Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech
Speaker 1: are Yet. So this past weekend two films did quite
Speaker 1: well at the box office here in the United States.
Speaker 1: And while I could do an episode about Barbie, talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, some of the Barbie dolls and various toys
Speaker 1: that have crossed over into the tech sphere and some
Speaker 1: of the issues that those toys created, primarily regarding you know,
Speaker 1: privacy concerns, I thought instead we'd talk about the atomic
Speaker 1: bombs used in World War Two Batman and Little Boy,
Speaker 1: because you know, Oppenheimer was also a pretty big hit
Speaker 1: at the box office this weekend. So in World War two,
Speaker 1: the United States dropped two different types of atomic bombs
Speaker 1: on the US hit Hiroshima with a bomb called Little Boy,
Speaker 1: and Little Boy used uranium enriched uranium as the fissionable
Speaker 1: material that would produce the intense energy of the bomb.
Speaker 1: And then the US dropped a bomb on Nagasaki. That
Speaker 1: one was called fat Man. Fat Man had a plutonium core,
Speaker 1: not uranium. But how did these bombs actually work well.
Speaker 1: First of all, it boils down to atomic physics. So
Speaker 1: some heavier atoms are unstable, and you know, with the
Speaker 1: right instigating incident or with enough time, the heavier atom
Speaker 1: will split into smaller atoms and release neutrons. Also in
Speaker 1: the process doing this ends up also releasing a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of energy. Splitting the atom is also called fission,
Speaker 1: and this is the type of technology our nuclear power
Speaker 1: play rely upon. The big difference being that in nuclear
Speaker 1: power plants you have a controlled nuclear fission reaction and
Speaker 1: in a bomb, ultimately you have an uncontrolled chain reaction
Speaker 1: that releases a tremendous amount of energy. Now, you do
Speaker 1: get a whole lot of energy just by splitting one atom,
Speaker 1: but you could really get a big release if you
Speaker 1: were able to set up a chain of atomic reactions.
Speaker 1: So how do you do that? How did the engineers
Speaker 1: and scientists who worked for the Manhattan Project, because that
Speaker 1: was the name of the project that developed the atomic
Speaker 1: bomb for the United States, how would they guarantee a
Speaker 1: chain reaction? Well, let's talk about those two elements that
Speaker 1: were used in each of the atomic bombs, or rather,
Speaker 1: you know uranium in Little Boy and plutonium and fat Man.
Speaker 1: So the type of uranium that little Boy used was
Speaker 1: uranium two thirty five. Fat Man was dependent upon plutonium
Speaker 1: two thirty nine. Both of these are isotopes, and both
Speaker 1: of these isotopes regularly undergo fission. They are very much
Speaker 1: ready to split apart with the right situation. Now, the
Speaker 1: way you start all that is that you shoot the
Speaker 1: isotope with a fast moving particle, essentially a neutron neutrally
Speaker 1: charged particle, sub atomic particle that if you were to
Speaker 1: shoot that at a uranium two thirty five atom and
Speaker 1: it makes contact, Essentially, the two thirty five would absorb
Speaker 1: that neutron and then the atom would split apart and
Speaker 1: in the process also release other neutrons, So that neutron
Speaker 1: strikes the isotope, you get the split, you get more
Speaker 1: neutrons released. If you've got more atoms of that same
Speaker 1: heavy atom, like U two thirty five, packed together, then
Speaker 1: the release neutrons can make contact with those uranium atoms
Speaker 1: and then cause the reaction to continue. So you've got
Speaker 1: to pack enough of these atoms together to increase the
Speaker 1: chances of that happening. You know, keep in mind, like
Speaker 1: when we're talking about atoms like very very tiny stuff
Speaker 1: and subatomic particles even tinier. You've got to pack a
Speaker 1: whole lot of it together to increase the odds of
Speaker 1: a neutron hitting an isotope. Otherwise, if it doesn't, if
Speaker 1: the neutron ends up being absorbed by something else or
Speaker 1: escapes or whatever, then it doesn't continue the reaction. You
Speaker 1: have to have it set up so it creates the
Speaker 1: sort of domino effect, except we're not talking on one
Speaker 1: to one relationship here. It'd be a domino effect where
Speaker 1: you know, you have a domino that, when you knock
Speaker 1: it over, makes contact with two other dominoes at the
Speaker 1: same time, knocking both of those over, which in turn
Speaker 1: make contact with two other dominoes, and so on and
Speaker 1: so forth, so that by knocking one domino over, you'll
Speaker 1: ultimately knock over a whole bunch. Same idea here, except
Speaker 1: we're talking about isotops. We're talking about individual atoms and
Speaker 1: packing enough of them together so that you do get
Speaker 1: this chain reaction. And once you do that and you
Speaker 1: have nothing there to rain in that chain reaction, you
Speaker 1: get a truly tremendous release of energy in the process.
