Salton Sea Atomic Test Base Part 1
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.ย. 2024
- The Salton Sea Test Base in Southern California is a legacy atomic site that was active for 20 years testing atomic bomb geometry. I visited the site to see if I could find any contamination and to see what state of decay the site was in since the last time I was there a couple years ago. This site is open for everyone to explore. If you are going to visit this site do your research and make sure you are taking the correct route and that you have a way to get out of deep sand if you end up getting stuck. Also plan for the weather in this area. It can get well over 100 degrees and get extremely windy.
This video was getting kind of long so I broke it up into two parts.
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#nuclearbomb #radiation #atomic
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From the mid 60s to the mid 80s, my father and I did a considerable amount of fishing at Salton Sea. Looking at the specific location on the map, the Naval base was an area I never really notice, a spot we always drove around to get to the other side. In later years, I would drive pass Salton Sea on my way to San Felipa, Baja California. So many memories. Thanks.
Curious, what was he fishing for? Did your family eat the fish caught? I am sure the fish is fine to eat, just curious. Thanks for sharing, it is always good to remember those good memories.
@@superchuck3259 Orangemouth corvina, tilapia, gulf croaker, and sargo. Corvinas were the illusive prize fish, the one for which there was a limit of seven. Once my dad and I limited-out offshore near Red Hill, an event a female game warden took particular note of with her binoculars. Yeah, she was there to greet us at the docks.
Those glass insulators were used for telephone and telegraph lines...those wires are spaced way too close to carry electrical power (the wires would be arcing!). Looks like telephone lines to me...railroad tracks had lots of wiring like that, too, along the tracks. It was used for internal telephones, telegraphs, and railroad signaling systems. It's been replaced by fiber optic cables since the mid 1980's.
Thanks for the clarification.
Telephone lines and telegraph lines are not high voltage and did not require large glass insulators you're exactly opposite from correct.
@@RealRocdad he is correct, those are telegraph lines. Yes typical modern phone systems are run in very thin wire, but in that era they used self support copper. The insulators are not that size for the voltage but to be robust enough to hold the wire without breaking. Also old telephone systems did amplify to a couple hundred volts on transmission lines to compensate for line loss.
@@RealRocdad youre incorrect. even the railroads used glass insulators for their telegraph lines. we have some abandoned lines out here in the central valley next to the railroad tracks. the glass insulators were indeed used for telephone lines. i am a communications contractor so this is my wheel house
@@RealRocdad
They may not have required them for the voltage, but they were used. The railroad by my place used them on the telegraph lines along the track. Our telephone also used those styles of insulators when it was above ground on telephone poles!😄
Those power lines are actually Carrier Telephone Circuits and the glass insulators probably are Pyrex insulators. Open wire lines like that are now obsolete and the insulators are collectable.
There is an abandoned rail line close to were i live with an old overhead line running nearly mostly of its length. The entire line could easily be 100 miles or more. There are thousands of those glass insulators sitting on those poles.
these types of insulators were not made of pyrex aka borosilicate glass, that would have been an unnecessary expense.. these were made of ordinary bottle glass, the clear ones aren't worth much but the colored ones can be worth some money. the valuable ones were made before the 1940's.
oh yeah? i have a crate full of those... it's yours for $50
Surprised the morons haven't shot those insulators,they seem to shoot everything else out in the desert!
Even before the Fat Man bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, the military had decided on the final configuration for the bomb case, and a special line of B-29 Superfortress bombers, the Silverplate series, were being manufactured to deliver bombs. An assembly line was set up to manufacture dummy bombs, and these were produced in large numbers. The dummy bombs included a wide variety with instrumentation inside, in addition to just cement filled cases that were the same size and weight, with the same mounting point system and balance as a live weapon. New types of barometric triggers, safety system interlocks, parachute deployment systems, etc.. would have been tested at this location.
My grand parents had a trailer on the Salton sea. It was a really nice place. I was lucky enough to spend a week or two out of my summers from 1966 when I was 6 , until around 73 when they had both passed on. It was a hoppin place then and really cool. It was hard watching it die.
I can only imagine. That place looks like it’s had a long hard fall.
