 --> 00:54:31,560
Speaker 1: it was nicknamed fat Boy fat Man. Yeah yeah, fat

878
00:54:31,560 --> 00:54:34,640
Speaker 1: Man named after him. Yeah no, uh uh yeah, he

879
00:54:35,040 --> 00:54:36,640
Speaker 1: I don't know if he ever. I don't know when

880
00:54:36,640 --> 00:54:38,600
Speaker 1: he got the memo on that part, but he was

881
00:54:38,640 --> 00:54:42,839
Speaker 1: totally on board. Truman told Stalin, Uh, he had been

882
00:54:42,880 --> 00:54:47,600
Speaker 1: told by his his advisors, Hey, don't tell Stalin. Stalin's

883
00:54:47,680 --> 00:54:49,560
Speaker 1: kind of a bad guy. You don't want to You

884
00:54:49,560 --> 00:54:51,719
Speaker 1: don't want to let him know about this ahead of time.

885
00:54:52,080 --> 00:54:57,560
Speaker 1: But Truman felt that it was necessary to preserve the

886
00:54:57,760 --> 00:55:00,040
Speaker 1: uneasy piece between the United States and the so of

887
00:55:00,080 --> 00:55:03,440
Speaker 1: the Union, So he told Stalin of the development of

888
00:55:03,440 --> 00:55:06,200
Speaker 1: the weapon and told told Song without the presence of

889
00:55:06,200 --> 00:55:10,000
Speaker 1: an interpreter, it's just Truman and Stalin, and Stalin was

890
00:55:10,280 --> 00:55:13,360
Speaker 1: very composed. And it turns out the reason he was

891
00:55:13,440 --> 00:55:17,200
Speaker 1: composed was because he already I knew about it. Um,

892
00:55:17,280 --> 00:55:21,719
Speaker 1: he already knew about it because despite the paranoia, there

893
00:55:21,880 --> 00:55:27,160
Speaker 1: was a Soviet spy amongst the Brits who were working

894
00:55:27,239 --> 00:55:32,160
Speaker 1: alongside the Americans on the Manhattan Project. So um, yeah,

895
00:55:32,200 --> 00:55:33,920
Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit about him in a second.

896
00:55:33,960 --> 00:55:37,360
Speaker 1: But the US wanted unconditional surrender of Japan, the dismantling

897
00:55:37,360 --> 00:55:41,880
Speaker 1: of the imperial system, and Japan wanted to surrender. Based

898
00:55:41,880 --> 00:55:46,400
Speaker 1: on intercepted messages between Tokyo and Moscow, but not under

899
00:55:46,440 --> 00:55:49,880
Speaker 1: the conditions that the Americans were demanding. Japan I believe

900
00:55:49,960 --> 00:55:54,040
Speaker 1: still wanted to maintain some of the territory. Yeah, and

901
00:55:54,080 --> 00:55:57,839
Speaker 1: they didn't want to abandon the empire approach of their

902
00:55:57,880 --> 00:56:00,040
Speaker 1: government like that was that was a big deal. And

903
00:56:00,040 --> 00:56:02,880
Speaker 1: and United States was like, no, your empire, the imperial

904
00:56:03,000 --> 00:56:07,520
Speaker 1: method has to go. It can we want democracy, we

905
00:56:07,520 --> 00:56:12,840
Speaker 1: want a different system of government. Yeah. So it was,

906
00:56:12,920 --> 00:56:15,080
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a tall order and Japan was

907
00:56:15,120 --> 00:56:18,680
Speaker 1: not like the Japanese government was not in a position

908
00:56:18,719 --> 00:56:23,319
Speaker 1: that could easily capitulate to those demands. So things are

909
00:56:23,360 --> 00:56:27,480
Speaker 1: moving out ahead. And on August six, the and Nola

910
00:56:27,560 --> 00:56:31,600
Speaker 1: gay A B twenty nine bomber piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbots,

911
00:56:32,280 --> 00:56:36,960
Speaker 1: released a nine thousand, seven hundred pound uranium gun bomb

912
00:56:37,000 --> 00:56:39,520
Speaker 1: called Little Boy. This remember this is the one that

913
00:56:39,560 --> 00:56:42,200
Speaker 1: had never been tested. They knew, they were confident it

914
00:56:42,200 --> 00:56:44,920
Speaker 1: would work, but they had never actually tested this bomb.

