That Time a Science Fiction Writer Accidentally Almost Revealed the Manhattan Project

[@zxjim]

There was a wartime cartoon, Private Snafu, which was used to teach soldiers “don’t do that”. One episode had him ignoring security and blabbing about this new ‘superbomb’ which could destroy entire islands. Censors blocked it from release, for reasons obvious to us now, but back then it was entirely a coincidence. The animators has no idea about the Atomic Bomb project, they had made up the whole thing.

[@firearmsstudent]

Yay first amendment

[@zxjim]

@@firearmsstudent The cartoons were commissioned by the U.S. Military for distribution to military personnel only (the Snafu cartoons has suggestive adult content), so the First Amendment doesn't apply. The First Amendment does apply NOW, and you can find the Snafu cartoons on KZbin, including that particular one.

[@PvblivsAelivs]

Of course, if enemy powers had access to the cartoons actually released, the _absence_ of a cartoon about a "super bomb" might have tipped them off. It is something predictable, expected to be there. Making powerful bombs is something militaries do.

[@jeromebarry1741]

@@zxjim Ha! if you think the First Amendment does apply now, you obviously don't understand that when facebook and twitter cooperate with governmental demands about silencing people who speak words contrary to whatever Dr.Fauci says today they are directly implementing the government will to void the 1st amendment. By court decision in the past, a private company doing the government's dirty work is the government.

[@NinjaNFriendsGaming]

@@jeromebarry1741 I know this is probably a big shocker to you, but those are private forums, owned by private companies. It's the same as a corner store or restaurant being able to refuse service. If you don't like how they run then start a competitor, that's the American way. Well it used to be, now the American way is to cry about what you don't like on social media and KZbin comments

[@n1gak]

In one of his books, Feynman describes buying a direct train ticket to Los Alamos, rather than taking a circuitous route, as all the other scientists had been instructed to do. The clerk at the train station remarked, "Oh -- So all that scientific equipment that's been shipped out for the last few weeks is for you?"

[@jorgelotr3752]

And that's called "following one's own procedures".

[@Globovoyeur]

Heh. Reminds me of the four years I spent in the Air Force. I was instructed very seriously to tell no one where I was assigned, and I didn't. But in a few weeks I began getting junk mail there...

[@FitzChivalryFarseer2]

If you wanna see something silly/stupid misspell your name on purpose on anything not to important.... you'll get some mail with that eventually

[@alexs5814]

I'm wheezing of laughter!!!! this was hilarious!!!

[@jorgelotr3752]

@@FitzChivalryFarseer2 the worst thing in my case is that I don't have to...

[@bbirda1287]

John Campbell and the Golden Age of Science Fiction is an Astounding story. Heinlein, Hubbard, Asimov, their involvement with the military and relationships with each other, make a very fascinating book.

[@CFG-eb3my]

Hubbard - golden age hack

[@leehelck4606]

how the hell you decided to include Hubbard in with greats such as Heinlein and Asimov is the truly astounding story.

[@bbirda1287]

@@leehelck4606 They were pals and wrote at the same time. Pals at first. Hubbard did write some wild space opera type stuff, like wild.

[@bbirda1287]

@@leehelck4606 Read the book, it's Astounding (see what I did there)

[@leehelck4606]

@@bbirda1287 i once tried to read a Hubbard novel. i didn't get past the second chapter. utter trash. just like his fictional and false "religion".

[@TheShoemakerb1]

Something like this happened to the folks at WB cartoons. They produced animated training films during WWII for the army featuring "Private Snafu." In one they showed Snafu inadvertently telling about the government's new "secret weapon" within earshot of enemy spies, illustrating the secret weapon on screen as a bomb that could wipe out a whole city. When the Army found out, they stopped the cartoon's release, because it was too close to their real secret weapon, the atomic bomb!

[@R32R38]

When Dr. Strangelove came out in 1963 the Air Force thought there had been a security breach because the movie's depiction of the B52 bomber's cockpit was quite close to the highly classified actual cockpit.

[@Paladin1873]

I was told just the opposite by one former B-52 navigator I knew. Regardless, the movie remained a SAC favorite for years. A friend of mine who served as a missile launch officer did tell me that the launch sequence depicted in another movie (I forget which one, but I think it was Damnation Alley) was so accurate that SAC changed its procedures. How accurate or true such stories are is anybody's guess, but they do make for fun conversation.

[@stevetheduck1425]

There is an Avro Vulcan's cockpit in the film 'Thunderball' but so little can be seen. The layout of the seats and the shape of the control columns is correct, though.

