Strange Nuclear Bomb Lore

At 529 a.m. on July 16, 1945, over the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico, the night became day. The very first atomic bomb, known as Trinity, detonated, launching the world into the Atomic Age. The explosion was the result of four years of research, development, and the work of over 500,000 individuals, all a part of the top-secret Manhattan Project. The test itself was witnessed by top U.S. scientists and generals, but what you might not know is that it was accidentally witnessed by many other individuals who lived nearby. One such individual was blind university student Georgia Green. Georgia Green was being driven early in the morning by her brother-in-law Joe Willis, about 75 miles away, when the bright flash of the Trinity test illuminated the sky over the horizon. Green, who was blind, suddenly jolted up and asked her brother-in-law, what's that? On July 17th, the Albuquerque Journal headline read, The story gave several examples of eyewitnesses to the Trinity test, including Georgia Green. Decades after the Trinity test, Green would tell her story to her friends and family, and the story became a bit of an urban legend. Many believed that Georgia Green couldn't see any light at all, that she was 100% blind, and that the Trinity test was only seen by her because of some strange properties within the light. Perhaps it was the radioactive glow that she witnessed. But in reality, Green wasn't 100% blind. She could, and had always been able to, distinguish between light and dark. But the story of the magical light properties of atomic bombs was too intriguing, and the false story forever became part of nuclear bomb lore. And that's what this video is all about, weird nuclear bomb lore. Many weird urban legends and stories have cropped up over the years. Did atomic bomb debris fall on a girl's dance camp? Did a steel plate get launched into interstellar space by an atomic bomb test? Why is this ballet dancer in front of a mushroom cloud? We will be discussing all these stories and more in today's video. But before we get to that, a quick word from today's video sponsor, Aura. Alright, check this out. I'm just going to google a generic name here, and look. See all these websites hosting this information? These are known as data brokers, and they sell your information to different people like scammers, spammers, hackers, and these nefarious individuals then use that information to access your bank accounts, your social media accounts. Not a good situation. But thankfully, there's Aura. Aura automatically scans the web for your information, whether that's an address, a phone number, whatever. Scans the web for your info, finds the websites that are selling your information, and automatically ops you out of these websites. That way, you don't have to worry about it. 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While blind, Georgia Green witnessed the explosion from a car 75 miles away. There was another group of 12 girls who were awoken by the flash at a nearby dance camp. The 12 girls were sleeping soundly in their cabin when light suddenly poured into the windows, lighting up the entire cabin, startling all the girls awake. As the story goes, apparently all the girls ran outside to see the sky lit up like day. They also witnessed what appeared to be snow falling all around. For the next hour, the girls played in the snow, frolicking all around, making snow angels and even catching it on their tongues. But these white flakes were definitely not snow. They were tiny bits of nuclear fallout. When an atomic bomb detonates near the surface, what is known as a groundburst, all that dirt, all that debris gets lofted into the mushroom cloud and becomes very radioactive. So radioactive that it often ionizes the air, giving off a glow. The Trinity test was detonated very close to the ground and indeed lofted a ton of radioactive material high into the sky. In fact, witnesses near the explosion claimed to see the mushroom cloud air glow, therefore verifying that the Trinity test was indeed a very dirty, very radioactive explosion. All this radioactive dust eventually fell back to the ground, sometimes as far as 200 miles away. Here's a chart showing the fallout spread of the Trinity test. Obviously, this is a huge area and even though most of it is out in the desert, there are still many individuals who reside in these areas. The people who are affected by nuclear fallout are known as downwinders and many have suffered the ill effects of radiation, often dying at a young age of cancer. But going back to the dance camp, there are some parts of the story that have made me a bit skeptical. One of the girls stated that they played in the snow while the sky was still lit up by the atomic explosion. Well, we know that that cannot be possible as the bright flash would have disappeared long before any fallout would have occurred. There's also this photo which supposedly shows the girls dancing in the snow. I'm actually shocked that there's even a photo of this event, if it's actually a real photo, but this is obviously taken during the day. While there are some strange discrepancies within the story, the reality is that 10 of the 12 girls unfortunately died