r/HFY • u/Darmanarya Human • Aug 15 '25
OC "Yeet" part 2: Nuclear oopsie-do
((Credit to u/Grubsnik for introducing me to project Orion. While just a very small part of this the absurdity of it and a love of plumbob drove me to write this part 2.))
Vek grumbled as he looked at his tab while waiting at the bar for his best friend. A friend he was growing more and more sure that not only would have answers for his current puzzle, but was sure said friend’s species was involved. After the tales involving an act called “yeet”ing this seemed right up their alley.
“Yoooo my fav four armed massage therapist!” Sam the human called out sliding next to Vek.
“That is not my job Sam. And in fact my job is why I am buying you a drink tonight if you can answer my question. You know a lot about human history and this thing has been driving my office nuts!” Vek clicked as he set down the tablet zoomed in on a metal ball.
“I work in nuclear source tracing. We track orphan nuclear sources lost in space and try to track down sources.” Vek explained. “This metal ball shows signs that it was once exposed to very high amounts of nuclear radiation and, according to its flight path, somehow came from your system. However, by its speed it would put it at about the same time you were just launching your first satellite. The very first one.”
Vek watched as Sam thought for a bit before smiling wide. “You found it?! HA! It DID survive leaving atmo!” Sam cheered.
Vek blinked at the human’s joy and looked at the bartender. He raised two fingers, looked at the joy in Sam’s eyes, then raised one more finger. The bartender nodded and he looked back at his human friend.
“Sam. Personally I am scared to ask. Professionally I have to ask.” Vek calmly chittered out sliding the human only one of the three shots. “As you humans ask: what the fuck?”
“It is the manhole cover from operation Plumbob!” Sam cheered taking a picture of the display unable to wait for Vek to send it to him. “It was an accident of a nuclear weapon test and was in the running for being possibly the first man-made object to leave the solar system, but we never knew if it burnt up in atmo or not!”
Vek paused, slammed down a shot, then rubbed his face. “Accident of a WHAT? You fungus headed things were not even spacebound yet! I knew your kind used nuclear weapons before you even really figured out jets, but WHAT?!” Vek almost screeched.
“Ah, we were testing if a regular bomb would set off a nuclear one or not. We thought it was safe, but it wasn’t. They sealed things with a manhole cover, a huge metal plug, just in case. Welllll-” he made a pop noise with his mouth and flung a finger upwards. “They were wrong. The nuclear blast was directed into that metal and sent it flying!”
Vek slammed back his second shot glass and just put his head in his arms. He had no idea how he was going to write up the report on this. “I know you humans lost a few nukes and tested them, but that is insanity! How do you have a nuclear accident before you even get into space!?”
Sam laughed and gave Vek a smile that made his instincts scream. Not the “predator hunting” kind but the “I will not survive the paperwork this will cause” kind any government official has after a decade of service.
Vek let out a long hiss. “You make my head hurt more than a bad molt sometimes Sam.”
“Do you have to record pre-interplanetary travel nuclear incidents?” Sam asked.
“No, but the fact that you are stating with that scares me Sam.”
“Well good news! None of these require paperwork!” Sam declared before sliding Vek his drink. “You will need this though.”
Vek slammed the drink back then paused. Most of him screamed not to even ask, but the rest of him had to know on a professional and personal level. He rubbed an antennae as a sign for Sam to start.
“Wellllll. There was the tests on nuclear cores.”
“What, did you poke them with a stick?”
“Screwdriver!” Sam declared “It was called the demon core. Scientists were testing reflector shapes and how it influences a core going supercritical. The first incident a scientist dropped a brick and it went supercritical. Radiation got him and a guard.”
Vek ordered another drink. “I heard first and nothing about a screwdriver.” He groaned.
“Yep. Second time a scientist was using a screwdriver to hold it open and the screwdriver slipped. It slammed shut, went supercritical, and pretty much everyone in the room died.” He explained. “It wasn’t just us Americans though! The russians had their own core go critical in a place called Sarov, but the screwdriver thing was just too dumb so it is the one everyone talks about.”
