Year 3 of Plainly Difficult

hello it's that time of the year again and can you believe that year free of play needy is over as a kind of tradition on this channel I rolled all of the last 12 months a video into this one upload so you can sit back relax and listen to me in extended play kind of like a plainly difficult omnibus thank you all for your support interaction with the channel I really enjoy making content for you all and it's amazing how you have helped plaintiff will grow into what is today today's video was suggested to me by Tim one of my patrons I can't thank you enough for your support on the 1st of July 1940 the world's third-largest suspension bridge was open to the public but within three months would be just a pile of twisted metal and concrete you might be thinking that it was some kind of espionage in the lead-up to the u.s. joining the Second World War where if he did unfortunately you'd be wrong as the cause was a minor design flaw and an unfortunate gust of wind okay it wasn't as simple as that but lessons learned would influence every large structure built afterwards ever since 1889 there has been a need for a connection between Tacoma and the Kitsap Peninsula in Washington State originally idea of a trestle bridge was floated by the Northern Pacific Railroad company but the plan didn't come to fruition and more serious plan was put forward in 1923 would the Chamber of Commerce attempting to find financing for the project during the initial stages of gaining support the appointed Washington's state toll bridge Authority found that a crossing bridge would not be able to cover the costs of construction from collecting tolls alone once again the project looked like it could not go ahead however the nearby Puget Sound Naval Yard and Fort Lewis run by the Navy and Army respectively showed great interest in the crossing back body Armed Forces the toll Authority requested 13 million from the federal government to design and build a crossing an engineer clock Eldridge was appointed to design a preliminary concept for a suspension bridge which would feature 7.6 meter deep trusses to stiffen the underside of the roadway however another engineer Leah Moises veteran at the Golden Gate Bridge project proposed a much cheaper and sleeker design Leon's idea would use much smaller Road trusses of only 2.4 meters this would reduce the cost of the bridge from around 11 million down to a much more affordable eight million the strength of the cables was thought to be able to offset the wind pressure on the bridge and in doing so transfer distress to the anchor the bridge would have a span of 850 meters making it the third largest suspension bridge in the world even though the bridge was along it was only predicted to have light traffic flow and due to Mr design only allowed for a 12 meter narrow two-lane roadway as well as being narrow the roadway was also very shallow due to the cheaper to construct two point four meter trusses it was these seemingly minor but visually appealing design decisions would cause problems for the bridges short life due to flexibility of the roadway as with most government dealings the cheaper bid got the contract the Public Works Administration approved six million for the construction project with the remaining balance of eight million to be collected from tell crossings after completion were to go ahead given and moist F's design planned out construction works began on the 27th of september 1938 the construction project took 19 months and at a cost of 6.4 million dollars even as the project was being built stability issues due to the shallow roadway caused workers to dub the bridge galloping gertie as she swayed in even mild wind the bridge twisted opposite size of the center span as the overly flexible roadway danced in the wind even before opening day the bridge began to become infamous for its unwanted vertical movement on the 1st of July 1940 galloping gertie was open to the public as the first vehicles navigated the bridge noticeable bouncing could be seen quickly she became a tourist attraction as the public came to see the bridge bounce around as people timidly crossed the span due to the entertaining experience at the bridge many film cameras captured the new buildings bizarre behaviour several attempts to design out the unwanted movement were implemented by attaching cables to the bridge attached to 50 ton concrete blocks however the cables to the blocks snapped soon after installation another set of cables were installed although this time they didn't snap but still proved ineffective the bridge also had hydraulic buffers installed when a towers met the roadway but again these had little effect to the unwanted movement gathering winds from the southwest on the morning of the 7th of November 1940 started to create oscillations gradually the bridge flexed as it done before as the winds reached 38 miles per hour at 7:30 a.m. but after each movement in a roadway bubbled higher and higher up to heights of 5 feet as it caught in the wind clock eldridge one of the original British designers drove across the bridge at 8:30 on route to his office by 9:30 the winds hit 42 miles an hour and scientist professor FB Farquharson arrived at the bridge within 2 hours the bridge would be in ruins now mr. farquharson is worth mentioning here as he had been employed to try and tackle the galloping gertie once and for all and he was only days away from fixing the bridge he was discovered during experiments in a wind tunnel but the weak roadway and poor aerodynamic properties were the cause of the oscillation Frederic farquharson proposed on the 2nd of November to fixes one would include cutting holes in the roadway girders to allow air to pass through eliminating the unwanted movement this was not favored by the toll bridge authority as it was permanent and a destructive fix as an alternative and less invasive fix farquharson proposed fitting fairings to decide at the bridge to help air flow around the roadway much like a wing but time had run out back to the faithful day and the professor tasked with fixing the bridge could only stand by and watch as the structure swayed uncontrollably in the wind he set up a motion picture camera to capture the unfolding disaster for the next half an hour leading up to 10:00 a.m. the last few cars braved the bridge and paid their tolls two more vehicles would attempt to traverse the bridge a delivery van from the rapid transfer company and a car Niva would complete their journey but transfer van would be toppled over by the west tower with its driver and passenger escaping on foot the car driven by Leonard cotesworth and news editor for the Tacoma News Tribune and his daughter's dog tubby managed to get as far as the east tower when a jolt from the bridge flew the car into the curb cotesworth escaped and started crawling towards the east tower eventually he made it to the safety of the toll plaza and told her a member of staff about his dog and then contacted the office which in turn dispatch one of their photographers to capitalize on the unfolding disaster Eldridge arrived at the scene at 10:15 a.m. after receiving a phone call saying the bridge was about to go by 10:30 parts of the bridge was starting to fall off some workmen managed to save Dattu from the topple van as the wind started to low 100 photographers from the News Tribune Howard Clifford braved his way onto the bridge to try and rescue the dog tubby strand in the side coats was car but he couldn't get close enough farquharson he was still taking photos decided to try to reach the car at 10:55 a.m. to rescued a dog he opened the doors to find a terrified tubby who then went to bite Farquharson finger unsuccessful he retreated back to safety at 10 a.m. larger and larger bits of concrete were launched into the air as the bridge ripped itself to pieces steel girders bent like rubber bolt shot off like bullets in all directions as suspension cables whipped around like a fishing line as the building tore itself to shreds hundreds gathered to watch the destruction firsthand at 11:02 the bridge finally gave out and a hundred and eighty-two meter stretch broke free falling into the puget below cables cracked through the air and sparks spat out from damaged electrical wiring farquharson on the east house scrambled for his life reaching the toll plaza as several sections plunged into the water poached with stranded car with tubby still inside disappeared into the Narrows and never to be seen again by 11:10 a.m. it was all over with the east and west house standing with only disfigured cables dangling along the once grand center span of the bridge in the aftermath an inquiry was set up to understand the cause of the collapse and to find who was at fault for such an embarrassing demise of a publicly funded project Eldridge was quick to point the finger at the moneylenders for using a cheaper design and pointed out that he had opposed Moises design due to the two point four meter girders acting like sails in the wind telling newspapers no man who held the purse strings were the whip crackers for the entire project we had a tried-and-true conventional bridge design we would old we couldn't have the necessary money without using plans furnished from an Eastern firm of engineers chosen by the moneylenders the Public Works Administration officials claimed that they had heard no such objections from the engineering team about the British design however barely two months have passed before one of the administration's own engineers David Glen balloon a whistle to say that he had refused to approve the bridge in July 1940 Amos submitting a report rejecting the bridge for use citing fatal design flaws the PWA and the toll authority ignored the report and accepted the completed structure two weeks after Glenn came forward he was fired from the PWA the Federal Works Administration appointed a panel of free engineers to investigate the collapse no single person was blamed but instead highlighted free causes for the incident the first being the bridges flexibility due to the relatively small support girders the second issue was the roadway deck acting like an aerofoil causing lift and drag which was the reason for the twisting motion finally the engineer is lack of understanding of the potential aerodynamic capabilities of a bridge which could have been solved by Windtunnel testing of potential design chief designer Liam ACEF was let off the hook however his career was in tatters and the shambles of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge would shadow him for the rest of his life until his death in 1943 Eldridge was not so forgiving scolding myself for designing a bridge for no more than seven million in doing so undercutting the original more thicker girded expensive design don't after Eldridge would quit his job and start working for the US Navy on the island of Guam bizarrely he'll be captured by the Japanese during world war ii and whilst in a powa amp will be recognized by one of the japanese officers who is studied in the u.s. who in turn approached Eldridge only to say Tacoma bridge controversially not all the money for the bridge could be recovered from the insurers straightaway as it was claimed about the towers and cables to be reused and because of this the underwriters offered a meager 1.8 million unsurprisingly the state filed a dispute trying to recover at least 4.3 million dollars after a nine-month battle both sides agreed on a payout of four million this delay stopped any project for a replacement in its tracks as the u.s. entered the second world war a second bridge would be built after the war opening in 1950 and were closely resemble the original design by Eldridge and Farquharson would play a part in the new bridges design with his testing of scale models in wind tunnels many lessons were learned from the first Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse helping to improve design and construction of all suspension bridges built since and it was lucky to have only had a death toll of one poor old tubby the dog thank you so much for watching I hope you enjoyed the video thanks again for Tim for suggesting this subject please help the channel grow by liking commenting subscribing and also sharing also keep up to date with new videos by hitting the bear icon and always have to say is thank you for watching [Music] this subject was suggested to me - he was too interesting to pass up so I pause what I was doing I started a focus on this thank you for the suggestion [Music] [Music] it is likely that you may have discovered my channel from one of my nuclear disaster videos this story is most definitely not the deadliest I've covered in terms of environmental impact however it deserves to be remembered as it was the only nuclear reactor incident in the u.s. it resulted in immediate deaths with one of the fatalities being impaled by a shielding plug to the ceiling the sl1 was an experimental nuclear reactor and stood for stationary low-power reactor number one the idea for the reactor was part of a series of experimental nuclear power plants for use in remote radar outposts in the Arctic where the only power source had been from diesel generators the army had been evaluating their use of diesel generators between 1954 and 1955 and decided on a more effective replacement the army reactors branch contacted the Argonne National Laboratory who had a proven track record in reactor development on the Manhattan Project to design build and test a prototype reactor the army has set out a shopping list of requirements for their new low-power reactor some of the more important attributes were simple reliable easy to build operable in the harsh arctic environment must be air transportable all components limited to package sizes measuring 2.2 by 2.7 by 6 meters and no heavier than 9.1 kilos to use minimal proprietary parts and finally each core loading to have a free year life cycle the prototype would be built at the National reactor testing station in Idaho Falls Idaho which was pretty isolated we're ground being broken in July 1957 after a year almost to the day July 1958 sold a Construction complete and going critical in August and finally up and running in November will it formally being opened on the 2nd of December the reactor was held within a 15 meter high cylindrical building made out of quarter-inch steel and was known as a ra 602 with a condenser fan room near the top of the building access to the plant was via a door through an enclosed stairwell for they are a60 free to support building there was an emergency exit leading out to external stairs to ground level the reactor was embedded in gravel at the bottom the building didn't have the same protections as a plant in a built-up area but it was thought for any incident could be contained within main structure the reactor would use a boiling water design and used 93.2% highly enriched uranium fuel which would use light water in a natural circulation cycle for cooling the water system flowed through fuel plates of uranium aluminium alloy under pressure of 300 pounds per square inch the reactor was built to house 59 fuel assemblies one source and nine control rods however in general operation he only used 40 fuel and 5 control components many of the blank spaces used dummy rods which were later fitted with test sentences after testing the reactor was handed over to the Army for operation and training experience and combustion engineering incorporated working as the lead contractor from February 1958 many different personnel would train on the reactor from both military and civilian organizations would the plant operated by true crew members with CEI staff monitoring any developments being able to step in as necessary as the reactor aged boron strips corroded and flaked off and by 1960 the CEO had calculated that 18 percent had been lost within the core 50 reactor in November 1960 cadmium sheets were added to try and bolster the corroded boron leading up to the Christmas on a 21st December 1960 the reactor was shut down for maintenance for 11 days during this time the instruments were recalibrated and extra auxiliary components were installed flux wires were also installed these were used to monitor the Neutron flux levels within the core on the 3rd of January 1961 the reactor was being readied by a free man team in preparation for it to be brought back online each members in their 20s and consisted of Army Specialist John a Byron's Richard Leroy McKinley and Navy Seabee construction electrician first class Richard C leg as the team worked on a reactor to false fire alerts would be triggered both of which were responded to by the fire department part of the maintenance process meant that no main control rod in the center of the core had to be withdrawn manually to be reconnected to its drive mechanism as the evening during all three men were inside the reactor room with byron's and McKinley at the side and leg standing on top of the structure supervising the movement of the control rod at one minute past 9:00 in evening John Byron's withdrew the control rod too far and we wind four milliseconds the rod became critical instantly creating enough heat to melt the fuel within the core vaporizing it as the heat caused the fuel to expand a pressure wave was ejected out of the reactor creating a water hammer which in turn lifted the whole reactor 2.77 meters in the air Richard leg who was standing on top of the structure became impaled to the ceiling by one of the shield plugs which had been traveling at a speed of 26 meters a second a high pressure spray of radioactive steam water hit the two men who had been working to the side of the reactor killing Behrens instantly and severely injuring McKinley from the control rod going critical to complete destruction only took between two and four seconds another fire alarm for today was sounded and a slightly annoyed fire crew of six men turned up at first it seemed like another false alarm with the main building intact from the outside with only a little bit of steam emanating from the roof however as the crew moved towards the building and upon entering the stairwell they found their radiation gauges were going haywire the fire crew immediately retreated and after consulting with a doctor made a plan of spending no more than a minute for each person inside the structure to limit the exposure initially one crew member and a health physicist wearing protective equipment and gas masks attempted to enter the building herve Raju after seeing 25 rata jhin's on their radiation meters at 10:30 p.m. a supervisor working for the contractor CEO and the head health physicist arrived on the scene and entered the reactor building at 10:45 two of the men were found soaked in radioactive water with