Speaker 1: So again we use the same sort of process in
Speaker 1: nuclear power plants. But we have tools there and processes
Speaker 1: that allow engineers to control the sequence, this rate of release,
Speaker 1: and that way they can release enough in order to
Speaker 1: generate electricity. So, in other words, they can allow this
Speaker 1: process to occur at a specific rate, and then the
Speaker 1: energy they release in the process they can use to
Speaker 1: generate electricity. I'm actually skipping a step here because the
Speaker 1: energy that gets released ends up essentially being incredibly intense heat,
Speaker 1: which you then use to turn water into superheated steam,
Speaker 1: use that to turn turbines which generate electricity. The steam
Speaker 1: eventually condenses down into water, and then that's in its
Speaker 1: own closed system, and you just keep doing that. But
Speaker 1: in a bomb, you don't have these tools and processes
Speaker 1: to keep it under control. Right. You don't have a
Speaker 1: way of absorbing neutrons, for example, So the whole point
Speaker 1: is to get that uncontrolled chain reaction that, by the way,
Speaker 1: is not a foregone conclusion. You can't really control where
Speaker 1: a release neutron is going to go, So again, you
Speaker 1: have to have the right amount of fissionable material in
Speaker 1: the right density, otherwise your bomb will only release a
Speaker 1: fraction of the energy you were planning on and you
Speaker 1: won't get the effect you were hoping for. It won't
Speaker 1: be nearly as devastating. And the only reason to use
Speaker 1: a weapon as devastating as an atomic bomb or nuclear
Speaker 1: weapon is to convince an opponent to surrender, because it's
Speaker 1: just such a truly devastating weapon, and it's not like
Speaker 1: you can use it to target specifically just military installations
Speaker 1: for example. You're going to be taking out civilian sites
Speaker 1: and innocent people who are not soldiers. So it's a horrible,
Speaker 1: horrible weapon, and the only reason you use it is
Speaker 1: to convince your opponent to surrender. Anyway, in order to
Speaker 1: do that, you have to make sure you've got enough
Speaker 1: fissionable material in your bomb, or else it's not going
Speaker 1: to have the effect you want and the conflict will
Speaker 1: just continue. So you have to reach what is called
Speaker 1: critical mass. This is the mass of fissionable material you
Speaker 1: need in order to start a chain reaction. That mass
Speaker 1: is completely dependent upon things like how much volume the
Speaker 1: fissionable material takes up, which we'll talk about when we
Speaker 1: get to the fat Man. So the more material you have,
Speaker 1: or the more mass you have, the greater the odds
Speaker 1: are that neutrons that get released in this reaction are
Speaker 1: going to hit another heavy atom, another heavy isotope, and
Speaker 1: you've arrived at critical mass when it's likely that a
Speaker 1: release neutron is going to create a subsequent heavy atom
Speaker 1: to split and release more neutrons. Now, finding out what
Speaker 1: it would take to achieve critical mass, that was a
Speaker 1: big part of the work over at the Manhattan Project
Speaker 1: was to actually determine what that would be. How much
Speaker 1: enriched uranium or how much plutonium two thirty nine would
Speaker 1: you actually need in order to achieve this and have
Speaker 1: it be a chain reaction that actually works. So Oppenheimer
Speaker 1: and others, he wasn't the only one, obviously, this was
Speaker 1: a huge team of scientists and engineers who worked on
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project. They were trying to develop a weapon
Speaker 1: that could initiate an atomic reaction that would rapidly consume
Speaker 1: a core of heavy atoms to generate an enormous destructive
Speaker 1: wave of energy. That was the whole goal, and they
Speaker 1: came up with two different ways of doing that using
Speaker 1: the two different elements of you know, uranium two thirty
Speaker 1: five in one case and plutonium two thirty nine in
Speaker 1: the other. So first we'll talk about uranium two thirty five,
Speaker 1: also known as refined uranium, because most of the uranium
Speaker 1: we encounter naturally on Earth is a totally different isotope.
