The Castle Bravo Disaster - A "Second Hiroshima"
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 เม.ย. 2024
- At the time, it was the most powerful artificial explosion in human history…but it wasn’t supposed to be. On March 1st, 1954, the United States detonated the country’s first thermonuclear or fusion bomb at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, a small coral reef and 23 islands almost equidistant from Australia, Japan, and Hawaii. In the days and weeks following the blast, the United States would pay out millions of dollars in settlements, thousands of islanders would be evacuated and re-evacuated, and the Japanese public would deem the test “a second Hiroshima,” a comparison no citizen would dare make lightly.
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Thanks for watching the latest “Half-Life History.” As usual, let me know what you think of the new format - more of these to come!
I like the more serious tone. Nice change
I adore this series so far. I'd love to see a video like this about David Hahn, the Nuclear Boyscout.
Thor compare Tsar Bombs?
Quite interesting, i enjoy the time and style of presentation. At 5:03 Lithium 6 has 3 neutrons.
I love science n history above all else, so these videos are perfect for me. Keep em coming!
This left me crying a little bit. In college, my Japanese film history professor said to us, "it's something to think about that exposure to radiation creates superheroes in America and monsters in Japan."
@@eggstu the bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki were war crimes and not needed
@@monauralsnail0669 the japanese govt was attempting to surrender before the nukes were dropped
@@eggstu Multiple things can be terrible at the same time.
@@eggstu this reads like you're trying to justify war crimes by saying "well everyone else is doing it!" stop it.
@@wizzerd229 it’s interesting to wonder why any one person or group of individuals would ever think that it would be a good idea to kill innocent people in such a terrifying way, just to send fear into a country and it’s government.
Edit: Especially considering those not killed by the initial blast suffer from a slow killer they can’t even see.
Two words that should never _ever_ be said together: "acceptable fallout"
That only applies if followed by the words New Vegas, otherwise no... just no
acceptable fallout = 0 fallout unless you a country that has nukes :(
COUGHFallout 76COUGH
there is no such thing as acceptab;le fallout
Well he says acceptible not acceptable so maybe you're reading into it.
Imagine trying to build the most inconceivably powerful bomb imaginable... only to react to its detonation with, "Holy shit, that was way too damn powerful."
It puts it in a different perspective seeing how it is then how one thinks. like your eyes are more hungry then your stomach. You get to the point “oh shit i think this is too much”
Yes, it was a wonderful surprise, it made thermonuclear devices practical. That has saved us from multiple repeats of WW II and all the lives it would have cost.
"Jesus, Larry, did you carry the three?"
"Wait, were we doing this in metric or imperial?"
we often like to think so hard about what we could do that we fail to take pause & consider what we _should_ do
The Great Kazoo made a button like that.
I grew up on the east COAST of Australia and as a kid I cried and had nightmares about this explosion, about the Marshallese and the 'jelly' babies they gave birth to, without bones, and the horror that they would never go home. It was my greatest nightmare for many years.
Pobrecito...
I'm sure
My god…
@@ScreenMasters369nice profile photo
Starting to understand what it meant by, "The luckiest are those who turn immediately into plasma after the initial blast. The remaining "survivor" are residence of Hell on Earth."
Crazy to think that we are still sitting on these ultimate by-products of human madness.
"As soon as the war ended, we located the one spot on earth that hadn't been touched by the war and blew it to hell." - Bob Hope
That speaks volumes.
Damn
@@fumeril damn indeed... 🥺
Sorry but it was very unfortunately necessary
Bob Hope was soooooo right.
when you're dealing with a topic like this, "until next time" is a horrifying phrase to end on.
Well I’m not sleeping tonight, thanks to your comment. Really good comment
Well, there is the Tsar Bomba...!
Just be happy that we can say that.
One day there won't be a "next time"
yikes
The more you know.
This feels like a case of something going horribly "right." They got the results they wanted, then got too much of the results they wanted. Far too much.
They went too far and had to deal with the consequences of it
we dreamt of makimg the worlds most powerful nuclear weapon... and we succeded.
@@d0rkl0rd92Well, the most powerful nuke would have to be the russian Tsar bomb, I think, even though nowadays there might be something even more destructive...
Fascinating! My dad was stationed on Eniwetok during the Castle Bravo test (and others). While years later he was concerned about what radiation exposure he might have received, this year (2023) he turns 91 and looks and acts like he is 10 years younger.
Great genes, bodes well for you
@@mamavswildIt’s luck, not great genes.
@@matmul4850well it was a fission bomb not a fusion bomb. Fission bombs are much cleaner in regards to fallout as more of the fissable material converts to energy
I like reading comments like that! Blessings to you and your father!
“The test was supposed to be a secret”
Ah yes, the VERY SECRET *15 MEGATON NUCLEAR BOMB EXPLOSION*
Well it wasn't like they intended it to be 15 megatons. They were only shooting for four.
World: What was that big boom?
USA: Weather baloon
World: What is that big mushroom cloud?!
USA: Weather baloon
World: And that ratiation?!
USA: Weather. Baloon.
World: Is it tho?
USA. Yes. But actually no.
It was the KIND of bomb that was supposed to be a secret. But because the detonation was much larger than expected, it gave away the secret that it had to be a new kind of bomb, a fusion bomb.
Yea who would notice A NUCLEAR BOMB
This was 15 megaton the tsar bomba was 50 just imagine seeing that
Imagine seeing a second sun rise on the horizon and hearing literal doom and being like, “yeah let’s keep fishing.”
It's just like the current state we're in, hearing literal communist freemasons in the UN telling us, "Welcome to 2030, you own nothing, you have no privacy, but you've never been happier" and being like, "Yeah, let's keep watching vids."
@@davemwangi05 struck me back to reality
@@davemwangi05 what?
@@davemwangi05 yes, the world economic forum... all of them communists. They're top capitalists, you do realise that?
@@lisaw150 Yeah, capitalists ganged up against us. Looks like you knew this already. Now look at what all comments here are about, people are like let's just keep watching videos. zero concern, or am I the only one seeing this?
- Did you care for the islands' inhabitants?
- No, not atoll 😑
I'm stealing that joke just like the U.S. stealing years off the natives lifespan
Im surprised that guy in that old film didnt just admit, "They are brown, and we dont care about them. But it will be fun to see how thay fare."
