From the Vault: The Atomic Scar

The creation of atomic weaponry changed human civilization forever, but it also left its mark on the Earth itself -- in both obvious and subtle ways. In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss some of the ways in which the world would not be the same. (originally published 9/24/2020)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is
Robert Land and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. Time
to go into the vault for an older episode of
the show. This one originally aired September and was called
the Atomic scar This one was about some of the
after effects of nuclear testing. All right, let's dig right in.

(00:27):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
My name is Robert Land and I'm Joe McCormick, and
today we're going to be talking about nuclear weapons testing. Now,
this is something that has come up on the show

(00:48):
a good bit before. Obviously, we've had to talk many
times about the very real, uh you know, danger potential
civilization level threat and and the real human costs of
nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons testing. But today I wanted
to focus on a couple of interesting and lesser known
environmental effects of nuclear weapons testing. Specifically something that I

(01:11):
came across as it pertains to industrial metals, and then
we're going to get into some other scientific territory as
we go on. But quite apart from any straightforward chemical
effects on the atmosphere, I think it is pretty fair
to say that the the the human departure into the
nuclear weapons testing era in nineteen forty five was really

(01:33):
sort of a shift moment for for humankind as a species. Yeah,
and I feel like there there are very few things
that have been said there are There are very few
audio samples certainly that sum it up quite as well
or or or are as haunting as those given by J.
Robert Oppenheimer in nineteen sixty five on the television documentary

(01:56):
The Decision to Drop the Bomb, broadcast as an in
DC White Pay for I imagine most of you have
heard this before. I've heard it's a sampled and used
in music. It uh, it shows up in comic books, literature,
um in it. The American theoretical physicist and father of
the atomic bombs he's sometimes referred, shares the following regarding

(02:18):
the first successful detonation of an atomic bomb at the
Trinity Test in New Mexico on July six. He said, quote,
we knew the world would not be the same. A
few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent.
I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture the Bagavad Gita.

(02:38):
Fish Nu is trying to persuade the prince that he
should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on
his multi armed form and says, now I am become Death,
the destroyer of worlds. I suppose we all thought that
one way or another. It's a difficult thing to imagine
working on that kind of research in a way, feeling
that it is your duty or your necessity to aid

(02:59):
the light cause in World War Two, but at the
same time knowing that you were working on something that
that would unleash an age of terror in human history. Yeah,
I mean absolutely, a weapon that would as of this recording, uh,
has only been used twice in war, which on one

(03:20):
hand you can you can say, thankfully has only been
used twice in war, but on the the same hand
you can say, tragically has been used twice in war. Um. Yeah, Well,
we'll get into the just the destructive capabilities a bit
of of the bomb as we proceed here, And of
course we've covered it on the show before to varying degrees.
But I want to come back to the quote that

(03:43):
that Oppenheimer is um is deploying here. So if if
you're not familiar with it, basically, these are these are
who the figures are in this You've got Vishnu, one
of the principal deities of Hinduism. Uh. The Bugabod Guetta
or the gutas it's sometimes just short too, is part
of the Hindu epic, the Mahabarata. Technically it's book six

(04:04):
in that. And the prince in question is the hero Argina,
part of the Pandava family that wages war against the Caravas. Uh.
That that's the big struggle. That's uh, that's key to
the Mahabarata. Anyway, at the beginning of the Gita, which
Appenheimer is um is quoting here, Argena rides his chariot

(04:25):
onto the field of forthcoming battle between these two families.
But he suddenly overcome by doubt and depression as he notes,
they're there on the other side, within the ranks of
the enemy's he recognizes friends, relatives, teachers, and Uh. And
therefore has this this just immense so weight descend upon him. Um.
This is a quote from it. This is as translated

(04:47):
by Edwin Arnold in five and as as is always
the case with translated works of literature and poetry, Uh,
you know, the English is going to be approximate, and
certainly with Hinduism, they're many cases where particular ideas and
phrases don't really have a parallel word in English. Um. Anyway,
it goes as follows quote. Thus, if we slay kinsfolk

(05:10):
and friends for love of earthly power, avat, what an
evil fault it were better? I deem it. If my
kinsmen strike to face them, weaponless and bear my breast
to shaft and spear, then answer blow with blow. So,
speaking in the face of those two hosts, Arginas sank
upon his chariot seat and let fall bow and arrows

(05:31):
sick at heart. So the prospect of the forthcoming bloodshed
is just too much for him. But what does he do?
He turns to his charioteer UH for counsel, and luckily
his charioteer is the blueskinned Krishna, the avatar of the
mighty Vishnu, and he gives him his counsel. In fact,
he gives him his counsel for eighteen chapters. That's that's

(05:53):
what the Geta is is basically him providing all of
this uh philosophical and spiritual advice on what it is
to have to make these sorts of decisions and engage
in war and duty and so forth. It's kind of
like something like the Book of Job in the form
we have it now, which you have a sort of
small framing narrative that mainly contains a didactic discourse on

(06:16):
theological matters, right and now if you want to like
a really good breakdown all of this episode, uh, in
the Mahabarata of the Gita, and especially as it relates
to Oppenheimer in his life. There's a wonderful paper that
you can find out there in full on the on
the internet from James A. Hegi, a professor of history,

(06:37):
University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Uh. He did. This was a
nice write up he did for the American Philosophical Society
in two thousand and He goes into greater death, but
he also summarizes Chrishna's counsel as follows He's he says, look,
you're a soldier, Arena. You have to fight. Fighting is
your duty, so you need to do it. Um. He

(06:57):
also says, look, Krishna, uh, you know this, this god
who I also am, is going to be the one
to determine who lives and who dies. It's not your
place to mourn or rejoice over human loss. In this case,
you should try to remain unattached from the outcome. And
then also faith in Chrishna is going to be what

(07:19):
saves your soul, Argenna. And this is the most important
part of the whole scenario. But as Argina begins to
metaphorically see the light or I suppose behold the true
nature of the reality he's faced with, he asks if
he can see Chrishna's godlike form, and this site ultimately
seals Arginna's commitment to do his duty. And this occurs

(07:40):
in chapter eleven, verse thirty two, where uh where the
now cosmically embodied Vishnu speaks to Arginna. And what he
exactly says of two English speaking ears is going to
depend on the translation. But for instance, the writer translation
has him say death, am I my present task destruction? Um.

