Operation Cue (1955)

[@estebansanchezoeconomo6827]

note: this is a 1964 reissue, that's why it alerts of the fact that contemporary bombs are much more powerful, implying that the scientific investigations undertaken with the 30KT bomb are obsolete.

[@l8tbraker]

I don't know about a reissue, but this film made in 1955 was specifically about the 29 kiloton Apple-2 shot during the Operation Teapot test series. This was a year after the 15 megaton Castle Bravo test at Bikini Atoll.

[@xenolithus]

These classic BGM sounds so nice it's surreal...

[@markpointer2967]

I graduated in physics, and this is where I first developed an interest in the science behind the workings of fusion & fission devices. In our final year (mainly), we were able to choose our own modules to study, rather than following a set syllabus, which was great. Modules I chose included ‘Atomic & Particle Physics’, and ‘Intro to the Geo-Politics of the Science within National Defence’ (or very similar wording!), among others. And I was fascinated. After graduation, I became more deeply interested in the geo-political, social, cultural, etc etc etc aspects, as well as the raw science. I have since read many dozens of books, and watched hundreds of hours of film on the subject. Anyway, that *_very round-about, long-winded intro_* was simply a build-up to say that, of all the many hours of film I’ve watched, I would easily rank the footage of Operation Cue as the most creepy, scary, and sinister that I’ve ever seen. From the way the mannequins are dressed and arranged - treated almost as though they were human, - through to the ‘arty’, slanted camera shots of them all happily in place, the bizarrely fake-cheerful, jaunty, light music, through to the obliteration bought about when the device detonates.... If I had seen this as a child, I would have had nightmares for a long time (and I was barely ever prone to nightmares). Whether intentionally or not, they’ve done a very good job of making nuclear war look nightmarish, and absolutely terrifying.....

[@Dov_ben-Maccabee]

Worked at NNSS ( Nevada National Security Site ) for several years. The Apple 3 house still stands.. with several post-shot boarders.. birds and animals.. Atomic city with a commercial building with my family namesake as a 'Realty' business.

[@Nikolaii2571]

You can bet that the Soviet agents watched this coast to coast broadcast right along with us.

[@scootermom1791]

The Soviets were too busy running their own tests.

[@aloysiusbelisarius9992]

@@scootermom1791 Not to the point that they weren't paying attention to ours.

[@TheWpelt]

@@scootermom1791 Spying kept cost to the soviet taxpayer low.

[@PsychopathUltimate]

The part you're looking for is at 10:28

[@Geckobane]

I like the whole enchilada

[@rayjr62]

I wonder how many of the people in this film contracted cancer from exposure to radiation.

[@hibco3000]

All of them

[@themagus5906]

@14:00 Nothing like a good ol' cook-out to celebrate after a nuclear (ahem; atomic) bomb!

[@warehousetroll]

whoa. 11:10 never seen that perspective before, being inside and seeing the flash hit the blinds and set the blinds and curtains on fire instantly.

[@buzaldrin8086]

***** > Many of those that viewed the first test got sunburn! It did not lead to cancer as the fallout was in a different direction. Gosh, I didn't now that sunburn/skin cancer is caused by nuclear fallout! Guess I don't need to use sunscreen.

[@MrGordonLiddy]

Flash heat.

[@buzaldrin8086]

***** 5.0 Effects of Nuclear Explosions Scroll down to Section 5.6.1 Thermal Damage and Incendiary Effects nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq5.html

[@rodolfopalma4518]

The most vintage thing i ever seen.

[@microchook]

pretty much, John Wayne filmed allot of his movies near there, died of cancer. But he also was a chain smoker so... how knows.

[@fredharvey2720]

Those thermal burn marks on the white paint are impressive

[@dutchgoing]

The part where people are eating in the vicinity of the test is just the most cynical form of experimentation I have ever seen. Deeply creepy and chilling propaganda suggests that there might be some kind of normal life after a nuclear war.

[@basspig]

The problem with this test is that it doesn't take into account mass fires that would result in typical residential areas. Any forested areas would erupt in flame, quickly spreading to structures.

[@CoolJules10]

10:52 They Used That Scene In The Painting And In The Uploads of TAWOG

[@andrewwilliams8385]

Who’s here for Mr. Patton’s class

[@engine173351]

The dummy at 4:14 looks like Judge Reinhold from the side.