"They're not american, who gives a s***?"
@@Ndlelex i mean are they wrong? the rest of the world hates us simply because of our success, why should we give a rats ass about them? you know how many countries would nuke the fuck out of us if they were smart enough?
Crazy how Castle Bravo instantly turned a paradise into a living hell.
Forever
More like, dead hell.
That's what nuclear weapons are designed for, so no wonder really...
Imagine being those fisherman minding your own business then all of a sudden BAM you’re a blind, feel like you’re on fire, and hear the loudest sound of your life all in a few seconds
I’d have knew I was dead, wth would be running through your head
@Nate Mogs - and then just keep fishing business as usual immediate to the blast lol.
Blind on fire and deaf
And imagine thinking $53,000 is enough for completely fucking over someone's existence
@@spicycaco2061 At that time, it was a lot of money. You are not taking inflation into account.
Today, it was reported that Mr. Oishi, a former crew member of the Lucky Dragon No. 5, died on March 7. Many Japanese are grateful for the videos you made. thank you, Mr. Hill. from tokyo.
holy shit, one of them survived until this year? RIP
Man that guy was a trooper.....respect from Texas....
thats badass that he was alive so long
@@DevynPlaysGames
He has been fighting illness for over 50 years and died on March 7, 2021 at the age of 87. He was a nu-bomb survivor. on the bed, He writes his own story "THE DAY THE SUN ROSE IN THE WEST"
@@thigh.enjoyer.
he said, its not the responsibility of the US. theres responsibility to all countries equal participating in the nu-weapons competition. our generations made up of the US productive innovations, thank you!
Castle Bravo was not the first thermonuclear explosion. The first was Ivy Mike on November 1, 1952.
Admittedly, Ivy Mike was really a proof-of-concept test, given that it used liquid deuterium as the fusion fuel. Castle Bravo was the first US test of lithium deuteride as the fusion fuel, which, being a solid at room temperature, is much easier to build a bomb out of.
There were plans to make a deliverable bomb using liquid deuterium, but it was quickly canceled once Castle Bravo demonstrated lithium deuteride's viability as a fusion fuel.
Revisiting this playlist after watching Oppenheimer. Kyle's videos fills you with such unimaginable eerie feeling that i almost feel numb for good 15 minutes after. Absolute Masterpiece.
My grandfather was present at the Bikini Atoll during this testing. He was on a destroyer. He had documents and everything. He described seeing the bones of his hands through closed eyes when the blast detonated.
Whoa thats insane to even imagine
That sounds extremely terrifying
Holy moly
Whoa, imagine an explosion so bright that it becomes a huge flashlight on it’s own
My father was there and is still living, although he’s had all kinds of cancerous skin lesions. He suffers from dementia, but did get to speak of this before he got really sick. He told we kids once at a holiday gathering, and said he didn’t want to speak of it or hear about it again. He meant what he said, so nobody raised the matter in his presence. Our mother didn’t learn of it for years after it was declassified. I suspect he’s taking a lot of still classified information with him to his grave.
These stories are honestly scarier than most horror films.
Most modern era horror films aren’t scary anyway, just one shitty ass jump scare after the other.
I like this comment but you're at 69
Yup
Because it’s REAL
Honestly check out horror stories real life stories.
I like how they tried to keep Castle Bravo a secret, as if you could hide a 15 Megaton Blast from anyone 💀
just put a silencer on it. ez fix 👍
Important detail:
The atoll of Rongelap was particularly affected. Jeton Anjain, Minister of Health and Senator in the Marshallese parliament, later testified, “Approximately five hours after the detonation, it began to rain radioactive fallout at Rongelap. Within hours, the atoll was covered with a fine, white, powder-like substance. No one knew it was radioactive fallout. The children played in the ‘snow.’ They ate it.”
“The test, was supposed to remain a secret.” How the fuck do you keep a nuclear explosion a secret?
the ocean is a huge place
Use a suppressor so it dosent make boom boom
@@sonicman7697 What kind?
@@randomstuff6790 the one where it no boom boom
The islanders probably thought it was a giant orange cock rising above the horizon.
My former landlord was AT this test. His body was riddled with cancer for years. He's still alive by some miracle.
No way!
Wow!!
Liar.
@@Dr.Mantis-Toboggan-M.D. does it make you feel better inside when you act childish?
That's insane!
Re-watching this masterpiece after 2 years and oh man I appreciate the brilliant work Kyle has done even more!
Same!! I used to love his half life histories stories. I just watch Oppenheimer last night and remembered Kyle's videos and revisited them again after two years. Beautifully made and spine chilling indeed
I've watched several videos of the Operation Castle series of nuclear tests. All of them were intense. But it was the Bravo shot that was frightening - for the reasons you elucidate, and for those documenting the shot. There were a group of observers in a concrete bunker at the other end of the atoll from Bravo who immediately knew something was drastically wrong. The story of their survival and rescue is worthy of a video in itself. Good information Kyle. This was a comprehensive and intelligent video.
That story sounds fascinating, I tried finding more but couldn’t. Can you share where I can find some more information about their story?
@@Fractured_Unity Richard Rhodes wrote a book entitled "Dark Sun" about the development of the super. He goes into depth about the Castle Bravo shot and who was involved and what the fallout was. Fascinating strory.
who says 'elucidate'? 🤓nerd alert! listen to you trying to sound clever. Anyone else would have said, for the reasons you describe or the reasons you present. 'elucidate' that's just you indulging in IQ-signalling as is your remark that it's a "comprehensive and intelligent video". To brand anything intelligent publicly is a bid to ramp up your intelligence to the reader as only an intelligent mind could brand anything else intelligent. That's your logic. This is mine, exposing the vulgar seasoning you pepper your comments with to boast about how clever you are. Disgusting. Be direct, use plain English. If you were really intelligent you wouldn't feel the need to boast about it surreptitiously in your comments.
I really like these kind of “mini documentary’s” keep up the great content Kyle
its amazing
Agreed, love these videos
Gotta love a good video essay.
I guess he's calling them "Half-Life Histories"? But yeah they are amazing, i send all of them to a large group of people every time lol
These are the best! Please keep them coming!
