Can you test a nuclear weapon without a fallout?

Over the course of human existence, thousands of nuclear weapons have been exploded on Earth and in space. With all of those tests, one can't help but wonder how much fallout has been produced. Learn the tricks of the nuke-testing trade in this episode.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is stuff you should

(00:23):
not like it or not like it or not. People
are like tuning out now. Oh, man, I downloaded the
wrong one. I thought this is radio. I thought this
is w t F with Martin Marry H. What is
that stand for? What the heck? With an F? What
the heck? H? I probably shouldn't even say that. We'll

(00:44):
find out, Yeah, I guess so. Um if we get
censored or get an angry email, that's right. Um, how
you doing? Man? Good? Good, I'm glad. I'm well sir. Uh.
This is gonna be a good one if you ask
me this this point. This goes in with our um
nuclear sweet which is pretty extensive by now. Yeah, we've

(01:04):
done quite a few steel steal a bomb. Yeah, who
won the Cold War? When the Cold War mutual issued destruction? Um?
What else have we done? Now? This one that seems
like there was one other one Star Wars had some
nuke stuff to it. Yeah, we've done some other stuff.
So this is part of the nuclear nuclear sweet. Yes,

(01:24):
as it were, the very sweet nuclear sweet. Um. And
we're talking today about whether or not it's possible to
detonate to test to um, it's a full extent apparently
I looked that at that's not the term. I think
Julia Layton made it up. Term up full extent testing

(01:44):
a nuclear bomb. It's full extent, which means not Apparently,
you can simulate a nuclear bomb by putting a bunch
of T and T together and going kaboom, but there's
no radiation. But it's really not quite the same as
testing a nuclear weapon by really blowing up the nuclear core,
which we used to do a lot, a lot um

(02:05):
and most recently there's been a lot of nuclear tests, chuck.
A total of two thousand and fifty three nuclear weapons
have been exploded on planet Earth, which is a big qualifier.
It's crazy, um, But that was only eight countries that
did that. Yes, the US had one thousand, thirty two,
North Korea, Russia's seven, France two d the UK and

(02:30):
China are tied at forty five apiece. India and Pakistan
each had to, and then North Korea had to as well,
the most recent one to join the FRAY in two
thousand six and two thousand nine. I wonder if the
UK and China are kind of like do it. I
could think China doing it over Oak wouldn't do that.

(02:51):
You never know, Okay, well they did it before. Yeah,
but those are different days. But of course the U.
S A leads the pack in detonating nuclear weapons on
planet Earth. Yeah, man by far desert out in the ocean, yeah,
underground in the air. I sent Josh a video earlier
that Jonathan Strickland if tech Stuff sent me today by chance.

(03:14):
I was like, dude, really, yeah, how crazy is it
that you sent this? And he didn't respond, but it
was a there's a video on the YouTube's of this. Uh,
these five Army or Navy guys standing underneath this is
one of the aerial detonations of a nuclear bomb. I
think they were Air Force and they were the Air Force,

(03:35):
and they just stood there and and watched. Basically they
stood at ground zero under the hypocenter. It is crazy
and like you can see it and hear it happen,
and they're just like laughing and carrying on and talking
about how awesome it was. Well, there's so there's five
of them. Four were volunteers. The only one who wasn't
a volunteer was the photographer. They forced him to do it.

(03:56):
But yeah, like, you see this light go off and
there's no sound, but they like kind of inch and
then one guy wearing like old timey nineteen forties sunglasses
like looks up and then you can hear the sound.
It's pretty crazy. But that was again mentioned. Number two
of Radio Lab. That was Robert croll Witch's blog roll,
which wonders. He's one of the hosts of Radio Lab
of course. Um and that was pretty awesome. And I

(04:19):
found another blog of his that we'll talk about later.
Did I send it to you? Yes, that was pretty sweet. Yeah.
I think it's top the first one even But um
So Strickland's involved, the UK has involved Robert croll which
has already been mentioned. UM. Basically, this is gonna be
a big, sweeping, enormous epic podcast if you ask me.

