"Harmless" Nuclear Test - Operation Plumbob - Nuclear Engineer Reacts to the Fat Electrician

Original Video ‪@the_fat_electrician‬ • America's Unhinged Nuc...

[@tfolsenuclear]

Thanks so much for watching! If you would like to hear more about a crazy nuclear test, please check out: kzbin.info/www/bejne/gaDQm2NtrN-Aa6c

[@MarcusChamberlain-kj6lt]

TFE was a medic

[@bsadewitz]

Lol, I love how you said "scientifically interesting... wow". It's as if they're implying "science" has interests lolol. PERSONS have interests. Which phenomena, exactly, could one definitely say are NOT of "scientific interest"? Reminds me of how I once casually remarked to my doctor "so I guess I should keep the smoking to a minimum...." He replied, "What, as opposed to a maximum?"

[@MemorialRifleRange]

The Genie air to air missile had a yield of 1.5 kt.

[@spvillano]

@@MemorialRifleRange which had a fallout level equal with one of my bean farts. Pretty much literally. This, from a guy who worked with nukes, born a week after Tsar Bomba.

[@NightFangFenrir]

Definitely helped that it was detonated approximately 18,000 ft above them, so it’s possible they received only a very minor dosage of the radiation.

[@robertsmith4681]

Nick "The Fat Electrician" is a retired Army medic.

[@oxylepy2]

So he's a jacked former Army medic, he's titled as a fat electrician, and his icon is a nuke. Bro is like a Parfait, layered

[@robertsmith4681]

@@oxylepy2 Dude is basically single handedly rewriting history books, quite a talented individual.

[@Canthus13]

@@oxylepy2 You're saying he's an onion. An ogre. Shrek, if you will.

[@oxylepy2]

​@@Canthus13not everyone likes onions. Cakes! Cakes have layers

[@charlesmaurer6214]

@@oxylepy2 Also cakes have fat while onions don't.

[@FuzeTheWholeTeam]

"even friction was like wtf" now that's the science i live for lmaooo

[@awg6397]

Those little one liners are why I am on a mission to watch every video he has ever put out

[@fshalor738]

I did a very brief back of the envelop calculation on the ablative loss for a 1 ton hardened steel round with that much back pressure. Very hard to know, without the temperature and pressure of the tunnel beneath the "man hole cover" mass, but the yield would have had to have been massive to completely vaporize that plug. It's in space. Likely past Saturn by now.

[@carlosamponin2859]

I did the rough calculations - that manhole cover was in the atmosphere for 1.488 seconds

[@johns3544]

Ya was basicly a black Powder rifle 😂😂😂😂

[@armadillolover99]

@@awg6397 When you finish watching all his videos between his two channels (TFE and The Fat Files), there’s also all the-probably well over a hundred that he’s in by now-episodes of the Unsubscribe Podcast to watch.

[@joncrow3228]

In order to answer the manhole cover question, I propose we repeat the experiment with a better camera.

[@awolfalone2006]

Say, Ballistic High Speed and Slow Mo Guys?

[@deed5811]

​@@awolfalone2006Put a go pro and transmitter on the manhole cover?

[@JKM395]

"Today on Kentucky Ballistics..."

[@wesw9586]

@@JKM395 put a thumb in it! Woooo!

[@GramadinGG]

Honestly, that's what I was thinking.

[@RockNRuen]

"Its never a warcrime the first time"-The Fat Electrician

[@michaelhinman1770]

Don't touch the boats!

[@moneykingmm9298]

?

[@scotthill1600]

@@moneykingmm9298ifykyk & if ya don’t ya don’t

[@scottwheeler2494]

​@@moneykingmm9298you have to watch his videos to understand.

[@emilyrln]

@@michaelhinman1770Titanic?

[@isaiahoconnor8236]

Also, he is really cool to reactors and often has a "post credit" clip as it were, and his wife is hilarious.

[@tylersimplot13]

not really

[@isaiahoconnor8236]

@tylersimplot13 not really what?

[@donaldlang9157]

I believe that scene is called a 'stinger'

[@isaiahoconnor8236]

@@donaldlang9157 yes that's another term for it.