915
00:56:45,800 --> 00:56:48,800
Speaker 1: And it was released in approximately eight fifteen am thirty

916
00:56:48,800 --> 00:56:52,760
Speaker 1: one thousand feet above Hiroshima, Japan, and forty three seconds

917
00:56:52,840 --> 00:56:56,440
Speaker 1: later it detonated. At that point, it was at an

918
00:56:56,480 --> 00:57:01,040
Speaker 1: altitude of nineteen feet above the city and initial explosion

919
00:57:01,120 --> 00:57:06,880
Speaker 1: killed seventy thousand people, more or less instantly. Yeah, uh

920
00:57:07,000 --> 00:57:10,080
Speaker 1: where this is where you hear about people's shadows being

921
00:57:10,120 --> 00:57:14,160
Speaker 1: burned into the walls behind them because of the intense

922
00:57:14,280 --> 00:57:18,240
Speaker 1: energy that was released by this bomb. By nine fifty

923
00:57:18,320 --> 00:57:21,040
Speaker 1: the death count would be closer to two hundred thousand,

924
00:57:21,320 --> 00:57:26,440
Speaker 1: So that seventy thousand those that was initial where again instantaneous,

925
00:57:26,960 --> 00:57:30,240
Speaker 1: not even a moment to think it's just over. But

926
00:57:30,440 --> 00:57:33,880
Speaker 1: another hundred thirty thousand would die due to radiation sickness,

927
00:57:34,120 --> 00:57:38,600
Speaker 1: So an agonizing fate for so many. Nearly all the

928
00:57:38,600 --> 00:57:41,400
Speaker 1: buildings in a five square mile radius were either leveled

929
00:57:41,440 --> 00:57:44,600
Speaker 1: completely or just severely damaged to the point where there

930
00:57:44,640 --> 00:57:47,840
Speaker 1: was no chance of using them again. They would need

931
00:57:47,880 --> 00:57:51,400
Speaker 1: to be taken down. Truman announced the Hiroshima raid that

932
00:57:51,440 --> 00:57:55,080
Speaker 1: evening to the American public, which was the first time

933
00:57:55,920 --> 00:57:59,840
Speaker 1: that the United States revealed to the general public that

934
00:58:00,240 --> 00:58:03,680
Speaker 1: they had been working on an atomic weapon. This was

935
00:58:03,720 --> 00:58:06,440
Speaker 1: the first time the Manhattan Project had been unveiled in

936
00:58:06,480 --> 00:58:09,760
Speaker 1: a sense that it existed right. They didn't go into

937
00:58:09,760 --> 00:58:12,320
Speaker 1: any details about how much work had gone into it

938
00:58:12,360 --> 00:58:14,760
Speaker 1: and what had happened, but that this was the first time.

939
00:58:15,040 --> 00:58:18,120
Speaker 1: So again a hundred thod people had worked on it.

940
00:58:18,400 --> 00:58:20,640
Speaker 1: Many of those people this was the first time they

941
00:58:20,680 --> 00:58:25,160
Speaker 1: found out what their work was, what the result was like.

942
00:58:25,240 --> 00:58:29,360
Speaker 1: They didn't know necessarily. There were very few of that

943
00:58:29,440 --> 00:58:32,600
Speaker 1: hundred thirty thousand who actually knew what the purpose of

944
00:58:32,640 --> 00:58:36,200
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project really was, which is phenomenal. It's hard

945
00:58:36,360 --> 00:58:39,000
Speaker 1: and in hindsight, it's hard for us to imagine that.

