Cold War Nuclear Testing

alex

Do not read this.
From Mr Tea's thread re: Badass Phenom..

582px-Comparative_nuclear_fireball_sizes.svg.png


Yea @ Mr Tea if it had been the original 100tn proposed idea, it would have released fallout totalling to 25% of the total amount of fallout emitted since the first detanation of nuclear weapons.

Excellent pictorial account of the Operation Crossroads
http://biturl.net/deamonds

This was the one I was on about re: moving the local people to an island nearby, where they could not sustain themselves..

 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Interesting (and sobering) topic for a thread.

The Castle Bravo H-bomb test in 1954 produced a yield about three times bigger than expected, due to an 'inert' isotope in the fuel mixture that turned out to be anything but. It also produced horrific amounts of fallout that poisoned islanders living nearby and the crew of a fishing boat (who, with horrible irony, were Japanese), one of whom later died.
 

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
It is a disgusting testament to the levels of cynicism our governments are capable of when they test a nuclear bomb in an area that results in the birth defects, illnesses and deaths of inhabitants nearby and they offer them money in compensation. The sooner that human society realizes that the value of money is not ultimate and infinite, the better - although I suspect this may not ever happen until we face a scenario where currency completely loses its value de facto.

Even more embarassing is the reasons given why such a procedure was necessary in this instance: to beat the Russians, of course! Swift was right - we are too often a race of yahoos in denial.
 

alex

Do not read this.
If you watch ‘Trinity & Beyond, The atomic bomb movie’ (providing you are able to persevere with Shatners voice for that long of course) there is footage from the High Altitude test’s that were detonated just off the coast of Hawaii. You actually see the night sky lit up by vivid aurora, an incredible sight. The Starfish Prime shot caused an artificial radiation belt around the earth, causing damage to many satellites. The shot also damaged communications for quite a while after the test.

If anyone has a decent link to watch it I would be grateful, I had to sit through 10 parts.
 
This is one of the most interesting articles i ever read (written by Freeman Dyson's son, no less). I couldn't remember where on the Internet it resided, but fortunately found it on my HD this morning and tracked back.

I'm also obsessed by this stuff, it would be my Mastermind specialist subject.

GEORGE DYSON
Strange Love
Or, how they learned to start worrying and love to hate the bomb.
http://makezine.com/images/07/strangelove.pdf

"The smallest tactically deployed nuclear weapon
was the Davy Crockett, with a warhead weighing
less than 60 pounds. It was not designed by Taylor.
“I tried to find out what was the smallest bomb you
could produce, and it was a lot smaller than Davy
Crockett, but it was never built in those years,” he
said. “It certainly has been since then. It was a full
implosion bomb that you could hold in one hand
that was about 6 inches in diameter."

and...

“I had a dream last night, about a new form of
nuclear weapon, and I’m not telling anybody what
this is, because I’m really scared of it,” Taylor told
me in 1999. “I have tried, I thought successfully, to
hold on to a vow of just not thinking about new types
of nuclear weapons any more. And what’s happened,
to put it simply, is that it has gone from my conscious
to my unconscious, and it’s emerging as a dream; I
cannot shut it off. I woke up at 2 a.m. and went back
to bed at about 6 o’clock, and wound up filling up a
page with notes. It makes me think of the prototypical
example of what directed energy can do, making
the transition from a pile of high explosive to a gun,
as the Chinese did, after they invented it. What I am
afraid is in the offing is people figuring out how to
make a transition that’s as spectacular as trying to
kill a deer at 200 yards with a pile of high explosive,
or by shooting at it.”
 
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alex

Do not read this.
Will reply properly to that when I get a sec, do you own a copy a copy of 100 suns HMGovt?
 

alex

Do not read this.
no worries, thanks so much for posting that article, a really nice read, read it walking home from work!

Jesus, they made one smaller than the Crockett! but not just a little bit smaller! I mean that really is fascinating, being able to concentrate that amount of energy into something so small is unreal.

Can't find any copies of Trinity & Beyond, only some off Ebay.. went into HMV and it seems they have stopped making it now.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128170775

nice vids & audio re: starfish prime

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_B-47_crash

that is fucking crazy
 
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alex

Do not read this.
Watched a documentary about the Cuban Missile Crisis last night, just wondering if anyone has any suggestions for any doc’s in the same vein, or about the CMC, as this one was forwarded by Tom Clancy and had the ‘Worlds Most Dangerous Weapons’ narrator, it was informative and interesting, but you can imagine what most of it was like.
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
bomb test imagery is utterly mindfucking, admit to mooching voyeurism on lunch with test blasts boiling and seeming to liquify (old footage stock adds to the sense of surrealism), wonder as horror

colours like argent ripping through blackout as reds, lilacs, mauves, yellows, gleam as textural shifts in air and water swell and lightning forks jettisoned jaggedly - add boats in atoll footage or less clear but equally beguiling Soviet tests leading to Tsar

addictive

horror is compounded by pilot statements in interviews or the bios of Oppenheimer or Sakharov, yet it’s specific pilot statements which ellicet the deepest quandaries - war as automaton, man as a mere cog, old tropes but not necessarily at these scales because of nuclear blackmail

This is one of the most interesting articles i ever read (written by Freeman Dyson's son, no less). I couldn't remember where on the Internet it resided, but fortunately found it on my HD this morning and tracked back.

I'm also obsessed by this stuff, it would be my Mastermind specialist subject.

GEORGE DYSON
Strange Love
Or, how they learned to start worrying and love to hate the bomb.
http://makezine.com/images/07/strangelove.pdf

"The smallest tactically deployed nuclear weapon
was the Davy Crockett, with a warhead weighing
less than 60 pounds. It was not designed by Taylor.
“I tried to find out what was the smallest bomb you
could produce, and it was a lot smaller than Davy
Crockett, but it was never built in those years,” he
said. “It certainly has been since then. It was a full
implosion bomb that you could hold in one hand
that was about 6 inches in diameter."

and...

“I had a dream last night, about a new form of
nuclear weapon, and I’m not telling anybody what
this is, because I’m really scared of it,” Taylor told
me in 1999. “I have tried, I thought successfully, to
hold on to a vow of just not thinking about new types
of nuclear weapons any more. And what’s happened,
to put it simply, is that it has gone from my conscious
to my unconscious, and it’s emerging as a dream; I
cannot shut it off. I woke up at 2 a.m. and went back
to bed at about 6 o’clock, and wound up filling up a
page with notes. It makes me think of the prototypical
example of what directed energy can do, making
the transition from a pile of high explosive to a gun,
as the Chinese did, after they invented it. What I am
afraid is in the offing is people figuring out how to
make a transition that’s as spectacular as trying to
kill a deer at 200 yards with a pile of high explosive,
or by shooting at it.”

not to get all CND, mechanisms of delivery as devices at scale with any number of small objects adapted from the mundane and ordinary to god knows what, all come back into view with the war in Ukraine

makes you wonder wtf is available today
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
If, hypothetically, a Davy Crockett got dropped on Gus in Brooklyn, are you in range @Leo ?


slightly larger yield, to be sure, thoroughness, closure etc


bit of collateral damage, maybe Red Scare with a bit of luck, a hard reset
 
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