The Real Weapon That Could Destroy New York

hey 42 here when it's been a long year and you're in desperate need of some rest and relaxation nothing compares with an island holiday the ocean breeze the soothing sound of waves lapping on the shore the tinkling of ice in your glass the incinerating heat of a nuclear blast okay a nuclear blast is probably not something you need to concern yourself with next time you're heading for hawaii or the maldives but perhaps double check with your travel agent because it turns out that islands rank really high on the list of stuff humans like to blow up at least it seems that small spits of land in the ocean really piss off the united states because in july 1946 they performed the first public test of a nuclear weapon by dropping an atomic bomb on bikini atop a collection of small islands within the larger marshall islands group in the pacific ocean as an aside it was around this time that frenchman louie reard invented what we know today as the bikini even though by today's standards it looked a bit something like what your gram would wear because she probably did however it was much skimpier than any bathing costume that had come before so when the us dropped the bomb literally on the bikini atoll just four days before reard was to debut his new two-piece swimsuit the opportunistic inventor capitalized on all the news headlines and publicity by naming his new product the bikini knowing that it was likely to be an explosive launch he later patented the name and the rest is history there is a related anecdote about the mankini at all but really that's a story everyone would rather forget anyway back to the weapons of mass destruction between 1948 and 1956 the united states dropped 67 nuclear bombs on or above the marshall islands creating massive craters and making entire islands disappear in 1952 the first hydrogen bomb was tested on their enewy tuckatol also part of the marshall islands and then in november 1971 the united states conducted its most powerful underground nuclear test to date by detonating a nuclear warhead one mile below ground on the remote amchiteka island in alaska however none of these hold a radioactive candle to the utter contempt russia clearly holds for islands particularly the archipelago of novaya zemla located in far north russia in the arctic ocean it was designated as a nuclear testing site in 1954. since then it has seen 224 nuclear detonations with explosive energy totaling 265 megatons of tnt all the explosions used in the second world war including the two atomic bombs dropped on japan only came to two megatons of tnt nevia zemla's greatest moment if you can call it that came in october 1961 when the soviet union used it as the test site for the most powerful bomb in history the sarbomba russian for king of bombs it was almost eight meters long two meters in diameter and weighed 27 tons there was no plane big enough to carry it so one had to be modified especially for the job the construction of sarbomba may seem a little random like they just woke up one more ingam thought mother russia must build biggest bomb ever it is destiny but it was actually a very typical move for russia and just another object in a series of really big russian [ __ ] built in 1586 sarkanon is the largest cannon by caliber in the world it's made of solid bronze measures more than 5 meters in length and weighs in at 40 tons sar bell is you guessed it the largest bell in the world even though it's never been wrung or even hung up which isn't surprising considering it weighs more than 200 tons and is two stories high so there were certainly a few eye rolls and thoughts of here we go again when soviet premier nikita khrushchev commissions the construction of sarbomba in july he even called the bomb kusko's mother a reference to an old russian proverb meaning you're about to teach someone a harsh unforgettable lesson but this time the bigger is better philosophy delivered some pretty tangible results the impact of sarbomba was devastating even though it detonated four kilometers above the earth it wiped the land below it clean ground zero was reported to appear leveled swept and licked so that it looked like a skating rink observers felt the heat from the blast 170 miles away whilst anyone within 70 miles experienced third degree burns that's about the distance from new york to philadelphia by the way the flash from the explosion was seen 620 miles away through bad weather and windows as far away as norway and finland were shattered by the force the bomb's mushroom cloud reached 40 miles into the sky just below the edge of space shock waves from the blast travelled around the earth three times you may be asking yourself what's the point why on earth would anyone want to invent something that could vaporize entire cities well i think you probably already know the answer to that it's the same as the answer to why do countries have military parades why do people drive hummers or why do bodybuilders wear tight shirts as a display of power sar bomber was constructed in the early 60s just as the cold war started to heat up or cool down whatever the united states and the soviet union were taking turns flexing their muscles and proving just how powerful they were by blowing stuff up until that point the most enormous detonation ever recorded was the 15 megaton castle bravo hydrogen bomb dropped by the us on yes bikini at all 1 000 times more potent than the hiroshima bomb it decimated everything on free islands raised water temperatures to 55 000 degrees and left a crater that was more than a mile wide and 70 meters deep so when khrushchev ordered sarbamba to be built he had but one purpose in mind to put an end to the ongoing to and fro between the world's superpowers and prove once and for all that the soviet union was the big daddy he originally wanted the king of bombs to be a 100 megaton monster but due to various constraints nuclear physicists eventually settled on a 50 megaton device don't you just hate it when you're designing a bomb and your nuclear yield gets cut in half even with a measly 50 megatons in their cargo holes the pilots who drops to the bomb were told they only had a 50 50 chance of survival and that proved to be pretty accurate they only barely survived after the plane was knocked out of the sky by the blast and plummeted three thousand feet before writing itself if you're sitting there thinking blimey that sure sounds impressive but what does 50 megatons even mean allow me to explain explosions of all kinds are measured in a tnt equivalent one gram of the explosive chemical compound trinita toluene also known as tnt for obvious reasons releases 4 000 joules of energy so a one kiloton bomb releases the same amount of