[@armadillolover99]

The best thing is his write off couch and yes, he does actually do tax write offs for everything you see in his videos.

[@tarinindell8217]

TFE is a great channel with a lot of great stories. A lot of teachers should learn from his style. React to all of his videos, we wont mind. Fair warning though, he doesnt have too many videos that would cross over with your area of expertise. No one would mind if you kept on reacting though because his videos are great.

[@christopherbartleson8918]

I wish I had someone like him as a history teacher back in the day! I'd be LMAO all the time.

[@SupersuMC]

I recommend his video on the Davey Crockett - you know, the real life equivalent of Fallout's Fat Man.

[@scythelord]

Thing is, that was the minimum speed for it to have been captured in that single frame. It could have been even higher. The estimate was 41.6 miles per second. If whatever chunk made it out of the atmosphere had 26.16 miles per second velocity remaining, it is currently interstellar and is the furthest manmade object ever and should realistically remain so forever.

[@SupersuMC]

And could start an interstellar war, because as they say in Mass Effect 2, "Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a b****** in space!" due to the first law of motion.

[@truthseeker2321]

That's assuming that it wasn't vaporized before leaving the atmosphere. It had to have already been close to a molten state from the nuclear explosion before leaving the ground.

[@allmyrage1]

​@@truthseeker2321 buh

[@John_Ridley]

@@truthseeker2321 I'm not sure about that. It takes time for the heat energy to get into the object. With that much energy hitting it at once, the first layers would ablate and possibly form a protective layer of plasma, sort of a Leidenfrost effect but at a few thousand degrees.

[@truthseeker2321]

@@John_Ridley That makes sense. The fireball probably never reached the plate before it was already airborne and gone.

[@arclight545]

This is how active duty and Veterans all talk. Very straightforward, with Dark humor

[@TheSpookiestgoose]

And tradesman as well

[@brigidtheirish]

@@TheSpookiestgoose Both deal with incredibly dangerous situations on the daily and are often dismissed or reviled by those in positions of cultural influence. The main difference is that tradesmen generally don't have to deal with being shot at. Enter the SeaBees.

[@benn454]

@@brigidtheirish I mean, it depends on the kind of neighborhood the job site is in.

[@brigidtheirish]

@@benn454 Good point.

[@minigunner1218]

There was an experiment that lends credence to the notion of the manhole cover making it to space called “Lew Allen’s Balls.” It was an experiment where multiple shaped objects made of materials such as steel, aluminum, and ceramic were placed within fireball radius of the bomb. One would think that all the objects would vaporize, but what actually happened was that only a small amount (mere millimeters for the steel balls) were vaporized, and the expansion from that was enough to propel them out of the fireball and several feet into the ground. This surface-level vaporization is called ablation, and it shielded the remaining material akin to the Leidenfrost effect. So yeah, it’s likely that the manhole cover did vaporize a little, and flattened to some degree by the insane opposing forces, but it ultimately made it into space.

[@I_Stole_A_BTR-80]

So the US can claim the very first and last achievements of the space race? Only however many technicalities left to prove that the US was truly the winner of the space race from start to finish.

[@kylematlock7499]

@@I_Stole_A_BTR-80 Neither this manhole cover nor Sputnik were the first objects in space. Sputnik was the first object to Orbit Earth. Some V2 Rockets made it to space before these.

[@badlatency9979]

​@I_Stole_A_BTR-80 oh better, see that manhole cover didn't just shoot past escape velocity of the Earth...it was going faster than the escape velocity of the solar system so that thing is well off into interstellar space now.

[@brandonmercer499]

​@@badlatency9979It's eventually going to hit an alien planet and Crack the entire thing

[@nbsmith100]

also to add- the guy who was at the site who did the calculations and was the original source of the "it burned up in the atmosphere" statement that has since propagated... but way later in life he'd revisit those calculations and said he made a goof in them and revised his conclusion that it indeed would be possible that it could have made it to space without completely disintigrating before getting there, altho it would not be a 100% sure conclusion.