946
00:58:39,080 --> 00:58:42,080
Speaker 1: I'm sure at the time it was a job, you know,

947
00:58:42,160 --> 00:58:44,920
Speaker 1: you were working on science. Yeah, and and the h

948
00:58:45,120 --> 00:58:53,000
Speaker 1: and communication worked differently because pre internet. Yeah so um

949
00:58:53,160 --> 00:58:56,600
Speaker 1: the United States and in the wake of this, calls

950
00:58:56,640 --> 00:59:00,760
Speaker 1: for Japan's surrender according to the earlier terms. Japan did

951
00:59:00,840 --> 00:59:05,800
Speaker 1: not immediately respond, which then led to the August ninth

952
00:59:05,880 --> 00:59:10,440
Speaker 1: bombing of Nagasaki. Uh. This was the plutonium implosion method.

953
00:59:10,520 --> 00:59:12,560
Speaker 1: This was the one that they had tested previously. This

954
00:59:12,680 --> 00:59:15,200
Speaker 1: was called fat Man, and it was carried by a

955
00:59:15,240 --> 00:59:20,200
Speaker 1: plane named Box Box Car and b O C K

956
00:59:20,680 --> 00:59:24,800
Speaker 1: not b O X, and Nagasaki was actually the secondary target.

957
00:59:25,200 --> 00:59:28,760
Speaker 1: The primary target was the Kokura arsenal, which would have

958
00:59:28,760 --> 00:59:32,600
Speaker 1: been more of a military target than Nagasaki was, but

959
00:59:32,840 --> 00:59:36,760
Speaker 1: weather prevented the pilot, Charles Sweeney, from flying over it,

960
00:59:37,040 --> 00:59:39,240
Speaker 1: he felt that there was too low of a chance

961
00:59:39,280 --> 00:59:40,720
Speaker 1: that he would be able to drop the bomb on

962
00:59:40,760 --> 00:59:43,680
Speaker 1: the intended target, so he swapped swapped out to his

963
00:59:43,720 --> 00:59:47,040
Speaker 1: secondary target, which was Nagasaki. It was dropped at an

964
00:59:47,040 --> 00:59:50,680
Speaker 1: altitude of twenty nine thousand feet and detonated one thousand,

965
00:59:50,680 --> 00:59:53,800
Speaker 1: six hundred fifty feet above Nagasaki at eleven oh one

966
00:59:53,880 --> 00:59:57,720
Speaker 1: am and exploded with a force of twenty one thousand

967
00:59:57,880 --> 01:00:03,720
Speaker 1: tons of TNT. Now, it killed forty thousand people and

968
01:00:03,800 --> 01:00:07,440
Speaker 1: injured another sixty thousand on that initial explosion, and the

969
01:00:07,480 --> 01:00:11,000
Speaker 1: eventual death toll was calculated at around a hundred forty thousand,

970
01:00:11,360 --> 01:00:14,600
Speaker 1: largely because Nagasaki did not have the same population density

971
01:00:14,640 --> 01:00:17,600
Speaker 1: as Hiroshima. Wasn't that it wasn't that this was a

972
01:00:17,680 --> 01:00:22,400
Speaker 1: less devastating bomb. It was that, due to the geography,

973
01:00:22,080 --> 01:00:26,000
Speaker 1: it affected fewer people. So in the space of just

974
01:00:26,040 --> 01:00:32,320
Speaker 1: a few days, Japan lost three ultimately would lose three.

975
01:00:34,320 --> 01:00:39,040
Speaker 1: The initial would be closer to a hundred ten thousand. Yeah,

976
01:00:39,320 --> 01:00:46,960
Speaker 1: in two bombings, uh devastating, absolutely devastating. Um The Manhattan

977
01:00:46,960 --> 01:00:51,120
Speaker 1: Project itself would continue because while it had built these

978
01:00:51,160 --> 01:00:54,400
Speaker 1: bombs specifically for the purpose of bringing World War two

979
01:00:54,400 --> 01:00:58,480
Speaker 1: to an end. Uh, the research was going to continue

980
01:00:58,520 --> 01:01:02,800
Speaker 1: on and it would and officially in nineteen seven and