Speaker 1: It's not you two thirty five, it's uranium two thirty eight.
Speaker 1: And you might wonder why does that make a difference,
Speaker 1: Like why is one type of uranium useful for weapons
Speaker 1: and the other one isn't. Well to do that, we
Speaker 1: have to talk about isotopes. So an isotope is just
Speaker 1: a form of an element, right, you have, and when
Speaker 1: you're talking about isotopes, you're talking about two or more
Speaker 1: forms of the same element. Each isotope of an element
Speaker 1: will have the same number of protons as all the
Speaker 1: other isotopes of that element, right, because if you were
Speaker 1: to add or subtract protons, you would change the element itself.
Speaker 1: It would no longer be the element you started with.
Speaker 1: So the number of protons remains consistent across all isotopes.
Speaker 1: The difference is in the number of neutrons that are
Speaker 1: in the nucleus. So uranium two thirty five has one
Speaker 1: hundred forty three neutrons in its nucleus. Uranium two thirty
Speaker 1: eight has one hundred forty six neutrons, And this might
Speaker 1: lead you to say, well, neutrons are neutrally charged. That's
Speaker 1: why they're called neutrons. They have a neutral charge. How
Speaker 1: does that make it a difference, Like, what difference do
Speaker 1: three neutrons make? Well, isotopes can actually have different chemical
Speaker 1: properties from one another, which is kind of crazy, right,
Speaker 1: You're talking about two things of the same element, but
Speaker 1: they can have different chemical properties. So uranium two thirty
Speaker 1: five and uranium two thirty eight are both isotopes of uranium,
Speaker 1: but they don't always behave the same way. So let's
Speaker 1: take uranium two thirty eight. Now, I mentioned that to
Speaker 1: initiate nuclear fission, you would fire a neutron at an
Speaker 1: isotope and it would split that isotope up. But if
Speaker 1: you were to fire a neutron at uranium two thirty eight,
Speaker 1: instead of splitting up, it could just capture that neutron
Speaker 1: and become uranium two thirty nine. So instead of two
Speaker 1: thirty eight, you got two thirty nine, but you don't
Speaker 1: get that split. And that means that if uranium two
Speaker 1: thirty eight absorbs the neutron and becomes uranium two thirty nine,
Speaker 1: there's no chain reaction because it didn't split apart. It
Speaker 1: didn't release more neutrons to cause that reaction to continue.
Speaker 1: So your reaction would go nowhere. You would just have
Speaker 1: uranium two thirty nine now, and that wouldn't do you
Speaker 1: any good. You wouldn't have an explosion. Uranium two thirty
Speaker 1: five is a totally different story. If you fire a
Speaker 1: neutron at uranium two thirty five, you're gonna get an
Speaker 1: atomic split and a whole butt load of energy in
Speaker 1: the process. But here's the thing. Uranium two thirty eight,
Speaker 1: that's the stuff that's abundant. That's the stuff we can
Speaker 1: find naturally on Earth. Uranium two thirty five makes up
Speaker 1: less than one percent of naturally existing uranium, which meant
Speaker 1: the scientists had to develop a means to refine uranium
Speaker 1: two thirty eight into uranium two thirty five. All Right,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we'll talk more about the challenges that the engineers and
Speaker 1: scientists of the Manhattan Project were facing. We're back now.
Speaker 1: During the Manhattan Project, obviously time was ticking. This wasn't
Speaker 1: some R and D project that could just take as
Speaker 1: much time as necessary. There was actually a war on
Speaker 1: there was a concern that access nations could be developing
Speaker 1: their own atomic weapons. So the United States poured a
Speaker 1: lot of resources into this research, and the desire was
Speaker 1: to find a process that would work, and it didn't
Speaker 1: matter which process it was, So actually the Manhattan Project
Speaker 1: was pursuing different strategies simultaneously. One of the overseers of
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project was General Leslie Groves, who authorized four
Speaker 1: separate projects to explore how to refine you two thirty
Speaker 1: eight into You two thirty five. And again they wanted results.