[@EShirako]

So part of why the blast was noticed across most of the world was that our earthquake sensors were quickly improving in capability and sensitivity. Also, the blast was into bedrock so it was like striking a drum, just 'from inside the drum' I guess. My favorite detail of the second test is that the super-high-speed camera caught only the one frame of the lid taking off. The manhole cover may have vaporized on the way out, BUT I really think it may have been 'buffered by its own plasma' on the way out instead, ablating but not vaporizing. And yes, his "WTF was that?!" thing about Friction is actually entirely making sense. Reality Itself was just like "What...what just happened?!" I mean...150k mph is what, about 67km/sec? Which is almost solar system escape velocity needed from MERCURY (67.7 km/s in the chart I looked at on Wikipedia if Ve is the proper speed to reference, else it's only ~20.3 km/s for the Vte?), so whatever remains of that lid may be ripping across the cosmos at 10 or 20 km/s perhaps? Solar system escape velocity from Earth is either 42.1 or 16.6 km/s, out of 67 km/s, minus a bit for escape friction losses and stuff? So even say 67 becomes 'only' 50km/s to escape from Earth, and if it needs 42.1 km/s to manage that, that'll still leave it an idealized-minimum of 7.9 km/s, or about 17,672 mph of remaining velocity. It won't escape the Milky Way, but that thing has a LOT of energy still! I wonder whereabouts it is nowadays if it did escape Earth? Surely somewhere into the interstellar medium by now, but...well, anyway, I don't know how to calculate that at the moment, so meh! It's fun to wonder about, though!

[@Armoured-Pizza-Carrier]

Well I’m pretty sure it’d be still in the solar system because the voyager is pretty fast and is still deep in the solar system (o clueing the Oort Cloud)

[@EShirako]

@@Armoured-Pizza-Carrier Hm, but didn't this happen years earlier? Darn it, I might need to find graph paper. I think it was way ahead of the Voyager probes, but if this was at the bare-minimum of 18k mph they would be faster, at up to 38k, but the lid might be much faster than that. I may have to graph it out. Aha, yeah, 20 years earlier. Plumbob was 1957, and Voyager first launched (ironically) Voyager 2 in Aug of 1977, so 57->77 is a two-decade lead. Also, the Oort cloud has an 'inner' and 'outer' section. Voyagers are in the Outer now, with both of them having crossed into 'Interstellar space', so they're...huh. Well, they're still 'in the Solar System' despite also being in interstellar space and outside the sun's heliosheath, but the outer Oort cloud may extend up to 50,000 AU out, which is about 0.8 light-years distant...so, yes, by the fullest definition of 'in our solar system and within the outermost Oort cloud', Voyager may be in that for tens or hundreds of thousands of more years! With about 80% of a light-year to find the outside of our 'everything', even at 38k mph the Voyager probes at best are not too much faster than the slowest I was guessing that lid might be going (just under 17kps for Voyager 1, vs 7.9 for "Slow Lid"). If you don't take my worst=case, rounding-down estimates, the lid might well be going along at maybe 25 kps, plus or minus a few kps. With a two decade lead, the lid made it to interstellar space first, but all three of them are still "within the Solar System's outer limits." Space is so amazingly huge..! Also, TIL that the solar system is wildly-larger than my mental model had had any idea about! I was thinking it extended "a bit past ol' Pluto", but it seems like almost a light year out is the ACTUAL edge of our system, not some 'handful of AU past Pluto'..! Wow. Just...wow. Also...some quick 'rounding a bit to be fast with the answer' calculations on how fast that all is says that even my murder-tiddlywink screaming along at a 25 kps escape velocity will take about 9,619.3 years to escape the 50k AU boundary of the outer Oort cloud and be fully free of our solar system. Soooo not quite ten THOUSAND years for 'Tiddlywink' to escape. Everything will be 'inside the Solar System' for a loooong, LONG time yet!

[@noodlelynoodle.]