[@dongiovanni4331]

IIRC there was a partial picture of a b52 cockpit, which the filmmaker used to extrapolate the rest

[@hokutoulrik7345]

@@Paladin1873 might have been the original WarGames movie. I think that scene where they were doing the drill was pretty accurate up to the point of the commander not turning the key and his subordinate pulling a gun on him

[@Paladin1873]

@@hokutoulrik7345 A good friend of mine was a Minuteman launch officer when War Games was released and he was royally pissed by that scene, not because of any authenticity in the launch sequence, but because of the notion that any launch officer would refuse to fire his missiles. As he put it, "Everyone you ever loved has just been killed and you're just going to sit there and do nothing? Bullshi--, you're going to kill the enemy!" I can't speak to how accurate the launch procedures were portrayed, but I shared his sentiment.

[@billd.iniowa2263]

Reminds me of the crossword puzzle that appeared in a newspaper in England shortly before D-Day. Completely by chance within the answers were the code names for some of the beaches to be assaulted. And even the name of the entire operation: Overlord. It caused quite a stir in the HQ of the top brass, and they hauled in the maker of the puzzle for questioning. Seems his explanations were satisfactory and the plans hadnt been leaked. But it was quite the coincidence.

[@tdm17mn]

Didn’t he make a video on that story too?

[@wwoods66]

Though inadvertent, it may not have been "completely by chance." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Day_Daily_Telegraph_crossword_security_alarm

[@jbrisby]

I do crosswords regularly, and believe me they are endless sources of eerie coincidences. For instance, the time two puzzles, by two creators, released in the same week, both contained the word 'treeline'. What are the odds of that? Dunno, but it happens constantly.

[@InquisMalleus]

@@tdm17mn I'm not sure, but I was going to ask for one.

[@Kannot2023]

By chance author of crosswords, worked at a school near a military camp, and heard the words from the schoolboys

[@awileksand]

Okey, so when he got investigated and interrogated, he knew for a fact that he was on to something. Therefore it was actually the FBI that spilled the beans.

[@commandervile394]

As usual, FBI imcompetence was rampant even back then, but as expected from the brainchild of a cross-dresser.

[@lakodamon]

@@commandervile394 Those frilly pink underthings weren't his! They were someone elses. Yeah. Some other guy. That guy he used to hang around with. That's him. Nothing suss.

[@maskofthedragon]

Glow-in-the-darks are dumb as Hell

[@changer_of_ways_999]

That's the government for you

[@ariavachier-lagravech.6910]

@@maskofthedragon is that a motherfucking Terry reference???

[@Ashannon888]

Anyone else slightly reassured that Oppenheimer, when he heard of the potential of the atmosphere igniting, actually had the one who had the theory look into it? I mean he could have just ignored it and kept going.

[@DonVigaDeFierro]

It would have been worth to look into it, since a scientist told him with the explanation to back it up, not just an average Joe with an educated guess. Plus, I figured he rationalized that igniting the atmosphere would be... detrimental... to the US war effort.

[@iitzfizz]

@@DonVigaDeFierro detrimental...yes

[@ThePaulv12]

They were heady times; no one knew what exactly was going to happen. Converse to the atmosphere igniting, Enrico Fermi just hours before the first nuclear detonation said he doubted it (fission that could be used as a weapon) would work I heard in an excellent doco called Uranium - Twisting The Dragons Tail. I think Fermi's misgivings were that the uranium would become sub critical and be a fizzer.

[@TonkarzOfSolSystem]

Oppenheimer actually cared about the potential major consequences of what they were doing, and was later crucified for it by paranoid communist hunters in the government.

[@Hunter-lm7wo]

and for further reassurance, Kyle hill did a video about it. the scientists found that you would need such a huge explosion that while not said in the video, i would guess the only potential way to maybe do it would be a very large anti-matter bomb.

[@RCAvhstape]

Tom Clancy said that back in the 80s after his books Red Storm Rising and The Hunt for Red October were published, he got a visit from some FBI types who asked him where he was getting all his technical information about submarines and weapons from, and he pointed to his bookshelf and piles of Aviation Week and Space Technology magazines and stuff.

[@drboze6781]

In "The World Set Free" the atom bombs were very strange. Bombers would light a fuse, drop the bomb from their biplane, and the bomb went off not with a bang, but instead heated the surrounding area to melting temperature. In essence, it would be more like multiple lava flows than simple blast destruction.

[@Kittsuera]

thermal atomic bomb?

[@Ebani]

All atomic bombs do that to some degree, the photons emitted are so high energy they literally vaporize whatever is near the impact blast, including ppl, which is why only their "shadows" are left imprinted on the wall.

[@paddington1670]

melta bomb

[@stdesy]

I’d imagine that you could make something like this but it would be quite large and contaminate huge areas in the process. Essentially a melting down reactor you toss out of an aeroplane

[@walterfechter8080]

H.G. Wells understood what a manmade capture of the sun could do to humans and objects on this planet.

[@ghyslainabel]

In related subjects, Tom Clancy was also investigated because he used public information about the military and some educated guesses in his novels.