energy as one thousand tons of tnt which is a lot of joules a 50 megaton bomb releases roughly the same energy as 50 million tons of tnt and so on for context the energy contained in one megaton of tnt is enough to power the average american household for 1000 years the energy in a 30 megaton blast could power the same home for more than three million years or the entire united states for three days in the end it appears khrushchev's plan worked the sar bomba was a cold war mic drop and two years later the united states soviet union and great britain established the partial nuclear test ban treaty limiting all test detonations of nuclear weapons to underground but this treaty didn't equate to the world bowing to russia's military might instead it was a long overdue wake-up call humanity had had more than a taste of how devastating a thermonuclear blast can be and it seems to have scared everyone back into line at least for a while of course for most of us regular folk who are more concerned with choosing a tasty yet conveniently high-fiber breakfast cereal rather than blowing up the planet this is good news fortunately sarbomba was too big to be used in actual battle but what if we developed the technology to deliver that same destructive force in a more convenient package the resulting damage to human life from a 100 megaton bomb being dropped over a major metropolitan area doesn't bear thinking about in london that would translate to roughly 6 million fatalities in new york 8 million tokyo 14 million the fort is sickening even those involved in nuclear arms development have come to regret it the nuclear physicist who led the creation of the world's biggest bomb andrei sakharov became a strong supporter of imposing limitations on these tests he was horrified by what he'd built as well as the cumulative effects of nuclear weapons testing regions like navoya zemla and the marshall islands have suffered significant ecological damage and show increased levels of radioactive elements at some spots in enewetoc where the first hydrogen bomb was tested and other parts of the marshall islands show radiation levels similar to those found near chernobyl and fukushima sakarov became an outspoken critic of soviet weapons plans and a civil rights activist in the soviet union eventually receiving the nobel peace prize in 1975 this is especially ironic since the founder of the nobel prize swedish chemist inventor and engineer alfred nobel was perhaps most famous for his invention of one of the most enduring explosive materials of all time dynamite another key figure who turned his back on nuclear weaponry was j robert oppenheimer as the leader of the manhattan project oppenheimer is credited with creating humankind's first atomic bomb but after the weapon was used against japan in world war ii oppenheimer began to regret what he'd helped create he felt responsible for the nuclear arms race that followed and deeply opposed the development of the h-bomb or hydrogen bomb saying that it was too powerful for humans to control after sarbomba which was an h-bomb it seems that he may be right even though the development and testing of thermonuclear devices has slowed in recent decades we shouldn't naively assume this spells the end of humanity's appetite for really powerful blowy-up type things sadly nuclear may only be the beginning one theoretical possibility is an anti-matter bomb its destructive potential is beyond anything we've ever imagined never mind created just half a gram of antimatter would be enough to build a bomb that releases 40 percent more energy than that dropped on hiroshima that means that just one and a half kilograms of antimatter would be needed to deliver the same explosive force as the 27 ton sar bomber but every apocalyptic cloud has a not so shitty lining and an anti-mata bomb wouldn't lead to much nuclear fallout that's all the radiation left behind after an atomic or hydrogen bomb so it would be in a really weird way a clean explosion but i doubt that would be much consolation to the people it lands on it's like saying i only drink organic cyanide fortunately there are a few hurdles that are likely to ensure we're still some time away from seeing an anti-matter weapon in action the explosive power of antimatter comes from the fact that as soon as it comes into contact with ordinary matter the two annihilate each other releasing extraordinary amounts of energy obviously this makes containing it and moving it around more than a little bit tricky as soon as antimatter comes into contact with the size of the tupperware container you've put it in boom no more tupperware and no more you the second problem is supply the universe is made up of considerably more matter than antimatter if it were 50 50 one would cancel out the other and there'd be no universe left it would be like a really really empty disco party and i say disco because disco can't die partly due to this bias towards mata antimatter has proved extremely difficult to find at cern the largest particle physics laboratory in the world scientists have amongst lots of other geeky things spent the last 30 years trying to harvest antimatter so far they've got their hands on 10 billionths of a gram possibly enough to light a match it's not a cheap exercise either the current costs of production of antimatter are about 62 million dollars per gram so it seems that we're safe from the bomb that will blow up the world for the time being that's not to say total planetary destruction is not on the cards though nature itself is considerably more powerful than anything humans have come close to creating the 1883 eruption of krakatoa a volcano near indonesia was four times more powerful than sarbomba the total energy released by the 1815 eruption of mount tambora on the island of sambawa was estimated to be more than 600 times bigger than sarbomba the most energetic event in earth's history was the chick-zulub meteor impact that caused mass extinction and ended the reign of the dinosaurs that was 2 million times more powerful than sarbomba a bit embarrassing really i'm not saying that you shouldn't keep an eye on psychopathic totalitarian dictators with an itch for nuclear warfare i'm just saying there's a lot of stuff out there that's a lot scarier of course there's nothing you can do about it though so keep calm and carry on thanks for watching check out my new podcast random interesting facts available on youtube spotify apple podcast and anywhere else you get your podcasts link in the description below thanks

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 505,250

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Id: DUuE4nhxgz4

Length: 16min 39sec (999 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 13 2021