981
01:01:02,920 --> 01:01:08,640
Speaker 1: hand over the research into atomic weaponry to a new group,

982
01:01:08,720 --> 01:01:12,880
Speaker 1: the Atomic Energy Commission, which we talked about extensively when

983
01:01:12,920 --> 01:01:17,040
Speaker 1: we took covered Area fifty one. Atomic Energy Commission was

984
01:01:17,080 --> 01:01:21,320
Speaker 1: important during the the establishment of Area fifty one. So

985
01:01:22,120 --> 01:01:25,040
Speaker 1: I mentioned that there had been a spy who reported

986
01:01:25,080 --> 01:01:27,600
Speaker 1: to the Soviet Union. That would be a Klauss Fuchs,

987
01:01:28,000 --> 01:01:30,200
Speaker 1: who was part of the British contention of scientists who

988
01:01:30,200 --> 01:01:33,400
Speaker 1: worked on the Manhattan Project. It was not discovered until

989
01:01:33,440 --> 01:01:36,000
Speaker 1: nineteen forty nine that he was actually a Soviet agent.

990
01:01:36,320 --> 01:01:39,560
Speaker 1: So throughout the entirety of the Manhattan Project, all the

991
01:01:39,560 --> 01:01:42,280
Speaker 1: way to the point where it was over, he was

992
01:01:42,480 --> 01:01:45,560
Speaker 1: feeding information to the Soviet Union. He was caught and

993
01:01:45,600 --> 01:01:49,280
Speaker 1: convicted of espionage and was eventually released in nineteen fifty nine.

994
01:01:49,800 --> 01:01:53,880
Speaker 1: He then moved to what was then East Germany. Kids,

995
01:01:54,040 --> 01:01:56,480
Speaker 1: if you don't know that there was an East Germany,

996
01:01:56,520 --> 01:02:00,360
Speaker 1: there was for a while, you need to look it up.

997
01:02:01,040 --> 01:02:05,640
Speaker 1: He was eventually Uh, he eventually rather provided information that

998
01:02:05,720 --> 01:02:09,600
Speaker 1: helped China develop its first atomic bomb, right. Yeah, So

999
01:02:09,720 --> 01:02:12,720
Speaker 1: you may have heard stories recently UM or in the

1000
01:02:12,760 --> 01:02:16,880
Speaker 1: past few years about a scientist named A Q. Kahan

1001
01:02:17,200 --> 01:02:23,560
Speaker 1: continually linked to other countries acquiring nuclear weaponry or knowledge

1002
01:02:23,560 --> 01:02:28,600
Speaker 1: of the atomic process. UH. This is UM class food.

1003
01:02:28,800 --> 01:02:32,480
Speaker 1: Fuchs is like the original version of that and did

1004
01:02:32,680 --> 01:02:38,160
Speaker 1: quite a bit to propagate this technology. Also, UM, the

1005
01:02:38,200 --> 01:02:43,200
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project, on balance is fairly lucky that he's the

1006
01:02:43,320 --> 01:02:47,280
Speaker 1: kind of spy. He was a spy sent to feed

1007
01:02:47,320 --> 01:02:52,680
Speaker 1: information rather than to stymy the progress. It made a contribution.

1008
01:02:52,800 --> 01:02:56,440
Speaker 1: The goal of ending World War two was shared obviously

1009
01:02:56,480 --> 01:03:01,520
Speaker 1: by both Stalin and UH the United States. UM, but

1010
01:03:02,280 --> 01:03:06,000
Speaker 1: obviously Stalin also had a very strong interest in gaining

1011
01:03:06,040 --> 01:03:09,800
Speaker 1: that information or on behalf of Soviet Union so that

1012
01:03:10,000 --> 01:03:12,920
Speaker 1: the United States would not have the upper hand for

1013
01:03:13,000 --> 01:03:16,120
Speaker 1: very long in what would then become the Cold War.