[@ObadiahtheSlim]

Dr. Strangelove also was a little too close to comfort in it's accurate depiction of the, then classified, B-52's cockpit. Although that was just a matter of taking a B-29's cockpit and making a few educated guesses

[@markotrieste]

@@ObadiahtheSlim say gauges x 8 :-)

[@bxdanny]

Not to mention the NY Times crossword-puzzle author who included names like "Omaha" and "Overlord" in crosswords shortly before D-Day. Although that was just names, not technology.

[@bateman2112]

That's the kind of thing an undercover FBI agent would want. You're not an undercover FBI agent are you? You have to tell me if I ask, it's in all the movies so it has to be true...

[@ghyslainabel]

@@bxdanny that one was an unintentional leak. Soldiers talked about the mission outside the base, students did hear strange words, told those words to their professor who used them in the crosswords.

[@marsgal42]

The sort of thing that security people lose sleep over. It's sometimes far too easy for somebody to read things, hear things, put two and two together and figure out something that was supposed to be secret.

[@eroraf8637]

Odd strategy, basing your security protocols on the assumption that you’re the only inquisitive, informed, intelligent people. How is one supposed to account for the reality of the curious layperson?

[@christopherreed4723]

Simple...you can't. You try, within the bounds set by your legal system, to close as many doors as possible. You hope you have someone on your staff who can think outside the box, like realizing the implications of a whole bunch of top nuclear physicists relocating to a godforsaken corner of New Mexico all at the same time. Someone really should have thought of setting up forwarding addresses. But, in many ways, US security and counterintelligence were starting with a playbook full of blank pages. We simply hadn't had to think that way before, not in living memory at least. The USSR had an easier time of it. Not only had internal security and counterintelligence been a fundamental part of the government since Tsarist times, but their legal system made creating "closed cities" such as Gorky (aka Nizhny Novgorod) and others possible. Censorship was so heavy that, iirc, it was common for people living in these areas to drop letters into the mail with the envelopes unsealed. This saved the censors the effort of unsealing them (minor concern) and saved the recipient from becoming frightened when they inevitably realized that all of the mail from their friend/relative was being opened and re-sealed (major concern). Closed cities also used forwarding addresses located in other, open, cities and identified by specific PO box numbers. The Soviet system allowed measures like that, and it often *still* wasn't enough to prevent major leaks.

[@plaidmoon5642]

My grandmother was in the WACs (Women's Army Corps) during World War 2 and was stationed at Oak Ridge as a secretary. My mother as a teenager was living with relatives at the time but made a trip to Oak Ridge to see her mother in either 1943 or 1944. After showing my Mom around the site, my grandmother and a few others asked my Mom what she thought they were doing there. Dangerous question! My Mom thought about it for a moment and said that there were so many scientists working there. She also mentioned that there used to be science fiction stories about atomic bombs but there hadn't been any during the war, so she guessed that they were working on some kind of nuclear weapon. Everybody's jaws dropped. They quickly swore her to secrecy and made her promise to NEVER mention it to anyone.

[@bobbyfeet2240]

SciFi often makes eerily accurate predictions. That's one of it's main things. It it also often makes predictions that are hilariously wrong a lot. Probably more often, tbh. It's almost better to ignore the security-risky good guesses as getting interested in them may reveal more than pretending like there's nothing there.

[@cripplious]

Private Snafu had an episode that was censored for decades because it came so close to describing the a-bomb.

[@Foolish188]

Isaac Asimov on learning that one of his Professors was leaving the University, asked if he was going to work on the Atom Bomb. Caused some problems for Asimov.

[@tomcombe4813]

Although los alamos was supposed to be a secret, it really wasn't a well kept at all. Even the train drivers nearby knew about it because there were all these trains full of materials and post going to what was supposedly the middle of the desert.

[@garretth8224]

They only needed to keep its purpose secret, not the location. Look at area 51 as an example.

[@tomcombe4813]

@@garretth8224 this video is evidence they didn't do that very well either

[@amandajones661]

This is exactly why I tell people that if something is going on in the military, eventually it will come out.

[@sopcannon]

still want too know where stealth tech came from.

[@Redmenace96]

And also why I don't believe alien bodies were found in Roswell, shipped to Ohio (Wright-Patterson AF base?), and then to Area 51. Just too many people and too many moving parts. Unless they lined up all the personnel who drove trucks, guarded the remains, flew the planes, wrote the orders, autopsied the bodies, built the hyperbaric chambers, etc- and shot them? It doesn't make sense. There would still be evidence of a mass grave, and then you also have to worry about the 10 people you had on machine gun duty! Ha, ha!

[@AndrewAMartin]

@@Redmenace96 That's why the moon landing conspiracies fall flat -- there's no way that the hundreds of thousands of people involved could have kept that secret.

[@DutchDread]

Imagine writing a story about a weapon that will ignite the atmosphere of the planet itself and then having the FBI show up at your door going "how do you know what we're building!?" Sure he slept well that night.

[@horrormike]

The great John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding, also wrote the classic "WHO GOES THERE?" adapted twice as John Carpenter's THE THING and THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD.

