4 ms·

Why the Germans did use 664 instead of 666 uranium cubes is beyond me...

wolfretcrap 5y ago
666 is number of the beast. I wonder how many thiest scientists would have refused to work on it if they were to use 666
- sschueller 5y ago
  I don't think Germans are as superstitious as Americans. You won't find a single building "missing" the 13th floor in Germany.
  - risedotmoe 5y ago
    The nazis were crazy into the occult. I don’t doubt all sorts of wacko stuff went down because of that.
    - chmod775 5y ago
      Hollywood Nazis are crazy into the occult. You can read a more sober look into the matter here: https://aeon.co/ideas/the-nazis-as-occult-masters-its-a-good-story-but-not-history https://aeon.co/ideas/the-nazis-as-occult-masters-its-a-good...
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - 8bitsrule 5y ago
      Pauwels and Bergier 1959 book Morning of the Magicians (Le Matin des Magiciens) goes into detail on much of that part of Nazi charm. Sample: [http://koreshan.mwweb.org/virtual_exhibit/vex3/ac-0130.pdf http://koreshan.mwweb.org/virtual_exhibit/vex3/ac-0130.pdf]
    - zxcvbn4038 5y ago
      I don’t think that is quite accurate - the majority of the German people identified as Christian, and while Himmler did want to replace the church he was forbidden by Hitler because Hitler did not want to risk alienating the Christian populace during the war. Alternate ideas that were popular at the time were Nazism as a state religion (which is what they depicted in Man In The High Castle), and “Positive Christianity” which basically removed the Old Testament, gave Jesus an Aryan lineage, and might have included Hitler as a sort of saint or contemporary savior. But that said - the occult stuff has made for some of my favorite movies and video games. If not for the Nazis, Indiana Jones would have ended up battling gangsters and mad scientists with army of zombie Africans and its not the same movie at all. (If anyone knows the name of that 50s adventure series with the mad scientist that used a machine to turn Africans into his zombie army, I can’t remember to save my life.)
  - xyzzy21 5y ago
    This was then - everyone was far more religious in the first part of the 20th century than today! You can't take current German sensibilities as representative of that time.
  - bserge 5y ago
    This was the same regime that shunned "Jewish science".
  - irrational 5y ago
    Is this the same Germany that just a few centuries before killed more than 10,000 “witches”?
MichaelGroves 5y ago
Probably 664 is what they had available, or what their calculated geometry called for. It seems silly to speculate that they could have or should have gone for 666 but deliberately chose not to. If that were the case, why not 665 or 667? Is there any reason to think 666 would have been a more appropriate number?
- qubex 5y ago
  Having seen photographs of the “diabolical chandelier” I expected 664 to be a centred cubic number, but it isn’t. That leaves me somewhat perplexed as to how they actually arranged the geometry of the fissile material.
jl6 5y ago
They didn’t want anybody else writing their plans, which ultimately couldn’t be executed by anybody.

666 is number of the beast. I wonder how many thiest scientists would have refused to work on it if they were to use 666

sschueller 5y ago
I don't think Germans are as superstitious as Americans. You won't find a single building "missing" the 13th floor in Germany.
- risedotmoe 5y ago
  The nazis were crazy into the occult. I don’t doubt all sorts of wacko stuff went down because of that.
  - chmod775 5y ago
    Hollywood Nazis are crazy into the occult. You can read a more sober look into the matter here: https://aeon.co/ideas/the-nazis-as-occult-masters-its-a-good-story-but-not-history https://aeon.co/ideas/the-nazis-as-occult-masters-its-a-good...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - 8bitsrule 5y ago
    Pauwels and Bergier 1959 book Morning of the Magicians (Le Matin des Magiciens) goes into detail on much of that part of Nazi charm. Sample: [http://koreshan.mwweb.org/virtual_exhibit/vex3/ac-0130.pdf http://koreshan.mwweb.org/virtual_exhibit/vex3/ac-0130.pdf]
  - zxcvbn4038 5y ago
    I don’t think that is quite accurate - the majority of the German people identified as Christian, and while Himmler did want to replace the church he was forbidden by Hitler because Hitler did not want to risk alienating the Christian populace during the war. Alternate ideas that were popular at the time were Nazism as a state religion (which is what they depicted in Man In The High Castle), and “Positive Christianity” which basically removed the Old Testament, gave Jesus an Aryan lineage, and might have included Hitler as a sort of saint or contemporary savior. But that said - the occult stuff has made for some of my favorite movies and video games. If not for the Nazis, Indiana Jones would have ended up battling gangsters and mad scientists with army of zombie Africans and its not the same movie at all. (If anyone knows the name of that 50s adventure series with the mad scientist that used a machine to turn Africans into his zombie army, I can’t remember to save my life.)
- xyzzy21 5y ago
  This was then - everyone was far more religious in the first part of the 20th century than today! You can't take current German sensibilities as representative of that time.
- bserge 5y ago
  This was the same regime that shunned "Jewish science".
- irrational 5y ago
  Is this the same Germany that just a few centuries before killed more than 10,000 “witches”?

MichaelGroves 5y ago

Probably 664 is what they had available, or what their calculated geometry called for. It seems silly to speculate that they could have or should have gone for 666 but deliberately chose not to. If that were the case, why not 665 or 667? Is there any reason to think 666 would have been a more appropriate number?

qubex 5y ago
Having seen photographs of the “diabolical chandelier” I expected 664 to be a centred cubic number, but it isn’t. That leaves me somewhat perplexed as to how they actually arranged the geometry of the fissile material.

jl6 5y ago

They didn’t want anybody else writing their plans, which ultimately couldn’t be executed by anybody.