[@rudolphguarnacci197]

Nice to know I might have a second or two or more and know the killing blast is coming. Thanks

[@GenAdams]

Fallout 3

[@Dingwinkle]

kina satisfying to see the dust come off the buildings then see in explode

[@fuffoon]

I believe that the largest bomb still in US inventory is 25mt. As the accuracy of missles increased, the need for high megatonnage diminished. The Russian bomb test of 100mt was reduced to 50 out of reasons of sanity and not irradiating large portions of Russia or destroying the delivery airplane. Theoretically, there is no limit to the size of a multi-staged thermonuclear weapon. It is therefore feasable, but not advisable, to build a bomb large enough to destroy the human race.

[@QAKVIK]

It was called The Tzar/Czar Bomba. Yes, they reduced its yield to 50 Megatons AND got a bonus 7 Megatons - YIKES !! The mushroom cloud topped out around 40,000 feet/1.333,3 metres. The Shock Wave went around The Earth 🌍 3 times. Anyone within 100km/62miles of ground zero 0⃣ would have suffered 3rd degree 🔥 burns from the Gamma radiation, etc. Help Medic!! SORRY - ALL DEAD. "The Living Would Envy The Dead " - Nikita Khrushchev 1961

[@rampking1]

@professorcurtis yes, switched to the theory of "mutual assured destruction"

[@pschroeter1]

I think a lot of this footage from the test shows up in World War III movies like The Day After. Boy that narrator sure sounds familiar.

[@mwbright]

When that nuke goes off, she's going to bake some nice cakes and pies for everybody.

[@hootinouts]

They could have cooked that roast beef to perfection if they calculated the exact distance to place it prior to the detonation. BTW, the pretty music goes so well with nuclear explosions. Who thought of this?

[@nyjazzman]

How likely would be it be that multiple bonbs (10,20,30?) would be used? I think in most places, even if you survived the initial blast(s)would you really want to try to live your life among the devastation?

[@silverbladeTE]

and that test was a load of lies 1) thermonuclear weapons have much greater heat pulse effects than fission weapons, especially in the megaton range 2) real cities have LOTS of buildings etc, complex geometry, where as deserts, lagoons, beaches just reflect lot of the heat back up. cars, trucks etc are heated red hot and blown through buildings, and the fuel tanks ignite and explode as the fuel vapourizes in the heat so after the blast passes, everything burns, city goes up in a firestorm

[@lukek4851]

smartass, it was 1955, you wrote it much longer, look at it 1955, but 2015

[@microchook]

They did make a 100MT bomb and it could of gone to 1000mt in theory, but there are none of these in service, too large to deploy and to expensive to make. Russian Nuclear weapons in service.... eh, look it up on wiki for yourself. They very similar to US. since the SALT and NPT, have limited all nations with nuclear weapons number and sizes. They needed the big megaton weapons as the delivery systems were not accurate. But since ICBM's have been developed this has been less of a priority.

[@rapman5363]

I saw in another documentary that the actual mannequins used in these tests were returned to service after “cleaning” and were in department stores all across the country

[@Raptorman0909]

Yeah, I think that highly unlikely.

[@dominicseanmccann6300]

Highly likely I'm afraid. Look what they did to human beings. Saw the same film. Not the melted ones, obviously! 😆

[@xclandestinex33]

I particularly remember some roast beef

[@scarakus]

Only 24 hours before, they were cows in a makeshift pen, 1 mile from ground zero..

[@stevenmerlock9971]

There were live pigs and sheep tested = bacon and chops

[@hootinouts]

LOL, she got to witness unimaginable power unleashed by a single bomb and the roast beef is particularly remembered. Give me a break.

[@Suojeluninja]

People seem to forget that the effect of nuclear weapons decreases exponentially as distance and time increases. Sure theres an area where its impossible to survive. But the are where you could survive with proper counter measures is much much larger.

[@nicholasmaude6906]

One thing that annoys me about this film is the sappy violin music in the background.

[@ole9421]

Here's a twisted observation. You all remember the story of the 3 little pigs and how the big bad wolf would huff and puff and blow their houses down? And how, in the childrens story and this atomic test film, the building materials seem to be overly emphasized. And why are pigs used as the characters? Perhaps because they are a good analogy to humans. Heh, heh... Please don't read too much into this. Just an odd thought that fluttered through my mind.

[@NickTasy]

What causes all that smoke/dust to occur before the shockwave hits seconds later? Is it the intense light from the blast? If so, how does that create the smoke/dust to rise from the buildings?

[@chupachups6098]

it's microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, x and Gamma rays. those burn the surfaces that release that little smoke prior to the big blast. Counting the time elapsed from the burn and the blast you may calculate the ground zero distance. something as half mile away...