Note: If white stuff starts to fall from the sky in a place where it usually doesn't snow, *_DO NOT PICK IT UP AND LICK IT._*
I read that literally the second he said that.
Trying to find this comment lol
Actually you also shouldn't lick snow. It's polluted af. But then in contrast to that stuff you mentioned you will probably survive if you slick snow, lol.
Don’t you tell me what to do... *you’re not my real dad!!*
😆
I’d like to propose that we expand “snow” to include anything 🤣 anyone hear the story of the meat falling from the sky? A bunch of vultures puking for like 5 straight minutes (or something like that) was the eventual explanation but really. Rotten meat falling from the sky. Don’t eat sky food, it’s gross.
Ivy Mike was the first thermonuclear bomb test nov 1st 1952.
Castle Bravo march 1 1954
One of the darkest moments in human history. Oh how mankind with all its ‘knowledge’ destroys every living thing on this beautiful earth
It's fascinating how nuclear bombs have so often been underestimated in intensity by the very people who built them.
Almost as fascinating as when you get vaporised by one. . . . .
Yeah, there's definitely something disturbing about how often people who are capable of designing these things from first principles just get something *completely* wrong. Like...imagine if the guy trusted with the calculations for whether or not the Trinity test would set the atmosphere on fire and kill everything on earth fucked up to this degree? There definitely would no longer be a Los Alamos.
The father of the soviet hydrogen bomb program and chief designer of the 50 megaton "Tsar bomb", Andrei Sakharov changed his attitude towards nuclear weapons right after witnessing the test of his Tsar bomb. He openly called for total worldwide nuclear disarmament and even suggested the Soviet Union should make a start in reducing its nuclear arsenal even if the USA does not agree to disarm at the same time. Of course that did not go down well with the communist leadership in Moscow and he was suspended from his position. He also made other controversial political propositions like democratic reforms and boosting ethnic minority rights within the Soviet Union which led to him being declared persona non grata and put under house arrest in the end. The EU later named its human rights prize after him, the Sakharov prize. Imagine that. One of the fathers of the hydrogen bomb and chief physicist of the entire soviet nuclear weapons program, turned into a political idol and greatest figurehead of nuclear disarmament later in his life.
Dumb humans that's why, we really never know anything, just think we do
They didn’t that’s why the french chose to test in the pacific and kill all the locals..They should test in France 🇫🇷...I’m against nuclear ☢️ anything....
"The test was supposed to be a secret." If this wasn't so serious, this would be uproariously funny.
Those idiots... How the hell can you drop a 15 megaton bomb without anyone knowing LOL
@@chrism6904 they didnt think it was gonna be 15 mt.
@@bwab9051 They thought it'd be 6, would that still be unnoticed by anyone?
@@chrism6904 stop analysing mid 50 's with your 2020 knowledge at that time scientists tinkered nuclear cores with screwdrivers...
@@calgar42k Even back then many knew that particular experiment was incredibly stupid the way they were conducting it
I just saw the other day ago that video time-lapse of all nuclear weapons tests, and I was completely overwhelmed by the fact that not a few, not a dozen, not a hundred - but thousands of tests were done by the governments of the US, USSR, France, and UK. Now that I've seen this video as well, I got a history lesson that our schools don't teach. I appreciate it! ❤
2,056 nuclear tests were made between all the countries that developed and used those weapons of mass destruction during those time periods. The United States alone detonated more than half of those devices out of the total sum. Then half of what the United States detonated in total, was tested in the atmosphere.
Most of the nuclear devices used for these tests by all countries involved the governments didn't know or acknowledge the severe devastation such acts would have on the environments and people as little to almost nothing was known, even by scientists, the long term effects radioactive fallout caused.
Kyle you are extremely good at breaking these stories and the science down to an understandable level for people who have not studied science past high school. I'm very impressed, thanks for being so intentional about how you break things down!
Finally someone on TH-cam telling a story in a normal voice
BROOOOOOOOO
Pussyslayer 666 with that profile pic
Friend, repent from your suffering and give it to JESUS. HE will help you. Be cleansed with HIS blood and prosper in HIS will. I bless you with humility to accept HIM
NUMBER 6 STUDENT WATCHES PORN AND GETS NAKED!!!!
@@messiahimminent9761 ratio
Jesus was a creation. Jesus needed to eat, drink, sleep, and had many other needs. The one who needs is weak and imperfect, and the weak and imperfect is clearly not the Creator of the world.
Isn't.... Isn't Nagasaki the second Hiroshima?
Yes but pretty sure the quote means it metaphorically not literally
The footage of the explosion and subsequent fireball/mushroom cloud is jaw droppingly beautiful but viciously deadly at the same time. It's a weird feeling, a beautiful juxtaposition when you see a nuclear explosion, incredible awe in one hand, visceral shock in the other hand.
“It was the worst atomic disaster in American history”
SUDDEN AD BREAK
“Noooooo! Quick, get bounty, the quicker picker upper!”
Brooo it switches up the mood so fast😂
I got an Old Spice one
I got a happy febreze ad. TH-cam algorithms should figure the mood of a video before thrusting that in.
Too much yield in your fusion bomb? Clean up that mess with Bounty, the quicker picker upper.
Yeah. I got Febreeze.
Can you say, "Mood Whiplash?"
interesting fact: Godzilla's skin or scales were inspired by radiation burns from Hiroshima and the victims of the Castle Bravo test. And the opening scene of the 1954 film with the fishing boat is a reference to this incident.
“Fun” fact
@@peterboris3765 Ima be honest, I was thinking the same before I hit send
Godzilla was the result of nuclear testing
Tbh I'm a bit disgusted that Americans made godzilla a hero in the newest godzilla trilogy
Edit: The original comment was based on a lack of information on my part, pls stop upvoting it
@@-cookiezila-461 The Japanese did during the appeal to kids cheesy as hell era, also he was an anti hero in several films that came after that era.
So it wasn't just the Americans who did it, hell Legendary Godzilla is about the same as the Heisei era Japan Godzilla.
I studied this my whole senior year at university of Washington, with holly barker, these people have not recovered, their genetics have changed and their way of life will never be the same.