Speaker 1: They didn't really care which one was going to be
Speaker 1: the best. They just needed that uranium. So the scientists
Speaker 1: already knew that standard chemical processes were not going to
Speaker 1: necessarily work to refine You two thirty eight into You
Speaker 1: two thirty five because the two isotopes, while they are different,
Speaker 1: share enough chemical similarities that it just wasn't going to
Speaker 1: be a way forward. So instead they looked at methods
Speaker 1: that included liquid thermal diffusion, gaseous diffusion, separating the components
Speaker 1: with the centrifuge, and electromagnetic separation. I should probably do
Speaker 1: an episode really that really focuses on those four specific approaches,
Speaker 1: but for the process here, it just meant that they
Speaker 1: were able to generate enough you two thirty five to
Speaker 1: make a viable weapon. So they finally got enough fissionable
Speaker 1: material to construct a bomb. They did a test bomb, obviously,
Speaker 1: but they also put together Little Boy. This bomb worked
Speaker 1: on what was called a gun type device inside of it.
Speaker 1: The bomb itself had a bunch of different elements so
Speaker 1: that it would explode the way the engineers intended. That is,
Speaker 1: it would explode in the air. This was not a
Speaker 1: bomb that was meant to collide with the ground and
Speaker 1: then explode. That would have limited its destructive capacity. So instead,
Speaker 1: the engineers designed it so that at a specific altitude
Speaker 1: it would initiate the explosion. So to achieve this, the
Speaker 1: bomb actually had several systems on board to measure when
Speaker 1: to ignite its explosive charge that would initiate the nuclear
Speaker 1: reaction inside the bomb. So the explosive charge wasn't the
Speaker 1: bomb itself. The explosive charge was kind of the trigger
Speaker 1: to start the nuclear reaction, which then would release the
Speaker 1: truly enormous amount of destructive energy. So the tools they
Speaker 1: used in order to measure altitude for the bomb so
Speaker 1: that it would go off at the correct height above
Speaker 1: the target. Included barometric press sensors. Those measure barometric pressure,
Speaker 1: so they would essentially monitor for the pressure to reach
Speaker 1: a point that would indicate that it was at the
Speaker 1: right altitude. But they also had radar altimeters on this bomb,
Speaker 1: and they were essentially shooting down radio waves toward the
Speaker 1: ground and listening back for echos, And when those echoes
Speaker 1: would indicate that the bomb was at the proper altitude,
Speaker 1: then it would trigger the explosive, the conventional explosive that
Speaker 1: would then lead to the actual nuclear reaction. So if
Speaker 1: you were able to look inside the Little Boy bomb,
Speaker 1: you would see that the conventional explosives were at the
Speaker 1: tail end of the bomb, and they would end up
Speaker 1: driving forward some thick disks of uranium two thirty five.
Speaker 1: So these disks, you know, they had a hole in
Speaker 1: the center of them, and they were at the tail
Speaker 1: end of the bomb. Like I said, the explosive would
Speaker 1: go off, it would end up propelling these discs forward
Speaker 1: toward the nose end of the bomb, just like a
Speaker 1: gun would propel a bullet, Like you know when the
Speaker 1: gunpowder inside a cartridge would ignite the gases expanding would
Speaker 1: push the bullet through the barrel of a gun, similar
Speaker 1: in that case, except there's no open end of this gun,
Speaker 1: So this stack of thick disks would shoot forward. On
Speaker 1: the opposite end of the bomb. In the nose end
Speaker 1: of the bomb would be a stack of uranium two
Speaker 1: thirty five that were at the diameter, so they would
Speaker 1: fit inside those thick disks. So what happens is you've
Speaker 1: got these two halves of a core essentially that came together,
Speaker 1: and now you suddenly had this solid core of uranium
Speaker 1: two thirty five. Also, there was some polonium inside this bomb.
