April 28, 2016 • 43 mins
America had already used two nuclear bombs to devastating effect when researchers thought "maybe we can use these bombs to dig big holes instead." That's right, atom bombs to replace bulldozers. And it worked great.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry
Rowland and uh, this is stuff you should know the podcast.
It's the bomb. It is not the bomb du bomb
(00:25):
even that's right. So it was, but it was okay,
it worked for this one. Have you heard? Go ahead?
I was gonna say, you know, it didn't work for
this one. Was this the intro long intro which was
a nice story but has nothing so I would like
to cover that at some point. Yeah, it's a true story.
(00:46):
Let's leave it a secret. Yeah, everybody. Sorry. So, um,
had you heard of Operation Plowshare before? So, guys, there's
this really awesome Slate article um about Operations Plowshare. It's
a it's actually, um an excerpt from a book. I
can't remember what the book is called, but um, it
was on Slate. It's worth checking out. But just look
(01:09):
up operation plosh here and Slate. This guy goes into
it's actually called What Could Go Wrong? It's by Ed
Regious bam um that it's a guy who wrote a
book on Operation plows Share. And they excerpted on slate. Oh,
I thought you were going to say. He was like,
you know some my important like Brian Gumble. You know,
I was bamming like my own like so quick I
got the answer that I was looking for. I was
(01:31):
able to stall without coming off as stalling while I
found the answer. I was just so um, I've heard
about this when when I read that article, but I
hadn't heard about it before. But Operation Plosh there is
basically this idea that we could use all of these
surplus huge atomic bombs that we're laying around for civil
(01:56):
engineering projects, basically that we had to move earth. Yeah,
that we had at our disposal developed in World War Two,
this incredible explosive capacity to yeah, like, why not use
it to move earth? We we could use a canal,
let's make one. Yeah, Why bring a hundred bulldozers in
(02:18):
for months and months and man hours when we can
just drop a bomb and have a big hole right exactly. Weirdly,
it makes sense. It totally makes sense. Here's the problem
with it, though, It's insane because to to use this
successfully you have to literally ignore radioactive fallout from nuclear blasts.
(02:44):
There's just no way around it. Yeah, but this was
a time where they were they were blasting bombs up
in the way of high in the sky. They were
blasting it well as you'll see underground. Well, these cats
knew what was going on. It was the public that
wasn't hip to it yet. Well, sure, you know, but
I mean there was a little regard I think, yes,
(03:05):
I mean they dropped him on people. Yeah, that's that's
a little regard. They had pretty little regards. That's Japan. Yeah,
so that that that's that's a really great point that
you bring up UM. After Japan, this idea of using
UM nuclear bombs for peaceful civil engineering projects. UM led
(03:27):
to the title of this operation. The name of this
operation operation Plowshare, based on that. I think it's an
old Testament thing about beating your swords into plowshares, so
that you're you're using things not for war, you're using
technology not for war and to harm other people, but
to further humanity through technology. Yeah. They lifted the name
(03:47):
straight from the Book of Isaiah in the Bible. So
umle and supposedly the legend goes that there's a physicist
named Isadore Isaac Robbie UM and he said, so you
want to beat your old atomic bombs in the plow shares.
Huh when they went Robbie, you did it again. Uh
So should we talk a little bit about what led
(04:08):
up to this idea? Um, it's something called the Uh. Well,
have you heard of the Suez Canal once or twice?
Have you heard of the sue s crisis? Uh No,
I hadn't, actually had you. I had heard of it,
but I didn't know much about any of this stuff.
Uh So the Suez Crisis is what preceded this idea. Uh.
And it goes a little something like this. N UM.
(04:34):
The American government in the British government were starting to
get UM. Well, for a couple of years, they had
been a little bit annoyed with Egypt. UM, specifically their president,
Colonel Gamal A del Nassar or NASA. And UM, I
think it's we'll go with NASA. And he had been
(04:55):
cozing up to the Soviet Union, UM, kind of getting
weapons funneled through checklistle and they were they were arming
his his Egyptian army, and it was, you know, we're
talking about the Cold War. So people were getting a
little annoyed by it. They were because Egypt had been
formerly First World because it was not only allied with
(05:15):
the British, it was under British imperial rule until the
early fifties. And um a military coup basically threw off
the British shackles, but not immediately and not necessarily in
the most bloody manner. The British ended up hammering out
a timeline where they left um Egypt, right, yeah, but
the Brits were, I mean for a couple of years.
(05:36):
At this point in nineteen fifty six, Egypt was still
trying to get Britain to in their military presence around
the canal, right and then uh, and at the beginning
of July n six to the last British troops left
the Suez Canal. And on July six, Nasser said, Oh,
we're nationalizing the Suez Canal. See you later, everybody, it's ours. Yeah,
(05:57):
And that was a little bit in retaliation for or
um the U S and England and Britain pulling out
of our promise to help them finance their Aswan damn project.
So it's sort of like there's a lot of back
and forth sniping like oh, yeah, you're not gonna finance this, Yeah, well,
I'm gonna nationalize the canal now that you guys aren't
here anymore, and I'm friends with the Soviets now and
(06:18):
they're giving us weapons. So that was a big deal.
And not only was it a big deal because there's
a lot of geo political maneuvering going on, it was
a big deal to Britain because the British Empire was
very much in decline. UM. It had just been bombed
to holy heck, even though it had come out on
(06:38):
the successful side during World War Two. And because of
World War Two, America kind of came out as like
the new big kid on the block, that the kind
of tough bully in charge basically, and this was happening.
America was ascending at the same time, Great Britain was
declining and the British ego was a little um touchy
(07:02):
at the time. So it assaulted the British empires ego
for the one. But it also had a more practical problem,
and that was that damn was important. Yeah, the not
the damn, the canal. Yeah, the canal was. It obviously
controlled a lot of trade in the Middle East, uh,
specifically the oil supply UM, and it wasn't just Britain,
(07:22):
it was France as well. Uh. They actually ran the
Suez Canal Company. Even though Brits, the Brits were the
large the British government specifically was a big stakeholder in
that company until it was nationalized. It was run by
a French company. And they were also exposed. You know,
basically Britain and France were both kind of exposed, like,
(07:45):
you know, Egypt stood up to them and they were like,
wait a minute, They were like, Egypt shouldn't be standing
up to us. You know, we're Britain, Great Britain exactly.
So there was egg on the face of I guess
omelets or wait, crepes, crepes on the face of France, yes,
and eggs on the face of Britain, right because eight eggs. Yeah,
(08:09):
but what's like toast and pork and beans, which is weird.
So um, the British and the French have egg all
over their face and they decide that they're going to
do something about this. Now they don't technically invade Egypt themselves,
right they do is they go to Israel and they say,
you guys should probably invade Egypt, don't you think, Yeah,
(08:32):
like you guys have been battling Egypt already. Yeah, border,
what's one more invasion? Yeah, so they got Israel to
invade basically is a means of setting themselves up, the
French and the British of sending troops into act as peacekeepers. Man. Yeah,
it sounded like all three of them. I don't think
they like snowed Israel. I think they were all three
(08:53):
on in this plan. Yeah, that's the impression I have to.
So basically they said, you guys attack on October fifty six.
We're gonna call for a ceasefire, but we'll be in
there a couple of days later, don't you worry. Right,
And that's actually a very post imperial maneuver. Had it
been imperial, they would have just been like, uh, these
guys are brown and are rising up, so we're going
(09:16):
to invade. That's totally fine, isn't it. Rest of the
West and the rest of the West would have been
like sure, sure. But this was post imperial. They had
to do some maneuvering. They sent Israel in, they came
in as peacekeepers afterwards. And remember American now as the
big kid on the block. And there's such a thing
as a UN in America went to the u N
and went, what is that. They can't do that and said,
(09:37):
we condemned this. They basically acted without telling the US,
which really rubbed uh, the American government the wrong way.
So they and and by this time, well it was
initially successful. They took control of the Suez Canal, the Israeli, French,
British thing the force did. So it worked. But then
(09:58):
the Soviets got involved and they said, you know what,
kru Chef said, I'm gonna start reigning down nuclear bombs
on your head. Uh, because this is a big issue.
So the US said, I don't like any of this.
I'm gonna threaten sanctions against all the countries involved. All
of your time out go in the corner. That's right.
And when kreus Chef said I'm gonna rain bombs down
(10:19):
on you guys around the canal, it worked, Yes, it did. Um.
It actually ended the Tous crisis right like really quickly,
like at the end of October is when the invasion
took place, and in December is when France and Britain withdrew,
so it was like six weeks. Yeah, that's pretty quick.