1014
01:03:17,040 --> 01:03:19,600
Speaker 1: Another important person that we didn't really mention. I mean,

1015
01:03:19,640 --> 01:03:22,320
Speaker 1: there's so many, there are times there's there's just the

1016
01:03:22,440 --> 01:03:25,520
Speaker 1: list of names connected to the Manhattan Project as incredibly long,

1017
01:03:25,600 --> 01:03:28,520
Speaker 1: hundred thirty thousand as it turns out. UM. But another

1018
01:03:28,520 --> 01:03:32,800
Speaker 1: important person on the physics side was Edward Teller, a

1019
01:03:32,880 --> 01:03:35,560
Speaker 1: theoretical physicist. He was the one who was really pushing

1020
01:03:35,560 --> 01:03:38,160
Speaker 1: for the development of the hydrogen bomb. In fact, he

1021
01:03:38,160 --> 01:03:40,919
Speaker 1: has been referred to as the father of the hydrogen bomb,

1022
01:03:41,000 --> 01:03:44,600
Speaker 1: a name he did not like. Um, they called it

1023
01:03:44,640 --> 01:03:47,440
Speaker 1: the super bomb during the Manhattan Project, and eventually it

1024
01:03:47,440 --> 01:03:53,240
Speaker 1: would be developed, uh, not really not used, but but

1025
01:03:53,360 --> 01:03:57,400
Speaker 1: developed and tested. So that is the story of the

1026
01:03:57,400 --> 01:04:00,320
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project from the beginning all the way to the

1027
01:04:00,320 --> 01:04:03,560
Speaker 1: development and deployment of the two atomic bombs that were

1028
01:04:03,600 --> 01:04:06,000
Speaker 1: dropped on Japan. Yeah, and we touched on a lot

1029
01:04:06,040 --> 01:04:09,680
Speaker 1: of things that are stories in themselves, the U S

1030
01:04:09,680 --> 01:04:13,160
Speaker 1: s RS program. I think Stalin learned of the U

1031
01:04:13,280 --> 01:04:19,560
Speaker 1: S program or the US intentions in which and then

1032
01:04:19,600 --> 01:04:22,480
Speaker 1: there's this there's this story that I think you mentioned

1033
01:04:22,480 --> 01:04:27,600
Speaker 1: in part one about what happens to um, the scientists

1034
01:04:27,600 --> 01:04:32,000
Speaker 1: who are held consentially or not in the German program.

1035
01:04:32,040 --> 01:04:35,120
Speaker 1: And uh, you know operation paper Clip, but you get

1036
01:04:35,200 --> 01:04:38,280
Speaker 1: more rocketry. That's more rocketry on the U S side.

1037
01:04:38,600 --> 01:04:43,920
Speaker 1: But the USSR forcibly abducted some scientists from the German

1038
01:04:43,960 --> 01:04:48,320
Speaker 1: program very strange times. There's there's tons of stuff we

1039
01:04:48,320 --> 01:04:50,120
Speaker 1: could talk about, and in fact, I'm sure stuff they

1040
01:04:50,120 --> 01:04:51,600
Speaker 1: don't want you to know. US covered quite a bit

1041
01:04:51,640 --> 01:04:56,280
Speaker 1: of this materiality or two. Yeah, So I highly recommend

1042
01:04:56,280 --> 01:04:58,600
Speaker 1: you go check out that show just in general, but

1043
01:04:58,760 --> 01:05:02,120
Speaker 1: especially if you want to hit and more about you know,

1044
01:05:02,280 --> 01:05:06,080
Speaker 1: the tactics that were employed. This was I mean, there

1045
01:05:06,080 --> 01:05:08,680
Speaker 1: are no games higher stakes than this, right, this is

1046
01:05:08,760 --> 01:05:13,360
Speaker 1: this is incredibly grim stuff when you boil it down

1047
01:05:13,400 --> 01:05:16,400
Speaker 1: to what's actually the end goal and what is happening.