Like anyone one on here cares. The callousness displayed is unbelievable ☹️
"Castle Bravo is such a cool name for anythi-oh...oh now I'm sad"
I knew about the intensity of the blast but I always assumed that it was intentional. I never knew that it was an accident. I also never learned about the people that had lived there. It’s absolutely sick.
"oh that's so cool! My name is Bravo and- oh it's super sad".
There's a city named Castle Danger in Northern Minnesota if that makes you feel any better.
I'm claiming "Tritium Bonus" for the hardcore punk band I always wanted to start!
@@brandonlink6568 that is the single best city name other than the real city named Batman, no really. Change my mind
"The second Hiroshima"
Nagasaki: Excuse me?
A direct quote, not my interpretation
@@kylehill my donation gave you a stroke lol “hey the the, Show Kyle Hyle Love”
@@kylehill HELLO!!! I want to spend time with celebrities. Just kidding. GAGAGAGAGA! I only want to spend time with my two girlfriends and record TH-cam videos for with the 3 of us. OH YEAH. Don't hate me for living the best life, dear jyle
AxxL you good?
@@AxxLAfriku lol, you're a three-year-old dude 😂
Listening to you describe the sailors touching the ash and licking it had my skin crawling. I just kept saying “no no no”
Very well done story telling and pacing. It’s sad what happened to these people.
Sad my aunt Fanny, so called civilization treating Marshall Island like lab rats, so glad your good with that.
I adore these videos. There's zero fat on your content, it's all interesting and informative from beginning to end.
Mr. President, we're proud to announce that Castle Bravo was a 250% success.
@Frank Harris we are in a TH-cam comment section not a science article. It's okay to not be exact when making a colloqial comment.
@Frank Harris While you display amazing math skills, your spelling sucks. It's Los Alamos.
Always underpromise and overdeliver? :-)
@Frank Harris They confusingly used a range of values, 5-6 Mt. Therefore the range of success was 250% of 6 Mt to 300% of 5 Mt. But 250% makes more sense because the 60% Li-7 added to 40% Li-6 is 250% of Li-6 alone whether it would have been 5 or 6 Mt. 15 Mt comes in at the high end. The only way to get more than 250% of Li-6 alone is if the fast neutrons from fusion succeeded in causing more fission in the present Uranium (235 & 238) in a third stage.
@Stinky Piece of Cheese excuse me brother I was in the ICU last week in septic shock. Sorry for not being bang on with my tertiary level English
It's the middle of the night here. Quiet, not the slightest sound anywhere aside of my table clock ticking. In this environment, this video felt like a therapy for calling my mind also kinda creepy. Huge thanks to Kyle Hill. I absolutely loved it.
Wow that sounds *imersive*
@@rianantony sounds peaceful
@@joshuaschritz8151 sounds fucking sick to me
@@BernieHollandMusicit is f… sick
I can’t believe Godzilla and SpongeBob have something in common. That is bonkers.
The disaster terrifies me greatly but it’s an important story to tell. Assumptions lead to foolish decisions. Don’t underestimate nuclear power.
7:57 a big reason cancer rates shot up was that before the testing, the islanders didn’t have many carcinogens. In Hiroshima and the western US, people exposed to fallout smoked and were exposed to various carcinogens at work, like DDT, benzene, and asbestos. All that combined to make cancer cases caused by the bombs almost indistinguishable from the background noise.
The 1950s were the years that effectively defined American excess.
You're going to love this.
As well as the 20 foot long cars with 8 litre engines and the behemoth that was the B-36 Peacemaker strategic bomber, you might want to sit down for the following two items ...
First, one tobacco company actually suggested using asbestos in cigarette filters.
Now that you've got over the shock of that one, Gilbert, a manufacturer of educational toys, actually marketed and sold not only extensively stocked chemistry sets, but, wait for it, a nuclear science laboratory for children. You can look this one up, some examples survive to the present. The kit contained samples of real uranium.
1950s America was ... surreal.
For those wondering, the fireball could be seen from almost exactly one Ohio away
For the Americans
Dang that's like a half a Texas, impressive!
I never wondered that. I actually wondered if the fireball was visible from the top of the Texas panhandle to brownsville. In other words, one Texas away.
One what? What's an ohio?
@@makilaetkencun9358 Ohio has been eliminated.
In light of the whole ordeal, "The Lucky Dragon" has to be the most ironic name for a ship I've ever heard.
Well it sure wasn't lucky
Oh it was lucky alright. Though that luck turned out to be bad.
Tickling the dragon tale. And getting struck by a random wind. Well
It turned out to be very lucky, as it caused the US and the Soviet Union to start pumping the brakes on mutually assured destruction. It just wasn't terribly lucky for the crew.
They were caught up in a nuke - look at at these poor people who colided with sufracing submarine, probably only one within 1000km....
so happy i found your channel been binge watching your videos the past few nights been looking forward to bed time so i can prop up the phone and listen to these awesome story’s
“Second Hiroshima”
Nagasaki: am I a joke to you?
They typically default with Hiroshima because it was the first city hit.
I explained to my students that a thermonuclear bomb is effectively like creating a small star on the planet Earth for a few seconds. Hydrogen to Helium, just like the Sun. Of course the reaction is unstable and unsustainable...which is for the best honestly.
Then why have various people been pursuing controlled fusion reactions for 60+ years?
@@buckhorncortez Because a stable fusion reaction is the holy grail of energy production but for 60+ years we have been unable to produce a controlled fusion reactions that produces more energy than it takes to sustain.
Yeah, nowhere near enough pressure to sustain a fusion reaction. Imagine if the flash could last longer than a fraction of a second...
@@buckhorncortez because if you manage to stabilize it, you’ve got the most efficient energy source ever.
@@CStone-xn4oy had the first fusion reaction that generated more energy than what we put into it. 8 months after you said this
My father was one of the lucky sailors there. He died in 2019. He had had many surgeries to remove cancer. They removed the right side of his thyroid glands and about a year later the left side. He had a tumor removed from behind his right eye. He was 22 when he was at the test. In the 50s they gave Potassium Iodide to the soldiers at the Nevada tests. The Iodide would fill their thyroid glands to prevent absorption of radiation. They didn't give it to the sailors at this test because they thought that they were far enough away.
I said my father was one of the lucky ones and he was. He lived to be 87. Most of the people there didn't live to a very old age.