(08:02):
There's a translation by Arnold that says, thou seest me
as Time, who kills Time, who brings all to doom,
the slayer Time, ancient of days, come hither to consume.
And there's another one I came across that I thought
was pretty good. I am mighty Time, the source of
destruction that comes forth to annihilate the world's And I've
always loved this one by J. A. B. Then Bitinen quote,

(08:25):
I am time grown old to destroy the world embarked
on the course of world annihilation. I am time grown old.
Always find that kind of there's something kind of perplexing
about that phrasing that seems to befitting of this all
powerful being that is, you know, that has taken on
his true form to you. Yeah, there's something that comes
in the fullness of time. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting the

(08:48):
way the personification as time further serves that purpose of
the kind of depersonalization of of one's role in history.
You know that there is a kind of like a
fate or world path that is executed through the passing
of time, and what you are is someone who plays
a role within it, not the shaper of it. Yeah. Absolutely,

(09:12):
Um again, it is it is even in translation as
it's it's this really perplexing and beautiful passage. Now, it
should stress that Oppenheimer was not religiously Hindu, but he
was interested in Hindu scripture, and clearly he found an
association here between his role in the creation of the
bomb and the idea of duty performed regardless of potential outcome. Now,

(09:36):
he certainly is bending the text here a bit, because
in in the Gita Vishnu slash Krishna is saying, look,
I'm the prime mover here, I'm the one who destroys you.
Just do your duty. Oppenheimer seems to be implying the opposite,
that there perhaps is no all powerful force that bears
the burden of our deeds, that the burden is instead

(09:56):
on the shoulders of those involved in the creation of
such a weapon. You know, when he's saying, you know,
now I am become death, and that we all felt
that way one way way or another. I mean, I mean,
he is he is. He He's confronting the personal responsibility
that seems to be there in the creation of such
a weapon. But so it does seem that there's this

(10:17):
this double terror in Oppenheimer's mind, like what if we fail?
But also what if we succeed? Yeah? Yeah, that that
that's something that Heggia gets into, you know, this this
idea that there's this an immense fear of failure. You know,
what if we don't develop the bomb as we've been
tasked with, uh, and what will that mean for us.
But then, yeah, well, how much mass human death will

(10:40):
be brought into the world, even on the short term, Uh,
if this is successful, without even getting into the way
that it will change the landscape of of not only
warfare and and potential warfare in global security, but just
human civilization itself. Yeah, there's so many ways you can
track the impact of the invention of nuclear weapons. Clearly

(11:00):
one of them is a sort of like world psychological impact.
You know, there's just there's bomb consciousness in the world
now that that sort of will always be there unless
nuclear weapons are entirely eliminated, But even even then they
would they'll probably still be the knowledge that they could
be built again. Yeah. This this reminds me of one
of Grant Morrison's creations for the Doom Patrol comic book,

(11:24):
the idea of the Candlemaker, This embodiment of all of
our apprehension, uh, surrounding nuclear annihilation that takes on this
kind of godlike really almost kind of terrifying, Vishnu like
appearance in the human psyche. Is this the guy who's
made of wax? It is, and we'll have we'll have
more to say about him in a forthcoming October episode

(11:47):
of stuff to pull your mind. Oh, that's right, it's
almost October. It is. But to come back to the
part of Openheimer's quote that is not part of on
the of the guida, Um, we knew the world would
not be this same, uh, and that that is true.
It wasn't. It isn't. And you're you're probably aware of
most of the reasons why. But but yeah, today's episode,

(12:08):
we're going to look at some of the particular ways
that it was changed, uh, particularly regarding um, you know,
a few environmental scenarios as well as the nature of steel. Yes,
So getting into these lesser known environmental effects, I want
to start with the fact that might seem extremely odd,

(12:29):
which I was reading about in an article published in
the journal Health Physics in two thousand seven by a
health physicist named Timothy P. Lynch. And the article is
called a historically significant shield for in vivo measurements, And
the fact goes like this. In Richland, Washington, there is
a research facility called the in Vivo Radio Bioassay and

(12:53):
Research Facility. And within this facility there is a special
room that is surrounded on all sides by thick plates
of steel that was once part of a World War
two ERAB battleship called the USS Indiana. This was a
battleship that served in the war. It was launched in
nineteen It was in a number of battles It served

(13:16):
extensively in the Pacific theater during the war, and then
after it was decommissioned. They took steel out of the
ship to build this room. Why would anybody do that? Yeah,
if you don't know the answer, it sounds a bit mysterious,
right it all. It sounds like the kind of thing
Grant Morrison would make up where you're having to engage

(13:36):
in some sort of magical ritual involving steel from old ships.
Oh yeah, yeah, it totally sounds like something magical, either
kind of magical or symbolic thinking of like, you know,
I'm gonna melt down the statue of the Golden Calf
for the false Sidle or king or whatever and and
turn it into something holy. I'm gonna make a throne
out of all the swords of those who once opposed

(13:58):
my rule. Exactly. Yes, it is the iron throne. So
this is the the iron throne of rooms. Now the
room is again and in vivo radio bioassay detector, and
Lynch tells us in the paper that quote, the detection
system is used to monitor workers for intakes of fission
and activation products. So this means that it's used to

(14:22):
check workers people to see if they have ingested tiny
radioactive particles known as radionuclides. Radionuclides consist of atoms that
can decay into different isotopes and emit radiation as they
do so. And if you take them into your body,
say by swallowing them or breathing them in, they can

(14:42):
do this inside your body and provide internal radiation sources
which you do not want. They can pose a serious
health risk. If enough of them accumulate in the body,
a large dose could cause acute radiation syndrome. Prolonged exposure
to even smaller doses over time could be a risk
for damaging d n A and causing cancer. This is

(15:03):
to use one example why you don't want to consume
things that would come from a radioactively contaminated area, you know,
somewhere around a nuclear meltdown. Why would you not want to, say,
you know, roll around in the dirt near Chernobyl or
drink the water there. It's because the the environment is
contaminated with radio neuclides, these little particles that you don't

(15:24):
want anywhere near your body. You do not want them
going inside you. So people who get tested regularly in
this room would include Department of Energy workers, but Lynch
also mentions that the room has been used to test
a helicopter pilot and some other workers from Chernobyl, as
well as children from Chernobyl. I guess who lived nearby.

