Yamaguchi Tsutomu was one of the many people in Hiroshima the day it got bombed. He survived, and then went home... To Nagasaki. Just in time to get nuked again. And, again, he lived. He died in 2010. So if you think you're having a bad week, just remind yourself that you haven't been nuked once, let alone twice.
There was also an incident in Chad during the 70's, where a nuclear round was detonated, and Rhodesian troops walked into the area. My friend who was in charge of those troops, passed away last year.
"On the Planet Earth, man had always considered himself more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much; the wheel, New York, wars, and so on - Whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water, having a good time. Conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were more intelligent than Man...for precisely the same reasons." So true, Doug...So true.
I live near Oak Ridge. Born and raised in Tennessee. My grandfather was in the war and then worked with Oak Ridge after. Not as a scientist but a machinist. I guess that’s what sparked my interest in nuclear history, and I began buying geiger counters and collecting radioactive sources when I was about 20. It’s amazing the kind of stuff you can find.
In the sci-fi TV show Stargate SG-1 there is an episode (S05E21 - Meridian) where an alien civilization is building a weapon akin to our nuclear bombs, but with much higher destructive power. In that episode they say they of course don't want to use the weapon, but merely use it as a deterrent against further aggression from their enemies. The show's protagonist, in turn, says some of the most memorable and truthful words about nuclear weapons: "A weapon of mass destruction can only be used for one thing. Now, you might think it will ensure peace and freedom, but I guarantee you it'll never have the effect you're hoping for until you use it, at least once." It illustrates perfectly why, as terrible as the bombings of Japan were, they served to ensure the world's relative peace ever since then. Minor conflicts aside, no war on a global scale has ever happened again since then. Nukes are a terrible thing, but they serve their purpose as a threat of mutually assured destruction. They are possibly the only reason the Cold War didn't escalate into World War 3, and they are possibly the only reason the west has been free of major conflict for the past 75 years.
They did then it created a chain reaction with normal naqaudah threatening to destroy the entire planet and to clinch it all they needed another bomb to save the planet
Yesss but... I think that Marshal plan, the European project, the NATO and the ONU might have something to say about your "the only reason"😂 Personally I think that those agreements did a much better job to keep the peace than the nuclear bombs. Also because it avoided the escalation of the cold war but was also one of the main reason the cold war happened 🙄
@@emanuelescarsella3124 I did say 'possibly'. Of course NATO and all the other stuff contributed, but tensions ran pretty high during the cold war and the nukes definitely did their part to make both sides think twice about their possible breach of agreements overall.
One of the LIGOs is where I live, my ex-husband worked on the project for about 18 months, baking out the long tunnels so they had a vacuum and the laser would shoot straight.
The people at CERN should stop what they're doing don't look for the God particle only bad things can happen when you look for things you don't understand
6:37 Excellent choice of a background photo for Colorado. That is Colorado National Monument and you can find Uranium Ore on the eastern side of the Monument. Actually it’s from the same geological formation that the Uranium for the Manhattan Project was mined. It was milled just down the road at the Mill in Grand Junction. I collected Carnotite (Uranium Ore) just outside of the area years ago when we lived there. Actually the Radon level in the house we lived in was twice the EPA safe limit we found out during our closing inspection. Glad we moved to East TN where’s it’s safe… oh wait Oak Ridge (Y-12) is just down the road… great…
Fun fact: when they were setting up the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge for electromagnetic separation they needed a lot of copper wire for the electromagnets, only to discover that, it being wartime, copper was in very short supply. Until someone realized that, hey, silver works almost as well, and we've got all that bullion lying around.... Which led to the Under Secretary of the Treasury asking a question that has probably never been asked before or since: "Six thousand tons of silver? How much is that in troy ounces?" In the end, 13,300 metric tons of silver was used, worth over a billion dollars in 1940s money. The last of it wasn't returned until 1970; they had been so careful with it that less than one pound had been lost.
Silver works better than copper Though silver wire is roughly 7 percent more conductive than a copper wire of the same length, silver is a significantly rarer metal than copper. ... Silver wire, however, is generally reserved for more sensitive systems and specialty electronics where high conductivity over a small distance is prioritized.
@@user-hr8pz6lh5w Not on a per-mass basis. Yes, silver is a better conductor (although it's more like 5.7 percent, 15.87 nΩ·m vs. 16.78 nΩ·m), meaning you can make a wire of the same resistance 5.7% longer, which gets you more loops, which means a higher magnetic flux. But silver is also about 17% more dense than copper, so you can make less wire out of one kg of silver. In the case of Y-12 I mentioned, they were substituting silver for copper at a ratio of 11/10.
Even more fun. Is that more time has passed since we went to the moon than the interval between the first commercial airplane flight and the first human space flight.
Simon, this is probably one of your best videos ever. It's controversial due to the choices made to build the bomb, and at the same time it had to be a difficult choice to use it. You spoke to both views and I appreciate that as an American. It's sometimes hard to believe that humanity can do what they did in the first 45 years of the last century. I think about an idea that the English astrophysicist Brian Cox said that we have a duty to preserve life as we are the only life in this Galaxy. I, as a veteran, hope we find a better way.
@@davidhartenstine190 Unfortunately that has yet to be proven, but a very high possibility. There is no possible way we are the only ones out there. Most likely in this system, but not in this galaxy.
My grandfather worked at Hanford during the war. He worked stoking a coal boiler for winter heat during the winter. During the spring and summer he returned to his farm in Arkansas to put in a crop of corn.
The quote is actually "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds". (Not trying to be a grammar nazi! lol. I had to write a paper on it many years ago, and I guess it stuck). Simon repeats it at 12:56, & Oppenheimer at 13:00 in the video. Either way, it is a memorable quote. The blast had a pretty deep affect on the guys that built it. Richard Feynman mentioned that some time later he was back in New York City and noticed all of the engineering and construction marvels that were going on there in building bridges, infrastructure, skyscrapers, etc. Things that earlier would have amazed even him. But after being at the Trinity test, it hit him as something like "Why? Why bother with all of this effort? We can destroy it all in a few milliseconds now". That must be some pretty heady stuff spending years, and having great success, on the project you were asked to do. Then shortly after, asking yourself "what have we done?" That's gotta be rough!
@@Terri_MacKay When he realized what he had helped create? WTF? I guess during planning and execution of the Mahattan project, he thought the bomb was just going to be a prop for a movie set. His entire quote was a last ditch effort by a man aware of his mortality to rectify his image and legacy.
@@holywater8897 : Oppenheimer could be confident he would not be blamed if the Uranium half of the project didn't work - Groves later remarked he, not Oppenheimer, would be on the hook if that was a fizzer. The plutonium device was scientifically much more dodgy and needed testing. So yes, it might well have been an expensive throwaway prop.
@@Terri_MacKay : There was a betting pool going for the Trinity yield: most were way, way below the actual 21kT result, and only Teller had the temerity to bet on a higher yield (45kT in his case). So horror, yes, mixed with a strutting pride, but Oppenheimer's brother Frank said that both had the same reaction in the first instant: simply that "It worked!"
first ever fully arc welded ships and all the troubles that come with new tech. half of them fell apart sitting empty in the docks...they didnt knew what is going on.
One member of the German high command (Speer?) remarked, upon hearing that we could build a Liberty ship in a week, that they had lost the war. They'd never be able to sink so many ships. I think it was at a Kaiser shipyard that they were able to assemble one in a single day. It was all pre-fab, though. More of a stunt than practical. But Ford's Willow Run bomber plant could produce a bomber every hour, the record being one every 48 minutes. Note: that was a plane ready to fly left the plant at that rate, the individual planes took days to build, but there were so many in production at once.
@@deadfreightwest5956 And now I'm worried about countries with enough industrial power that can build a fleet of aircraft carriers in the time USA can build a torpedo
You can visit Trinity on only two days in a year: April 1st and Oct 1st. I visited the site several years ago and was -- excuse the phrasing -- blown away by the history that was present there. Seeing the container that held the bomb was humbling. Last year, I visited Hiroshima and was equally touched. Truly, the Manhattan Project was a massively significant part of not just US history, but in world history.
I've been to Hiroshima and it is quite possibly the most humbling place to visit in the World. Going to all the memorials and museums, you really learn how the general Japanese people were just caught totally off guard and the terrible suffering that ensued. The story that sticks with me the most was seeing a picture of a nuclear shadow of someone who was sitting on the bank steps waiting for the bank to open at 8am, but it never did.
@@WanderingWriter It's on an active military base and there's still a lot of (not life-threatening) radiation around. I presume they limit it to ensure both the safety of the site and the visitors alike.
If you mean the giant steel container (Nicked named "Jumbo") it was supposed to contain the gadget, to contain the plutonium in case a nuclear reaction did not occur. The plutonium was that precious. So it was only designed to contain the chemical explosives. By the time the test occured they were confident enough that it would work they didn't use the container. But it was too thick to cut up easily, so they just left it. Hence why it has survived.
Sir James Chadwick, CH, FRS (20 October 1891 - 24 July 1974) was a British physicist who was awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the neutron in 1932. In 1941, he wrote the final draft of the MAUD Report, which inspired the U.S. government to begin serious atom bomb research efforts. He was the head of the British team that worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. He was knighted in Britain in 1945 for his achievements in physics.
I love this series. Infographics, Geographics, and now Megaprojects....I love these videos! Keep them coming. There is so much to talk about in the world.
I believe there was an incredibly important side effect of those two bombs that is totally overlooked, even today. If the world had not seen the effects of these two first gen bombs on a city, then nuclear war between America and USSR would have been much more likely.