1048
01:05:16,920 --> 01:05:21,440
Speaker 1: And as a result, Uh, there are nations and people

1049
01:05:21,480 --> 01:05:26,160
Speaker 1: who will you know, there's no there's no limit to

1050
01:05:26,280 --> 01:05:30,480
Speaker 1: what they will the tactics they will employ to achieve

1051
01:05:30,520 --> 01:05:33,480
Speaker 1: the goal because the goal the stakes are so high,

1052
01:05:33,640 --> 01:05:37,680
Speaker 1: and uh, sometimes that leads to stories of heroism, which

1053
01:05:37,720 --> 01:05:42,320
Speaker 1: is amazing. Sometimes it leads to stories of that is dirty,

1054
01:05:42,440 --> 01:05:47,240
Speaker 1: underhanded stuff, you know that uprooting people whether they are

1055
01:05:47,320 --> 01:05:50,080
Speaker 1: quote unquote on the wrong side or not, and then

1056
01:05:50,120 --> 01:05:53,080
Speaker 1: forcing them to work on your behalf. In some cases,

1057
01:05:53,120 --> 01:05:54,760
Speaker 1: there were people who were more than willing to do

1058
01:05:54,800 --> 01:05:57,680
Speaker 1: that because to them the science was what was important.

1059
01:05:58,520 --> 01:06:01,880
Speaker 1: They were that their ultimate moral compass, which can I

1060
01:06:01,920 --> 01:06:04,360
Speaker 1: work on the science? Yeah, and it wasn't so much

1061
01:06:04,400 --> 01:06:06,640
Speaker 1: who who is the person like, I'm not the one

1062
01:06:06,680 --> 01:06:09,400
Speaker 1: who decides who this gets used on. I'm the one

1063
01:06:09,440 --> 01:06:12,720
Speaker 1: who figures out whether or not it works. Um, it's

1064
01:06:12,760 --> 01:06:15,479
Speaker 1: just it's an odd story and there's so many of them.

1065
01:06:15,720 --> 01:06:19,240
Speaker 1: But on all sides, so can I ask you, um

1066
01:06:19,840 --> 01:06:21,720
Speaker 1: and tell me if this is to tell me, if

1067
01:06:21,720 --> 01:06:24,800
Speaker 1: this is too much of a heavier speculative thing, what's that?

1068
01:06:25,400 --> 01:06:27,440
Speaker 1: Do you think the world is a better place with

1069
01:06:27,520 --> 01:06:33,520
Speaker 1: this technology? Who? Boy? I quarrel with it myself. I

1070
01:06:34,160 --> 01:06:43,440
Speaker 1: think I think nuclear power certainly has some very important applications, uh,

1071
01:06:43,520 --> 01:06:48,640
Speaker 1: some of which are incredibly beneficial to humanity, even with

1072
01:06:48,800 --> 01:06:55,120
Speaker 1: the problematic nuclear fuel and nuclear waste issues. Um. So

1073
01:06:55,240 --> 01:06:58,880
Speaker 1: on that side, I think that it was incredibly important

1074
01:06:59,040 --> 01:07:02,240
Speaker 1: and benefits From a weaponry side, I think it just

1075
01:07:02,280 --> 01:07:09,120
Speaker 1: caused enormous amounts of harm beyond the obvious of the

1076
01:07:09,600 --> 01:07:11,560
Speaker 1: people who lost their lives as a result of the

1077
01:07:11,560 --> 01:07:16,160
Speaker 1: bombs being dropped. There are stories of people who who

1078
01:07:16,680 --> 01:07:21,200
Speaker 1: uh may have developed cancer just from working on the projects.

1079
01:07:22,160 --> 01:07:25,400
Speaker 1: Whether or not that's actually the cause, it's impossible to

1080
01:07:25,400 --> 01:07:28,000
Speaker 1: say because they're just too many vectors to take into account,

1081
01:07:28,480 --> 01:07:31,760
Speaker 1: but it seems like it's a likely source at least

1082
01:07:31,760 --> 01:07:35,480
Speaker 1: for some of the cases, if not many of them. Um.