​@@Armoured-Pizza-Carrierthe crazy thing is even moving a million miles a day like the Voyager is it still won't be to the oort cloud for another like 300 years the oort cloud is like 464 billion miles away and on the low end if it didn't lose any speed from the atmosphere the manhole will have covered 88 billion miles, the high end would be 160-200 billion so up to half way there

[@davehart1027]

@EShirako so you could calculate wolverines strength? I cannot, from xmen origins wolverine movie, he was able to cut through 3 inches or so of solid steel. Like instantly He would have the punch force of a tank,

[@EShirako]

@@davehart1027 I'll have to see that movie to have a better idea, but remember that you can trade 'pure force' for 'sharpness/hardness'. If his blades are some kind of crazy-hard-metal (I think Adamantium, right?), then he could be a lot less insanely-strong to do such a thing. The fabled 'monoatomic edge' types of blades from sci-fi tend to cut through super-strong metals like cheese...I mean, 'a perfect diamond edge with a perfect atomic-line along its edge' could be shattered because diamonds CAN be shattered, but a PERFECT carbon-carbon edge would have WILD sharpness. If you cut 'perfectly straight' you could slice right through tons of things with little effort. So...I think his blades are very sharp, but not insanely-atomic-edge-sharp, so he'd still need to be strong to pull this off, but the edge itself, the metal the claws are made of, are likely doing a lot of the work in that sort of situation. With an idea of the steel alloy in question, how deep the cuts are, how fast they are made, you could estimate the strength needed to do that, but I don't have enough data offhand. I hope this helps, though! Or at least gives you fun things to think about. :)

[@TylerMusgrave9]

Nuclear Pigs in a Blanket sounds like a circa 1800s radium enriched novelty snack.

[@shawnmiller4781]

Add enough food colouring and anything will glow

[@tylerbrown136]

Goes great with mummies and tea

[@blitzhacker6981]

The Fat electrician is the most epic youtuber / American history teacher I've ever witnessed. Due to this single reason, I know more about American history than I do Canadian history.. (Canadian)

[@robertsmith4681]

Same, I wish we had somebody like that telling our own history.

[@brigidtheirish]

@@robertsmith4681 As an American, I agree. What little I know about Canadian history sounds *awesome.*

[@kellyevans3254]

@@brigidtheirishthere was a great video about when Canadians go to war showcasing some of our hero’s and war crimes during the world wars.

[@brigidtheirish]

@@kellyevans3254 Yeah. I think it was about the guy who joined the Canadian army because America wasn't joining the war fast enough.

[@kellyevans3254]

@@brigidtheirish the video I was thinking of was by the channel “the front” the video title is “Canadians change when they hear the word “war””. The one you mentioned might be the fat electrician talking about mcnasty.

[@karlj8092]

Finding this blast as a seismic reading was how America learned to monitor the Soviet Union for when they chose to do underground testing. Which they did, starting in 1963. The seismic waves are different than an earthquake, so were able to be recognized.

[@pop5678eye]

In the military 'volunteering' is a relative term. 'Hey it's totally voluntary but you will be put in the back of the promotion line if you don't do it.'

[@awg6397]

Voluntold

[@pop5678eye]

@@awg6397 Just to re-emphasize the point the 'volunteers' here were mid-level (below general) officers. Promotion in the US military is competitive and there are term limits. If you don't get promoted within a certain number of years you will be forced into retirement.

[@brigidtheirish]

@@pop5678eye Which I find kinda weird and probably counter-productive. Like, what if someone is just really good at being a captain but wouldn't be much good as a major? Makes me think of how civilian companies tend to promote people until they end up in positions they're completely unqualified for.

[@stevea9604]

I’m sure alcohol was not involved 🤣🤪😝

[@sillythewanderer4221]

@@brigidtheirish yes it’s weird.

[@m2hmghb]

18,000 feet might not be a common air burst altitude but it would be within engagement range of the missile if used as designed. We had nuclear tipped surface to air missiles until the 1970s I believe. Fat Electrician was a National Guard medic before getting out and becoming an electrician. He's done a couple videos on nukes. Davy Crockett, America Almost Nuked the Moon, Atomic Annie, one of my favorites Chicken Powered Landmine, Fight Fire with Nukes, and he did a collab with Brandon Herrera on the time the US dropped nukes on North Carolina (The Government Nuked North Carolina…Twice).

[@isaiahoconnor8236]

Thank you I was trying to remember which ones he did :)

[@Armoured-Pizza-Carrier]

Also technically fighting fire with nuke will work, because if there’s nothing there’s there’s also no fire

[@emilyrln]

@@Armoured-Pizza-Carrier #technicallytrue 😂

[@mojo6524]

His PROPORTIONAL video is the best way to tell those stories I've ever heard!

