It doesn't get much more deadly than this... | (The Demon Core)

[@swhaw]

Radiation is a horrible way to go, the story of Hisasi Ouchi goes further into detail since he was kept alive for over 80 days as he decomposed while still conscious. Like it or not the time before modern safety standards were like the wild west. Scientists dying all the time from the materials they work with, poison, radiation, etc. Curie died due to her research and its a prime example, Elizabeth Fleischman the pioneer of X-ray radiology, and of course Daghlian and Slotin, my interests are more physics based if you can't tell, there are plenty who died due to engineering experimentation (like planes, balloons, machines, etc) and Biological science (epidemiology and even ornithology, I do know of an ornithologist who died due to arsenic poisoning from preserved birds which is a wild way to go). The best thing to come of that time is the standards to which we know need to be held to be safe. Thanks to Slotin and Daghlian we know a lot about the criticality of Plutonium and sadly while that also leads to more efficient and deadly bombs it also leads to breakthroughs in safety when handling nuclear material. Though I am amazing Feynman or Fermi or any of the other more senior physicists didn't put a stop to that screwdriver shit is beyond me. He was warned even, they knew people would die and only gave a warning. I recommend the Goiania incident or any story of the nuclear boyscout (cant remember his name, kid accumulated hundreds of smoke detectors and watch hands painted with radium to extract the nuclear materials and make a reactor in his back shed, again wild shit.). But stories like those and Anatoli Bugorski, the Lia radiological accident, and the Hanoi incident are more human looks at tragedies that more affected the every day person and not a physicist making a nuke, though Hanoi and the Bugorski story were still set in labs with particle accelerators.

[@apexer6]

wow you know alot about this topic. I would love to cover some of those cases that you mentioned. Thank you for chiming in, I love this topic and would like to learn more about this. I was wondering about the screwdriver because it seemed so reckless but I had no idea HE WAS WARNED. that is insane because I was from the perspective of that maybe he did know any better. Well said man, I will try and cover more topics like this in the future.

[@swhaw]

​@@apexer6 Feynman and Fermi both warned Slotin, Feynman warned him on multiple occasions and Fermi was quoted in the video as saying to Slotin, "Keep doing that experiment and you will be dead in a year." As the video said, he was literally a Nuclear Cowboy, extremely reckless. Even though most of the scientists I listed in my last comment died due to their experiments, it was because they were pioneers in their fields and setting foot where nobody has at the time, Slotin was the only one who was so egregiously reckless doing an honestly simple test that has been done many times before in demonstrating to a room full of observers. He was a brilliant scientist, but had stubborn balls of steel that eventually killed him. Daghlian was just unlucky, his experiment was done correctly and he backed off before it went critical and his hand slipped as he was going to remove the last brick and disassemble the setup, though one could argue that if he wasn't alone it might not have happened but his hand slipped, its not like another person could have cleared the distance to catch the brick in the 4 or 5 inches it had to fall. But yeah I find the history and subject matter fascinating, mostly due to a hyperfixation on physics. Fr it is like our real life magic system but its more based around elements of and how the universe works and less based on spirituality and mystic forces. Our mystic forces are magnetism, electricity, gravity, etc. I mean Uranium is like a cursed object that kills those who get close to it (based on different variables) and we can harness that force to create untold destruction or harness it to power cities. It is why magic users are always seen as academics and such and its always seen was something to research or study. I wish schools in the US could teach more about these disasters, as well as instill a better understanding and interest in the topic. Especially with how much misinformation goes around, which is a huge problem for nuclear power because its a very niche knowledge set that you'd really have to have an interest in to understand, my school hardly taught anything about radiation, and my teacher was staunchly against nuclear power and looking back heavily instilled her bias into her teaching. I mean its a fundamental function of the universe, everything decays until they reach a stable point, Uranium eventually settles as lead. That is core knowledge that should be taught in schools, it was the reading of lead 206 from Uranium decay in zircon crystals that allowed Clair Patterson to determine the age of the Earth in the 50s and it is still the estimated age we use today because we haven't found a more accurate system. The closest we can get is between 4.55 and 4.62 billion years. But I could go on, I find it fascinating and all of this not mentioned as much as it should be. I have no problem with religion and faith even as more an athiest or agnostic, however I hold such a strong opinion, moreso now because of today's political climate and habit of science denial. That's also why I'll say sorry for the wall of text, I spent the Saturday debunking conspiracy theories and trying not to start a fire as one of my friends tried to convince me of young Earth creationism. So science literacy needs to spread. I'll leave it there because I am on new ADHD meds and it shows, I am just now realizing how long this shit is lmao, loved the vid tho, even if yall making reactions it still spreads science literacy so I'll try to tune in when I can, especially since you are into it lol.

[@bdubbed517]

0:00-0:05 idk