byron's dead and McKinley slowly moving and groaning from a head injury prioritizing McKinley the rescue team focused on trying to save the injured operator who have only one entry at one minute per person it would take until 10:50 before I could successfully place him on a stretcher and remove him from the structure McKinley would not regain consciousness and was succumbed to his wounds at 11:00 p.m. although dead his body was still deadly measuring gamma radiation at five hundred wattage ins an hour even after being stripped of his contaminated clothing it would take until 11:30 8 p.m. for the discovery of the final victim Richard leg whom had been impaled to the ceiling above their heads after the discovery of all the victims two rescue efforts slowed down as to protect the safety of the recovery team the next night Byron's body was recovered by team of six volunteers it wouldn't be until tonight that an attempt could be made to recover legs body the process to remove legs body would be practiced in the safety of the Dugway proving ground as it would involve a 1.5 by six point one meter stretcher attached to a crane this process would take ten men each working in intervals of 65 seconds to pull legs body off the shield plug by using hooks on long eventually his body became free and fell into the stretcher suspended from the crane originally it was thought that the disaster was caused by chemical explosion believing the reactor to be safe however gold watch worn by one of the operators showed evidence that the buckle had reactive gold and other items in the men's possessions showed Neutron activated element the bodies had to be treated is there favored nuclear wastes due to their potential for polluting the environment and were buried in lead line coffins placed inside metal vaults with some one or more radioactive parts being buried in the Idaho desert with other nuclear wait the cleanup efforts would take 475 people 18 months it was decided that to transport all the contaminated waste to the radioactive waste management complex 16 miles away will cause too much risk of radiation exposure as the journey would travel over public roads instead a burial site was established 500 metres from the reactor the first main hurdle was cleaning up the contaminated reactor room of all dangerous materials once this was done a 60 ton crane was employed to remove the reactor vessel from the building as reactor building was deconstructed any contaminated materials got disposed of in the burial site however any parts of the structure and reactor core that would be needed in a later investigation were sent separately to the aircraft nuclear programs hotshot inspection Center after which were sent to the radioactive waste complex in total after completion of the cleanup efforts in September 1962 2,800 meters of dangerous material was placed in the burial site up to a depth of 4.3 meters with half a meter of clean soil placed above the site is now known as United States Environmental Protection Agency operational unit 5 - 0 5 the cause the incident would be a mystery over the following two years of the investigation they newly reactor went critical but I didn't know why the control rod was pulled out so far maintenance procedures stated that the rod would only be needed to be manually moved 10 centimeters however is estimated that byron's actually withdrew its 66 centimeters causing the reactor to go critical setting off the steam and water hammer that would destroy the vessel much of the damage to the building and the impaling of leg was put down to the high pressure waterjet initiated by the vaporized fuel union scratches on the control rods and analyzing the newly installed flux wise investigators managed to establish any movement under fifty eight point four centimeters of the rod would not have caused the reactor to go critical however it would have only taken Bynes 500 milliseconds to move the rod between 58.4 and the eventual 66 centimeters unfortunately he had no time to correct his action however still a mystery was while of rod had been moved over the ten centimeters needed in the first place as though no logs made during the process some worrying theories were proposed here are the main theories from least to most likely a suicide murder because of an affair with one of the other crew members wives plain old suicide sabotage accidental withdrawal and finally an attempt to make the rod travel freely within the core by working it backwards and forwards there is some weight unfortunately behind the murder suicide theories as Byron's and leg were from the same training class and lake had surpassed him becoming a supervisor and the 3rd of January was the first shift leg had worked being in charge of his old classmate also on the day of the critical event Byron's had been informed that his wife wanted a divorce weather and an intentional mistake or not is not unthinkable to think that Byron's mind was not on the job at hand the last furious thought to be in the most likely case as a design of the sl1 had an unwanted side effect sticky control rods this meant not over the three years that the reactor was operational forty events of a stuck control rod had been reported and the number had dramatically increased over latter part of 1960 with four happening in the month leading up to the incident it was thought that the reason for the problem of sukkot roads were caused by corrosion clutch and drive bearing issues on the rotation assembly in the core and a misalignment issue the rod that went critical number nine was in the center of the core a bearing or clutch issue would be unlikely as sticking only occurred during rotation this would affect the other non central control once more even though the cause was highlighted the rapid of control rod number nine the reason for the movement will likely still remain a mystery the aftermath of the sl1 incident caused the design to be abandoned and for future reactors to not have the ability to go critical after removal of just one control rod other low power reactors would be made June the army reactors branches project however the outbreak of the Vietnam War would divert army resources stopping the program in 1965 during a cleanup around seven hundred and ninety people were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation the area would be monitored for decades to come 32 workers would receive commendation for heroism for their role during the recovery and cleanup operation he's lucky about the reactor was situated in a relatively isolated area and a building itself did well to contain a lot of contaminants however in 1995 the Environmental Protection Agency recommended a cat be built over the burial sites as these were still hot spots of radiation the cat was made out of local rocks and rubble and was completed in 2000 thank you very much for watching I hope you enjoyed the video do you have any suggestions for future videos let me know in the comments below help the channel grow by liking sharing and subscribing if you'd like to support the channel financially I also have a patreon and a link is in the description I'd always have to say is thank you for watching [Music] history can be horrible and the beginning part of the 20th century certainly had some horrific moments and would not have been the best time to be around you would think that one world war would be the unlucky situation to find yourself in especially for an 18 to 20 year old as you would be a terror that would define the rest of your life and surely if you survived that then Lady Luck would be on your side well think unfortunately again as one of the unluckiest generations had to fight in not one but two of them and the time in between was not too pleasant either with the centenary of the end of World War one just passing as I write the script I fought about my Irish great granddad who was born in 1899 and ended up serving in the British Army during the Great War he would survive only to die in his early thirties of a chest invasion but it got me thinking if he'd had lived to old age he would have lived through one of the most unluckiest periods in history in my opinion let's imagine you're one of my great-granddad generation born in 1899 so working-class family in say London England turn-of-the-century London was not the most pleasant of places to live especially if you were poor where one in five children died before her first birthday and a working-class person would earn about a pound a week also if he survived the first year you'd have a one in ten chance of not making it to adulthood the survivors didn't have it much better with some parts of London having 25 families sharing one toilet but your long journey of bad luck is only at its start fast-forward to 1914 and the outbreak of war in July the great powers mobilize and you are just leaving school at the age of 15 to young to join up yourself but you see many people in your slums sign up and gradually leave for war now I say you would be too young to sign up as during the ward illegal age to serve abroad was 19 however many soldiers saw active duty as young as 15 this was due to recruitment officers turning a blind eye to clearly under 8 recruits let's assume you come across an officer that plays by the rules and you're forced to wait until 1917 before you can enlist although in reality I 250,000 under a soldiers served in the British Army after seeing out for closing years of the First World War and scarred with the sights smells and sounds she would have encountered you might be looking forward to returning home a hero well possibly not as between 1918 and 1919 a pandemic would hit the world killing depending on estimates between 3 and 5 percent of the world's population it'd be known as the Spanish flu and unlike other influenza outbreaks that mostly took aim at the weekend only this time the victims would be young healthy adults he'll be the conditions of the soldiers quarters during the end of the First World War that the flu would thrive in and with millions of men demobilizing returning home but deadly virus was spread quicker than any pandemic before it the flu gained its name from the forced impression of Spain seeing the highest mortality from the disease he actually wasn't any better or worse than any other country but the press in neutral Spain were allowed to report freely on the outbreak whereas wartime census for countries like France Germany and UK avoided reporting on the illness as to not affect their respective populations mourão by December 1920 between fifty and a hundred million people will be dead across the world if you're lucky enough to survive so far and make it back home life post war was filled with apathy and disinterest in the experiences of ex-service personnel with mental health conditions like PTSD going untreated many men suffered in silence June a war many women filled the roles in many industries and this led to a worker surplus in the post war years the surplus was further compounded by economic decline as wartime industries closed down and national debt mounted up Britain however was one of the better places to be in with his programs to retrain Xserve as men in new skills many countries saw social and political upheaval for example the russian and irish civil wars and the toppling of the german and ottoman empire's junior 1920s you would see vast expansion and economic boom it would be around this time but a war veteran such as yourself might get married and have children and start putting money into the bank and move out to one of London's new suburbs USA thrived in the 1920s however you couldn't drink due to Prohibition and that would be a bit of a downer if you lived there this periods you could say will the golden years however towards the end of the decade storm cloud started to appear over the horizon on a twenty of September 1929 the London stock market crashed after Clarence was imprisoned for forgery and fraud this was set off a chain of events in which weakened American investments in European markets for several weeks The Wall Street stock exchange would become unstable with large amounts of stocks being so gradually intensifying during October on first aid at 24 October and a market lost 11 percent of its value marking the Wall Street Stock Exchange crash and the beginning of the Great Depression vast employment would hit the Western world and the UK was no exception by 1930 the jobless had more than doubled from an estimated 1 to 2.5 million causing political crisis higher taxes and reduced unemployment benefits were proposed by an ever-increasing unpopular Labour government under Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald to try and help the most needy the government started the unemployment benefits system however to qualify you needed to meet a strict means test the test would involve a government official inspecting all of your assets and finances to see if you had any hidden earnings and savings for many it will be humiliating experience and which sparked several protests in the streets of London Britain would lose the gold stand in 1931 which in turn would gradually help the country to recovery during the later part in the 1930s stimulating a building boom in the south however some countries did not recover as quickly and this led to a rise of National Socialism in Germany seen as secure for the years of political and social upheaval the Nazi Party would promise less unemployment and improved Germany's international standing the stone cloud for war would start to loom again as in the militaristic Germany built up his armies and readied for European dominance in 1939 you are age 40 and yet again the world powers would mobilize for war France Britain Australia New Zealand on the 3rd of September 1939 declare war on Germany after several provocative land grabs and the invasion of Poland borange a 44 yoona National Service Armed Forces Act of 1939 is enacted on the 3rd for all men aged 18 to 41 you could be cool for war once again and to add salt to the wound if he had a son he could also be cold if he was old enough even if you weren't called up life wouldn't be easy as you'd have to dodge the bombs falling nightly on London and all over the UK the National Service Act stated if you were married you'd be called up after any single man but eventually you would be called as by the end of 1939 around 1.5 million have been conscripted into the Armed Forces 1945 finally rose in and you've seen out another bloody World War if you served in the Armed Forces home time might be a while coming as in the UK demobilization was done on your age and how long you'd served even though you'd be in your mid 40s you and videod serving as later amendments to the conscription act in 1942 enrolled men as old as 51 in all it took around 18 months to demobilize some 4.3 million British service personnel well it's home time we finally arrived he would encounter a Briton still under rationing and a London impartial ruin if that wasn't enough many returning personnel received divorce papers who have 60,000 applications being processed in 1947 it would take years for Europe to recover from the Second World War and another dark cloud would hold itself over life known as the Cold War in retiring years of the 1950s and 1960s you would see the nuclear age and the legitimate fear of total atomic annihilation culminating in the Cuban Missile Crisis now do you think this is one of the most unluckiest generations or would you be more unlucky to have been alive in another period in history let me know in the comments below I hope you enjoy the video and I slowed it different from the normal plainly difficult episode if you liked it leave me a thumbs up if you want to stay up to date on plainly difficult videos don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell I've got patreon if you'd like to support the channel financially and almost have to say is thank you for watching nuclear weapons come in all shapes and sizes and have been designed for all sorts of applications from the Tsar Bomba to the Davy Crockett scientists during the Cold War experimented with pretty much any concept they could think of and project blue peacock is no exception jr. 1950s there was a real fear of another war breaking out a new European continent were divided Germany becoming the tinderbox for tensions armies on both the east and the west squared off against each other under NATO and the Warsaw Pact respectively after the frightening speed of the capture of soldiering the Korean War and the rate in which the frontlines changed during the early part of the war military planners attempted to find a way to stem a potential Soviet invasion in Europe Judah less apart in 1950s British scientists thought of a novel and completely impractical invention that could be used by the army of the Rhine in the event of a Soviet invasion the weapon devised was atomic landmines pretty much the ultimate in burning of bridges as a detonation of such a mine would make the surrounding area completely useless development began in 1954 at the Royal armament research and development establishment in Fort house did just outside Sevenoaks Kent and misses what looks like from the window of a Honda Civic dr arte took the already tried and tested free-falling blue danube as a basis for an atomic landmine weighing in at over seven tons and looking rather like a deadly grain silo the mine would yield ten kilotons of Soviet stopping might due to the size of the device testing would have to take place in a flooded gravel pit just outside Sevenoaks which is a really nice place to visit and has a visitor scenting worth checking out to the pond would have free means of detonation even an eight-day timer remote control or if it was tampered with due to the weapon being essentially left unattended in the event of war as the army of the rhine retreated anti-tamper devices were pretty much important the casing for the device was pressurized and would featured tilt and pressure switches detonation would occur after 10 seconds if the casing lost pressure if the mine was moved after arming or if the weapon was flooded once the mine went off it was expected to create a crater of 114 meters across if I'm a surface or 195 meters if buried ten point six meters below the ground not only would the explosion destroy an oncoming army and create a big hole in the ground that would hinder tanks and the like but the radiation left behind would deny the area for quite a while the engineers did however find a small hiccup with the design and this is how the blue peacock became famous due to a number of switches and delicate equipment on board the mine was susceptible to reliability issues in the cold and these issues would be further compounded if buried in the cold earth of a European