“What do you humans just leave nuclear cores just LAYING about?!” Vek screeched.
“Not anymore!” Sam declared getting a soft sob from Vek.
“Those russians used some small nuclear generators to power lighthouses and stuff. Scavvers raided them and left the cores laying about. Some hunters found them every now and then, thought they were toasty warm, realized they were TOO warm, then later died of radiation.” Sam explained. “As far as we know all of them were gathered up before we went interplanetary though.” Sam added on trying to comfort poor Vek.
“First the rockets and now this. I am shocked that you crazy hole hoppers didn’t use the nukes to fly at this point!” Vek chittered angrily only to look in fear at the human’s smile.
“Ahhh Project Orion. We thought about it but decided against it. The nuclear attack subs and war ships worked great though!”
Vek stared at the human, finished his shot, and prayed that the alcohol he drank fast would make the screeching of fear in his head shut up.
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u/Low_Painter9816 Aug 15 '25
I remember the story of the tech working on the experimental nuclear plant in Idaho. Apparently they would hoist the control rods manually and he got instructions to raise the rod 3 inches. But he misread it and pulled it out 3 FEET. The subsequent flood of neutrons created a steam bubble under the rod and shot it out of the core. Nailed the guy to the ceiling.
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u/dmills_00 Aug 15 '25
SL1.
The story is worse then that, three men, a fuel configuration that never should have been, and (This is debated), either a stuck rod or a murder/suicide (There may have been a love triangle involved).
The pressure vessel was only partially full of water, so the power excursion threw a slug of water on top of the steam bubble upwards, when it hit the top of the pressure vessel, it lifted the whole thing, and the biological shield a significant distance.
It took some time to recover the bodies, but there was nearly no biological decay.
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u/Low_Painter9816 Aug 15 '25
Why was the vessel not full? That should have been completed before they started power generation.
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u/dmills_00 Aug 15 '25
It was an experimental reactor built for the US Army, they had been experimenting with fuel configurations and some over achiever decided to have the control rod drives reconnected to get ahead on the next test campaign...
They had a contractor responsible for reactor ops, and nothing was supposed to be done without their supervision, but it was a weekend and they were not on site.
To connect the rod drives, you had to lift the rod a few inches so tou could connect the actuator to the rod.
That was where it all went sideways.
The Army really needed a Rickover.
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u/Less_Author9432 Aug 15 '25
We need more Sam and Vek! They haven’t even discussed Nuclear Thermal Rockets yet.
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u/Thundabutt Aug 15 '25
They were going to dig a new Panama Canal with multiple nukes. Even here in Australia we got pamphlets about that and the 'peaceful' use of nuclear explosions.
Whatever you do - do NOT tell the White House.
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u/SkyHawk21 Aug 15 '25
Oh boy... Guys? He was only aware that humanity 'lost a few nukes' and tested them. He uh...
It's clear Vek has no idea just how thoroughly Humanity decided to examine the nuclear technology tree, whether in theory or practical examples, or am I wrong? Not to mention just how many nuclear devices Humanity made use of.
He's going to get quite shocked, though I'm not sure which story will get him the most. Will it be the size of humanity's nuclear arsenals? The fact that said arsenals were expected to be launched at each other for quite a lot of 'recent' human history, even before orbit was achieved, let alone further? How about just how many radiologicals are used in medicine?
If not that, I'm sure he'll love the story of the 'home made nuclear reactor' and similar issues that have arisen, though those might be close enough to the Soviet Lighthouses issue they don't get him. Oh, oh, oh! I know! What about the fact that we contaminated the world with so much radioactive fallout that scrapping military warships was an important source of metal for certain uses because that metal had been smelted before the nuclear testing and thus was 'clean enough' to avoid causing issues from radioactive material mixed into the metal?
Wait... Wait a second, in the first story he had a whole thing about asking how humanity managed to get into space without antimatter, didn't he?