And then in March Israel withdrew and it was all
(10:41):
over in. The Soviets were able to puff their chest out,
and you know, say, you know a nuclear threat worked,
and you guys know how well nuclear bombs work because
you did it. And the British went back and drown
their sorrows in a pine and bitter and the French
went back and uh, drink wine. Sure I was gonna
(11:02):
say great Goose vodka, wouldn't that be the Soviets? No,
because Great Goose is made in France. I just hear
vodka in a minute, I know that's what that's a
lot of people in France has the same reaction. So um, chuck,
somebody said, I think you said. Cruise chef said, I'm
gonna rain bombs down on your nuclear bombs down on
(11:24):
this canal, on all of you, and um, that must
have struck an American physicist because at some point somebody said,
you know what, ranting bombs down with canals, it's not
a bad idea. It might make a larger canal. Exactly. So,
in a very strange way, the Suis crisis actually helped
lead to Operation Plowshare, And we'll go into that right
(11:47):
after this. How about that all right, So the SUS
(12:09):
crisis was still going on in November nine six, and
it's a brief window that it was still uh active.
And a dude named Herbert Yorke. He was the director
of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Livermore, and he was
a new nuclear scientist, and he said, you know what,
uh what Josh Clark said before the break was right right.
(12:31):
He always follows me around. He says, maybe we can
use nuclear weapons to move a lot of earth. And
they got the name, as we said earlier, from the
Book of Isaiah, took it to the Atomic Energy Commission
and they said, this is a great idea. Let's right. Yeah,
they had a meeting and just brought people together and said, hey,
(12:52):
all of you guys, um, let's uh, let's figure out
a better way to use these things. There's a lot
of projects we want to do, so let's let's pretend
like the pies in the sky and we'll all shoot
for it. And that the old say. Um. So they
all got together and um started thinking, putting their heads together,
(13:12):
and again the US and um, the Soviets and Great
Britain and then France as well. I believe are all
just testing, testing nukes all over the place all the time.
But they're testing nukes throughout this era, throughout the fifties
and sixties and uh seventies too, I guess, um to
basically figure out how to make a better nuclear weapon.
(13:33):
What Operation plash here was, it was different. It was
using these nuclear detonations to study things that could be
used for like industrial applications. And one of the first
tests like this was called the Reneer Shot, which was
actually a part of a larger operation called plumb Bob,
which is pretty great. All the names when you read
(13:54):
them out are pretty funny. And the Reneer Shot, which
is the one nuclear test in a larger program, um
was the first, um, the first fully contained underground nuclear
test that means that none of the nuclear fallout escaped
into the atmosphere. And it was a pretty big deal
because it showed that you could do this, and they
(14:16):
also were looking at whether it was basically a proof
that you could use nuclear bombs for underground engineering projects. Yeah,
and it uh. It went so well, in fact, that
the a e C, the Atomic Energy Commission, which approved
the project to begin with, said you know what, We're
not even gonna hide this one we can actually talk
about it and press like we're proud of this. Basically
(14:37):
they did, um, and so actually nar was again it
was part of Operation Plumb Bob. It wasn't part of Plaushure,
but it was basically a proof of concept that this
could happen, UM, and that you could just kind of
study these explosions for things like um, you know, uh,
industrial uses. Yeah, it was their sizzle reel, right exactly. So, UM.
(14:58):
The problem was that the nuclear weapons you would be
using for a civil engineering project were really basically the
same thing as the nuclear weapons that you would be
using as weapons that are extraordinarily highly classified and just
couldn't be given to see civilian companies for testing in use.
So the government, that Atomic Energy Commission and UM, the
(15:20):
Lawrence Livermore Laboratories and all of those guys, UM, they
had to carry out the tests themselves to make sure
that they they basically kept a lid on it before
handing the technology over to the civilian sector. And they did.
And that was where plowshare officially came from. And it
started at a really bad time. Actually yeah, I mean
(15:42):
they weren't along. I think it started in the summer
fifty seven. Uh. In in March nineteen Khruschev said, you
know what, uh yet no more testing of nukes? Yeah
for US, which put pressure on the US. But eisen
Or didn't. He wanted to cease testing too, but he
(16:02):
didn't feel like he could, you know, be the first
one to do that, because you know, the rest of
the people in United States would think he's a big
what was? And then interesting though that Kruscheff and Eisenhower
both wanted to stop nuclear testing and totally neither one
of them had the support at home for it. Yeah,
So it took cruise chef to start it. So then
Eisenhower said, well, now we can stop. And there was
(16:23):
a moratorium on nuclear testing for a while. Yeah. Um,
But the nuclear physicists who were involved in Operation Plowshare
where like this didn't gonna last very long. The Cold
War is just too too cold. And as a matter
of fact, a series of events led to the end
of that moratorium within I think two years or was
it nineteen fifty eight that the moratorium started? Uh, yeah,
(16:46):
March nineteen fifty eight, so then I think it might
have been three years. Yeah, three years later. Um, the
US and the Soviets started squabbling about West Berlin in
the Berlin Wall, which was one of my all time
favorite episodes. I always forget about when people ask, like,
what's one of your favorite episodes, That's definitely one of them. Fascinating,
(17:07):
it was a good one. Um. And then, uh, they
also started squabbling about the shooting down of a YouTube
spy plane in nineteen sixty Yeah. That really like puffed
up everyone's chest obviously. Um. And so in September nineteen
sixty one they said, I think it was kru Chef
again was the first one to say. Remember when I
(17:30):
said yet, now I'm saying whatever the Soviet word for yes,
is it? So let's start testing again? And so then
the US of course said, well we'll start testing again
an Operation Plowshare. They had gone into serious pre production because,
like you said, they knew it wasn't gonna last, so
they just started planning all the things they would do
once they got these bombs back. Yeah, they had some
(17:51):
downtime and they wanted to be able to be shovel
ready when the moratorium was lifted on nuclear By shovel
you mean adam bomb, right exactly? So um. Edward Teller
had gotten his other his people together and said start
thinking about this stuff. And some of the ideas that
had come up with were they were gonna blow a
channel through the kapinga marangei reef in the Marshall Islands.
(18:16):
I think I actually said that correctly, copinga MARANGUEI yeah,
thanks man, support that. So they were going to use
a nuclear weapon to blow up a live coral reef
off the Marshall Islands. I can't imagine how devastated that
area is just from the stuff they did do there.
Because where we did so much of our Pacific nuclear testing.
(18:36):
I can't imagine what has anyone ever done A lot
of studying on Nevada Nevada excuse me, not Nevada, No,
it's Nevada, but Nevada. Like I think of these plowshar
tests took place in Nevada. Yes, and there's gotta be
like that has been rained down with nukes underground all
over the place as testing ground, not just Nevada. But
(19:00):
I think they've we're definitely, like you know, took the
line share of the abuse, for sure. I curious. I'm
sure they've done tests and I'm sure they're just like
when the results come in. Maybe that's why to pronounce
their own state's name for anybody who doesn't know what
we're talking about. Any time we say Nevada, we get
(19:23):
eighteen emails at least from people who live in Nevada
telling us kind of firmly that we're saying it wrong
and please say it right. From now on, they say
it's Nevada, and my response is always the same. I
was like, we know, but you should know that only
people from Nevada say it that way. Everyone else has Nevada.
And now we'll get emails from six more people say
(19:46):
I don't even live there, and I say it right.
We poked fun. We should do a show in Vegas
one day. Sure, No, we should have our own theater
in Vegas one day. Yeah, we should. We should have
like um those like, yeah, that's what I was looking for.
Britney Spears, Yeah we can get Uh. Who is that
guy that sings like all the impressions Rich Little No,
(20:07):
the singer Danny something, Danny Kay, I can't remember his name.
Who are you talking about? He's a dude. He's got
a big act in Vegas where he just you know,
he's like now, I'm Frank Sinatra, No Bruce Springsteen, no
Billy Jewel. Well, those are terrible impressions. Well, I'm not
the great Danny Danny Gans. That sounds familiar. I thought
(20:28):
you were so good at impressions that you were doing
an impression of Danny Gans is bad impressions. No, I
think he's supposed to be pretty good. Yeah, I think
that name's right. You don't get your own theater in
Vegas unless you're not Buddy Way. You gotta be Danny
for Britney Spears. Yeah, or David Copperfield. Oh yeah, got me.
The jet disappear and the statue of Liberty, let's not forget,
(20:51):
just gone. No tricker either, no camera tricks. He literally
made the statue of Lipperty disappear. I just said, Lipperty.
