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In 1957, Five Men Agreed to Stand Under an Exploding Nuclear Bomb (2012)
- gtirloni 9y ago"Agreed" (2012) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4262242 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4262242
- blowski 9y agoProbably the same type of people who want to be the first to live on mars. Some people are thrill seekers, consequences be damned.
- angrygoat 9y ago> "Quite a few have died from cancer," he told reporter Bill Broad. "No doubt it was related to the testing." Here in Australia, veterans of nuclear testing only just received access to the 'Gold Card' which covers all healthcare costs. Of course, many of those exposed have now died. http://www.abc.net.au/news/story-streams/federal-budget-2017/2017-05-07/federal-budget-2017-veterans-welcome-gold-card-decision/8504884 http://www.abc.net.au/news/story-streams/federal-budget-2017... The people in the photo might have known what they were signing up for, and an idea of the risk, but many service people had no idea at all.
- jessriedel 9y agoDo we actually know that anyone involved in this story had cancer that was likely caused by testing? The size of effects of very low dosages (which are only seen at the population-level) is not well understood, but the risks of dosages with large effect is very well quantified. Certainly, it does not appear that the radiation dose from this single test was large enough to give someone cancer with large (e.g., >5%) probability, which is less than the baseline population rate.
- Symmetry 9y agoWe don't know how much radiation the cameramen were exposed to. If they were close to enough nuclear tests they might very well have gathered a lifetime dose in the 100s of mS range without ever getting radiation poisoning. Which is certainly enough to up your cancer rates quite a bit. Some online calculators tell me that the 5 guys in the photo got about 50 mS which is barely enough to detectably raise cancer rates. With small nukes like that 2kt one the main danger tends to be from radiation rather than heat and blast. With big 2Mt nukes it's the opposite. Well, 2Mt nukes are basically all fission-fusion-fission devices and that last U-238 fission stage creates an immense amount of fallout.
- tgjsrkghruksd 9y agoIf it was testing it wasn't just this test. The exposure appears to be minimal.
- ianai 9y agoIt was a starkly different time back then.
- valuearb 9y agoThe blast was far safer than you believe.
- mabbo 9y ago> It was shot by the U.S. Air Force ... to demonstrate the relative safety of a low-grade nuclear exchange in the atmosphere. > the U.S. government has paid some $813 million to more than 16,000 "downwinders" to compensate them for illnesses presumably connected to the bomb testing program. I can only hope that the lessons learned from these programs are still remembered today, as the POTUS talks about resuming building nuclear weapons.
- emodendroket 9y agoThey're remembered about as well as the lessons of Vietnam regarding trying to prop up a government with little domestic legitimacy in a civil war.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- throwanem 9y agoIn the phrase "relative safety", the word "relative" is significant. An exchange high above ground level is less dangerous than one at or near it, because, as the article we here discuss points out, the former doesn't produce the kind of long-lasting fallout the latter does. But it would be a real stretch, I think a longer one than supported by the facts or any contentions made here, to argue anyone is actually trying to say there's such a thing as a nuclear exchange that is harmless. As for looking to fund a desperately necessary overhaul of the US nuclear arsenal, our current president is not the first to do so; the program under discussion originates with his immediate predecessor, as the New York Times recently discussed: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/04/us/politics/trump-nuclear-weapons-cost-estimate.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/04/us/politics/trump-nuclear...
- openasocket 9y agoFortunately: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_Nuclear_Test_Ban_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_Nuclear_Test_Ban_Treat... bans all above ground tests . This was largely spurred by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Tooth_Survey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Tooth_Survey which showed that the levels of radioactive Strontium 90 in baby teeth around the US were steadily increasing. Nothing like radioactive baby teeth to get people to take action.