Yep, think you're correct there. As far as I know, the scientists of the time even petitioned to 'demonstrate' the effects to the Japanese beforehand, which was shotdown. Later after the war, the 1st demo bombs were exploded at Bikini Atol in front of 40thousand ppl....I'm not sure it was 'that' impressive. (My father was a young seaman who witnessed this, wasn't that impressed, actually).... So actually using them on an enemy showed we would 'use the big stick' not just feint with it...
The threat of nuclear war and its total devastation, quite possibly makes the atomic bomb one of the greatest life saving inventions of the 20th century.
Ussr just don't get a f'uck about people. Soviets killed over 40 mln people without any war , just concentration camps and starvation. If stalin had a plane or rocket to nuke usa - 1000% guarantee
Asking Simon Whistler for directions on the street - “First you need to go 300 yards (274 metres) south, then turn 90 degrees left, until you see a sign 3feet (91.4 cm) high...”
@Peace I didnt know that. The Romans took a good idea then and implemented it very well. The North Africans may have conceived it but the Roman Empire was second to none on the scale of their civil engineering projects. I am sure that the tax structure and therefore the money to fund these generational projects was the key to that being possible.
@Peace You don't sound very peaceful Mr. Peace. I am an American and we certainly did nothing to erase your history. Islam is what is holding back North Africa. It's a barbaric political and societal belief system that is incompatible with human rights, personal liberty, secular governance, and modern civil progress. Its the most regressive force on the planet which is why you remain the world's armpit. Good luck with indoor plumbing and feeding your people. You'll need it. If you need us we will be landing on Mars.
Little-known fact: Klaus had a younger brother who was also a physicist. However, he stayed at home because when it came to the UK, Germany could not give two Fuchs. Thanks, I'll be here all week.
At this point in my youtube life simon has taken over.. ur my first vid of the day and my last vid at night.. just dont tell the missus lol.. the multiple channels are awsome!
My goodness I keep find new channels that you put on, and they are all relevant and tasteful, I love that it is fact based, you don’t push a point of view, and it’s very entertaining.
Trainfan1055 I once saw a fascinating video on the Irish lighthouse systems from around 1880-1905 (very rough dates here). The engineering & plain muscle power behind them was really impressive.
My father survived the atomic bomb at Nagasaki. After the bomb, he joined the medical rescue team headed by Dr. Nagai to treat the injured people. He described the injury which were so different than the traditional bombing injury. He lived to 2007 at the age of 83. But the experience of that fateful day, August, 9th, 1945 and aftermath remained with him for his whole life.
If you're ever in Tucson Arizona, it's home to the last of the Titan II missile silos. Worth going to see. A standing testament to "Peace Through Deterrence" and very sobering.
"Now it can be told: The story of the Manhattan project" by General Leslie Groves is a fascinating read. It details the whole project from the point of the commanding general of the project and is more than worth the read.
My Dad worked in a steel mill where parts of the project was done. He was on the crew that buried a chunk of plutonium under a mill. It’s now one of the many superfund sites spread over the region. (A superfund site is a highly toxic chemical polluted area that will cost millions to clear up)
I'd recommend that anyone interested reads Richard Rhodes seminal work"The making of the Atomic Bomb". 838 pages of near forensic level investigation on the Manhattan project
Fantastic book. Dan Carlin has a couple of excellent podcasts about the bomb as well. The episodes are called The Destroyer of Worlds and Logical Insanity. Highly recommended.
Great suggestion. Also, I'd like to recommend "Working on the Bomb, An Oral History of WWII Hanford" by S. L. Sanger. Having the recollections of those who worked there is a fascinating insight. The sheer scale of the construction project initially, then the operations of various facilities (as one person said of the reactors, "there was no operating manual") is breathtaking.
In the summer of 1945 my dad had just been released from the Brooklyn Naval Hospital having his face rebuilt after an encounter with a grenade in Italy. He was shipped to San Diego where he boarded a destroyer bound for Tokyo Bay. The mission: Sweep the mines out of the bay in preparation for the Japanese land invasion. Every man on that ship was told it was a suicide mission and they shouldn’t expect to return home. The atomic bombs fell while the ship was in route, and Japan surrendered prior to arrival. My dad lived to get back home and start a new life, and I am literally alive today because of the Manhattan Project and Truman’s decision.
Do you think you could do a video on the Nevada-Class Battleships as both ships had interesting careers. One of which USS Nevada tried to escape Pearl Harbor, fought at D-Day , Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, and survived 2 atomic bombs. I would say that's a mega ship. Great work on theses videos, love them
Fun fact: After Hanford got under way, a party of British physicists showed up out of the blue and asked to tour the facility. They were turned away. One of them was Klaus Fuchs. It's no wonder that the US was reluctant after the war to share nuclear technology (especially bomb production) with Britain. British academia was so rife with communists and Soviet sympathizers that sharing such info would have the same effect as airmailing all of it to Moscow.
One of the conditions that the US had, was for Great Britain to share all of their technology, which they gladly did. Churchill even stood up naked and sopping wet from a bath tub at the White House stating " Britain has nothing to hide from the US". So even though US/GB relations were on par with each others goals, that is not not to say that there was some suspicion and intrigue by both parties.
I have no doubt given US foreign policy since WW II, that if other nations had not acquired nukes that the US would have invaded even more countries in the name of "freedom"
Wow, I have lived my entire life in Richland the town created for Hanford workers and I had never heard that story. Back 10 years or so I toured the site and had a close up look at the B reactor. Now it’s part of a National Park with Las Alamos and Oak Ridge. I am so proud to be a Bomber (my mascot in high school was a bomb and a mushroom cloud) for my kids it’s been changed to the bomber plane named Days Pay. Because it was built with funds from all the employees donating one days pay. My grandmother talked about how no one asked what anyone’s dad did for work and 95% had no clue what they were doing, just said yes sir and got to work. Also if you did not work at the actual Hanford site you could not live inside the city of Richland. One of my grandfathers was a bus driver for the schools, he was forced to live in West Richland- across the river from the Army town.
Simon, I like that you stick to business. No sob side stories. No sneaky agendas. No grueling street scenes leading to the subject. Nope. Simon jumps right in.
The massive construction necessary to build Y-12, X-10, & K-25 uranium enrichment plants in Oak Ridge, TN was incredible. And that doesn’t included constructing a city for 125,000 - complete with fencing & security stations. I was born in and grew up in this artificial city.
There's also the fact that the vast majority of people working there had no idea what they were doing as the process was split into individual steps that could be done without any need for an overview of what was happening in total. I've read one person describing their job there as "I watch this gauge. When it reaches a certain value, I press this button"
Simon, I'd really like to see a Mega Projects episode on the construction of the Roman Aqueducts. Perhaps to include the development of plumbing and water delivery. Water systems in general are fascinating.
We saw a film about Oppenheimer at school (back in the 60s). When he quoted the bhagavad gita (I have become death...) it made me cry and I have never forgotten it.
Well...then you might like to know that In late 1940 or early 1941, Oppenheimer bought a new Cadillac which he and his wife nicknamed, “Bombsight.” Oppenheimer didn't believe the first reports of fission. However, once an experiment was performed at the Radiation Laboratory that showed fission, it took him less than 15 minutes to figure out where his original hypothesis and calculations for fission not working were wrong. A day later, Phillip Morrison (then a graduate student) walked in to Oppenheimer's office and found a crude drawing of an atomic bomb on his blackboard. Yep...Oppenheimer was all about philosophical musings about the bomb...
Of the many unusual aspects of the Manhattan Project, one of them is that a great number of the academic and engineering staff working on the project had received portions of their education in Germany. Also, the Enola Gay was on display at Chanute AFB for many years after WW2. Many questioned if it was the Enola Gay, or if the name had been painted on in homage, so Chanute AFB had the aircraft checked out and it was found, by my Dad, that the air frame serial number, and a few other serial numbers, matched they of the Enola Gay. My Dad was an instructor at Chanute and one of the incredible things of that base was that to maintain the displayed aircraft in near perfect condition many of them were used for basic education classes.
''We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ''Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'' Words that then, as now, shall haunt humanity throughout history.
Millennial Chicken I can’t imagine what went through their heads when they 1st saw the explosion. I’m sure at least a few of them thought that, perhaps in hindsight, it wasn’t the wisest of things to do.
@@susanmaggiora4800 no. scientists this curious are happy it works, and eager to "push the line" a bit further. some do think of moral implications, but i think propaganda and money takes over...furthermore, the push to use this technology as a weapon, NOT as a safe and useful purpose, like efficient, farly safe and low cost power, says it all....
Little Wol Well,Oppenheimer certainly didn’t feel that way. I imagine 2 others gelt similarly, since I only said a FEW. And if you think nuclear power is ‘fairly’ safe, perhaps we could store the spent rods in your backyard?
@@susanmaggiora4800 Richard Feynman (who was a fairly junior scientist at the time) wrote about it in 'Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman?'. Seeing the test he was basically just pleased their project had worked, but after the bombings he became haunted by it, for some years beliving a global nuclear war to be inevitable.
Well, if you mean "Words that then, in 1957..." In 1945, his brother Frank, also a physicist, said that they looked at each other and both said, "It worked!!" Oppenheimer was pretty sanguine about the bomb until Teller began pushing his Super so hard. By 1957 Robert had lost his security clearance and most of his influence in government circles. It stands to reason he was pretty depressed.