[@MrRezRising]

Thank God Carpenter saw the 50's film first. That story reads like a 9th grader wrote it. 🤮

[@johnhowells9751]

@@MrRezRising day:

[@horrormike]

Sure. sport, that's why it's been made into 3 films. Carpenter based his film on Campbell's novella, not the 1950s film. You should educate yourself before making silly comments.

[@MrRezRising]

@@horrormike Maybe you should lighten up. You'll live longer. The novella is crap, the 50s film was crap, and the 2011 film was crap. JC was the only one to do something worthwhile with the material.

[@horrormike]

@@MrRezRising ahaha you're the one that sounds butthurt. Once again, Carpenter loved Campbell's novella and adapted the story closely for The Thing. The Thing from Another World was nothing like the novella. Your ignorance is...sad.

[@PedroConejo1939]

Fascinating, especially with the real security breaches at the end.

[@MadTheDJ]

The movie adaptation for The Hunt For Red October had a similar problem in the design of its nuclear sub bridge sets. Even though the designers worked a lot from their imaginations and possibly older reference material, the production was told by the DoD to heavily change the look of the bridges because they were too close to actual submarine layouts and technical details. Just goes to show that creative minds can come up with very realistic details just by using common sense, logic and a little imagination.

[@onemooreperson13]

Every time you said the character's name, all I heard was "ya boi" lol

[@X150t]

Same. Hearing a Brit say it too makes it so much funnier

[@cathyd74]

Same!

[@SLashafrass]

I was just looking for someone else that noticed

[@uggligr]

I wrote a book, "Project Zeus", named after the Nike missile interceptor, about accumulations of the nuclear explosive uranium 234 (that's two thirty FOUR) that can be found in nature. Every last bit of it was on the open internet for anybody to find or in published books such as "The Secret History of the Atomic Bomb" by Anthony Cave Brown (Simon, you should read this). To defend against terrorist attack I contacted any law enforcement agency whose jurisdiction contained this material, including the FBI. I told the agent, in Loud Voice, "This is your chance to make me SHUT UP!!' And he said, "No, we're not going to do anything like that." I guess the FBI learned it's lesson from this. If you figure this out, then you should be easily able to find where this material is located. When you do, contact the Sheriff of the county it's in and have him lock it down.

[@raheeeg]

I would pay so much money to watch the transition between this Simon and business blaze Simon

[@WTH1812]

DEADLINE "Detonation and Assembly 12. 16. As stated in Chapter II, it is impossible to prevent a chain reaction from occurring when the size exceeds the critical size." ... The full story can be found in the excellent the anthology series "Isaac Asimov presents The Great SF Stories [volume] 6 (1944)" edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H Greenberg. Beginning in 1939 this series goes year-by-year through the top science fiction stories of the year with a separate book each year. It is a wonderful collection if you can find it anywhere, like my library. Always good to get a bit of the backstory 😎

[@charlessmith6412]

You might also want to look up “Solution Unsatisfactory” by Robert Heinlein written in about 1941. Before the Manhattan Project was authorized by President Roosevelt, Heinlein predicted it in his story, as well as some other aspects of a nuclear weapon. As a result he was visited by the FBI (it might have been a different agency).

[@willc3900]

He literally mentions that book in this video. Did you watch the whole thing?

[@SorendeSelbyBowen]

@@willc3900 A little correction: "Solution Unsatisfactory" was a short story (published in Astounding), not a book.

[@charlessmith6412]

@@willc3900 Actually, that was a short story not a book. Although I did watch the "whole thing" through to completion, I somehow missed the reference to Heinlein. Probably the fact that I live in an active household with a lot of distractions.

[@WasabiSniffer]

I’m reminded of the relatively more recent Space Force, when a competing space agency broadcast a rocket launch. The design matched Space Force’s and a witch-hunt was underway. Spoilers, it was a good design and the competitors just coincidentally came to the same end.

[@HahnJames]

Military secrets are the most fleeting secrets of all.

[@stevetheduck1425]

There was an article about 'cooking with radio' in a British magazine before WWII, during WWII a lot of effort went into finding and destroying all of the magazines, as it described how to generate microwavelength radio frequencies, a clue to making the cavity magnetron, a device being used in British airborne RADAR sets. By 1945 the Nazis had at last found how to make their night-fighters effective on those wavelengths; use the cavity magnetrons from shot-down British aircraft.

[@cwcordes]

My mother , rest her soul, told me while she was reading about atomic energy in the mid 1930's at Berkley she noticed something happening in the library. Reference books about the subject were slowly disappearing. She got the shoulder shrug from the clueless librarian so she moved on to study something else. One afternoon in August 1945 it became instantly apparent what had happened.

[@drowningin]

Which is silly since they are only hiding info from their own citizens. Those books & others like them remained Europe & soviet union

[@torg2126]

@@drowningin If Soviet spies failed to turn over enough information, we could have shattered the CCP in Korea. There would be no North Korea, and the world would be short the largest, most powerful genocidal regime.