[@hootinouts]

@@chupachups6098 I agree. Man it sure is creepy

[@Raptorman0909]

Yes, radiant energy, not nuclear radiation by electromagnetic radiation, the heat from a nuke, will cause the top layer of dirt and soil to gain enough energy to jump off the ground. Some of the dirt will have a little moisture and as that flashes to steam it will tend to launch dirt particles. There may also be ionization effects that repel particles of dirt electrostatically. There are instances of dirt particles on the Moon forming low clouds of dust even though there is no atmosphere, or very little atmosphere, due to heating by the Sun.

[@dontdomarmalade]

Bethesda could of used this for fallout 4 adverts

[@aloysiusbelisarius9992]

Being that there are many details of the dynamics of nuclear weapons that have been revealed or corrected over the past 68 years, this should be an opportune time to correct terminology shown in 0:16. Before I do, I have to admit to having adhered to this belief, because it was this sort of info that was given to the public when I was a child. Further study of nuclear-weapon history has made me all the wiser. The difference between "atomic" and "hydrogen" (or, in more precise terms, "fission" and "fusion") is *not* actually in the amount of explosive power a given weapon yields. It is in the type of reaction said weapon produces. On that premise, the early "hydrogen bombs" were not true hydrogen bombs, but instead super-boosted fission bombs. Every so-called "hydrogen bomb" detonated from 1952 through 1954 generated the bulk of their respective yields from *fission,* not fusion. It is true that the fusion components of these bombs went up to the megaton range, but it is also true that smaller hydrogen bombs generated yields only in kiloton range, by design (e.g., Storax-Sedan, 104kt, 2/3 fusion). A hydrogen bomb is not a hydrogen bomb unless more than half of its total explosive yield comes from fusion. More than half the energy given by the early thermonukes (the only truly accurate terminology to describe these weapons) came from sudden *fission* of the uranium or plutonium components within...and there was quite a lot of that used in these bombs, not merely in the initial trigger. To ensure that the fusion reaction would not prematurely fizzle out, they needed a fully-enclosed casing, a "tamper," made of very heavy material dense enough to deflect escaping neutrons back into the reaction so it would go full-burn. The material they first chose was natural (or depleted) uranium, which could not be used as a fuel for a fission bomb. What they failed to realize was that, once acted upon by a large-enough force, such as a fusion reaction, depleted uranium can, and *does,* undergo full-fledged fission...and as much uranium as was used to encase the fusion cores of thermonukes in the first couple years, that fission would contribute multiple megatons of explosive energy (and corresponding fallout powerful enough to render a whole area uninhabitable). True hydrogen bombs did not come to be in the United States until 1956, with the debut of Redwing-Zuni. By that time, and under pressure from the government, scientists had to come up with something else to serve as the fusion tamper. They came up with lead, which is much lighter than uranium but still dense enough to deflect neutrons. As a consequence, the majority of energy from that test came from fusion, which actually lived up to the original promotions of thermonukes that Edward Teller and others with him used to push for the development of these weapons: Larger bang for the buck, with a small fraction of radioactive pollutants produced (the latter of which was *not* realized due to the use of uranium as a tamper material). This discovery spread to other nuclear powers as well; Russia's Tsar Bomba (the actual test bomb) had one and only one difference from its original 100-MT design: The use of lead in between the fusion layers as opposed to uranium originally called for. That was what made all the difference in that bomb, and why Russia was not rendered uninhabitable by its own government. Some will argue that the conversion to solid fusion fuels were contributors to those very high yields. It is true that lithium-deuteride provides a stronger reaction while at the same time reducing the bomb's overall size for weapon use...but the real big player was the uranium. Example, Castle Bravo, the most powerful nuclear explosion the U.S. ever conducted: 5 megatons of that explosion came from its lithium-deuteride core, which is a very significant increase from the liquid deuterium used in Ivy Mike (which came to only about 2.7 megatons of the total 10.6-megaton blast from that test). The other 10 of the 15 megatons Castle-Bravo yielded came from its uranium casing, as well as the trigger in the very core of the device which underwent even more thorough fission once the fusion reaction acted upon it. Bottom line: It's what produces most of the yield, *not* the yield itself, that makes the difference between an "atomic" bomb and a "hydrogen" bomb.

[@microchook]

Because they banned open air testing the 1960's. current nuclear bombs arn't that massive now, between 3-5mt.

[@skinaldo69er]

Why paint the windows panes???

[@pugsareawsome5202]

to see where the glass scatters also so it's easier to see when cleanup happens later

[@CharlieBo1985]

They ate roast beef that was cooked by a nuclear explosion... Is that safe?

[@cautionthisissparta]

O_o i found that mesmerizing

[@microchook]

depends on wind current. If its up wind fallout would be minimal.

[@sski]

Ahhh. Armageddon never looked so pleasant.

[@larsisco]

Classic

[@sojutime]

No mention of radiation?

