Posted on 03/17/2017 1:35:15 PM PDT by NYer
Weapon physicist declassifies rescued nuclear test films - Video
On Tuesday, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a federally funded facility outside San Francisco that focuses on nuclear research, released 63 rare, restored and declassified nuclear-test films.
The films, uploaded to the lab’s YouTube account, are part of a trove of some 10,000 that have been in storage since they were originally shot between 1945 and 1962, and had been held in secure vaults since then.
The initial release is just a fraction of about 750 that Greg Spriggs, a physicist at the lab who has worked on the project for five years, declassified on Tuesday. And even that number is small compared to some 6,500 films that have been found of the 10,000 that were estimated to have been shot at the height of the Cold War.
The goal in preserving and digitizing them, Spriggs said in a news release, was to keep the films for future study, lest they decompose and disappear forever.
“You can smell vinegar when you open the cans, which is one of the byproducts of the decomposition process of these films,” Spriggs said. “We know that these films are on the brink of decomposing to the point where they’ll become useless. The data that we’re collecting now must be preserved in a digital form because no matter how well you treat the films, no matter how well you preserve or store them, they will decompose.”
What that means for viewers of the lab’s YouTube account is a lot of mushroom clouds. Like this explosion named Harlem, which occurred off Kiribati in 1962 in a series of tests known as Operation Dominic.
Or this explosion, part of a series of tests at the Nevada Test Site that took place in 1955 that was known as Operation Teapot. This particular explosion was called Tesla.
The United States is the only country to have ever used nuclear bombs during war. In 1945, at least 100,000 men, women, and children were instantly killed when bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in addition to tens of thousands more who later died because of the bombs’ after effects.
Thanks,I had no idea.I thought that everything would be obliterated instantly.
Most excellent
Nah it takes a while for everything to develop. It is spectacular to watch
BFL!
Wow! Does anyone else know about this?
I knew a guy whose father was in the US test. He had a series of health problems starting about 20-25 years later.
Russians did something similar I believe when they
were experimenting with nuclear mines, drove bull dozers
and tanks into the craters.
Rosie O’Donnel’s arm and two legs after feeding at the trough?
If you are ever in Las Vegas I highly recommend a visit to the National Atomic Testing Museum. Very interesting and sobering.
http://nationalatomictestingmuseum.org/
Teapot-Turk is also my favorite. The blast effect captured on film is just amazing. Glory be to the bomb!
A friend’s father was on of the first to enter Hiroshima. He lived into his 80’s before dying of brain cancer.
Bkmrk
I’m beginning to feel resentment against my own country. How could we be so terrible?
yeah just imagine what one like that would do to Mecca.
“Notice the 3 protruding jets at the base of the explosion.What is that?”
Several of those bombs were floated in tethered balloons at modest height. The jets are the steel mooring cables vaporizing, possibly with some secondary effects with streams of particles bombarding the metal vapor.
The United States did NOT use nuclear bombs during WWII. They were atomic bombs. There is both a qualitative and quantitative difference.
bump to find.
I have no qualms about keeping nuclear weapon design and testing results classified for and undetermined amount of time. Let us pray that these newly declassified films give the Iranians and North Koreans help in the continued development of their own nukes.
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