My father loved America and his home state of North Carolina. He held no hard feelings about all these issues with his health and cancer. He was made aware (by his doctors) that the test was the likely cause of the cancers. He served in the Navy for 24 years and retired as a Chief Petty officer.
I don't care if anyone believes this or not. I just want people to understand that there were people who lived a long time and went through a lot of surgeries, treatments and chemotherapy because of this 'Test'.
Yall Take Care and be safe, John
Absolute legend. I'm sorry he had to go through that
Did he describe to you what they saw, and how the heatwave felt? I"m supposing he's one of those who watched the explosion with naked eyes. I heard that that the gov lied to them, told them it was no big deal while in reality they needed a lot of shielding, and looking directly at the X-rays was a terrible idea.
It’s sad a legend like this and many many many others are forgotten by this so called democratic and “patriotic” government.
@@DoctorTauri Remind me again what Trump and the ultra-right did for these men?
@@DoctorTauri
More like Pathetic government
This is probably the best documentary I've seen, even tho it's short, on the potential of nuclear weapons. I was born into the age of duck and cover and had an uncle who was one of the sailors at the post bomb exposure, even swimming in the lagoon. I learned a lot from this. Thank you
I've been to Hiroshima and visited the museum at ground zero, it's absolutely horrendous what happened there. There are burnt toys of children on display, and you learn that that's all what's left of them. Thousands of people burning to death. Shadows on walls in the shapes of people, rags of clothing. Children dying.... It truly left me in shock how someone was willing to commit such atrocities on anyone. I can't imagine the suffering and pain that people who survived went through
an atrocity that America will tell you saved millions, im not sure about that but if its true but i hope it is, i hope that this horrible deed did infact save millions and wasn't just a barbaric act in the final stage of the war
@@jackurquhart7994 I think that the death and fallout of Hiroshima has kept many countries from using nukes in the years since the war, because they know what will happen if the do, but that doesn't justify it in any way
Yea.... Dont start none, wont be none. They asked for it.
Truly fked up there are a lot of images with such "shadows" imprinted on walls of ppl of all ages , then u see a couple of cretins in the comment section parroting the same garbage they were feed by their brainwashed parents thinking this saved more lives than it took which is absolute horseshit
Fun fact: one of the larger, if not the largest, displaced groups of Marshallese ended up in Springdale, AR. About the furthest thing from a pacific island chain you could imagine.
Must have felt like being dropped on an alien planet.
And just in time for and only 111 miles away from the Damascus Titan missile explosion. What are the odds on that?
Wait really? I drive through there all the time, I guess I have to stop sometime and see if I can talk to someone about it
@@matthewparker5277same
Whats so fun about that fact?
Scientist reporting back to top brass: "I have good news and bad news. The good news: Our bomb design is more efficient than we thought. The bad news: The bomb was more efficient than we thought."
What I think is funny is when you look at the planning to drop the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs nobody stopped to think that the entire country was made out of bamboo and paper and not bricks and steel so it did a thousand times more damage than they planned to do!!!
They literally didn't expect it to wipe every single building off the face of the planet
@@ShuffleUpandDeal32 nothing was selfish about it was a needed thing that had to happen the alternative would of been a full scale invasion of the island that would of resulted in more deaths than Hiroshima and Nagasaki
@@jessewarr1277 they stopped because of the ussr invasion not the us bombing
@@ShuffleUpandDeal32 The bombs were initially meant for Germany.
@@jessewarr1277 yes it had to happen - the allies had planned to send over about 700 thousand troops to Japan if the atomic bomb was not used. This would have drove the death toll to around 400 thousand american soldiers and more Japanese. It was a horrible thing and words cannot describe it. But it could have been much worse had that war not been stopped.
FYI, Ivy Mike was the first fusion bomb, castle bravo was the second
I just had to rewatch this with my wife. Your videos age better than the finest wine.
hard to tell this is the same guy that makes all those funny, lighthearted and cheery science videos. very solemn and respectful, i applaud that
I was sure he must've hired a narrator because there is just no way this voice belongs to that same man
His voice definitely rang bells; very thankful he gives these stories the calm and respect they truly deserve.
Yeah, I first discovered this channel trough this video and was completely surpised with just how different his normal videos are to these ones.
My Grandpa witnessed this test along with operation Ivy. He was a radarman on the USS Curtiss from 1951-1954. When the bombs dropped (edit: I know now it was a remote detonation, nothing was dropped) he said his vision was completely white, even when turned around with his face shielded. He recounted seeing palm trees, dirt, water, etc being flung into the air. Unfortunately he died in 1979 from stomach cancer, I never met him. Many of the people who witnessed these tests had cancer later in life, the casualties from this test were not all immediate.
Anyway this video made me think, he got a double dose of nuclear bomb radiation over the course of 2 years. Crazy.
Wow
my grandpa was also a radar man there during that same period and he died of cancer 6 years ago. i wonder if they knew eachother. i have his lighter that is engraved with the island and atomic energy symbol and it says he was joint task force 7.
What was his name btw
What bullshit... they knew about nuclear radiation back in 1945...
They weren’t dropped, they were ground based. Look it up!
Moral of the story? If you ever encounter mysterious "falling, snow-like dust" ... do not "take a lick."
Glad they were able to understand better how to control detonations after this. It was a very educative experience for everyone. Now we have ultra-miniaturized dial a yield 3+ stage thermonuclear devices.
so - at 6 minute mark - the commander had ample time to postpone the test and wait for favorable winds.....and he chose to continue, costing the US millions and the lives and health of the natives. Nice work, Congrats.
It would have cost human lives even with ideal winds and only the originally intended size of the explosion. They dropped a nuclear bomb into a populated area and they did it again and again. Nothing can justify that insanity.
Given how they talked about it and the era in question, I'd guess that "acceptable fallout" probably wasn't meant to indicate that the collateral damage was unintended but "acceptable".
It meant they were part of the study. And it wasn't the first (or the last) case of human experimentation without consent in those decades.
You don’t know many Navy admirals do you...they are all stupid..
6:00
@@henryptung some were foreigners, some were our own citizens. Many were our own soldiers and some were even just young children, often orphans. All were just people trying to survive in the world.