- epalmer 9y agoMy dad witnessed one of the Bikini Atoll nuclear bomb tests and was on the Atoll 24 hours later measuring background radiation. He never got cancer and lived till he was 83 and died of old age with his organs just shutting down. He was almost never sick. Many of the people that were with him died early of cancer. I hope I have some of his gene pool protection. He also worked on the Manhattan project. He really never wanted to talk about either experience other than the days when he was assigned to the Manhattan project but before then got to Oakridge Tenn. He had some funny stories to tell about being stationed in NYC before transport to Tenn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_Atoll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_Atoll
- mabbo 9y agoCould be a bit of selection bias there. Of the people at Bikini Atoll during the testing, just randomly some were more susceptible to radiation and sickness, others less. Those that were more susceptible died sooner, those that weren't lived long enough to be your father.
- cm2012 9y agoThat's what OP said.
- nv-vn 9y agoI think the GP means the OP's father survived long enough for OP to be born, so from OP's perspective it looks like his father had good genetics. The selection bias is that none of the children of those who died early would exist, so only the children of those lucky enough to live a long time could say their parents must've had good genes.
- DonHopkins 9y agoHow many fathers do you think he has?
- phreeza 9y ago
- eunoia 9y agoSomewhat on topic, but in Colorado we have 6 of the original Titan I nuclear complexes. Abandoned since 1965, each complex has probably a mile of tunnels, huge underground rooms and 3 massive silos. They're absolutely fascinating to explore. Some random photos from the last time we went in to one. https://www.instagram.com/p/BLysXzHjG58/?taken-by=hamonacob https://www.instagram.com/p/BLysXzHjG58/?taken-by=hamonacob https://www.instagram.com/p/BK3fsXFjwE6/?taken-by=hamonacob https://www.instagram.com/p/BK3fsXFjwE6/?taken-by=hamonacob https://www.instagram.com/p/BCqaiG-KHGF/?taken-by=hamonacob https://www.instagram.com/p/BCqaiG-KHGF/?taken-by=hamonacob Happy to answer any questions for the curious.
- Namrog84 9y agoThose are always the place I assume that most people assume are totally safe and spelunk and climb and explore only to find out later they have way more radiation or something 'new' bad thing that all those people were now exposed to.
- eunoia 9y agoThe Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment has published their findings on each site's environmental concerns. https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/cdphe/titan-1-missile-complexes https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/cdphe/titan-1-missile-compl... Edit: Of course there's still risk. Plenty of obvious asbestos about as well as physically precarious flooring, deep standing water, angry farmers that don't want you on their land, etc. Lots of fun though :)
- stilldavid 9y agoThere are many more Titan I complexes around the US as well, including at Beale, Larson, Ellsworth, and other AFBs in addition to Lowry.
- sonoflegless 9y agoSuper curious! I'm taking a road trip through Colorado later this year, and would love to stop and see one or more of these. I'm a little worried about playing whack-a-mole trying to find an accessible one. Is Jim's listing of them here accurate? http://w3.uwyo.edu/~jimkirk/titan1.html http://w3.uwyo.edu/~jimkirk/titan1.html Is there a better source?
- fnordfnordfnord 9y agoNotably, the cameraman did not volunteer for the job. This article from 2010 was linked in the OP: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/science/14atom.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/science/14atom.html?pagewa...
- badosu 9y agoAlso, from the wikipedia entry on the AIR-2 Genie [0]: Gamma and neutron doses received by observers on the ground were negligible. Doses received by aircrew were highest for the fliers assigned to penetrate the airburst cloud ten minutes after explosion. Imagine for a moment being assigned to take a risk of developing a mortal condition. [0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIR-2_Genie https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIR-2_Genie
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Imagine for a moment being assigned to take a risk of developing a mortal condition. Every action involves some risk of developing a mortal condition, and being in the military, particularly, involves notable risk of being assigned to tasks that have elevated risks of developing a mortal condition.
