Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with the text stop from host.
Speaker 1: Welcome to text Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland and joining me
Speaker 1: once again to conclude our two part series on the
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project has been the books back then. Hey, thanks
Speaker 1: for happy me back a forward. I'm glad that this
Speaker 1: ended up being a two parter because there was there's
Speaker 1: so much stuff that we we kind of have to
Speaker 1: establish before we even really get into the nitty gritty
Speaker 1: of the Manhattan Project. So so I'd like to say
Speaker 1: all listeners, if you have not heard part one of
Speaker 1: this product, of this podcast or this series, then I
Speaker 1: implore you. Maybe maybe that's too strong a word. I
Speaker 1: don't know. No, I think implore is a good word,
Speaker 1: because otherwise there's gonna be a lot of player It's
Speaker 1: gonna be like watching season four Lost. It'll be like
Speaker 1: it'll be like if you if you've heard, hey, that
Speaker 1: Game of Thrones show is supposed to be really good,
Speaker 1: let me just watch this one episode. You won't know
Speaker 1: who any of the people are or why they're doing
Speaker 1: what they're doing. Uh So, here's a quick previously on
Speaker 1: tech stuff. We ended up covering the physics that led
Speaker 1: up to the discovery of fission. We also covered the
Speaker 1: political landscape, the fact that World War two was well,
Speaker 1: first it was building, you know, the world was building
Speaker 1: up to World War two, and then World War two
Speaker 1: breaks out, and how that ended up creating a fast
Speaker 1: track in the United States for research into fission, specifically
Speaker 1: in the weaponization of fission, using using atomic science to
Speaker 1: create a weapon, because there was the very real threat
Speaker 1: that the Nazis we're working on their own program for
Speaker 1: such a thing, and even before the United States was
Speaker 1: pulled into the war, UH, there was this this need.
Speaker 1: Einstein himself had expressed concern. And we also talked about
Speaker 1: sort of the the players that we're all doing various
Speaker 1: lines of research into the separate separation of of ions
Speaker 1: of uranium, because, as it turns out, you two thirty
Speaker 1: five is really what you want if you're trying to
Speaker 1: achieve nuclear fission, especially a sustainable chain reaction, but you
Speaker 1: two thirty eight is overwhelmingly the more abundant version of
Speaker 1: uranium that's found in nature, and separating the two is
Speaker 1: not an easy task. So we have multiple areas of
Speaker 1: research looking into ways to do that and also a
Speaker 1: need to find a way to weaponize it. We concluded
Speaker 1: Part one. This is just to set us up apart
Speaker 1: to we concluded part one talking about how there was
Speaker 1: the Army Corps of Engineers have become involved, and there
Speaker 1: is a fellow named James C. Marshall who was initially
Speaker 1: in charge. James C. Marshall's headquarters were located in Manhattan
Speaker 1: and specifically was the Manhattan Energy District. Was the code
Speaker 1: name for it, and the secret project, super secret project
Speaker 1: to develop atomic weapons became known as the Manhattan Project,
Speaker 1: even after those headquarters were no longer in Manhattan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, if you find a name that works, you stick,
Speaker 1: you stick with the name. And it's one of those
Speaker 1: it's one of those common misconceptions because as as we've
Speaker 1: mentioned on the previous episode, this uh Manhattan Project did
Speaker 1: not occur, not only did not occur in just Manhattan
Speaker 1: or just in Mexico, but it occurred in areas across
Speaker 1: the across the US. There's some really cool stuff that's
Speaker 1: going to happen. There are towns that only exist because
Speaker 1: of the Manhattan Project. They would not have otherwise grown
Speaker 1: up where they are. And to really get into this,
Speaker 1: at this stage, the very early days of the Manhattan
Speaker 1: Project as an official thing. There were some tensions that
Speaker 1: were already building up between the scientific community, the various
Speaker 1: research centers that were looking into this, and the army
Speaker 1: that was more or less kind of facilitating it, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of in charge. But also mainly their purpose was
Speaker 1: to make sure that the scientists were going to have
Speaker 1: the facilities and resources that they would need in order
Speaker 1: to do what they needed to do, and also the
Speaker 1: ones to crack the whip on the timeline. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, the army moves a certain pace
Speaker 1: that the scientists didn't find particularly helpful. That you know,
Speaker 1: the essentially bureaucracy got in the way things. Things slowed down,
Speaker 1: and the scientists were not entirely happy with the way
Speaker 1: Marshall was running things. So in September nineteen forty two,
Speaker 1: the Army decides to replace Mark Shoal with Colonel Leslie R. Groves, who, after,
Speaker 1: you know, six days after becoming the head of the
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project, was promoted to brigadier general. So calling him
Speaker 1: colonel Groves is misleading since he was almost immediately a
Speaker 1: brigadier general. Gross was instrumental in bringing the Pentagon or
Speaker 1: building the Pentagon. He was he was one of the
Speaker 1: people very much in charge of that project. And he
Speaker 1: also had a background as an engineer, so he understood
Speaker 1: the needs of building facilities, you know what, what actually
Speaker 1: is required to do this, and he knew how to
Speaker 1: work on this in a very uh aggressive timeline. I
Speaker 1: guess it is the best way to put it. So
Speaker 1: Groves moves in. And then there were all these different
Speaker 1: sites that the scientists had identified as being potentially ideal
Speaker 1: for the Manhattan Project, and Marshall had been very slowly
Speaker 1: investigating them. Groves, on the other hand, said all right,
Speaker 1: let's do it to get them, let's get her done.
Speaker 1: Uh So Groves relok at the headquarters from Manhattan to
Speaker 1: d C. But of course it was already known as
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project. It was not going to be called
Speaker 1: the d C Project. It got stuck that way, and
Speaker 1: he made Colonel Kenneth D. Nichols, who was James Marshall's deputy,
Speaker 1: into his chief aid on the project. Marshall himself became
Speaker 1: a district engineer within the program, and that's where he
Speaker 1: really excelled within the Manhattan Project because his his talents
Speaker 1: were considerable. It's just they were better suited for a different,
Speaker 1: h different job than overseeing the entire project. I see
Speaker 1: what you're saying. Yeah, because, as it turns out, you know,
Speaker 1: you want someone who's aggressive so that things can get started,
Speaker 1: but you also want people who observe the need for
Speaker 1: caution when you're handling nuclear materials. It's important. Marshall was
Speaker 1: not fired. No, he was just simply reassigned. It was
Speaker 1: one of those things where the need for this project
Speaker 1: was clear, but how to organize it was something that
Speaker 1: was kind of up in the air for a little bit.
Speaker 1: Is the first time anybody was doing something like this
Speaker 1: as far as exactly, you know, the ancient Egyptians. No. Uh,
Speaker 1: so at the same time that this is going on,
Speaker 1: Vanavar Bush. If you don't know who that is, you
Speaker 1: need to listen to our last episode. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's just gonna get more difficult from this point forward.
Speaker 1: Uh set up the Military Policy Committee, which would be
Speaker 1: made up of a representative from the Army, a representative
Speaker 1: from the Navy, and one from the Office of Scientific
Speaker 1: Research and Development. If you recall, Bush himself was the
Speaker 1: head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, but
Speaker 1: was constantly moving up because his considerable talents in also
Speaker 1: getting things done. Bush I think was probably one of
Speaker 1: the best at figuring out who would be ideal to
Speaker 1: run certain parts of this project. Like he was really
Speaker 1: good at matching the people with the parts of the
Speaker 1: project that needed them. Um very visionary kind of guy.
Speaker 1: Also very very effective at being a liaison between the
Speaker 1: big the big machine and then these brilliant scientists. Uh yeah.
Speaker 1: He seemed to know how to handle people no matter
Speaker 1: what background they came from, and those folks are invaluable.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can find people who are really smart
Speaker 1: and really talented, but if they don't know how to
Speaker 1: how to interact with other people, they don't go very far. Bush, however,
Speaker 1: was not one of those guys. Um and Groves himself
Speaker 1: made it clear that the pursuit of multiple lines of
Speaker 1: research for that isotopes separation, that was something that could
Speaker 1: not go on forever. That really what needed to happen
Speaker 1: was the project needed to settle on the you know, one,
Speaker 1: one line or maybe two lines of inquiry to really
Speaker 1: concentrate their effort. Even if it turned out those were
Speaker 1: not the most uh efficient, it would mean that they
Speaker 1: could at least concentrate their their you know, their workforce
Speaker 1: because at the time these scientists have their pet projects,
Speaker 1: which some of them have, even if they some of
Speaker 1: them already kind of indicate that this will be enormously
Speaker 1: expensive unless there's some breakthrough. And and you had groups
Speaker 1: that had very different views on the efficacy of various methodologies.