(04:42):
Um So. Part of North Korea spiel after two dozen six,
when it became officially a nuclear state was that um
a press release that said there was no nuclear fallout
from this test, it was totally contained. Well, it's kind
of unbelo lievable, you know. I mean, like one of
the things you think of with the nuclear weapon is radiation.

(05:05):
That's one of the things that's designed to do, is
not just wipe out a population with the explosion, but
to really plague it for generations, you know. Um, But
it turns out that it is possible depending on the
type of test you conduct and the conditions and the
h if you carry the two, well, then you might

(05:29):
be able to conduct a nuclear test that doesn't have
any fallout, at least that atmospheric fallout. Is that true?
Because I didn't even gather that from this. I thought, well,
we'll get into it. No, it can be totally contained. Really,
I never drew that conclusion like that they have done
it and contained it completely. The Okay, then theoretically it can.

(05:54):
I don't know if they if it can. But like
there's I saw this awesome article on the BBC that
even had an flash slide show, which is the mark
of quality, um, that showed how a an underground test
could be done. We just give it away. It's the
underground test that you can contain the fallout. But how
it could contain all the fallout, and that COREA supposedly

(06:16):
went to these links to do it, supposedly. So um, well,
let's tuck real quick about what happens in a nuclear reaction. Chuckers, Yeah, Um,
I guess we should define a couple of things, um,
because we're gonna be thrown around some terminology that we
might understand, and you might be like, what's an isotope?
I forgot chemistry from high school. An isotope is basically

(06:38):
a different version of the same element, determined by the
number of neutrons. So like, if you've got hydrogen um,
just a regular old hydrogen atom doesn't have neutrons. If
you add one neutron, it's tertium. If you have two neutrons,
it's tritium. But they're all hydrogen. So they're just different
versions of that same element. Pretty easy. So fission happens

(07:01):
when scientists basically bombard a larger isotope with neutrons and
the collision basically is fission, and it produces like an
incredible amount of energy because of mass defect. So like
if you were to take if you were to write
out this formula for a nuclear fission reaction I have,

(07:23):
and it was like really accurately measured um all the
mass of all the atoms and all these sub atomic
particles before and after you're gonna find a mass defect.
You can find some missing mass, and that missing mass
is the energy, which is awesome if you're have a
nuclear reactor, because you're creating like tons and tons of energy,
and I guess it's awesome if you want to make

(07:43):
the nuclear bomb. Bro it is. What you're talking about
is fission. So fishing is like when one of those
neutrons is picked up by an atom, that the additional
neutron just splits the atom and that releases more neutrons,
which forms a chain reaction. Well, it's the key there
is that were uses. There's only two. It has to

(08:03):
release extra neutrons and there's only two main isotopes that
can do this they found out, which is uranium two
plutonium two thirty nine. I'm more a plutonium guy, are
you really? Um? So they're fissionable, which is kind of
an awkward word, right, but it's not suspiciona well, because
I mean, how we can split an atom if you want,

(08:25):
let's do it right now. But we're just splitting one atom.
The point to this is that there has to be
a sustainable chain reaction, so that when we split one atom,
it causes another atom is splitting another atom to split
in another atom is splitting. As these splits are taking place, Um,
a huge expansion is undergone. Right, it's growing and supposedly

(08:45):
at critical mass, which is like the full sustaining of
this chain reaction of nuclear fission among these atoms. Yeah,
that's the minimum amount required to create that chain reaction.
So the critical mass um the number of neutrons can
be doubled eighty times a micro second. A micro second

(09:09):
is a millionth of a second, So that means that
in one second the number of neutrons can have doubled
eighty million times. That's called yeah, something special. Yeah, and
that's not eighty million times two. That's the eighty million
power I believe, isn't it. It's exponential. Yeah, So it's
crazy big, right, you go from something very tiny to kaboom,

(09:34):
where all of a sudden, an enormous mushroom cloud. That's right,
And how you get that cloud? If you want to bomb,
you're gonna have two subcritical. Subcritical means that hasn't reached
critical mass. You have two subcritical but fission norble isotopes,
and you keep them separate. That's really key. And then
you combine them with a traditional explosive and it's all