Where were we? I have no idea Operation Plowshare. Oh
we were talking, I note Chuke. We were talking about
all the insane projects that Edward Teller father the h bomb,
(21:13):
and his crew um came up with during the downtime,
during the moratorium. So there's blowing a channel in the
kapingamar Ange reef off the Marshall Islands. How about a
new harbor in Alaska. Yeah, we'll talk about that in
a minute. Yeah, that was a big one one, making
canals and not just canal sea level canals, because um,
(21:34):
we did an episode on the Panama Canal and one
of the issues I guess you could call it with
the Panama Canal is that there are a series of
locks as part of the canal that basically are steps
for ships to go up and down a mountain range
sea level canals or where you blow a flat line
all the way through anything that gets in the way
(21:55):
from sea to shining sea, so that the entire now
is at sea level, so as ship can just go
Yeah bam. So that's what they're looking at. Sea level
canal excavation using nuclear bomb. Yeah, they were gonna call
that the It was either that one or the widening
of the Panama Canal, the Panatomic Canal. It's like, come on,
(22:18):
that's way too cute. Even everybody was blitzed on martinis
at this time. That's true. All right, Well, let's take
a quick break and then we will pick back up
with the restarting of Operation plow Share in December. All right, Josh,
(22:50):
is December. It's promised, liar, if you are in Carl's Bad,
New Mexico. You might want to take a weekend away
to Nevada and go work on a healthy glow, maybe
because if you live near there. They had something called
Operation Gnome, code named Gnome, and that was a three
kiloton blast and this one it seemed like hold on, tuck.
(23:14):
Do you remember that huge coffee table book that was
an illustrated guide to the life of Gnomes? It was
big in like the late seventies, early eighties. Really it
was wonderful. That's all I have to say. Okay, I
I thought for sure you're gonna be like, yes, no,
I gotta Hopefully my dad still has it at his house.
(23:36):
I really hope he does, because I want to get
my hands on it. What's the deal Gnomes? Why are
people so into that? They're just cute and they're helpful
and they hang out around psychedelic mushrooms as like you know,
that's where they hang out under shade and stuff, right, Um,
So they set off the bomb and Operation Nome, and uh,
(23:56):
they had a few objectives here. They wanted to see
how much heat it produced, what kind you know, is
it going to cause an earthquake? Let's measure the seismic activity.
They wanted to see if they could generate steam to
using turbines for electricity and basically setting off electric or
um nuclear bomb. Yeah, but they kind of what they
kind of really wanted to do was see how big
of a whole they could create kind of and again, um,
(24:19):
this one was also underground, and I think they blew
it in. Uh, Carl's bad in a salt mine, right,
and they basically just loosened created a huge cavity underground
in a salt mine and loosened up a bunch of salt.
They said, wow, that that really worked. And actually none
was the first actual plowshare test. Everything else had been
(24:39):
kind of laying the groundwork for it before then, so
that no one went really well, and everybody's like, this
is great, let's do it again. So July, we just
celebrated the fourth of July, so let's celebrate again by
setting off a hundred and four kill its unbombed and
the Nevada Desert. Uh, and man, this thing was huge,
(25:01):
a four hundred and thirty seven yard in diameter hole
that was a hundred and nine yards deep. Right, it's
actually the largest man made crater in America. Huge, it's
a it's it's on the Register of National Historic Places
because obviously it's still there. It's like Tahoe Now. Actually,
that's funny. Those Soviets developed their own similar program a
(25:23):
few years after the Americans, called the Nuclear Explosions for
the National Economy Program, and they blew up. They created
a crater lake in Kazakhstan with one of their explosions.
So it has been done, but with this one. It's
a dry crater, the one from the Sedan test. Right, Yeah,
I cannot hear the word Kazakhstan without thinking of Borat. Yeah,
(25:44):
that's where Barret's from. And I watched the other night.
I came home after a late night out, That's all
I'll say, and Borat was on and I hadn't seen
it in a long time, and I found myself watching
it and laughing as if it was the first time
I had seen it. Will hold up forever, so funny,
Oh man, I love that character. So Um the Sedan
(26:05):
test they used so again, a hundred and four kiloton
kiloton bomb Kila toon, Yeah, what's wrong with me anyway? Um?
The one from the Nome blasts three kiloton so It
was huge, and you were talking about Nevada getting like
(26:26):
fall out and all that chuck. This this explosion was
so huge and it released so much radioactivity into the
atmosphere that apparently they have done some calculations and they
figured out that this bomb alone, this test alone, released
seven percent of all the fallout from all the tests
in Nevada combined. It was huge, and it went everywhere.
(26:49):
It went up into Iowa, it went to the northeast.
It was everywhere, and they were like, let's try it again. Yeah,
they did move twelve million tons of dirt, which was
the objective. Um again, I sort of see where they're going.
And if there wasn't nuclear fallout, great, it was just
a bunker buster that could do that kind of dirt movement,
(27:11):
it would be great. Well, not great because you're still
wrecking wildlife in the ecosystem. They can find somewhere else
to live. But you're right, they did say it went great,
So let's move on to Operation Buggy. That's they wanted
to string together a chain of nuclear bombs. It's like
(27:31):
it's like they started smoking weed one night and said, hey,
what else can we do? You know, like like Beavis
and butt head, and they said, all right, let's let's
link these some bombs together like some black cats. Yeah,
let's get five of them and see if we can
make a channel. It's a nuclear road charge, basically, it's
what it was. It's the one and only that the
(27:52):
US ever conducted. And um, again, I guess it worked.
Five one ko ton bombs that needed simultaneously. That must
have been a heck of a thing to see. Yeah,
and then of course those dopes they're always standing somewhere nearby,
like behind a lead shield, right, and then they turn
and look at the camera and then their teeth fall
out and then a Simpsons I think, so um, and
(28:15):
we're laughing. It's not funny. The Simpsons are hilarious. Okay,
they were. Got. One of the other things that we're
looking to do here is what we know now is fracking. Yeah.
Then this is actually like the likeliest thing you could
have used a nuclear bomb for as far as like
civilian projects go. Yeah, but far less precise is fracking
to say the least. Yeah. So you know, fracking is
(28:38):
where you basically explode some oil that's locked up in
shale or natural gas or something like that, so that
you can get to it more easily. Um. But they
use it with hydraulic pressure these days, not nuclear bombs. Right,
it's a little more surgical. Right. It's it's amazing that
freck and could get even worse. But sure if you
(29:00):
ply a nuclear bomb to it, it makes everything worse, basically, Yeah,
they call it. They called it then gas stimulation, which
um ten jokes. I'm not gonna say I think that's
a that's good. Uh, And that actually turned out to
be one of the more promising aspects of the whole
program because that could generate money. It could, and there
(29:22):
were actually corporate sponsors on the that project of course. Um.
The problem is that they found out later on that
when you use a nuclear bomb to um loosen up
gas underground locked in rock or whatever, um, it taints
it with tritium actually, and you it renders it basically unusable.
(29:46):
And they figured out that even if you could do
it without tritium. What are you laughing about? I can't
say it out loud, um, then you you would still
be wasting tons and tons and tons of money. Figured out, Yeah,
I mean things became They found out cheaper ways to
uh get these resources. Over the years, and so they
(30:09):
said non nuclear ways exactly safer and cheaper. Yeah, and
they and actually through this, um, this investigation in the
gas stimulation which one was that was that buggy? Okay, um, no, sorry,
buggy was the row charge one. I'm not sure what
the what the that one was called where they looked
into it. But um, but for the gas stimulation project,
(30:32):
they figured out that they had poured eighty two million
dollars into it by the time it was over, just
that one program, and that it would take twenty five
years of continuous gas production from these sources just to
make back that. So they're like, well, this isn't adding
up at all. That's probably the only reason they stopped,
just because it didn't financially make sense. Well that and
(30:53):
then also like it was taining the natural gas with
tritium which made it unusable. So this testing went on
for twelve years under plowshare, twenty seven experiments, thirty five bombs,
most of those in Nevada, like I said, and then
in nine it finally stopped. But um, the big Daddy
(31:14):
hadn't happened yet. Yeah, you want to talk about a
couple more of these jobs. For these jobs, um, carry
all Operation Carryall was gonna move He said, you know what,
that highway should move through that mountain range in southern California.
So it's just blow a valley two miles long through it.
We're Americans. Why should we drive around mountains. We'll just
(31:36):
blow right through them, pretty much. And they not only
were they going to move I forty through it, they
were also going to move a couple of rail lines
through it too. Um and this one did they didn't
do this one. This was proposed, right, Yeah, I don't
think that. No, of course, this would have been enormous.
So remember that twenty two bombs they were gonna use
in total for that one, right, and then remember the one,
(31:57):
uh which one was it Sedan, which had even percent
of the fallout from all the bombs of Nevada. That
one was a hundred and four kilotons, right. Operation carry
y'all planned to use twenty two nuclear devices, ranging in
payloads from twenty to two hundred kilot tons each. Yeah, yeah, yes,
(32:19):
it takes a lot of nukes to blow up a mountain,
my friend. Right, And they were gonna blow about sixty
eight million cubic yards of earth, that's what they were
planning to blow out of there. It's really really fortunate
for everybody anywhere near that area that they didn't actually
try this. The boy sure would be able to drive
(32:41):
from Arizona to l a quicker slightly quicker. Actually don't
know if that's the area, but that's my best guess.