My Uncle has a sort of connection to this and the story I am to tell you will explain what I mean. Years ago when I was a kid, I wanted to stay with my Uncle Paul. My Uncle's full name was Paul Abner Dunkel and he was a veteran of WW2, you see he told me this story when we were watching something on TV I think he needed to say it. You see he was coming back home from the European theater on a troopship when over the loudspeaker came the announcement that the US has bombed Japan and Japan has surrendered the war was over, and he along with everyone else cheered. Sometime later he had gone to the movies and he was watching the newsreels where they showed after the bombings and this is what he said, "I wish I never would have cheered." That was the first time I think I ever saw him cry. He did not talk much about the war and when he did though it was like he was reliving it. I was lucky to have had the opportunity to have the few stories I got. WW2 was not a set of facts in a history book or text book, it was real and was named Us Army Corporal Paul A. Dunkel.
I've been to Hiroshima 11 years ago. It is really weird, I visited many other cities in Japan, but Hiroshima is very different. Most houses are grey. Everything is weirdly uniform, compared to other cities. Not all houses are the same, no, but they feel the same in a way. The most beautiful part of the city is the peace park. It's a small island in a river. There is a T-shaped bridge that leads over the river and to the island. It's tha AO-Bridge and it was the aim of the bomb, a T in a river is as good as a cross on a map. But the bridge didn't crumble under the blast, only in 1984 (could be of by 1 or 2 years) the bridge had to be renewed, before it still worked fine. On the side towards the city centre you find the A-Dome, a world heritage. It was a merchant hall, but back in the 40ies one of the only stone buildings in the area. All the houses were wooden, they were gone in the blast. The A-Dome lost it's roof, but the building still stands. You are not allowed to go too close, but you can see, how the structure of the stone changed. When you go over the bridge to the island, you find the peace bell and many different memorials. The one for all the children, who died thanks to the bomb and thanks to the radiation after. There are glass cases with thousands, maybe millions of cranes, send from primary schools and kindergarten from all over Japan. You find cranes on strings at many of the memorials. There is one in the middle, that looks like a huge hill, under it are the ashes of the people...a mass grave. And something, which was a bit creepy. When I visited, there were a group of young children with their teacher. when they walked over the bridge, they were like you expect kids to be, chatty, laughing. But when they reached the park, they all became quiet. After I left the park, I did check out some stores and had some food, but then head back to my friend's place. I could have stayed longer, but I didn't want to stay longer in this city. I am glad, I went, if you are in Japan and have the time, you should go and see the result of the atomic bomb yourself.
I went to Hiroshima a year ago and it was pretty much as you described. However, I thought it was a vibrant, beautiful city and found some of the best food on my trip there. Also, Miyajima which is nearby is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. I loved the place and want to go back some day.
I never understood why the Japanese couldn't have been offered some sort of cessation of hostilities agreement as the North Koreans were offered and accepted eight years later.
Yep. At that point in time, the Japanese public still believed that the emperor had divine providence and the war could be won even if they lost several battles. It was only a few high-level military officials who really knew how poor their chances actually were, but they were already far too deep into the conflict and could not pull back. The US made the decision for indiscriminate bombing with such immense destructive weapons as a means to overthrow the public's perception toward their leadership and provide the emperor with a justified opportunity to surrender. The choice to drop nuclear weapons on Japan, while certainly still a war crime by modern standards, was a masterclass in psychology and politics.
17:02, Japan surrendered on September 2nd 1945 not December 2nd. The Japanese emperor announced the surrender on August 15th but it was signed on September 2nd.
@@megaprojects9649 Travelling Wave Reactor is a very interesting topic. It uses U-238 for fission. So we can skip enriching process. We can even use nuclear waste to produce energy. If once we fill the reactor with fuel, reaction will take 30-40 yrs to complete. It's a promising Technology. Please cover this in Ur channel.
Luckily Hirohito's advisor and Generals helped to convince him to surrender. He was still under the assumption, for some stupid reason, that they would fight to the death and the populace would've listened. We probably wouldn't have gone straight to a decapitation strike in Round 2, but if a couple more bombs on military complexes/ports didn't convince them, Tokyo probably wouldn't have survived Round 3. Hell if we had dropped 2 or 3 more bombs on Japan, the death count (direct and indirect) would've been pushing 500,000 at least.
@@Drummin003 I think the US was running out of cities to flatten at this stage. Logic and intelligence indicated more bombs would be needed. If your enemy has sworn to fight to the last woman and child then you want to eliminate all of them in a timely and efficient manner. Okinawa involved hundreds of thousands of dead, an invasion of the home islands was expected to be many times more deadly.
Although St. Louis is most known for the gateway arch and perhaps the Cardinals, the most famous mega project in the city is the 19th century Eads Bridge, the first bridge across the Mississippi anywhere, the first bridge to be built mostly of steel, of such high quality Andrew Carnegie grumbled loudly, and one of the first to use caissons to build the underwater piers. It continues to carry rail, vehicular, and foot traffic to this day, and has outlasted several newer bridges. Oh, and the chief engineer was a riverboat pilot.
I have stayed on the island of Tinian, Northern Mariana Islands my whole life, The island was used to assemble the two atom bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on the northern part of the island of Tinian you could still drive on the runways that were used during the war the runway that Enola gay departed from , many history sites still remain. I really hope you all get to see it.
Nagasaki was a major military town. It also had a ship yard in the southwest part of the city for building military ships. There was also the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works. Shimoshima Island just south of Nahasaki was a major storage depot and embarkation point for troop ships. It was a major target
You should cover the former Secretary of State, Henry L. Stimson on your Biographics channel. The story of his argument against the use of the nuclear weapons on Japan should not be forgotten.. the part about him striking Kyoto from the list still tugs at my heart strings.
One of the least known WWII mega projects was proximity fuses for artillery and anti aircraft shells. They did not have transistors, but figured out how to put a tube into something that was going to be fired out of a cannon. Apparently this project was the same level of secrecy as the manhattan project.... which gives an idea of how important it was considered to be.
Glad you didn't use midrolls again. I do enjoy watching the presentations you produce on this channel. That said, I wish you'd focused more on the suffering of the survivors, as that is really the only thing that I could imagine would make more people realize the true horror of these weapons when suggesting we use them in the present.
The images are out there if one has the will to look them up. Yes, I agree, it was truly horrifying regardless of the debate about the usage of the weapon itself.
Thank you for maintaining such a balanced and impartial perspective on all the topics you cover. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate not being told how I should think, feel, or believe about things.
Balance? Do you realize that Japanese diplomats were in Washington DC giving out "peace bracelets" while their countrymen were killing 2,403 Americans who had no idea that Japan was declaring war against them? Did you forget that during WW2, Japan was allied with Italy and Germany. Do I have to remind you who the leaders of Italy and Germany were during WW2?
The Manhattan Project is quite interesting to investigate. Unknown to most is that Canada played a major component in the project. Canada and Britain had been designing nuclear bombs far before the US got involved but gave up the project when the US got involved. Canada's nuclear development labs were located in Quebec where there were large concentrations of uranium. These resources were transferred to New Mexico. On the opposite side of Canada in a small mountain city called Trail, British Columbia they developed a factory to produce heavy water which was necessary to contain enriched uranium. Just south of Trail was a city call Hartford, Washington State. This city refined the uranium into weapons grade fuel ... with uranium from Quebec Canada ... combined with heavy water from Canada. The whole story is quite amazing.
The Manhattan Project was a major undertaking, facilities, power plants, and cities sprung up seemingly overnight amid a shroud of secrecy. Aside from the obvious destructive potential, the Manhattan Project had far reaching implications: products and technologies developed that we use today, from non-stick fluoropolymers to radioactive isotopes used to diagnose and cure cancers, to long-life batteries.
My father was very involved in the Manhatten Project, working heavily in R&D with Oppenheimer. I was born in '61, so I found out about this history a few rainy-day-stories at a time when I was older. I have not been able to connect much with the visual record----until now. Thank you, Simon, for re-acquiainting me with my history.....and my father.
Great video as always. Here's a suggestions... the Berkut oil drilling platform (largest), Freedom Ship (planned not built), and Knock Nevis (longest oil tanker and movable man-made object).
2 notes: 1. The idea that Robert Oppenheimer said "now I have become death the destroyer of worlds" came from himself years after the war. There are actually very detailed notes of how he reacted after the bomb went off including from Robert Oppenheimer's brother Frank. His brother Franks said that after that after the bomb went off the 2 brothers hugged and and Robert kept repeating happily "It worked! It worked!". 2. I don't know how something that saved hundreds of thousands to millions of lives can at all be consider "terrible". It is another post war thought that Japan was about to surrender prior to the 2 nuclear bombings of Japan. Yes, there were people in Japan even at the highest levels of government who wanted to surrender. But there was just as much if not far far more who wanted to continue the war. This is evidence by even after the 2nd bombing only half of the top Japanese government wanted to surrender and only the Emperor was able to break the tie. And then even after that the officers of Japan's military were so unwilling to surrender that they tried to launch a coup on the Japanese government to prevent the surrender that failed. People now also like to bring up the invasion of Manchuria as what made Japan surrender which is also false. Japan already knew no matter what that Manchuria and it's colonies were a loss. Japan's hope in continuing the war was to cause as many casualties as possible to get a negotiated peace in order to safe face which nobody in the Japanese government expected would include them keeping any of their colonies. In fact in the months prior to the Japanese surrender they had been trying everything possible to bring their troops from China, Manchuria and Korea back to Japan to defend the home land against the invasion by the Western allies that they knew was near. The final straw that convinced the Japanese government to agree to surrender (for those that did agree) according to them after the war was that America with the new nuclear bomb had the ability to wipe the Japanese population off the face of the Earth without even having to invade the island. And the only thing keeping the Japanese from surrendering earlier was the fact that they thought if the Western allies had to invade Japan they could cause so many casualties that they could get the Western allies to allow Japan to have a negotiated surrender.