1083
01:07:35,520 --> 01:07:39,160
Speaker 1: I mean the Cold War was awful. I mean it

1084
01:07:39,240 --> 01:07:42,360
Speaker 1: led to the space race, which was awesome, and a

1085
01:07:42,360 --> 01:07:47,600
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of the world changing or civilization

1086
01:07:47,720 --> 01:07:52,120
Speaker 1: changing technology that we have today comes from times of conflict. Yeah,

1087
01:07:52,200 --> 01:07:53,960
Speaker 1: it's true. I mean, we would not be where we

1088
01:07:54,000 --> 01:07:57,439
Speaker 1: are today without that conflict. But I don't necessarily think

1089
01:07:57,440 --> 01:07:59,320
Speaker 1: that that's put us in a great place. I mean,

1090
01:07:59,360 --> 01:08:04,440
Speaker 1: there's certainly there are current conflicts in the world, cold

1091
01:08:04,480 --> 01:08:09,040
Speaker 1: and otherwise that. Uh, the presence of nuclear weapons have

1092
01:08:09,200 --> 01:08:15,000
Speaker 1: made far more complex and higher stakes than would otherwise exist.

1093
01:08:15,560 --> 01:08:18,880
Speaker 1: And I'm not a big fan of that, So I mean,

1094
01:08:19,320 --> 01:08:22,200
Speaker 1: and ultimately, I do believe that the Allied Powers would

1095
01:08:22,200 --> 01:08:26,120
Speaker 1: have won World War Two without the use of atomic weapons.

1096
01:08:27,040 --> 01:08:29,439
Speaker 1: You know, it would have happened. The question is how

1097
01:08:29,479 --> 01:08:31,960
Speaker 1: long would it have taken and how much more would Japan.

1098
01:08:32,080 --> 01:08:38,439
Speaker 1: Would Japan have suffered more due to the nature of

1099
01:08:38,600 --> 01:08:41,840
Speaker 1: the war than it did from the bombs. That's a

1100
01:08:41,920 --> 01:08:44,160
Speaker 1: question that's impossible to answer because there's no way of

1101
01:08:44,160 --> 01:08:48,080
Speaker 1: knowing how it would have turned out otherwise. Um, And

1102
01:08:48,160 --> 01:08:51,120
Speaker 1: ultimately you start to wonder if perhaps the bombing of

1103
01:08:51,200 --> 01:08:55,519
Speaker 1: Japan was not only to force Japan to capitulate to

1104
01:08:55,560 --> 01:08:59,160
Speaker 1: the United States demands and the Allied demands of surrender,

1105
01:08:59,720 --> 01:09:03,160
Speaker 1: but also perhaps a demonstration of the United States is

1106
01:09:03,520 --> 01:09:08,599
Speaker 1: superiority and weaponry to say, Hey, everybody in the world,

1107
01:09:09,120 --> 01:09:11,760
Speaker 1: pay attention, because this is what we can do now.

1108
01:09:12,640 --> 01:09:16,200
Speaker 1: And I would like to think that that was if

1109
01:09:16,280 --> 01:09:20,760
Speaker 1: apart the smallest of parts. But something deep inside me

1110
01:09:21,040 --> 01:09:24,200
Speaker 1: worries about that. Well, one thing, um, you know, when

1111
01:09:24,400 --> 01:09:27,640
Speaker 1: one thing that I really enjoy about seeing him with

1112
01:09:27,720 --> 01:09:31,600
Speaker 1: you on this episode is that this series rather is

1113
01:09:31,640 --> 01:09:35,960
Speaker 1: that this is a story that a lot of people

1114
01:09:36,960 --> 01:09:41,120
Speaker 1: sort of no have a cursory knowledge, and it's it's

1115
01:09:41,160 --> 01:09:43,680
Speaker 1: good to have. It's good to have this resource that

1116
01:09:43,760 --> 01:09:46,720
Speaker 1: kind of goes from stem to stern. And I want

1117
01:09:46,760 --> 01:09:49,240
Speaker 1: to say that I really appreciate it. Every time you're

1118
01:09:49,240 --> 01:09:51,800
Speaker 1: an opportunity be on your show, I'll go ahead and