Speaker 1: The polonium would actually act as the release of neutrons
Speaker 1: that would start the whole reaction going. So the conventional
Speaker 1: explosives were necessary to get the kinetic energy that would
Speaker 1: then launch this nuclear fission process that quickly became an
Speaker 1: uncontrolled chain reaction and would release an enormous amount of energy.
Speaker 1: In total, the Little Boy contained sixty four kilograms of
Speaker 1: enriched uranium. That's a lot of uranium, and the explosion
Speaker 1: it generated was the equivalent of fifteen kilo tons. So
Speaker 1: when you hear explosives being talked about in kilotons or megatons,
Speaker 1: whatever it may be. That's actually talking about how many
Speaker 1: tons of TNT it would take to get an equivalent
Speaker 1: release of energy. So fifteen kilotons means you would need
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand tons of TNT to get the equivalent explosion. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you had this bomb that at the right altitude would
Speaker 1: have a gunshot essentially go off inside the bomb, the
Speaker 1: two halves would come together, some neutrons would get released,
Speaker 1: the nuclear reaction would immediately follow. You would get an instantaneous,
Speaker 1: uncontrolled chain reaction. And this truly tremendous amount of energy
Speaker 1: released overhead of the city because again they thought that
Speaker 1: if they could release the energy in the air, they
Speaker 1: would cause way more damage. It's hard to get your
Speaker 1: mind wrapped around how much damage you're talking about. At
Speaker 1: ground zero, where Little Boy exploded, there was a zone
Speaker 1: of around like zero point thirty six square kilometers that
Speaker 1: was just totally devastated. That was total, total destruction. Buildings
Speaker 1: were leveled, Any buildings that were remain standing had such
Speaker 1: structural damage that they were unstable. It would be possible
Speaker 1: to have survived in that blast zone initially anyway, if
Speaker 1: you were in a truly strong, stable structure underground really,
Speaker 1: so like if you were at the bottom of a
Speaker 1: really solid parking deck that wasn't just completely crushed by
Speaker 1: the energy of this explosion, you could have survived the
Speaker 1: initial blast potentially. However, there would be other issues, like
Speaker 1: the intense amount of radiation would certainly cause problems that
Speaker 1: wouldn't be just the concussive force of this energy radiating outward.
Speaker 1: So yeah, pretty much at ground zero, you would have
Speaker 1: people who likely would not survive either with the structures.
Speaker 1: Beyond that, you would have a zone that would be
Speaker 1: called like a moderate damage zone that could extend out
Speaker 1: to a radius of around a mile or one point
Speaker 1: six kilometers from the point of detonation. Here you would
Speaker 1: still have substantial damage to structures. Some of them might
Speaker 1: remain standing, but a lot of them would be leveled.
Speaker 1: And depending upon where you were at the moment, and
Speaker 1: if you were in a stable structure, you might have
Speaker 1: made it through. You might have survived within that moderate zone,
Speaker 1: but you would likely be in need of urgent medical
Speaker 1: attention due to other things. Like you got to remember,
Speaker 1: this explosion, it would create a like a fire ball
Speaker 1: or a wall of fire really that would extend out
Speaker 1: very quickly, and it was intense enough to vaporize you
Speaker 1: if you were just outside. I mean, it was incredibly
Speaker 1: intense energy. Beyond the moderate zone, then you have the
Speaker 1: light damage zone. This could extend ten miles out from
Speaker 1: ground zero. And even in this light damage zone, you
Speaker 1: could have, you know, an increase in air pressure that
Speaker 1: would cause all the windows to shatter. From there, you know,
Speaker 1: you might have more or less superficial damage from the
Speaker 1: actual physical blast, but again you still have the issues
Speaker 1: with radiation, and obviously the damage would create other problems,
Speaker 1: like you would get fires, and it would wipe out utilities.
Speaker 1: Truly devastating weapon. I know I'm using that word a lot,
Speaker 1: but I can't think of a word that's more fitting. Now.