(09:55):
over after that. And remember there's one of these just
sitting off the coast of Savanna somewhere a law. That's right,
it's just sitting there. And there's like there was dynamite.
There's forgot about that. They're not one the same. There's
a t NT detonator that's just aging terribly underwater. I
thought they found it. No, remember the this x AG

(10:15):
Yeah yeah, yeah, offered to locate it for a million
bucks very publicly. Well that was a long time ago.
We talked about that. Yeah. I think that was the
maybe the steal the newke one. That was an early
one for sure. Wow. So that's another reason to be
scared all over again. Right, So, chuck, um, there's four
kinds of nuclear weapons testing, at least four that we've

(10:37):
come up with and carried out so far. Yes, there's
a high altitude space which I think we wondered like
what would happen in the Star Wars episode? Answered right here? Yeah, Um,
underground underwater and atmospheric. Let's talk about these all right, Well,
let's talk about atmospheric. Let's do this is the one

(10:58):
that I said. The YouTube of showed a plane flying
and shooting this bomb off. It wasn't like dropped, It
was like launched like a rocket and then exploded above
these dudes heads where they could see it. Um. Not
a good idea. I don't know why they ever thought
this is a good idea, even in the middle of
a desert. Um, it's gonna fall, It's gonna rain down.

(11:19):
What happened upon the ground and whoever is down there
is Billy Idol put it, It's going to rain hell
from above that idol? Yeah, okay if the rebel yeo
was it? Yeah? I don't know all the words of
that song. Where where where does that come? I can't
remember what is the it's the it's the last rain

(11:41):
hell from a bow in the midnight man crop all.
It's pretty good, Billy Idol. So the scariest thing about
when they do these tests out in the middle of
a desert is all they do basically is quote clear
the area, Like that's how they prepare the surround owning
area for a nuclear fallout. They just clear it as

(12:04):
best they can, which usually consists of clearing like one
or two micro nations consisting of one or two guys
who use like chocolate chip cookie dough is currency. Right, Yeah,
I mean, what about all the animals, what about all
the vegetation and playing Stop thinking about them, hippie, we're
trying to test nukes here. Well, and that's why they

(12:24):
do it out like in the middle of the Nevada
desert is because they think, you know, like it's barely
needing alive out there still. Okay, Yeah, the ground groundhog
or no, the prairie dog populations have been decimated because
they were reduced by exactly time percent. Did you see
the guy that wrote in about that today? He says,

(12:44):
by the way, when Josh said fact toy and decimate,
he's both of them wrong. And I had the same reply.
I was like, buddy, it's not ancient Rome anymore. Look
it up. Decimate means a completely different thing, though. Okay,
at this actoid All right, so let's talk about um
A ground test, the castle bravo test. Well, hold on

(13:06):
real quick, the atmospheric test, he said, like you drop
it out of a plane. There's other ways you can
do it. You can also um launch it via weather balloon,
and you can just put it on top of a
tall pole. But basically an atmospheric test is anything just
above ground. You could also detonate it on top of
the ground because it's atmospheric, there's nothing covering it. Right. Um,

(13:29):
Between that and say about two fifty miles, that's an
atmospheric test. Okay, two I believe so because two or
more is typically the high altitude test. How would they
do that on the ground though? It's like, get it?
Two nine miles up is what I say. I mean
they were standing underneath the hypoth drop, two of them
on Japan. People were a little more reckless with nuclear

(13:52):
weapons back then, all right, so the Castle Bravo test. Yeah,
So basically the reason we talk about this is things
back then at least they would clear the area for
what they thought was gonna happen. But when you miscalculate, uh,
and you make an error in your math, bad things
can happen, which is what happened in nine at the

(14:14):
Bikinia Toll. That's right, and that's uh, that's actually where
the bikini swimsuit is named after. That's right. There was
nuclear fever around the world and some French designer made
the Bikini in honor of nuclear testing in Paradise, and
they said, how about some midriff fellas, and the guys went,
all right, I love the atomic age. Let's screw up

(14:36):
this big test. Yeah. So um. Basically, what they were
trying out was a new type of fuel core made
of lithium lithium fifteen I believe, And they had not
carried the two And we're estimating a six megatime detonation explosion. Yeah,
I as low as four. So they were off by