[@jakewalter9323]

Fat Electrician is THE best military history storyteller on KZbin rite now. I highly encourage everyone to check his channel out. If Nick had decided to become a history teacher tomorrow his students would be the most engaged kids on the planet.

[@GHMYahooka]

"if we poison the food nobody will be able to prove they got the cancer from our messing around with super poison bombs"

[@emilyrln]

Or the water 💀

[@Canthus13]

My grandfather died of mysterious parkinsons-like symptoms at 79. The rest of his brothers and sisters lived into their 90s and 100s. His mom did as well. His dad was 87. None of them had similar issues and it doesn't run in the family. He was on deck to watch some of the blasts at Bikini with only welding goggles for protection.

[@Razor-gx2dq]

Hmmm

[@quarterbritish7283]

It's funny. Without the Fat Electrician the KZbin algorithm probably wouldn't have recommended me your video. It's nice to hear a reaction from someone who actually knows their stuff.

[@williamwest9204]

Rising tides raise all ships

[@mgratk]

President Ronald Reagan said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” That statement is more true than ever.

[@brigidtheirish]

I was born during his first term in office. One of my favorite presidents alongside Theodore Roosevelt. And Thomas Jefferson, pirate hunter.

[@tadferd4340]

I disagree. The government should absolutely be handling certain things, as well as protecting the consumer and worker from business and corporate interests. Antigovernment sentiment has poisoned what should actually be increased government oversight.

[@brigidtheirish]

@@tadferd4340 Increased government oversight is *part of the problem.*

[@tadferd4340]

@@brigidtheirish It's the opposite.

[@brigidtheirish]

@@tadferd4340 Whatever you say. The rest of us will deal with reality.

[@KamiNoBaka1]

Man, we got you reacting to The Fat Electrician and Mr. Terry History reacting to the Unsubscribe Podcast (which The Fat Electrician is part of, along with Eli_Doubletap, Brandon Herrera, and Donut Operator, though Donut's not in that clip) on the same day... It's a great day for seeing some of my favorite KZbinrs react to some of my favorite KZbinrs lol

[@GHMYahooka]

the only one of his friends that are worth listening to is wendigoon but any time they ask him something they never stop being obnoxious dude bros and actually listen to what he has to say.

[@KingofKarnies]

From what my Dad's told me, he's an electrical engineer specializing in control systems, while working with both the TVA and Brown's Ferry. The "Let's just finish up then go home" is almost a motto.

[@Rorschach1024]

I worked with one of those soldiers. He had all kinds of health problems, mainly allergies to damned near everything. But he lived well into his 70's.

[@ayoCC]

I like that he disclaimers when some things are unclear or could go one way or another

[@Everblack666]

The Fat Electrician is such a good channel, I love that you reacted to this, and I love your channel as well 🤘

[@Rorschach1024]

Let's not forget the TWO nuclear tests that occurred NOT in the desert but instead in rural Mississippi. Shockingly few people know about those two tests.

[@Rorschach1024]

And the reason for the tests in Mississippi was to see if it was possible to muffle the seismic signature of an underground test to see if it was possible to cheat the nuclear test ban.

[@Rorschach1024]

BTW, it was learned that it was possible to muffle the Shockwave enough that it was inconclusive whether it was a nuke or not.

[@denvan3143]

The creator of Star Trek Gene Roddenberry was one of those soldiers in the trench when the atomic bomb was exploded. As he related in later years, he had on blackout goggles with his eyes closed and his arms over his face. When the bomb went off he could see the bones in his arms through his closed eyes and the blackout goggles.

[@marine5480]

The logo is based off of his phrase “dropping warheads on foreheads “. At least I’m pretty sure that’s where he got it.

[@rmartinson19]

"That would make about as much sense as anything else in The Last Jedi." You, sir, just earned yourself a like and subscribe. 🤣

[@homeonegreen9]

The only conclusion we can have from this video is we need to try this again now that we have better cameras.

[@SupersuMC]

Exactly! That or hire a time-traveler to go back there as soon as we develop the tech to do so.