Why do historians always leave out the part where the US dropped pamphlets warning of the incoming bomb to hopefully evacuate civilians (it didn't work). Also to my understanding the battle of Okinawa was a preview of how bloody a mainland invasion would be and influenced the decision to drop the nukes. As someone who lived in Okinawa for many years, I have found human remains and unexploded ordinance as it is a regular insurance there still to this day.
The estimated civilian casualties in a land invasion of Japan were in the millions. On the US side, hundreds of thousands at least. I do not envy the position President Truman was in.
The official story is that Truman dropped the bomb to save american soldiers lives, and there is for sure some truth in that statement. What usually is not mentioned is that the US wanted to show to dear Josef that they had the bomb, that they were not afraid of using it and that they had more than one...just in case their friend Joe was thinking about doing something stupid in Europe. There are two fantastic podcasts from Dan Carlin about the bomb. One called The Destroyer of Worlds and the other called Logical Insanity. Highly recommended.
@@sparkybolt2085 - And consider that only after he was sworn into the Presidency after FDR's death did Truman learn of the project. Stalin probably knew about it before he did. But at least he lived up to his motto, "The Buck Stops Here."
@@sparkybolt2085 I've read that the Japanese military estimated 20 to 30 million civilian deaths from a US land invasion. They would have fought to the end, even after the atomic bombs had Hirohito not ordered the surrender. Quite a chilling thought.
So let me get your point. They dropped pamphlets warning people of a bomb that had never been used before in human history, and of which they had no way to reference the level of devastation? I wonder why it did not work.
i like how comfortable youve become over the years from shaved simon to manbeard youve became a very important part of my life lol. great work everyone on your team
My grandfather was stationed in Calcutta and his name was on the very long list of soldiers who would be flown to Japan in gliders to fight a ground war if necessary. It is extremely likely that I'm alive because Japan was nuked and the ground war never happened.
My grandfather was in the Philippines. I remember him telling me when I was young that it was very likely that he wouldn’t have made it to the end of the war.
I’m grateful that you are here, and that your grandfather was not required to fight a horrendous ground war in Japan, and also, I wonder how many Japanese people there might have been today that could say something similar had The Bomb not been dropped on civilian populations.
My great grandfather was a prisoner of war on the river Kwai. Without sounding horrible, if the bomb wasn’t dropped, so many more pain and suffering would have continued…
The Soviet Dead Hand would be a really cool Megaproject to do. Not a lot of videos are out there about it, pretty wild and interesting dooms day device, love the content man keep it up!
Really in depth video. I’ve always had a fascination about WWII as it was astonishing that so many brilliant people were suddenly there at one point in time. If you want to do a really good biography, I suggest you research one Richard Feynman. He was a physicist on the Manhattan project and had an incredible life. Note: He also was known for his participation on the shuttle Challenger committee. Also, as a counterpoint to your excellent video on Curtis Lemay, a good counterpoint would be an exploration of Jimmy Doolittle, an amazing leader who was a bit mischievous from time to time! Keep up the excellent work although in the future I want to talk to you about your video on weapons that are too dangerous! Ta!
Simon, you might consider a focused review of the Roman Empire. If we look at the rise of this empire, you would have massive construction, in every country the Romans invaded, much of which remains accessible, today. Militarily, almost all of our present-day military tactics owe their origin to the incredible Roman generals who were tasked with brining Europe, and North Africa, to heel. Whether discussing aqueducts, bath houses, temples, roads or any other enduring features, the expansion of the Roman Empire marked a pivotal period in world history, and a period that is readily re-visited, whether you live in Italy, France or any other territory the Romans occupied. Just a thought...
There was tremendous medical advances made during WW2. Sadly, some knowledge came from the horrific experiments of Dr Mengele, which are used by all divers and navies today.
@Luc Préfontaine sort of. That's oversimplifying it a bit. Necessity is what drives innovation, and in war time there is a very stark necessity. That said though, the same is true for the current pandemic, and other emergencies/needs throughout history. A lot of innovation is also derived from opportunity--e.g. the scientific advancement of organisations such as NASA and the CSIRO. To leave it at 'war = innovation' is technically correct, but it's a bit like saying 'Australia = desert'. It leaves out too much detail and dimension.
@Luc Préfontaine except that we do deal with them all the time. I mean we don't stop them from happening, in the same way we don't stop wars from happening, but the amount of technological innovation stemming from crises response is astounding. There have been a lot of wars, but I don't know if there have been more wars than disasters, crises etc.
This intro gave me a flash back of the crazy hair conspiracy guy. But with Simon super imposed saying "I am not saying it was a mega project, but it was a mega project!".
The quote in context - 'We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Bhagavad-Gita: Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.'
Yamaguchi Tsutomu was one of the many people in Hiroshima the day it got bombed. He survived, and then went home... To Nagasaki. Just in time to get nuked again. And, again, he lived. He died in 2010.
So if you think you're having a bad week, just remind yourself that you haven't been nuked once, let alone twice.
There was also an incident in Chad during the 70's, where a nuclear round was detonated, and Rhodesian troops walked into the area. My friend who was in charge of those troops, passed away last year.
@John Barber why would you want one??
If he said he was his friend then he is.But if he lied,nothing's gonna happen anyway
Yep, I made a video about this a while back on one of my other channels :)
Lived to be 90 plus. I think he lived longer than any of the crew of Enola Gay.
I heard he was in the hospital telling his unbelieving boss what had happened when he got confirmation !!!
So looking forward to Oppenheimer this week. Was stoked to see Simon made a video on The Manhattan Project
I tried to see the film last week and it was sold out, going to try again
"On the Planet Earth, man had always considered himself more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much; the wheel, New York, wars, and so on - Whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water, having a good time. Conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were more intelligent than Man...for precisely the same reasons."
So true, Doug...So true.
So long and thanks for all the fish!
This message has been approved by Slartibartfast
This is one of those points where you feel like posting "the finger raising guy" meme :P
@ Fuck off you dumb fuck
@@Wppk765 - "My name? It's not important. Ever been to Norway?"
I live near Oak Ridge. Born and raised in Tennessee. My grandfather was in the war and then worked with Oak Ridge after. Not as a scientist but a machinist. I guess that’s what sparked my interest in nuclear history, and I began buying geiger counters and collecting radioactive sources when I was about 20. It’s amazing the kind of stuff you can find.
In the sci-fi TV show Stargate SG-1 there is an episode (S05E21 - Meridian) where an alien civilization is building a weapon akin to our nuclear bombs, but with much higher destructive power. In that episode they say they of course don't want to use the weapon, but merely use it as a deterrent against further aggression from their enemies. The show's protagonist, in turn, says some of the most memorable and truthful words about nuclear weapons: "A weapon of mass destruction can only be used for one thing. Now, you might think it will ensure peace and freedom, but I guarantee you it'll never have the effect you're hoping for until you use it, at least once."
It illustrates perfectly why, as terrible as the bombings of Japan were, they served to ensure the world's relative peace ever since then. Minor conflicts aside, no war on a global scale has ever happened again since then. Nukes are a terrible thing, but they serve their purpose as a threat of mutually assured destruction. They are possibly the only reason the Cold War didn't escalate into World War 3, and they are possibly the only reason the west has been free of major conflict for the past 75 years.
Very well said!
Naqaudria bombs are a crime against sentient beings
They did then it created a chain reaction with normal naqaudah threatening to destroy the entire planet and to clinch it all they needed another bomb to save the planet
Yesss but... I think that Marshal plan, the European project, the NATO and the ONU might have something to say about your "the only reason"😂
Personally I think that those agreements did a much better job to keep the peace than the nuclear bombs.
Also because it avoided the escalation of the cold war but was also one of the main reason the cold war happened 🙄
@@emanuelescarsella3124 I did say 'possibly'. Of course NATO and all the other stuff contributed, but tensions ran pretty high during the cold war and the nukes definitely did their part to make both sides think twice about their possible breach of agreements overall.
“Sir, they have a city destroying bomb” ... “oh shit”. This might be the best quote I could have heard 😂
Large Hadron Collider might be an interesting one to cover or possibly LIGO.
Definitely want to see this covered. I have never seen a documentary made on how it was made. Simon covering it would be awesome.
Just watched the video I got back from the editor yesterday! It's coming very soon :). Maybe even later this week!
One of the LIGOs is where I live, my ex-husband worked on the project for about 18 months, baking out the long tunnels so they had a vacuum and the laser would shoot straight.
The people at CERN should stop what they're doing don't look for the God particle only bad things can happen when you look for things you don't understand
@@jodystevens1333 Like antibiotics, air travel, and pasteurization! All works of the DEVIL! Now where'd we put our Trump posters??....
6:37 Excellent choice of a background photo for Colorado. That is Colorado National Monument and you can find Uranium Ore on the eastern side of the Monument. Actually it’s from the same geological formation that the Uranium for the Manhattan Project was mined. It was milled just down the road at the Mill in Grand Junction. I collected Carnotite (Uranium Ore) just outside of the area years ago when we lived there. Actually the Radon level in the house we lived in was twice the EPA safe limit we found out during our closing inspection. Glad we moved to East TN where’s it’s safe… oh wait Oak Ridge (Y-12) is just down the road… great…
Fun fact: when they were setting up the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge for electromagnetic separation they needed a lot of copper wire for the electromagnets, only to discover that, it being wartime, copper was in very short supply. Until someone realized that, hey, silver works almost as well, and we've got all that bullion lying around....