How about how about yeah, probably I would guess. I'm
not sure. I think I fort well, I'm gonna be
wrong no matter what I say. From Santa Barbara to Kansas,
(33:01):
from Milanda Mints, right. So, Operation Chariot was sort of
the big daddy, um or one of the big daddies.
This is when the United States said, Alaska, congratulations your state.
Now we're gonna drop nuclear bombs in an area the
size of Delaware. Two. See if it works, let's do it.
(33:26):
That was sort of the reason. I mean, they said
apparently there was some sort of military advantage, but I
think it was non specific. You could just get weapons
close to the Soviets, I guess, because we're talking in Alaska,
and you can be Alaska from Sarah Palin's house, right,
So obviously, if you if you have a means of
getting into further into the Arctic Circle by blowing a
(33:47):
harbor up. Then not well, creating a harbor, right, that's
what they're gonna do, right, Yeah, they said, we would
like a nice body of water here, so your your state, congratulations. Here,
we're gonna reign new ex down on you. And some
of the local uh tribes there it wasn't heavily populated,
but they were like, I don't like this idea. Right here,
(34:10):
two different villages that were inhabited that were within forty
miles of the site and um it. Actually the land
was under the control of the Bureau of Land Management,
I believe, but these Inuit groups had like real rights
to this area and had a real say in it,
(34:30):
and they were like not happy with this idea at all.
And other people jumped on board, the Audubon Society and
all kinds of you know, environmental rights groups. But Edward
Teller again, he's the father of the h bomb. He
wrote in um Popular Mechanics and I think March of
nineteen sixty one, very excitedly about this project. He said
that um it was going to use in a matter
(34:51):
in a matter of milliseconds, the energy will move twenty
million tons of earthen rock, blast out a channel eighteen
hundred feet long and seven d defeat wide. At the
same time, create an inner harbor a quarter of a
mile wide and a half a mile long. Minimum water
depth will be around thirty feet. And they were just
going to do that in a matter of milliseconds, just
(35:11):
create a artificial harbor. And it sounds cool and everything,
but when you really look at like, why are you
doing this, no one had a really good explanation. Uh.
Teller in that same article said there's vast oil and
coal reserves. They're just waiting to for people to show
up with boats to take it out of He left
(35:31):
out the fact that it's actually behind ice nine months
of the year, so it wouldn't be very easy to
um to industrialize. Um. And there was just holes in
this plan bigger than the harbor they were going to create. Yeah,
we're gonna we're gonna put water and fish with five eyes,
right exactly, another Simpsons reference. Yeah, five eyes, four eyes,
(35:52):
three three eyes blinky the fish because anything more than
one is or more than two, well, yes, one on
each side, blinky. We just mauled him. Yeah. Um. So
the first idea for Chariot was two point four mega
tons and then they even they knew that was ridiculous,
(36:16):
and they said, all right, how about four would you
call it a colotton? Yeah, to kill a ton and
uh but thankfully, um there was enough hay raised in Alaska.
They said, we're branding state while you're treating us like this,
and um we said, all right, well maybe you're right
bad idea, Yeah, which is great because people started to
(36:38):
question it and say, you guys just want to see
if you can do this, and that's not good enough,
so stop. And then Plowshare as a whole kind of
ran into the same type of resistance. So because of
all of these worries about fallout, because here's the problem.
If you're the United States government, you can't be like
you gotta be, you really need to. You're the Soviets
(37:00):
and their nuclear weapons, you know, but try not to
worry about the weapons were actually blowing up in your state. Right.
That's that's tough to really spin that in a way
where people aren't worried about And the public became more
and more and more worried about fallout and nuclear testing
and especially these underground ones where they're basically fracking or
trying to open up aquifers and that kind of stuff.
(37:22):
They were worried about ground groundwater getting contaminated, and that
UM really kind of brought Operation Plowshare front and center
in the nascent environmental um awareness movement. Yes. Um. And
then secondly, when they figured out there's just way cheaper
ways of doing this, Uh, there, the Operation plowshare was dead.
(37:45):
I wonder if they went to their top spin doctor
and even that person was like, I got nothing for
you here, or you know who their top spin doctor
would have been at that time in the seventies, a
man himself. Yeah, chills, you got anything else, no, sir.
And that's the end of that chapter. If you want
(38:07):
to know more about Operation flos share, just type those
words into the search bar how stuff works dot com
and uh, we'll bring up this article. And since I said,
uh plowshares, it's time for listening mail, I'm gonna read
a quickie uh, and then and then then a real one.
But we the gauntlet has been laid down. We've got
a message from John Hodgman. Oh, yes, you listened to
(38:30):
our nostalgia episode. Yeah. I never thought he'd listen. And
I said, uh, I think we both offered him a
chance to rebut we're like, you know, it's not cool
just to slam your theory um without you being in
the room. I thought it was perfectly cool. It's like,
but you can you know, if you want to write
a listener mail for us, we'll read it. Oh man,
the indignancy. Oh man, So he sent this in that
(38:52):
guy gets set off, like at the drop of the hat,
life was so much better before you trash me in
my nostalgia theory all over your podcast. You can't pull
that and then get me to write something for you
for free. I love that for a free thing. Call
me up and I'll discuss it with you, dudes, or else,
let's talk about it on stage when you're in Brooklyn,
because we're gonna be in Brooklyn this June for two
(39:13):
shows at the Bellhouse. Either way, I demand a special
episode looking forward to your reply in the future. That
is all so uh, we're gonna have John on via
calmly and he'll probably rush the stage in New York
I soon, I sincerely hope not, but we're gonna have
(39:33):
him on soon to officially rebut via phone. I'm excited
about this, Chuck. It's got me good it's good. Oh,
it's gonna be great. All right, So here's the real
listener mail. I'm gonna call this the gender pay gap episode,
and there's gonna be a couple of these over the
next couple of weeks because it generated a lot of mail. Alright, yes,
a lot of email. Uh, let's just listen to the
gender pack up, guys. I'd like say thank you both.
(39:55):
Chuck said at the end, you felt a bit clumsy
with getting your points across, and I know you may
not have meant it this way, but I want to
commend you guys for all the times you've handled sensitive
topics like champions. Uh, it's apparently handled. It's apparent when
you speak you're mindful of how your words could be
interpreted by others, and it's uplifting. You think you guys
have young infession. Impressionable fans and podcast lands have taken
(40:18):
notice how you were considerate of other perspectives that are
not your own. Um, we try, but we we've brewed
that up to so but I appreciate it. A little
side note. When you were talking about gender dominated professions,
you mentioned that these are jobs that men or women prefer. However,
I don't think that the ratio of one gender or
another under profession or industry is indicative only of a preference.
(40:39):
I think it is still the expectation of certain genders
having specific jobs. Uh, that is the stronger determinant of
professional choice. Uh, profession choice. Imagine if men and women
of all races have been given equal opportunity from the
get go, what would be the gender makeup of various
industries and positions that are currently dominated by one gender?
(41:00):
Begin to change us. I think it's great importance to
instill in young people and understanding that they're not constrained
to any set of jobs due to gender. That is
from Emily Trene. Emily, that is such a great point.
Couldn't agree more. And we got so many emails like
that about just these little details. Yeah, if you just
mention them, it just changes the complexion of everything. It
(41:21):
takes this this concept and makes it even more like
a parent. Yeah, one time, I wish we could go
back in time. Well I sort of do too, but
we can do that now. Because one thing I wanted
to mention was one point I wish I had made
was I got a lot of responses, um mainly from
dudes on our Facebook fade saying well, you know, you
set it yourself. Men are more apt to ask for raises.
(41:42):
Men are more aggressive about negotiating their salary to begin with.
And I was like fine, but like step back and
then why is that true? Like don't just say well
that's the reason, Like maybe take a more macro view
of that even and say, well, why are they more
apt to do that? Is that part of society? Is
that sy stomach? Um? And I think it is. Sure.
(42:04):
So that's all I have to say about that. Uh, well,
thanks again, Emily, thank you, Chuck, sure, thank you, Josh,
thanks and Jerry, thank you? Quiet Jerry? Should we got
wake noal up and thank him. Uh, we'll just leave
a note on his head. Um, there's already three notes
on his head. And if you know once from like
last week. Uh, if you want to get in touch
(42:27):
with us to make an excellent point or flesh out
a point that we made or what have you, we
love to hear that kind of stuff. You can tweet
to us tot s y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
how stuff Works dot Com and has always joined us
at home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot
(42:47):
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Does it, How stuff works dot Com.