(14:59):
almost three times. Yeah. It turned out to be a
fifteen megaton explosion, which means that the blast radius, the
the area where it's still safe just from the explosion,
was expanded tremendously, or should have been expanded tremendously. There
was a group of Japanese fishermen on a boat that

(15:19):
in English translates the name of which translates to lucky dragon.
And they were not so lucky because they were just
outside of the blast zone and um of the original
blast zone, and all of a sudden, all this stuff
starts raining down and like one of them is like
sticking at his tongue trying to taste it. It's all
nuclear fallout, and uh, the whole boat came down with
with sickness. And actually the one fatality from the Castle

(15:41):
Bravo test was on that boat. But people, Yeah, there
was a lot of like cancer birth effects, second generation
birth effect. Yeah, there was a lot of It was
a huge screw up, to say the least. I got
some stats on that. They produced a four and a
half mile wide fireball four and a half miles dude

(16:05):
left a crater feet in diameter and two fifty ft deep,
and in the end it was a thousand times more
powerful than either one of the bombs we dropped on Japan,
and it's still the largest nuclear detonation by the United
States ever. Yeah, I think Russia topped that, of course.
And they basically just put the device out on top

(16:29):
of this a toll and like ran away, like setting
off a firework or something like that. Yeah, that was
pretty nuts, very sad. Um. Shall we go underwater if
you're interested in this at all, especially like the Bikinia
Tall there's footage in this awesome documentary from called Atomic Cafe.

(16:50):
I think I've seen that it's it's it's just like
newsreel footage and basically it's like cold war nuclear hysteria
and um love and reasons behind hya. But there's a
there's a news reel clip of like the King of
I can't remember, but the Marshall Islands. Basically the indigenous

(17:10):
king um stands up, He's like, we're really excited to
evacuate our home for you guys to do nuclear testings,
so let's go. And it's really just awkward and staged
and it's something else. Or the people all behind him
going did he just say what I think he said? Yeah,
They're like, what did he say? That actually sucks? Yeah? So, um,
it's a good movie. The whole thing is, Yeah, that's

(17:32):
a documentary. I think there's a movie called The Atomic
Cafe too. That's it. Oh, I didn't think it was
a documentary. It's a documentary. It's by two brothers and
a friend, a lady friend. Really is there a person
on the bicycle on a bike on the cover? There
may be. I believe there's definitely a mushroom cloud. I

(17:52):
might be thinking of something altogether different. You're thinking of
fables of the reconstruction, all right, so now, Mr Zusu,
can we go under water? Yes, that's all right. Um,
underwater is gonna have less fall out obviously because you're underwater.
So that's good. But and you don't see a lot
of this. It's hard to get a lot of information

(18:13):
on this, but obviously you're gonna destroy any kind of
marine life, coral reefs that we've talked about, and basically
anything else that it comes into contact with, not to
mention fishing villages and basically these these people that depend
on fishing to live. Yeah, it's not just the um,

(18:37):
it's not just the immediate impacts, which is basically blowing
up tons of dolphins and whales and stuff like that. Um,
it has a long sustained impact. Like think about it.
That just from Fukushima. That's another one in our nuclear
suite how nuclear meltdown works. That's right, Fukushima. Um, there's
people who like won't touch any kind of seafood from

(19:00):
Japan now because they're afraid to fall out. Whether that's
correct or not, at the very least in the public opinion.
You can't just blow up a nuclear weapon underwater and
expect everything to be okay. Well, yeah, and the economic
impact that has on the fisherman, of course, it's huge. Uh.
And the three eyed fish like the Simpsons, Blinkie was that?