- badosu 9y agoOf course, but remember that you're not being asked simply to fly a plane in a common way or to test some conventional device. You're being asked to fly into a radioactive mushroom cloud to test if you get harmed or not. And you're probably not even being asked but ordered, you don't have too much choice. Oh, he died? Well, let's test again but 20 minutes later instead of 10
- jessriedel 9y agoThis was not the purpose of flying into the cloud.
- 9y ago
- jshmrsn 9y agoI was just reading about the Genie a few days ago, funny to see it on HN. Unguided air-to-air missile with a nuclear warhead. A great icon for era it came from. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIR-2_Genie https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIR-2_Genie
- caub 9y agowell, the cigar/cigarettes he's smoking did more damages than nuclear bombs in history
- yourapostasy 9y agoEspecially informative was the side comment on what an atomic bomb really sounds like to those on the ground observing from a distance. Forget the media representations (shocker, right?). The all-encompassing, blinding light of the sun part in fictional portrayals is mostly realistic. The sound however, is completely different, and I've never heard a fictional one like it [1], with its higher-toned sharp bang preceding the growling aftermath that is also higher-toned than I expected based upon conditioned memory from entertainment media. It's like most entertainment media portrayals of drowning: not useful, not actionable, not educational, and not informative; would be more enriching if the entertainment industry reversed that predilection. [1] https://youtu.be/U_nLNcEbIC8?t=141 https://youtu.be/U_nLNcEbIC8?t=141
- DonHopkins 9y agoI always thought the higher tone preceding the bang was the "YEEEEEEE HAAAAAWWWW!" https://youtu.be/snTaSJk0n_Y?t=1m30s https://youtu.be/snTaSJk0n_Y?t=1m30s
- smnplk 9y agoI don't get why he had a parachute.
- ryanmarsh 9y agoIndeed this reconstruction sounds a lot more like bombs sound in real life. https://youtu.be/Mn7PeI2UyEM https://youtu.be/Mn7PeI2UyEM
- mannykannot 9y agoWe have to consider that the recording equipment probably did not capture the detonation with much fidelity, and not at all the physiological effects of a powerful shockwave. I was once fairly close to a lightning strike, and my impression was that there had just been a very loud bang - it was as if it had no duration whatsoever. If a movie were to depict an explosion realistically, most of the audience would think there was something wrong about it.
- sillysaurus3 9y agoHere's a little mystery for HN. Have you seen the fictional BBC segment someone produced about an escalating conflict between Russia and NATO? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VZ3LGfSMhA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VZ3LGfSMhA It made the rounds on HN a couple months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14101405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14101405 It's the only piece of fiction that has made me feel deathly ill in quite the same way Threads did. The video is incredible. It's one of the best pieces of realistic fiction I've ever seen. But how was it made? Who made it? And why? I counted at least 10 professional-quality actors with convincing, in-character costumes. See this timestamp: https://youtu.be/2VZ3LGfSMhA?t=1053 https://youtu.be/2VZ3LGfSMhA?t=1053 The uploader of the video is "Ben Marking", only 8k subscribers, and no online presence. They left a comment: http://i.imgur.com/MJVh31d.png http://i.imgur.com/MJVh31d.png Other than that, no one's taking credit. So why make it? It's wonderful art, but is there anything more to it? Whoever's behind this has also uploaded nine revisions since last year: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA9r2NNlWMitk1hhR7yj8SA/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA9r2NNlWMitk1hhR7yj8SA/vid... including a Canadian and Australian version.
- IanCal 9y agoI'm not sure I get what you mean from the timestamped section. It looks like either simple to make footage or real footage where they've dubbed over. I think there are possibly only two actors, and only one for the vast majority of it. I think all the footage is just real clips, which is why it looks realistic. edit - I jumped to a random section and it has Fallon talking about Russia making a situation more dangerous, but it's a real clip as there's coverage back in 2015 of him saying these things: http://www.itv.com/news/update/2015-10-08/fallon-russia-is-making-syria-situation-more-dangerous/ http://www.itv.com/news/update/2015-10-08/fallon-russia-is-m...