winter a bizarre solution was offered and it was chicken's weapons designers loved using animals of the beaked persuasion for some reason this time however instead of being a guidance system for Birds would be used to heat the device just enough food will be supplied for the chickens inside the bombs casing to allow them to survive the eight days the device would be left on his own the body heat of the birds would be enough for the sensitive electronics to survive unfortunately the chickens wooden as well as the food ran out they would pass away and also if the bomb went off they would also die the British government ordered ten units in June 1957 for use in Germany how will be shipped under the cover story of being a portable atomic generator for British soldiers because well the British we're not going to tell the German government what they really were who needs enemies when you have analyzed like this the Ministry of Defence did see the potential political fallout as well as the actual fallout to be an issue for the UK and subsequently cancelled the order in February 1958 looking at the context of the period floating an idea like this wasn't all that crazy as June in 1950s nukes where even kisses it to be used to stop hurricanes and there are plans to Nutan a moon as well to show that nowhere was safe well I'm glad that didn't happen thanks for watching I hope you enjoyed a video if you did leave a like or even subscribe if you have any suggestions for future videos let me know in the comments below and also if you'd like to support the channel financially I've got a patreon and always said to say it's thank you for watching [Music] ever since the invention of flight many daring rates have taken place from the Doolittle Raid to Operation Black Buck today however we are looking at the daring and controversial Israeli 1981 raid on an Iraqi nuclear reactor our story starts on the 17th of August 1959 with Iraq's establishment of its nuclear program under an agreement with the USSR by 1968 the USSR would provide a 2 megawatt nuclear reactor called the IRT 5000 and Iraq would sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty ratifying it a year later the treaty legitimized the Iraqi nuclear program but were limited to only being able to develop nuclear energy removing any right to make an atomic weapons program throughout the 1970s Iraq would seek to build upon its fledging nuclear program and would again ask in 1975 helped from the USSR Iraq fur out the 1960s and 70s had been seeking a clandestine nuclear and chemical weapons program however this time Moscow would only provide a new reactor if the station would be regulated by the International Atomic Energy Agency Iraq unsurprisingly refused a deal this was because the fledgling atomic program would not be used for purely energy reasons and having a nuclear reactor checked out by the IAEA would quickly fort any nuclear weapon ambitions Iraq would search for a new technological provider and they'd find this in France and Italy after approaching Paris and failing to procure a gas called graphite plutonium producing reactor and reprocessing plant another deal was offered for an already established reactor type the French were willing to sell 72 kilograms of uranium and a non agency regulated reactor for 300 million dollars the reactor was an as iris class research unit after a deal was signed in November 1975 construction began on a new reactor in 1979 the reactor project was announced internationally by the Iraqis and the French but it was solely for the use of peaceful research the procurement agreement of the facility had a clause but excluded military use of these Irish reactor you actor was a 40 megawatt light-water nuclear plant though it could be scaled up to 70 megawatts and it was cited at the hour to refer nuclear center near Baghdad the French would name it as Iraq portamento of is iris and Iraq the Iraqis named new reactor Tammuz 1d reactor building would be a hundred meters long and 21 meters high the site also held with soviet-built reactor and a smaller French built reactor in July 1980 the first of six twelve point five kilograms shipments of uranium from France arrived and eventually the reactor could be capable producing material for a nuclear weapons program the Iraqi nuclear program did not go unnoticed with Israel under the exact grab in government and a newly established Islamic Republic of Iran watching as the atomic industrial work intensified as it seemed suspicious about a country of no shortage of oil would be seeking out an alternative to fossil fuel Israel will begin to actively plan to derailed a nuclear program leading up to the late 1970s in 1977 on the 21st of June Moroccan Bagan took over as Israeli prime minister taking a Rox anti-zionist frets as a serious issue the new government began to make preparations for pre-emptive attack on is Iraq before the Iraqi nuclear weapons program could get off the ground whilst plans for sabotage were being made foreign minister Moshe Dayan sought out a diplomatic resolution to stop the reactor with France Italy and with help from the US however diplomatic efforts yielded no discernible result France in an attempt to make the reactor more palatable inserted a clause in the agreement with Iraq but for at least 10 years fact the reactor will be overseen by a French technician however this would not subdued a fear of an Iraqi reactor in the region parts of the reactor awaiting transport in less than Lemire in 1979 was sabotage and in 1980 Yael measured an Egyptian nuclear scientist lady the Iraqi program was found dead under suspicious circumstances in his hotel room at La Meridian in Paris also a number of French and Italian contractor companies were bombed and others were threatened the incidents were thought to be linked to Mossad agents these clandestine operations only slowed the reactor down so more substantial plan was needed a planned raid would have to take place 990 miles away from etsion Israel's closest airbase and the potential flight path would violate both Saudi and Jordanian air spaces and once reaching a rocky territory the aircraft would had to fly below radar cover an altitude of just 100 feet to be able to sneak past Jordanian and Saudi defenses the flight would make radio contact only in Arabic and would use only Saudi or Jordanian formations and signals this meant that in-flight refuelling was out of the question the military planners would opt to use heavily fueled and armed aircraft however the operational limitations were not the only hurdle to a surgical strike on the is Iraq's site the decision to pull the trigger on a preemptive strike was a controversial one and because of this the subject was a hot topic of the begin government there was a legitimate fear but a strike could hinder a fragile Egyptian Israel peace talks create anxiety in Arab countries in the area damaged Israel's profile as a regional power breakdown French Israeli relations as well as hinder Israel in the future on the international stage foreign minister Dayan defense minister at servicemen and Deputy Prime Minister yeh Gordon opposed a strike even yoshiya sagaie a head of military intelligence advised the continuation of non-military efforts to stop the Iraqi nuclear program this was because of the time estimated for the program to create material or foreign atomic weapon was between five and ten years how they begin and others in his cabinet including future prime minister Ariel Sharon thought the political ramifications will be minimal and spurred on by the worst-case scenario of weapons material being available in two years pushed for the airstrike to take place also it's fought with the strike before the reactor became operational would reduce the potential environmental impact and being so close to Baghdad could in theory expose a large population to radiation whilst Israel decided whether to or not to launch an attack the Islamic Republic of Iran beat him to the punch and launched an air strike of their own on the 31st September 1980 the attack made sense as Iran and Iraq were in the opening days of a war that would last the best part of eight bloody years the attack did not fully destroy the reactor plant and only damage control rooms and cooling systems both of which were relatively easy to repair and quickly bring the reactor back on track to becoming operational with information from a u.s. satellite Mossad agents and a failed Iranian September attack an operational date of June 1981 was predicted by Israel and in October a vote in the Israeli cabinet was held to determine whether a strike would go ahead a vote of 6 to 10 in favour for the strike was cast an operation opera would get the green light even though Iran and Israel were publicly enemies behind the scenes clandestine cooperation was upheld from the pre-revolutionary Iranian government days allegedly the Israeli Air Force received reconnaissance photos from the Iranian Air Force in a follow-up flight over as Iraq in November 1980 the Israeli Air Force had found a black spot in the Iraqi radar cover on the border with Saudi Arabia miss [ __ ] in the armor was known to the Iraqi Armed Forces but had not thought to fix it as there's never an expectation for an attack from Saudi Arabia operation opera would use eight new US built f-16s each with to mark 84 mm pound or 925 kilogram delay fuse bombs to accompany the attack six f-15s also nourish and us-built were provided for fighter support Juno practice efforts leading up to the strike pirates have been trained on a4 Skyhawks but later changed to the newer aircraft as deliveries of f-16 a's were diverted from revolution and to us Aram to Israel highly skilled pilots were picked for the attack including Israel's first astronaut Eliane Ramon the operation would benefit from the iran-iraq war where the key hates free airfield was struck in April 1981 by the Iranians destroying many Iraqi airplanes greatly diminishing their retaliation or potential the operation started on the 7th of June 1981 the date was picked as being a Sunday there would be a lower likelihood of workers on site including any foreign contractors however on the day this was not the case just before 4:00 p.m. local time 1:00 p.m. GMT the heavily fueled and armed flight took off heading for Iraq unknowingly the squadron flew past King Hussein of Jordan whose holidaying on his yacht in the Gulf of Aqaba noticing that the planes were not jordanian hussein tried to raise the alarm but i'm 44 the iraqis the message didn't make it through upon reaching the iraqi border the Fleiss split up with two f-15s staying with the f-16s and the remaining f-15s split off in different directions to try and confuse the iraqi defenses the formation heading for the reactor dropped to a hundred feet to try and fly under radar cover by 6:35 p.m. local time 14:35 GMT the attack formation had reached 12 miles from the reactor at this point the aircraft shot up six thousand nine hundred feet to avoid the earthworks built around a reactor site and turned into a 35 degree dive hitting just under 700 miles per hour at 3,600 feet the f16 started releasing their bombs in pairs every five seconds out of a total of 16 bombs eight hit and doumitt of reactor building after just two minutes the attack was over and the aircraft turn and headed back to Israel evading anti-aircraft fire 10 rocky soldiers one French worker and a destroyed reactor lay in the wake of the strike with no Israeli casualties two days off the attack begins set up a press conference taking responsibility for the attack saying pretty dramatically we chose this moment now not later because later maybe too late perhaps forever as if we stood by idly two three years at the most four years and Saddam Hussein would have produced his free for five bombs then this country and this people would have been lost after the Holocaust another Holocaust would have happened in the history of the Jewish people never again never again tell your friends tell anyone you meet we shall defend our people with all means at our disposal we shall not allow any enemy to develop weapons of mass destruction turned against it detecting go unnoticed internationally and Israel was to see a different kind of Fallout that would have been expected if as Iraq was operational new United Nations condemned the attack stating it was a clear violation of the charter of the United Nations and the norms of international conduct even the traditional friends of Israel was shocked at the unprovoked attack on a sovereign state the US newspapers called it state-sponsored terrorism and inexcusable the International atomic agency condemned the attack on the 12th of June stating the agreement between France and Iraq excluded military use and inspections of the reactors at the site had no compliance or safety breaches on a 1915 the UN announced resolution 487 calling for a cease of hostile activities gave Iraq the right to claim for conversation and urged Israel to place its own nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards the resolution passed with a vote of 15 to 0 unsurprisingly some of the Arab states were particularly damning of not only Israel but also the US for supplying the weapons carried out in the attack in response the u.s. froze the delivery of a number of aircraft destined for Israel but blocks any further punishment several months later however the order was unfrozen and the aircraft were eventually delivered Iraq unsurprisingly wasn't happy about the attack claiming it was a diversion from Israel's own nuclear program and demanded compensation for damage and loss of life the Iraqi government would still be demanding payment for the next 30 years internally sanim Hussein ordered the execution of Colonel fogey his Sanjib a head of the western air defense for failing to stop the attack a number of other officers would also be executed and several pilots would be imprisoned the reactor was planned to be rebuilt again by the French but issues with payment put the project on hold indefinitely so damn over the following decade built up a rocks army and sought out other weapon types with its chemical and biological programs with France out of the picture the Iraqi nuclear program stalled and by 1991 and the end of the Gulf War only a few grams of weapons-grade uranium had been produced the one French national killed in the attack 25-year old engineer Damien chess if he'd had restitution paid to his family from the Israeli government the attack also shaped the 1981 Israeli legislative election bolstering waning support for the begin government bizarrely not fully attack itself but for a disgust of the leader of the opposition's criticism of the attack the strike would be used to form the begin doctrine adopted by future Israeli governments for preventive strikes against potential enemies the doctrine would be used in 2007 on attack on a Syrian nuclear site or why this time international outcry was minimal the attack on the is Iraq and reactor site in June 1981 will be remembered as a daring and interesting slice of history albeit at the time a controversial one although international outcry was pretty deafening at the time the opinion on the raid would soften especially after the first Gulf War where Iraq had no ability to deploy nuclear weapons although it is unsure whether operation opera disallowed Iraqi nuclear weapons as a program for enough weapons-grade materials would never have fulfilled a quota for any atomic fret I hope you enjoyed the video if you did leave me a thumbs up do you have any suggestions for future videos if you do let me know in the comments I've got a patreon if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching [Music] battles are usually big messy Affairs often leading to stalemates needless to say this can lead to long drawn-out conflicts draining any nation involved of materials and personnel however in 1351 a pretty novel idea of settling a dispute was enacted and will be seen at the time as the ultimate act of noble shivery he'll be known as the combat after 30 the arranged battle was part of the Breton war for succession with a name like the combat of the thirty unsurprisingly it would involve 30 combatants however it would mean 30 champions knights and Squires on each side so really it's the combat 260 with the backing from the kingdom of France and the kingdom of England respectively the result from the combat could have potentially had wider political implications in the region between 1351 and 1364 the succession of the Duchy of Brittany was fought out between two rival factions the French King Philip the sixth back to the house of Blois and the English King Edward deferred back to house of Montford 15 years since the beginning of the Hundred Years War the contest with Brittany had become a bit of a stalemate with the Blois faction under Jean de bâle memoir and a Montfort side under John de Montford both sides would carry out raids into each of his territory controlled by numerous castles but no land changed hands for long in early 1351 Robert bran Borough of the English backed house a Montford in charge of the stronghold at Plum L was challenged to a single combat by below a stronghold of Jocelyn commander Jean de Beaumanoir in response Bramber offered not a single fight but instead to raise 30 of their best men on each side to fight it out to see who was the victor enthusiastically Beaumanoir accepted the reply and the two factions prepared for combat now the reasons for the challenge are a bit unknown have a slightly biased Beloit ballad depicts brembo as the ruthless Despoiler of the local population and the scared locals go to Baumann what for help Behrman wah is depicted as a hero coming to the aid of the defenseless people however it is possibly unlikely as both sides pretty much raided where they likes another theory but it was purely a matter of honour of shivery or maybe they were just bored and wanted a fight the combat was set up in a similar way to a tolerant with refreshments and gathering of spectators the battleground was agreed by both parties around the halfway point between plum ale and Joslin DeFranco Brenton's side of 30 consisted of 10 nights including de Beauvoir and 20 Squires all native Britons the Anglo Britons side had seven Knights including Sir Robert bream breh and 23 Squires and minute arms the force was mixed consisting of only 20 Englishmen and the remaining men being six German mercenaries and for Britain partisans the French had the benefit of their fighters having a proven combat pedigree we're seeing glyph side was a little bit more ragtag the two parties faced off against each other on a 26th march 1351 armed with daggers swords spears and axes on foot the combat was fierce and according to contemporary reports fought