Which led to the Under Secretary of the Treasury asking a question that has probably never been asked before or since: "Six thousand tons of silver? How much is that in troy ounces?"
In the end, 13,300 metric tons of silver was used, worth over a billion dollars in 1940s money. The last of it wasn't returned until 1970; they had been so careful with it that less than one pound had been lost.
Silver works better than copper
Though silver wire is roughly 7 percent more conductive than a copper wire of the same length, silver is a significantly rarer metal than copper. ... Silver wire, however, is generally reserved for more sensitive systems and specialty electronics where high conductivity over a small distance is prioritized.
@@user-hr8pz6lh5w Not on a per-mass basis. Yes, silver is a better conductor (although it's more like 5.7 percent, 15.87 nΩ·m vs. 16.78 nΩ·m), meaning you can make a wire of the same resistance 5.7% longer, which gets you more loops, which means a higher magnetic flux. But silver is also about 17% more dense than copper, so you can make less wire out of one kg of silver. In the case of Y-12 I mentioned, they were substituting silver for copper at a ratio of 11/10.
Even more fun. Is that more time has passed since we went to the moon than the interval between the first commercial airplane flight and the first human space flight.
Top factoid! 👍👍👍
First Commercial flight 47 years, 5 months, 1 week, 6 days before Yuri Gagarin *and* the Apollo 17 mission dec 17 1972 until now.
Simon, this is probably one of your best videos ever. It's controversial due to the choices made to build the bomb, and at the same time it had to be a difficult choice to use it. You spoke to both views and I appreciate that as an American. It's sometimes hard to believe that humanity can do what they did in the first 45 years of the last century. I think about an idea that the English astrophysicist Brian Cox said that we have a duty to preserve life as we are the only life in this Galaxy. I, as a veteran, hope we find a better way.
How about the moon landings for a megaproject or even something like the building of the pyramids? An ancient megaproject could be interesting.
I second both of these ideas
Definitely hope for these! And for the space shuttle!
Everyone know's the Pyramids were built by aliens!
I don’t think the aliens will want to talk about it
@@davidhartenstine190 Unfortunately that has yet to be proven, but a very high possibility. There is no possible way we are the only ones out there. Most likely in this system, but not in this galaxy.
My grandfather worked at Hanford during the war. He worked stoking a coal boiler for winter heat during the winter. During the spring and summer he returned to his farm in Arkansas to put in a crop of corn.
"I have become death, the destroyer of worlds"
Still one of the most memorable quotes in history
The quote is actually "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds". (Not trying to be a grammar nazi! lol. I had to write a paper on it many years ago, and I guess it stuck). Simon repeats it at 12:56, & Oppenheimer at 13:00 in the video. Either way, it is a memorable quote. The blast had a pretty deep affect on the guys that built it. Richard Feynman mentioned that some time later he was back in New York City and noticed all of the engineering and construction marvels that were going on there in building bridges, infrastructure, skyscrapers, etc. Things that earlier would have amazed even him. But after being at the Trinity test, it hit him as something like "Why? Why bother with all of this effort? We can destroy it all in a few milliseconds now". That must be some pretty heady stuff spending years, and having great success, on the project you were asked to do. Then shortly after, asking yourself "what have we done?" That's gotta be rough!
And one of the most heartbreaking...imagine his horror when he realized what he had helped create.
@@Terri_MacKay When he realized what he had helped create? WTF? I guess during planning and execution of the Mahattan project, he thought the bomb was just going to be a prop for a movie set. His entire quote was a last ditch effort by a man aware of his mortality to rectify his image and legacy.
@@holywater8897 : Oppenheimer could be confident he would not be blamed if the Uranium half of the project didn't work - Groves later remarked he, not Oppenheimer, would be on the hook if that was a fizzer. The plutonium device was scientifically much more dodgy and needed testing. So yes, it might well have been an expensive throwaway prop.
@@Terri_MacKay : There was a betting pool going for the Trinity yield: most were way, way below the actual 21kT result, and only Teller had the temerity to bet on a higher yield (45kT in his case). So horror, yes, mixed with a strutting pride, but Oppenheimer's brother Frank said that both had the same reaction in the first instant: simply that "It worked!"
The thought of nuclear war doesn't make me lose sleep, but that huge closeup of Robert Oppenheimer just might.
Liberty ships would be a good idea for a video.
first ever fully arc welded ships and all the troubles that come with new tech. half of them fell apart sitting empty in the docks...they didnt knew what is going on.
One member of the German high command (Speer?) remarked, upon hearing that we could build a Liberty ship in a week, that they had lost the war. They'd never be able to sink so many ships. I think it was at a Kaiser shipyard that they were able to assemble one in a single day. It was all pre-fab, though. More of a stunt than practical. But Ford's Willow Run bomber plant could produce a bomber every hour, the record being one every 48 minutes. Note: that was a plane ready to fly left the plant at that rate, the individual planes took days to build, but there were so many in production at once.
The channel ‘mustard’ has a very good video on libertyships!
@@rik5095 Was just thinking that. Love his work!
@@deadfreightwest5956
And now I'm worried about countries with enough industrial power that can build a fleet of aircraft carriers in the time USA can build a torpedo
The story of what happened in Oak Ridge, Tennessee is pretty much a modern miracle and definitely deserves its own video. Please!
You can visit Trinity on only two days in a year: April 1st and Oct 1st. I visited the site several years ago and was -- excuse the phrasing -- blown away by the history that was present there. Seeing the container that held the bomb was humbling.
Last year, I visited Hiroshima and was equally touched. Truly, the Manhattan Project was a massively significant part of not just US history, but in world history.
why only those two days?
I've been to Hiroshima and it is quite possibly the most humbling place to visit in the World. Going to all the memorials and museums, you really learn how the general Japanese people were just caught totally off guard and the terrible suffering that ensued. The story that sticks with me the most was seeing a picture of a nuclear shadow of someone who was sitting on the bank steps waiting for the bank to open at 8am, but it never did.
@@WanderingWriter It's on an active military base and there's still a lot of (not life-threatening) radiation around. I presume they limit it to ensure both the safety of the site and the visitors alike.
@@WanderingWriter I believe it is still an active millitary test range.
If you mean the giant steel container (Nicked named "Jumbo") it was supposed to contain the gadget, to contain the plutonium in case a nuclear reaction did not occur. The plutonium was that precious. So it was only designed to contain the chemical explosives. By the time the test occured they were confident enough that it would work they didn't use the container. But it was too thick to cut up easily, so they just left it. Hence why it has survived.
Suggestion - Snowy Mountain Scheme.
Most would never have heard of it.
Handed the global power of destruction to Earth's most advanced species, dolphins.
*Douglas Adams has entered the chat*
Second-Most. The best-laid plans of Mice and all that...
;D
C Ragan damn, you beat me to it.
Goodbye and thanks for all the fish!
"So long and thanks for all the uranium...."
Sir James Chadwick, CH, FRS (20 October 1891 - 24 July 1974) was a British physicist who was awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the neutron in 1932. In 1941, he wrote the final draft of the MAUD Report, which inspired the U.S. government to begin serious atom bomb research efforts. He was the head of the British team that worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. He was knighted in Britain in 1945 for his achievements in physics.
I love this series. Infographics, Geographics, and now Megaprojects....I love these videos! Keep them coming. There is so much to talk about in the world.
Indeed :). Thank you.
I always find Simon’s videos highly informative , detailed and well researched, with a tinge of good old British humour too. Keep it up SW!
I believe there was an incredibly important side effect of those two bombs that is totally overlooked, even today. If the world had not seen the effects of these two first gen bombs on a city, then nuclear war between America and USSR would have been much more likely.
Yep, think you're correct there. As far as I know, the scientists of the time even petitioned to 'demonstrate' the effects to the Japanese beforehand, which was shotdown. Later after the war, the 1st demo bombs were exploded at Bikini Atol in front of 40thousand ppl....I'm not sure it was 'that' impressive. (My father was a young seaman who witnessed this, wasn't that impressed, actually).... So actually using them on an enemy showed we would 'use the big stick' not just feint with it...
The threat of nuclear war and its total devastation, quite possibly makes the atomic bomb one of the greatest life saving inventions of the 20th century.
@@jericho86 without it there is no doubt USA and USSR would have gone hot at some point
Ussr just don't get a f'uck about people. Soviets killed over 40 mln people without any war , just concentration camps and starvation. If stalin had a plane or rocket to nuke usa - 1000% guarantee
...it's not like we didn't know what they did tho it was simply because now the USSR was aware that the us would actually use them
Asking Simon Whistler for directions on the street - “First you need to go 300 yards (274 metres) south, then turn 90 degrees left, until you see a sign 3feet (91.4 cm) high...”
and the temperature is 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) right now.
Maybe do a video on Roman road/highway system. Truly a masterpiece of engineering.
And the Aqueducts. Many still standing.
@Peace I didnt know that. The Romans took a good idea then and implemented it very well. The North Africans may have conceived it but the Roman Empire was second to none on the scale of their civil engineering projects. I am sure that the tax structure and therefore the money to fund these generational projects was the key to that being possible.
@Peace You don't sound very peaceful Mr. Peace. I am an American and we certainly did nothing to erase your history. Islam is what is holding back North Africa. It's a barbaric political and societal belief system that is incompatible with human rights, personal liberty, secular governance, and modern civil progress. Its the most regressive force on the planet which is why you remain the world's armpit. Good luck with indoor plumbing and feeding your people. You'll need it. If you need us we will be landing on Mars.
Little-known fact: Klaus had a younger brother who was also a physicist. However, he stayed at home because when it came to the UK, Germany could not give two Fuchs.