You know, the statistic "as much energy as all the bombs the Allies dropped in WW2 combined" is supposed to make the Castle Bravo explosion look huge (and it does), but it really gives a scale of strategic bombing. They dropped nuclear levels of explosive one dumb iron bomb at a time using prop driven bombers. Insane.
Many people forget the firebombing raids on Tokyo, Dresden, and other cities that killed many more people than nuclear weapons did. Of course the logistical ease of "One plane, one bomb, thousands dead" can't be ignored. Nor can the Damocle's Sword that is the tremendous arsenal of deliverable nuclear weapons that exist in the world today.
The most sobering statistic to me is knowing that a single Ohio-class submarine carries up to 20 missiles, each having 12 independently-targetable warheads with a combined yield 5,700 times that of the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.
100,000 died overnight from fireworks over Tokyo 5 months before Hiroshima. And 300,000 in several days in target cities of Japan. Mostly civilian, women and children. Certainly there was a high tolerance for civilian casualties compared to now.
@@richbarrows3922So using this logic you'd been ok with vaporizing Jews in nazi Germany to end a war
@@eracer1111Dresden wasn't actually as bad as it was portrade. The official death count is high because most people died of suffercation so there was lots of body's that could be identified and weren't buried under rubble. The Nazis also turned it into properganda. Even the author of slaughter house five said he regretted how he portrade the bombing in his book saying that he was "the only person to profit from the Dresden bombings".
You mean in comparison, they dropped tiny, insignificant levels of explosives. Not nuclear levels!
That "Danger, No Smoking" sign next to a nuclear device must be some kind of an internal joke.
Fantastic narration and well done documentary. I learned quite a bit.
My grandpa was there and saw it. His name is Ron Yoxsimer, and is still alive surprisingly, and still is very healthy at 89 years old.
If he's willing, set up a camera and interview him....before his story is lost. Kudos to him for being one tough SOB.
Maybe radiation gave him superpowers
People are resistant to radiation. The US exposed some unwilling test subjects to low doses of radiation for long periods of time and no health effects were seen.
The body can heal low doses, but if the damage passes an threshold it causes too much damage for the body to repair.
@@agentepolaris4914 Haha...
That's amazing.
I really would interview him while he's still with us. It would be very interesting to hear an in depth account from sombody who was there.
The tragic irony of that ship being called “the lucky dragon“ is just baffling.
Dark humor here, but it wasn't just The Lucky Dragon. It was The Lucky Dragon No. 5
What happened to the first four?
@@ovni2295 lucky dragon no. 1 and no. 2 sank due to poor construction when holes started to develop after the heavy loads of fish they got. Lucky Dragon No.3 was taken by the IJN during peace time as costal defence. Lucky Dragon No.4 collided with an Ocean Liner and sank
@@fivenightsofrandomness9224 It's like they cursed the boats with that name.
@@fivenightsofrandomness9224 Yikes
"The Lucky Dragon and her crew" in the end brought about dangers of not properly understanding the theory of Nuclear Weapons and the effects. In essence, "The Lucky Dragon" finally showed her true colours to the world.
"原水爆の犠牲者は、わたしを最後にしてほしい。"- 久保山 愛吉 Translation: "I want to be the last victim of the atomic and hydrogen bombs." - Aikichi Kuboyama
Here after watching Oppenheimer such a great movie !!! Really shows how insane nuclear weapons are.
My uncle (my dad's brother) was a scientist that was exposed to radiation during the test. He died in 1960 of leukemia caused from that exposure.
Bullshit
Allegedly
@@ralphmacchiato3761🤦
So he was helping make a bomb to kill foreigners and ended up getting killed by that very bomb.
Sounds like poetic justice
@@qualicumjack3906Braindead comment. Nuclear bombs in reality have prevented millions of deaths of the last 70ish years because of the concept of Mutually assured destruction. Many scientists knew once the arms race started that despite the terrible potential of nuclear weapons, they could be the catalyst to allow the civilized world to play nice (in terms of not engaging in hot wars). And the only way a smaller nation gets enough nuclear weapons to participate in mutually assured destruction, is to develop enough as a nation where they will be mature enough to handle that many weapons appropriately. If Iran were to drop a nuke today, the response would be conventional not nuclear, but Iran would conventionally be wiped off the face of the earth. There’s a unique balance to it that has saved countless lives, as well as created a modern global society that relies on cooperation over immediate war like it used to be
Imagine being a fish chillin on the coral reef then just being evaporated
At least it's painless. The survivors are the ones who suffer the most.
Good thing fish dont really have any memory I guess.
Lol aerosoled, irradiated, and swept with the winds
@@bigpjohnson That's a myth
Fish stick
Outstanding. When Castle Bravo is mentioned in my house, one line inevitably follows: "Who knew Lithium-7 could fuse?"
I did have to stop at point in the video, I thought you said Selenium-141. Do what? No way! I can't believe...oh CERIUM-141. Silly me.
It sounded like he DID say selenium-141!
@@The_Amazing_Lizzy Thank you. I'm not crazy after all!
"they didn't saw the ship on the radar".
I would be surprised to learn that they actually spotted it but said ;
"let's see what happens."
That wouldn't have been the first time Los Alamos dudes did something wrong in the name of science.
Outside the Wire makes even more sense now, "it's just collateral"
Was a pretty good movie ngl
Where just collateral hug ur kid n be glad thats possiable that day
@@SeraphFemboy It was shit. 2 out of 5. An interesting initial concept, if not particularly original, that was completely squandered by the end. The story was a total mess with multiple plot holes and even the action was pretty boring. Like when the US robots end up fighting the Russian robots in the street, I thought at least this bit of action would be entertaining, but no. Another missed opportunity.
@@oldnelson4298 k
Old Nelson not a single person in the entire universe asked for your opinion
I think the only person who cheered when Castle Bravo went off was Edward Teller, who pushed to get it made.
I highly doubt he gave much thought to the victims from the fallout….
Fun fact.
