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History of Technology 4: Nuclear Bombs 16 Views
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Description:
Word to the wise: if you ever work on a weapon that can destroy the world, you might want to leave it off of your LinkedIn profile.
Transcript
- 00:02
Remember nuclear power? [Picture of a nuclear power plant]
- 00:05
That little thing that redefined the energy potential of the world?
- 00:08
All sunshine and puppies, right? [Rainbow coming out of a nuclear power station cooling tower]
- 00:10
Nothing dark and scary about it…
- 00:12
…Uh…that can't be good. [An explosion turns people into skeletons]
Full Transcript
- 00:14
Okay, so it wasn't all rainbows and love.
- 00:16
Originally, scientists were trying to make a nice, efficient energy source to solve all [Scientists in a control room]
- 00:20
our worlds problems...
- 00:21
But nuclear research got redirected, and fast.
- 00:25
The new goal?
- 00:26
To build the most destructive weapon ever known to man kind. [Nuclear bomb with a devil face]
- 00:29
And guess what?
- 00:31
They succeeded.
- 00:33
Yay…?
- 00:34
The world’s first working nuclear bombs, or atomic bombs back then, were made in the USA. [Nuclear bomb with 'made in the USA' written on it]
- 00:39
The super secret program that created the bomb was called the Manhattan Project, even
- 00:45
though they were nowhere near Manhattan.
- 00:46
They actually did most of the experimenting out in Los Alamos, New Mexico. [Workers preparing experiments]
- 00:52
Robert Oppenheimer was the head of the Manhattan Project.
- 00:55
We wonder if he would've left that off his LinkedIn after…y'know…death and destruction [Oppenheimer's LinkedIn profile]
- 01:00
happened.
- 01:01
He had a team of high profile scientists under his wing. [Oppenheimer flies in with wings]
- 01:04
One of the most important of these science-minded types was Enrico Fermi, who’d escaped fascist
- 01:10
Italy to come to the US.
- 01:13
Fermi actually was on the ground floor of the whole "nuclear bomb" thing. [Fermi stood next to a bomb with his thumbs up]
- 01:17
Fermi was one of the first guys to alert FDR on the dangers of the Nazi’s nuclear program, [A bird drops a message to FDR]
- 01:24
and was like, "yeah, the U.S. should probably get in on that too…"
- 01:29
He also oversaw the world’s first nuclear chain reaction.
- 01:33
We wonder what his LinkedIn profile would look like… [Fermi's LinkedIn profile]
- 01:36
Anyway, as impressive as Fermi was, Oppenheimer was still the boss of the Manhattan Project,
- 01:41
which successfully tested the first bomb at Trinity Site in Alamogordo, New Mexico on [Footage of Manhattan project workers]
- 01:47
July 16th, 1945. [Footage of the nuclear explosion]
- 01:49
No one knew what to expect.
- 01:52
Would the bomb poison all of America with radiation? [Map of America gets sick]
- 01:56
Would it blow a hole in the space-time continuum allowing vicious extra-dimensional beings [An alien appears and shoots the Earth]
- 02:01
into our world?
- 02:02
Probably not to all of the above…
- 02:04
But there was only one way to find out...
- 02:07
Three, two, one….boom. [Countdown]
- 02:09
After the bomb dropped, there was a blinding flash that could be seen for about 200 miles. [Huge explosion]
- 02:16
Next came a mushroom shaped cloud that reached 40,000 feet and blew out the windows of houses
- 02:23
up to 100 miles away.
- 02:25
All this created a half-mile wide crater and transformed the desert sand around it into [Shockwave smashing windows]
- 02:32
glass.
- 02:34
When folks nearby asked what had gone down, government officials said… [People looking confused]
- 02:38
"Our bad…a huge ammunition dump exploded in the desert. [Government worker with long nose]
- 02:43
Definitely not a giant bomb.
- 02:45
Hah.
- 02:46
No way.
- 02:47
Noooo way….hey look, a squirrel." [His nose grows longer]
- 02:48
Y'know.
- 02:50
More or less.
- 02:52
Somewhat surprisingly, people actually fell for this.
- 02:54
But can we blame them?
- 02:55
Most had never heard of an atomic bomb.
- 02:57
They had no idea that such a devastating weapon could exist. [Atomic bomb flying above a field]
- 03:01
Plus, squirrels are pretty distracting. [Squirrel jumping off a fence]
- 03:05
And in retrospect, extra-dimensional raiders may have been a preferable outcome to the test. [Aliens appear and a man runs away]
- 03:11
You know, they could be friendly.
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