(19:23):
Who was? And it blinked on in succession? Right? Yeah,
that's pretty funny. Yeah. Um, and you just confirmed that
it was a bicycle in the front of the Atomic Cafe, right, yeah,
that's Atomic Cafe, all right. I've always wanted to see that,
and I never knew it was a documentary. It's very good.
I always associated with Attack of the Killer Tomatoes because
I think they came out at about the same time
and they both seem to have like the same kind

(19:44):
of thrilling poster. Okay, shall we go into outer underground
or should we say that for last and do outer space? Uh? Well,
let's go underground because this is the winner as far
as the only way theoretically took taine fully a nuclear blast.
But you gotta go down really really really deep, like

(20:04):
eight which is a half a mile about feet and
for that's that's a bomb of what size? Uh? I
don't know, Chuck, Well, Okay, this can put it into
into comparison. At least three hundred feet down you could
contain a one kiloton bomb. That's kiloton. You gotta remember

(20:25):
that Castle Bravo was fifteen mega tons. So yeah, there's
some math involved there somewhere, But I imagine eight hundred
eight hundred feet you said, um, And supposedly, even though
they do point out in this article, you never really

(20:45):
know until you do it because it can be unpredictable,
obviously in the case of of the Bikini Atoll. But um,
it's worst case scenario if it does go above ground,
because then it's raining down radioactive soil and lots and
lots of radio ative soil. So UM. To to outfit
the best case scenario, um, basically, you want to dig

(21:09):
this eight D you want to bore an eight hundred hole,
and you've hit subtraine in rock like the mantle of
the earth at this point, depending on where you are,
but most likely you have because you're half a mile
into the earth. You put your little nuclear bomb in there. Um.
And it says here also that North Korea's it's done

(21:29):
something like four to five mega tons. Yeah, Um in
in the chamber, which is like the bottom of the hole,
and you backfill it with like gravel, gypsum, like this
composite of all these different solid materials that are gonna
pack that whole solid to absorb the shock wave the

(21:49):
blast um. So that means that it can go up,
but it's not going to go up very far. What
it's gonna do is go out. So you set the
thing off and it goes out and down and it
actually the blast vaporizes the mantle of the earth around it,
which then eventually, after probably a few seconds, cools into
molten rock. And after that sits there in stews for

(22:14):
a couple of minutes. The um the the whole above
it where the it can't support the earth above it
any longer, and so it collapses. And then what you
have is called a subsistence creator. Subsidence creator cannot be
good for the Earth. It's not. But there's YouTube lousy
with like underground tests where these creators just form. It's nuts,

(22:37):
But that supposedly contains the fallout. Supposedly, that's what I hear,
that's what the BBC says. But that's how if you
if you're ever interested, that's how you perform an underground
nuclear test. If you have a nuclear bomb and an
eight D boer. Yeah, that's I mean, that's got to
be some high engineering right there to get down there

(22:57):
and not have a cave in on itself. And it's
not just a hole either. Probably, Hey, Kim jong Ill
knew what to pull the stops one. That's right, all right.
So now outer space, which is one of the dumbest ideas.
Actually they're all pretty dumb if he asked me. But
we did it, and so did Russia, and we would
um to see basically if we could kill satellites with

(23:20):
nuclear bombs in space. Um. One of the problems is
it kills a lot of satellites and possibly your own
important satellites. So they just discovered the Van Allen Belt
of nuclear radiation around the Earth, and they figured out
that if they blew up a nuclear bomb in the
Van Allen Belt, they could create an electromagnetic pulse that

(23:43):
would wipe out satellites. But it wiped out more than
two stars, and it actually created that. This is where
we hit Robert Krolwitz again, who apparently shares the same
interest in nuclear history cold war nuclear history that we do,
because this is the second blog of his on this topic.
But UM, I would definitely recommend looking this up. It's

(24:03):
called um a very scary fireworks show and it's about
this um US launch of nuclear weapons into space. It
was called Starfish Prime was the operation. It's a pretty
cool name. M Starfish Prime PRIMU School. Starfish not so much.
I think it's cool. But they were publicizing it was
all over the newspapers. It was like, look for a

(24:25):
great fireworks is playing the sky and you could see
it looked like the Northern lights up in space when
this thing was exploded two miles up. Well, the good
news there is there's not gonna be any fallout because
our atmosphere is going to deflect that. The bad news though, is,
like we said, it's not exactly it's not an exact science.
You're not sharp shooting, so you can take out all

