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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums61 years ago today: Those Who Witnessed Castle Bravo Looked Into Armageddon
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/those-who-witnessed-castle-bravo-looked-into-armageddon-fa7610578413The flash from the nuclear explosion was overwhelming, even by the standards of nuclear explosions. Men saw their bones appear as shadows through their living flesh. Streams of blinding light shone through the smallest cracks and pinholes in secured doors and hatches.
Bravos thermal radiation was far more intense than expected. More than 30 miles away from Ground Zero on Bikini Atoll, sailors on board Navy ships said the heat was like having a blowtorch applied to their bodies.
The shock wave destroyed buildings supposedly outside of the calculated damage zone. It nearly knocked observation aircraft out of the sky, and caused some men inadvertently trapped in a forward observation bunker to wonder if the explosion ripped their concrete and steel shelter from its foundations and flung it into the sea.
longship
(40,416 posts)The first, The Making of the Atomic Bomb is a great telling of history focused on the A-bomb and on World War II development. It won the Pulitzer Prize. Well deserved.
His sequel book, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb is not as good of a narrative as is his previous book, but it has no less impact.
One of the important stories in the book is of the Castle Bravo test, which ran away by three times over expectations -- instead of 5 Megatons, it was 15 Megatons -- and exposed many to huge radiation exposure, including Japanese fishermen who happened to be fishing downwind, and many observers who were assumed were safe.
The physicists missed an important cross section, atoms that would fuse given enough energy, thus adding to the weapon's calculated energy release. They missed by a factor of three. And people died.
Rhodes's books are awesome. Highly recommended.
R&K
hatrack
(59,587 posts)Fascinating. A catalog of fuckups major and minor and a recitation of just how lucky we've been so far.
Couldn't agree more re. Rhodes' books - they're both fantastic, and the first is probably the best book on the history of science I've ever read.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)It had a chapter on the political battles surrounding the thermonuclear bomb, Teller was something of a whack job IMO...
I'll see if my library has Rhodes' books or can order them for me, thanks, I'm always interested in stuff like that.
hatrack
(59,587 posts)Rhodes' phrase - wish I'd thought of it.
longship
(40,416 posts)The first one is fucking wonderful, The Making of the Atomic Bomb. The second, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb is a darker and a much more tangled narrative, with much more politics. Both have lots of science. And as to the latter narrative, Teller was a fucking jerk. His early designed H-bombs apparently did not work. But he self-promoted himself as the father of the H-bomb, possibly and mainly because he never met a nuclear bomb he did not love.
Rhodes books are essential history, especially the first.
Regards.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)I picked it up at a thrift store because I remembered seeing Halberstam on TV quite a bit, I think on the News Hour or perhaps Sabbath gasbag shows and he always seemed level headed and in command of the facts.
There were a lot of things going on in the fifties that still resonate today, we tend to think of it as kind of a boring and staid time but there were some heavy undercurrents in American culture then.
longship
(40,416 posts)And born in the 40's.
I remember Murrow and Joe McCarthy. And Walter Cronkite hosting The Twentieth Century. And Howdy Doody. And Sputnik. I was a teen in 1961 when JFK took office. I delivered the Detroit News on my bicycle when JFK was assassinated.
History is important, as George Satanyana once said.
And good books are essential.
Best regards.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)longship
(40,416 posts)Let alone Clarabell (AKA Bob Keeshan, AKA Captain Kangaroo).
And if folks don't know that one, I know not to quiz them on Phineas T. Bluster.
(Hmmm! Kinda looks like...
http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/Hc5QSJz8P8Mejc.ZFEqS6Q--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9aW5zZXQ7aD00MDc7cT04NTt3PTUxMg--/
Naw!!)
Maybe more like Dilly Dally.
As always, my friend.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Definitely a closer match than Dilly Dally..
Haven't thought about those two in more than fifty years..
hatrack
(59,587 posts)Big Captain fan as a kid, but born after Howdy Doody.
The Blue Flower
(5,442 posts)The one and only Andy Devine.
longship
(40,416 posts)They showed jungle adventures, like Ramar of the Jungle, although that might have been Andy's Gang, not Smilin' Ed. My memory fades of that time. However, I do remember Froggy plunking his magic twanger and convincing Smilin' Ed to cut off the sleeves of his shirt, to an audience full of kids delight. Plus, there was Buster Brown shoes, with his dog Tige.
A very long time ago.
Thankfully Froggie had a revival with the Ghoul, although not to his advantage:
Pshaw! The 70's late night local horror film programs.
I'm sorry, Parma, OH.
Hi-ya, hi-ya, hi-ya, kiddies!
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Ya know, that's one thing I miss is the late night Saturday horror movie hosts.
I'll chalk it up to Bush and all the "super-Christy" types trying to get us on our knees.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Bugenhagen
(151 posts)check out The Firecracker Boys by Dan O'Neil
http://www.amazon.com/The-Firecracker-Boys-Environmental-Movement/dp/B00EFCW1GA
It describes the infamous Project Chariot, Teller's plan to create a deep water harbor in northern Alaska using nuclear bombs, and the heroic people to stopped him. It is a great read.