Regarding the Salton Sea itself, you haven't really experienced it until you're downwind in summer when it smells very much like an outhouse.
Oh I've been there in the summer at Bombay Beach and Red Hill. Wow, that smell was something else.
The salton sea is a very shallow body of water averaging 6 to 12 ft with some deep holes about 40 to 60 ft in the south east area around bombay beach. As a result of this shallowness whenever the wind blows the salton sea ends up with anywhere from 3 to 5 ft waves. They stir up the sediment causing an algae bloom which will either be a red tide or a green tide and these will use up all the oxygen in the water. As a result fish and many other life forms dependent on oxygen will die. This is what causes the smell not the Salton Sea itself, not the water itself, but the algae bloom and the resulting fish die off due to lack of oxygen. I'm just a retired janitor but having grown up in the area i can tell you a lot about the history here. One thing i don't like to hear or read is words used to describe our communities as deplorable, pitiful, and toxic. Yes since the 1940s when they needed to increase food production for world war II they started using pesticides herbicides and fertilizers which were made chemically. All these have since settled into the bottom of the sea and of course that's where your toxic dust blowing around when the water dries that's where it comes from. The salton sea itself isn't deplorable isn't pitiful, isn't toxic, and doesn't stink. For those of you who believe otherwise, perhaps i should make the broad generalization that Los Angeles is nothing but homeless people, drug addicts, and people living in tents. Or wait a minute is that portland oregon i'm talking about????
@@maxortega4690 Los Angeles and the area surrounding it is also full of smug, elitist, leftist America hating rodents.
Your comment is spot on..respects!
@@RadioactiveDrew Does it smell like... "a bag full of assholes"?
@@maxortega4690 Well,LA does have more than its share of deplorables,some of which dress nicely and live in fine homes.....
A friend of mine rode his dirt bike there and got it buried pretty deep in the mud. When I visited him, he had two nice KTM dirt bikes and I asked him why he had two? He told me about his getting the original one all gunked up at SS. I then said, "So, you got this one dirty and so you bought another one?". He thought for a minute and then said, "Yeah, I guess I did!". Gotta love having a really good income while you are single...... 🙂
Love your videos. Keep up the good work!
Thanks.
The drone following your truck was pretty epic. Wish more vloggers used this. Great job.
Thanks.
You'll get 10k subs before you know it. People just need to discover your channel
Thanks for the words of encouragement.
This content is more worth than 618 subs! Great video!
Thanks. Glad you liked it. Part 2 will come out next week. In that one I winch my friend out of some sand he got stuck in and check out some explosive bunkers.
@@RadioactiveDrew looking forward to see it!
I've noticed your videos are extremely high quality, you've got 33,400 views and only 899 likes on this video alone. Something doesn't add up. So here's a like and a new subscriber to spite the algorithm.
Thanks for both.
@@RadioactiveDrew It's no problem. It's good content and deserves to be recognized as such.
Another great video! Keep 'em coming, Drew!
Thanks.
Another lovely video! I'm not a real expert on it but as I understand it when you see the dozens of little glass insulators and dozens of lines that's telegraph/early telephone lines, lots of separate lines in the days before the more modern methods of bundling up many circuits. Power you only have the three phases (or maybe two sets of three). And of course people do collect glass insulators (I've only got like a half-dozen common ones, I'm not a *real* collector!)
Thanks for that. Helps me understand what I was seeing out there a little more.
Yup, I think they are old style POTS lines....each pair....one phone line! Crazy! Pretty cool too.
@@AtomicElectronCo actually each single wire was one line and all of the lines on a run shared a common signal return wire. so if you had 50 wires on a run you actually had 49 lines.
I worked at Sandia lab in the nineties. They make the trigger that explodes at the precise second. Lawrence Livermore lab over hwy 580, they are the ppl's that build the Fat Boy. Sandia also have facilities in North New Mexico.
Sandia also has a large R&D complex next to (or just inside) Kirtland AFB - Albuquerque, New Mexico. KAFB has also a major nuclear weapons storage area within the Manzano (spelling?) mountains at the base”s east perimeter.
The New River (sewage canal from Mexico, for those not familiar with the area) still drains into the Salton Sea. Definitely not safe to swim! 😝
Thanks for sharing the video. It brought back a lot of childhood memories.