- sillysaurus3 9y agoAh, thanks for pointing that out.
- baddox 9y agoI assumed it was stock footage. That sort of thing is pretty common even in major Hollywood films.
- jessriedel 9y agoFYI: The article mentions that this weapon had a 2 kiloton yield. This is to be compared to the 15-20 kiloton yields of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and modern thermonuclear warheads which typically have maximum yields in the 300-500 kiloton range.
- badosu 9y agoThere were not guided missiles yet, and the US was anxious due to the development of the atomic bomb and bombers by Soviet Russia. So it was devised as a missile that could compensate the lack of accuracy with the higher yield than conventional ammunition, even though it was not as potent as a bomb.
- chiph 9y agoCorrect - the guidance on these missiles were more of the "point and fire" variety. So to ensure that you shot down the Soviet bomber (which also had nuclear weapons on it), you compensated by increasing the size of the explosion. Even a miss might have been good enough, as the shockwave could potentially tear a wing or tail off.
- atemerev 9y agoI'd volunteered. People make larger risks with paragliding or mountain climbing, but there at least was a chance to make history.
- likelynew 9y agoYou mean you are one of those 5?
- whiteandnerdy 9y agoMore likely a grammar error: OP probably meant "I'd volunteer" but conjugated as if "I'd" was "I had" (using the past participle) rather than "I would" (using the bare infinitive). Easy mistake for a non native speaker.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- NamTaf 9y agoThat's my interpretation. The OP likely meant 'I'd have voluneered'.
- Simulacra 9y agoThere's a fascinating book called "How to Photograph an Atomic Bomb" [1] that delves into exactly how they made all of those photos, and movies. It's really not as simple as one might think. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Photograph-Atomic-Bomb-Peter-Kuran/dp/1889054119 https://www.amazon.com/Photograph-Atomic-Bomb-Peter-Kuran/dp...
- nylonstrung 9y agoBoth my paternal grandparents were some of the downwinders in Utah it alludes to. They were exposed to fallout from around 200 atmospheric nuclear tests, the vast majority of which were far more powerful than Fat Man and Little Boy. That is an amount of radiation many orders of magnitude greater than Fukushima. I've researched it extensively and am convinced it is genuinely one of the darkest and most disturbing parts of US 20th Century history and one that remains glossed over to this day The Atomic Energy Commission had plenty of evidence to believe that the fallout would be harmful to anyone downwind yet reassured the local populations that it was actually healthy due to "hormesis" and encouraged them to watch the detonations and drink contaminated milk while they themselves wore protective gear and followed proper protocol. There were several proposed test sites that would have sent the fallout relatively harmlessly into the Atlantic yet they chose one in an extremely dusty area upwind of population centers which were almost entirely Native Americans and Mormons. At best it was a blatant disregard for human life that prioritized the budget of the AEC over minimizing harm to innocent people and at worst it was an intentional case of unethical human experimentation. It certainly was when they forced infantry to march through mushroom clouds without any decontamination or protective gear. As for my grandparents, one lost his stomach and gallbladder and went from a muscular ~200 lb outdoorsman to a 90lb skeleton dependent on a feeding tube. Our grandmother died unexpectedly from a horrific variety of lung cancer 10 years later. He lived another 10 years in absolute misery. There are thousands of stories like these in Utah, many of them even more tragic. Despite their oncologists testifying that it was essentially impossible for their cancers to have been caused by anything other than nuclear weapons exposure, neither received the paltry $50,000 compensation because of bureaucratic technicalities.
- rainbowmverse 9y ago>> "At best it was a blatant disregard for human life that prioritized the budget of the AEC over minimizing harm to innocent people and at worst it was an intentional case of unethical human experimentation." Eugenics was pretty popular globally around then, so the latter is more likely.