Speaker 1: For example, the British loved the idea of gaseous diffusion
Speaker 1: for isotope separation. Meanwhile, you have Oppenheimer who was demonstrating
Speaker 1: that the electromagnetic version of isotope separation could be incredibly effective.
Speaker 1: It's just that he was working on a smaller scale, right,
Speaker 1: but the scale that he was working on, if he
Speaker 1: could scale up, he was pretty sure this methodology would
Speaker 1: be incredibly fruitful. So he was arguing quite strongly for that.
Speaker 1: So you had all these different camps coming in, and
Speaker 1: then you had other versions as well. There were just
Speaker 1: two of them, and that's what Grows was saying, Okay, guys, really,
Speaker 1: by the end of this year, by the end of
Speaker 1: let's really settle on a specific one so that we
Speaker 1: can actually make a weapon that will make a difference
Speaker 1: in this war. Because at the rate we're going, by
Speaker 1: the time we create a weapon, peace will have broken
Speaker 1: out and then we'll just feel like jackasses, or it
Speaker 1: would be a situation where if we don't get there,
Speaker 1: someone is going to because the paranoid at that time
Speaker 1: was so very high. Right Even first of all, there
Speaker 1: was not really any There was no way of knowing
Speaker 1: what was going on in the Nazi camps, so it
Speaker 1: could very well be that Nazi scientists were much closer there.
Speaker 1: That was legitimate fear. But beyond that, there were already
Speaker 1: tensions between the United States and other nations, specifically the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union, and so there was also a real fear
Speaker 1: that Soviet Union could be investigating this as well. And
Speaker 1: so even if the weapon weren't used in World War Two,
Speaker 1: it would be really important for the United States interests
Speaker 1: for there to be such a weapon period. In fact,
Speaker 1: that's going to play apart when we get to the
Speaker 1: point of actually deploying said weapon. But anyway, November uh
Speaker 1: there was one of the methods of isotope separation that
Speaker 1: just did not pan out, and that was using centricus centrifuges.
Speaker 1: And it's because the centrifuge machines were not dependable. They
Speaker 1: would break down too frequently, so it wasn't that the
Speaker 1: methodology was bad, it was that the machinery itself was
Speaker 1: not dependable. Yeah. So um, I mean if you remember
Speaker 1: the stucks Net story, you know those were centrifuges that
Speaker 1: were set to spend at the wrong speed which ended
Speaker 1: up causing uh, some pretty big issues. Yeah. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's something that we've known about for since the
Speaker 1: nineteen forties, is that if you don't get the machinery
Speaker 1: to work correctly, then you're not going to be producing
Speaker 1: the you two thirty five that you need. So electromagnetic
Speaker 1: separation was the big winner so far with you to
Speaker 1: thirty five. Guess diffusion was promising enough to still be
Speaker 1: in the running for consideration, and the Brits. The Brits
Speaker 1: were still very much behind that. Plutonium, which was a
Speaker 1: completely separate line of inquiry. Remember most of this was
Speaker 1: focused on uranium. Plutonium was ended up getting a big
Speaker 1: boost as well. The Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago, which had
Speaker 1: just recently brought Enrico Fermi on. He had been working
Speaker 1: at Columbia and he had moved over to the Metallurgical
Speaker 1: Laboratory in Chicago. They produced a small amount of pure plutonium.
Speaker 1: They had uranium piles and plutonium was a byproduct of
Speaker 1: the process they were using, and so they were saying, well,
Speaker 1: plutonium is a better Uh. It's it's more apt to
Speaker 1: undergo fission than you is. The problem is making enough
Speaker 1: plutonium for that to be effective. So it was promising.
Speaker 1: But when we're talking small amount of pure plutonium, it's microscopic,
Speaker 1: that's how small. So not useful for any sort of
Speaker 1: practical Yeah. Nothing, nothing at all except for the fact
Speaker 1: that saying we've proven that it works, so so if
Speaker 1: we can, if we can scale this up, then it
Speaker 1: could be a promising means of generating plutonium. And it
Speaker 1: was Glenn Seaboards team. If you don't know who Seaboard is,
Speaker 1: you need to listen to the last episode. Uh. Figured
Speaker 1: out how to separate the plutonium from a radiated uranium. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then you had the theoretical physicists. So these are
Speaker 1: the guys who you know, You had the the experimental
Speaker 1: ones who are actually making theory, you know, putting theory
Speaker 1: too to the test. But the theoretical physicists, who are
Speaker 1: led by Oppenheimer, we're refining their calculations to figure out
Speaker 1: exactly how much fission norble material would be needed to
Speaker 1: create a working bomb. Now, the Brits had come forward
Speaker 1: and said probably between five to ten um After there
Speaker 1: after they work with Oppenheimer and the other theorists, they said, yeah,
Speaker 1: we think that might be an underestimation. Yeah, you might
Speaker 1: need twice as much. By the way, they would change
Speaker 1: this again later on, and each time the goalposts will
Speaker 1: moved further outlet we need to we need we're going
Speaker 1: to need more material based on our calculations to make
Speaker 1: a truly UH reactive system where there is a sustainable
Speaker 1: chain reaction. So Oppenheimer was recommending research into a fusion bomb,
Speaker 1: not just fission. UH. Fusion bomb would actually be triggered
Speaker 1: by initially a fission reaction, So you'd have to have
Speaker 1: fissionable material first, and then you would the energy from
Speaker 1: that That interact sin would provide the necessary energy to
Speaker 1: facilitate a fusion reaction, which could be much more powerful.
Speaker 1: This would be the super bomb. Hydrogen bomb was one
Speaker 1: of those things that was bandied about quite a bit
Speaker 1: in these early days. But frankly, everyone's like, let's let's
Speaker 1: crack fission first. Finish your breakfast. Yeah, exactly, but but
Speaker 1: s one, the Office of Science and Research authorize some
Speaker 1: research into light materials, deuterium being the main one to
Speaker 1: look into the possibility of a fusion bomb, so they
Speaker 1: didn't want to discount it or dismiss it. But they
Speaker 1: also didn't want to put all the eggs in the
Speaker 1: fusion basket. Right. Well, it's you know, if you consider
Speaker 1: just from what what you outlined earlier, it's at it's
Speaker 1: complicating a process that we have yet to successfully do,
Speaker 1: you know, or complete. Right, And so then Groves decides, Okay,
Speaker 1: since peaches out, that's not gonna work. It's it's it
Speaker 1: will take us too long to refine the process for
Speaker 1: it to be practical. Let's focus right now on the
Speaker 1: pile research that's what generates plutonium, the electromagnetic research, and
Speaker 1: the gases diffusion research, and we're gonna skip the pilot
Speaker 1: plant stage go straight to full scale production. In other words,
Speaker 1: normally you would create a slightly larger pilot plant to
Speaker 1: make certain that the things you had tested in the
Speaker 1: laboratory still work at the plant stage. But if they
Speaker 1: don't work, then you can tweak things. Because the pilot
Speaker 1: plant isn't so large or so the infrastructure is not
Speaker 1: so rigid that you can't shift things around. So the
Speaker 1: idea being that you find the ideal operating conditions at
Speaker 1: the pilot plant stage, then you scale up to full scale.