[@jenniferklayer5259]

Nick is funny af. I've binged his whole channel. Glad you're enjoying... That poor manhole cover never stood a chance 😂😂😂

[@PaulGAckerman]

Thank you for acknowledging that the volunteers are all officers. I would have thought it would have been enlisted service members that had been voluntold to participate.

[@PolarisRider06]

2:16 Richard Feynman was the only human to actually watch the first nuclear explosion with no "conventional" eye protection and saw its true color in person. He was far enough away to not worry about the shockwave and he sat inside of a truck and watched through the windshield because the glass blocked the UV radiation... (if I remember how he told the story correctly)

[@jasonnelms4556]

Welcome to the world of Nic, aka "The Fat Electrician," the best storyteller on youtube. And as a Nevadan who worked for the army, this is Nevada as hell. This is a rabbithole you need to go down

[@LoveDR91]

Love your videos man... Found your channel a few weeks ago and can't stop watching. Fascinating stuff!!

[@bionicleone]

Cody’s lab did a small scale recreation to get the best guess to see if it could have survived the atmosphere and his findings point to yes it did. From his testing his projectiles kept forming into cones vastly decreasing air resistance. Add on top of that it would have escaped earth in arguably less then a second and material it was made of. That thing in my mind absolutely made it into space and would have left the fucking solar system (if it didn’t collide with one of the local planets) in roughly 16 years (ish). Physics is fun

[@Lanse1984]

The Fat Electrician channel is one of the most entertaining content creators on KZbin

[@joshuaboudreau5258]

This is a perfect fat electrician video for you to have covered. Giving us the extra information is awesome.love this channel, by the way ❤

[@cammyrubin2512]

“A nuclear pig in a blanket…”. 😂 I just lost it 🤣😂🤣

[@cpeabody85]

This has become one of my favorite History Channels, just because of his storytelling skills are extraordinary

[@cpeabody85]

Since KZbin is being a pain in my back side and not allowing me to edit the comment. I meant Nick's channel, the fat electrician, absolutely one of my favorite channels

[@rob_over_9000]

I really just want Nick to do a weekly show where all he does is talk about the news with his hilarious delivery and anti-government attitude

[@CCAFS617]

One of the training classes I had at Brookhaven National Laboratory we had to take for the Department of Energy. The guy teaching kept saying, radiation it's good for you, it's perfectly fine

[@darzog666]

The Fat Electrician is a real gem. Loads of great videos.

[@odorousobject8165]

"Injuries not service related" absolute peak US military

[@bigfoot_huntr2964]

Bro you are about to head down a rabbit hole of funny, whacky, and amazing history if you watch more of his stuff. Please do!

[@wesw9586]

TFE is a fantastic channel! Thanks for doing this.

[@michaelhinman1770]

TFE is hilarious, I am really glad you covered him. His channel is one of 3 that I will actually stop what I am doing to watch when he releases a new video.

[@ChurchNietzsche]

Thanks!

[@tfolsenuclear]

@@ChurchNietzsche Thank you very much!!

[@GHMYahooka]

"it depends on the direction" sir im no expert but im going to guess the direction was "up"

[@stevea9604]

There are actuarial tables that they used to figure out how many would be dead left to pay off…

[@dardoscorvo510]

Outside of your field, you definitely should react more to Nick's content, he is just a gem

[@spiraleye7822]

The depth in the movie Armageddon they had to drill to was 800 ft. Masterpiece of modern cinema! "No Nukes! No Nukes!"

[@stevea9604]

The VA has a radiation exposure rating that anyone exposed to radiation and gets cancer is rated at 100%

[@thelopen2604]

You should watch more of him. He's hilarious.

[@ericminton6084]

a friend of mine's dad was one of those soldiers that was at that test and developed cancer due to his exposure...

[@wishingb5859]

Love the Fat Electrician. Thank you for saving that he gets his science right. I had wondered.

[@RockinTheBassGuitar]

I live pretty close to the test site. I personally know many people who work there. We have many test wells to track contaminants in the water as well as fall out detection/sirins.

[@grantragsdell3576]

The nuclear engineer is reacting! Everybody get to a safe distance!