Border Patrol will not go in the water near there if that tells you anything!
I am confused on how you only have 600 subscribers!
I guess YT doesn't like me that much. I keep getting comments like this, which is kind of funny.
@@RadioactiveDrew"Sex, danger and food" sells. Do a video: "Danger! Avoid This Radioactive Food", and you will get views:).
Thanks for the suggestion. But none of that would be true. I may hype up a title a bit to get people interested but my main goal is to let people know radiation is all around us and isn’t as dangerous as most people make it seem. I try and present it in a way that is nice to watch.
@@RadioactiveDrew So, radiation is like KOWIT-XIX, " is all around us and isn’t as dangerous as most people make it seem"
@@robertdeptula2003 Why not "Avoid this radioactive food during sex" then?
You got some REALLY good cinematic shots on this one, beautiful work! I bet you have an excellent stash of desktop backgrounds.
Thanks...its a great location to get cool shots at.
makes me want to go out and explore the salton sea again. excellent video.
Thanks. The Salton Sea is a pretty amazing place.
Beautiful images. Beautiful topic. Beautiful music. Beautiful you. ❤
Those wires are open wire communication circuits. 4 ten pin arms, equal 20 circuits
your channel is underratred ! ....great video
Thanks. Glad you enjoyed it. Part 2 should be out this weekend.
All the wires you saw at the end were telephone wires, not power lines. The insulators are collectors items. Some could be worth hundreds if not thousands of dollars.
Atomic Legacy sites are everywhere in this country. These sites include areas where atomic exploration in WWll and after. Thank you for your videos.
That was very cool, cant wait for part two. subscribed . thanks for the vid...
Glad you liked it. Thanks for the sub.
Very interesting place. Looking forward to part 2.
If you ever get a chance to check it out you should. Its a very interesting spot.
Great video, love it. I've been out to the Salton Sea before. Looking forward to video #2!
I released it yesterday.
You might encounter residents out there, and you might get the chance to find out a lot of things about that town you never wanted to know...
I've talked to people out at Bombay Beach over the years. Interesting characters out that way.
Wished I had known that area was there when I visited SS area back in 2009. I would like to camp out on that camera stand on a full moon night,think it would be cool.
That would be cool. I would be very careful being on that now. Too many people have been destroying the walls.
Fantastic videography, Drew 👍👍👍😊
If i remember its either 8 inch or 9 inch tiles that were asbestos. We had to go through basic asbestos training when i was helping clean up after hurricane katrina. Only a few folks went and got certified in the actual hands on cleanup of the stuff.
👍Good watch ‼️thanks 🙏✌🏽
Notice "legacy Site" not "disaster area".... and I think the reason for nothing being left has more to do with it being less accessible by drifting sand. Remember all the fishing that used to take place in that lake?
I really enjoyed the videography in this video, especially the drone shot following your 4x4
Given the cost of fissile material in the 1940s, it's pretty unlikely that any of the bombs tested at Salton Sea contained any fissile material. I'm not sure if they would have had any depleted uranium either, as a lot of that was needed for refining the manufacture of tamper/pusher assemblies in nuclear weapons. Even though it was "waste" from the enrichment process, it was still pretty valuable.
I’ve seen reports that they used depleted uranium in the test bombs out there. That’s the only reason I bought it up.
@@RadioactiveDrew Fair enough. I only know about the British bomb project in any great detail. Somewhere I used to work was engaged in development of manufacturing techniques for the pushers. It was not particularly easy because apparently DU is a very challenging material to machine. That was all back in the 40s/50s, long before I got there, but a curious by-product was the suspiciously dense door stops that some of the older engineers possessed.
@@RadioactiveDrew DPU was used as ballast in some of the casings with concrete as filler. Early on they used lead, but war was on and they needed lead for other things.. My wife's uncle worked there for a while.
8:59 What a view !
It’s a very beautiful place. Some people have a hard time seeing it.
@@RadioactiveDrew Thanks for the awesome vid. Now more people can see this unique area.
Those are telephone or control lines mostly. Cool place!
Yeah, that’s what others informed me.
LOVE YOUR VIDEOS,VERY INTRIGUING.
Thanks.