[@drowningin]

@@torg2126 that's assuming it wasn't invented at another time & used against U.S., or U.S. on Soviets and the world be in nuclear winter. It may of turned out better or far worse. That's a really big butterfly to effect I just wondered

[@torg2126]

@@drowningin The only difference I postulated was a better counterintelligence effort on the part of the US.

[@drowningin]

@@torg2126 I posted about how if we had never invented nukes during WW2 but the post seems to of been deleted

[@L0Lza1]

Feckin’ lumberjack beard there Simon, lad.

[@markotrieste]

Feynman used to pick locks in Los Alamos. He discovered that most of the colleagues used 314 or similar obvious numbers for the drawers.

[@dyingearth]

Or factory default. It gets so bad that there was a memo in Oakridge that if Feynman gets closed to anyone's safe when he visited there, they'll have to change it's code ASAP.

[@NX-gw7wg]

A 3 digit code seems extremely weak for a lock for a top secret government project.

[@markotrieste]

@@NX-gw7wg I don't remember the digit number, I was making a different point.

[@paulcoy9060]

The first numbers of Pi?

[@markotrieste]

@@paulcoy9060 yes, or e etc

[@TheEvilCommenter]

Good video 👍

[@calebjones7868]

It's so wierd how serious he is in these videos but if you watch his other channel business blaze he's a completely different person

[@trixrabbit8792]

In this world where The Simpsons are the most accurate prophets of the future, is it really that hard to believe a couple guys could unintentionally write a story that mirrors reality?

[@amberkat8147]

It's not at all hard to believe. With so many people on the planet, it's pretty much inevitable.

[@zachantes1161]

@@amberkat8147 Yeah, you know what they say about monkeys and typewriters, give enough people enough time and anything can happen.

[@thatdamncrow9197]

Actually simpsons didnt predict much For example the trump one Trump ran for office once in the past which is why Also they made like 1000s of episodes so yea no shit they are gonna end up randomly getting something

[@johncomstock2759]

It's not difficult to get the information needed to construct a simple nuclear weapon. My, incomplete, knowledge of the process came from a man who had a PhD in nuclear power and worked on the Gadget.

[@stevetheduck1425]

That bit about the delivery addresses of readers of astounding Science-Fiction Magazine changing to Los Alamos. British Intelligence worked out where the Nazis were hiding their secret projects (V1, V2, nerve gases, etc.) from a list of petrol supply priorities picked up off a desk.

[@IamGrief887]

"Voluntary" censorship code sounds a lot like mandatory censorship guidelines.

[@demonic_myst4503]

it was a system where gov convince publishers and brouadcasters to censored what they let put out press and publishers had been given a code of what they should concider censoring for the safetu of the country the catch phrasxe of this was loos lips sink sbips which is why that became a saying

[@danbrodt977]

Heh. First thing I thought of was the Patriot Act. The title of the bill often has nothing to do with its purpose.

[@eumenidis8660]

That story was widespread in the sci-fi fan community in the '60s, though fans took it as evidence of how erudite & "in the know" they were compared to non-sci-fi fans.

[@Foolish188]

SF fans, not sci-fi.

[@eumenidis8660]

@@Foolish188 I know, but mundanes are more familiar with "sci-fi."

[@OffRampTourist]

SF, sci-fi, sci-fi, it really depended on when you joined the community, and from which subculture, and to what degree you were searching for some sort of exclusive prerogative. In the early days we were happy to find anyone else who was enthusiastic for Heinlein, Asimov, etc , whatever they called themselves.

[@WhatAboutZoidberg]

Pretty sure its been figured out Ethel Rosenbaum had no knowledge of what her husband was doing and was executed as a scapegoat for her husbands crime. Thier son made a documentary trying to figure out what happened to his parents.

[@wintonhudelson2252]

Nonsense, she knew exactly what her husband and brother were up to. She was hip-deep in it all.

[@laurabeane8862]

And I was given the impression Ethel's Brother turned them in.

[@wintonhudelson2252]

@@laurabeane8862 Only to save his own skin.

[@campbellpaul]

You should do a story on test animals in space... Great video, Simon!

[@nocureforgaming]

Love the channel, with the intelligent demeanor, great stories and information. You remind me of Charles Xavier with a kick ass beard.

[@Thephilipcartmelexperience]

Here's a coincidence that you might find interesting. In 1939 my Grandfather William Bell Cartmel had passed away after years teaching Physics and Electrical engineering. He was an associate of Albert Einstein and worked on nuclear theory as well as writing a column on physics and electrical issues. He developed the precursor to the transistor through Northern Electric Laboratories in Montreal and had a collection of notes that were seized that year by the RCMP. The RCMP expunged all records of Grandpa from the University of New Brunswick, seized the notes he had on nuclear fission from my grandmother's apartment in Westmount in Montreal. It was only in 2012 that I contacted the UNB records department and informed them of the actions of the RCMP. They were surprised and delighted when I provided proof through a surviving paper written on the theory disputing Einstein and his theory of time vs light. Today Grandpa is reinstated in the records of UNB and the similarity between Cartmel and Cartmill did not go unnoticed. Perhaps Cartmill noticed the similarity as well and curiously found out about my grandfather?