Speaker 1: They're skipping pilot plant and saying we don't have time
Speaker 1: for it, which is a dangerous Yeah, literally and figuratively right,
Speaker 1: because figuratively you could say, well, we built this facility
Speaker 1: based upon our best estimation and it turns out that
Speaker 1: was off, and now we're stuck with it and we
Speaker 1: have to use an unideal situation to do whatever it
Speaker 1: is we need to do. Literally, you're dealing with radioactive
Speaker 1: material and if it gets out of control, that would
Speaker 1: be devastating. December second, nineteen forty two, Enrico Fermi and
Speaker 1: his team demonstrate in front of a group of dignitaries
Speaker 1: a nuclear chain reaction which lasted for twenty eight minutes
Speaker 1: until firm me shut it down. So that was this
Speaker 1: is where we get one of the most famous exchanges
Speaker 1: from the Manhattan Project, and it was when Compton who
Speaker 1: called Conant. Those names will be familiar, Yeah, So Compton
Speaker 1: called Conan and they had the following exchange, up, who
Speaker 1: do you want to be Do you want to be
Speaker 1: Compton or Conan? I will you know what, I'll be
Speaker 1: comfort cool? I go ahead, m ring ring, Hello, the
Speaker 1: Italian navigator has landed in the New World. How were
Speaker 1: the natives very friendly? And that was that was the
Speaker 1: way of describing Not only was the the experiment of success,
Speaker 1: but it it impressed the dignitaries who were there to
Speaker 1: see it. So that was that was there coded some
Speaker 1: semi coded, like improvised way of of saying what had
Speaker 1: happened without you know, squeezing or or or or or
Speaker 1: dropping information that might be you know, pretty sensitive over
Speaker 1: a telephone line. No, you did. You did a bang
Speaker 1: up job with these with these notes and UH when
Speaker 1: I saw when I first saw this, it made me
Speaker 1: want to go into a rabbit hole of finding all
Speaker 1: of the recorded UH code word conversations of this time
Speaker 1: because it must sound so bizarre because people are saying
Speaker 1: it with gravity, but they're saying stuff like um, they're
Speaker 1: saying stuff like the rabbit has left the hutch. The
Speaker 1: rabbit has left the hutch. And then the person on
Speaker 1: the other line is like green and someone goes and
Speaker 1: hangs up, you know right, and you're like, does there
Speaker 1: any record of what this actually meant. I mean, the
Speaker 1: probably the most famous quote out of all of the
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project, I would argue, comes from Oppenheimer absolutely and
Speaker 1: spawned so many, um, so many things ranging from uh
Speaker 1: out and out conspiracy theories to uh just fascinating biographies
Speaker 1: to to spoil it because I mean, I'll forget about
Speaker 1: time we get around for the part where the bomb
Speaker 1: is being tested. Oppenheimer's famous quote, and you've probably heard
Speaker 1: it before as I am become deaf, the destroyer of worlds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he um. He has a quotation where he explains
Speaker 1: that because that's some ominous stuff, that's like a nick
Speaker 1: even the bad Seed songs. Sure it, sure is. It
Speaker 1: were there with red right hand, if I were, if
Speaker 1: I were just hanging out, if you and I were
Speaker 1: hanging out when when the bomb dropped and someone said
Speaker 1: that they would immediately become a dangerous person, I would
Speaker 1: seriously wonder like, should we have you around? Yeah, for
Speaker 1: a moment I thought you were going to say, Like
Speaker 1: if we were out and I just turned to you
Speaker 1: and said, hey, Jonathan, I am become death of the
Speaker 1: straight of worlds, I would take that as something to
Speaker 1: really mull over and possibly start to look for the
Speaker 1: nearest exit, especially if we were if we were just
Speaker 1: going down the street to a food truck or something. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're just heading out to the one over in the
Speaker 1: parking lot. Yeah, talking about tuoting your own horn. But
Speaker 1: there is a context of this, so yeah, and we
Speaker 1: can shut that. We'll get there a little bit later.
Speaker 1: In December two, the US government allocated half a billion dollars,
Speaker 1: which would eventually grow to more than two billion dollars
Speaker 1: dollars to fund further development. By the way, those costs,
Speaker 1: that's just the official numbers. There could be tons and
Speaker 1: tons that are tied into it in one way or another. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and not to mention funds that didn't come directly
Speaker 1: from the United States government, right, right, And that's that's
Speaker 1: a huge part of this. The truth of the matter
Speaker 1: is that we probably will never know for sure, but
Speaker 1: we do know that two billion, although it may be
Speaker 1: the sticker price was not, was not the the entirety
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah. And in fact, when we say we
Speaker 1: may never know, no one may might know. Right. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's such a huge undertaking that it's very unlikely
Speaker 1: there's a document anywhere that has the full tally. It's
Speaker 1: just it's it's just too big. It's too big. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's not it's not like a conspiracy as much
Speaker 1: as it is a tremendously difficult calculation. Exactly, I've got
Speaker 1: the I've got the inflation number too. There, what's that?
Speaker 1: And so we said two billion in nineteen Okay, so
Speaker 1: let's let just just do some math here. Let me
Speaker 1: get my advocates out two billion. Oh, you have to
Speaker 1: use smaller values. I was on a calculator. You have
Speaker 1: to smaller values. So just a lot of money will
Speaker 1: leave it. Okay, yes, a significant amount of cash. So
Speaker 1: the money went on to establish full scale gaseous diffusion plants,
Speaker 1: full scale plutonium plants, and smaller electro magnetic plants, power plants,
Speaker 1: you know, like the manufacturing facilities, not not like biological plants.
Speaker 1: That doesn't come along until much later. Yes, uh, and
Speaker 1: vanavar Bush said the earliest a bomb could be expected
Speaker 1: would be early nineteen forty five, and he was actually
Speaker 1: trying to be a little conservative because the earlier reports
Speaker 1: had suggested that if things worked out, there might be
Speaker 1: a weapon ready as early as nineteen forty four. But
Speaker 1: Bush was thinking, you know, I'm gonna pad that out
Speaker 1: a little bit. And as it turns out, even that
Speaker 1: was optimistic. Early optimistic. Plutonium was looking promising, but people
Speaker 1: were worried that the the radioactive pile approach, which is
Speaker 1: what for ME was using, wasn't going to be scalable.
Speaker 1: That they'd be able to produce plutonium, but it would
Speaker 1: be at such small amounts that it would take way
Speaker 1: too long to have enough for it to be a weapon,
Speaker 1: especially considering that they want to build more than one
Speaker 1: because they have to test it and they're still not
Speaker 1: absolutely sure how much they need per weapon. Right, and Uh,
Speaker 1: the demonstrations for ME had shown revealed that there could
Speaker 1: be a chain reaction, but the reaction was at too
Speaker 1: slow a rate for it to be used potentially as
Speaker 1: a weapon. Uh. The idea being that, yeah, you could
Speaker 1: do this to to generate energy, like it could be
Speaker 1: a nuclear power plant. The chain reaction would allow you
Speaker 1: to to harness in that respect, but it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: so fast to create an explosive event, so it would
Speaker 1: not be useful as a weapon. Um. However, more research
Speaker 1: would go into that. Also forms approach was at such
Speaker 1: a slow rate of of energy release that they did
Speaker 1: not need any sort of cooling system. So, um, there
Speaker 1: was no need for the very advanced cooling systems that
Speaker 1: you will find in nuclear power plants these days, which
Speaker 1: was kind of interesting to me. And there were three
Speaker 1: different competing designs for nuclear piles. One was water a
Speaker 1: water cooled model which was developed by Gail Young and
Speaker 1: Eugene Wigner. One was a liquid metal cooled approach headed
Speaker 1: by our good friend Leo listened to the last, and
Speaker 1: the last was a helium cooled pile, which was headed
Speaker 1: by Thomas V. Moore who was an engineer. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: had a great nickname. It is called may West, um
Speaker 1: presumably because the design included spherical segments in the outer
Speaker 1: show l of the facility and May West was built.
Speaker 1: I don't mean the Actress. I mean I do mean
Speaker 1: the Actress, but I really mean the the actual facility
Speaker 1: name nicknamed may West. That was its official name, by
Speaker 1: the way. Scale Yeah. Right, So Groves demanded that the
Speaker 1: Metallurgical Lab come up with a unified approach. Uh not not.
Speaker 1: You know, he wasn't gonna say, all right, look, let's
Speaker 1: have all three of these progress at the same time.
Speaker 1: Because he was already dealing with a branch further up right,
Speaker 1: he was saying, plutonium is just one of the legs
Speaker 1: of research they're already funding, the other two being electromagnetic
Speaker 1: and gasees diffusion. So he didn't want plutonium research to
Speaker 1: then split into three separate groups as well. That would
Speaker 1: just become unmanageable. So UH, a small facility would be
Speaker 1: headed by Fermi and shut down in ninety three. So
Speaker 1: Fermi's research could end up informing the next stage UM.
