The Time We Nuked Five Men to Prove a Point

on july 19 1957 five u.s air force officers and one photographer volunteered to stand a few miles behind me next to them a sign that said ground zero population five in the next few minutes a two kiloton nuclear warhead would detonate eighteen and a half thousand feet directly above their heads why would these men volunteer for such a demonstration and what happened to them before they were banned internationally in 1963 most above-ground nuclear weapons tests were as much spectacles of nuclear supremacy as they were actual tests mushroom clouds kilometers high x-ray driven fireballs hotter than the sun light intense enough to vaporize a vehicle's paint job but in this incredible archival video of five men willingly standing underneath a nuclear explosion we see something else instead of destruction not much more than a synchronized flinch a few moments earlier 65 miles northwest of las vegas an f-89 interceptor had launched a two kiloton nuclear warhead directly above the heads of colonel sydney bruce lieutenant colonel frank ball major norman bodinger major john hughes don luttrell and george yoshitaki the unseen cameraman these men were ground zero population five for a successful test of the world's first air-to-air nuclear weapon these men volunteered to get nuked to prove a point to you in the background was the growing struggle between two great powers to shape the post-war world in the middle years of the cold war but before intercontinental ballistic missiles would render them tactically disadvantageous cold war america was most worried about a surprise nuclear attack from fleets of soviet bombers anti-aircraft technology at the time wasn't equipped to handle dozens of relatively high-flying fast-moving planes so in the august of 1954 president dwight d eisenhower appointed mit president james r killian jr to lead some of the nation's top scientists engineers and industry professionals in an effort to counter this potential threat to develop strategy and technology that would make this aspect of the cold war a little colder 307 meetings later a panel of 42 experts produced a 190 page document entitled meeting the threat of surprise attack during their four-hour testimony to the u.s national security council in 1955 the experts argued that the most effective way to meet a thermonuclear-equipped adversary in the air was with nuclear weapons also in the air indeed the report recommended that nuclear weapons should be the main defense against possible air attacks the reasoning was simple a single warhead of significant tonnage should be enough to wipe out an entire fleet of soviet aircraft flying in bombing formation the council was convinced that same year development would begin on the mcdonnell douglas air 2a genie a 1.5 kiloton nuclear warhead that could be fired to air but there was still a problem the public rightly sensing that americans might not want nuclear bombs detonating above their heads even in defense the killian committee also recommended that an upcoming demonstration of the genie technology be promoted to citizens as an advertisement of its safety a nuclear bomb publicity stunt they just needed some volunteers two years later july 19 1957 f-89 pilot captain eric william hutchinson fires a 1.5 kiloton nuclear warhead powered by a solid fuel thiokol sr49tc1 rocket engine the engine runs for two seconds now traveling at over three times the speed of sound the rocket flies for another 12 seconds hutchinson executes a dangerous high g maneuver to ensure that he escapes the 1 000 foot blast radius and then the genie was out of the bottle there it goes a rocket is gone we felt a heat pulse a very bright light a fireball it is red this guy looks black about it it is boiling above us there how is a nuclear weapon dangerous it may surprise you to learn that what most people imagine to be the most destructive aspect of a nuclear weapon the ionizing radiation and subsequent fallout is in reality the smallest fraction of a detonation's colossal energy output and ionizing radiation only makes it so far in air as it collides with the atmosphere's atoms and molecules while fallout is of most concern when an explosion vaporizes a large amount of additional material like terrestrial rock or sea coral therefore a relatively small nuclear weapon like the genies w25 detonating at an altitude six times higher than the highest building on earth did in fact pose very little threat to anyone on the ground fireballs would rise into the sky and cool any minimal fallout would spread out as to become mostly harmless a warhead-carrying soviet aircraft on the other hand would find it physically impossible to escape deletion as a missile moving at mach 3.3 instantly transforms into a 1 000 foot wide sphere of air hotter than the center of a star the same year that five men successfully stood beneath shot john of operation plum bob the united states started producing some 3 100 genie air-to-air rockets and attached them to interceptor aircraft at 31 bases across 20 states the genie would remain in service for almost another 30 years and secretly the only nuclear weapon that could be launched in response to an attack without presidential authority thankfully the only genie that was ever fired and detonated was at ground zero population five by the late 80s nuclear strategy changed it had to intercontinental ballistic missiles could now quickly strike nearly anywhere on earth and a single one like the russians r36 warhead with a 25 megaton yield could glass an entire city and spread deadly fallout over half a coast gone were the days of relatively slow fleets of bombers that could be stopped with unfocused nuclear fire the age of mutually assured destruction was here and we've been living atop the insane geopolitical knife edge that replaced the genie ever since as for the five men at ground zero they were right or at least what they were told before they volunteered was right time and distance is what saved them what made the test a suitable pr stunt exploding outwards from a single point the intensity of a nuclear bomb's pressure wave ionizing radiation and scalding heat decreases exponentially with the square of the distance traveled a warhead like genies with a 1000 foot blast radius wouldn't be three times less intense three radii away it would be nine times less intense and therefore with over eighteen thousand feet between them and a genie out of the bottle the men would hear a shockingly large noise eventually but feel little else and by presumably not spending very much time in the area of any potential fallout long-term health effects for the men were extremely unlikely indeed records show that every single one of them live very long lives afterwards some lived well into their 90s donald luttrell passed away just eight years ago it's not the kind of time you might expect afforded to you after standing directly below a nuclear blast time and distance until 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Channel: Kyle Hill

Views: 6,840,345

Keywords: because science, engineering, kyle hill, learning, math, physics, science, stem, the facility, chernobyl, five men, five men ground zero, half life history, half life histories, half-life, history, documentary, operation plumbbob, shot john, las vegas, genie, nuclear bomb, nuke

Id: _eRcmjW9BUY

Length: 10min 2sec (602 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 25 2022