(15:44):
So this has been in use for a long time,
and it's used to measure the radiation coming from living people.
So somebody walks into the detector room, they get scanned
for radio neuclides across the length of the body by
accounting system that Lynch describes is comprised of five coaxial
germanium detectors, and because the level of radiation emitted by

(16:07):
these radio newclides is usually very faint outside the body,
you need an extremely sensitive detector. And here you hit
another problem, which is interference from background levels of radiation
coming from the rest of the world. So you've got
cosmic sources, atmospheric sources, terrestrial sources. So in order to

(16:29):
scan the body properly, you need a room with extremely
tight radiation shielding. And this is where the steel comes in.
So the counting chamber here is surrounded by a thin
layer of lead and then cadmium and then copper. This
is what's known together as a graded Z shield. And
then outside that you have thirty solid cinameters of steel

(16:53):
that's all pre war battleship steel, and this keeps the
background radiation within the chamber within low minimum detectible activities.
But the question remains, Okay, so you need thirty centimeters
of steel, but why couldn't you just build your radiation
shield out of any old steel, Like, if regular steel
is good enough for your car and your appliances and

(17:13):
your sky scrapers, why would you have to harvest the
flesh of a decommissioned battleship in order to build this
thick radiation shield. Yeah. Again, it's it's easy to sort
of leap to magical conclusions. It's kind of like, well,
we live in a we live in a sinful world.
We have to build our sacred vessel out of wood

(17:34):
from the garden of Eden. You know, um, you know,
the the atomic age is so scarred our world that
we have to we have to find artifacts from before
that time. Yeah, it certainly does feel like that, but no,
there is actually a very good physical, scientific reason for this,
and maybe we should take a break and then get
back into it when we come back. All right, we're back.

(17:59):
So we've been talking about the idea of radiation shielding
around a very sensitive radiation detector room, and the shielding
was made out of steel that was harvested from a
decommissioned World War Two battleship called the USS Indiana. So
the question is, why would you need to get steel
from a source like that, Why couldn't you just use

(18:19):
regular steel. Well, so let's look at how you make steel.
Steel is of course a mixture of iron and carbon
and sometimes other additives to create alloys with special properties,
and crucially for our purposes, the process for making steel
involves the incorporation of atmospheric gases. I was reading about

(18:40):
this in an article for Chemistry World by Kit Chapman.
I think it was also a podcast episode of Their's
talking about how they're There are two major industrial processes
for making steel in the modern world. One is known
as the Bessemer process, and this involves melting the iron
in a furnace and then removing impurities by blowing air
through the molten metal. The other is known as the

(19:02):
bos process, and this is similar, but it uses pure
oxygen instead of air, but that oxygen is still extracted
from the atmosphere. And so the problem is that either way,
the gas you're blowing through the molten iron to make
your steel comes from the atmosphere, from the air. And

(19:23):
ever since nuclear weapon tests began in nineteen that has
not exactly been regular air. It is bomb air. Yeah.
The the ghastly truth of it is, Yeah, we we
find ourselves saying, oh, we need to use air in
this is like, oh, that the air, the air we breathe,
that's where we set off, um, a whole lot of
nuclear weapons. Um. And and therefore changed it. Um that

(19:47):
air is not good enough for our steel, for for
the special steel, at least, just for our breathing and
our our food and our our children and so forth.
Now we'll get a bit more into the history of
the nuclear testing era in a second here, but in short,
there was a period of time in the middle of
the twentieth century when lots of nuclear weapons tests were
conducted around the world, and these tests seeded the atmosphere

(20:11):
with radioactive contamination. Now, the levels today are much lower
than they were, say in the mid nineteen sixties when
these tests have been going on for a decade and
a half, but even today the air still contains some
radioactive isotopes such as cobalt sixty and others. Uh that
is left over from the hundreds of nuclear detonations that

(20:33):
characterized the post war period. Now this had many effects,
of course, the most important of which are probably like
the health effects on humans and the effects on wildlife.
But another one of the effects is that for a
long time you couldn't make steel via normal processes without
it being potentially contaminated with radioactive particles. Not so many

(20:54):
radioactive particles that it would be unsafe for regular use,
but enough that it would be uns suitable if you
were trying to make a sensitive instrument. So if you
needed to make a Geiger counter or shielding for a
sensitive radio bioassay chamber. Uh, So, what would you do? Well,
it probably wasn't impossible to make steel without environmental contaminants

(21:16):
from nuclear tests, but it would have been expensive and difficult.
And another option presented itself, which was harvesting steel made
before the Trinity Test in nineteen forty and this precious
material became known in the industry as low background steel,
low background because of its low background radiation and what

(21:39):
would be a great source of huge quantities of pre
bomb steel old naval vessels. So to come back to
the Timothy Lynch article about the radio bioassay facility in Richland, uh,
the USS Indiana was again the battleship that was sourced.
It was the source here. It was decommissioned on September
eleven and then sold for scrap after it was taken

(22:02):
off the navy list in on June one, nineteen sixty two.
And as the ship was dismantled, some parts were kept
for ceremonial purposes, like the mainmast and a forty millimeter
gun were put on display on the campus of India University, Bloomington,
and I know some of its anchors were put on
display at various museums and memorials. You know, it's compasses,

(22:23):
wheels and all that went to places where where you
can honor the fallen ships. Well it this really drives
home this metaphor of the ship is a fallen beast
like the warship is a thing that once dead. Uh
you know that certain parts are kept for like you said,
ceremonial purposes, or display purposes, magical purposes, and yet other

(22:43):
things are harvested for it for the raw meter bone
of the creature, right, and the raw meter bone would
be the steel here the snade up. The bulk of
the ship was put to low background uses. So in Indiana,
v A hospital got sixty five tons of low background
steel from the Indiana and that was used for their own, uh,
their own background radiation counting facilities. But then Lynch writes