Speaker 1: They would then be able to decide if that was
Speaker 1: in fact the way they wanted to go. Plus they
Speaker 1: could take all the plutonium that was made by that
Speaker 1: that's part of the research and set that aside. May
Speaker 1: West would be built and ready for operation by March
Speaker 1: ninety four, and its design would allow it to produce
Speaker 1: a hundred grams of plutonium per day, which was significantly
Speaker 1: more than firm's approach. UM and good old Leo was
Speaker 1: allowed to continue research on liquid metal cooling systems kind
Speaker 1: of on his own right because it wasn't as a priority, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. It didn't look as promising too, Grows, and
Speaker 1: so even the Grows was like, look, you had to
Speaker 1: settle on one. Technically, all three continued. UM Again, they
Speaker 1: didn't want to draw any conclusions too early on, and
Speaker 1: it turned out that they backed the wrong horse men. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Glee Glenn Seaboard's work and plutonium extraction made it possible
Speaker 1: to separate plutonium from a radiated uranium, which was an
Speaker 1: important step because both plutonium and radiated uranium were byproducts
Speaker 1: of this pile research, and you have to separate the
Speaker 1: two if you want to get the fissionable material necessary
Speaker 1: to create the chain reactions. UM. So S one felt
Speaker 1: that the plutonium experiments could potentially be dangerous. Uh, and
Speaker 1: so they were there's thinking, maybe we should, um, maybe
Speaker 1: we should start separating out some of these facilities, like
Speaker 1: maybe we shouldn't co locate the isaid the plutonium separation
Speaker 1: facility with the nuclear pile facility. Let's go back to
Speaker 1: your basket phrase. Let's know, why do we need to
Speaker 1: keep all our disasters in one basket? And then and
Speaker 1: then this also, you know, needs to be in an
Speaker 1: unpopulated area. Yes, because if you recall from the first episode,
Speaker 1: the nuclear pile research was largely taking place in an
Speaker 1: old racket court underneath the grandstand at the University of Chicago.
Speaker 1: UM so not you know, they're they're the facility or
Speaker 1: the The department actually was saying, yeah, we kind of
Speaker 1: wish you had come to us before you decided to
Speaker 1: use that area because this is kind of scary. Um.
Speaker 1: So they started looking around for potential partners to help
Speaker 1: build the facility and it Uh, there was one specifically
Speaker 1: that they looked at, and they required a lot of
Speaker 1: um oh, corsion is the wrong word, but convincing for
Speaker 1: them to take part in it. It was a DuPont
Speaker 1: um and DuPont was not super keen on doing this.
Speaker 1: It actually did take quite a few conversations before they
Speaker 1: came on board, but they would ultimately build the facility. UM.
Speaker 1: And also in two Oppenheimer suggested the location of Los Alamos,
Speaker 1: New Mexico, as one of the three sites the Manhattan
Speaker 1: Project would use to pursue the effort of building an
Speaker 1: atomic bomb. Very remote location. Oppenheimer himself owned a ranch
Speaker 1: that was neighboring Los Alamos, so he thought of it
Speaker 1: as being remote enough for it to be a useful
Speaker 1: test site and development site. Also, there were very few
Speaker 1: people who were there uh, and the ones who were
Speaker 1: there could be convinced to move by offering them a
Speaker 1: decent amount of money for their their land, especially considering
Speaker 1: that the value of the land at the time was
Speaker 1: pretty low because like what's out there, very little. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a boys school that was out there, but
Speaker 1: Groves went up and offered to buy it from from
Speaker 1: the schools, offered to buy the land, and they said,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll relocate and they left UM. So in
Speaker 1: ninety three in eastern Tennessee, work was well underway on
Speaker 1: several facilities. There was the plutonium plant that was designated
Speaker 1: X ten. That was the electromagnetic facility which was Y twelve,
Speaker 1: and a Ghasius diffusion plant which was called K twenty
Speaker 1: five UH. And this was a site that was located
Speaker 1: west of Knoxville, Tennessee. It was nineties square my miles
Speaker 1: or fifty nine thousand acres and it became a military
Speaker 1: reservation with the official name of Clinton Engineer Works UM.
Speaker 1: By the summer nine three, the Manhattan Project headquarters would
Speaker 1: move from Washington to the site in Tennessee, and eventually
Speaker 1: that that military site grew into a full fledged town
Speaker 1: that today is called Oak Ridge. Got A got a
Speaker 1: little tangent for you here, what's happen. So my my family,
Speaker 1: my extended family, is from the Tri Cities area, which
Speaker 1: is uh in the very very tip of Tennessee, up
Speaker 1: in the mountains, and for a time members of my
Speaker 1: family lived and worked around the area that would be
Speaker 1: known as Oak Ridge. And it was sort of an
Speaker 1: open secret that something was going on, but people really
Speaker 1: didn't have any any idea that um any idea how
Speaker 1: big oak Ridge would actually become, to the point where
Speaker 1: I think at some point it was power providing like
Speaker 1: power to one seven of the power it was actually
Speaker 1: drawing one one some of the power of the entire country,
Speaker 1: not of Tennessee, of the entire United States. One seventh
Speaker 1: of the power being generated in the United States was
Speaker 1: dedicated to powering the facilities at what would become Oak Ridge.
Speaker 1: That it was never called oak Ridge during the duration
Speaker 1: of the Manhattan Project that would come later, but eventually
Speaker 1: it did grow into a full fledged town because they
Speaker 1: these projects were enormous and needed a huge variety of
Speaker 1: workers to make things run, everything from administrative staff to
Speaker 1: the people who actually operated the machinery and the controls,
Speaker 1: the people who were transporting materials, that there was support
Speaker 1: staff to support all of that. It just it quickly
Speaker 1: grew into and a full fledged town. Um. And so
Speaker 1: this was and a lot of people didn't know what
Speaker 1: they were working on and beyond like their actual day
Speaker 1: to day jobs, they didn't know what the end goal was, right,
Speaker 1: And it's something that happens today even in other large
Speaker 1: scale projects that it's the compartmentalization of information and one
Speaker 1: of the you know, it's kind of an ugly truth
Speaker 1: that gets sensationalized a lot, but I think we'll we'll
Speaker 1: explore it later on in the show. Uh. The primary
Speaker 1: reason for this at this time was the complete, completely
Speaker 1: consuming paranoia on the part of the military of spine
Speaker 1: and espionage and not you know, this wasn't some um
Speaker 1: hair brained fantastical thing. This was a valid concern. Yea.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, it was so valid that it
Speaker 1: ended up not being paranoid enough. In Washington State, we
Speaker 1: have the third of the three sites. The projects set
Speaker 1: up headquarters in Hanford, and they created another boom town,
Speaker 1: another town that was specifically meant to help push the
Speaker 1: the goals of the Manhattan Project. UH. Hanford would become
Speaker 1: home to the water cooling pile facilities and the chemical
Speaker 1: separation plants, which were called the Queen Mary's And that
Speaker 1: only really makes sense if you see a picture of them,
Speaker 1: because it looks almost like the shape of the stuff
Speaker 1: that's above ground looks like it's in the shape of
Speaker 1: an old ocean liner, as if you had taken a
Speaker 1: Queen Mary ocean liner and buried it in the ground,
Speaker 1: so only the very top is visible. That's why they
Speaker 1: were called that. Uh So, in the in the spring
Speaker 1: of Oppenheimer had another lab set up in Los Alamos,
Speaker 1: New Mexico. He began to suspect that it might take
Speaker 1: three times as much material, not two times as much
Speaker 1: as they had previously estimated, to make a working bomb.
Speaker 1: By the way, part of the reason why the atomic
Speaker 1: bombs ended up being so incredibly devastating is because they
Speaker 1: kept on thinking that they were going to need more
Speaker 1: and more visionable material, and it turned out that some
Speaker 1: of the earlier estimations might have been a little more
Speaker 1: on the dot than they had worried about. Nine. Both
Speaker 1: the Y twelve, which was that electromagnetic plant, and the
Speaker 1: K twenty five, that's the gasiest diffusion plant, experienced problems uh.
Speaker 1: They were having issues all the way from too and
Speaker 1: project scientists decided to take a look at another method
Speaker 1: of isotope separation called thermal diffusion, which had previously been
Speaker 1: under consideration but kind of dismissed as being too slow
Speaker 1: and too poorly understood to rely upon as a reliable
Speaker 1: means of getting a weapon built, because you know, they
Speaker 1: it might pan out in the long run, but in
Speaker 1: wartime consideration, it's not practical. At this point, they started
Speaker 1: to revisit it UM and with both of those facilities
Speaker 1: having issues, there was a lot of incentive to look
Speaker 1: at it again because if either the other two didn't
Speaker 1: pan out because of technical difficulties, because because of skipping
Speaker 1: that pilot plant step, they needed to have a fallback plan.
Speaker 1: So Oppenheimer suggested to Grows that they build a thermal
Speaker 1: diffusion plant at Oak Ridge, and Grows agreed and co
Speaker 1: located it with the power plant for the K twenty
Speaker 1: five UM, which the reason for that was the K
Speaker 1: The power plant would create steam, which would turn turbines
Speaker 1: that generates electricity basic power plant design. So they decided, well,
Speaker 1: that steam is really hot, we can then use that
Speaker 1: as part of the thermal diffusion process to provide the
Speaker 1: heat and the thermal meaning heat. Uh, this would be
Speaker 1: the best way of doing it. We wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: build another facility to generate steam. We could just co
Speaker 1: locate it with this other one. So we've got all
Speaker 1: the science about the fissionable materials, but there's a whole
Speaker 1: other section we got to talk about two, the actual
Speaker 1: development of the bomb itself. Oh yes, that is. That
Speaker 1: is going to be an important part of this story,
Speaker 1: isn't it. So so you've got you've got the science
Speaker 1: going on about how do we create this chain reaction?