Great video! Great drone work. It is a contaminated cesspool. CA is getting ready to waste more money on "cleaning" it up.
Thanks. The way to fix it would be to allow some water to flow in and out. I know they have talked about cutting a canal. Personally, and I know this is going to sound horrible, but I want the water to keep getting lower. There are so many aircraft at the bottom of the Salton Sea and who knows what else. The responsible thing would be to have an inflow / outflow. It’s also a tricky area because it’s below sea level.
I loved dirt biking out to the bunkers out there. Or finding spent smoke grenades and m60 shells/links from that navy seal camp across the sea. The pink house is cool too although the last time I was there it was kinda falling apart. You should go back and look for the bunkers though, they're there.
The Part 2 of this video I went out to the bunkers with a buddy of mine.
Nice video! Thinking of going to Salton Sea next month
Its a very cool place to explore. But watch out for sand and mud...have a plan to get out if you get stuck.
Boeing used depleted uranium as balance weights on the control surfaces of their 747's. Quite safe as long as they were painted and had no corrosion. Corrosion powder of Depleted uranium is a very high risk Alpha Radiation source.
The pedestal that you said turns looks like the mounting base for a J arm davit, basically a small crane hoist for getting heavy equipment up onto the roof. In your shot of walking up the stairs I thought I saw a winch spool just below it
Little known secret. There were tunnels from the base to Thermal High School & out to The elementary school in thermal. In fact both schools still have their big valt doors were the tunnels connected!
Wow, I’m going to have to look into that.
@@RadioactiveDrew I've tried to find more details with no luck. Hope you can find deeper info..
The Hot Springs at North Glamis resort helped my back more than anything else
That "little piece of junk" at 6:07 looks very much like a Facet electric fuel pump.
It could be interesting to see what a metal detector finds out there.
I totally agree. I want to go back out there before it gets insanely hot and windy.
You flew your drone below Sea level! I’m proud of you.
Thanks.
Denser the air, the easier it will fly.
In mountains, some drones won't even fly.
Im less than 50 miles away from there! On a different note, the Radeye B-20 is a little out of my price range... Whats your thoughts on the RADIATION line of survey meters for doing some ore exploration/clicking around. I see the Alert Ranger EXP for under $1100 w/ a pancake head. Is there another you would suggest? I thought I saw where you tested several but I cant seem to find it now but I dont remember you including any Radiation units. Thanks
I don't have any experience with the Alert Ranger. Some people seem to really like them from what I've heard. You could always get a used Ludlum Model 3 or a Model 14C...both of those can use a 44-9 pancake probe. The Ludlums are solid detector...I own 2 of them. Here's that video you were talking about th-cam.com/video/3ONbwFMBS4Q/w-d-xo.html
You do the Coolest Stuff!!
Thanks...the Salton Sea is a place I've been going out to for the past 10 years. Mainly for the purpose of shooting photos and timelapse clips. About 4 years ago I started going out to the Navy/Test Base. Its a very unique place to visit.
I was told that Based was used to train for the failed Iranian hostage rescue.
It was used for a couple of different things. I think troops when out there before they went to Operation Desert Storm. There are a lot of older shell casing out there.
great video editing!
Thanks.
@@RadioactiveDrew would you be interested in coming to a youtuber meetup in Boston in a few months?
oh hey! you have the same tires that I got for my truck!
The KO2's are the best.
As soon as the music started I noped out.
Well I can’t make everyone happy.
If you passed by any steel jacketed concrete chunks, those were the dummy bombs.
And there's "target" towers on the East side. A few small ones on land and one BIG one in the water.
I’ve seen the one out on the water. Some guy took a boat out to it.
always a very good prod and stunning images ! I wish I had that artistic gen! .. well done sir.
Thanks. I'm always trying to make them better.
Hey drew. Next time you are utah I want to go with. I’ll be your safety vehicle to pull you out if and when you are stuck.
This is great but is it “Depleted Uranium”? The early bombs did use fair amounts of U-238, which is basically the same thing, but was made the regular way and was not a reactor by-product like Depleted Uranium. The early bombs used U-238 for the shells surrounding the bomb core - not large but still hundreds of pounds. Both Depleted Uranium and U-238 have little radioactivity and are mainly a chemical hazard similar to lead.