of cancer by the age of 40. And that is not a coincidence. These girls really were victims of the first atomic explosion. After further research, I found another article from Vice that really cleared a few things up. According to this article, the explosion not only lit up the cabin, but also shook the ground and even knocked a few of the girls onto the floor. The dance instructor named Karma Dean believed that the water heater had exploded. That's how loud the explosion was. The article also states that the nuclear snow didn't arrive until the afternoon. It's really quite a tragic story and these girls are not the only victims. Many Downwinders from the Trinity test have had premature deaths due to higher cancer rates and many are still around and are still fighting for recognition and aid from the U.S. government. Another tragic story involving innocent civilians impacted by radioactive fallout from nuclear testing came during the filming of 1956 movie, The Conqueror. Much of the movie was shot near St. George, Utah, about 130 miles downwind from the Nevada test site. In 1953, Operation Upshot Knothole conducted 11 above ground nuclear tests, all of which lofted loads of radioactive debris high up into the air. Many believe that this debris then settled in the canyon lands around St. George, Utah. The crew of The Conqueror spent months running around kicking up dust and over the course of several decades, 41% of the crew developed some sort of cancer, including John Wayne. Now, there's a lot of controversy behind whether or not the film crew was actually impacted by radioactive fallout. In fact, the national average cancer rate is 43%, nearly the same as the percentage of the film crew. However, it's worth noting that these crew members developed cancer at a much younger age. Also, smoking was really common back in the day, so it's likely that a lot of these people died of cancer caused by other carcinogens. John Wayne himself was an avid smoker and he died of lung cancer. But I don't know, I wouldn't be surprised if nuclear fallout played a small factor. One interesting photo that I recently stumbled across in an article written by Alex Wellerstein was this, a ballet dancer in front of a mushroom cloud. A very intriguing photo that could be interpreted in many ways. Was this a protest photo? An advertisement perhaps? And it wasn't just one photo, by the way, it was a series of photos. So what's the story behind these photographs? Well, on April 6, 1953, the U.S. military was conducting the 11th kiloton atomic test, Dixie. This was also a part of Upshot Knot Hole, the same operation that may have impacted the crew of the Conqueror. During the test, 40 miles away, photographer Donald English and ballet dancer Sally McCloskey took these photographs atop of Angel Peak. English simply instructed McCloskey to perform an interpretive dance while he snapped a few shots. And well, that's what she did. But why? Well, in an interview, the photographer Donald English stated this, Sometimes we would cover it from Angel's Peak, take pictures of the mushroom cloud. Sometimes we'd even take dancers up to the top of the peak. I have one girl, Sally McCloskey. We did a little series that was called Angel's Dance. And she was a ballet dancer, not a showgirl. And she did an interpretive dance to the mushroom cloud as it came up. And we shot a series of pictures and sent it out on the wire. And they called it Angel's Dance. We just did anything we could to make the picture a little bit different because the newspapers would run the mushroom cloud pictures. But they were always hungry for anything that had any kind of different approach. So in a sense, they were just doing the 1950s equivalent of creating a good thumbnail. Something to stick out from the rest of the mushroom cloud photos. A magazine known as Parade did finally publish the photographs in a series they called Angel's Dance. According to the article, this photo represents apprehension. This photo represents impact. This photo represents awe. And the final photo represents survival. Not really a protest photo shoot like I had expected, but still an interesting piece of nuclear bomb lore. Another strange atomic bomb mystery is the infamous manhole cover. During Operation Plumbob in 1957, Robert Brownlee from the Los Alamos lab was asked to look into conducting underground nuclear tests. Site workers then constructed a 500-foot long shaft and a nuclear device at the bottom. On July 26, the nuclear device known as Pascal A detonated, but it had a much higher yield than anticipated. This resulted in a massive plume of fire exiting the shaft. They decided to redo the test, but this time they would weld a large 2,000-pound steel plate to cover up the borehole. This test would be named Pascal B, and it was conducted about a month later on August 27. When the second test was conducted, the massive amounts of pressure within the shaft led to the steel plate cover failing, where it was then launched high into the atmosphere, never to be seen again. Prior to the test, a high-speed camera was set up to look directly at the manhole cover, as many of the scientists saw a large potential for its failure and deemed it scientifically interesting. This high-speed camera