[@ThePaintballgun]

+sojutime 8:45

[@SonichuFan]

08:14 According to Indiana Jones you're food would be fine even if it flew across the desert.

[@stevenmerlock9971]

Ask “The old man in a cave” about foodstuffs

[@tomblah]

Underrated comment!

[@marmaladekamikaze]

@professorcurtis Yes there is, The Swiss know this. & I will personally stand in the open 20km away from a 100 kt weapon. I doubt I'd even get flash blindness from this distance. Most Nuclear weapons are closer to a yield of 500 KT nowadays though, W87 & W88s Especially Soviet weapons which are around 500 KT, but that doesn't mean I'd have to stand 5 times further away, I'd stand 30km away from a 500 KT event without any ill effects as long as I'm upwind.

[@visionsofed9459]

What about the Radiation?

[@scootermom1791]

Did they not know that radiation was dangerous then?

[@hugglescake]

True microwave food.

[@HappyFlapps]

Gamma ray food

[@microchook]

since they banned open air testing in the 60's, I think they might of cared a bit.

[@jimwalsh2001]

Can someone explain the "cube root scaling law" described early on... 1:05

[@walrusesareawesome7631]

If you have a square with one foot on each side, then doubling the sides results in an area 4 times as big, because 1^2=1, but 2^2=4. When making a square twice as big, you actually need the sides to be the square root of 2. They use the same principle here, but with spheres and their radius instead of squares and their side lengths

[@FireTacoProductions]

they should have put a guy in a lead lined fridge.

[@freddiestubblefield8526]

☝️👁❤

[@HappyFlapps]

I can't believe we're still doing these open air tests! And why does everyone's clothes look so weird?

[@nicholasmaude6906]

You realise that this was filmed in 1955?

[@KillerHelix]

@kforcool I really hope you were intentionally being wrong there.

[@drumdude46]

yeah, place is safe only 24 hrs. after a 30 Kiloton Blast.......... Lol!

[@rickyojeda7554]

well no nuketown fanboys know about this

[@engine173351]

@FireTacoProductions Just like Indiana Jones.

[@jupiterlove76]

Why were bombs even built in the first place as if guns weren't enough?

[@buzaldrin8086]

Aerial bombs dropped by heavier than air aircraft have been used since before WW1.

[@BARRIEMOREBARLOW]

@visionsofed The radiation is the other people's problem. Even if it's our people.

[@crazypete3]

I think they banned it for ethical reasons like fear of war and too much power, not the atmosphere.

[@buckhorncortez]

Then you weren't around in the 1950s when people all over the United States were concerned with strontium 90 in milk and other foods.

[@Hybridx86]

You know that is big problem.

[@FailDrummer]

@Joycell22 Yea :D

[@crazypete3]

Very

[@TinyArapaho]

They, they ate the food?!?!

[@marmaladekamikaze]

@Sockerfader And it torments me, Sure there is propaganda on both sides but you should know that The Tsar Bomba was never weaponized. Furthermore I doubt America would have survived a surprise nuclear strike, but a surprise strike would never happen as America has Earlier warning radar. What I do fear however is that most Americans would not know what to do afterwards.

[@microchook]

probably did, as it was also propaganda to show that the US could function as a nation even after a nuclear exchange.

[@Trebuchet1914]

how can i suvivor whit a bomb of 1000k ??

[@Tstorms]

Pegasus...

[@jim7627]

Who's the dame?

[@defendukraine181]

That math don't add up. Lol

[@1stLtDavis]

After 24 hours?....that's just enough time for all of the fallout to hit the ground lmfao. Poor bastards.

[@joshbarron3244]

gg humans. my turn

[@southernclassik]

Fallout 3

[@crazypete3]

How come you never see videos of modern nuclear bombs, it's been 57 years I want to see a 2012 bomb.

[@DannyCD]

yeah just what we all need, more radiation in the atmosphere

[@uberkloden]

Putin can do this to Ukraine

[@8800081]

They shouldn't have girls narrating this stuff

[@isslepoo]

why not babe

[@infmeister5855]

What about the cameras? They didn't even move.

[@u171098atgmail]

a.k.a. 'operation ah-h-h shit!', the sad part is we nuked ourselves (not the russians) as 'we' set off bombs weekly in the nevada desert thru the fifties and early sixties lovingly referring to them as 'atomic parties' from nearby fabulous Las Vegas. about 315 bombs in total.. you wonder why there is an 'epidemic' of blood cancers today, I don't? both my parents came of age during these blasts and both died of 'rare' cancers. thanks for protecting us and keeping us 'safe' congressional, military, industrial complex..I know, I know it's just about the money..