Speaker 1: But then you think, well, what about the actual device
Speaker 1: that's going to hold this material and initiate that chain relation? Uh?
Speaker 1: And there were some different approaches for that too. So
Speaker 1: they started working on the ordinance aspects. That's essentially the
Speaker 1: physical manifestation of this bomb, like the physical parts. They
Speaker 1: called it the gadget um. So in order to do this, uh,
Speaker 1: they were looking at multiple methods. One was this creating
Speaker 1: two subcritical masses of ficionable material that would come together
Speaker 1: so that you know, when they're separated, everything's kosher. You
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about it blowing up. Relatively for
Speaker 1: purposes and then bringing them together. That's what would allow
Speaker 1: the very rapid fission process to occur, releasing enormous amounts
Speaker 1: of energy in the process. Thus you get the big boom. Uh.
Speaker 1: So they started looking into ways they could do this,
Speaker 1: and they had to figure out how to do it
Speaker 1: precisely at a high speed, and they had to make
Speaker 1: sure that at whatever they did would not cause a predetonation,
Speaker 1: because that would be bad. You don't want your bomb
Speaker 1: going off before you you planned on it going off. Um.
Speaker 1: So one of the things they were looking at was
Speaker 1: the gun method, which was essentially firing a plug of
Speaker 1: fissionable material into a subcritical mass, turning it into critical um. So,
Speaker 1: think of it as it's a bomb has within it
Speaker 1: an actual gun. There's a barrel, it's got a plug
Speaker 1: of this stuff. When the trigger is pulled, essentially it
Speaker 1: fires that plug into the subcritical mass and then starts
Speaker 1: the the chain reaction. All this happens in a second.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's incredible how fast it happens. But
Speaker 1: there are some things that can go wrong. Yes, there
Speaker 1: are things that can go wrong, and one of those
Speaker 1: things is it maybe that it doesn't start the reaction
Speaker 1: fast enough. So that was one of the deals. They
Speaker 1: wanted to test this theory both with you two thirty
Speaker 1: five and with plutonium approaches. And there was another approach
Speaker 1: that was looked at as well, not just using the gun,
Speaker 1: but what if you were to create an implosion. Uh
Speaker 1: So an implosion would be too you would create shock
Speaker 1: waves that would then uh end up instigating this this
Speaker 1: chain reaction. Um. And the person who started looking at
Speaker 1: implosion tests first really was Seth H Neddermeyer uh and
Speaker 1: he was kind of left to his own devices to
Speaker 1: look into this, and um he uh ended up looking
Speaker 1: at it along with John von Neumann, who was Hungarian
Speaker 1: refugee who visited Los Alumos late. He was looking at
Speaker 1: various ways to create a reliable bomb as well. So
Speaker 1: you've got the nuclear physicists all working on the fuel
Speaker 1: and uh fissionable material side, and then you have the
Speaker 1: other like mechanical engineers looking at well, how can we
Speaker 1: make this a practical weapon. So so sort of like
Speaker 1: two parallel versions of research. Also, there was some friction
Speaker 1: between net or Meyer and Navy captain named William S.
Speaker 1: Dieck Parsons. He was actually in charge of ordinance So
Speaker 1: when you've got a guy who's working on one of
Speaker 1: the methods, the implosion method and the guy was in
Speaker 1: charge of it not getting along that was an issue. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so you had to have kind of liaisons with
Speaker 1: that as well, so that you did have some ego
Speaker 1: battles going on. UM people who thought that things needed
Speaker 1: to go a certain way and other folks who felt
Speaker 1: very strongly that that was not the appropriate direction. So
Speaker 1: a lot of drama going on behind the scenes as well,
Speaker 1: not just with the technology and the science, but with personalities,
Speaker 1: which is always kind of interesting. Ah. Then you had
Speaker 1: the Army Air Force involved there. You've got like so
Speaker 1: many different departments that there's departmental issues as well. Uh.
Speaker 1: Parsons group was developing two bomb models by March nineteen
Speaker 1: four and to test he wanted to test these with
Speaker 1: B twenty nines. These are essentially the methodology without the
Speaker 1: actual bomb materials and UM and they named them thin Man,
Speaker 1: which was named after President Roosevelt. That used the plutonium
Speaker 1: gun design, so firing a plug plutonium into fissionable material. Yes.
Speaker 1: And then you had fat Man, which was named after
Speaker 1: Winston Churchill, that was an implosion prototype. So you had
Speaker 1: the implosion one needed a larger form factor, thus fat Man,
Speaker 1: and then you had thin Man. Uh. You also had
Speaker 1: a smaller uranium gadget called Little Boy, which was using
Speaker 1: a uranium gun. So so you had the plutonium gun
Speaker 1: and the uranium gun. Uh. The plutonium gun eventually was
Speaker 1: abandoned because it turned out that plutonium to thirty nine
Speaker 1: could pick up a neutron and become plutonium to forty
Speaker 1: and increase the chances of predetonation, which we have already
Speaker 1: established is a bad thing. So they said, well, if
Speaker 1: we're going to use plutonium, we can't use the gun method.
Speaker 1: It would only really work with the implosion method. So
Speaker 1: the thin Man variation on these bombs that was abandoned.
Speaker 1: So you had a fat Man and Little Boy versions
Speaker 1: and that was it because otherwise it was too dangerous.
Speaker 1: But this this also meant that the approaches were requiring
Speaker 1: the the timeline to extend a bit. They were not
Speaker 1: going to make that early deadline of a working bomb,
Speaker 1: and at this point in the war, the the tiger
Speaker 1: is turning yes yeah. And in fact, on the Army
Speaker 1: Corps of Engineer's side, you had Groves and Marshall meeting
Speaker 1: together and discussing what's happening, and their estimation was that
Speaker 1: by the time a bomb would be ready, they were
Speaker 1: being quoted that on August one would be the earliest
Speaker 1: that a bomb would be available. They were pretty sure
Speaker 1: that by then Germany was going to have surrendered. The
Speaker 1: tides were turning enough where it looked like it was
Speaker 1: just Germany was on borrowed time, however, and the Pacific
Speaker 1: theater Japan would likely fight to the very end. The
Speaker 1: Japanese culture was such that there was very little chance
Speaker 1: of Japan's government reconciling, at least in a way that
Speaker 1: the West found um acceptable, because the West was going
Speaker 1: to demand that Japan dismantled its empirical system, and that
Speaker 1: was so deeply ingrained in Japanese culture it was unlikely
Speaker 1: to happen until just catastrophic losses were experienced on Japan's side.
Speaker 1: The economies of well, the economies of all all the
Speaker 1: countries involved at some point shifted greatly, as they do
Speaker 1: during times of war, but the Japanese economy at the
Speaker 1: time was a war powered economy, like it was necessary
Speaker 1: to keep the cycle going. Yeah, so pretty grim, uh,
Speaker 1: and but it became more and more apparent to the
Speaker 1: Army Corps of Engineers that, in fact, if they were
Speaker 1: able to produce a working bomb, the target was not
Speaker 1: going to be Germany, it was going to be Japan.
Speaker 1: They knew this in early ninety five. They were pretty sure.
Speaker 1: Um by mid expenditures were around a hundred million dollars
Speaker 1: per month, and in late nineteen In early ninety five,
Speaker 1: progress at oak Ridge meant that the August first deadline
Speaker 1: actually started to look realistic. It didn't, you know. At
Speaker 1: first they were they were worried that even August first
Speaker 1: might be too aggressive. But the early problems that have
Speaker 1: been plaguing the facilities had largely been worked out, and
Speaker 1: now all the different lines of research were starting to
Speaker 1: be fruitful. So at this point they weren't even saying
Speaker 1: which version is going to work. They were they were
Speaker 1: pretty sure there was going to be at least two.
Speaker 1: The plutonium implosion bomb like it was very promising, and
Speaker 1: the uranium gadget bomb, the the gun method look like
Speaker 1: it was very promising. So, uh, then they started looking
Speaker 1: into how they were going to to actually build these. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Hanford up in Washington, their plutonium facilities had some problems
Speaker 1: early there was an issue with what was called zenon poisoning,
Speaker 1: which was not for the employees. They were this was
Speaker 1: the this was the nuclear fuel. Yeah, the xenon um.