shot one frame per millisecond. When the test was conducted, the steel plate was only seen in one frame. By the way, you cannot find this photo anywhere. I looked for so long, so if you know where this photo is, let me know. Very rough calculations were made, and some estimated that the steel plate may have gone a speed six times more than the speed needed for escape velocity, aka 41 miles a second, aka the plate was going so fast it was launched into space, never to be seen again. Not only that, but at the time, it would have been the fastest man-made object ever built. They never did find the plate, but the plate was shown to be intact on the high-speed camera. Of course, going this insane speed would have caused the plate to likely burn up in the atmosphere via ablation, similar to a meteor burning up in the sky. But some do believe that the steel plate was thick enough, was big enough to survive flying through the atmosphere, and is now chilling somewhere in interstellar space. One thing that is a bit intriguing about this whole mystery is that if for some reason it was launched into space, and for some reason didn't fall back to earth, but actually went out into space, perhaps in an orbit around the earth or the sun, that would mean that the U.S. technically achieved getting a man-made object into orbit before the Soviets, since Sputnik wouldn't occur until a month after the test. Pretty interesting, but by far the most likely scenario is that it burned up in the atmosphere on the way up, which technically is also a first. This topic can be quite controversial in nuclear bomb forums, so be sure to discuss theories below. There are many topics to discuss when it comes to pre-Trinity mentions of atomic bombs. It wasn't just America and Los Alamos that pondered on the potential of an atomic bomb. Many other countries have put in place their own version of the Manhattan Project. The Soviets' atomic bomb project actually started in 1942. But what's really quite interesting to me is that the original idea for an atomic bomb was made popular not by a scientist, but actually an artist, the very famous author H.G. Wells. H.G. Wells was always ahead of his time. We can't forget about my personal favorite sci-fi story, The War of the Worlds. The War of the Worlds features alien tripods that were way ahead of their time. I mean, look at these, like, just look at these things. These are creepy as heck. But H.G. Wells also coined the term atomic bomb way back in 1914. This was in his novel, The World Set Free. Wells was very interested in physics, and he had read several scientific publications from popular physicists at the time. He would often fictionalize much of what he read in these science publications. In The World Set Free, Wells, on page 103, wrote this, Certainly it seems now that nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the earlier 20th century than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible. And as certainly as they did not see it, they did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands. All through the 19th and 20th centuries, the amount of energy that men were able to command was continually increasing. Applied to warfare, that meant that the power to inflict a blow, the power to destroy, was continually increasing. There was no increase whatsoever in the ability to escape. Before the last war began, it was a matter of common knowledge that a man could carry about in a handbag an amount of latent energy sufficient to wreck half a city. That was written 30 years before the Trinity atomic bomb test, which is incredible. I mean, blow up half a city? Atomic bombs? This was written in 1914. It is said that science fiction often inspires real life. I That's an iPad right there. Apple just literally copied Star Trek. But what's interesting is that one of the lead physicists of the Manhattan Project and one of the fathers of the atomic bomb stated that he himself was influenced by H.G. Wells. Leo Slyzard, who read the book in 1932, two years later, would patent the idea of a neutron-based nuclear chain reaction, which is like the core thing you need for an atomic bomb. So H.G. Wells, in some ways, kind of came up with the atomic bomb. H.G. Wells died in 1946, so he did live to hear about the first nuclear explosions. All he said when he heard about the atomic bombings in Japan was, it is the end. Of course, there are many other strange and obscure pieces of nuclear bomb lore. I have to quickly do an honorable mention, or perhaps dishonorable mention, to the Demon Core, a sphere of plutonium that killed two scientists on two different occasions. Both of these scientists accidentally set off a chain reaction when they were handling the device carelessly. This sphere of plutonium would have been used as a third atomic bomb had Japan not surrendered. In the end, it was never used, and it was melted down, and its contents were used in various tests in the late 40s. But yes, that is the end. Thank you so much for watching. Be sure to subscribe for random videos about tornadoes, nuclear bombs, space, really anything that I find interesting. Also, be sure to check out Aura. Use Aura.com to get two weeks free. Thanks once again for watching, and we'll see you next time.