1119
01:09:51,880 --> 01:09:53,920
Speaker 1: say something I usually say at the end, which is,

1120
01:09:54,240 --> 01:09:57,720
Speaker 1: if you are interested not only in the past of technology,

1121
01:09:57,760 --> 01:10:01,840
Speaker 1: but also in the future, che out forward thinking the

1122
01:10:02,439 --> 01:10:05,080
Speaker 1: video series which has been going like Gangbusters and the

1123
01:10:05,120 --> 01:10:09,280
Speaker 1: audio podcast. Yeah this is um you know, I highly

1124
01:10:09,320 --> 01:10:11,479
Speaker 1: recommend you check out all the stuff sites and all

1125
01:10:11,520 --> 01:10:14,320
Speaker 1: the stuff podcasts, but stuff they don't want you to know,

1126
01:10:14,400 --> 01:10:17,000
Speaker 1: in particular, dovetails so well with so much of what

1127
01:10:17,040 --> 01:10:19,559
Speaker 1: I do either with forward Thinking. It's like it's like

1128
01:10:19,600 --> 01:10:21,479
Speaker 1: it's like the two sides of the coin type deal.

1129
01:10:21,680 --> 01:10:27,880
Speaker 1: It's true. Yeah, the there's the if those shows were roommates, Yeah, yours,

1130
01:10:28,479 --> 01:10:31,679
Speaker 1: it's like the odd couple. Yeah. Yeah for for stuff

1131
01:10:31,680 --> 01:10:33,120
Speaker 1: that I'll want you to know would be the creepy

1132
01:10:33,120 --> 01:10:36,320
Speaker 1: one in the basement, and forward Thinking is the Collie

1133
01:10:36,360 --> 01:10:39,160
Speaker 1: g Willickers. Guys, it sure is pretty outside. Yeah, but

1134
01:10:39,240 --> 01:10:43,160
Speaker 1: we hang out. Yeah, hang out. Also, I thought you

1135
01:10:43,160 --> 01:10:45,240
Speaker 1: would be interested to hear this. Ben Uh. The very

1136
01:10:45,280 --> 01:10:48,200
Speaker 1: next episode I will be recording will be with Joe McCormick,

1137
01:10:48,280 --> 01:10:51,880
Speaker 1: and we are going to cover what technologies would stick

1138
01:10:51,880 --> 01:10:55,840
Speaker 1: around the longest in a post apocalyptic scenario, So it

1139
01:10:55,920 --> 01:10:59,760
Speaker 1: kind of dovetails with this episode. That's fascinating. Um, I

1140
01:11:00,160 --> 01:11:01,960
Speaker 1: wait to hear it. It will be It'll be a

1141
01:11:01,960 --> 01:11:04,880
Speaker 1: fun conversation and I'm sure we'll devolve into a lot

1142
01:11:04,920 --> 01:11:08,760
Speaker 1: of discussions about our favorite post fund olyptics stories. In fact,

1143
01:11:08,760 --> 01:11:10,880
Speaker 1: I know it well because it's in the notes. So

1144
01:11:11,360 --> 01:11:13,759
Speaker 1: we're going to wrap this up. Guys. If you enjoyed

1145
01:11:13,800 --> 01:11:16,800
Speaker 1: this episode, let me know, send me an email, let

1146
01:11:16,800 --> 01:11:18,519
Speaker 1: me know what else you would like to hear about

1147
01:11:18,560 --> 01:11:21,599
Speaker 1: here on tech Stuff. The address is tech stuff at

1148
01:11:21,640 --> 01:11:23,720
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, or you can drop me

1149
01:11:23,760 --> 01:11:27,040
Speaker 1: a line on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumbler to handle I

1150
01:11:27,120 --> 01:11:29,960
Speaker 1: use at all. Three is tech stuff hs W and

1151
01:11:30,000 --> 01:11:38,960
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again and really soon. For more

1152
01:11:39,000 --> 01:11:41,599
Speaker 1: on this and bathings, another topic is it how stuff

1153
01:11:41,640 --> 01:11:51,160
Speaker 1: works dot com.