(23:07):
quote in addition to the VA hospital facility, several large
sections of the hull, weighing a total of two tons,
were also fabricated into a room. These applications were probably
never imagined by the original designers of the Indiana. These
sections of the hull are still being used for the
original purpose as a shield, but instead of protecting against

(23:29):
artillery shells and torpedoes, the new purpose is to shield
radiation detectors from the background radiations originating from cosmic, atmospheric,
man made and terrestrial sources. So what was once armor
again unitions is now armor against the entire universe and
its radioactive contents. The room was first constructed at the

(23:50):
University of Utah Medical Center in Salt Lake City, where
it was used for many years in radio biology research,
and then it was finally moved to the Richland Facility
in nine and the Indiana was not the only battleship
that became a source of low background steel. So after
the Armistice in nineteen eighteen, at the conclusion of World
War One, the German High Seas Fleet was ordered to

(24:12):
report to an Allied base known as the Skapa Flow,
where the naval vessels were supposed to be handed over
to the British Royal Navy. But the German officers did
not like that. They had a different idea and they decided,
sort of as a kind of last middle finger to
the British, they scuttled their ships in the harbor. They
sank their own ships on purpose so that the British

(24:34):
couldn't have them. So now they're all those shipwrecks there.
In fact that the Scapa Flow is well known for
its World War One era shipwrecks, and it's been exploited
extensively as a source of low background steel. And though
it's not known for sure I've read rumors, unconfirmed rumors
that some early spacecraft may have used low background steel
from the Scapa flow or other wrecks in radiation detectors.

(24:58):
Interesting now, I'm mentioned this earlier, but it's worth pointing
out again that the atmosphere is much less radioactive today
than it was at the height of nuclear testing in
in the middle of the century. For example, cobalt sixty
has a half life of about five point three years,
and there has been a lot less nuclear testing since
the Partial Nuclear Test Band Treaty in nineteen sixte certainly

(25:19):
a lot less atmospheric testing, so the atmosphere should be
reduced to um near pre war levels of background contamination
within a reasonable amount of time. But but it took decades.
So Robert, when reading about this, I came across a
comic strip I thought you might like. It's one of
the x K C D comics. And in it they
build a time machine. But it turns out the time

(25:42):
machine requires lead from sunken Roman warships and uh. This
is of course hard to come by, so they determine
they have enough lead for one trip into the past
and uh, and in this way through time travel, Greek
fire is born. It's kind of like the you know,
if you could you only had one wish from a genie,

(26:02):
what do you do, well, you wish for more wishes? Yeah,
more wishes. Yeah. I love this little comic strip. I
had not seen it before you I shared it with me,
but it it's especially nice because I just started watching
some nineties episodes of The Outer Limits, and this is
the kind of sort of Outer Limits see sort of plot,
maybe skewed a little bit for comedic purposes, but you know,

(26:24):
it's the It's the kind of twist you you expect
in time travel fiction. I like it. Yeah. Uh so
if I wasn't totally clear and you didn't get they
travel back in time and use their future weapons on
Roman warships, and of course that becomes the legend of
Greek fire. Yeah. They take out like a helicopter with
a flamethrower back in time and uh and and set

(26:45):
to light the Roman ships. Now, I guess we've made
several references to this nuclear testing age in the middle
of the twentieth century. Of course, this began in the
nineteen forties. The first one was again the Trinity Test
by the United States in July nine. The Soviet Union
first performed nuclear weapons tests in nineteen forty nine. Tests

(27:05):
took place all, you know, all over the place. They
were in the upper atmosphere, underground, in the ocean, and
once several other The majority of the tests were by
the United States and the Soviet Union, but several other
countries eventually got involved, and there were a lot of
bomb tests in the end. Yes, so you're probably wondering, well,
just how many? So I looked at it, looked around

(27:27):
for a good, uh, good total on this. I find
that the estimates very a little bit, I mean not
a lot. But according to Darryl Kimball, executive director of
the Arms Control Association, which is a great source for
for the sort of uh information, this is what they
had to say in a July report quote. Since the
first nuclear test explosion on July six, ninety, at least

(27:50):
eight nations have detonated two thousand and fifty six nuclear
test explosions at dozens of test sites, including Lopnore in China,
the atolls of the Pacific, Nevada, Algeria, where France conducted
its first nuclear device, Western Australia, where the UK exploded
nuclear weapons, the South Atlantic semipalatans in Kazakhstan, across Russia

(28:12):
and elsewhere. So that's over two thousand nuclear test explosions
in total. And if you're looking specifically at atmospheric tests alone,
which are often considered like the worst kind in in
terms of proliferating UH contaminants into the atmosphere, of course
those would be there. There were definitely more than five
hundred atmospheric tests. Yeah, when you when you start breaking

(28:36):
down the numbers, the US conducted most of these with
let's see some two d fifteen atmospheric tests and eight
hundred and fifteen underground tests. The ussr slash Russia ranks
second with two hundred and nineteen atmospheric tests and four
hundred nine underground test and the remaining ranking goes like this.
You've got France, then the UK and China. They're tied

(28:58):
UK and China with a total of forty five tests each.
Then you have North Korea, India and Pakistan. The United
States is of course responsible for the only wartime detonation
of nuclear weapons as in utilized as weapons against another people.
Two bombs deployed against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima, and Nagasaki,
killing between one hundred nine thousand and two hundred twenty

(29:21):
six thousand people, mostly civilians. Needless to say, those were
both atmospheric detonations. Yeah, and of course with each of
these tests there is going to be more radioactive contamination
entering the atmosphere. Now, in nineteen sixty three, the Partial
Nuclear Test Band Treaty managed to ban tests in the
atmosphere and underwater, so basically it banned all except underground tests.