[@jonnytrickz662]

Love being here great content ✌️💯😜

[@patrickdurham8393]

Asimov posited the A-bomb years before the Manhattan project was a thing. One helluva brain.

[@Grunt0066]

lol imagine accidently leaking a government super weapon project when you just wanted to write a cool story

[@paulcoy9060]

Also in a Superman comic, some kind of atomic bomb story before 1945.

[@BezBog]

Yeah, the author was like "I totally didn't pick information from various spies and snitches.. I just made it all up." :D

[@krisfrederick5001]

So H.G. Wells was 80 years early 👽👀

[@marks1638]

Not unusual, many of the future Sci-Fi writers including Heinlein and Asimov worked together during WWII on projects for the US Government and used that knowledge to expand their ability to speculate about future technology. But during the War, many other writers (without access to Classified Info) were publishing stories technology changes from Radar to Rockets, but sometimes ran afoul of Censorship as they revealed classified information (even if it was just a guess about other technology.) That's what Sci-fi writers do, they think about what could be in the future. Sometimes they get it right and the results may not make the Government happy.

[@PrivateEyeYiYi]

Science fiction was really science based, unlike today’s alien robot space opera mashups.

[@danbrodt977]

There's plenty of science based science fiction today (Gattaca, Moon for movies, Altered Carbon and Neuromancer for literature). And there was PLENTY of pot boiler stuff that came out of the Golden Age of Science Fiction.

[@PrivateEyeYiYi]

@@danbrodt977 Not familiar with Altered Carbon, but I’m not seeing any more than a casual reference to anything scientific in those other works. I was a fan of writers like Clark, Azimov and Crichton. Their fictional accounts involved science wasn’t insulting to one’s intelligence.

[@danbrodt977]

@@PrivateEyeYiYi Gotcha. I see what you're looking for and I'm with you. It's what I've heard described as "hard fiction."

[@zeratulthedark2985]

@@danbrodt977 I've a ton of Asimov here, but I haven't ever been a fan of reading science fiction in general. Verne is the last sci fi writer I've read.

[@grahamrankin4725]

Alfred Hitchcock's 39 Steps initial used U235 as the McGuffin (the plot device - what everyone was looking for). After a visit from British military intelligence he changed it to industrial diamonds.

[@dyslexicboogaloo]

So, this guy was having lunch with Edward Norton and suddenly knew how to make a nuclear bomb? I am Jack’s total lack of surprise.

[@michaelwerner1836]

A very minor part of the plot of Gregory Benford's alternative history SF book, "The Berlin Project." Includes the exact same quotes from the story.

[@pattressel3864]

That suggested plan to suppress nuclear bomb ideas from being publicized via science fiction magazines, by abruptly stopping their publication or distribution, would itself have drawn attention, and triggered significant speculation as to the cause. It's often better to just ignore the possible vague references to something secret, and not point to them by yanking them away.

[@Capohanf1]

OR HOW ABOUT THE TIME MY MOTHER'S BOSS WAS ARRESTED FOR SAYING THE WORDS, "A New Type of BOMB"? The year 1942, my newly wed parents were living in downtown Los Angles, California, in a small apartment not to far from MacArthur Park (the MacArthur Park of anti-Vietnam war music fame). My Father was working at Lockeed-Martin's Skunk Works installing the armor plate that protect the pilots of the P-38 Lightning and P-51 Mustang (Dad was a small man so he could squeeze into those tight places. Because of this he also installed the instrumentation in the United States first expermental jet fighter prototype.) Mother was a secretary at ALCOA (Corporation's LA offices. Her boss was VP in charge of orders or shipping (I do not remember which). Mom told the story of how on one week day her boss went to an hour's lunch with some other executives and came back 4 hours later as "White as a Sheet". When she asked him what happened he told her he could not say much but, he and the other executives were sitting around the table of a nice restaurant talking business when one of them said, "I wonder why we are shipping so much Aluminium to New Mexico? There are no factories, or ship yards out there." Her boss made an off hand remark, "Maybe it has something to do with a new type of bomb!". Her boss told of how no sooner than he said that, the group was surrounded by "Men dressed in dark suits with guns in shoulder holsters". All were taken "Downtown" to the FBI's LA office where the men had to prove who they were and were questioned on what they knew about a "New Bomb". After they satisfied the FBI that there were NOT spies, the group was released with a OFFICIAL warning NOT to talk about their shipments in public again!

[@youretheai7586]

"Surely you can't be serious!" "I am serious, and don't call me Shirley!"