I wonder if some of the bombs they dropped as dummies, would be cool to recover them for displaying
That would be cool…and a little dangerous.
@RadioactiveDrew it would safe if someone had a side sonar system to search the area, then working with the Navy for recovery.
There's a lot of radioactive minerals below the surface in that area. There are (were?) several Unocal & Chevron Geothermal Power Plants operating there, using the seawater for circ water for their condensers. Ex-Navy Nuclear Operator who did some regular electrical test work at them in the 1980-90s. Met some other Ex-Navy Nukes working as Operators there. They wore TLDs & other Dosimetry. They told me, when I asked why, that the hot ground water they extract & circulate to boil their feedwater is loaded with radium and its decay products, and they get higher doses working there with its higher dose rates than we got in our respective Navy Plants (and the three civilian Nuke Plants I also worked at).
those look like telegraph and phone lines as they are far too close together to be power lines
Yeah, someone else corrected me on that also.
Wow, so basically this place was a prequel to Area 51. Profound.
More like a prequel to the Nevada Test site. But I guess Area 51 is there.
Awesome!!!!!
what a bizarre place, thanks for the video
Actually Sandia Labs was the organization who built the test facility they stopped using it in 1961.
They took over the base that was built by the Navy. It seems like the Navy base was smaller and Sandia expanded it
Now the range its at Tonopha AFB.
You make me want to go there!
It’s a interesting place to explore.
Great music choices.
Thanks.
I just went last year! The road was unbearable, but just looking at this secret historical site was… BREATHTAKING.
Also, someone from Palm Springs Air Museum mentioned a nuclear training sight there prior to atom bomb of Hiroshima and post WWII.
The Navy controlled the base before Sandia took it over for the whole atomic testing.
"site".
@@MrShobar Thanks, for spell check.
Looking on Google maps, I guess you are at the Naval Auxillary Air Station Salton Sea?
@19:07 - and 21:00 - those are phone/telemetry lines, not power.
The Salton sea may have been additionally poisoned by radioactive metallic salts and mine dust from nearby (now long closed) mines on top of farming pesticides and crop spray chemicals over the years, so that's why your Geiger counter pancake probe may be chirping now and then?
More than likely its just naturally occurring radioactive elements. I'm sure some of it could be from contamination.
EPA page for DU:
"DU is still used to make bullets and mortar shells. DU contamination of spent shells and shell fragments is a hazard at some military firing ranges.
What you can do:
Minimize your risk of internal exposure by limiting your proximity to uranium manufacturing plants and firing ranges that continue to use DU in ammunition."
Not sure if you can go to a test range for DU but avoiding that warning sounds like something worth while.
If there were particles or big pieces where I went it would have come up on the detector.
Good stuff!
Thanks.
When are you going to see the Elephants foot ? Lol
You need to go to Chernobyl.
Can you even go right now ?
I would like to go. But I don’t think that’s going to happen for a while.
"Oh here's an unexploded 50 Megaton hydrogen bomb, better not touch it ...!!"
Great work! I’ve always been fascinated by nuclear fusion fission. In school during science we learned about the periodic table of elements, I didn’t view things then the way I do now. Thanks for bringing the content you have to your channel! I appreciate it.
On a side note, I’m surprised those power lines haven’t been clipped and taken to be sold for their copper value.
Glad you are enjoying the videos…and yeah I’m surprised as well those power lines are still there.
Not sure if those lines are made of copper. High tension cables are usually steel.
@@jk-76 … or aluminum?
like your t-shirt. talking bout nukes, how can i get one for myself? love what you do!
Careful with touching old power lines. Power lines can still build up very high voltages of static and capacitive voltage.
Thanks for the warning. I don’t think these lines would do this because none of them are isolated from the ground for that long.
Buy yourself some Staun tire deflators.
I live in Salton City, which is a few miles down the road and know exactlyvwhat you mean by swallowed by the sand.
I bet. That's a very interesting place out there.
