How The Demon Core Killed Everyone Who Touched It

today's video is kindly sponsored by guardio find out more later on hey 42 here for as long as there have been humans there's been war whilst we can hope that a thousand years from now we'll all have matured into hoverboard riding pacifists for the time being murdering each other in the name of whatever disagreements fashionable this decade seems set to remain an intrinsic part of who we are probably the most devastating acts of violence ever to have been carried out by humans on humans were the atomic bombings of the japanese cities of hiroshima and nagasaki that's the tail end of the second world war the weapons that caused this mass destruction were code named little boy and fat man respectively and between them they claimed somewhere in the region of 200 000 lives the role these two bombs played in ending the second world war is widely known but what's a little less well known is that this deadly duo was very nearly a trio whilst the world was still coming to terms with the sheer level of devastation little boy and fat man had unleashed on japan over in los alamos home of the manhattan project the finishing touches were being made to another atomic bomb had japan not surrendered to the allies on the 15th of august 1945 this third weapon was penciled in for being released over an unknown japanese city just four days later nestled within the centre of this nuke that never made it was a radioactive cord that had been given the nickname rufus if that sounds a little too cute for this explosive core of a city killing nuclear weapon don't worry because history has since given this 6.2 kilogram ball of plutonium a different name this is the story of the demon corps a bomb that killed despite never being detonated now the internet is a wonderful thing but as the world becomes more connected the risk of being scammed or hacked increases with time it's never been more important to protect yourself whilst browsing the web and guardio offers that protection in an effective 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you'll receive an extra discount for the full browsing protection which includes a seven day free trial that you can cancel anytime before the end of the trial free of charge don't miss out when emperor hirohito of japan unfurled his white flag in the wake of the bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki this lump of plutonium that will come to be known as the demon core was no longer required for its original deadly purpose but that didn't make it surplus to requirements far from it the process that gives nuclear weapons their destructive power nuclear efficient had been discovered less than a decade before that made the demon core a piece of cutting-edge technology based on brand new science that wasn't well understood gaining a more complete understanding of nuclear fission had profound implications for the whole of humankind not only was there an all too predictable desire to build bigger and better bombs nuclear fission could also be put to less cataclysmic uses fission occurs when an atom's nucleus is split in two a process which releases huge amounts of energy along with that energy a split atom also fires out neutrons some of which in turn will smash into other atoms splitting them and releasing more energy and more neutrons under the right circumstances a self-sustaining chain reaction can be triggered unleashing staggering amounts of energy and i really do mean staggering fission of a single kilogram of uranium will produce roughly the same amount of energy as from burning 4 billion kilograms of coal in order to help scientists better harness this incredible power the demon core became a subject of study at los alamos a vital part of that research involves so-called criticality experiments designed to determine under exactly which conditions a nuclear core will achieve critical mass the point at which a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction takes place it was important science understanding critical mass is key to ensuring your nuclear weapons explode and your power plants don't but the experiments were also incredibly dangerous because figuring out at which point the demon core would go supercritical could only be done by bringing it to the very edge of a devastating chain reaction accidentally triggering such a reaction wouldn't necessarily lead to an explosion but it would unleash a massive wave of lethal radiation legendary physicist richard feynman once famously compared the critical mass experiments carried out at los alamos to tikkalinga dragon's tale his point was clear make a mistake and you're going to get burnt the scientists at los alamos were well aware of this danger but these were not cautious men they'd spent the previous few years developing a weapon that was capable of single-handedly ending the biggest war in history whilst millions of lives were on the line those kinds of stakes breed urgency and urgency allows for certain corners to be cut when it comes to things like safety procedures and best practices the end of the war should have taken that urgency away and allowed for more caution but much like bruce willis old habits die hard now if you picture scientists carrying out complex experiments on highly radioactive materials today you'd probably conjure images of hazmat suits and heavy lead doorways covered in alarming yellow and black symbols in the 1940s things were a little bit different to give you an idea of just how different take a look at this picture at first glance you'd be forgiven for thinking these guys are loading a crate of beer into some beaten up old truck before a party but no in that box is the radioactive plutonium core that would eventually form the beating heart of the gadget the first atomic bomb ever detonated on earth that guy in the middle is harry dagliam by the way a physicist with the manhattan project and i chose an image including him for a reason you see exactly 64 days after this picture was taken at just 24 years of age harry daglian would be dead dagliam was one of the scientists tasked with carrying out criticality experiments at los alamos in the aftermath of the war his methodology was fairly simple he stacked neutron reflecting tungsten carbide bricks in a ring around the core this had the effect of bouncing escaping neutrons back towards the core therefore increasing the rate of fission and edging the core closer and closer towards supercriticality [Music] to begin with the experiment was working well with every tungsten carbide brick harry stacked his lab instruments indicated that fission within the core was increasing but just when the core