- srtjstjsj 9y ago
- advisedwang 9y agoThis was around the time that the US started to put Nuclear warheads on anti-balistic missile systems. Nike Hercules would have used high-altitude low-yield nuclear blasts within 100 miles of US cities to stop incoming ICBMs. My guess is that this is what the author is referring to when he says "Air Force wanted to reassure people that it was OK to use atomic weapons to counter similar weapons being developed in Russia."
- openasocket 9y agoWhy on earth would you need a nuclear weapon to intercept a ballistic missle? Certainly conventional explosives would have more than enough yield to destroy a single missle. Or is the idea that you don't have to hit the target exactly, you just have to be in the ballpark?
- angersock 9y agoAt the time the Nike/Spartan systems were being developed, remember that interception was a lot harder and precision and accuracy was a lot lower.
- openasocket 9y agoAh, I forgot we're talking about systems designed in the late 50's and 60's!
- rootusrootus 9y agoAnd even today, isn't the latest system under development only running about 50/50 on successful intercepts? It's a hard problem to solve.
- openasocket 9y agoThat's really unsettling. Could you launch like 10 of them at a single ICBM and reduce the odds of failure to 1/1024?
- fokinsean 9y agoOn a related note, here is a time lapse of all the nuclear detonations since 1945. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY
- thatwebdude 9y agoGuy in middle with sunglasses had the right idea. I'd really like to know how dark they were though, he didn't even flinch at that flash.
- dredmorbius 9y agoGround Zero, population six. More on the cameraman, civillian photographer Akira "George" Yoshitake. On the test footage shown: "he was not aware of what his assignment would entail, until arriving at the test center that day." An interview: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/20/george-yoshitake-nuclear-test-five-5-men-nevada_n_1687233.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/20/george-yoshitake-nu... His obituary, 2013. http://lompocrecord.com/lifestyles/announcements/obituaries/akira-george-yoshitake/article_e7d7490d-8347-5fab-a8ed-6e0adf725271.html http://lompocrecord.com/lifestyles/announcements/obituaries/... George died in Santa Barbara. From his name, it's evident that he's of Japanese ancestry. As the obit states, his family were interned along with other West Coast American citizens of Japanese descent, during World War II.
- hagakure0c 9y agoSame kind of people playing around with weaponized AI today, what could possibly go wrong.
- ChuckMcM 9y agoAs the article points out, much of the fallout from the nuclear tests headed south and east over Utah and St. George Utah in particular. There has been a number of research studies on the population there. What is less well known is that these studies, and some longitudinal studies of Japanese survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs are nearly all of the data sets available for understanding the effects of environmental nuclear exposure on humans.
- LordKano 9y agoThis is fantastic. I can only imagine the kind of courage it would have taken to volunteer for this 60 years ago.
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoI'm not sure "courage" is the word. They'd been assured by trusted authority figures that it was completely harmless. Maybe "naive trust".
- eridius 9y ago2 colonels, 2 majors, and another officer. I think they were the authority figures.
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoMaybe "stupid", then.
- krath94 9y agoWould an actual detonation happen at that height? If so, how does it actually kill other than radiation?
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Would an actual detonation happen at that height? Yes, quite likely. > If so, how does it actually kill other than radiation? Remember that the purpose of this was to assure the public about safety of using nuclear weapons to intercept enemy nuclear attacks (specifically, I believe, incoming bomber groups.)
- musgrove 9y agoThe first 5 inductees into the Darwin Awards?
- jdcarr 9y agoRadiolab had a great episode about nuclear weapons in the US. At the ~51:26 mark of the episode http://www.wnyc.org/radio/#/747788 http://www.wnyc.org/radio/#/747788 there's a great description of what the explosion of a hydrogen bomb was like.
- doener 9y agoTwo comics where this plays a role: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormwatch_(comics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormwatch_(comics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_(comics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_(comics)
- Dove 9y agoI realized only recently the degree and specificity to which this scenario forms the backstory to the classic arcade game Missile Command. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQJA5YjvHDU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQJA5YjvHDU