[@CallanElliott]

"Depends on how long it sustained the speed..." My brother in Christ, that manhole cover was going 150,000miles per second, it basically just teleported into space.

[@dariuszrutkowski420]

Quick correction the Airburst detonation is not the most dangerous because of the fireball but the shockwave. As the wave hits the ground it not only spreads outwards but also reflects off of the ground and the first part of the wave (the tip of the blast radious sphere) is reflected away from the ground and spreads outward like the rest of the shockwave. The two waves merge and become stronger (kinda like a tidal wave gets bigger when it goes around an island and curves aroud to the opposite side of the island and on the other side the two parts of wave drections crash into eachother and in that area the wave grows and gets more destructive. ) There is probably some animation on YT that shows how an airburst detonation works ...for those more visual learning people it will likely explain it better.

[@swagnut9864]

The true first man-made item to make it to space was the German V-2 rocket back in 1944. The Germans made up a test to see how high the rocket was able to go straight up, if my recollection serves correct the rocket made it to 175km (109mi) which is well above the established height for reaching space (100km or 62mi).

[@jehoiakimelidoronila5450]

The air-2 (air-intercept rocket, 2nd of its kind) "genie", has a *1.5 kiloton yield*

[@brim4799]

Nick (The Fat Electrician) is fantastic and you'll find ALL his stuff is well researched. You should do reactions to some of his other stuff. He has an earlier video on Plumb Bob as well I believe.

[@shariaguillon917]

You know it's something moving that fast if it survived leaving the atmospher it's probably the first thing that we have launched into interstellar space than at this point

[@splatninja9447]

Great friggin choice! The Fat Electrician is easily one of my very favorite channels. Also, a "clump" of bombers is called a wing.

[@Rob_Fordd]

Fun fact, Physicist Ted Taylor had a complete mental design for a 20lbs nuke, nicknamed "The Taylor Special". We know he probably wasn't lying because he was also the guy who created the 40lbs nuke that went into the Davey Crockett warhead, which is still the smallest ever made. He thought a 20 pounder would be to globally destabilizing so he never wrote a paper about it or made a schematic. He took the knowledge to his grave at age 79 in 2004. Gotta wonder when someone will figure out the puzzle he did decades ago.

[@Lucky9_9]

"Now that's not safe" A bit of an understatement 😂

[@shawnsanto3564]

You also check out his Davy Crockett video. He is a great story teller.

[@JaxMerrick]

Or his short on Project A119: When the US planned to nuke the moon.

[@shawnasbury7375]

I swear for 5 minutes, I thought I made a comment and just forgot, or someone stole my KZbin account because of your username.

[@joshdavis3743]

Bert the turtle never get hurt because Bert the turtle is very alert!

[@chrismaverick9828]

I learned what a "shake" was in nuclear jargon from Plainly Difficult's videos on nuclear accidents.

[@SBQDawn]

Just a side note concerning seismic equipment and it's sensitivity. A doz. yrs or so ago in a place called Black Thunder Mine in WY they had a blast accident. The relief Blaster , wanting to do a good job on his first Person in charge blast double loaded hundreds of drill holes with blasting agent (it's some serious stuff and is kind of a semi liquid like jelly) well the Blast went off it popped a HUGE boulder out of the ground it landed on the coal train tracks about a half mile from the blast area breaking all 4 sets of rail and it set off seismic equipment in Russia. They contacted our government asking what we were up to thinking we'd just broken the underground nuclear test agreement. we flew in representatives from Russia to WY to see what had happened to prove it was Just a blast accident. Yeah Kennecott Mining . Opps little embarrassing but still one hell of a laugh.

[@woodworkerroyer8497]

The "safety device" was most likely of the Russian K19 safety standard, so it going off like that was not only not worried about, but actually planned.

[@damonf6564]

The AIR-2 Genie, the nuke he they blew up over their heads was 1.5kt W25 nuclear warhead.

[@pop5678eye]

I always wondered in various documentaries and TV shows how the heck the cameraman is capable of showing somebody _else_ in extreme danger. Especially in older documentaries that equipment wasn't light either and the guy may just be hanging on to a ledge with one hand while filming with the other.