@@RadioactiveDrew Most definitely, the reddish pinkish scars on the mountains behind the local Casino is actually a gold mine. The chocolate colored rock you can see on the local mts, and halfway between Indio and Blythe has a high Iron content. They also have Gold which has a high copper content and tarnishes black. I use Google Earth to find old Gold mines, plot a course to them, then use my 2021 TRD 4X4 OFF ROAD to get there. Look up Tumco, a former Gold mining town located south of Glamis above the I-8. I've explored the whole area now for 50+ years. The Santa Rosa mts. had the only Beryl mine and Emeralds have been found all over the area. The natives from Sonora Mexico would bring Mushrooms and Peyote for religious ceremonies, and receive Emeralds in exchange. I found a good sized Emerald in the early ,70's buried under an outside cooking grate next to a stone cabin in Martinez canyon. Not knowing what it was, and believing it to be glass we used ut for target practice. 8 years later when I discharged from the Army, I learned about the local history of Emeralds. It measuted about 3/4" thick, two inches high at one end tapering to 1" at the other end, and three inches long. MY LOSS!!
That whole area has some really cool geology.
Check out the film “The Monster That Challenged the World” (1957)
Yeah all them old government buildings had asbestos wall panels. I took down the skunkworks buildings in Ohio and they were all asbestos too.
Asbestos is the bestus.
I don't understand why you have a geiger counter when they never had anything out there just dimmy bombs.
Some of the dummy atomic bombs still used uranium metal in them to simulate the correct weight and other aspects.
Not even a glimpse of Trevor Phillips
Where did you get that shirt from?
I sell the shirts at uraniumstore.com
The bombs wouldn't explode or anything cool like that, they would just bury themselves in the sand very very quickly.
Rocky Flatts?
I don't see why visitors can't just leave the old structures alone so future generations can see them...🤔
you know that sand will eat your frame and undercarriage
I pressure wash my truck pretty regularly.
you would have to pressure wash it w WD40
@@RadioactiveDrew
@kevinbroadway5398 I’ve been out there about a dozen times with my truck since getting it back in 2011. There hasn’t been any excessive rust. I get my truck up on a lift at least once a year or more. So I get to walk under it and see everything in great detail.
ok well i went once on my dirtbike right up to the water where the dead fish were and got stuck in the mud almost and by the time i got home the chain was rusted and the next day the whole bike was rusted i had to use soap and scrub every nook and cranny them spray WD40 all over the bike and then ride it a few times in just reg dirt and rinse soap wd repeat i ended up tearing it down to the frame and greasing all the bearings and some were just shot and needed to be replaced@@RadioactiveDrew
@@kevinbroadway5398 oh yeah, the mud and water at the Salton Sea can be extremely damaging to metal. I've never taken my truck in the water...almost got stuck in some mud by Red Hill Marina. But I've found that if you stick to the dry sand and stay away from the water in the lake you should be good.
Are they KO2’s on the Tacoma? Just bought a set for my Tacoma.
Cheers for the great video.
Yeah...I really like the KO2's. They work really well in the dirt, sand and snow. I would say mud as well but not much is great in the mud. The desert mud is some of the worst mud because of the clay mixed in. Good luck with the KO2's on your Tacoma...I think I'm on my 4th set. I have around 320K miles on my Taco.
the smell... crazy weird place
I'd love to be you. Pickup. Geiger counter. Imagination.
Where can I get one of those shirts?
The t-shirts are available at uraniumstore.com
Nu-clear
But that zipcode has that look
What an ecological disaster it has become.
Very much so.
nukular is not a word and nuclear (nuk lee urr) is
I’ll keep saying it my way.
Nuke-lay-her? Nuke-lee-hear? Nuka-cola? Nuka-nuka-motha-trucka? Why tf does it matter how he pronounces it? 🤣 Did ya know what he was referring to? Then yep, his way was working just fine 💁♂️
The gunny partbof you being a pendantic ass is you're simply wrong it is a word and means nut shapped. It's also a pronunciation for nuclear that's been around since the 40's so you're not going to get rid of it it's just like calling an opossum a possum, language evolves like shit yeet is an actual word in dictionaries now because of it and nuculur has been around a hell of a lot longer
You cant swim in the salton sea
Watch out for giant snails! th-cam.com/video/50NZq9DNVa0/w-d-xo.html
pass
And stinky
Who owns the land now BLM?