(29:46):
It did not really stop nuclear proliferation, but it did
massively decrease the dispersal of radio nuclides into the atmosphere. Now,
there's been another, um perhaps unexpected, interesting environmental side effect
of the nuclear testing age, which is how it has
affected atmospheric levels of carbon fourteen and the way that

(30:08):
this has turned into an unexpected number of scientific tools
that can be used to study the natural world. So,
in nature, carbon fourteen is the radioactive isotope of carbon
that is generated in Earth's atmosphere every minute of every day.
The Earth is of course bombarded by cosmic rays, and
cosmic rays are charged particles, usually protons and atomic nuclei,

(30:31):
which are emitted from high energy sources including the Sun,
but also places far away, usually traveling near the speed
of light. And when one of these high energy particles
enters the atmosphere, it sometimes strikes atoms to generate free neutrons,
and a free neutron then combines with a regular atom
of nitrogen fourteen to produce an atom of carbon fourteen,

(30:55):
and this carbon fourteen then pairs up with oxygen to
create carbon fourteens CEO two. So there's a lot of
carbon fourteen in the atmosphere is just produced at a
steady rate naturally as the cosmic rays are coming in,
and this carbon fourteen c O two gets into everything
that ingests atmospheric carbon. So plants suck in c O

(31:17):
two with a predictable amount of carbon fourteen and they
use that carbon to make their bodies, and then the
trees and the grass and the corn are all made
out of carbon content that is retrieved from the air
and has a certain amount of carbon fourteen in it.
So if you do a molecular analysis of a plant,
you will have a certain proportion of carbon fourteen in there,

(31:38):
because the atmosphere does about one out of every trillion
carbon atoms is a carbon fourteen atom but of course
it doesn't stop at plants, because we also exist in
a carbon fourteen generating atmosphere. You know, all the chemistry
on Earth is sort of interconnected. So we eat those plants,
and we eat animals that eat those plants, so our

(32:00):
bodies also have a predictable amount of carbon fourteen content.
And as I said earlier, carbon fourteen is radioactive, which
is another way of saying it's unstable. It has a
known half life, so we know that it decays into
other isotopes at a regular predictable rate. So if you
die and you stop breathing and stop eating, the amount

(32:22):
of carbon fourteen in your body will steadily decrease over
the years. And what scientists figured out in the twentieth
century was that you could use the amount of carbon
fourteen in a formerly living object or an object formerly
incorporating a known percentage of atmospheric carbon, to see approximately
how long it had been since that organism stopped ingesting

(32:45):
carbon from the environment, in other words, when it died.
And this has been amazingly useful to the historical sciences.
This this has created the era of carbon fourteen dating.
It's been enormously useful to archaeologists and all kinds of
other scientists to analyze and date organisms and substances from
the past. But nuclear testing, beginning in the nineteen forties

(33:09):
and especially since the nineteen fifties, has introduced new wrinkles
into this. It has introduced new layers of radio carbon science,
both some complications to the existing radio carbon science and
new tools that scientists couldn't have predicted at first that
they would have. Uh. And so next, I just wanted
to talk a bit about a really, really excellent article

(33:30):
in the Atlantic by by Carl Zimmer. Can we say
a friend of the show? Carl Zimmer? He's a former
guest of the show, Carl Zimmer. Um, let's see what
we had. We laid out specific rules for this in
the past. Right, if you're on the show once, you're
a former guest or a previous guest of the show. Okay,
I think you have to be on two times to
be a friend of the show or is it three times?
I can't remember how that status we break. We've been

(33:53):
the rules all the time. Uh. Carl is one of
my favorite science writers. He wrote an excellent book called
She Has Her Mother's Laugh that we talked about on
the show, and and this article is just fantastic. But
it's called nuclear tests marked life on Earth with a
radioactive spike. And this article of course is worth reading
on its own, but I wanted to talk about a

(34:13):
few things that Carl gets into here about some of
the environmental effects of of nuclear testing, specifically relating to
carbon fourteen. So Carl, Carl Zimmer, in addition to having
been a wonderful and just cheerful guest of the show,
is just all a wonderful writer. As always, I want
to read just a little bit from this article here

(34:34):
to to set the stage. Quote, carbon fourteen, produced by
hydrogen bombs spread over the entire world. It worked itself
into the atmosphere, the oceans, and practically every living thing.
As it spread, it exposed secrets. It can reveal when
we were born. It tracks hidden changes to our hearts
and brains. It lights up the cryptic channels that joined
the entire biosphere into a single network of chemical flux.

(34:58):
This man made burst of carbon fourteen has been such
a revelation that scientists referred to it as quote the
bomb spike. Only now is the bomb spike close to disappearing,
But as it vanishes. Scientists have found a new use
for it to track global warming, the next self inflicted
threat to our survival. The part of this that sticks
with me the most is where he talks about how

(35:21):
looking at carbon fourteen in the way it penetrates the
whole biosphere. Really, it's one of those you know, like
the brain lights up with the sudden realization that uh,
to use a sort of stone or cliche, everything's connected,
but it really is it like literally in a scientific way,
is there is a single sort of chemical flux that

(35:43):
that takes place all throughout this planet. Yeah. I keep
coming back to this, this basic like this this uh,
this sort of you know, arguably hippie notion, this everything
is connected, we're all one world, on people, etcetera, which
I know is something that everyone has heard so many
times that even if you believe in it wholeheartedly, it
can it can sound a little uh uh limp, you know,

(36:05):
in in your ears. And yet like that's I mean,
that is the reality that drives through and all of
this science, and it stands in such harsh contrast to
the way uh, certain individuals uh in uh like the
political and the military sphere view nuclear weapons the idea
that like, you know, certainly we can say a head

(36:26):
of state using a nuclear weapon against the city within
their own nation, that would be that would be ridiculous,
that would be monstrous. But it's but but then the
you know, people will say, oh, but you use it
against another nation and other people, that's less monstrous. But no, no,
it's all interconnected in in a in in a in
a scientifically verifiable way. I mean, it's it's one atmosphere

(36:50):
at the very base level without getting into, um, some
of the other um issues we're going to explore, and
just the basic ethical framework of the choice. Yeah. Mean,
it makes me think of that commonly sided thing about
astronauts very often, you know, seeing the Earth from space
and then suddenly feeling more of a kinship with all
of humankind and not feeling nearly as much the uh,