Speaker 1: The process was producing xenon, and the problem was that
Speaker 1: the way the chain reaction works, if you remember from
Speaker 1: our our previous episode, AH, these radioactive elements when they decay,
Speaker 1: give off fast moving neutrons which can then trigger another
Speaker 1: another particle to to undergo fission. And thus it ends
Speaker 1: up reducing fast moving neutrons. And as long as it's reduced,
Speaker 1: it's as long as it's producing more than one of
Speaker 1: those fast moving neutrons, this becomes a a an expanding
Speaker 1: chain reaction. It's like you know, you tell two friends
Speaker 1: and they tell two friends and they that sort of thing. Um. So,
Speaker 1: the problem was that xenon, which was being produced by
Speaker 1: this uh, this process, could accept neutrons so readily that
Speaker 1: it would end up preventing a chain reaction from happening,
Speaker 1: essentially like come on over here, boys were good. And
Speaker 1: then because the neutrons were being accepted by zenon, they
Speaker 1: were not triggering further fission. And so once they figured
Speaker 1: that out, they were able to take advantage of something
Speaker 1: DuPont had absolutely insisted upon when it agreed to build
Speaker 1: the facilities. UH, they had designed the facility to allow
Speaker 1: for operation at greater power levels, which originally the scientists
Speaker 1: were saying we don't or actually is really the Army
Speaker 1: Corps of Engineers saying we don't want this. It's too expensive,
Speaker 1: it's it's not necessary. We've been told that it should
Speaker 1: work at these lower power levels, and DuPont said, no,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to insist, and as it turns out,
Speaker 1: that was the right decision. So by operating at the
Speaker 1: greater power levels, that overwhelmed the xenon. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: it was generating neutrons at a rate so fast that
Speaker 1: the xenon was not going to be able to accept
Speaker 1: them at the rate they were coming out, so it
Speaker 1: was allowing that chain reaction to occur after all, So
Speaker 1: the Hanford facility began producing plutonium and significant amounts and
Speaker 1: sent the first shipment to Los Alamos in February. So
Speaker 1: the plutonium gun method of bomb design did not work.
Speaker 1: The only way the plutonium was going to be useful
Speaker 1: is if they could prove the implosion method would work.
Speaker 1: So that's where the focus shifted at that point. They
Speaker 1: knew the gun design was a bust, so they started
Speaker 1: looking significantly into implosion. So by late nine they were
Speaker 1: pretty sure that the uranium gun method was viable, so
Speaker 1: that was gonna be the little boy version of the bomb. Uh.
Speaker 1: They froze that design, meaning they said, all right, this
Speaker 1: is definitely what we are going to build. They froze
Speaker 1: it in February. Plutonium. Uh, their work with that was
Speaker 1: obviously taking a little longer. They knew the gun design
Speaker 1: wasn't going to work. But once they figured out the
Speaker 1: implosion design, that got approved in March, and they scheduled
Speaker 1: a test for the fourth of July, the biggest fireworks
Speaker 1: you'd ever see. However, they actually moved it back to
Speaker 1: July because of weather actually, and they named it the
Speaker 1: Trinity Test, and it happened at five thirty in the morning.
Speaker 1: So interesting thing they the uranium gun method was so
Speaker 1: certain they didn't test it. They never they never, they
Speaker 1: never tested the bomb before they used it. But the
Speaker 1: plutonium method, they weren't sure. So they build this plutonium bomb,
Speaker 1: the implosion based bomb. At five thirty in the morning
Speaker 1: on July, they fire it. They used a firing tower
Speaker 1: to hold the bomb and to to kind of approximate
Speaker 1: where the bomb would be before it detonated, because the
Speaker 1: bombs detonate before they hit the ground. Yeah. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not like there's a tip on the bomb that hits
Speaker 1: the ground. Their their program to get to a certain elevation,
Speaker 1: built to get to a certain elevation and then explode
Speaker 1: above the ground because it maximizes the damage. Yeah. This
Speaker 1: is where this, by the way, is also where our
Speaker 1: conversation it's gonna get pretty heavy because we're now talking
Speaker 1: about actual physical damage and the law of human life.
Speaker 1: So while we were maybe a little cavalier, I don't
Speaker 1: know even if cavaliers word, but we were playful at points.
Speaker 1: This is where this show is really going to get serious,
Speaker 1: because we're talking about real human beings. So this test
Speaker 1: was phenomenally impressive and successful from a weaponization point of view.
Speaker 1: It vaporized the firing tower, it turned asphalt into sand,
Speaker 1: and it turned sand into glass. Uh. The explosion knocked
Speaker 1: over a two hundred tons steel container that was a
Speaker 1: half mile from ground zero. The steel container had been
Speaker 1: built and designed and put down as part of the test,
Speaker 1: but they didn't intend to actually use it. On the
Speaker 1: July sixte test, it was literally just standing where they
Speaker 1: had left it, and it knocked it over. Um. The
Speaker 1: explosion was bright enough to cause temporary blindness and observers,
Speaker 1: even those who were wearing goggles with smoke glass lenses,
Speaker 1: they knew it was going to be bright, they had
Speaker 1: no idea how bright it was going to be, and
Speaker 1: some of them lost their vision for a while. Glass
Speaker 1: would shatter and houses a hundred twenty five miles from
Speaker 1: the explosion point, and it was equivalent to fifteen thousand
Speaker 1: to twenty thousand tons of T and T they had
Speaker 1: estimated it would be about equivalent to five thousand tons.
Speaker 1: And this goes back to the earlier statements with this. Also,
Speaker 1: by the way, the day that Oppenheimer creeps out everyone
Speaker 1: but uh and and the where it was whoops instead
Speaker 1: of whoops, he says, I become of the death destroyer
Speaker 1: of world. Yeah, and just just briefly on that the
Speaker 1: the reason that he said that. There's a great quotation
Speaker 1: from him here says we knew the world would not
Speaker 1: be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried,
Speaker 1: most people were silent. I remember the line from the
Speaker 1: Hindu scripture the Bahagavad Gita. Visi Nu was trying to
Speaker 1: persuade the prince that he should do his duty, and
Speaker 1: to impress him, takes on his multi armed form and says,
Speaker 1: now I've become Death, the destroyer of worlds. I suppose
Speaker 1: we all thought that one way or another. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I'm not sure if they did. But this,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, in this, in this day, um, you know,
Speaker 1: you have to think about how how you would feel
Speaker 1: a hundred miles away this thing blows up and the
Speaker 1: I don't know blame is the right word, but because
Speaker 1: they kept upping the amount they thought they needed, that's
Speaker 1: what happened. And those people who witnessed the detonation and
Speaker 1: participated in it were very lucky to survive. And and
Speaker 1: you think about this, like, you know, they didn't have
Speaker 1: a full understanding of what the long term effects were
Speaker 1: going to be of this, not just you know, the
Speaker 1: initial effects are devastating enough, but the long term effects
Speaker 1: continue to end up, you know, causing damage and killing
Speaker 1: years after the initial explosion. We'll get into some figures
Speaker 1: a little bit, so, uh. I think this is also
Speaker 1: one of those points where there's that moment of realization
Speaker 1: that the thing you've been working so hard, the thing
Speaker 1: that previously had just been theory that you had based
Speaker 1: it upon observations of the energy that was released in
Speaker 1: these nuclear reactions, something that you knew was possible but
Speaker 1: had not actually seen for yourself, now is reality. It
Speaker 1: is no longer abstract thought, is no longer the realm
Speaker 1: of calculations on a sheet of paper. Now it's real.
Speaker 1: And that's got to be a heavy, heavy moment, Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially when you consider what the intended purposes. On April,
Speaker 1: President Roosevelt dies and Vice President Harry S. Truman is
Speaker 1: sworn in as president. Here's how secret the Manhattan Project was,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that it employed around a hundred thirty
Speaker 1: thousand people at one time or another, Truman didn't know
Speaker 1: about on it detonated a nuclear weapon. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: vice president didn't know about it. He didn't know about No.
Speaker 1: At this point in April, they hadn't quite hadn't done so.