Speaker 1: It's actually really hard to estimate how many people died
Speaker 1: from the detonation of Little Boy. There's a pretty huge
Speaker 1: span of estimates here, Like on the low end, on
Speaker 1: the low end of estimates, it's around seventy thousand who
Speaker 1: died as a result of Little Boy exploding. On the
Speaker 1: high end, you're talking one hundred and forty thousand, twice
Speaker 1: as many. It's a really tough question to answer. For
Speaker 1: one thing. Japanese authorities didn't have a really good handle
Speaker 1: on how many people were living in these cities in
Speaker 1: the first place, so it's hard to say, you know,
Speaker 1: how many people were missing afterward. And then they're also
Speaker 1: tougher parts of the question, like do you just count
Speaker 1: the deaths that happened as a result of the initial
Speaker 1: blast or the fires that were produced as part of it,
Speaker 1: What about other hazards that were more long term, where
Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't initially from the explosion, maybe it
Speaker 1: was in the hours or days or weeks that followed it,
Speaker 1: or if you're talking about radiation, what about the months
Speaker 1: or years that followed. So it does make it very,
Speaker 1: very very hard to estimate the number of deaths, but
Speaker 1: clearly it was in the tens of thousands, and potentially
Speaker 1: well over one hundred thousand, just or Hiroshima. All right,
Speaker 1: we're going to take another quick break. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about fat Man and Nagasaki. Okay, So I
Speaker 1: had mentioned that Little Boy used enrich uranium as its
Speaker 1: fissionable material. Fatman used plutonium, and this meant that the
Speaker 1: method that Little Boy used to initiate that nuclear reaction,
Speaker 1: that gun method wouldn't have worked with fat Man. It
Speaker 1: would actually have caused the bomb to undergo spontaneous vision
Speaker 1: before the gun mechanism could even fire, which means the
Speaker 1: bomb would lose a lot of its energy before it
Speaker 1: could even explode. So again, you wanted to maximize the
Speaker 1: effectiveness of this weapon, or at least that's what the
Speaker 1: scientists and engineers wanted to do, because the whole purpose
Speaker 1: was to create a weapon so terrible that your opponent
Speaker 1: surrenders rather than risk being hit by it again. So
Speaker 1: the team had to come up with a different way
Speaker 1: to have the mechanism explode. So one of the problems
Speaker 1: that they faced was actually that they needed to use
Speaker 1: plutonium two thirty nine, but their reactors couldn't create pure
Speaker 1: plutonium two thirty nine flawlessly. They kept creating trace amounts
Speaker 1: of plutonium two forty and plutonium two forty that isotope
Speaker 1: is more prone to spontaneous fission than plutonium two thirty nine.
Speaker 1: So what they needed was they needed a way to
Speaker 1: have a subcritical mass of plutonium. They needed it so
Speaker 1: that it would not spontaneously undergo fission because the atoms
Speaker 1: would be too widely spaced apart so you needed to
Speaker 1: be subcritical until the moment when you needed to initiate
Speaker 1: the nuclear reaction. Then you needed to somehow make this
Speaker 1: subcritical mass become a critical mass. So their approach was
Speaker 1: to surround a subcritical plutonium core with essentially a globe
Speaker 1: of conventional explosives. So think of like, you know the
Speaker 1: Earth has an iron core. Well, this was a explosive
Speaker 1: globe with a plutonium core. And the conventional explosives were
Speaker 1: designed so that they would ignite simultaneously and they would
Speaker 1: explode and collectively create this tremendous pressure on the plutonium
Speaker 1: core in the center implosion. In other words, that would
Speaker 1: end up squeezing this plutonium core and increasing its density,
Speaker 1: and that is what would push the plutonium core from
Speaker 1: being subcritical to critical by essentially physically squishing all those
Speaker 1: atoms closer together. Now, your subcritical plutonium mass is a
Speaker 1: critical plutonium mass, and that means that once that nuclear
Speaker 1: fission reaction can start, you've got yourself your chain reaction. Now,
Speaker 1: this was a really efficient weapon. It was much larger
Speaker 1: than Little Boy because you needed way more conventional explosives. Right,
Speaker 1: the gun method only needed a relatively small amount of
Speaker 1: conventional explosives to bring the two halves of the uranium
Speaker 1: core together, but the fat Man bomb needed a lot
Speaker 1: more conventional explosives to create that concussive blast that would
Speaker 1: create the implosion. So the Fat Man was much larger
Speaker 1: than the Little Boy, but it needed less fissionable material.