with gallantry on both sides after several hours a break for refreshments was called at which point for French and to English lay dead on the battlefield but time allowed both sides to bandage wounds and prepare for another bout of combat after the combat resumed the english Breton side took a severe blow with Bream bruh being slain linguist I'd formed a tight defensive formation repelling several French attacks per day would be decided by Squire Gilliam de montalbán mounting a horse and breaking the English line forcing a surrender this action was against the rules but by this point the damage was done by the end of the combat everyone was evil wounded or dead with nine slain on the English side and six French laying dead on the field in the spirit of chivalry the English combatants were captured treated well and released after a small ransom was paid in the grand scheme of things to combat or defer to change pretty much nothing and would have most likely gone down in history as a footnote albeit an interesting one and be forgotten about however the story captured the imagination of contemporary society as an act of the highest form of honor and chivalry chronicler jean FRA song wrote that the Warriors held themselves as vanity on both sides as if they'd all been Rowland's in Oliver's the event was honored in poems and chronicles and even had a comparative stone place at the combat site and king charles v of france commissioned a tapestry salmon authority became local celebrities being honored by the french king as the years went by the narrative changed for the combat portraying the English as the aggressors and being there to terrorize the poor people an English side the combat wasn't seen as much of an honorable win by the French mainly due to mountebank mounting a horse against the rules but loss was seen as evidence of a treacherous and cheating opponent as with many historical events which spin possibly appeared as a form of propaganda but combat a30 albeit meaningless in the grand scheme of the war that it represented shows an interesting way to settle differences the Breton war succession would ultimately be won by the English backed house and Montford after the Battle of array in 1364 in a certain that many wars could have been a hell of a lot less bloody if nations decided to sort things out via a tournament rather than you know the whole destructive massive war thing thank you for watching I hope you enjoyed the video do you have any interesting subjects you'd like me to cover let me know in the comments below like if you liked the video and if you'd like to support the channel financially I have a patreon and all the links is in the description below all it's left to say is thank you for watching [Music] when I think of nuclear reactor incidents Janica war normally rushar the US and the UK jump to mind however one of the first-ever nuclear active incidents to happen in the world was in Canada luckily though in this story no one was killed in a horrific way by a rogue part of the reactor the unlikely venue a for potential catastrophic incident might be surprising however the research reactor in Canada was for a time the world's most powerful research facility even what bizarrely the aftermath of the partial meltdown will be cleaned up by a team of individuals including a future President of the United States of America like most early nuclear endeavors of the Cold War our story begins during the Second World War Canada found itself the ideal place for atomic research being mostly out of the reach of the Axis forces a collaborative arrangement between Canada and the UK in 1942 arose under a Montreal Laboratory of Canada's national research council the NRC use scientists from Kenner Britain and a number of European countries displaced from the Nazi occupation of mainland Europe the main goal was to develop a heavy water reactor research facility later on into the project the USA also got involved a town called chalk river 110 miles northwest of Ottawa was selected for the site for the nuclear research facility the area was ideal for a nuclear reactor being next to the Ottawa River which would become a healthy source of cooling water in 1945 the world's first non usa-based nuclear reactor known as the Z DEP or zero energy experimental pile went online marking chalk river as well underworld centers for atomic development the new reactor would be used as a leading experimental tool for developing heavy water based systems and we paved the way for the reactor that but title of this video is about the nrx the national research experimental reactor abbreviated to nrx was the direct successor to the Z DEP and was heavy water moderated analyte water cooled capable of creating 10 megawatts of when it first went operational 1947 firstly the heavy water slows down the resulting neutrons from fission creating a greater likelihood of more fission reactions the second form of governing the reactor came from the control rods which are used to absorb neutrons without themselves fissioning the removal of water or the inserting of the rods can stop fishing reducing the power output or shutting down the reactor completely new reactor consisted of an aluminium Calandra basically a big cylindrical tank of water eight meters wide by three meters high inside the Calandra housed the core consisting of 175 6 centimeter diameter vertical tubes arranged in a hexagonal lattice located inside most of the tubes were the fuel elements surrounded by air surrounding the tubes and inside a cleanser was up to fourteen thousand litres of heavy water topped off with helium gas to prevent corrosion of the reactor cores component the whole reactor was surrounded by thick concrete walls and topped off by a rotating deck and below the Calandra was a sump designed to catch any heavy water leak free heavy water storage tanks were located below the reactor and were 4.7 millimeters thick made of stainless steel and were mainly empty even ODNR x represented the apex of reactor design a replacement was even in the works as early as 1947 a few aside ENR X was formed into three point 1 meter long 31 millimeter diameter rods consisting of an outer sheath a cooling water annulus and an inner sheaf weighing a hefty 55 kilograms per element the outer sheath was surrounded by the air inside the tube located at the reactor core and had a flow of around 8 kilograms a second the cooling water inside II analysts came from the Ottawa River at a flow rate of up to 250 liters of water per second if your robes extended both above and below the Calandra as can be seen in this 1961 report into the design of the nrx to control the reactor 12 of the vertical tubes were employed as control rods made of boron carbide powder inside steel container tubes the rods were held in place by powerful electromagnets above the reactor this design feature was ingenious as in the event of a power failure and addy energization of the magnets would cause the rods to fall with the help of gravity into reactor core shutting down any further chain reactions to remove the control rods a set schedule had to be used in order to maintain control of the reactor and to reduce the risk of any unforeseen flux if the prescribed sequence was not adhere to a safety circuit would trip releasing the control rods shutting down the reactor the design of the control system was intended to shut down the reactor within seconds however to achieve this time expectation the rods were attached to a pneumatic system the air pressure could be used to slowly raise the controls from the reactor as well seven of the twelve rods would absorb enough neutrons to shut down the reactor completely however for we use as a safety bank for any plans shutdowns remaining eight rods went up and down using the preset sequence the two banks of rods were activated by push buttons on the main panel in the control room another push button to seal the rods to pneumatic system was located on the same panel however a few paces away on a separate control panel contained a button to blow down the rods into the reactor in the event of an emergency red lights in the control room were used to indicate to the operators whether the control words were inside the reactor or not however this system would prove to have a potentially deadly fault but we'll come back to this in a bit on the 12th of December 1952 one of the world's first nuclear incidents would begin to unfold VN rx was operating at low power whilst the calandria tubes were being investigated for a cooling issue for the tests some of the chews were disconnected from the original water cooling system and instead were connected to a temporary arrangement with hoses one of the tubes however were only being cooled by air during tests a supervisor noticed something very worrying happening to the reactors control rods you see below Lockland row were several valves in charge of controlling the rods pneumatic system by accident and operator in the basement turned four valves causing the air pressure from above holding the rods inside the reactor to be released and the air pressure from below caused four rods to rise out of the core the unwanted movement set off red lights in the main control room alarmed by this indication the reactor supervisor phoned down to the operator in the basement to immediately stop what he was doing once off the phone the supervisor hurriedly made his way down to the basement and closed the valves himself after checking the air pressure the supervisor assumed the control rods had made their way back into the core rightly so as the red lights in the control room had now been extinguished however for an unknown reason this indication was not correct but supervisor from the basement called his assistant in the control room to request him to operate the push buttons - sealed with drawn rods - pneumatic system during the phone call a miscommunication led the assistant to push for draw safety Bank button in so doing so he placed the phone on the desk immediately realizing the mistake instruction the supervisor shouted down the phone to desist n't to stop what he was doing however due to the phone being on a desk no such instruction was heard at 1507 the reactors started to double in power every two seconds originally starting at point one megawatts and operator noting the rate of power increase trip to reactor after 20 seconds we should have forced the safety bank of rods into the core however this didn't happen and 90 seconds had passed three rods had not moved and the fourth had moved slowly into position at this time the reactor passed seventeen megawatt the water inner tubes attached to the temporary cooling system began to boil a vent causing some him to rupture setting off power even higher around 14 seconds later the valves at the Calandra is heavy water was set off dumping the heavy water onto the reactor building floor the peak power reached an astonishing 80 megawatts before all the water moderator left a Calandra without the heavy water no more reactions could take place and the power output fell to zero after 25 seconds in all the reactor had been above 1 megawatts for just over one minute disaster averted actually no as a fear of the fuel elements had melted creating holes in the Calandra causing helium gas to escape the melting fuel also released hydrogen and other gases as it reacted with the coolant water minutes later at 1511 the highly dangerous cocktail exploded during the event fission products in gas form were vented to atmosphere and many litres of heavy water and contaminated coolant had leaked onto the reactor building floor the incident was finally over for several days after the cooling system was kept running to remove any heat left over however this caused over 4,000 meters cubed of qatal native water to be dumped into the building's basement reaching a depth of one meter needless to say this would be a cleanup nightmare during a cleanup efforts the reactor core and Calandra were removed and buried due to being damaged beyond repair however around 150 tubes had remained stable June the partial meltdown showing back the design had proved to be fairly stable the worker Saudi nrx reactor building took months to be fully decontaminated the efforts drafted in 150 u.s. Navy personnel one of whom you might know as he was called Jimmy Carter the future 39th President of the USA a further 170 military Canadian personnel and 20 civilian personnel were used to clean up the site in addition to the 867 strong staff already working at York River amazingly the nrx would see many more years of use albeit with a new court and calandria finally being shut down on the 30th March 1993 after 45 years of use the legacy of the incident would be twofold one good one not so good let's start with the bat was so much contaminated water created by the partial meltdown a pipe was run to a sandy area some distance from the site complex around 10,000 Curie's of material was pumped into this area to seep away this decision meant that the Ottawa River was saved from any major contamination water was monitored downriver for any sign of radioactive contamination but luckily nothing above natural levels were found staff involved in the accident cleanup were monitored for any health conditions and again Frank nothing was reported above natural expected levels so compared to some other incidents I've covered vn RX is mild in terms of human and environmental casualties even Ola legacy was not very bloody the nrx partial meltdown is important for atomic history as many lessons would be learned from the event even a root cause for the events on the 12th of December 1952 was operator error ultimately the human machine interface was the aggravating factor for the accident as in a report by WB Lewis who suggested a revised operational procedure should be adapted to take into account operator error future reactors will be designed with assurances the complete reactor shut down by independence and variation of safety system so I suppose you could say that would be one of the good legacies of the incident as well you know the nrx continued to operate after substantial repairs and its successor known as the nru will carry on the evolution of reactor design and practices after his operational date of deferred in November 1957 however it too would suffer an incident in 1958 well I suppose mistakes are made on the weight of affection thank very much for watching I hope you enjoyed the video if you did leave me a like and if you'd like to you can always subscribe if you have any suggestions for future videos let me know in the comments below and I have a patreon if you fancy supporting me financially and always have to say is thank you very much for watching [Music] as you may or may not know I'm a Londoner more to the point a South London er and as a young plainly I always wondered why people would call this plot of empty land Croydon Airport even though there was and still is a lack of planes well this is partly due to today's subject the tragic 1924 to Havilland air crash and this event would not only influence the direction of London's air transport but also be an important milestone in the history of investigations into commercial air disasters in the early 1920s Croydon Airport just on the southern outskirts of Greater London was the fact zone main airport for the UK's capital Arijit constructed has two separate airports the Beddington aerodrome and a wooden arrow drone during the First World War many of these small air strips popped up to defend against the threat of Zeppelin attacks on the capital in 1924 two runways were merged to form the Croydon aerodrome and was tasked with handling all international flights to and from London during this time plough Lane a main road that divided the airport remained open to traffic and would be intermittently close for riving and departing flights I should probably say that even though this was London's International Airport only a few scheduled flights would take place each day no way near the scale of Gatwick or London Heathrow today early destinations were Rotterdam Paris and Amsterdam however Berlin Tempelhof was added in 1923 for the Paris peace talk cam 1924 and the Croydon aerodrome was the first Airport in the world to have a new safety feature an air traffic control tower the growth of the burgeoning new airport created the UK's first national airline called Imperial Airways founded in March 1924 who had flee to around 22 aircraft the backbone of the Imperial Airways fleet was the de Havilland dh44 a single engine biplane capable of carrying 10 passengers and two crew consisting of a plywood fuselage wooden wings and a 12 cylinder engine outputting 450 horsepower needless to say such an aircraft would not be considered as safe by today's standards on a 24th December 1924 the noon Express de Havilland eh 34 G bbx was getting ready for a scheduled flight between Croydon and France with eight souls on board the two-year-old airplane had been in service with another operator since March 1922 and in April 1924 the aircraft had received a new non-standard set of wings after a collision in May of the same year four plane received another new set of wings all be at this time of standard configuration receiving a new certificate of airworthiness on the 24th of November just one month before his ill-fated last flight moments after takeoff the aircraft was seen flying low over to town of Pearlie circling and zigzagging before entering a nosedive and crashing into the ground with a large explosion within 10 minutes according to the Yorkshire Evening Post leaving nothing but distorted metal parts of the aircraft hardly surprising due to the flammable material of the aircraft's wings and fuselage no once throughout the crash with one eyewitness to the wreckage site saying I ran to the spot but by the time I got there the whole machine was burnt away I could see in the wreckage charred remains of bodies all of the passengers must have died instantaneously the clothes were gone and their bodies were black Nullah bodies could be recovered from the wreckage until the fire brigade managed to get the inferno under control all passengers and crew were lost in the crash the accident was Imperial Airways first fatal accident not a good start for a newly formed company an insurance claim was approved for the loss of the aircraft from the British aviation Insurance Group now aviation of his period was hardly the safest endeavour and a fatal crash albeit tragic wasn't the first accident linked to Croydon or even linked to this particular type of aircraft we have no immediate obvious cause for the crash an inquiry was launched on a 29th of December in Croydon town the initial parts the investigation heard the basic facts for example the pathologist