was approaching criticality harry daglian made a mistake and he woke the dragon judging that he'd added as many tungsten carbide bricks as was safe harry reached out to start dissembling his neutron reflecting wall his aim was off by an inch instead of picking up the topmost brick he knocked it forwards sending it tumbling directly on top of the core which went super critical in an instant daglian reacted immediately grabbing the errant brick and tossing it away he was fast but not fast enough a blast of ionizing radiation had already crashed into his body with such force it had damaged his dna acute radiation sickness doesn't kill you instantly it takes time for the catastrophic cell level damage it causes to make itself known typically it starts with flu-like symptoms nausea vomiting and diarrhea oddly enough sufferers usually rally at this point and for a period that can last hours or even weeks they present relatively few symptoms but that's just the calm before the storm exactly how things go next it depends on the dosage of radiation perceived but symptoms include confusion seizures tremors blistered skin hemorrhaging fever and organ failure harry daglian experienced his own miserable cocktail of these symptoms over the following 25 days before finally slipping away in doing so he became the first person in history to die in a nuclear criticality accident fast forward nine months and the demon corps had been lined up for a new assignment as part of operation crossroads the united states first post-nuclear war weapons tests that were scheduled to take place at bikini atoll in the middle of the pacific ocean knowing that the demon core would soon be gone for good the scientists at los alamos were keen to extract as much data from it as possible whilst they still had the chance and that meant more criticality experiments you'd think that seeing a colleague die horribly carrying out one of these experiments would have been enough to catalyze some fairly robust safety reforms at los alamos but yeah they didn't bother with any of that canadian physicist louis slaughton was considered to be pretty much the world's leading expert when it came to tickling the dragon's tail and he led many of the criticality experiments in the lead up to operation crossroads considered to be something of a maverick by his colleagues at los alamos slauson usually rocked up to work in his trademark blue jeans and cowboy boots as a bit of an exhibitionist he particularly enjoyed tickling the dragon's tale in front of an audience yeah okay that came out wrong anyway there were seven other scientists in attendance for the final criticality experiment before the demon core was to be shipped off to the pacific instead of piling tungsten carbide bricks around the core as douglian had slotted encased it inside two hemispheres of neutron-reflecting beryllium in theory the experiment should have been relatively safe so long as a gap was maintained between the two hemispheres at all times enough neutrons would be able to escape to ensure the core would never go supercritical to that end the experiment was usually run using spacers that physically prevented the beryllium hemispheres from meeting but slotten's setup didn't use spaces because he'd invented his own state-of-the-art alternative a screwdriver that's right as utterly ridiculous as it may sound when louis slotten tickled the dragon's tail all that stood between him and the demon's core radioactive breath was the whiff of a flathead screwdriver wedged casually between the beryllium reflectors despite the danger slosson had carried out the experiment in exactly this way dozens of times before but on the 21st of may 1946 exactly nine months to the day after harry daglian had woken the dragon slotten's screwdriver slipped the beryllium hemispheres briefly met fully enclosing the demon core and igniting a nuclear chain reaction within a burst of bright blue light was followed by a wave of heat as the demon core belched four for colossal blast of radiation just as harry daglian had nine months before louis slotten reacted fast flipping the upper hemisphere free from the core but once again it was much much too late it's kind of terrifying to think what must have been going through slotten's head in those frantic seconds he was one of the world's leading experts on the handling of plutonium and he just seen a colleague and friend die horribly in a similar accident mere mumps beforehand he knew exactly what he'd just done and more importantly he knew exactly what was going to happen next according to one of the other scientists in the room at the time slotten spoke exactly four words in the immediate aftermath of the accident well that does it it's estimated that slotten received a dose of radiation so high it would have been fatal four times over in some ways that was a blessing whilst harry daglian had clung onto life for close to a month louis slotten was dead within nine days [Music] i won't go into the details of his decline because to be frank it's harrowing stuff let's just say it wasn't a good way to go as for the seven other scientists in the room at the time each received a different dose of radiation depending on where they've been sitting or standing at the time of the accident you may be assuming that anyone unlucky enough to have been nearby was a dead man walking but radioactive emissions are governed by the inverse square law meaning the intensity of radiation drops off rapidly the further away you get from the source nobody aside from slotten suffered from acute radiation sickness in the aftermath of the accident though at least two of those presents died years later from radiation related causes as a result of the criticality accident that killed louis slotten the demon core was too radioactive to be used in operation crossroads as had been planned and in the end it was simply melted down and reintegrated into the us's nuclear arsenal which means it's very possible that elements of this killer core sit inside other nuclear weapons within the u.s stockpile to this day when you think about it there's a kind of tragic irony to this already sad story free bombs were assembled to be dropped on japan at the end of the second world war the first killed 140 000 people in hiroshima the second killed 80 000 in nagasaki the third it killed two in-cautious scientists working at los alamos and it's that one that earns the nickname the demon core thanks for watching

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 2,427,550

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Id: rlywR2PNwCg

Length: 17min 17sec (1037 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 28 2022