Thanks, I'll be here all week.
Did he Fuchs off to the Antarctic?
At this point in my youtube life simon has taken over.. ur my first vid of the day and my last vid at night.. just dont tell the missus lol.. the multiple channels are awsome!
Legend.
TH-cam is slowly becoming SimonTube
My goodness I keep find new channels that you put on, and they are all relevant and tasteful, I love that it is fact based, you don’t push a point of view, and it’s very entertaining.
I'd like to recommend Bell Rock Lighthouse, the first successful offshore lighthouse. It took four attempts to get right.
Trainfan1055 I once saw a fascinating video on the Irish lighthouse systems from around 1880-1905 (very rough dates here). The engineering & plain muscle power behind them was really impressive.
Not exactly mega but still an excellent story. Perhaps a geographics??
@@ethan7353 I have learned more in all Whistler's comments than anything else thanks... Rabbit...
My father survived the atomic bomb at Nagasaki. After the bomb, he joined the medical rescue team headed by Dr. Nagai to treat the injured people. He described the injury which were so different than the traditional bombing injury. He lived to 2007 at the age of 83. But the experience of that fateful day, August, 9th, 1945 and aftermath remained with him for his whole life.
Of all your channels, this one is by far the most awesome. I like it 👏
I like geographics most
For me it's definitely business blaze but this is a close second. Simon keep up the good work I really appreciate having so much great content.
If you're ever in Tucson Arizona, it's home to the last of the Titan II missile silos. Worth going to see. A standing testament to "Peace Through Deterrence" and very sobering.
This is a sickening statement. This is what is wrong with our country we think violence is the answer
I love the script's neutrality on the atom bomb and nuclear power
Definitely
"Now it can be told: The story of the Manhattan project" by General Leslie Groves is a fascinating read. It details the whole project from the point of the commanding general of the project and is more than worth the read.
Speaking of historical impact, how far back do you want to go? I am thinking The Pyramids? Or the Roman road system?
The Pyramids don't have that much historical impact
I'm thinking the Republic of Venice.
I'd like to see Hagia Sophia featured.
Wheel?
@Atheos B. Sapien But they didn't have the historical influence like the ending of a world war
My Dad worked in a steel mill where parts of the project was done. He was on the crew that buried a chunk of plutonium under a mill. It’s now one of the many superfund sites spread over the region. (A superfund site is a highly toxic chemical polluted area that will cost millions to clear up)
I'd recommend that anyone interested reads Richard Rhodes seminal work"The making of the Atomic Bomb". 838 pages of near forensic level investigation on the Manhattan project
Fantastic book.
Dan Carlin has a couple of excellent podcasts about the bomb as well. The episodes are called The Destroyer of Worlds and Logical Insanity. Highly recommended.
Great suggestion. Also, I'd like to recommend "Working on the Bomb, An Oral History of WWII Hanford" by S. L. Sanger. Having the recollections of those who worked there is a fascinating insight. The sheer scale of the construction project initially, then the operations of various facilities (as one person said of the reactors, "there was no operating manual") is breathtaking.
This is quite possibly the best video I have ever watched on youtube. Thanks Simon.
"Dolphins! Not really." Lol that got me.
:)
I love how describes these project with fancy word. As a foreigner this channel helps my english and i enjoy history
17:00 you mentioned Japan surrendered on 2nd December 1945? I thought they formally surrendered 2nd September 1945...
You are 100% correct. My screw up. I will do better.
August 15th VJ Day
Japan announced the surrender on August 15th, but the signing ceremony that took place on the battleship Missouri was on September 2nd.
0:40 - Chapter 1 - The destroyer of worlds
1:40 - Chapter 2 - Nuclear fission
4:05 - Chapter 3 - Construction
6:05 - Chapter 4 - The process
9:35 - Chapter 5 - Espionnage & counter espionnage
11:15 - Chapter 6 - The test
13:10 - Chapter 7 - Hiroshima & nagasaki
17:20 - Chapter 8 - Post war
18:15 - Chapter 9 - Legacy
What about doing one on that seed vault they have buried under the permafrost in Norway?
Will check it out. Svaldbard I think is the name. Will do some prelim research :)
@@megaprojects9649 Yeah, Svalbard is the name of the island it's on, well north of the Arctic Circle.
Would be nice to see a video about the Svalbard seed vault, I belive north korea is the only country to whitdraw seeds from it.
@@silentdeath7847 the seeds have been drawn from svalbard seed vault when the gene bank in Aleppo Syria was destroyed due to bombings
In the summer of 1945 my dad had just been released from the Brooklyn Naval Hospital having his face rebuilt after an encounter with a grenade in Italy. He was shipped to San Diego where he boarded a destroyer bound for Tokyo Bay. The mission: Sweep the mines out of the bay in preparation for the Japanese land invasion. Every man on that ship was told it was a suicide mission and they shouldn’t expect to return home.
The atomic bombs fell while the ship was in route, and Japan surrendered prior to arrival. My dad lived to get back home and start a new life, and I am literally alive today because of the Manhattan Project and Truman’s decision.
Wow, another tragedy that we can lay at the feet of Oppenheimer and the others.
Old McDonald had a farm...and the US Military blew it the F*** up!!
ei ei oh
Loui's father: Old Mc'Donald had a farm! Till government confiscated it :)
@@coreytaylor447 I love that you added that 😆
That's the most metal thing I've heard all week
@@TheWhiteTrashPanda so fucking metal!
Do you think you could do a video on the Nevada-Class Battleships as both ships had interesting careers. One of which USS Nevada tried to escape Pearl Harbor, fought at D-Day , Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, and survived 2 atomic bombs. I would say that's a mega ship. Great work on theses videos, love them
Fun fact: After Hanford got under way, a party of British physicists showed up out of the blue and asked to tour the facility. They were turned away. One of them was Klaus Fuchs. It's no wonder that the US was reluctant after the war to share nuclear technology (especially bomb production) with Britain. British academia was so rife with communists and Soviet sympathizers that sharing such info would have the same effect as airmailing all of it to Moscow.
Don't forget there were also several American spies for the Soviets as well.
One of the conditions that the US had, was for Great Britain to share all of their technology, which they gladly did. Churchill even stood up naked and sopping wet from a bath tub at the White House stating " Britain has nothing to hide from the US". So even though US/GB relations were on par with each others goals, that is not not to say that there was some suspicion and intrigue by both parties.
I have no doubt given US foreign policy since WW II, that if other nations had not acquired nukes that the US would have invaded even more countries in the name of "freedom"
@@longfang98
The Marshall plan has left the chat....
Wow, I have lived my entire life in Richland the town created for Hanford workers and I had never heard that story. Back 10 years or so I toured the site and had a close up look at the B reactor. Now it’s part of a National Park with Las Alamos and Oak Ridge. I am so proud to be a Bomber (my mascot in high school was a bomb and a mushroom cloud) for my kids it’s been changed to the bomber plane named Days Pay. Because it was built with funds from all the employees donating one days pay. My grandmother talked about how no one asked what anyone’s dad did for work and 95% had no clue what they were doing, just said yes sir and got to work. Also if you did not work at the actual Hanford site you could not live inside the city of Richland. One of my grandfathers was a bus driver for the schools, he was forced to live in West Richland- across the river from the Army town.
Simon, I like that you stick to business. No sob side stories. No sneaky agendas. No grueling street scenes leading to the subject. Nope. Simon jumps right in.
The massive construction necessary to build Y-12, X-10, & K-25 uranium enrichment plants in Oak Ridge, TN was incredible. And that doesn’t included constructing a city for 125,000 - complete with fencing & security stations. I was born in and grew up in this artificial city.
There's also the fact that the vast majority of people working there had no idea what they were doing as the process was split into individual steps that could be done without any need for an overview of what was happening in total. I've read one person describing their job there as "I watch this gauge. When it reaches a certain value, I press this button"
Dorothy Rosenberg Wow. I would like to hear more. Your next channel, Simon...
Simon, I'd really like to see a Mega Projects episode on the construction of the Roman Aqueducts. Perhaps to include the development of plumbing and water delivery. Water systems in general are fascinating.
We saw a film about Oppenheimer at school (back in the 60s). When he quoted the bhagavad gita (I have become death...) it made me cry and I have never forgotten it.
Well...then you might like to know that In late 1940 or early 1941, Oppenheimer bought a new Cadillac which he and his wife nicknamed, “Bombsight.” Oppenheimer didn't believe the first reports of fission. However, once an experiment was performed at the Radiation Laboratory that showed fission, it took him less than 15 minutes to figure out where his original hypothesis and calculations for fission not working were wrong. A day later, Phillip Morrison (then a graduate student) walked in to Oppenheimer's office and found a crude drawing of an atomic bomb on his blackboard. Yep...Oppenheimer was all about philosophical musings about the bomb...
Of the many unusual aspects of the Manhattan Project, one of them is that a great number of the academic and engineering staff working on the project had received portions of their education in Germany. Also, the Enola Gay was on display at Chanute AFB for many years after WW2. Many questioned if it was the Enola Gay, or if the name had been painted on in homage, so Chanute AFB had the aircraft checked out and it was found, by my Dad, that the air frame serial number, and a few other serial numbers, matched they of the Enola Gay. My Dad was an instructor at Chanute and one of the incredible things of that base was that to maintain the displayed aircraft in near perfect condition many of them were used for basic education classes.
''We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ''Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.''
Words that then, as now, shall haunt humanity throughout history.
Millennial Chicken I can’t imagine what went through their heads when they 1st saw the explosion. I’m sure at least a few of them thought that, perhaps in hindsight, it wasn’t the wisest of things to do.