reports evidence of identification and witness reports the inquest was adjourned until 9:00 for January 1925 upon returning the investigation heard evidence but the plane had in the days leading up the accident suffered with engine troubles due to low oil pressure engine issues would be backed up by witness reports of the airplanes and long and slow takeoff from airstrip taking seven hundred yards to finally get off the ground and even been slowly increasing altitude before eventually crashing witnesses near the crash site in Pearlie one and a half miles away from Croydon stated that the aircraft's engine was making a rattling noise however both these reports were contradicted by Imperial Airways own witnesses who claimed engine noise was normal at every departure of the day took off long and slow due to the rain soaked grass runway the plane had been running uphill as well which would have also slowed down the gain in altitude the inquest was adjourned again to be reopened on the 14th of January at a reopening of the inquest a public inquiry was announced it will be the first of such an inquiry for an air crash in British history in lead-up to the public inquiry the inquest in Croydon heard more evidence of the loading weight of the plane and the condition of the runway during this time an accusation was thrown at Imperial Airways regarding interference with witnessed however this was quickly shot down by the coroner interestingly the plane was near full capacity at seven hundred and ten kilograms of an allowed 713 the inquiry was adjourned again until the 21st of January only to be adjourned again in light of new evidence an Imperial Airways general manager major wood Humphries being taken ill this would hold up the inquiry until February to 12th in the meantime a public inquiry at the strands Royal Courts of Justice in London had started its hearing on a 23rd of January headed by sir arthur conan and jimsy wynn born assessing originally I had written a detailed day-to-day run down at the public inquest however it did make the video a bit long and boring and on many of the days the same points were brought up and argued so I'll do a brief rundown of each day the first day focused on evidence based a round pilot David Stewart his career started in 1917 during the First World War earning in his military career the Military Cross Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Force Cross unarguably it would seem that the pilot in charge of the plane was very well experienced for any type of situation that would have come across him it was also discovered that a petrol pie and the wreckage had a limited flow of fuel however it was unknown whether the damage was pre or post crash on a second day of the enquiry on a 25th of January saw major Cooper who was in charge of investigating the crash for the investigation branch gave evidence based on over a hundred witness testimonies seeming to suggest that the pilot hadn't counted engine troubles and was attempting to return to Croydon Airport a plane had been away from Croydon for six days before the crash our reports have been put in claiming that the engine had been running rough upon returning to Croydon the engine oil was drained and refilled and the engine was ran on the ground for 20 minutes Cooper suggested Valley engines should have been tested more rigorously and he also condemned the fact that the fuel pipe used on the plane was not fit for military use the inquiry was adjourned for a few more days whilst charts of the aircraft's previous flights were analyzed by experts on the third day of the inquest the analyzed chart showed that the engine had no issues on the two flights leading up to the crash however on a previous flight to Amsterdam a pilot did report that the engine had fluctuating oil levels nothing was done at the time of report due to the plane being due to return back to Croydon within an hour throughout the return flight Leal pressure fluctuated and the plane was turned back to Amsterdam however this was due to poor weather condition whilst Amsterdam a mechanic had a look at the plane the mechanic was called to give evidence and stated that he replaced all 24 spark plugs and tests around the engine for half an hour on a return journey back to Croydon the engine oil held pressure but still fluctuate the coinbase mechanic also gave evidence similar to the Croydon inquiry that he had changed the oil and her ground tested the engine yielding satisfactory results the following day resumed the inquest and inspector of engines at MPO Airways stated that the engine was in the service ready condition during the day Imperial Airways maintenance schedule was brought into question by a mr. Bay ffice a representative for one under crash victims however a representative from the companies insurance who had paid out on the claim for a plane crash said that they had no issues with the way that the plane was maintained on the fifth day for director of Imperial Airways Frank surly gave evidence to the inquiry claiming that any pilot working for the company could refuse to fly any aircraft if they felt it was unsafe furthermore the day saw more evidence on the aircraft's fuel pipes and that armored and unarmored variants were in use and that both were proved by the Air Ministry a representative of D Napier and son an engineering company backed up the claim of Imperial Airways that their mechanical maintenance schedule was of the highest quality for the sixth day the representative of the crash victims brought into question again the maintenance schedule of the plane not only Imperial came under attack but this time the airport itself was under scrutiny for suitability for use with airliners the aquire was adjourned until the 2nd of February once the enquiry resumed Croydon Airport announced that the site would be extended and the road dividing the runway will be diverted to allow for extra space the announcement included that an act of Parliament would be drafted for financing and would be secured as it was fought that Croydon was the ideal place for a London Airport the inquiry was adjourned for one final time on the final day mr. BAE faces accusations were rejected and it was found that the Air Ministry had worked within its remit with Imperial Airways Sir Arthur Koehler announced that he would visit with his assistants to Croydon Airport before the public report would be published the 10th February saw the publishing of the report into the accident it was found that the aircraft was air worthy and that conditions of the runway on the day were a contributory factor both the Air Ministry in peel Airways and pilot David Stewart were cleared of all blame because the accident was an unknown mechanical failure leading to a stall on an attempted emergency landing but damage to the petrol pipe that was under scrutiny was agreed to have been caused post crash junuh rescue efforts for local inquest which had been adjourned during the public enquiry who zoomed on the 12th of February the coroner found that the public inquiry had shown that no one was at fault and a verdict of misadventure was agreed by the jury essentially the result was a bit of an anti-climax as no one was to blame however the accident would set a precedent for in-depth investigations into further civil Asian accidents in the UK Coyne Airport continue to grow over the following decades seeing you in a second world war and some civil use post-war the growth for the airport would be part of his undoing as it encroached on local housing leaving little room for expansion for newer larger aircraft of the post-war era the airport in his career saw eight crashes many of which were fatal this coupled with the lack of space made other air strips such as Heathrow and more commercially attractive option for last plane to depart from Croydon took off in 1959 leaving a large undeveloped space behind today the airport is an industrial estate and some playing fields however one of the original buildings remain known as Airport house the world's oldest control tower still remains at the site and many local roads are named after aviators and aircraft did you enjoy the video I hope you did if you did leave a like and if you'd like to see more videos on air crashes let me know in the comments if you like the channel and you haven't done so already please consider subscribing for all the latest videos if you fancy it you can also support the channel financially through patreon and always left to say is thank you for watching [Music] [Music] planes have been the target of hijackings and terrorist organizations ever since the first recorded incident in 1931 this is probably due to the amount of media coverage but any attempt would get thus boosting any terrorist organizations public profile believe it or not there was actually a so-called Golden Age of hijacking where security and Airlines left a lot to be desired and because of this between 1969 and 1980 many planes around the world would be targeted from a notorious case of DB cuca to the youngest ever hijacker 14-year old David Booth today's video is about a hijacking right in the middle of this deadly decade the attack on Sabena flight 571 buried a daring rescue mission which would cement this event in history sir Ben are short for Belgian Corporation for air navigation services was in 1972 Belgium's national airline flight 5 7 1 kept him by Reginald levy DFC prepared his Boeing 707 to the part from a scheduled stop in Vienna on a brussels to lodge service on the 8th of may in 1972 it would be the captains 50th birthday because of this his wife Dora was also aboard as the two had planned to celebrate in Tel Aviv Oh had been well during the first leg of the journey however once the plane reached 33,000 feet just 20 minutes after departing Vienna this run-of-the-mill journey would take a dangerous turn two men and two women who had been pretending to be couples ally to her Abu Sinha abed al Aziz a trash Reema tano's and Teresa Hauser left out of our seats brandishing two handguns two grenades and two belts of explosives quickly taking over control of the aircraft with the two men forcing their way into the cockpit the hijackers were members of the Black September organization a breakaway group of the PLO an organization with the purpose of the Liberation of Palestine through armed struggle mainly aimed against Israeli and Jewish civilians the group would be later on behind the tragic Munich Olympic hostage massacre captain Levy kept calm at gunpoint announcing to the passengers over the PA as you can see we have friends on board levy was ordered to stay on course to LOD he would comply albeit at the slowest possible speed in order to give any chance of a rescue effort time to materialize after the control had been taken of the aircraft the hijackers went on to separate the passengers forcing every Jewish hostage to the back of the plane both Levy and his first officer managed to transmit coded messages explaining the situation as well as communicating to the ground captain Levy managed to get a message to the cabin crew asking to keep the identity of his wife secret the coded messages would find their way to Moshe Dayan setting off plans for rescue once the plane landed at LOD night time had reached LOD Airport as five seven one landed quickly the aircraft was Shepard to a quiet part of the airport the hijackers made their demands known to release 315 Palestinian terrorist prisoners held in Israel otherwise failed blow up the plane whilst the plane sat on the tarmac Israeli agents managed to let out the air out to the aircraft's tires and disabled the hydraulic system and mobilizing 571 Levy managed to calm down the agitated hijackers by claiming that the plane had experienced technical issues disallowing them from taking off again throughout a night Larry spoke with the hijackers saying later I talked about everything under the Sun from navigation to sex his efforts helped build up the trust buying everyone on board time for a rescue effort on the morning of the 9th levy was sent to the terminal building to show that the attack is meant business he was sent from a sample of explosives to terrorists plan to use if their demands were not met this might not have been a wise idea as levy not only showed in a sample but also described and folder situation aboard the aircraft vitally explaining that the doors were not blocked under Moshe Dayan levy was instructed to return to the plane and tell the hijackers that Israel would agree to the terms and would begin to release the prisoners this might sound like it was pretty easy for the black September to get rid demands met but don't forget this is Israel and they probably aren't going to give him that easy upon returning to the plane the news was met by the hijackers rejoicing fair exciting gnam went over the radio a voice spoke in Arabic claiming to be a release prisoner what she told the hijackers that the plane would be repaired and the release prisoners was surely arrival to be transferred off to Cairo however all of this was a ruse and all a way of buying time to position Israeli Special Forces for rescue attack later on in the day bogus prisoners started to appear within sight of flight 5 or 7 one boarding an aircraft in hijackers mines everything was appearing to go to plan so much so that they allowed the planes doors to be opened to help with the midday Sun beating down on the aircraft even more encouraging 21 hours after the initial hijacking two trucks carrying 18 men in white overalls pulled up to sabina 5 7 1 and appeared to begin repairing the flat tires however everything was not as it seemed after milling around appearing to repaired a plane that 18 overall men burst into the aircraft for emergency doors over the wings opening far as a whim within 90 seconds for 2 male hijackers lay dead the overall men were part of the elite commando unit serie t' mad-cow led by a hood black and included benjamin netanyahu both future prime ministers several inside the plane would be injured including one woman who would later died of her wounds Netanyahu was also injured in his bicep the two surviving hijackers were arrested with Theresa Houser injured and Rima tennis left relatively unscathed both the hijackers were later convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment only to be exchanged in 1983 after a Lebanon war for Israeli prisoners captain Levy insisted on flying the 707 back to Belgium and would continue to fly into his retirement in 1981 living in Dover with his wife who also survived 5 7 1 his wife Dora passed away in 2005 and Reginald died in 2010 at the age of 88 his bravery during the hijacking was not out of character as he was a veteran of World War 2 and a Berlin Airlift the 707 would carry on to serve Sabina for another five years ironically being sold off to the Israeli military for use as a spy plane thank you much for watching I hope you enjoyed the video if you did please leave a like and a comment below if you haven't done so already I'd always appreciate it if you subscribed and don't forget to click the bell icon to keep up to date I also have a patreon if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all this stuff to say its thank you for watching [Music] this seemingly harmless Bowl fully uninitiated looks like any old piece of metal a cannonball or a small wrecking ball maybe but if you had the misfortune to handle this incorrectly you would most certainly have a painful and horrible death sadly two people had such an experience and more would die prematurely of cancer over subsequent decades and arguably the two instants showed how you can't take for granted material with a potential of going supercritical at the drop of a hat unsurprisingly the item in question would gain a named a demon core but what was this innocuous-looking item this subject has been covered before by someone I know but I found this story really interesting and I had to do a video about it I've included the link in the video description if you'd like to check it out once you finish watching this video like many of my atomic videos our story starts during the Second World War and the Manhattan Project a demon core or Rufus as it was originally nicknamed was intended to be used in a third atomic bomb to be dropped on Japan her weapon fat was never needed on the 15th of August Japan surrendered after two atomic bombs being detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki the core was similar to the one used in the fat man bomb dropped on Nagasaki consisting of free pieces to plutonium gallium hemispheres separated by a ring the plutonium core was refined and hot pressed into its ominous severe achill shape at Hanford and shipped to Los Alamos laboratory for preparation for use in an implosion type bomb once assembled it was designed to be 5% below critical mass leaving the course somewhat safe however 5% was to ensure that when needed it could be used to make a very large explosion easily but one deadly side effect was that this left very little margin for error you see once stur core went critical it would be in a perfect state of equilibrium no increase or decrease in power however one in many different factors could send the core into super criticality creating and sustaining a chain reaction until it either settled at a new quick level and increased power or explode needless to say both outcomes would be a bit of a bad thing for scientists and a Manhattan Project found themselves with this surplus piece of weapons-grade material and I did what most scientists would do study and push the boundaries however so many experiments were outright reckless and misleads us to the cause first victim hairy deadly in a 24 year old physicist from New London Connecticut was working on the core on a 21st of August 1945 dead lien had been on the staff of the Manhattan Project since 1944 joining while still a graduate student on a fateful day dag lien was making a neutron reflector around the core of tungsten carbide a new chin reflector funnily enough is designed to reflect neutrons back into a subcritical mass making the material critical it can also increase nuclear fission a critical mass is capable of the neutral reflector experiment was being performed alone apart from private to Robert J Henley who was sat behind desk four meters away on guard duty whilst undertaking the experiment degli and noticed that the addition of a phial tungsten brick would render the core supercritical he withdrew to brick with his hand in doing so accidentally dropping it onto the pile this was all that was needed for the core to go prompt critical immediately he tried to remove the brick by knocking it off and was unsuccessful instead he quickly disassembled a pile but by this time he had absorbed 510 REM of neutron radiation