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry
Rowland and uh, this is stuff you should know the podcast.
It's the bomb. It is not the bomb du bomb
(00:25):
even that's right. So it was, but it was okay,
it worked for this one. Have you heard? Go ahead?
I was gonna say, you know, it didn't work for
this one. Was this the intro long intro which was
a nice story but has nothing so I would like
to cover that at some point. Yeah, it's a true story.
(00:46):
Let's leave it a secret. Yeah, everybody. Sorry. So, um,
had you heard of Operation Plowshare before? So, guys, there's
this really awesome Slate article um about Operations Plowshare. It's
a it's actually, um an excerpt from a book. I
can't remember what the book is called, but um, it
was on Slate. It's worth checking out. But just look
(01:09):
up operation plosh here and Slate. This guy goes into
it's actually called What Could Go Wrong? It's by Ed
Regious bam um that it's a guy who wrote a
book on Operation plows Share. And they excerpted on slate. Oh,
I thought you were going to say. He was like,
you know some my important like Brian Gumble. You know,
I was bamming like my own like so quick I
got the answer that I was looking for. I was
(01:31):
able to stall without coming off as stalling while I
found the answer. I was just so um, I've heard
about this when when I read that article, but I
hadn't heard about it before. But Operation Plosh there is
basically this idea that we could use all of these
surplus huge atomic bombs that we're laying around for civil
(01:56):
engineering projects, basically that we had to move earth. Yeah,
that we had at our disposal developed in World War Two,
this incredible explosive capacity to yeah, like, why not use
it to move earth? We we could use a canal,
let's make one. Yeah, Why bring a hundred bulldozers in
(02:18):
for months and months and man hours when we can
just drop a bomb and have a big hole right exactly. Weirdly,
it makes sense. It totally makes sense. Here's the problem
with it, though, It's insane because to to use this
successfully you have to literally ignore radioactive fallout from nuclear blasts.
(02:44):
There's just no way around it. Yeah, but this was
a time where they were they were blasting bombs up
in the way of high in the sky. They were
blasting it well as you'll see underground. Well, these cats
knew what was going on. It was the public that
wasn't hip to it yet. Well, sure, you know, but
I mean there was a little regard I think, yes,
(03:05):
I mean they dropped him on people. Yeah, that's that's
a little regard. They had pretty little regards. That's Japan. Yeah,
so that that that's that's a really great point that
you bring up UM. After Japan, this idea of using
UM nuclear bombs for peaceful civil engineering projects. UM led
(03:27):
to the title of this operation. The name of this
operation operation Plowshare, based on that. I think it's an
old Testament thing about beating your swords into plowshares, so
that you're you're using things not for war, you're using
technology not for war and to harm other people, but
to further humanity through technology. Yeah. They lifted the name
(03:47):
straight from the Book of Isaiah in the Bible. So
umle and supposedly the legend goes that there's a physicist
named Isadore Isaac Robbie UM and he said, so you
want to beat your old atomic bombs in the plow shares.
Huh when they went Robbie, you did it again. Uh
So should we talk a little bit about what led
(04:08):
up to this idea? Um, it's something called the Uh. Well,
have you heard of the Suez Canal once or twice?
Have you heard of the sue s crisis? Uh No,
I hadn't, actually had you. I had heard of it,
but I didn't know much about any of this stuff.
Uh So the Suez Crisis is what preceded this idea. Uh.
And it goes a little something like this. N UM.
(04:34):
The American government in the British government were starting to
get UM. Well, for a couple of years, they had
been a little bit annoyed with Egypt. UM, specifically their president,
Colonel Gamal A del Nassar or NASA. And UM, I
think it's we'll go with NASA. And he had been
(04:55):
cozing up to the Soviet Union, UM, kind of getting
weapons funneled through checklistle and they were they were arming
his his Egyptian army, and it was, you know, we're
talking about the Cold War. So people were getting a
little annoyed by it. They were because Egypt had been
formerly First World because it was not only allied with
(05:15):
the British, it was under British imperial rule until the
early fifties. And um a military coup basically threw off
the British shackles, but not immediately and not necessarily in
the most bloody manner. The British ended up hammering out
a timeline where they left um Egypt, right, yeah, but
the Brits were, I mean for a couple of years.
(05:36):
At this point in nineteen fifty six, Egypt was still
trying to get Britain to in their military presence around
the canal, right and then uh, and at the beginning
of July n six to the last British troops left
the Suez Canal. And on July six, Nasser said, Oh,
we're nationalizing the Suez Canal. See you later, everybody, it's ours. Yeah,
(05:57):
And that was a little bit in retaliation for or
um the U S and England and Britain pulling out
of our promise to help them finance their Aswan damn project.
So it's sort of like there's a lot of back
and forth sniping like oh, yeah, you're not gonna finance this, Yeah, well,
I'm gonna nationalize the canal now that you guys aren't
here anymore, and I'm friends with the Soviets now and
(06:18):
they're giving us weapons. So that was a big deal.
And not only was it a big deal because there's
a lot of geo political maneuvering going on, it was
a big deal to Britain because the British Empire was
very much in decline. UM. It had just been bombed
to holy heck, even though it had come out on
(06:38):
the successful side during World War Two. And because of
World War Two, America kind of came out as like
the new big kid on the block, that the kind
of tough bully in charge basically, and this was happening.
America was ascending at the same time, Great Britain was
declining and the British ego was a little um touchy
(07:02):
at the time. So it assaulted the British empires ego
for the one. But it also had a more practical problem,
and that was that damn was important. Yeah, the not
the damn, the canal. Yeah, the canal was. It obviously
controlled a lot of trade in the Middle East, uh,
specifically the oil supply UM, and it wasn't just Britain,
(07:22):
it was France as well. Uh. They actually ran the
Suez Canal Company. Even though Brits, the Brits were the
large the British government specifically was a big stakeholder in
that company until it was nationalized. It was run by
a French company. And they were also exposed. You know,
basically Britain and France were both kind of exposed, like,
(07:45):
you know, Egypt stood up to them and they were like,
wait a minute, They were like, Egypt shouldn't be standing
up to us. You know, we're Britain, Great Britain exactly.
So there was egg on the face of I guess
omelets or wait, crepes, crepes on the face of France, yes,
and eggs on the face of Britain, right because eight eggs. Yeah,
(08:09):
but what's like toast and pork and beans, which is weird.
So um, the British and the French have egg all
over their face and they decide that they're going to
do something about this. Now they don't technically invade Egypt themselves,
right they do is they go to Israel and they say,
you guys should probably invade Egypt, don't you think, Yeah,
(08:32):
like you guys have been battling Egypt already. Yeah, border,
what's one more invasion? Yeah, so they got Israel to
invade basically is a means of setting themselves up, the
French and the British of sending troops into act as peacekeepers. Man. Yeah,
it sounded like all three of them. I don't think
they like snowed Israel. I think they were all three
(08:53):
on in this plan. Yeah, that's the impression I have to.
So basically they said, you guys attack on October fifty six.
We're gonna call for a ceasefire, but we'll be in
there a couple of days later, don't you worry. Right,
And that's actually a very post imperial maneuver. Had it
been imperial, they would have just been like, uh, these
guys are brown and are rising up, so we're going
(09:16):
to invade. That's totally fine, isn't it. Rest of the
West and the rest of the West would have been
like sure, sure. But this was post imperial. They had
to do some maneuvering. They sent Israel in, they came
in as peacekeepers afterwards. And remember American now as the
big kid on the block. And there's such a thing
as a UN in America went to the u N
and went, what is that. They can't do that and said,
(09:37):
we condemned this. They basically acted without telling the US,
which really rubbed uh, the American government the wrong way.
So they and and by this time, well it was
initially successful. They took control of the Suez Canal, the Israeli, French,
British thing the force did. So it worked. But then
(09:58):
the Soviets got involved and they said, you know what,
kru Chef said, I'm gonna start reigning down nuclear bombs
on your head. Uh, because this is a big issue.
So the US said, I don't like any of this.
I'm gonna threaten sanctions against all the countries involved. All
of your time out go in the corner. That's right.
And when kreus Chef said I'm gonna rain bombs down
(10:19):
on you guys around the canal, it worked, Yes, it did. Um.
It actually ended the Tous crisis right like really quickly,
like at the end of October is when the invasion
took place, and in December is when France and Britain withdrew,
so it was like six weeks. Yeah, that's pretty quick.