@@susanmaggiora4800 no. scientists this curious are happy it works, and eager to "push the line" a bit further. some do think of moral implications, but i think propaganda and money takes over...furthermore, the push to use this technology as a weapon, NOT as a safe and useful purpose, like efficient, farly safe and low cost power, says it all....
Little Wol Well,Oppenheimer certainly didn’t feel that way. I imagine 2 others gelt similarly, since I only said a FEW. And if you think nuclear power is ‘fairly’ safe, perhaps we could store the spent rods in your backyard?
@@susanmaggiora4800 Richard Feynman (who was a fairly junior scientist at the time) wrote about it in 'Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman?'. Seeing the test he was basically just pleased their project had worked, but after the bombings he became haunted by it, for some years beliving a global nuclear war to be inevitable.
Well, if you mean "Words that then, in 1957..." In 1945, his brother Frank, also a physicist, said that they looked at each other and both said, "It worked!!" Oppenheimer was pretty sanguine about the bomb until Teller began pushing his Super so hard. By 1957 Robert had lost his security clearance and most of his influence in government circles. It stands to reason he was pretty depressed.
My Uncle has a sort of connection to this and the story I am to tell you will explain what I mean.
Years ago when I was a kid, I wanted to stay with my Uncle Paul. My Uncle's full name was Paul Abner Dunkel and he was a veteran of WW2, you see he told me this story when we were watching something on TV I think he needed to say it.
You see he was coming back home from the European theater on a troopship when over the loudspeaker came the announcement that the US has bombed Japan and Japan has surrendered the war was over, and he along with everyone else cheered. Sometime later he had gone to the movies and he was watching the newsreels where they showed after the bombings and this is what he said, "I wish I never would have cheered."
That was the first time I think I ever saw him cry. He did not talk much about the war and when he did though it was like he was reliving it. I was lucky to have had the opportunity to have the few stories I got.
WW2 was not a set of facts in a history book or text book, it was real and was named Us Army Corporal Paul A. Dunkel.
I've been to Hiroshima 11 years ago. It is really weird, I visited many other cities in Japan, but Hiroshima is very different. Most houses are grey. Everything is weirdly uniform, compared to other cities. Not all houses are the same, no, but they feel the same in a way. The most beautiful part of the city is the peace park. It's a small island in a river. There is a T-shaped bridge that leads over the river and to the island. It's tha AO-Bridge and it was the aim of the bomb, a T in a river is as good as a cross on a map. But the bridge didn't crumble under the blast, only in 1984 (could be of by 1 or 2 years) the bridge had to be renewed, before it still worked fine. On the side towards the city centre you find the A-Dome, a world heritage. It was a merchant hall, but back in the 40ies one of the only stone buildings in the area. All the houses were wooden, they were gone in the blast. The A-Dome lost it's roof, but the building still stands. You are not allowed to go too close, but you can see, how the structure of the stone changed. When you go over the bridge to the island, you find the peace bell and many different memorials. The one for all the children, who died thanks to the bomb and thanks to the radiation after. There are glass cases with thousands, maybe millions of cranes, send from primary schools and kindergarten from all over Japan. You find cranes on strings at many of the memorials. There is one in the middle, that looks like a huge hill, under it are the ashes of the people...a mass grave.
And something, which was a bit creepy.
When I visited, there were a group of young children with their teacher. when they walked over the bridge, they were like you expect kids to be, chatty, laughing. But when they reached the park, they all became quiet.
After I left the park, I did check out some stores and had some food, but then head back to my friend's place. I could have stayed longer, but I didn't want to stay longer in this city.
I am glad, I went, if you are in Japan and have the time, you should go and see the result of the atomic bomb yourself.
I went to Hiroshima a year ago and it was pretty much as you described. However, I thought it was a vibrant, beautiful city and found some of the best food on my trip there. Also, Miyajima which is nearby is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. I loved the place and want to go back some day.
It was either the nuke, or the amphibious assault, Simon. The latter would've been worse. It was a descisive action that ended everything
I never understood why the Japanese couldn't have been offered some sort of cessation of hostilities agreement as the North Koreans were offered and accepted eight years later.
@@robthegardener9631 The Japanese wouldn’t have accepted anything like that. They viewed surrender as the worst possible thing one could do.
@@robthegardener9631 They were.
People also ignore that the fire bombing of cities would have been far worse without the use of the nuke, and those caused more damage.
Yep. At that point in time, the Japanese public still believed that the emperor had divine providence and the war could be won even if they lost several battles. It was only a few high-level military officials who really knew how poor their chances actually were, but they were already far too deep into the conflict and could not pull back. The US made the decision for indiscriminate bombing with such immense destructive weapons as a means to overthrow the public's perception toward their leadership and provide the emperor with a justified opportunity to surrender.
The choice to drop nuclear weapons on Japan, while certainly still a war crime by modern standards, was a masterclass in psychology and politics.
17:02, Japan surrendered on September 2nd 1945 not December 2nd. The Japanese emperor announced the surrender on August 15th but it was signed on September 2nd.
Apologies, my screw up. It was right in the script, and I read it wrong... Like an idiot.
This subject has always fascinated me. Great video!
Love this channel... ✨
please do a video on CERN Large Hadron Collider , ITERs Tokamak and Travelling Wave Reactor by TerraPower funded by Bill Gates
LHC coming very soon.
@@megaprojects9649 Travelling Wave Reactor is a very interesting topic. It uses U-238 for fission. So we can skip enriching process. We can even use nuclear waste to produce energy. If once we fill the reactor with fuel, reaction will take 30-40 yrs to complete. It's a promising Technology. Please cover this in Ur channel.
Hi Simon, I am now addicted to all your of your channels. Your videos make up about 90% of all entertainment I consume. Can not get enough. Thanks..
We sent a short note: we have harnessed the power of the sun! Surrender unconditionally or your ability to make war will cease for eternity!
Could have been an even shorter video. World War II. End of World War II. Well in Europe, Japan kept going. America made a big atom bomb with others
even the creator was terrified of the sheer power the bombs could do.
Luckily Hirohito's advisor and Generals helped to convince him to surrender. He was still under the assumption, for some stupid reason, that they would fight to the death and the populace would've listened. We probably wouldn't have gone straight to a decapitation strike in Round 2, but if a couple more bombs on military complexes/ports didn't convince them, Tokyo probably wouldn't have survived Round 3. Hell if we had dropped 2 or 3 more bombs on Japan, the death count (direct and indirect) would've been pushing 500,000 at least.
@@Drummin003 I think the US was running out of cities to flatten at this stage. Logic and intelligence indicated more bombs would be needed. If your enemy has sworn to fight to the last woman and child then you want to eliminate all of them in a timely and efficient manner. Okinawa involved hundreds of thousands of dead, an invasion of the home islands was expected to be many times more deadly.
Although St. Louis is most known for the gateway arch and perhaps the Cardinals, the most famous mega project in the city is the 19th century Eads Bridge, the first bridge across the Mississippi anywhere, the first bridge to be built mostly of steel, of such high quality Andrew Carnegie grumbled loudly, and one of the first to use caissons to build the underwater piers. It continues to carry rail, vehicular, and foot traffic to this day, and has outlasted several newer bridges. Oh, and the chief engineer was a riverboat pilot.
So long! And thanks for all the fish!
The war has not gone in our favour. Love your video's Simon.
I have stayed on the island of Tinian, Northern Mariana Islands my whole life, The island was used to assemble the two atom bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on the northern part of the island of Tinian you could still drive on the runways that were used during the war the runway that Enola gay departed from , many history sites still remain. I really hope you all get to see it.
Nagasaki was a major military town. It also had a ship yard in the southwest part of the city for building military ships. There was also the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works. Shimoshima Island just south of Nahasaki was a major storage depot and embarkation point for troop ships. It was a major target
Really appreciate him using the empirical and the metric system so everyone can have a good understanding of ever🥰
Not sure the human mind is capable of comprehending the sheer destructive power of this weapon
You should cover the former Secretary of State, Henry L. Stimson on your Biographics channel. The story of his argument against the use of the nuclear weapons on Japan should not be forgotten.. the part about him striking Kyoto from the list still tugs at my heart strings.
One of the least known WWII mega projects was proximity fuses for artillery and anti aircraft shells. They did not have transistors, but figured out how to put a tube into something that was going to be fired out of a cannon. Apparently this project was the same level of secrecy as the manhattan project.... which gives an idea of how important it was considered to be.
Great video. So glad I found your channel
Glad you didn't use midrolls again. I do enjoy watching the presentations you produce on this channel. That said, I wish you'd focused more on the suffering of the survivors, as that is really the only thing that I could imagine would make more people realize the true horror of these weapons when suggesting we use them in the present.
The images are out there if one has the will to look them up. Yes, I agree, it was truly horrifying regardless of the debate about the usage of the weapon itself.
The people that would use this type of weapons don’t care about suffering, to them it’s win or die trying. It’s that simple.
@@MICHAEL-ys3pu isn’t that applicable to war in general? 🤔🤦♂️
This video being Recommended to me on July 16 2023 is wild af. (Trinity Test was conducted on July 16 1945)
Thank you for maintaining such a balanced and impartial perspective on all the topics you cover. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate not being told how I should think, feel, or believe about things.
Balance? Do you realize that Japanese diplomats were in Washington DC giving out "peace bracelets" while their countrymen were killing 2,403 Americans who had no idea that Japan was declaring war against them? Did you forget that during WW2, Japan was allied with Italy and Germany. Do I have to remind you who the leaders of Italy and Germany were during WW2?