his fate was sealed he received intensive care but would fall into a coma and pass away 25 days after the incident the first known death linked to a criticality accident his hands shown here had the skin burned off from the event Douglas body was transported back to New London to be buried in Cedar Grove a tragic accident that led to Douglas death sparked review of safety regulations within the project one of the major changes was that any similar experiment would require two personnel and two instruments capable monitoring and alerting Neutron counts these new rules put in place were thought to reduce the risk of a criticality accident however this would not be the case when it came to the soon-to-be nicknamed demon core just nine months would go by until a core experienced its second criticality accident do an experiment nicknamed tickling the Dragons tail so named due to the apparent disregard to stander safety practices Louis Slaton was a 35 year old Canadian physicist and chemist having worked on a Manhattan project since 1942 he worked on experiments with uranium and plutonium cause to assess their critical mass amount needless to say he was experienced but possibly he had become complacent plotting in the heads become quite the showman when doing experiments and this had not changed leading up to his planned exit from the Manhattan Project Slauson had become increasingly unhappy in his involvement in the project however he could not leave into a replacement have been trained up here being quoted saying I am one of the few people left here who are experienced bomb putted together nurse after leaving the project slot Ian had planned to return to teaching this brings us to the 21st of May 1946 and at around 3 p.m. Slaton was preparing to demonstrate an experiment to his replacement 36 year old Alvin Seagraves the experiment would involve two spheres of beryllium the two parts put together around the core would create a neutral reflector an experiment was used to create one of the first steps in efficient reaction one half of their beryllium sphere had a small hole in the top of it to allow an operator to hold on to it to enable manual lowering and shim were used to prevent the two halves from touching which would cause a criticality accident machines made a rudimentary albeit effective method of protection however Slaton had developed a unique modification to the experiment he instead of using shims would use a single flat blade screwdriver to separate the two half spheres meaning that during an experiment both hands of the operator would be used one holding the top half by the hole with their thumb and the other spacing the sphere with the tip of the screwdriver Slauson had done the experiment in this fashion several times two observers even reportedly prompting Enrico Fermi to tell slot in that he'd be dead within a year if he carried on using this dangerous method so well-known was the danger of using a screwdriver for the experiment got the nickname at tickling metalia dragon I think we can see where this is going June experiment around 3:20 p.m. be inevitable happened as the flat head screwdriver slipped in slot in his right hand causing the top half sphere to close over the core the core went supercritical causing the air around it to ionize making an eerie blue glow the intense bursts of neutron radiation was released into the room a slot in experience a sour taste in his mouth slot in his left hand started to burn immediately causing him to throw his arm in the air in doing so knocking off the top sphere onto the floor ending the criticality incident in total only last in a couple of seconds Slaton had prevented any further reaction and his position over the core had inadvertently shielded the other occupants in the room including Alvin who had received a high but not deadly dose of radiation however this ensured that Slaton was not so lucky Slaton vomited after leaving the laboratory and was immediately hospitalized his body was covered in blisters and had experienced burns on some of his internal organs in what a doctor would describe as free dimentional sunburn seven days after exposure Slaton experienced extreme mental confusion and after his lips went blue he was placed inside an oxygen tent eventually slipping into a coma he died of his exposure with his parents at his side after nine days despite having received intensive care three other witnesses the experiment would remain in hospital after slaughtering tragic death Alvin graves developed symptoms of acute radiation sickness and all those surviving would live with chronic neurological and vision problems he will continue to work in nuclear testing until his death in 1965 after a heart attack whenever personnel member would die around the same time as graves of leukemia however it is impossible to tell for certain due to the demon core also the guard on duty June Begley and experiment would die at the age of 62 also of leukemia sadly the core took the lives of two very talented scientists but it just shows how deadly radiation can be and how complacency even with the most skilled of operators is not the most ideal thing around dangerous material the cause destination was going to be intended for operation crossroads after the experiments however due to the slotting and criticality incident some time was needed to re-evaluate the cause effectiveness for use in a bomb ironically it would be due to its criticality incidents but the core would not be used for weapons detonation instead it was melted down for use in other cause due to the criticality accidents no more experiments would be done by hand instead using remotely controlled machines allowing the operator to be located in a safe room away from radiation however this would not completely remove casualties from criticality accidents but they will be subjects for future videos thanks for watching I hope you enjoyed the video if you did leave a like if you have any suggestions for future videos let me know in the comments if you'd like to support the channel financially then you're in luck as I have a patreon and a link is in the description and officer to say is thank you for watching [Music] if you look on Google Maps just off the coast of the island sheppy in the Thames history you'll see a pin for historical landmark with 17 reviews however you can't visit not just because it's at sea but the cut is within an exclusion zone intended to protect London's Thames Estuary from an apocalyptic tsunami this looming threat is called ESS Richard Montgomery and there is at the moment nothing that could be done about it the SS Richard Montgomery was a Liberty class of cargo ship built during the Second World War to transport weapons and goods for the US the class of ship was originally a British concept for cheap mass-produced cargo vessel but refined under the impressive industrial scale of 1940s America by the end of the war around 2710 would be built essentially making the vessels somewhat disposable understandable as during the Battle of the Atlantic Freight vessel losses were unprecedented at the hands of the German u-boats the SS richard montgomery was laid down as st. Johns River shipbuilding company in Jacksonville Florida in March 1943 being launched in May the same year and being finished in July karna shows how quickly these ships were being churned out just by seeing fourteen thousand four hundred and seventy four tons with a length of 128 point eight meters she sported to oil fuel steam engines and held a complement of thirty-five personnel the ship was named after Irish shoulder which Montgomery who was killed during the American war for independence roll on 1944 and of richa Montgomery's final voyage she was loaded with around 7,000 tons of munitions at hawk Island Philadelphia and under the command of Captain Willie key her journey across the Atlantic was relatively uneventful reaching the Thames s tree later on in the month to form part of a convoy to share berg under the orders of the king's Harbormaster from HMS Lee which was not actually a ship but a commandeered Southend pier she was ordered to drop anchor just off the coast of the North sands of the Isle of Sheppey around 1.5 miles from Sheerness which is around here on a map see this is a bit of a mistake as at the low tide but depth of the water was around 30 feet and a richer Montgomery drew just over 31 feet I think we can see where this is going in the early morning of the 24 August the richer Montgomery was seen by lookouts on ships moored nearby swinging towards the shoal warning sirens sounded by the ships were not heeded by chief officer and watch aboard division Montgomery now if it was made to even wake the captain to try and rectify the impending disaster soon enough the ship was pushed onto the Sheerness middle sands straining the vessel we're still as the tide ebbed the ship rested on the seabed causing some of her plates to buckle under her own weight cracking her hull making gunshot sounds as rivets pinged out quickly life rafts were released from the richer Montgomery as a crew took their chance to escape the stranded ship kind of understandably as who would want to be on board a potential bomb as it starts to break open that stranded on the sands the earliest time she query floated would be in a whopping two weeks time and even then only if most of a cargo was removed of Rochester based company was drafted in to unload the dangerous cargo from the Richard Montgomery and works began on the 23rd making use of her own unloading machinery just one day later would see the whole crack allowing some of the ship to flood even ownership was breaking up savage efforts carried on right the way into September eventually being abandoned on the 25th around 1400 tons of munitions remained on board two stranded and half sunken ship in an inquest into the accident captain with a key who was acquitted of any blame due to not being aware of running a ground because of being asleep most of the blame was laid at the feet at the Harbormaster now fast forward to today how much risk does the rich Montgomery pose on London right now so misses plainly and I decided to go to the Isle of Sheppey so you don't have to he'll attempt to see the SS Richard Montgomery in the flesh well as you can see we went on a bit of a road trip in vain as you can only see what might be the ship's mast in the distance mister tjuta would have fog on what was an otherwise sunny day so the wreck is at a depth of 15 meters leaning to a starboard side his fault is she still holds 286 two thousand pound high-explosive bombs 4439 a thousand pound bombs 1925 500-pound bombs 2815 fragmentation bombs and bomb clusters as well as other various flares charges and fuses because of the amount of ordnance still sitting in the thames history an exclusion zone was placed around the wreck in 1973 as surveys has suggested that detonation could be caused by a collision obviously something you don't want it's been leads us to the question of why hasn't a mess at a richer Montgomery being cleaned up saving bizarre choice of doing nothing might sound odd but there's a genuine fear of detonation and caused by any cleanup works this fear is based on a 1967 cleanup effort of a Polish munition ship sunk off the coast of Folkston in 1946 the recovery work set off the munitions aboard creating an explosion measuring 4.5 on the Richter scale creating a six metre deep crater on the seabed his fault by the amount of explosives were around a quarter of that on board the Richard Montgomery his fourth if the rich Montgomery were to detonate a 1,000 feet wide column of debris and water will be launched 10,000 feet into the air also creating a 16 feet high tidal wave although it wouldn't create as much devastation as a Halifax Explosion damages could run into the millions as a Thames Estuary is one of the busiest shipping lanes in Western Europe journey insult to injury leaving the wreck itself is a dead end option as well due to the explosives on the ship herself becoming more unstable over time the copper in the explosives has caused concern as it can react with the LED creating copper is eid a deadly and sensitive explosive this worry has been somewhat debunked by the marathon agency saying as a fuses will have probably had been flooded for many years and the sense of compounds referred to are soluble in water this is no longer considered to be a significant hazard but a use of the word probably doesn't give the highest level of confidence I'll leave it up to you guys and gals to decide on that it was predicted in a 2012 report but if she were to explode then a smaller tidal wave of around one meter would emit from the epicenter although not catastrophic it could still flood many places on the estuary which needless to say if you live there would be pretty bad although you can't visit the stranded vessel you can visit some of her reviews online which are rather amusing to say the least pretty much the explosive situation has turned into a damned if you do damned if you don't good job they never ended up building that Airport there the last month has been crazy we just hit fifty thousand subscribers and thank you all so much for your support I think of doing a QA to celebrate this so submit any questions in the comments below I hope you enjoyed the video if you did like and share it it really helps spread the awareness of the channel I've also dug out my rarely used Twitter which I will be posting random facts regularly from now on also if you like to support the channel financially I've got a patreon and all the links are in the description below and all this left to say is thank you for watching [Music] if I asked you to think of an arms race winning weapon from the Soviet Union a capitalist destroying soup device may come to mind like the Tsar Bomba however this formidable Western Nile a shin machine I'm thinking of actually would end up making more the headache for the east and would Tragically take the lives of many Soviet naval personnel if you're a regular plainly difficult viewer you'll probably know I like covering completely avoidable incidents and the k-19 submarine is no exception this case submarine is not the same type that I've covered before that's were involved in the Battle of May Island instead it was a cold war-era Soviet vessel k-19 was the first of a class of soviet nuclear powered and armed submarine known as project 65 8 May June a 1950s the hotel class as they were known to NATO were intended to even at the playing field with the USA in submarine development by creating the Soviet Union's first nuclear fuelled and armed fleet the Soviet Union had been using nuclear-powered subs with the first Coke a free of project six to seven from June of 1958 which was used as an attack vessel the Soviet Navy did have nuclear armed submarines under project 629 from 1958 as well pretty much the k-19 would be a combination to two classes to make one super weapon but we'll talk about her design in a little bit the US Navy had fielded the world's first nuclear-powered submarine in 1955 called the Nautilus the addition of a nuclear reactor to a submarine revolutionized naval combat has essentially meant that the only limit to a vessels endurance was the amount of food or board for the crew this was due to the fact that noisy polluting and air consuming diesel generators were not needed to charge the submarines batteries mean that sub didn't have to surface to allow air in and exhaust fumes out the deletion of the need to surface made a nuclear-powered submarine much harder to detect allowing the deployment of SLBMs or submarine launched ballistic missiles under the nose of an unsuspecting enemy miss immediately gave the upper hand to the USA as most atomic weapons at the time were to be dropped from easy to target and destroy bomber planes the new submarine design boasted an endurance sixty days at sea limited by food at top speed of 26 not submerged 270 megawatt reactives a crew of 125 and a submerged displacement of 5080 tons she was Alma conventional torpedoes was six tubes forward and two aft design also had to take the freshly developed r-13 slbms intended to rival the u.s. polaris a-1 missiles the new vessel was powered by two vm pressurized water reactors using 20 percent enriched uranium-235 and outputting 70 megawatts the whole project was a rush job from start to finish with the class being based on the design of the project six to seven vessels with the additional missile component added behind the sail near miss our section was a derivative version another type of sub the golf class soviet diesel-powered vessel known to the soviets of project 69 a new a d2 launch system would be utilized instead of the d1 in project six to nine recycling a design is only really a good idea if the thing you're copying is good but the 67 was riddled with issues and sticking to questionable designs together would probably not be the best idea the new sub had to surface to fire her ballistic missiles held a d2 system allowed this to be done within 12 minutes pretty impressive essentially the project was a cut-and-paste job and it would come to bite a navy in the behind the k-19 was lay down the 17th of october in 1958 at Severodvinsk estates ship hard 402 in russia construction of the submarine was anything but smooth with two workers dying in a fire during the works and six more killed by fumes was fitting assistant the death toll didn't stop there as another worker was crushed to death was loading on one of her missiles and another died by falling between two compartments it would seem that k-19 didn't have a very lucky start to life with ten deaths linked to the vessel even before her first mission due to the rush in construction many parts of the vessel suffered from shoddy workmanship which will come to haunt her in the future if all the construction deaths linked to the ship wasn't bad luck enough during her christening on the for April 1959 tradition was ignored with a man instead of a woman Breda champagne across the ship's Stern even VAT didn't go to plan as the bottle bounced off the rubber coating of the vessel viewed as bad luck - traditionally superstitious sailors captain first rank Nikolai's zotti EV was given the keys to the new superweapon as sea trials begun early life for the k-19 was as you would expect ropey with her reactor being damaged from incorrect' operation on the 94 January 1960 the accident occurred from confusion during a shift handover resulting in a controlled being bent a damage Montano he actor had to be rebuilt which is a bit worrying that damage could have been done in the first place as improper functioning of control rods is not a great thing June see tails in July and between the 12th of August innate for November the crew noticed after