And then in March Israel withdrew and it was all
(10:41):
over in. The Soviets were able to puff their chest out,
and you know, say, you know a nuclear threat worked,
and you guys know how well nuclear bombs work because
you did it. And the British went back and drown
their sorrows in a pine and bitter and the French
went back and uh, drink wine. Sure I was gonna
(11:02):
say great Goose vodka, wouldn't that be the Soviets? No,
because Great Goose is made in France. I just hear
vodka in a minute, I know that's what that's a
lot of people in France has the same reaction. So um, chuck,
somebody said, I think you said. Cruise chef said, I'm
gonna rain bombs down on your nuclear bombs down on
(11:24):
this canal, on all of you, and um, that must
have struck an American physicist because at some point somebody said,
you know what, ranting bombs down with canals, it's not
a bad idea. It might make a larger canal. Exactly. So,
in a very strange way, the Suis crisis actually helped
lead to Operation Plowshare, And we'll go into that right
(11:47):
after this. How about that all right, So the SUS
(12:09):
crisis was still going on in November nine six, and
it's a brief window that it was still uh active.
And a dude named Herbert Yorke. He was the director
of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Livermore, and he was
a new nuclear scientist, and he said, you know what,
uh what Josh Clark said before the break was right right.
(12:31):
He always follows me around. He says, maybe we can
use nuclear weapons to move a lot of earth. And
they got the name, as we said earlier, from the
Book of Isaiah, took it to the Atomic Energy Commission
and they said, this is a great idea. Let's right. Yeah,
they had a meeting and just brought people together and said, hey,
(12:52):
all of you guys, um, let's uh, let's figure out
a better way to use these things. There's a lot
of projects we want to do, so let's let's pretend
like the pies in the sky and we'll all shoot
for it. And that the old say. Um. So they
all got together and um started thinking, putting their heads together,
(13:12):
and again the US and um, the Soviets and Great
Britain and then France as well. I believe are all
just testing, testing nukes all over the place all the time.
But they're testing nukes throughout this era, throughout the fifties
and sixties and uh seventies too, I guess, um to
basically figure out how to make a better nuclear weapon.
(13:33):
What Operation plash here was, it was different. It was
using these nuclear detonations to study things that could be
used for like industrial applications. And one of the first
tests like this was called the Reneer Shot, which was
actually a part of a larger operation called plumb Bob,
which is pretty great. All the names when you read
(13:54):
them out are pretty funny. And the Reneer Shot, which
is the one nuclear test in a larger program, um
was the first, um, the first fully contained underground nuclear
test that means that none of the nuclear fallout escaped
into the atmosphere. And it was a pretty big deal
because it showed that you could do this, and they
(14:16):
also were looking at whether it was basically a proof
that you could use nuclear bombs for underground engineering projects. Yeah,
and it uh. It went so well, in fact, that
the a e C, the Atomic Energy Commission, which approved
the project to begin with, said you know what, We're
not even gonna hide this one we can actually talk
about it and press like we're proud of this. Basically
(14:37):
they did, um, and so actually nar was again it
was part of Operation Plumb Bob. It wasn't part of Plaushure,
but it was basically a proof of concept that this
could happen, UM, and that you could just kind of
study these explosions for things like um, you know, uh,
industrial uses. Yeah, it was their sizzle reel, right exactly. So, UM.
(14:58):
The problem was that the nuclear weapons you would be
using for a civil engineering project were really basically the
same thing as the nuclear weapons that you would be
using as weapons that are extraordinarily highly classified and just
couldn't be given to see civilian companies for testing in use.
So the government, that Atomic Energy Commission and UM, the
(15:20):
Lawrence Livermore Laboratories and all of those guys, UM, they
had to carry out the tests themselves to make sure
that they they basically kept a lid on it before
handing the technology over to the civilian sector. And they did.
And that was where plowshare officially came from. And it
started at a really bad time. Actually yeah, I mean
(15:42):
they weren't along. I think it started in the summer
fifty seven. Uh. In in March nineteen Khruschev said, you
know what, uh yet no more testing of nukes? Yeah
for US, which put pressure on the US. But eisen
Or didn't. He wanted to cease testing too, but he
(16:02):
didn't feel like he could, you know, be the first
one to do that, because you know, the rest of
the people in United States would think he's a big
what was? And then interesting though that Kruscheff and Eisenhower
both wanted to stop nuclear testing and totally neither one
of them had the support at home for it. Yeah,
So it took cruise chef to start it. So then
Eisenhower said, well, now we can stop. And there was
(16:23):
a moratorium on nuclear testing for a while. Yeah. Um,
But the nuclear physicists who were involved in Operation Plowshare
where like this didn't gonna last very long. The Cold
War is just too too cold. And as a matter
of fact, a series of events led to the end
of that moratorium within I think two years or was
it nineteen fifty eight that the moratorium started? Uh, yeah,
(16:46):
March nineteen fifty eight, so then I think it might
have been three years. Yeah, three years later. Um, the
US and the Soviets started squabbling about West Berlin in
the Berlin Wall, which was one of my all time
favorite episodes. I always forget about when people ask, like,
what's one of your favorite episodes, That's definitely one of them. Fascinating,
(17:07):
it was a good one. Um. And then, uh, they
also started squabbling about the shooting down of a YouTube
spy plane in nineteen sixty Yeah. That really like puffed
up everyone's chest obviously. Um. And so in September nineteen
sixty one they said, I think it was kru Chef
again was the first one to say. Remember when I
(17:30):
said yet, now I'm saying whatever the Soviet word for yes,
is it? So let's start testing again? And so then
the US of course said, well we'll start testing again
an Operation Plowshare. They had gone into serious pre production because,
like you said, they knew it wasn't gonna last, so
they just started planning all the things they would do
once they got these bombs back. Yeah, they had some
(17:51):
downtime and they wanted to be able to be shovel
ready when the moratorium was lifted on nuclear By shovel
you mean adam bomb, right exactly? So um. Edward Teller
had gotten his other his people together and said start
thinking about this stuff. And some of the ideas that
had come up with were they were gonna blow a
channel through the kapinga marangei reef in the Marshall Islands.
(18:16):
I think I actually said that correctly, copinga MARANGUEI yeah,
thanks man, support that. So they were going to use
a nuclear weapon to blow up a live coral reef
off the Marshall Islands. I can't imagine how devastated that
area is just from the stuff they did do there.
Because where we did so much of our Pacific nuclear testing.
(18:36):
I can't imagine what has anyone ever done A lot
of studying on Nevada Nevada excuse me, not Nevada, No,
it's Nevada, but Nevada. Like I think of these plowshar
tests took place in Nevada. Yes, and there's gotta be
like that has been rained down with nukes underground all
over the place as testing ground, not just Nevada. But
(19:00):
I think they've we're definitely, like you know, took the
line share of the abuse, for sure. I curious. I'm
sure they've done tests and I'm sure they're just like
when the results come in. Maybe that's why to pronounce
their own state's name for anybody who doesn't know what
we're talking about. Any time we say Nevada, we get
(19:23):
eighteen emails at least from people who live in Nevada
telling us kind of firmly that we're saying it wrong
and please say it right. From now on, they say
it's Nevada, and my response is always the same. I
was like, we know, but you should know that only
people from Nevada say it that way. Everyone else has Nevada.
And now we'll get emails from six more people say
(19:46):
I don't even live there, and I say it right.
We poked fun. We should do a show in Vegas
one day. Sure, No, we should have our own theater
in Vegas one day. Yeah, we should. We should have
like um those like, yeah, that's what I was looking for.
Britney Spears, Yeah we can get Uh. Who is that
guy that sings like all the impressions Rich Little No,
(20:07):
the singer Danny something, Danny Kay, I can't remember his name.
Who are you talking about? He's a dude. He's got
a big act in Vegas where he just you know,
he's like now, I'm Frank Sinatra, No Bruce Springsteen, no
Billy Jewel. Well, those are terrible impressions. Well, I'm not
the great Danny Danny Gans. That sounds familiar. I thought
(20:28):
you were so good at impressions that you were doing
an impression of Danny Gans is bad impressions. No, I
think he's supposed to be pretty good. Yeah, I think
that name's right. You don't get your own theater in
Vegas unless you're not Buddy Way. You gotta be Danny
for Britney Spears. Yeah, or David Copperfield. Oh yeah, got me.
The jet disappear and the statue of Liberty, let's not forget,
(20:51):
just gone. No tricker either, no camera tricks. He literally
made the statue of Lipperty disappear. I just said, Lipperty.