(37:12):
not feeling the reality of national borders and things like that, uh,
nearly as much anymore. Uh. It's funny how easily those
illusions can be dissolved just by a sort of a
single visual impression or a single realization about saying how
chemistry works, that you're suddenly like, oh, wait a minute,
you know, there's just sort of earth life, and we

(37:34):
we really need to make this work and not create
problems that aren't necessary to begin with. Yeah, those are
those lines and those naps. They really do nothing against
a radioactive particles and certainly concepts such as nuclear fallout
or um or a climate change. So going into Karl
Zimmer's article, as I said, it's worth reading the article

(37:55):
in full. It's really fantastic. He begins by telling the
story of the Castle Bravo tests in nineteen fifty four,
which is uh, both all inspiring and horrifying and heartbreaking. Um.
But later on, when he's getting into the scientific history
of of carbon fourteen, he talks about the Chicago physicist
Willard Libby, who was a Nobel Prize winning or did

(38:17):
I say physicist, I think he would be called a
physical chemist. Uh. He was somebody who studied radioactive elements
and and one of was one of the major developers
of carbon fourteen dating. And one of the really interesting
things that Libby does is that Libby ends up comparing
measurements of methane from say living current sources, say methane

(38:38):
coming off of a sewage plant. So this is going
to be sewage from things that are currently alive, versus
methane coming off of fossil fuels like oil that has
been there for millions of years. And what he showed
was that, say, the methane coming off of the excreta
produced by living humans is something close to about the

(39:00):
atmospheric level. Meanwhile, what's coming the methane coming off of
fossil fuels, coming off of say oil that's been there
for millions of years, has essentially no carbon fourteen in it, right,
because it's been there for so long that all of
the radioactive isotopes of carbon have decayed, so it's just
got regular carbon in it. And there was some other
really interesting experiments too, but one of the things I

(39:23):
wanted to focus on was Karl's profiling of the New
Zealand physicist Ethel Rafter. So Rafter was picking up on
Libby's research and he was interested in radiocarbon dating. In
its early days, he used it to test the bones
of extinct birds and ancient volcanic eruptions, but he also
tried to help refine the technique itself by performing measurements

(39:45):
of the radio carbon in the atmosphere. And he would
do this by setting out a tray of lie on
top of it on a hilltop, and the lie would
capture c O two from the air, and then he
would measure the atmospheric levels of carbon fourteen or the ratio.
Of course, whenever we're talking about levels of carbon fourteen,
we're talking about the ratio of carbon fourteen to regular carbon.

(40:05):
And so Rafter would have been doing his research in
the nineteen fifties, and what he expected was that levels
of radio carbon in the atmosphere would sort of bounce
up and down. There'd just be sort of a natural
fluctuation around a baseline. But instead he found an extremely
steady trend. The level of carbon fourteen was just continually
going up. And what was the reason. While it was

(40:27):
the nineteen fifties, so to quote from the article, the
Castle Bravo test and the ones that followed had to
be the source. They were turning the atmosphere upside down.
Instead of cosmic rays falling from space, they were sending
neutrons up to the sky, creating a huge new supply
of radio carbon. In nineteen fifty seven, Rafter published his

(40:51):
results in the journal Science. The implications were immediately clear
and astonishing. Man made carbon fourteen was spreading across the
planet from test sites in the Pacific and the Arctic.
It was even passing from the air into the oceans
and trees. And when they checked, they found increasing levels
of radiocarbon in everything, in tree rings in Texas, in

(41:15):
snails in Holland, in the lungs of recently deceased people
from New York, even in the blood of living people. Uh,
there's just extra carbon fourteen in everything. And as bomb radiocarbon,
So the bomb radio carbon would be would be up
in the upper atmosphere, and as it settles back down
to Earth, it becomes a sort of tracer molecule that

(41:39):
can be used as a scientific tool. So Carl quotes
from somebody named Steve Beauprey who's an oceanographer at Stony
Brook University, and he's quoted in the article saying that
carbon fourteen is inextricably linked to our understanding of how
water moves. And so I thought this was so interesting.

(41:59):
So in the nineteen seventies, oceanographers found that there was
bomb radio carbon that was distributed throughout the top one
thousand meters of the ocean's water column. So if you
go down a thousand meters you're going to find, you know,
atmospheric radiocarbon, the elevated levels that you'd get from a bomb.
But then if you go down below that suddenly not
so much anymore. And this became a really important piece

(42:22):
of evidence in estimating the or in establishing that the ocean,
like the atmosphere, had layers, and that water was primarily
circulated within rather than between these layers. Carl Wright's quote,
the warm, relatively fresh water on the surface of the
ocean glides over the cold, salty depths. These surface currents

(42:43):
become saltier as they evaporate, and eventually, at a few
crucial spots on the planet, these streams get so dense
that they fall to the bottom of the ocean. The
bomb radio carbon from Castle Bravo didn't start plunging down
into the depths of the North Atlantic until the night
teen eighties, when John Clark this character from the Castle

(43:03):
Bravo test was two decades into retirement. It's still down
there where it will be carried along the sea floor
by bottom hugging ocean currents for hundreds of years before
it rises to the light of day. Uh And he
points out also that lots of ocean life bears the
seal of the bomb spike. Again, this is from atmospheric
tests and so this is not even underwater tests. This

(43:25):
is atmospheric tests coming down into the ocean. Bomb radio
carbon falls into the ocean. It infiltrates everything from algae
to the rings of calcium carbonate within coral growth, and
then it forms this kind of slime, so uh quote,
the living things in the upper reaches of the ocean

(43:45):
release organic carbon that falls gently to the sea floor
a jumble of protoplasmic goo, dolphin droppings, starfish eggs, and
all manner of detritus that scientists call marine snow. In
recent decades that marine snow has become more radioactive. And
the article he also profiles a researcher named Mary gay

(44:09):
Lord who works at the National Ocean Science is Accelerator
Mass Spectraumetry Facility, which is known as No Sam's for short,
and that's at the Woods Hole, which is where Hooper
comes from in Jaws, and she measures radiocarbon and everything
from bat guano to fish eyes. There's a lot about
fish eyes in this article, which is more interesting than