Hekate
(90,686 posts)pa28
(6,145 posts)I'll have to spend some quality time reading through in detail. Highly recommended.
hatrack
(59,587 posts)longship
(40,416 posts)It's when mixed with experimental stuff where things get tangled.
But since both inform the other, uncertainties in either can multiply. That's why experiments are done, to observe the limits.
The Castle Bravo test went well beyond projected limits, by a factor of three. It was not a good test. And the equations missed some rather important fusion cross-sections. The result is, as Richard Rhodes might have said, Castle Bravo went off like gangbusters. And it did. And people died.
TeamPooka
(24,226 posts)Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)longship
(40,416 posts)The Castle Bravo device:
They called it the shrimp.
Because this was the first H-bomb, the Mike device, more than a bit bigger:
And here was the Mike device going off:
But here was the shrimp, Castle Bravo, the largest bomb ever tested by the USA, at 7.5 times more powerful than Mike. BTW, it scared the shit out of everybody who witnessed it, and killed more than a few of them who wandered into the area.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Hissyspit
(45,788 posts)Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)WheelWalker
(8,955 posts)FairWinds
(1,717 posts)who sent it to the Vets For Peace Golden Rule Project where I am a volunteer.
Mr. Osborn is now is his 80's and lives in Washington State.
Thousands of Atomic Vets and Marshall Islanders were
experimented upon with the nuclear tests. They were quite deliberately
moved in close to the blasts (or not evacuated adequately) to see what would happen to them.
See also the "too scary for Public TV" documentary "Nuclear Savage."
I Have Seen the Dragon
I have seen the Dragon
Through clenched lids and arms pressed tight.
I have felt its hot breath on my back
And listened to the rumble of its voice.
I have looked upon its breath,
Glowing Amethyst, red and purple,
Climbing toward the stratosphere
To deposit its venom downwind.
I have waited in fear as my gums began to bleed
And my hair came out in clumps.
I breathed a prayer of thanks
As I began to heal.
After fifty years, our ranks are thin,
We who have seen the Dragon and survived.
Those who have died or are sickened still,
Their numbers are legion.
All we can hope for, work for, pray for,
Is that no madman will ever be allowed
To unleash the Dragon again.
For its legacy to all is death, disease and decay.
© Stephen M. Osborn
2 November 2006
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)And following seas to you..
Hekate
(90,686 posts)and thank you for the work you do with the VFP. during the BushCheney years I volunteered with Chapter 54, who developed and still present Arlington West.
The Wizard
(12,545 posts)muriel_volestrangler
(101,316 posts)Dropped from a plane.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba
It could have been 100 MT, but that would have destroyed the plane delivering it and caused too much fallout, so they used some lead in place of U-238 (as it was, "when detonation occurred, the Tu-95V fell one kilometre from its previous altitude due to the shock wave of the bomb" .
Also notable for an "oops, that did more than we expected" moment - Starfish Prime, detonated 250 miles up.
...
While some of the energetic beta particles followed the Earth's magnetic field and illuminated the sky, other high-energy electrons became trapped and formed radiation belts around the earth. There was much uncertainty and debate[who?] about the composition, magnitude and potential adverse effects from this trapped radiation after the detonation. The weaponeers became quite worried when three satellites in low earth orbit were disabled. These man-made radiation belts eventually crippled one-third of all satellites in low earth orbit. Seven satellites failed over the months following the test as radiation damaged their solar arrays or electronics, including the first commercial relay communication satellite, Telstar.[11][12][13] Detectors on Telstar, TRAAC, Injun, and Ariel 1 were used to measure distribution of the radiation produced by the tests.[14]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime
A nuclear explosion, as seen from a city in the country that set the damn thing off.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)Thermonuclear weapons work by setting off a fission nuclear bomb next to some lithium. A fission bomb is like the ones we dropped on Japan. The neutrons and photons spewing out of the fission reactions smack into the lithium, and turn it into tritium, a kind of hydrogen. The heat and pressure from the fission bomb causes this tritium to fuse into helium, and you now get a fusion nuclear weapon. And a much, much bigger explosion. (It's much easier to fuse tritium than "vanilla" hydrogen)
Scientists thought only Lithium-6 would undergo this reaction. They believed Lithium-7, the far more common isotope, could withstand the bombardment. So they worked for a very long time to enrich the Li-6 in the Castle Bravo device to be about 50% Li-6 and 50% Li-7.
Turns out Li-7 couldn't withstand the bombardment. So they got twice as much tritium, which caused twice as much fusion, and an explosion twice the expected size.
phantom power
(25,966 posts)Nobody talks much about nukes these days. Not like in the 70s and 80s. People need to remember we still have these things, and what they can do.
yuiyoshida
(41,831 posts)cool!
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)How nature points out the folly of men.