Speaker 1: You know, the Little Boy needed sixty four kilograms of
Speaker 1: uranium two thirty five. Fat Man only needed six point
Speaker 1: four kilograms of plutonium. And while the Little Boy bomb
Speaker 1: produced a fifteen kiloton explosion, fat Man yielded a twenty
Speaker 1: one kiloton blast. So not only did it require less
Speaker 1: fissionable material, it had a larger energy output. Despite that
Speaker 1: more powerful blast, the estimates of casualties and not Kasaki
Speaker 1: are much lower than for Hiroshima. Still, we're still talking
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of people, so I don't want to
Speaker 1: suggest that it wasn't many. It was a lot, It
Speaker 1: just wasn't as many as what we saw in Hiroshima.
Speaker 1: So on the low end, we're talking around forty thousand
Speaker 1: people killed by this bomb. The high end puts that
Speaker 1: at seventy thousand. So if we add both of those
Speaker 1: events together, then the estimate of deaths ranges from one
Speaker 1: hundred ten thousand on the low end to two hundred
Speaker 1: ten thousand on the high end. The demonstration of such
Speaker 1: destructive power was more than effective enough to force Japan
Speaker 1: to surrender, because really, think about it, these were just
Speaker 1: two attacks, and they were just carried out by two bombers,
Speaker 1: and those two bombers killed more than one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: people at the low end of estimates. That is a
Speaker 1: truly grim kind of evidence to show that weapons capabilities.
Speaker 1: And it would mean that if you know, if you
Speaker 1: extended that and you thought, well, what if an entire
Speaker 1: fleet of bombers were to fly over a country carrying
Speaker 1: lots of those bombs, think of the devastation that would mean, Like,
Speaker 1: you have no choice but to surrender. That was the
Speaker 1: thought process, and it's exactly what did happen. But it
Speaker 1: also launched countless debates about whether or not the US
Speaker 1: was justified in using such incredibly powerful and deadly weapons
Speaker 1: in an effort to end the war. Like the argument was,
Speaker 1: if we don't use the weapon, the war continues, and
Speaker 1: who knows how many people die. If we do use
Speaker 1: the weapon, a whole bunch of people die, but the
Speaker 1: war ends. Like it. It's a really tough dilemma that
Speaker 1: I cannot easily dismiss. I mean, I certainly am anti bomb.
Speaker 1: I am not pro bomb even in the slightest But
Speaker 1: at the same time, it is very hard to figure
Speaker 1: out what's the right approach if the opponent is not
Speaker 1: already leaning towards surrender. And this conflict could go on indefinitely,
Speaker 1: which means that the number of casualties is impossible to calculate.
Speaker 1: It does get very hard. Oppenheimer himself was obviously deeply
Speaker 1: conflicted over all this. On the one hand, he and
Speaker 1: the team at the Manhattan Project had really cracked technical
Speaker 1: and scientific challenges that were standing in the way of
Speaker 1: creating an atomic or nuclear explosion. This was never a
Speaker 1: foregone conclusion. It was a really challenging thing to do,
Speaker 1: and they were able to achieve an incredible advance in
Speaker 1: science and technical ability. But on the other hand, the
Speaker 1: devastating effects of the bomb weighed heavily on him. He
Speaker 1: very much struggled with the knowledge of how many died
Speaker 1: as a result of the explosion of those bombs, and
Speaker 1: it led to him opposing nuclear development and proliferation. He
Speaker 1: foresaw an era of nuclear proliferation, in which you know,
Speaker 1: countries would be compelled to develop nuclear weapons in a
Speaker 1: way to act as a deterrent and protection against nuclear
Speaker 1: capable countries, and in fact, that is what happened. And
Speaker 1: for those of you who are around my age or
Speaker 1: older who remember the Cold War and the age of
Speaker 1: nuclear proliferation, there was just this sort of constant, ominous
Speaker 1: possibility of nuclear conflict that hung over us, that made
Speaker 1: its way into pop culture entertainment, and it was something
Speaker 1: that people would occasionally talk about and probably not talk
Speaker 1: about for too long because it was very disturbing. But
Speaker 1: that's exactly where we went. It's where Oppenheimer kind of
Speaker 1: assumed the world would go, in that you had to
Speaker 1: develop this weaponry in an effort to protect yourself against
Speaker 1: those who already had it at their disposal. And then
Speaker 1: you had this sort of concept of mutually assured destruction
Speaker 1: where a nuclear capable country could assure that it would
Speaker 1: be able to destroy another nuclear capable country if nuclear
Speaker 1: war were to happen, which theoretically would prevent nuclear war
Speaker 1: from ever happening, because to initiate nuclear war would mean
Speaker 1: you would know that you were you know you were
Speaker 1: committing your entire country to destruction. So not a cheerful
Speaker 1: way to approach conflict resolution obviously, and also not always
Speaker 1: an effective way. We saw something very similar happen with
Speaker 1: conventional war and leading up to World War One, and
Speaker 1: it didn't work because people's you know, these countries started
Speaker 1: to develop very powerful militaries with the thought being that
Speaker 1: that would dissuade any kind of war within the continent
Speaker 1: of Europe, and of course that that's not what happened.