(24:46):
kinds of satellites. And I think there was an electromagnetic
pulse that actually can wipe out electrical systems here on Earth,
and it did in a big way. Um. And then
of course radiation in space, who knows what that means,
you know, to like man space flights. Yeah, you don't

(25:06):
want that stuff out there, which is strange because I
thought there was a lot of radiation already in space
from well just solar radiation. Um, there's tons of isotopes
up there. Man, I don't even get me started. So
is that it underground? Is that our consensus? It seems

(25:27):
to be the way to go. How about no more
nuclear weapons testing of any kind? That's that's what I'm
getting behind. Um Man, there's tons of cool stuff on
the internet. Uh. If you want to check out those
five crazy guys standing beneath the hypocenter of a new
nuclear blast and I think two. Um, you can check

(25:48):
out five men agree to stand directly under an exploding
nuclear bomb on coral which is blog. Also check out
this very scary fireworks display while you're there. Um, I
would strongly recommend atomic cafe and radio lab and tech
stuff yep. Um. And there's this really cool time laps
video of the two thousand and fifty three nuclear nuclear

(26:12):
bombs exploded on Earth. Ever um by a Japanese artist
named Sayo Hashimoto is a cool name. Um. It's called
nuclear Testing dot w m V on YouTube. It's it's
worth checking out. Yeah, it's cool. It's it represents them
by just little flashes instead Like I thought I was
expecting something different, but did you see like it had?

(26:33):
Like it looked like an old Atari game, like yeah,
it looks sort of like missile Command, but it had
the years. As the years tick by, it shows when
they were in, when and where they're detonated, and it's
funny to see the heyday of when they're going off
a lot more and that great cream hey day. Um.
And if you want to learn more about nuclear weapons testing,
you can type in nuclear weapon radioactive fall out. It'll

(26:57):
bring up this, uh, excellent article on how stuff works
dot com. And uh, I don't think I said search
bars the search bar. And now it's time for listener.
Now I'm gonna call this farmer Garrett rights in my
favorite farmer. Um. Hi, guys in Jerry, I just want
to take this time and say how much I enjoy

(27:17):
the show. Without you, I would not know what to
do with myself for hours on end. Literally, my friend
and I often find ourselves having nerd rampages where we
talk endlessly or debate about something you've covered in the show.
First started listening when my cousin introduced me to the
ten Strange Death podcast, and I was hooked, immediately subscribed,
been listening ever since. And without you, I would be

(27:39):
working in silence right now. You see, I work on
a farm, and most of the farm work has done
at night. Where I live. We have to wait for
the moisture to be just right before we can work
in the fields. So it's two fifty am according to
my clock right now, and I'll be heading out to
work shortly. So this is from Garrett Massey, and I
wrote Garrett back and I was like, dude, what kind

(28:01):
of farming are you doing at two fifteen in the morning.
I don't know anything about warming and he said we
actually our family worked with corn and hay and uh,
the reason we get up so early is so there's
plenty of moisture in the hay leaves before you rake
and bail them. So that's what I've been doing. I
started to thirty get home around ten am in the morning.

(28:22):
His work day is done. We live in New York,
I'm sorry. We live in New Mexico, not New York,
very different and it gets really hot and dry here,
which is why we have to work at night when
it's coolest and most humid. So I learned a little
something from that one. And since he brings up New Mexico,
that raises an excellent point. Just two days ago is
the sixties seventh anniversary of the very first nuclear weapons test,

(28:46):
Alma Gordo, New Mexico, the Trinity Test. It's all coming together. Yeah,
almost like we planned this stuff out. It's crazy, but
we don't. Strickland sending Land. I know, farmer Garrett sending
that time time. We're Jerry. Yeah. Well, if you want
to send us something that blows our minds, we're always

(29:06):
looking for that kind of thing. Um And we're not
even stuff to blow your mind, but we're we can
appreciate its. Um. You can tweet to us at s
y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook
dot com slash stuff you Should Know, and you can
send us a good old fashioned electronic email. Uh to
stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com for more on this

(29:34):
and thousands of other topics. Does it how Stuff works
dot Com Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
twelve camera. It's ready, are you