My grandfather was working in far north Queensland here in Australia and was a seismologist and as he said "for fun" he decided to tale a seismograph machine with him as he was going to be in the rainforest in a shack he had built by hand and which I own now. At the time he was on holidays but still liked to keep an eye on the earthquakes that happen here in Australia more than most people realise. When they detonated "castle bravo" it registered on his seismograph and he had a ham radio set up (which I own and still world with the antenna's he built 😁), in his words "I was sitting in my rainforest cabin smoking my tobacco pipe having a chat to a radio operator in Guam when suddenly the seismograph started registering what looked like an earthquake but slightly different. The chap I was talking to had his single wiped out by an unusual noise the likes I had never heard before. I contacted the the seismology department down south and had a talk to then even I was in cairns and they told me they would debrief me when I was not on my holidays"
I was a lot younger when my pop died but this was one thing I was really interested in but sadly I had a learning difficulty when I grew up so I did not have the capacity to persue a career in geoscience. He said later on that america and all those countries that conduct those tests were never sure what might happen every single time they detonated those weapons. And he also detected the tsar bomba when it was detonated. His only wish was that those scientists and others like th would stop playing god and stop the tests and destroy all nuclear weapons.
It's impressive how by studying history one can learn just how much government lies about anything. It is the only constant, yet, none believes it is happening when history is current day...
Truer words have never been said. There’s very little truth in what we’re being told.
Like Biden. Classic example
The government does lie but not about things of this scale, if a nuke was detonated in an oopsie daisy moment there would be vastly more media coverage than before the internet. The government simply can't lie as much anymore. Conspiracy theorists have only been right like 3 times. There is no reason to belive the government is lying.
@@betterthanyesterday3912 Biden is as much of an example as any of your average politicians, if anything he lies less than trump.
Lying is SOMETIMES necessary (for military ops, diplomatic missions, etc) , but lying about a NUKE is just....
Japan: castle bravo was like a second Hiroshima
People of Nagasaki: ....
if it weren't that sad...laughable title indeed
Oh ffs, the title hurt your feelings. you know what the hell they mean.
@@andrehof7876 Keever, Beverly Deepe (February 25, 2004). "Shot in the Dark". Honolulu Weekly. Archived from the original on August 28, 2008. Retrieved 2008-11-30. The Japanese government and people dubbed it “a second Hiroshima” and it nearly led to severing diplomatic relations.
Nagasaki be like "Am I a joke to you?"
@@adamnixon2886 Keever, Beverly Deepe (February 25, 2004). "Shot in the Dark". Honolulu Weekly. Archived from the original on August 28, 2008. Retrieved 2008-11-30. The Japanese government and people dubbed it “a second Hiroshima” and it nearly led to severing diplomatic relations.
theres a reason second hiroshima is in quotations in the title, see above.
castle bravo wasn’t the first fusion bomb we tested, Ivy Mike was
The only thing wrong is Castle Bravo is not the first fusion bomb, the Ivy Mike is. Castle Bravo is the biggest nuclear device detonated by US though.
"Lucky" Dragon. Man, people need to stop naming stuff that gives the Universe an excuse to be ironic.
So, if a boat is named the Unfortunate Weasel, it's pretty safe?!?
@@anhedonianepiphany5588 You're safe. Can't guarantee people won't laugh out loud at your boat's name like I did :-)
@@anhedonianepiphany5588 Well now your inviting bad fortune to come inside your house and eat your spagetti
Better than being named the "Angry Dragon." 😂🤣😂🤣
Most evil oxymoron ever: "acceptable fallout"
Acceptable Fallout is not an oxymoron, it is a catastrophic contradiction.
@@areyouready22 I like that too 😄 the alliteration is nice!
Why are there so many misspelled words these days?? “Acceptible” ... it is not. I grew up hating grammar Nazis. But all over TH-cam are misspelled words like this. They spend all these hours putting together lovely documentaries but can’t double check their spelling?? It drives me nuts!
@@douglasschmidt2869 Who are you talking to exactly? I didn't misspell acceptable. I'm old enough that I was actually taught to spell things properly.
@@KT-ed1dk in the video it's written onscreen as "acceptible" at 5:55 and again at 6:26. I agree with Douglas Schmidt. It's one thing to see misspelled words when your cousin's neighbor's idiot brother posts his conspiracy theories on Facebook, but when people put a lot of effort into an informative video like this on TH-cam, you'd think they would check the basics, like spelling. It leaves literate viewers wondering how reliable the rest of the info in the video is.
Added irony here because this video is about "some of the smartest people on the planet" (9:26) making a mistake.
Kyle, the first test of a thermonuclear device was Ivy-Mike, yielding 10 megatons. Castle-Bravo came after it.
Correct! Ivy Mike was the first and produced 10.4 MT, using cryogenic liquid deuterium.
The starter for the bomb was like that at Nagasaki, the Hiroshima device was a uranium bullet, which was a compression device.
I am a Radiation Protection Technologist and have worked in US Nuclear plants since 1974. The man who gave me my first training at that time was in charge of radiation protection for the Navy during this test (not the bomb, but the measurement and control of the exposure from the blast and fallout on the naval vessels in the area.) I heard this story back then along with some interesting descriptions of what happened on the navy ships that were in the area. Needless to say, no one was prepared for what really happened. We learned a lot from this and other tests that went...better. This was a pop gun compared to some devices that have been developed since.
Please don't make the foolish mistake of comparing nuclear bombs to nuclear power. They have very little to do with each other. We could not make one of our nuclear plants explode like that if we were desperate to do so.
Thank you for your comment. I'm a big proponent of nuclear power. There's a lot of slander against it. Ironically, Germany had to wake up a bunch of coal plants recently, after they deactivated their nuclear reactors for some odd reason. This life is one of constant visible irony and contradiction.
It is true that u can't compare the explosions of nuclear plants with thermonuclear bombs. However, the issue of spent fuel pools is quite serious. In 2016, the journal Science estimated that a spent fuel pool fire in Pennsylvania would contaminate approx. 100,000 square kilometers and require the evacuation of around 20 million residents.
@@TheReapersSon As a German I confirm and agree, that was pretty dumb of our government (not too surprising though)
@@TheReapersSon The decision to extend operation time of German nuclear plants has not been made yet, although it is not unlikely in the current world situation.
Renewables are the much better option imo, as the spent fuel final storage is still unresolvef and unattainable in one of the most populated European countries
@@wolfgg00 containing the very small amount of waste from nuclear plants has had a safe solution for actual decades. It is extremely safe especially in comparison to how we produce energy from other sources. Kyle has done a video on it and it’s an eye opener. Certainly worth watching.