traveling just over 10,000 miles that most of her rubber coating on the vessel had stripped away and during a 300 meter test dive flooding was reported in the reactor room caused by a defect leaving the sub to lift to one side then to add insult to injury crew members tried to flush a wood into the waste system causing it to flood one of the ship's compartments by 1/3 so by the time the sea trials had ended she needed new coating and some remedial repairs replacing a poorly fitted gasket in December 1960 a water pump failed in the cooling system meaning k-19 had to be fixed it see unsurprising the dumpster fire development gave the ship a terrible reputation for luck however k-19 finally made it into commission on the 30th of April 1961 in all a total turnaround time from lay down to finish of just under three years pretty impressive especially if you compare it to say of the good old British astute-class development cycle k-19 enter service with a compliment of a hundred and thirty nine men including everyone needed to run a vessel as well as specialist observers which were probably needed giving the vessel and the cruise track record for incidents all of the accidents so far although bad probably wouldn't be remembered outside of the USSR however it was the next part of her story that would make the case go down in infamy just over two months after her commissioning on a fourth of July 1961 k-19 was taking part in exercises after coast of Greenland still under the command of captain sati F at 4:15 a.m. the vessel developed a fault with the reactor cooling system the failure was caused by a leak dropping the system's pressure to zero this in turn sent the reactors temperature soaring immediately the reactives scram system was activated inserting the control rods into the core however the temperature carry on rising to add insult to injury k-19 was unable to contact moscow due to her long-range radio system being damaged in an earlier accident with no help from Moscow's a TF took matters into his own hands and ordered the ship's engineers to make a completely new cooling system for the reactor needless to say missus rather an unorthodox request such an order would expose his crew to dangerous levels of radiation as a repair would involve opening the sealed reactor room the engineering team worked in the deadly conditions but bravely followed orders the eight-man team seven engineers and their divisional officer received a high dose of radiation but had managed to rig up an improvised cooling system by using an air vent valve and welding it to a water supply pipe the new reactor modification worked in bringing down the reactors temperature however radioactive steam had circulated throughout the vessel via the ventilation system large parts of the submarine had been contaminated including some of her ballistic missiles every member of the crew received a dose of radiation although in varying amounts k-19 was in a dangerous predicament cut off from contacting the USSR and limping captain's @ef decided to change course and sail on a heading to meet with some conventionally powered diesel submarines to the south due to the effect in fear of radiation sickness as a TA of feared a mutiny and ordered most of the ship small arms to be thrown aboard with a few weapons kept back for the captain and trusty crew members needless to say that the situation aboard the damaged sub must have been excruciating Soviet submarine s 270 picked up K 19 s low power radio calls and managed to arrange to meet the damaged vessel however someone else was listening a US destroyer also picked up the distress calls and offered to help which sounds like a case of good samaritan ism and it most likely was but also had the benefit of gaining possession of a brand new soviet weapon system fearing missus a tea have refused the help and sailed towards the s 270 upon reaching the diesel subs at e EV evacuated his crew and arranged for the k-9 team to be towed to a friendly port by the 10th of July 1961 k-19 made it to paly ma near Murmansk repair works would take two years contaminating many more workers in an area of 700 metres around k-19 in the port to add to the radioactive cherry to the pretty environmentally killing cake the Navy dispose of the vessels reactor and by dumping it into the car a sea between the 10th and 25th of July in 1961 the eight-man engineering teams succumb to the deadly dose of radiation they received whilst working on a makeshift cooling system each man received between 7.5 and 54 savors of radiation it is thought that if you receive over 5 SP then your outlook on life would be very short another 14 crew members would die before the 2 year repair time of the k-19 was up and many more of the crew would contract cancer kidney issues and chest pains for life all of the dead from the radiation incident were buried in leg coffins but a family members were not notified of the reason some recognition of the dangers the crew experienced on board the contaminated sub 26 members were decorated for courage and valor for their actions the official reason for the cooling system failure was put down to a welding error during manufacture where a worker had failed to protect a cooling pipe from unwanted welding sparks leading to a spark falling on one of the exposed pipes making a microscopic crack that would overtime and pressure caused the damage to fail you might think that due to the damage aboard the vessel ver its service life would be reduced or even scraps but no k-19 will continue to see active duties all the way up until 1990 shirogane the dark nickname of hiroshima and would continue to experience bad luck in 1969 she would collide with USS gateau in the Barents Sea luckily with no fatalities the bad luck would still carry on into the 1970s as she would experience two fires in 1972 in February and November 1 of which killing 28 crew members she would be finally taken out of service in 1990 eventually being towed to Murmansk to be scrapped in 2002 ending a long and deadly career but not for the reason she was designed for captains that've carried on in the Navy into retirement in 1986 passing away from lung disease in 1998 at the age of 72 he was buried in Moscow next to some of his crew from decay 19 [Music] thanks for watching I hope you enjoyed the video if you did leave a like if you have any suggestions for future videos let me know in the comments if you'd like to support the channel financially then you're in luck as I have a patreon and a link is in the description and officer to say is thank you for watching [Music] I've covered two out of four of the international nuclear Event Scale level five instance on this channel one of the two left is very well known and will be a future video however the subject for today is much less known he was a tragic story of negligence and shows how much damage can be done that the public unknowingly come into contact with radioactive materials event would leave parts of a city contaminated for dead a further two hundred and forty nine irradiated and another 112 thousand people needing to be examined the event will be called by The Times as one of the worst nuclear incidents in history and it wouldn't happen in the UK USSR or the USA but instead late 1980s brazil in a controlled and protected environment such as a hospital full of trained staff a teletherapy unit two poses little to no danger to the public this is because said trained staff know how to properly operate and maintain a machine but uses a radioactive material many hospitals and treatment centers use such machinery in a treatment of cancer and the beginning of the guy any incident starts in such an establishment in 1985 one kilometer away from the administrative center of goiânia sadly Instituto guy an EOD raya Tarapur a private radiotherapy center that had been closed down the company moved to a new premises taking a cobalt-60 teletherapy unit with him however no move left behind a cesium 137 unit this was against the institute's license with the licensing authority how's the closure of the center the ownership of the property came into dispute however a seemingly unnoticed two organizations arguing over abandoned property and its contents would put the piece of equipment into dangerous waters this was because the IGR was refused entry to the site while the argument was litigated in doing so not allowing the unit to be removed and placed in a safe lest abandoned environment during the dispute the court of goiânia noted on the 11th of september 1986 that it was aware of the equipment and it's radioactive contents left at a property due to lack of entry granted to IG our owner Carlos Pulido in 1987 to retrieve items left in the abandoned property several letters were sent to the National Nuclear Energy Commission warning of potential issues for storing radioactive materials in an abandoned building of the abandonment of the building it became partially demolished leaving the telephone unit unsecured the sorry state of the property led to vagrants regularly entering to search for scrap materials to sell and for shelter needless to say this is not a good thing the city of goiânia in the 1980s had a population of around 1 million first of all let's talk about the equipment that could get into the wrong hands that was worrying the owner of IG are so much in the first place the unit purchased in 1977 was a model sesor pan f3000 designed by Rossetti and company of milan italy in the 1950s the machine used a sealed source capsule to house the cesium 137 made of lead and stainless steel set inside a sauce wheel with a rotating shutter mechanism to provide a beam for use to shutter was turned electrically to align the source capsule with the radiation aperture to be failsafe the mechanism used a spring to return the shutter to its off position after exposure or in the case of a power failure the whole assembly was designed to be able to be dismantled but only with specialist tools the source was thought to have been manufactured at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in around 1970 the sauce was cesium 137 in the form of a soluble salt and the sealed capsule was of an international standard size but a time 1987 had come round the value of the machine had become common knowledge in the local area Roberto dos Santos Alvis had heard such rumors and encouraged Waggoner monitor P area to join him on the 13th of September to illegally enter the old ITR site of the intention to dismantle the f3000 unit however the two only took with them basic tools after some wrangling with the units rotating assembly the Dhiru managed to set it free from the machine the assembly being made of stainless steel shiny and looked valuable and because of this they loaded it into a wheelbarrow and proceeded to take it half a kilometre to Elvis house it is not known whether during the dismantling if the pair received a beam of radiation at the disused clinic however a later investigation would show no contamination at the site meaning I hadn't damaged the capsule whilst removing it from the machine Elvis's house that evening the mechanism was dismantled leading to both men feeling sick however this was due to something they ate and continued to work on the assembly the next day a P area felt dizzy as well as vomiting his left hand also began to swell up and on the same hand a burn start to develop in the same shape and size as the exposure aperture by this time at least one of the men had received a direct beam of radiation during their dismantling efforts the next part of the video is based on the International Atomic agency's timeline of events on a 15-4 september pee area went to the local clinic to seek medical help he was diagnosed with an allergic reaction caused by bad food he received advice to stay in and try to rest only doing like work if necessary needs to save his diagnosis was a little bit off but in health professionals defense radiation exposure isn't a very common complaint the average Brazilian would seek out medical advice for body 18th on his own Elvis had placed assembly under a mango tree over the preceding days he had tried to work to remove the source wheel from the shutter whilst doing so he punctured the fik window of the capsule with a screwdriver he scooped out some of the radioactive material bizarrely he tried to light it as he thought it might have been gunpowder at this point it might be obvious that the men weren't aware of how this type of machinery works and the danger that they had put themselves in by the end of the day he had managed to successfully removed the wheel from the shutter here enters the next person to handle the seemingly harmless yet deadly scrap of metal Devere the area a local scrapyard owner bought the capsule off of Elvis later on in the evening he found the puncture lift by hours showing an eerie glow thinking that him must be valuable or possibly ghostly the area took it from the yard into his home to show his family the area's wife Gabriella examined a strange item the free days fee area invited friends and neighbors over to look at the source on its 21st Devere and a friend managed to exhume rice sized grains of caesium-137 however they quickly turned to powder office both Davey Fe area and his friend gave out the powder to friends and family they were unknowingly spreading a deadly contaminant amongst a community even scarier is that some of the recipients of the powder added it to their skin using it as a glitter over the coming days devere's wife started to show a similar symptoms to p area and again after a visit to the doctor resulted in a diagnosis of allergy caused by some dodgy food obviously again this was a fatal misunderstanding of the patients complaints by the 23rd Gabriella was sent home to rest and was joined by her mother to help her recover on its way de bares brother Ivo receives some of the powder and took it to his house down the road Ivo place of a serious powder on the floor and his daughter he D plays with it putting it on her skin who contaminated hands she ate a sandwich unknowingly consuming some of the sauce tragically this would be over a fatal dose but its 25th of scrap-metal capsule changed hands once again to another scrap yard and a day later more parts of the teletherapy unit were taken from the abandoned igr site although what was taken was mainly scrapped shielding now with most of her family showing some signs of sickness since exposure to the powder Gabriella collected up as much of the broken up capture where she could from both scrap yards and put the pieces into a plastic bag she men took a bus to Zealandia sanitary ER on 16th Street on the 28th a couple of people who were exposed were also taken to the village en si s Senate area initially the health workers confused by the symptoms of the group of people thought the case of sickness was from a tropical disease however one of the doctors recognized similar patient's lesions as a symptom of some kind of radiation exposure when the doctors also recognized some of the scrap metals as possibly from x-ray equipment because of a forked extra investigation was needed and a medical physicist resourced to test the mystery contents of the plastic bag on the morning of the 29th a medical physicist arrived with a scintillation counter oddly it was his second meter as the original one that he had borrowed from the nearby nuclear Brasil offices gave a reading in all directions quite a distance from the village insya Senate area assuming it was defective he took the original meter back and took a replacement hervana meter was not defective upon using his second meter today and the magnitude of the contamination was apparent the scrap yard vet elves had sold a capsule to was checked for contamination and was shown on scanners as way way too high and the fee areas were evacuated by the end of the day the Police Fire Brigade local and national government were very much aware of the situation over the next few days certain areas in the neighborhood were cordoned off by officials as the full-scale nation was established the list of contaminated areas ends up being pretty vast and included the abandoned igr facility although no contamination was found it was the known source of the radioactive materials and was treated as dangerous Roberto dos Santos house on brewer 57 de Vere fee areas scrapyard on rule 15 I Ivo fee areas house on 1f Rua 6 but junkyard vet received a capsule after 25th vigilancia Senate area several more houses 14 cars free buses and 5 pigs every resident in the area was removed and triaged and checked for contamination in addition 112 thousand people were screened of which 249 were found to have been contaminated the most contaminated was sent to Olympic Stadium on the 34 September totaling 22 possible people showing signs of radiation sickness most of the people were even relatives friends or workers at both junkie Oz all of whom were externally contaminated with cesium 137 some of the worst cases were flown to Rio de Janeiro for specialist care the I AAA investigation goes into great detail with a medical treatment for the victims and if I covered it all of this in this video then it will be way too long the report is really worth a read and the link for it is in the description we'll go to the victims later on in the video as october rolled in several key areas for the cleanup were surveyed using a helicopter of detectors mounted to it and with a car also fitted with detectors another car was used for out the wider city to highlight any other contaminated areas the problem with the cesium 137 was that it was a powder and was water soluble meaning contamination could find its way into virtually anywhere due to a large amount of radioactive waste a cleanup effort would produce the disposal site was earmarked 20 kilometers away from goiânia near abadeer das my Socktober would be spent planning the cleanup efforts a target day of the 21st December was set by the government so that residents and workers could return home for Christmas the cleanup team had a few tough weeks ahead 250 technical staff by 300 workers headed up the main cleaning efforts seven houses were deemed too contaminated to rescue and were demolished with the rubble sent to the disposal site in total 85 houses were found to have some form of contamination present beliefs contaminated properties were dealt with first as all the contents inside had to be removed and placed in an uncontaminated area for monitoring any safe items were wrapped in plastic and any remaining items were either cleaned or disposed of everything from cloves photos to toys had to be checked once all the items inside the house were checked the entire property was vacuumed clean to remove any contaminated dust any paint that was deemed to have been exposed was