Speaker 1: But in April they hadn't happened yet. But Truman, they
Speaker 1: were well on their way to the test. Truman had
Speaker 1: no idea. He was briefed on it as part of
Speaker 1: becoming president during war, which is, you know, a pretty
Speaker 1: tough gig, no matter how you look at it. But
Speaker 1: Truman understood the relevance of the project and he supported it. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know. Plus it's pretty late in the game. They
Speaker 1: were they had built the thing pretty much there, just
Speaker 1: just needed a tested at that point. Um. So on
Speaker 1: the political side, Germany had surrendered and it was clear
Speaker 1: that Japan was going to lose the conflict, but it
Speaker 1: was probably going to fight until the very end. So
Speaker 1: it was going to require a massive invasion of Japan
Speaker 1: using you know, a coordinated effort with the Allied forces
Speaker 1: in order to make it happen. No telling how many
Speaker 1: people would die on both sides of that, uh, and
Speaker 1: it was going to be it was going to to
Speaker 1: extend the war even further. And so there was a
Speaker 1: very serious discussion about what do we do. Do we
Speaker 1: go forward with invasion plans or do we actually use
Speaker 1: this weapon we have this we have designed now. The
Speaker 1: US informed Churchill of the success of the the test,
Speaker 1: and Churchill was all for it until he found out
Speaker 1: it was nicknamed fat Boy fat Man. Yeah yeah, fat
Speaker 1: Man named after him. Yeah no, uh uh yeah, he
Speaker 1: I don't know if he ever. I don't know when
Speaker 1: he got the memo on that part, but he was
Speaker 1: totally on board. Truman told Stalin, Uh, he had been
Speaker 1: told by his his advisors, Hey, don't tell Stalin. Stalin's
Speaker 1: kind of a bad guy. You don't want to You
Speaker 1: don't want to let him know about this ahead of time.
Speaker 1: But Truman felt that it was necessary to preserve the
Speaker 1: uneasy piece between the United States and the so of
Speaker 1: the Union, So he told Stalin of the development of
Speaker 1: the weapon and told told Song without the presence of
Speaker 1: an interpreter, it's just Truman and Stalin, and Stalin was
Speaker 1: very composed. And it turns out the reason he was
Speaker 1: composed was because he already I knew about it. Um,
Speaker 1: he already knew about it because despite the paranoia, there
Speaker 1: was a Soviet spy amongst the Brits who were working
Speaker 1: alongside the Americans on the Manhattan Project. So um, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit about him in a second.
Speaker 1: But the US wanted unconditional surrender of Japan, the dismantling
Speaker 1: of the imperial system, and Japan wanted to surrender. Based
Speaker 1: on intercepted messages between Tokyo and Moscow, but not under
Speaker 1: the conditions that the Americans were demanding. Japan I believe
Speaker 1: still wanted to maintain some of the territory. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they didn't want to abandon the empire approach of their
Speaker 1: government like that was that was a big deal. And
Speaker 1: and United States was like, no, your empire, the imperial
Speaker 1: method has to go. It can we want democracy, we
Speaker 1: want a different system of government. Yeah. So it was,
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a tall order and Japan was
Speaker 1: not like the Japanese government was not in a position
Speaker 1: that could easily capitulate to those demands. So things are
Speaker 1: moving out ahead. And on August six, the and Nola
Speaker 1: gay A B twenty nine bomber piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbots,
Speaker 1: released a nine thousand, seven hundred pound uranium gun bomb
Speaker 1: called Little Boy. This remember this is the one that
Speaker 1: had never been tested. They knew, they were confident it
Speaker 1: would work, but they had never actually tested this bomb.
Speaker 1: And it was released in approximately eight fifteen am thirty
Speaker 1: one thousand feet above Hiroshima, Japan, and forty three seconds
Speaker 1: later it detonated. At that point, it was at an
Speaker 1: altitude of nineteen feet above the city and initial explosion
Speaker 1: killed seventy thousand people, more or less instantly. Yeah, uh
Speaker 1: where this is where you hear about people's shadows being
Speaker 1: burned into the walls behind them because of the intense
Speaker 1: energy that was released by this bomb. By nine fifty
Speaker 1: the death count would be closer to two hundred thousand,
Speaker 1: So that seventy thousand those that was initial where again instantaneous,
Speaker 1: not even a moment to think it's just over. But
Speaker 1: another hundred thirty thousand would die due to radiation sickness,
Speaker 1: So an agonizing fate for so many. Nearly all the
Speaker 1: buildings in a five square mile radius were either leveled
Speaker 1: completely or just severely damaged to the point where there
Speaker 1: was no chance of using them again. They would need
Speaker 1: to be taken down. Truman announced the Hiroshima raid that
Speaker 1: evening to the American public, which was the first time
Speaker 1: that the United States revealed to the general public that
Speaker 1: they had been working on an atomic weapon. This was
Speaker 1: the first time the Manhattan Project had been unveiled in
Speaker 1: a sense that it existed right. They didn't go into
Speaker 1: any details about how much work had gone into it
Speaker 1: and what had happened, but that this was the first time.
Speaker 1: So again a hundred thod people had worked on it.
Speaker 1: Many of those people this was the first time they
Speaker 1: found out what their work was, what the result was like.
Speaker 1: They didn't know necessarily. There were very few of that
Speaker 1: hundred thirty thousand who actually knew what the purpose of
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project really was, which is phenomenal. It's hard
Speaker 1: and in hindsight, it's hard for us to imagine that.
Speaker 1: I'm sure at the time it was a job, you know,
Speaker 1: you were working on science. Yeah, and and the h
Speaker 1: and communication worked differently because pre internet. Yeah so um
Speaker 1: the United States and in the wake of this, calls
Speaker 1: for Japan's surrender according to the earlier terms. Japan did
Speaker 1: not immediately respond, which then led to the August ninth
Speaker 1: bombing of Nagasaki. Uh. This was the plutonium implosion method.
Speaker 1: This was the one that they had tested previously. This
Speaker 1: was called fat Man, and it was carried by a
Speaker 1: plane named Box Box Car and b O C K
Speaker 1: not b O X, and Nagasaki was actually the secondary target.
Speaker 1: The primary target was the Kokura arsenal, which would have
Speaker 1: been more of a military target than Nagasaki was, but
Speaker 1: weather prevented the pilot, Charles Sweeney, from flying over it,
Speaker 1: he felt that there was too low of a chance
Speaker 1: that he would be able to drop the bomb on
Speaker 1: the intended target, so he swapped swapped out to his
Speaker 1: secondary target, which was Nagasaki. It was dropped at an
Speaker 1: altitude of twenty nine thousand feet and detonated one thousand,
Speaker 1: six hundred fifty feet above Nagasaki at eleven oh one
Speaker 1: am and exploded with a force of twenty one thousand
Speaker 1: tons of TNT. Now, it killed forty thousand people and
Speaker 1: injured another sixty thousand on that initial explosion, and the
Speaker 1: eventual death toll was calculated at around a hundred forty thousand,
Speaker 1: largely because Nagasaki did not have the same population density
Speaker 1: as Hiroshima. Wasn't that it wasn't that this was a
Speaker 1: less devastating bomb. It was that, due to the geography,
Speaker 1: it affected fewer people. So in the space of just
Speaker 1: a few days, Japan lost three ultimately would lose three.
Speaker 1: The initial would be closer to a hundred ten thousand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in two bombings, uh devastating, absolutely devastating. Um The Manhattan
Speaker 1: Project itself would continue because while it had built these
Speaker 1: bombs specifically for the purpose of bringing World War two
Speaker 1: to an end. Uh, the research was going to continue
Speaker 1: on and it would and officially in nineteen seven and
Speaker 1: hand over the research into atomic weaponry to a new group,
Speaker 1: the Atomic Energy Commission, which we talked about extensively when
Speaker 1: we took covered Area fifty one. Atomic Energy Commission was
Speaker 1: important during the the establishment of Area fifty one. So
Speaker 1: I mentioned that there had been a spy who reported
Speaker 1: to the Soviet Union. That would be a Klauss Fuchs,
Speaker 1: who was part of the British contention of scientists who
Speaker 1: worked on the Manhattan Project. It was not discovered until
Speaker 1: nineteen forty nine that he was actually a Soviet agent.
Speaker 1: So throughout the entirety of the Manhattan Project, all the
Speaker 1: way to the point where it was over, he was
Speaker 1: feeding information to the Soviet Union. He was caught and
Speaker 1: convicted of espionage and was eventually released in nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 1: He then moved to what was then East Germany. Kids,
Speaker 1: if you don't know that there was an East Germany,
Speaker 1: there was for a while, you need to look it up.
Speaker 1: He was eventually Uh, he eventually rather provided information that
Speaker 1: helped China develop its first atomic bomb, right. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: you may have heard stories recently UM or in the
Speaker 1: past few years about a scientist named A Q. Kahan
Speaker 1: continually linked to other countries acquiring nuclear weaponry or knowledge
Speaker 1: of the atomic process. UH. This is UM class food.