[@johnplatt3704]

Will Jenkins - probably - is the guy who is on my bookshelf as Murray Leinster, who started publishing pulp stories, including sf stories, in the 1920's. Before Heinlein was labelled the dean of Science Fiction, Leinster/Will F. Jenkins was. By WWII he was not aspiring anything.

[@jymwrite]

Wow! Very cool story!

[@quimblyjones9767]

How many people have "almost uncovered nuclear tests"?? I feel like this is the 21st video on the topic!!

[@jliller]

This Poorly-Kept Secret Will Blow Your Mind. -BuzzFeed, 1945

[@serPomiz]

On one side, there the fact that coordinating multiple people leages a trail, and something like the nuclear research, requires a whole lot of people. On the other, americans back there were quite sure of their superiority in capability, and a lot of the security plans were made by higher ups that really had no foot on the ground to actually create working protocols

[@jackrotz2139]

What is that music is the background

[@DrewPicklesTheDark]

I like how governments eventually would start using science fiction as a cover for their projects.

[@zeratulthedark2985]

Makes more sense to do it that way, instead of attempting to censor it. Let people think it was some dude's crazy idea that gave the gov the inspiration for something new.

[@old_romans]

Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle deals with some of the early hypothesis about the thermal runaway effect, though, rather than a cascade of fire, it was of Ice.

[@brucer4170]

Ice nine to be exact.

[@chuckcookus]

What a great channel.

[@MakerOfChase]

Beard looking lush Simon

[@terryenby2304]

It’s all that BeardBlaze merch!!

[@Shadow__133]

Comparable to Bin Ladens' beard.

[@paulnolan4971]

@@Shadow__133 More of a Brian Blessed

[@JoshSees]

It's baleen for filtering krill out of the ocean

[@davidbenner2289]

Some of my wife's family were involved with research and construction of the Atomic Bomb. Some in Los Alamos. Her dad, my father-in-law, was a WWII infantryman at time. After WWII he completed MIT and became a rocket scientist, mostly in guidance. My wife has the upper level of genius IQ.

[@Hamstray]

the concern about the atmosphere possibly getting ignited was nothing more but scientists pulling layman's legs.

[@leonstrand329]

So I read about this in Atomic Awakening cool story

[@markstevens7699]

So.....?

[@colorbugoriginals4457]

Cool tip, didn't check that one out yet, thanks ✌️

[@markstevens7699]

Why say so at the beginning of a sentence you don't intend to elaborate on at all

[@bongwater1068]

@@markstevens7699 bruh he just wanted to share that don’t be a buzz kill

[@vladimirg7129]

Pllpp

[@jpheitman1]

>Video about WWII nuclear bombs >Upload date: August 9th >Nagasaki residents: ...Really?

[@Nurichiri]

I figured that was on purpose.

[@stephenkoehler4051]

This wasn't the only instance of censorship of a science fiction story by the Manhattan project. Lester Del Rey wrote a novelette about a nuclear accident in 1942 entitled Nerves. He describes a meltdown of a nuclear reactor in some detail told from the point of view of the plant's doctor. In the introduction of the novel, Del Rey described how the story was classified when a friend of his at the labs tried to read it at the lab library. She went to the store and bought the magazine in order to read the story, thus avoiding the censors.

[@robertmyers5269]

When I saw the header for this video, I immediately thought of 'Nerves'.

[@mikesullivan8237]

one of the most informative segments regarding the whole episode of WWII atomic security

[@otpyrcralphpierre1742]

Can you imagine sitting around and hoisting a few brews with the likes of Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Sprague Camp? My mind reels....

[@RogerWKnight]

As for setting the atmosphere on fire, what they were worried about was heating the nitrogen-oxygen mixture so high that the two gasses would burn out of control. However, their calculations showed that under the conditions of a nuclear explosion, the two gasses might burn and result in some nitrogen oxides, the bugaboo of high compression car engines of the 1960's, the reaction is endothermic, and thus peters out. If nitrogen-oxygen burning was exothermic, then a 10 to 1 compression ratio engine would be generating 5 or 6 horsepower for each cubic inch of displacement! Actually, the Manhattan Project scientists should have known that of course, nitrogen-oxygen burning is endothermic; the atmosphere does not ignite every time there is a lightning strike.

[@brigidtheirish]

Reminds me of something I heard quite a while ago about something in a Star Trek episode getting attention from the government. Apparently it bore a striking resemblance to something that was actually in R&D at the time.

[@friendlyone2706]

Governments seldom understand that nature is an open book.

[@kcollier2192]

The trouble here is that some folks in positions of power think it impossible that someone w/o vast technical experience could imagine something so complex as an atomic weapon, so they must be getting help from a spy.

[@jon82987]

Kodak actually was informed of when the nuke tests were going to be performed so they could safeguard their X-ray film so it didn’t cloud. That would be a good little short story to do a small video of.

[@marsgal42]

Only after they noticed their fogged film and asked The Authorities about it.