stripped off walls and all floors were washed with an acid based cleaning solution the houses roofs were jet washed and two houses had to have their roofs completely removed due to the high levels of contamination if any property had fruit bearing plants when the produce would be disposed of and all trees were pruned a further 45 public places were contaminated in the area and received varying levels of cleanup efforts depending on the exposure topsoil in all of the contaminated areas was removed and placed in industrial drums for disposal there in depth of soil was removed depending on the radiation levels and some 30 millimetres of new topsoil was added the worst area of contamination was the property that a capsule was originally punctured in meaning cleanup crews could only work for a limited time at the epicentre the site was the last to be decontaminated and was the biggest challenge after weeks of 12-hour shifts the December deadline was met for most of the major cleanup efforts after Christmas the affected areas were surveyed and any extra decontamination that was needed was undertaken in total around 3,500 metres squared of waste was generated that was disposed of with 275 lorry loads sent to the disposal site the environmental cleanup efforts took up a lot of resources and not all the contamination was stopped quick enough however the most tragic part of the event was the human cost in all four people lost their lives in de goiânia accident and more would face lifelong injuries both mental and physical first victims worse 6 year old lady and Gabriela on the 23rd of next was 22 year old Israel Baptista dos Santos on the 27th he had been exposed working at de Vere's scrapyard whilst trying to extract lead from a source capsule finally was 18 year old at Milson Alvis de Souza on the 28th also an employee of de Vere Ferreria his exposure was from working on the source as well de vere Ferreria survived the incident although he received a very high dose of radiation however he would die in 1994 due to depression and a drinking problem the Guyana incident shows how easy it was fun almost uncontrollable radiological accident to unfold sadly the whole event was completely avoidable as proper stewardship of a potentially dangerous piece of equipment would have never allowed the theft of the source in the first place and the victims of the accident were completely unknowing of the dangers that they encountered teletherapy machines are vital in the fight against cancer and shows a great leap forward in patient treatment many lives are saved each year by the type of equipment involved in a go any incident and is sad that such a machine designed to save life ultimately ended for although not the machines fault but the fault of poor management by its owners free of the owners of the IGR were charged with criminal negligence but were ultimately left off however they were ordered to pay a fine for the condition of the building that has the machine hello everyone and thank you very much for watching the video this is just a quick little plug I've just launched a teespring storefront so if you fancy having any one of these t-shirts that are now flashing up on the screen then please go ahead and buy them it helps out the channel and to celebrate this there is a 25% off discount code in the description of the video thank you very much to my patrons listed here if you'd like to become a patreon for plenty difficult channel there check out a link for my patreon page in the description as well if you liked the video please leave a like share the video as well if you'd like to show your friends and if you have any suggestions for future videos or would like to discuss this video in particular leave a comment in the section below and always said to say is thank you very much for watching you [Music] it may be hard to imagine but there was once a time when for seemingly no reason at all that a whole neighborhood could get ill and drop dead for many people living in the eighteen hundred's London this was an actual day-to-day reality scarily there seemed to be no way to stop it however one particular outbreak of cholera in 1854 would change the way scientists look at disease as a whole and strangely enough beer would be the catalyst London in 1854 was a pretty disgusting place people flooded into the inner city from the provinces and caused a waste disposal issue the infrastructure for sewage made by Joseph Basel gets had not yet come to fruition due to no proper alternative for disposal human and animal waste was either dumped into the Thames into homemade cesspits or out onto the street areas like Soho suffered from overcrowding and the primitive sewer system struggled meaning that the area was a breeding ground of disease and infection to add salt into the wound science hadn't quite cracked a way to prevent cholera mainly due to the leading theory of the disease and whilst we're on the subject let's talk about that particular popular theory the theory of bad air causing disease harks its history all the way back to ancient China the miasma theory posed that rotting organic matter created poisonous vapors that would infect any victim that came into contact with it the theory was used to explain the Black Death the presence of miasma was fooled to be identifiable by a foul smell interestingly pollution and poisonous air is actually dangerous especially in built-up urbanized areas I mean just look at this dust mask that I wore on my commute every day for a month what an organic matter and bad smells can be indicators of things you shouldn't be around if you value your health so the theory does have one likely place fit in reality however no miasma theory was attached to seemingly unlinked diseases like in our case cholera but also plague and even chlamydia even obesity was linked to the theory by inhaling the fumes offer food pretty much my asthma was used to explain a lot of the unknown when it came to health conditions conversely the efforts to reduce my asthma did actually lead to a healthier environment indirectly as local governments attempts to fight a vicious air actually involved improving sanitary conditions as well as just general cleanliness role on 165 years ago today or at least the date I'm recording this script the 31st of August 1854 and a major outbreak of cholera in Soho after several years of outbreaks in other parts of London within three days at least a hundred and twenty-seven residents of Broad Street lay dead from the outbreak and by the 10th of September a victim count rose to 500 many victims were treated by Florence Nightingale at Middlesex Hospital only a few months before she went to the Crimean War a place where she would be known as the lady with the lamp Soho within a week of the outbreak saw many residents flee the area now never needing an excuse for a day out missus cleanly and I went to Broad Street now called Broadwick Street to have a look around so you don't have to so far so normal for Victorian era London at least during 18-49 to 1854 the worst years of the cholera outbreaks so what makes the Broad Street instant's so important to history where it's not a place but a person who looked into the human tragedy that has cemented the instant in not only London but world important as it would be the key turning point in a development of Epidemiology this is where dr. Jon Snow enters the scene a longtime skeptic of the miasma theory snow in 1854 had a practice off of thrift Street not far from the epicenter of the outbreak by this time snow was a well-respected doctor having administered chloroform on Queen Victoria during the birth of her eighth child Leopold George Duncan Albert's in 1853 born in 1813 in York snow from early age shows an interest in science and mathematics starting a medical apprenticeship in 1827 at a young age of just 14 in 1832 he would encounter cholera for the first I'm treating many victims of the disease and in doing so learning up close its effects and possible causes in 1837 he began work in Westminster Hospital London becoming a member of the Royal College of Surgeons and Royal College of Physicians in 1844 and 1850 respectively from his previous experiences with the disease Snell was pretty skeptical of the miasma theory and had begun to suspect the source of the outbreak was somehow linked to polluted water due to contact with a pump on Broad Street as soon as the Broad Street incident started to become a full-scale outbreak snow set about to investigate the cause in an effort to prove or disprove his theory taken to the streets with the help of Reverend Henry Whitehead snow interviewed local residents both at home and at hospital asking them where they got their water from most people replied the pump on Broad Street several people who live closer to other pumps had also transmitted the disease but after interviewing friends and relatives of the victims it was discovered that many preferred the water from the Broad Street pump one bizarre case of a victim of the cholera outbreak was a widow in hampstead miles away from Soho he was found that from interviewed widows son by snow who informed him but his mother had lived in Soho many years before and had liked the water from the pump it was fair at least she sent a servant down to Soho every few days to collect the water last time which such a journey was made was on the 31st of August on a seventh of September snow went to the authorities of dicent James's parish to tell them to remove the handle from the pump as emergency prevention of further outbreak the parish obliged as they would try anything to slow the rising death toll but didn't exactly believe snows water transmitted Theory due to the whole miasma thing being privileged the epidemic started to subside however is not known whether the outbreak had already started to slow down before the handle was removed even though snow had pinpointed the epicenter he still didn't have enough proof to convince the local authorities what the cause of the outbreak was this is where snows methodical way of working really shined over the summer of 1854 snow revisited his study of the outbreak to try and prove his theory to his contemporaries by comparing water companies water in different areas of London snow saw an alarming coincidence many of the areas in London that way hits the hardest you know cholera epidemic was served by companies at pump the water from the polluted Thames the SAVAK and voxel Water Works company had served the Soho area and they had been pumping pretty much directly from the disgusting Thames which was also the place that most cesspits were emptied into another company called a lamb before two company had also been pumping from the town and many areas may served had also shown high numbers of Cholera link depths there the steal of a New River company pumped water from a different source and filtered out any obvious contaminants before providing to the areas they served and unsurprisingly their areas of operation had very few cholera linked deaths by the end of September around 616 victims were claimed by the outbreak on Broad Street it's no use doc maps to plot the area of the outbreak no points are guessing where the epicenter was by looking at this map the map showed that the closer to the Broad Street pump you were the more likely you would have been to be infected snow speery was starting to look excuse the pun watertight however there was an anomaly in the area the workers at a Broad Street Brewery flanked by new Street in Hopkins Street did not present themselves to the hospital as infected how could this have been the case well it's the way in which beer is made unknown Lee killed the cholera bacteria if you've ever been camping and taken water from a river to drink you might know why the act of boiling and filtering water effectively kills most bacteria and a key part of brewing beer is unsurprisingly boiling it so how did no one from the brewery contractor disease we're going to set one of the perks of working for the brewery was that each worker was given an allowance of beer each day and the workers took it and drank it instead of water this was a key indicator to snow that water contamination was the cause of the outbreak the hand offered a pump was later replaced but by then the outbreak had subsided for local authorities been lost interest in snow speery instead blaming the whole episode as a bout of bad air snow took his fury to the Board of Health who unsurprisingly rejected his new radical theory it would be until 1866 that snows results would gain some traction with William FAR's who was once an opponent to snows thinking this research into an outbreak in Bromley by Bo a40 snowed and get the chance to enjoy the recognition for his theory that he passed away in 1858 from a stroke how would a research he did would help to change the opinion of the propagation of the disease as snow series would be generally accepted after the development of germ theory in 80 eighty-three under the German Robert [ __ ] later will be found out that the Broad Street pump swell had been dug 900 centimeters from an old cess pit and wastewater from used nappies had leaked into the pit the nappies were from a baby that had contracted cholera from another source and the cesspit had leaked into the well hence causing the outbreak so sexy isn't hard to find especially in Soho with a fake pump in the place of the deadly original right outside the aptly named John snow pub however the area has changed since snows time with the brewery now this building and obviously jam-packed London traffic if you're in central London it is definitely worth checking out and why not pop into the pub to celebrate snows legacy with a cholera beating pint hello I hope you enjoyed the video if you did leave me a like do you have any suggestions for future videos then let me know in the comments below if you would like to have a plainly D t-shirt I now have a tee spring stool I also have a patreon page if you fancy supporting the channel and also I have a Twitter which I post random facts and other things that I find interesting I look forward to seeing on a next video and always have to say is thank you for watching [Music] I've mentioned the I NES scale a few times on this channel as some of you might be wondering what it is well you've clicked on the right video if you do want to know now this video is a short explanation of what it is and what the point of it is the international nuclear and Radiological event scale or ints for shorts was developed in 1990 by the International Atomic Energy Agency the scale was originally thought up to categorize certain events and accidents in nuclear power stations however its scope has been extended to any civil nuclear or radiological event is used and I quote from the IAEA website to communicate the safety significance of nuclear and Radiological events to the public essentially is used in publications to convey extremely complex ramifications from incidents for the layperson the scale is broken down into seven numerical ratings from one to seven which one being not bad not good - good lord what is happening to that nuclear reactor aurora borealis aurora borealis yes measured no the scale is used for rating of events that release radioactive material into the environment and in the exposure of workers under public each level is approximately ten times worse than the level below it the scale is not intended to be used for disaster management as usually the rating is only attached to an incident well after the fact this is due to the environmental impacts can only truly be assessed over time case in point being Fukushima that started out initially on a level five only to be raised to level seven after the full incident was realize the scale is further subdivided to accident which is the top four categories and incident which is the bottom three to add another level of confusion there's also a level zero but for the point of this video that basically covers all other non safety significant incidents the level on the scale is determined by considering free areas of impact people in the environment looks at the radiation doses to people close to the location of the event and the widespread unplanned release of radioactive material from an installation radiological barriers and control looks at events without any direct effect on people or the environment and only applied to major it covers high radiation that was confined within a facility because of an event depth in Defense is similar to the above as it looks at the events without direct impact on people or the environment but also looks at failures of systems or procedures to prevent accidents each level has its own classification so let's have a look level one is anomaly level two is incident level three is a serious incident level four is an accident with local consequences level five is an accident with wider consequences level six is a serious accident and level seven is a major accident Sellafield is the real winner in the scale as it features at least once in levels one two five which is bad for the environment but kind of good for this channel as it gives me plenty of future subjects for videos I've already started chipping away a couple of the levels on this scale and I've nearly completed all of level five the IAEA has developed the scale in cooperation with over 60 Member States through their official I NES officers now the scale isn't without criticism mainly from the two accidents in level seven Chernobyl and Fukushima as both events were very serious but had very different implications for the wider environment the scale is mainly used as an easy-to-use guide for the public so isn't very scientific which is its biggest criticism because of nuclear and Radiological events being open to interpretation it makes giving a number on the scale very difficult for classifying events now I hope this short little video helped explain what the inds scale is and are there any of these instance I should make a video on let me know in the comments below did you know you could gain access to plainly difficult videos before they put up on the channel well if you didn't you can by becoming a patreon supporter from just $1 a month and from free dollars a month you can have your name up with these lovely people for you guys who have watched this far thank you for watching and my next video will be on the free Mile Island now I've done my obligatory youtuber advertising os left to say is thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: Plainly Difficult

Views: 136,305

Rating: 4.8478003 out of 5

Keywords: plainly difficult, zepherus, demon core, nuclear, education learning, history

Id: Gt5waEj1wnc

Length: 158min 10sec (9490 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 28 2019