Speaker 1: Fuchs is like the original version of that and did
Speaker 1: quite a bit to propagate this technology. Also, UM, the
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project, on balance is fairly lucky that he's the
Speaker 1: kind of spy. He was a spy sent to feed
Speaker 1: information rather than to stymy the progress. It made a contribution.
Speaker 1: The goal of ending World War two was shared obviously
Speaker 1: by both Stalin and UH the United States. UM, but
Speaker 1: obviously Stalin also had a very strong interest in gaining
Speaker 1: that information or on behalf of Soviet Union so that
Speaker 1: the United States would not have the upper hand for
Speaker 1: very long in what would then become the Cold War.
Speaker 1: Another important person that we didn't really mention. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many, there are times there's there's just the
Speaker 1: list of names connected to the Manhattan Project as incredibly long,
Speaker 1: hundred thirty thousand as it turns out. UM. But another
Speaker 1: important person on the physics side was Edward Teller, a
Speaker 1: theoretical physicist. He was the one who was really pushing
Speaker 1: for the development of the hydrogen bomb. In fact, he
Speaker 1: has been referred to as the father of the hydrogen bomb,
Speaker 1: a name he did not like. Um, they called it
Speaker 1: the super bomb during the Manhattan Project, and eventually it
Speaker 1: would be developed, uh, not really not used, but but
Speaker 1: developed and tested. So that is the story of the
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project from the beginning all the way to the
Speaker 1: development and deployment of the two atomic bombs that were
Speaker 1: dropped on Japan. Yeah, and we touched on a lot
Speaker 1: of things that are stories in themselves, the U S
Speaker 1: s RS program. I think Stalin learned of the U
Speaker 1: S program or the US intentions in which and then
Speaker 1: there's this there's this story that I think you mentioned
Speaker 1: in part one about what happens to um, the scientists
Speaker 1: who are held consentially or not in the German program.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know operation paper Clip, but you get
Speaker 1: more rocketry. That's more rocketry on the U S side.
Speaker 1: But the USSR forcibly abducted some scientists from the German
Speaker 1: program very strange times. There's there's tons of stuff we
Speaker 1: could talk about, and in fact, I'm sure stuff they
Speaker 1: don't want you to know. US covered quite a bit
Speaker 1: of this materiality or two. Yeah, So I highly recommend
Speaker 1: you go check out that show just in general, but
Speaker 1: especially if you want to hit and more about you know,
Speaker 1: the tactics that were employed. This was I mean, there
Speaker 1: are no games higher stakes than this, right, this is
Speaker 1: this is incredibly grim stuff when you boil it down
Speaker 1: to what's actually the end goal and what is happening.
Speaker 1: And as a result, Uh, there are nations and people
Speaker 1: who will you know, there's no there's no limit to
Speaker 1: what they will the tactics they will employ to achieve
Speaker 1: the goal because the goal the stakes are so high,
Speaker 1: and uh, sometimes that leads to stories of heroism, which
Speaker 1: is amazing. Sometimes it leads to stories of that is dirty,
Speaker 1: underhanded stuff, you know that uprooting people whether they are
Speaker 1: quote unquote on the wrong side or not, and then
Speaker 1: forcing them to work on your behalf. In some cases,
Speaker 1: there were people who were more than willing to do
Speaker 1: that because to them the science was what was important.
Speaker 1: They were that their ultimate moral compass, which can I
Speaker 1: work on the science? Yeah, and it wasn't so much
Speaker 1: who who is the person like, I'm not the one
Speaker 1: who decides who this gets used on. I'm the one
Speaker 1: who figures out whether or not it works. Um, it's
Speaker 1: just it's an odd story and there's so many of them.
Speaker 1: But on all sides, so can I ask you, um
Speaker 1: and tell me if this is to tell me, if
Speaker 1: this is too much of a heavier speculative thing, what's that?
Speaker 1: Do you think the world is a better place with
Speaker 1: this technology? Who? Boy? I quarrel with it myself. I
Speaker 1: think I think nuclear power certainly has some very important applications, uh,
Speaker 1: some of which are incredibly beneficial to humanity, even with
Speaker 1: the problematic nuclear fuel and nuclear waste issues. Um. So
Speaker 1: on that side, I think that it was incredibly important
Speaker 1: and benefits From a weaponry side, I think it just
Speaker 1: caused enormous amounts of harm beyond the obvious of the
Speaker 1: people who lost their lives as a result of the
Speaker 1: bombs being dropped. There are stories of people who who
Speaker 1: uh may have developed cancer just from working on the projects.
Speaker 1: Whether or not that's actually the cause, it's impossible to
Speaker 1: say because they're just too many vectors to take into account,
Speaker 1: but it seems like it's a likely source at least
Speaker 1: for some of the cases, if not many of them. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean the Cold War was awful. I mean it
Speaker 1: led to the space race, which was awesome, and a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of the world changing or civilization
Speaker 1: changing technology that we have today comes from times of conflict. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's true. I mean, we would not be where we
Speaker 1: are today without that conflict. But I don't necessarily think
Speaker 1: that that's put us in a great place. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's certainly there are current conflicts in the world, cold
Speaker 1: and otherwise that. Uh, the presence of nuclear weapons have
Speaker 1: made far more complex and higher stakes than would otherwise exist.
Speaker 1: And I'm not a big fan of that, So I mean,
Speaker 1: and ultimately, I do believe that the Allied Powers would
Speaker 1: have won World War Two without the use of atomic weapons.
Speaker 1: You know, it would have happened. The question is how
Speaker 1: long would it have taken and how much more would Japan.
Speaker 1: Would Japan have suffered more due to the nature of
Speaker 1: the war than it did from the bombs. That's a
Speaker 1: question that's impossible to answer because there's no way of
Speaker 1: knowing how it would have turned out otherwise. Um, And
Speaker 1: ultimately you start to wonder if perhaps the bombing of
Speaker 1: Japan was not only to force Japan to capitulate to
Speaker 1: the United States demands and the Allied demands of surrender,
Speaker 1: but also perhaps a demonstration of the United States is
Speaker 1: superiority and weaponry to say, Hey, everybody in the world,
Speaker 1: pay attention, because this is what we can do now.
Speaker 1: And I would like to think that that was if
Speaker 1: apart the smallest of parts. But something deep inside me
Speaker 1: worries about that. Well, one thing, um, you know, when
Speaker 1: one thing that I really enjoy about seeing him with
Speaker 1: you on this episode is that this series rather is
Speaker 1: that this is a story that a lot of people
Speaker 1: sort of no have a cursory knowledge, and it's it's
Speaker 1: good to have. It's good to have this resource that
Speaker 1: kind of goes from stem to stern. And I want
Speaker 1: to say that I really appreciate it. Every time you're
Speaker 1: an opportunity be on your show, I'll go ahead and
Speaker 1: say something I usually say at the end, which is,
Speaker 1: if you are interested not only in the past of technology,
Speaker 1: but also in the future, che out forward thinking the
Speaker 1: video series which has been going like Gangbusters and the
Speaker 1: audio podcast. Yeah this is um you know, I highly
Speaker 1: recommend you check out all the stuff sites and all
Speaker 1: the stuff podcasts, but stuff they don't want you to know,
Speaker 1: in particular, dovetails so well with so much of what
Speaker 1: I do either with forward Thinking. It's like it's like
Speaker 1: it's like the two sides of the coin type deal.
Speaker 1: It's true. Yeah, the there's the if those shows were roommates, Yeah, yours,
Speaker 1: it's like the odd couple. Yeah. Yeah for for stuff
Speaker 1: that I'll want you to know would be the creepy
Speaker 1: one in the basement, and forward Thinking is the Collie
Speaker 1: g Willickers. Guys, it sure is pretty outside. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: we hang out. Yeah, hang out. Also, I thought you
Speaker 1: would be interested to hear this. Ben Uh. The very
Speaker 1: next episode I will be recording will be with Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and we are going to cover what technologies would stick
Speaker 1: around the longest in a post apocalyptic scenario, So it
Speaker 1: kind of dovetails with this episode. That's fascinating. Um, I
Speaker 1: wait to hear it. It will be It'll be a
Speaker 1: fun conversation and I'm sure we'll devolve into a lot
Speaker 1: of discussions about our favorite post fund olyptics stories. In fact,
Speaker 1: I know it well because it's in the notes. So
Speaker 1: we're going to wrap this up. Guys. If you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this episode, let me know, send me an email, let
Speaker 1: me know what else you would like to hear about
Speaker 1: here on tech Stuff. The address is tech stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, or you can drop me
Speaker 1: a line on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumbler to handle I
Speaker 1: use at all. Three is tech stuff hs W and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again and really soon. For more
Speaker 1: on this and bathings, another topic is it how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com.