(44:30):
you think because surprisingly the study of radio carbon and
fish eye lenses can tell us a lot like the
cores of fish eye lenses have the same levels of
carbon fourteen as the fish did when they were still
egg so it's a really good age indicator. And this
knowledge was used by Danish researchers in to create an

(44:50):
aging metric for these cold bottom dwelling animals, the greenland sharks,
which you might have read about them because they grow
so old. This helped confir arm the discovery that these
animals could live to be almost four hundred years old,
so a lot of these are pre bomb sharks. And
actually this also applies to humans. People born in the
early nineteen sixties have more radio carbon in the lenses

(45:14):
in their eyes than people born before the nuclear testing age,
and people born in the years since then have less
and less as time passes since the since the Partial
Test Band Treaty. Bomb radio carbon can also be used
to date human teeth. But there's a very sobering fact
that's discussed at the end of Zimmer's article, which is
that the proportion of carbon fourteen currently in the atmosphere

(45:37):
is actually a bit lower than would be predicted by
the known nuclear tests and the known rate of decay
and absorption by the Earth and seas. So what makes
the difference, Like why is there less carbon fourteen than
we think there should be? And it turns out there's
an answer to that. The answer is fossil fuels. Remember
how I mentioned earlier that the methane coming off of

(45:58):
oil had all been basically no carbon fourteen in it
because the oil is so old, all of the carbon
fourteen has already decayed, it's gone. Uh So, as we
release carbon from these ancient carbon sources into the atmosphere,
we're putting a much higher percentage than normal of regular
carbon up there, which actually dilutes what carbon fourteen there is.

(46:21):
Uh Carl Carl Zimmer points out in the nineteen fifty four,
which was the year of the Castle Bravo test, humans
emitted six billion tons of carbon dioxide that year uh
quote in humans emitted about thirty seven billion tons, which
is more than six times more as Willard Libby first discovered,

(46:43):
this fossil fuel has no radiocarbon left. By burning it,
we are lowering the level of radiocarbon in the atmosphere
like a bartender watering down the top shelf. Liquor, which
is so strange. So the remaining signature of humanity's first
great sort of civilis s ation level threat technology is
being deluded by the ever increasing mark of our other one,

(47:06):
by the second one. Wow. Alright, I guess we need
to take a quick break, but we'll be right back
with more than thank So. I have another example of
a specific resulting scientific discovery from a nuclear test that
that I ran across UM and it it concerns uh.
The test known as Starfish Prime. So this was a

(47:29):
one point for megaton thermonuclear device launched two hundred and
fifty miles or four hundred kilometers into the sky near
Johnston A Tall. So it is the largest outer space
nuclear detonation ever committed. It occurred around eleven pm local time. Uh,
this would be um you know, in the in that region,

(47:50):
and the thermonuclear sphere burned like a new sun in
the night sky. And if you look up Starfish Prime
online you can you can see photos that were taken
from Honolulu, Hawaii at the time, and it does look
like like a sun in the sky. Wow. Afterwards, an
aura could be seen as well for thousands of kilometers.

(48:10):
It it also resulted, and this kind of comes down
to one of the key findings. It resulted in an
electromagnetic pulse or an e MP, something that had been
suspected by scientists, but this was really the proof in
the pudding. It ended up disrupting the flow of electricity
for hundreds of kilometers around it, with its most of
its disruptions felt in Hawaii itself. It also damaged six

(48:35):
satellites which ultimately failed, and other failures might be linked
to starfish prime as well. So this was this was
ended up being an effect that was far stronger than anticipated.
Now now that that's all interesting, but obviously a test
like this expand is going to expand on our understanding
of the weapon technology being tested. But the side effect
here is that the CD one O nine tracers released

(48:58):
by the detonation allowed science just to work out some
of the seasonal mixing rate of polar and tropical air masses.
So again comes down to the fluid dynamics of of
in our earlier example the ocean, and here with atmospheric movement.
This also touches on something that comes up with the
Castle Bravo test and a number of other tests. You know,

(49:18):
the Castle Bravo being the hydrogen bomb that turned out
to be a much bigger explosive yield than was predicted.
And this is not just a scientific curiosity, and this
is something that that had tragic consequences for real people
like the people of the wrong gelop atoll, who were
pretty nearby where the Castle Bravo test was conducted, were
affected horribly with by like fallout from the test just

(49:41):
because it was so much bigger than the scientists thought
it was gonna be. Yeah, you see this this trend
with a number of the earlier tests, um, where they
they don't get quite what they were expecting or you know,
it's larger, or it doesn't go off exactly the way
it was planned and and and indeed, uh, in many
cases it means people were were sickened, people's health suffered

(50:04):
because of these tests. Environments were um, we're tainted by
the radiation, are still tainted. In some case cases people
have been dislocated and have not yet been able to return. Um.
You know, we believe we're calling this episode the atomic scar.
But a scar to we tend to think of as
something that is visible but is fully healed. And the

(50:24):
thing about a lot of these these tests is that
it's it's not so much a scar, but it is like, um,
a thick scab, and if we're to to pick at
it again, uh, we may bleed. In fact, we may
we may bleed um for the duration of our lives
sort of situations. So um uh so so yeah, these

(50:45):
uh kind of comes back to what we said earlier about,
you know, about the world in which we conduct these tests.
You know, we we might think, oh, we're not setting
this off in the house, We're setting off in the backyard,
you know. But but ultimately, you know, the wilds of Nevada,
or are some islands you know off the coast of Australia,
these are these are part of the world we live in,
as part of the atmosphere that we all breathe, part

(51:08):
of the ocean that we all depend on. And even
underground tests are not without some environmental consequences. I mean,
not nearly as much as a atmospheric or underwater tests,
but underground tests two can can produce leakages. Yeah. Now,
on the subject of underwater tests, I was reading a
little bit more about these and these were banned by
the Partial Nuclear Test Band Treaty in nineteen sixty three,

(51:31):
but the US, the UK, and the uss ARE managed
to conduct a total of nine before that that that
band came into place, and these included UM shallow detonations
to see how the the the the weapon would impact ships,
as well as deep detonations to see how they might
be used against submarines or how they would impact submarines.
The deepest was the nineteen fifty five Wigwam test at