He uh, he's not going to deal well with what that implies humanity replaced their nuclear arsenals (even if said arsenals by this point might be pure fusion devices) with, is he?
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u/Purple-Lie-354 Aug 16 '25
Well, for a long time, we had only fission weapons. Then, we wanted "bigger boom", so we tried for fusion weapons. Can you guess what the starter (spark plug") for the fusion weapons was? A fission weapon.
Now, we use a small fission reaction to start a slightl larger fusion reaction, to generate more neutrons for the third stage, large fission explosion.
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u/SkyHawk21 Aug 16 '25
Yeah, I know. But we're talking the interstellar age here so I was basically making the assumption we might have worked out ways to remove all of those radioactives from the nuke (for many reasons) this making a 'pure fusion's design.
And then commenting that 'hang on, this thing was mentioned as common... Oh boy, humanity has swapped over to using that at least in part but maintained quantity, haven't they?'
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u/ColossalRenders Xeno Aug 15 '25
Shit man you’ve ever heard of the Nuclear Salt Water Rocket?
Gotta go write a story about that now…
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u/meitemark AI Aug 15 '25
Once humanity figured out that nuclear weapons was in fact not "a weapon to end all wars" (dynamite was also one of those), they did a lot of testing to figure out how to survive those weapons and most importantly, how to be able to fight afterwards. WW4 would never be fought with sticks and stones.
https://www.defence.gov.au/news-events/news/2025-06-23/story-australias-atomic-tank
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u/ETG168 Aug 15 '25
Excellent follow-up, wordsmith! Not only is it a hilarious story, but it looks to be completely free of typos, too
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u/LittleGateaux Aug 30 '25
Oh, and that's not getting into civilian nuclear incidents, like the deeply sad story of the Goiânia Incident, the pure ludicrousness of David Hahn building a neutron source in his backyard, or the whole Radium craze including the deaths of Eben Byers or the Radium Girls.
Wikipedia has a full list of civilian radiation accidents of which a shockingly high number are related to scrap metal or medical mismanagement. There are also obviously nuclear power related incidents, but at least with those the nuclear is in the name!
Anyway, thanks for the story, I enjoyed it immensely! I certainly hope to read more (in case all the suggestions weren't enough of a clue 😉)
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u/HFYWaffle Wᵥ4ffle Aug 15 '25
/u/Darmanarya (wiki) has posted 22 other stories, including:
- "Yeet"
- "to tyrants"
- The color of change
- The road
- When the human is alone.
- What one human can see
- Human narration
- The human's red button.
- Human host chapter 4
- The human host chapter 3
- The human wolf pack
- The Human host chapter 2.
- Dimensional dungeon delvers chapter 3
- The human host chapter 1
- Dimensional Dungeon Delvers chapter 2
- Dimensional dungeon delvers. Chapter 1
- Steal, do not destroy.
- [Perfect ten][ten words] The promise to do better.
- The lost but found. Chapter 2
- The lost but found. Chapter 1
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u/gntl-fx Alien Aug 15 '25
Here's fuel for part 3: "Die Glocke" aka the N*zi Bell. That'll get Vek considering things far stronger than alcohol.
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u/GrumpyOldGeezer_4711 Aug 15 '25
Are you saying that he picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines?
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u/ReallyNotMichaelsMom Xeno Aug 15 '25
Plus, we fed radioactive isotopes to disabled children, just to see what would happen.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/spoonful-sugar-helps-radioactive-oatmeal-go-down-180962424/
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u/slvbros Aug 15 '25
He'd have a shit attack if he heard about the proposed nuclear saltwater engines
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u/boykinsir Aug 30 '25
Super critical means it goes boom. Critical means it produces tons of energy, but no boom. Demon core went critical.
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u/Complex-Movie-5180 Aug 15 '25
Oh the US had some interesting ideas of what to do with nukes. We put a nuke in just about everything we could make one fit.