Speaker 1: So very scary. Also, I think it's relevant today because
Speaker 1: not only do we still have to worry about nuclear weapons,
Speaker 1: but we also have been talking a lot about AI
Speaker 1: and how AI has become kind of another arms race,
Speaker 1: and that there's this concern that even if a country
Speaker 1: decides specifically to stay away from incorporating AI into military
Speaker 1: processes and equipment and strategies, some other country may not
Speaker 1: have that reluctance, And so if they do that, could
Speaker 1: they end up having a military advantage? And can a
Speaker 1: country afford to give other countries that military advantage, which
Speaker 1: then drives the need to you know, embrace AI everywhere.
Speaker 1: And we've already seen that that can be a really
Speaker 1: scary thing. So yeah, I think Oppenheimer is just as
Speaker 1: relevant today. Like I think that his story and the
Speaker 1: story of the Manhattan Project and the conflict within the
Speaker 1: teams at Manhattan Project, I think it's still very much
Speaker 1: relevant today. We're seeing the same sorts of discussions and
Speaker 1: debates play out in the AI space, and yeah, it's
Speaker 1: scary stuff. It's scary and it's not easy. Like again,
Speaker 1: I am personally anti like weapons that kill lots and
Speaker 1: lots of people, especially people who have no direct connection
Speaker 1: with conflict. I'm very much against that. But I also
Speaker 1: can't pretend like I have the solutions that would lead
Speaker 1: to everybody joining hands and singing songs unless it really
Speaker 1: is as simple as buying everybody a coke. I was
Speaker 1: taught in the seventies, and that's all it takes. I
Speaker 1: remain skeptical, but I have to admit I haven't tried
Speaker 1: it because I don't I don't live in that tax bracket.
Speaker 1: But if I ever do, I'll give it a shot.
Speaker 1: It's got to be better than developing massive weapons. I
Speaker 1: hope you were all well, I'm curious how many of
Speaker 1: you went to see either Barbie or Oppenheimer. I haven't
Speaker 1: made it out to either, not because I didn't want to,
Speaker 1: but because when I started to look for tickets, I
Speaker 1: couldn't find seats together in a place that wasn't way
Speaker 1: off to the side or way in the front. And
Speaker 1: I go to so few movies. I just can't. I
Speaker 1: can't put myself in a position where I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: a terrible crick in my neck trying to watch a film.
Speaker 1: So I'm waiting a little bit longer so i can
Speaker 1: see I am playing seeing both of them. By the way,
Speaker 1: I have a desire to see both of those movies.
Speaker 1: But if you did see them, I'm curious what you
Speaker 1: thought you can reach out to me. We still have
Speaker 1: a well, I guess now it's an x account. Used
Speaker 1: to be called Twitter, but Elon must change that to x.
Speaker 1: I'll talk about that more tomorrow. That's called tex stuff
Speaker 1: HSW If you want to send a message there, although
Speaker 1: I may not even see it because it's hard for
Speaker 1: me to log into that account. Now, you can just
Speaker 1: tweet at me or x at me whatever it's called now.
Speaker 1: My handle is John Strickland. That's j o En Strickland.
Speaker 1: But you can also find me on threads and if
Speaker 1: you're on Blue Sky. You can find me there too,
Speaker 1: John Strickland and all of those. And hope you're all well,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
Speaker 1: is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
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