Where were we? I have no idea Operation Plowshare. Oh
we were talking, I note Chuke. We were talking about
all the insane projects that Edward Teller father the h bomb,
(21:13):
and his crew um came up with during the downtime,
during the moratorium. So there's blowing a channel in the
kapingamar Ange reef off the Marshall Islands. How about a
new harbor in Alaska. Yeah, we'll talk about that in
a minute. Yeah, that was a big one one, making
canals and not just canal sea level canals, because um,
(21:34):
we did an episode on the Panama Canal and one
of the issues I guess you could call it with
the Panama Canal is that there are a series of
locks as part of the canal that basically are steps
for ships to go up and down a mountain range
sea level canals or where you blow a flat line
all the way through anything that gets in the way
(21:55):
from sea to shining sea, so that the entire now
is at sea level, so as ship can just go
Yeah bam. So that's what they're looking at. Sea level
canal excavation using nuclear bomb. Yeah, they were gonna call
that the It was either that one or the widening
of the Panama Canal, the Panatomic Canal. It's like, come on,
(22:18):
that's way too cute. Even everybody was blitzed on martinis
at this time. That's true. All right, Well, let's take
a quick break and then we will pick back up
with the restarting of Operation plow Share in December. All right, Josh,
(22:50):
is December. It's promised, liar, if you are in Carl's Bad,
New Mexico. You might want to take a weekend away
to Nevada and go work on a healthy glow, maybe
because if you live near there. They had something called
Operation Gnome, code named Gnome, and that was a three
kiloton blast and this one it seemed like hold on, tuck.
(23:14):
Do you remember that huge coffee table book that was
an illustrated guide to the life of Gnomes? It was
big in like the late seventies, early eighties. Really it
was wonderful. That's all I have to say. Okay, I
I thought for sure you're gonna be like, yes, no,
I gotta Hopefully my dad still has it at his house.
(23:36):
I really hope he does, because I want to get
my hands on it. What's the deal Gnomes? Why are
people so into that? They're just cute and they're helpful
and they hang out around psychedelic mushrooms as like you know,
that's where they hang out under shade and stuff, right, Um,
So they set off the bomb and Operation Nome, and uh,
(23:56):
they had a few objectives here. They wanted to see
how much heat it produced, what kind you know, is
it going to cause an earthquake? Let's measure the seismic activity.
They wanted to see if they could generate steam to
using turbines for electricity and basically setting off electric or
um nuclear bomb. Yeah, but they kind of what they
kind of really wanted to do was see how big
of a whole they could create kind of and again, um,
(24:19):
this one was also underground, and I think they blew
it in. Uh, Carl's bad in a salt mine, right,
and they basically just loosened created a huge cavity underground
in a salt mine and loosened up a bunch of salt.
They said, wow, that that really worked. And actually none
was the first actual plowshare test. Everything else had been
(24:39):
kind of laying the groundwork for it before then, so
that no one went really well, and everybody's like, this
is great, let's do it again. So July, we just
celebrated the fourth of July, so let's celebrate again by
setting off a hundred and four kill its unbombed and
the Nevada Desert. Uh, and man, this thing was huge,
(25:01):
a four hundred and thirty seven yard in diameter hole
that was a hundred and nine yards deep. Right, it's
actually the largest man made crater in America. Huge, it's
a it's it's on the Register of National Historic Places
because obviously it's still there. It's like Tahoe Now. Actually,
that's funny. Those Soviets developed their own similar program a
(25:23):
few years after the Americans, called the Nuclear Explosions for
the National Economy Program, and they blew up. They created
a crater lake in Kazakhstan with one of their explosions.
So it has been done, but with this one. It's
a dry crater, the one from the Sedan test. Right, Yeah,
I cannot hear the word Kazakhstan without thinking of Borat. Yeah,
(25:44):
that's where Barret's from. And I watched the other night.
I came home after a late night out, That's all
I'll say, and Borat was on and I hadn't seen
it in a long time, and I found myself watching
it and laughing as if it was the first time
I had seen it. Will hold up forever, so funny,
Oh man, I love that character. So Um the Sedan
(26:05):
test they used so again, a hundred and four kiloton
kiloton bomb Kila toon, Yeah, what's wrong with me anyway? Um?
The one from the Nome blasts three kiloton so It
was huge, and you were talking about Nevada getting like
(26:26):
fall out and all that chuck. This this explosion was
so huge and it released so much radioactivity into the
atmosphere that apparently they have done some calculations and they
figured out that this bomb alone, this test alone, released
seven percent of all the fallout from all the tests
in Nevada combined. It was huge, and it went everywhere.
(26:49):
It went up into Iowa, it went to the northeast.
It was everywhere, and they were like, let's try it again. Yeah,
they did move twelve million tons of dirt, which was
the objective. Um again, I sort of see where they're going.
And if there wasn't nuclear fallout, great, it was just
a bunker buster that could do that kind of dirt movement,
(27:11):
it would be great. Well, not great because you're still
wrecking wildlife in the ecosystem. They can find somewhere else
to live. But you're right, they did say it went great,
So let's move on to Operation Buggy. That's they wanted
to string together a chain of nuclear bombs. It's like
(27:31):
it's like they started smoking weed one night and said, hey,
what else can we do? You know, like like Beavis
and butt head, and they said, all right, let's let's
link these some bombs together like some black cats. Yeah,
let's get five of them and see if we can
make a channel. It's a nuclear road charge, basically, it's
what it was. It's the one and only that the
(27:52):
US ever conducted. And um, again, I guess it worked.
Five one ko ton bombs that needed simultaneously. That must
have been a heck of a thing to see. Yeah,
and then of course those dopes they're always standing somewhere nearby,
like behind a lead shield, right, and then they turn
and look at the camera and then their teeth fall
out and then a Simpsons I think, so um, and
(28:15):
we're laughing. It's not funny. The Simpsons are hilarious. Okay,
they were. Got. One of the other things that we're
looking to do here is what we know now is fracking. Yeah.
Then this is actually like the likeliest thing you could
have used a nuclear bomb for as far as like
civilian projects go. Yeah, but far less precise is fracking
to say the least. Yeah. So you know, fracking is
(28:38):
where you basically explode some oil that's locked up in
shale or natural gas or something like that, so that
you can get to it more easily. Um. But they
use it with hydraulic pressure these days, not nuclear bombs. Right,
it's a little more surgical. Right. It's it's amazing that
freck and could get even worse. But sure if you
(29:00):
ply a nuclear bomb to it, it makes everything worse, basically, Yeah,
they call it. They called it then gas stimulation, which
um ten jokes. I'm not gonna say I think that's
a that's good. Uh, And that actually turned out to
be one of the more promising aspects of the whole
program because that could generate money. It could, and there
(29:22):
were actually corporate sponsors on the that project of course. Um.
The problem is that they found out later on that
when you use a nuclear bomb to um loosen up
gas underground locked in rock or whatever, um, it taints
it with tritium actually, and you it renders it basically unusable.
(29:46):
And they figured out that even if you could do
it without tritium. What are you laughing about? I can't
say it out loud, um, then you you would still
be wasting tons and tons and tons of money. Figured out, Yeah,
I mean things became They found out cheaper ways to
uh get these resources. Over the years, and so they
(30:09):
said non nuclear ways exactly safer and cheaper. Yeah, and
they and actually through this, um, this investigation in the
gas stimulation which one was that was that buggy? Okay, um, no, sorry,
buggy was the row charge one. I'm not sure what
the what the that one was called where they looked
into it. But um, but for the gas stimulation project,
(30:32):
they figured out that they had poured eighty two million
dollars into it by the time it was over, just
that one program, and that it would take twenty five
years of continuous gas production from these sources just to
make back that. So they're like, well, this isn't adding
up at all. That's probably the only reason they stopped,
just because it didn't financially make sense. Well that and
(30:53):
then also like it was taining the natural gas with
tritium which made it unusable. So this testing went on
for twelve years under plowshare, twenty seven experiments, thirty five bombs,
most of those in Nevada, like I said, and then
in nine it finally stopped. But um, the big Daddy
(31:14):
hadn't happened yet. Yeah, you want to talk about a
couple more of these jobs. For these jobs, um, carry
all Operation Carryall was gonna move He said, you know what,
that highway should move through that mountain range in southern California.
So it's just blow a valley two miles long through it.
We're Americans. Why should we drive around mountains. We'll just
(31:36):
blow right through them, pretty much. And they not only
were they going to move I forty through it, they
were also going to move a couple of rail lines
through it too. Um and this one did they didn't
do this one. This was proposed, right, Yeah, I don't
think that. No, of course, this would have been enormous.
So remember that twenty two bombs they were gonna use
in total for that one, right, and then remember the one,
(31:57):
uh which one was it Sedan, which had even percent
of the fallout from all the bombs of Nevada. That
one was a hundred and four kilotons, right. Operation carry
y'all planned to use twenty two nuclear devices, ranging in
payloads from twenty to two hundred kilot tons each. Yeah, yeah, yes,
(32:19):
it takes a lot of nukes to blow up a mountain,
my friend. Right, And they were gonna blow about sixty
eight million cubic yards of earth, that's what they were
planning to blow out of there. It's really really fortunate
for everybody anywhere near that area that they didn't actually
try this. The boy sure would be able to drive
(32:41):
from Arizona to l a quicker slightly quicker. Actually don't
know if that's the area, but that's my best guess.