[@bowl1820]

There is a video this guy did one about 3 weeks ago. Plus other have done one.

[@cathyd74]

The guy from this channel has covered it

[@paulnolan4971]

"...thankfully for the scientists..." _Simon_ lol

[@zeratulthedark2985]

The editor noticed that most of his subscribers had a sudden change in address. And he managed to not mention that to anyone, so credit due there for sure. "Yes sir, I know where all my subs are now. They're at Los Alamos. Pretty sure they're working on something hush hush there, so we're gonna freak em out with this next issue."

[@DavidBeddard]

A bunch of nerds changed the address for their magazine subscription and almost exposed a super-secret doomsday weapon project. One submarine captain says no to launching that doomsday weapon a few years later. Lest anyone ever try to say that one person, one decision, can't change affect the course of history... 🤯

[@p.c.windhamparanormalroman4339]

Dang dude, pause and take a breath already.

[@lethemeatarss]

Helping the algorithm👍

[@templarw20]

You could do an entire video (here or Side Projects) about times when intelligence agencies had to intervene authors that got too close by research or dumb luck. Tom Clancy is a pretty good example.

[@NX-gw7wg]

That sounds interesting, I'd definitely watch that video.

[@davidb8656]

Every time I watch stuff like this, I worry if my search history is on some watchlist. Vids like this make me google stuff like, could a person build a nuke if they had all the required materials, lmao.

[@judahcalloway4360]

Thank you sir for helping me on my project

[@jbrisby]

Campbell was also the real creator of Asimov's Three Laws Of Robotics.

[@davidpotter8297]

Well, yes and no. According to Asimov, Campbell didn't propose the laws, but was the first to state them in their familiar codified form. He essentially formalized them based on the principles already described in the early robot stories.

[@LaidbakZak]

Is that the sourcefed music you’re using?

[@markchristy9704]

Looks like the FBI's habit of overlooking actual security risks goes back a long way.

[@SandraWatkinsB]

When I was a freshman in college, using just basic research in magazines, I wrote an English paper in how to build an atom bomb. And yes, I got investigated by school security.

[@r0bhumm]

I remember reading that there was a bit of a fuss about the cutaway drawing of a nuclear submarine they produced for the Eagle comic. A comic well known for its got away drawings. It turns out that the drawing was totally made up but an intelligent gets.

[@garrysmith9515]

Hey Simon! Are we ever going to get another TIFO Show?

[@TranscendianIntendor]

"Secret Weapons of WWII" is a hell of a fun read I'd love to make into a movie. Much of our weaponry was in fact the result of British scientists who shared with US scientists technology as for instance proximity fuses that contributed significantly to downing of enemy aircraft. It is a sore point for the British that the US was in no way reciprocal with final developments leading to the Atomic bomb as a working device post WWII.

[@getoverit2800]

That is so close to how the old uranium bombs were tested. The alloys are wrong but the idea is weirdly close.

[@peterquil282]

I’m digging the hand movements 😏 Makes Simon look like he knows wtf he’s talking about 😂

[@bassntruck]

I hear they have started questioning George Lucas and everyone at the original Lucas Films studio. And they also questioned Everyone close to Gene Roddenberry.

[@easyrecipesanddeliciousfoo2954]

我好喜欢这个频道的节目哦💖😳

[@mgrabow50]

我也做!

[@Hriuke]

Reminds me of the time The Times crossword had several of the D-Day landing beaches as well as OVERLORD in it's answers a month or two before the invasion.

[@DavidFMayerPhD]

Everyone who has read 1930s Science Fiction knows that "Atomic Energy" was central to dozens (or hundreds) of stories. There was plenty of precedent for the suspicious article. What the article had was a combination of John W Campbell's uncanny insight plus the talent of the author, Cleve Cartmill. It was a classical example of "Great Minds Think Alike". It is similar to the uncanny co-incidence that Hall in USA and Héroult in France (both 21 at the time) independently came up with a practical method for mass production of aluminum at the SAME TIME. Similarly, two comic strips, both titled "Dennis the Menace" began publication in USA and UK on the SAME DAY. Weird coincidences DO HAPPEN. If the Manhattan project leaders had been a little smarter, they would have realized that the attempt to suppress a story about an atomic bomb would be a great hint to our enemies that we were working on such a project. The smart thing to do would have been to ignore the store completely. If asked about it, the proper response would have been, "The War Department is not interested in Science Fiction. We have real problems to deal with."

[@ianknowlton5694]

What do a room full of monkeys and typewriters make? A recipe for an atomic bomb 😱

[@brucer4170]

And I thought it was one of Trump's rally speeches.

[@lakodamon]

At least he didn't reveal the launch code... 00000000

[@ComradeArthur]

Did you do that whole video without inhaling?

[@kirbymarchbarcena]

This is almost similar to the Clownfish vs Kevin Smith incident

[@Thegreatresetoflife]

Is Danny here?? Or is he locked up still