The Manhattan Project is quite interesting to investigate. Unknown to most is that Canada played a major component in the project. Canada and Britain had been designing nuclear bombs far before the US got involved but gave up the project when the US got involved. Canada's nuclear development labs were located in Quebec where there were large concentrations of uranium. These resources were transferred to New Mexico. On the opposite side of Canada in a small mountain city called Trail, British Columbia they developed a factory to produce heavy water which was necessary to contain enriched uranium. Just south of Trail was a city call Hartford, Washington State. This city refined the uranium into weapons grade fuel ... with uranium from Quebec Canada ... combined with heavy water from Canada. The whole story is quite amazing.
Would love to see a video about dreadnoughts or battleships. Maybe the Bismark or Iowa class.
The world was changed forever by the Manhattan Project. Excellent presentation! P.S. I'm diggin' the black globe on the bookshelf.....
3:17 'Everyone realized nazis having nukes is a bad idea.'
Best Quote.
The Manhattan Project was a major undertaking, facilities, power plants, and cities sprung up seemingly overnight amid a shroud of secrecy. Aside from the obvious destructive potential, the Manhattan Project had far reaching implications: products and technologies developed that we use today, from non-stick fluoropolymers to radioactive isotopes used to diagnose and cure cancers, to long-life batteries.
If it wasn't Oppenhiemer, it would have been someone else.
My father was very involved in the Manhatten Project, working heavily in R&D with Oppenheimer. I was born in '61, so I found out about this history a few rainy-day-stories at a time when I was older. I have not been able to connect much with the visual record----until now. Thank you, Simon, for re-acquiainting me with my history.....and my father.
You should do a bio on Tsutomu Yamaguchi. The guy that survived both atomic bombs.
Great video as always. Here's a suggestions... the Berkut oil drilling platform (largest), Freedom Ship (planned not built), and Knock Nevis (longest oil tanker and movable man-made object).
2 notes:
1. The idea that Robert Oppenheimer said "now I have become death the destroyer of worlds" came from himself years after the war. There are actually very detailed notes of how he reacted after the bomb went off including from Robert Oppenheimer's brother Frank. His brother Franks said that after that after the bomb went off the 2 brothers hugged and and Robert kept repeating happily "It worked! It worked!".
2. I don't know how something that saved hundreds of thousands to millions of lives can at all be consider "terrible". It is another post war thought that Japan was about to surrender prior to the 2 nuclear bombings of Japan. Yes, there were people in Japan even at the highest levels of government who wanted to surrender. But there was just as much if not far far more who wanted to continue the war. This is evidence by even after the 2nd bombing only half of the top Japanese government wanted to surrender and only the Emperor was able to break the tie. And then even after that the officers of Japan's military were so unwilling to surrender that they tried to launch a coup on the Japanese government to prevent the surrender that failed. People now also like to bring up the invasion of Manchuria as what made Japan surrender which is also false. Japan already knew no matter what that Manchuria and it's colonies were a loss. Japan's hope in continuing the war was to cause as many casualties as possible to get a negotiated peace in order to safe face which nobody in the Japanese government expected would include them keeping any of their colonies. In fact in the months prior to the Japanese surrender they had been trying everything possible to bring their troops from China, Manchuria and Korea back to Japan to defend the home land against the invasion by the Western allies that they knew was near. The final straw that convinced the Japanese government to agree to surrender (for those that did agree) according to them after the war was that America with the new nuclear bomb had the ability to wipe the Japanese population off the face of the Earth without even having to invade the island. And the only thing keeping the Japanese from surrendering earlier was the fact that they thought if the Western allies had to invade Japan they could cause so many casualties that they could get the Western allies to allow Japan to have a negotiated surrender.
The Russian invasion of Japanese territory had something to do with the surrender as well.
OMG YES, Ive been expecting this! 🔥 You sir deserve a medal 👌
Why do historians always leave out the part where the US dropped pamphlets warning of the incoming bomb to hopefully evacuate civilians (it didn't work).
Also to my understanding the battle of Okinawa was a preview of how bloody a mainland invasion would be and influenced the decision to drop the nukes.
As someone who lived in Okinawa for many years, I have found human remains and unexploded ordinance as it is a regular insurance there still to this day.
The estimated civilian casualties in a land invasion of Japan were in the millions. On the US side, hundreds of thousands at least. I do not envy the position President Truman was in.
The official story is that Truman dropped the bomb to save american soldiers lives, and there is for sure some truth in that statement.
What usually is not mentioned is that the US wanted to show to dear Josef that they had the bomb, that they were not afraid of using it and that they had more than one...just in case their friend Joe was thinking about doing something stupid in Europe.
There are two fantastic podcasts from Dan Carlin about the bomb. One called The Destroyer of Worlds and the other called Logical Insanity. Highly recommended.
@@sparkybolt2085 - And consider that only after he was sworn into the Presidency after FDR's death did Truman learn of the project. Stalin probably knew about it before he did. But at least he lived up to his motto, "The Buck Stops Here."
@@sparkybolt2085 I've read that the Japanese military estimated 20 to 30 million civilian deaths from a US land invasion. They would have fought to the end, even after the atomic bombs had Hirohito not ordered the surrender. Quite a chilling thought.
So let me get your point. They dropped pamphlets warning people of a bomb that had never been used before in human history, and of which they had no way to reference the level of devastation? I wonder why it did not work.
i like how comfortable youve become over the years from shaved simon to manbeard youve became a very important part of my life lol. great work everyone on your team
Manbeard Simon. I like it.
My grandfather was stationed in Calcutta and his name was on the very long list of soldiers who would be flown to Japan in gliders to fight a ground war if necessary. It is extremely likely that I'm alive because Japan was nuked and the ground war never happened.
No mercy to the enemy, or you will be dead . Nukes is the triumph of weaponry
My grandfather was in the Philippines. I remember him telling me when I was young that it was very likely that he wouldn’t have made it to the end of the war.
I’m grateful that you are here, and that your grandfather was not required to fight a horrendous ground war in Japan, and also, I wonder how many Japanese people there might have been today that could say something similar had The Bomb not been dropped on civilian populations.
@@andyharrison7061 without question there would have been far fewer…
My great grandfather was a prisoner of war on the river Kwai. Without sounding horrible, if the bomb wasn’t dropped, so many more pain and suffering would have continued…
The Soviet Dead Hand would be a really cool Megaproject to do. Not a lot of videos are out there about it, pretty wild and interesting dooms day device, love the content man keep it up!
Fun Fact: All hail the Dolphin overlords
Really in depth video. I’ve always had a fascination about WWII as it was astonishing that so many brilliant people were suddenly there at one point in time. If you want to do a really good biography, I suggest you research one Richard Feynman. He was a physicist on the Manhattan project and had an incredible life. Note: He also was known for his participation on the shuttle Challenger committee.
Also, as a counterpoint to your excellent video on Curtis Lemay, a good counterpoint would be an exploration of Jimmy Doolittle, an amazing leader who was a bit mischievous from time to time!
Keep up the excellent work although in the future I want to talk to you about your video on weapons that are too dangerous! Ta!
DO BATTLESHIP YAMATO! The largest battleship ever built (Attempt 19)
Yes, what a unique and wonderful piece of history that ship was. Like the Imperial Japanese Navy’s samurai’s of the sea.
Honestly this is already one of my favorite TH-cam channels now
Thank you. Glad you like it :)
I think you misspelled Manhattan.
Shit, thanks!!! Fixed the title, thumbnail fix coming soon :)
@@megaprojects9649 lol
=]
@@megaprojects9649 Well, you know, English can be a b***ch to master. American English, anyway.
@@megaprojects9649 Happy to help!
Simon, you might consider a focused review of the Roman Empire. If we look at the rise of this empire, you would have massive construction, in every country the Romans invaded, much of which remains accessible, today. Militarily, almost all of our present-day military tactics owe their origin to the incredible Roman generals who were tasked with brining Europe, and North Africa, to heel. Whether discussing aqueducts, bath houses, temples, roads or any other enduring features, the expansion of the Roman Empire marked a pivotal period in world history, and a period that is readily re-visited, whether you live in Italy, France or any other territory the Romans occupied. Just a thought...
I live just a bit up the road from one of the sites, it rhymes with Oakridge, the way I used to think it was spelled.
I live IN oak ridge. Yes... We all glow at night and watch three eyed frogs...
That was such a great video! Absolutely loved it!! 😁
War equals technological advancement always has.
There was tremendous medical advances made during WW2. Sadly, some knowledge came from the horrific experiments of Dr Mengele, which are used by all divers and navies today.
Necessity is the mother of invention
@Luc Préfontaine sort of. That's oversimplifying it a bit. Necessity is what drives innovation, and in war time there is a very stark necessity.
That said though, the same is true for the current pandemic, and other emergencies/needs throughout history.
A lot of innovation is also derived from opportunity--e.g. the scientific advancement of organisations such as NASA and the CSIRO.
To leave it at 'war = innovation' is technically correct, but it's a bit like saying 'Australia = desert'. It leaves out too much detail and dimension.
@Luc Préfontaine except that we do deal with them all the time. I mean we don't stop them from happening, in the same way we don't stop wars from happening, but the amount of technological innovation stemming from crises response is astounding.
There have been a lot of wars, but I don't know if there have been more wars than disasters, crises etc.
This intro gave me a flash back of the crazy hair conspiracy guy. But with Simon super imposed saying "I am not saying it was a mega project, but it was a mega project!".
Check out "Making of the Atomic Bomb", a really great book by historian Richard Rhodes.
The quote in context - 'We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Bhagavad-Gita: Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.'