How about how about yeah, probably I would guess. I'm
not sure. I think I fort well, I'm gonna be
wrong no matter what I say. From Santa Barbara to Kansas,
(33:01):
from Milanda Mints, right. So, Operation Chariot was sort of
the big daddy, um or one of the big daddies.
This is when the United States said, Alaska, congratulations your state.
Now we're gonna drop nuclear bombs in an area the
size of Delaware. Two. See if it works, let's do it.
(33:26):
That was sort of the reason. I mean, they said
apparently there was some sort of military advantage, but I
think it was non specific. You could just get weapons
close to the Soviets, I guess, because we're talking in Alaska,
and you can be Alaska from Sarah Palin's house, right,
So obviously, if you if you have a means of
getting into further into the Arctic Circle by blowing a
(33:47):
harbor up. Then not well, creating a harbor, right, that's
what they're gonna do, right, Yeah, they said, we would
like a nice body of water here, so your your state, congratulations. Here,
we're gonna reign new ex down on you. And some
of the local uh tribes there it wasn't heavily populated,
but they were like, I don't like this idea. Right here,
(34:10):
two different villages that were inhabited that were within forty
miles of the site and um it. Actually the land
was under the control of the Bureau of Land Management,
I believe, but these Inuit groups had like real rights
to this area and had a real say in it,
(34:30):
and they were like not happy with this idea at all.
And other people jumped on board, the Audubon Society and
all kinds of you know, environmental rights groups. But Edward
Teller again, he's the father of the h bomb. He
wrote in um Popular Mechanics and I think March of
nineteen sixty one, very excitedly about this project. He said
that um it was going to use in a matter
(34:51):
in a matter of milliseconds, the energy will move twenty
million tons of earthen rock, blast out a channel eighteen
hundred feet long and seven d defeat wide. At the
same time, create an inner harbor a quarter of a
mile wide and a half a mile long. Minimum water
depth will be around thirty feet. And they were just
going to do that in a matter of milliseconds, just
(35:11):
create a artificial harbor. And it sounds cool and everything,
but when you really look at like, why are you
doing this, no one had a really good explanation. Uh.
Teller in that same article said there's vast oil and
coal reserves. They're just waiting to for people to show
up with boats to take it out of He left
(35:31):
out the fact that it's actually behind ice nine months
of the year, so it wouldn't be very easy to
um to industrialize. Um. And there was just holes in
this plan bigger than the harbor they were going to create. Yeah,
we're gonna we're gonna put water and fish with five eyes,
right exactly, another Simpsons reference. Yeah, five eyes, four eyes,
(35:52):
three three eyes blinky the fish because anything more than
one is or more than two, well, yes, one on
each side, blinky. We just mauled him. Yeah. Um. So
the first idea for Chariot was two point four mega
tons and then they even they knew that was ridiculous,
(36:16):
and they said, all right, how about four would you
call it a colotton? Yeah, to kill a ton and
uh but thankfully, um there was enough hay raised in Alaska.
They said, we're branding state while you're treating us like this,
and um we said, all right, well maybe you're right
bad idea, Yeah, which is great because people started to
(36:38):
question it and say, you guys just want to see
if you can do this, and that's not good enough,
so stop. And then Plowshare as a whole kind of
ran into the same type of resistance. So because of
all of these worries about fallout, because here's the problem.
If you're the United States government, you can't be like
you gotta be, you really need to. You're the Soviets
(37:00):
and their nuclear weapons, you know, but try not to
worry about the weapons were actually blowing up in your state. Right.
That's that's tough to really spin that in a way
where people aren't worried about And the public became more
and more and more worried about fallout and nuclear testing
and especially these underground ones where they're basically fracking or
trying to open up aquifers and that kind of stuff.
(37:22):
They were worried about ground groundwater getting contaminated, and that
UM really kind of brought Operation Plowshare front and center
in the nascent environmental um awareness movement. Yes. Um. And
then secondly, when they figured out there's just way cheaper
ways of doing this, Uh, there, the Operation plowshare was dead.
(37:45):
I wonder if they went to their top spin doctor
and even that person was like, I got nothing for
you here, or you know who their top spin doctor
would have been at that time in the seventies, a
man himself. Yeah, chills, you got anything else, no, sir.
And that's the end of that chapter. If you want
(38:07):
to know more about Operation flos share, just type those
words into the search bar how stuff works dot com
and uh, we'll bring up this article. And since I said,
uh plowshares, it's time for listening mail, I'm gonna read
a quickie uh, and then and then then a real one.
But we the gauntlet has been laid down. We've got
a message from John Hodgman. Oh, yes, you listened to
(38:30):
our nostalgia episode. Yeah. I never thought he'd listen. And
I said, uh, I think we both offered him a
chance to rebut we're like, you know, it's not cool
just to slam your theory um without you being in
the room. I thought it was perfectly cool. It's like,
but you can you know, if you want to write
a listener mail for us, we'll read it. Oh man,
the indignancy. Oh man, So he sent this in that
(38:52):
guy gets set off, like at the drop of the hat,
life was so much better before you trash me in
my nostalgia theory all over your podcast. You can't pull
that and then get me to write something for you
for free. I love that for a free thing. Call
me up and I'll discuss it with you, dudes, or else,
let's talk about it on stage when you're in Brooklyn,
because we're gonna be in Brooklyn this June for two
(39:13):
shows at the Bellhouse. Either way, I demand a special
episode looking forward to your reply in the future. That
is all so uh, we're gonna have John on via
calmly and he'll probably rush the stage in New York
I soon, I sincerely hope not, but we're gonna have
(39:33):
him on soon to officially rebut via phone. I'm excited
about this, Chuck. It's got me good it's good. Oh,
it's gonna be great. All right, So here's the real
listener mail. I'm gonna call this the gender pay gap episode,
and there's gonna be a couple of these over the
next couple of weeks because it generated a lot of mail. Alright, yes,
a lot of email. Uh, let's just listen to the
gender pack up, guys. I'd like say thank you both.
(39:55):
Chuck said at the end, you felt a bit clumsy
with getting your points across, and I know you may
not have meant it this way, but I want to
commend you guys for all the times you've handled sensitive
topics like champions. Uh, it's apparently handled. It's apparent when
you speak you're mindful of how your words could be
interpreted by others, and it's uplifting. You think you guys
have young infession. Impressionable fans and podcast lands have taken
(40:18):
notice how you were considerate of other perspectives that are
not your own. Um, we try, but we we've brewed
that up to so but I appreciate it. A little
side note. When you were talking about gender dominated professions,
you mentioned that these are jobs that men or women prefer. However,
I don't think that the ratio of one gender or
another under profession or industry is indicative only of a preference.
(40:39):
I think it is still the expectation of certain genders
having specific jobs. Uh, that is the stronger determinant of
professional choice. Uh, profession choice. Imagine if men and women
of all races have been given equal opportunity from the
get go, what would be the gender makeup of various
industries and positions that are currently dominated by one gender?
(41:00):
Begin to change us. I think it's great importance to
instill in young people and understanding that they're not constrained
to any set of jobs due to gender. That is
from Emily Trene. Emily, that is such a great point.
Couldn't agree more. And we got so many emails like
that about just these little details. Yeah, if you just
mention them, it just changes the complexion of everything. It
(41:21):
takes this this concept and makes it even more like
a parent. Yeah, one time, I wish we could go
back in time. Well I sort of do too, but
we can do that now. Because one thing I wanted
to mention was one point I wish I had made
was I got a lot of responses, um mainly from
dudes on our Facebook fade saying well, you know, you
set it yourself. Men are more apt to ask for raises.
(41:42):
Men are more aggressive about negotiating their salary to begin with.
And I was like fine, but like step back and
then why is that true? Like don't just say well
that's the reason, Like maybe take a more macro view
of that even and say, well, why are they more
apt to do that? Is that part of society? Is
that sy stomach? Um? And I think it is. Sure.
(42:04):
So that's all I have to say about that. Uh, well,
thanks again, Emily, thank you, Chuck, sure, thank you, Josh,
thanks and Jerry, thank you? Quiet Jerry? Should we got
wake noal up and thank him. Uh, we'll just leave
a note on his head. Um, there's already three notes
on his head. And if you know once from like
last week. Uh, if you want to get in touch
(42:27):
with us to make an excellent point or flesh out
a point that we made or what have you, we
love to hear that kind of stuff. You can tweet
to us tot s y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
how stuff Works dot Com and has always joined us
at home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot
(42:47):
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Does it, How stuff works dot Com.
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