The problem was that when the Soviets heard of this they basically said challenge accepted.
and they won the final battle of baddest bomb ever made with the Tsar bomb. After that the U.S. and Russia agreed no more nuclear tests.
Though I don't know if "won" is the right word... I'm sure more powerful bombs could be made and tested today.
More just that that particular bomb was at the right point in a fiery game of leap frog where even the military had to step back and go "Hmmm... Should we keep doing this?"
@@Raven1024 Wasn't there this whole 'setting the atmosphere itself on fire' that made them ponder about wether they should go on... So yes. I don't see an engineering problem to make a bigger bomb... But... you know a complete pyrolytic self cleaning of the planet might be considered a bit overkill for even the worst warmongers...
@@robertnett9793 you are correct. Before the first detonation of the first atomic bomb, the threat of the entire atmosphere being lit on fire was a legitimate concern. As for bigger bombs, yes there are no engineering problems, only moral and mortal ones.
The Tsar Bomba could have been larger, but they limited its size to allow enough time for the bomber and her crew to escape the blast. They even attached a parachute to the bomb to increase the amount of time the crew had.
Unfortunately for us, there is no such thing as overkill. The total amount of nuclear warheads the world currently has, is enough to destroy every city in the world and still have around 1500 left (assuming every city requires 3 nuclear warheads each to be utterly destroyed)
@@Raven1024 One cannot help but think that conceivably the high incidence of cancers in the 20th century might possibly be from all those radioactive particles that were(and continue to be) carried around the world after this and Russia's own test.
It’s interesting to think Nagasaki wasn’t called a second Hiroshima
Real big fan of these videos with a more laidback storytelling. And the way you present the information is phenomenal. I hope you make more videos like this.
"Every effort was made to assure the comfort and well-being of the natives."
Months earlier...
"Sir, it may not be comforting nor good for the well being of the natives to detonate the bomb near their island. Should we make an effort to choose a different location?"
"No."
Hello can you see my comment a little further up??
I cannot see it-I scrolled for a bit but there are 8,476 comments to look through. What did it say?
Yeah, that sounds like America. Russia would also do that too.
@@notdoppler83 Russia and USA
Also the reason we’re not speaking German
@@johnviera3884 not everything is black and white though, especially governments. Yes, Russia and the US fought the Nazis in WWII. But that doesn't make them the good guys in everything else.
I'm old enough to remember duck and cover, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. When I was little I had nightmares about nuclear war.
In the UK everyone thought a nuclear war was inevitable, I was 13 yrs old, and to see grown ups worried takes the world away from under you. I remember my uncle who fought in ww2 saying quite calmly "every twenty years there is a war"
Now they're doing that with the lie of climate change.
Duck and cover is a good strategy. If the explosion is nearby things can be falling on top of you relatively quickly, shockwave. Duck and cover has been poopooed over the years because people mistakenly believe nuclear war is not survivable. It is very survivable. The people who were pushing that idea are those that wanted to get rid of atomic bombs. Leftists always resort to lies. Nowadays people are not instructed what to do in the event of a nuclear war, how to deal with fallout. Public fallout shelters do not even exist anymore. Russia has not screwed over their public with this nonsense. They have the ability to shelter their entire population, and the people are trained what to do.
I am sixteen
I think that we are very close to a potential nuclear war
The estimated fallout from climate change is 1.2 billion refugees by 2050
I’m not against helping refugees or allowing them access to the country but the world can’t cope with the mass evacuation of people from every costal city in the world
This would lead to disputes which would lead to violence which would lead to war
All it takes is one nuke to set of a chain reaction of retaliation strikes that would end civilisation as we know it
There is a reason why scientists put the doomsday clock time at 100 seconds to midnight, the closest that it has ever been
@@minnesotamarine9861 nice bait
Worth mentioning, Linus Pauling was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962 for his work against nuclear testing. Ava, his wife, should've gotten half the prize IMO.
Joseph Rotblat was awarded the prize in 1995 (not '55).
We need more brave scientists like these now more than ever. Great piece!
"War hardened men fell to their knees and prayed"
Some would call these men weak or naive. That is foolish.
These men understood that despite 'winning' the war, they had been condemned by the country they fought for.
Sounds like you the only one who thought that up chief
‘But not everything was so bad’
People *died* but don’t worry you’ve got spongebob
I know - I was stunned at even the mention, never mind an actual pic of that banality.
Cmon man he’s just a fry cook trying to get by
I agree that it’s a clumsy comment
C'est la vie
Well, some levity after this tragedy is acceptable.
“Despite the death and horror, it wasn’t all that bad... SpongeBob...”
I like to think in cannon Mr.Krabs uses money to cope with his trauma from the event.
Remember he was in the navy.
@@illbill5904 he's literally living in the crater technically.
Bikini Bottom.
It's so funny you should move & live there.
@@DespaceMan it shows the degeneracy of our current modern society, completely disregard the downfall of things for a shitty unfunny attempt at a joke.
sure call me a Debbie downer, but its only dimwits who plaster themselves on sunbeds and do controversial things and cry out for help and cost society when we succumb to cancers and unnatural aspects of cases of other conditions.
there is one episode in Spongebob with a depiction of a shady town with weird people living there
the road to this town goes completely vertical (downwards) at one point
My favorite part of this nuclear physics is how humans aren’t the only ones who can create nuclear reactors. There was a natural reactor back in the pre-human days that we found
I had the honor of meeting a vet whom was present at Castle Bravo and he told me the same fact about being able to see the bones in his hand during the flash.
there is something about a "no smoking" sign next to a 15 megaton bomb........
“It was dry and had no taste”
NO TASTE, THEY ATE IT?!
With no context, I think it's more likely that they just put their tongue on it. Scientists do that to get comprehensive reports
Okay so I just got to the part in the video and honestly it still makes sense. He interpreted it as snow, from what I understand
Gritty, not dry.
@@ZatWonGuy One scientist discovered no less than 9 lethal elements that way. He is not officially credited with those discoveries, as he always worked with colleagues and grad students and always deferred credit to them...but he literally ate all 9 elements just to see what it would do to him.
Yeah. He said it looked like snow