(51:54):
a depth of two thousand feet six d and ten.
Now an author by the name of Sarah Laskal Roda
a really good article about about the US tests for
Atlas Obscura, pointing out that the water is what really
made the tests more problematic because because instead of spreading
radioactive particles through a wider atmospheric region, it instead released

(52:16):
an immediate radioactive water cloud. So the ships used in
these tests were highly radiated and impossible to clean, so
they were just towed out to the deep and scuttled.
Now Alascow rights that quote. The Atomic Energy Commission would
not sign off on it until it was clear that
no one in the United States or Mexico was at
risk and that the test area was relatively free of

(52:38):
marine life. UM but but the tests certainly killed fish
and other organisms. UM. I read an account by a
UK veteran who was of course working with some of
those UK UH tests, claims that men were sent out
in boats to collect dead irradiated fish after after the
test was conducted. And this particular test would have been

(52:59):
uh the ninth two hurricane test in the Montebello Islands,
as this was the only UK underwater nuclear test that
was conducted, and of course in a lot of these
like tests in the Pacific Islands and stuff, even when
the explosion was carried out in the atmosphere, it was
still extremely damaging to marine life. Like yeah, there's a
part in uh Karl Simmer's article that we were talking

(53:21):
about earlier where he talks about with the Castle Bravo
test in fifty four quote, within seconds, the fireball had
lofted ten million tons of pulverized coral reef coated in
radioactive material. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean, these these atmospheric tests
were also devastating to these areas. One area that frequently
comes up is is Bikini at all, this is where

(53:43):
the first underwater test was was was conducted Baker, but
also you had many other atmospheric tests that took place
there as well. And what's interesting here is that there's
been there's some studies in in over the past decade
or so that have really looked at how the local
environ has has bounced back, and indeed it does show

(54:04):
that nature can be very resistant to even this kind
of you know, intense damage. Uh that they say that
the corals have recolonized bomb craters. Other life forms are
doing well, even if there are some curious mutations like
sharks missing their second dorsal fin that sort of thing.
The general belief is that UM, at least with the
with Bikini, that the worst affected fish died off decades ago,

(54:27):
and today's fish populations are only exposed to low radiation
levels as they frequently swim in and out. Plus, these
are also areas that have been left alone by humans,
they've more so than other marine areas. Now. One should
also note that the occupants of the area around Bikini
Atoll and the Marshall Islands were displaced by the test,

(54:48):
some one seven people, I believe, and they've never been
able to return. That their dislocation was supposed to be temporary. UM.
But but then on top of that children in the
Marshall Islands uh were observed to experience thyroid problems long
after nuclear tests ended. Now we've thus far been talking

(55:08):
about nuclear testing, and and of course beyond that we
we can, I think we can. We can hardly talk
about nuclear testing without at least briefly discussing the prospect
of nuclear war itself, because that is ultimately what the
testing is all about. Now you can make the argument
that ultimately it's about preventing uh that's sort of warfare

(55:28):
from taking place by making sure you have uh, you know,
a terrifying number of of of nuclear weapons in your armament,
or you know, the reverse is true, that you are
developing these weapons which may potentially be used. Any nuclear
weapon is a potential holocaust, uh you know, contained within
the warhead, right, I mean, I think I guess the

(55:50):
advocates of the pro nuclear armament theory would say, well,
what we did is that we did these tests so
that we wouldn't have to have actual wars, and the
uts discourage say the United States and the Soviet Union
from actually ever initiating a real, you know, shooting war
with each other. Of course, there are plenty of proxy
conflicts and all that. I mean in a way you

(56:13):
can only you know, you can never know how sure
to be about counterfactuals like that. People are saying, well,
things would have been worse if we hadn't had the
nuclear threat looming over us to discourage us from going
to war. I guess it's hard to know whether that's
true or not. But I guess it's also though, it's
just hard to calculate costs and benefits when you're thinking

(56:33):
about when you know the potential cost is like a
civilization ending worldwide calamity. Yeah, and and that indeed, you know,
to come back to the the idea of the world
changing forever. I mean that is one of the frequently
touched upon aspects of the whole scenario, is that it
is humanity's ability to to truly destroy itself and and

(56:54):
ultimately within a very short period of time. Now, I
know that this kind of brings as to a kind
of a dark corner for the end of the podcast.
And I know a lot of you don't like considering
such possibilities. I don't like considering such possibilities either. If
you are troubled by such possibilities, I would urge you
to consider following UH a group like the Arms Control

(57:17):
Association at Arms Control about org or any number of
other anti nuclear weapon or nuclear weapon control or disarmament groups.
And if you're in a position to use your vote
to favor candidates political candidates who take nuclear testing and
nuclear war seriously and are committed to certainly not testing them,
but even you know, not even raising the question of

(57:39):
their deployment or questioning why they shouldn't be used and
that sort of thing, then you should you should do so. Yeah,
I mean, the Cold War may be over, but there
are still lots and lots of nuclear weapons out there,
and UH, and fantasizing about nuclear escalation is not a joke.
It's not It's not something to play around with, absolutely,
especially since I think we've ted on some of this

(58:00):
on the show before. Like the the the barriers between
our our current world and one of nuclear warfare, those
those barriers are not as thick as as sometimes we
might think they are, Like the safeguards in place are
are not that robust. We we need to do everything
we can to to to to to lessen the possibility, UH,

(58:25):
that such a thing could come to pass, either in
a in a large scale certainly, but even at a
quote unquote small scale. Alright, On that note, we're gonna
go and close it out. In the meantime, we would
of course love to hear from you, oh your thoughts
about nuclear testing, nuclear weaponry, etcetera, or just so do
the overall impact on all of this on on our

(58:47):
our world and our culture in the many ways that
the world would not be the same in the meantime,
if you want to check out other episodes of our show,
you can do so by finding us wherever you get
your podcasts and wherever that happens to be. We just
asked that you rate, review, and subscribe. Hich Thanks as
always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
you would like to get in touch with us with
feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic

(59:10):
for the future, just to say hello, you can email
us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
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