[@jaratt85]

The thing about that test is, it would've been a LOT lower than what any bomber would've been flying at.. even in the 50's the best bomber the Russians had was their copy of the B29 the TU4 or it's turboprop powered derivitives like the Tu-95. The service ceiling of those planes was 45,000ft. Testing at 18,500ft was to put it MUCH closer to people on purpose to try to asuage the fears of the people.

[@deth3021]

Should be a "flight, group, squadron, formation of bombers" I guess?

[@aegrisomnia]

So, the man-hole-cover nuke was basicly the largest calibre cartrige that was ever fired...

[@CallanElliott]

The US becoming the first country to put a manmade object to space by yeeting a fucking manhole cover as a result of a nuclear test is why I love America so much.

[@rustywater3219]

Injuries not service related... I've heard that a few times.

[@Mombasa2k3]

My Grandpa was 1 of those 18000 Atomic vets. In 53 at Yucca Flats. He got Parkinsons

[@aaronunterseher1627]

To be fair he said hes used to filming nukes from miles away 18500 feet is still miles away

[@mungelomwaangasikateyo376]

Us taxpayers: Where do you think our money goes in the military part of the budget? US military: Let's use the earth as a giant potato gun... for science.

[@jamcdonald120]

My favorite reaction channel reacting to my favorite US history channel? YES PLEASE!

[@christiankirkenes5922]

that manhole cover had 40 billion kg of kinetic energy

[@ΔΔΙΓ]

wdym by kg of energy

[@christiankirkenes5922]

@@ΔΔΙΓ I just used f=ma2 as a comparison to being shot by a gun

[@jimbstars]

6:20 “not necessarily come close”. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades … and nukes.

[@stephennelson4954]

Some free existential dread. I now know how first contact goes. We get served a lawsuit for damages done to another sentient planet due to this goofiness.

[@SupersuMC]

Yup.

[@Joshwism]

"There is a 99.99% chance that you are too" Well hello there mr 0.01%

[@AndreiShevtsov]

1 frame! 150Kmiles/hr. I'm dying. 😂😂😂

[@I_Stole_A_BTR-80]

"The Atomic Age - USA 1950s" by MajorSamm is a really good video displaying some of the footage from the troop trials (set to some good 50s music), and even looking on it now seems surreal. It's only about 2 minutes long, but it means you don't have to go round scouring the internet for obscure 50s government test footage. Also, it seems like most (if not all) of that test footage is in colour, so you get nifty colour shifts (only very partial though) whenever a nuke goes off instead of just a bright white light in black and white.

[@2leftfeet113]

"If they cared about the safety mechanism" this was prime we're not giving AF era. The government is the kid with the magnifying glass and the ants. The governments ability to care is removed at conception.

[@nbsmith100]

the way they had high speed cameras back then was by using a lot of cameras in series comboed with a precisely tuned spinning mirror and timer. so while there wasn't any individual camera that could go quite that fast they could get a bunch that went like 1/10th or 1/100th that speed and then set them to snap a pic in sequence that would be that fast. kind of the reverse of how scientists were able to "Capture" a packet of photons in flight on camera not too long ago.

[@Gwydion_Wolf]

"A Nuclear pig in a blanket.... that's different" ---- Damnit.. now i need to find the towels... i shouldn't have been drinking my pepsi while you were reacting to Fat Electrician ..... >_>

[@ScottLovenberg]

TFE is awesomesauce! Nick is also a real history buff and is working on his masters in history at the moment.

[@plotholedetective4166]

It was a Nuclear space rifle chambered in 2klb manhole.... Now we need to figure out how to aim it and rechamber it for the rods of god as an uno reverse just in case any other country decides to make a space weapon.

[@kylen7351]

The fat electrician logo is the Americas Warhead to Forehead

[@BoxFwog]

Omg you are a C&C nerd too? This channel just got 1000000x better from that alone 🙏

[@shawnmiller4781]

Just a bit of a correction. The Genie wasn’t was middle but a rocket. The difference is the A rocket like genie did not have a guidance system. So point and shoot and it flies until it explodes or runs out of fuel. Missiles have guidance systems that can steer the weapon

[@emilyrln]

"A lot of it was exposed by Kodak" I see what you did there 😂