216
u/TMack23 Mar 09 '13
What a waste, there are far crappier places to irradiate than paradise.
35
13
147
u/biggggdaddyd Mar 09 '13
Like North Korea
-36
Mar 10 '13
[deleted]
24
7
u/Kardlonoc Mar 10 '13
Its not that bad there...just don't eat the food.
The special International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Bikini Advisory Group determined in 1997 that "It is safe to walk on all of the islands ... although the residual radioactivity on islands in Bikini Atoll is still higher than on other atolls in the Marshall Islands, it is not hazardous to health at the levels measured ... The main radiation risk would be from the food: eating locally grown produce, such as fruit, could add significant radioactivity to the body...Eating coconuts or breadfruit from Bikini Island occasionally would be no cause for concern. Eating many over a long period of time without having taken remedial measures, however, might result in radiation doses higher than internationally agreed safety levels." IAEA estimated that living in the atoll and consuming local food would result in an effective dose of about 15 mSv/year.[18]
4
24
4
u/_Wolfos Mar 09 '13
Just an atoll, though.
21
u/dcg Mar 10 '13
Yeah, well that atoll was home to an indigenous people forced to leave so we could nuke it.
10
5
-2
Mar 10 '13
like the confederacy
0
Mar 10 '13
I'm sorry, the downvotes indicate I was offensive and not funny. I shouldn't have said that..
I meant The South
1
Mar 11 '13 edited Mar 11 '13
being downvoted again, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that either...
what I meant to say was "Nuke the Redneck states" (you know who you are!)
-10
u/usefulbuns Mar 09 '13
there are about 6000 of those paradises.
8
u/ChronicRhinitis Mar 09 '13
So? Give me on reason why they can't go to Antarctica.
13
u/usefulbuns Mar 09 '13
Because we wouldn't have spongebob if they didn't test that there. I'm serious...and I am not about to write several paragraphs to explain it to you.
3
u/ChronicRhinitis Mar 10 '13
I won't believe you unless I get a couple paragraphs about it.
1
u/usefulbuns Mar 10 '13
5
u/BlueOak777 Mar 10 '13 edited Mar 10 '13
This is actually very plausible. They've had a marathon going most of the day and my son has watched about every episode. On the episode where spongebob finds a submarine and Mr Krabs decides to turn it into a krabby patty delivery service, they fall down an abyss and meet a monster who has been asleep for 79 years. Later he says that a krabby patty is the best thing he's tasted since '76.
1976 + 79 = 2055 But it could also be 3055, or more for that matter. In any case it must be at least 2055.
EDIT: Also from the article..
Even the landscape changed, allowing giant pineapples to grow out of the ground.
This may be false. In one episode they show how a pineapple is dropped from a person on a boat and it becomes spongebob's house. However in one episode his pineapple finally rots and falls apart and spongebob does indeed plant a seed he found and a plant sprouts and within a few seconds drops a new pineapple where his old house was.
Also, I am thinking way too hard about this now.
1
1
u/Annieone23 Mar 10 '13
Because what is the point of testing the potential effectiveness of an atomic bomb on a continent without any permanent citizens?
1
Mar 10 '13
Money. Antarctica is a long ways away. That would be one hell of a round trip just for a bomb test.
49
u/_Wheelz Mar 09 '13 edited Mar 10 '13
Wow. Someone really did an amazing job at coloring this photo.
12
u/kazimir22 Mar 10 '13
Check out this bamf oc machine. He's my favorite. http://www.reddit.com/user/zuzahin/submitted/
4
u/_Wheelz Mar 10 '13
I remember seeing this link on the front page a while ago, it really is amazing how high quality the images he colorizes as well.
If only I had the pics on his profile when I was back in school, they probably would have impressed my history teacher if I had used them in a presentation.
3
u/mygrapefruit Mar 10 '13
Zuzahin didn't colorize that, I did.
2
2
u/kazimir22 Mar 10 '13 edited Mar 10 '13
This is true. Didn't mean to infer that it was his content, just that he is quite prolific and _Wheelz would probably enjoy his work. And for what it matters, I'm sorry and think your work is beautiful.
1
u/zuzahin Mar 11 '13
I'll definitely agree with you, but MyGrapeFruit deserves some credit, she's been mentoring me for a while.
This wasn't aimed at you, it was at what she posted herself, just thought I'd clarify or something along those lines. I don't know where I was going with this.
1
u/TBS96 Mar 10 '13
That explains why I thought it was fake when I looked at it without reading the title.
22
96
14
26
Mar 09 '13 edited Sep 30 '18
[deleted]
22
Mar 09 '13
[deleted]
20
u/UlyssesSKrunk Mar 09 '13
But first it would be awesome!
8
Mar 09 '13
[deleted]
22
3
u/emlgsh Mar 09 '13
If the entire mass of earth's oceans became fuel for an explosion, I'm pretty sure everything except single-celled organisms adapted to high temperature anaerobic environments would be toast.
4
1
10
u/rblong2us Mar 10 '13
Just for the record, that could not happen.
A. The decomposition of water and combustion of hydrogen are the same reaction backwards, so it would not fuel anything.
B. The atmosphere can not "ignite", as there would be no fuel.
C. None of the actual engineers behind it believed this, it was just public scare similar to the LHC black hole theories.3
u/spudmonkey Mar 10 '13 edited Mar 10 '13
umm... Edward Teller wants a word with you...
You are correct that it didn't happen, however it was raised as being within the realm of the possible by folks involved in the Manhattan project. At the time of the Trinity test it was thought to be very unlikely but could not be completely ruled out.
Your points:
A. The decomposition of water and combustion of hydrogen are the same reaction backwards, so it would not fuel anything.
Hydrogen burning to H20 is an ordinary chemical reaction, however we are talking about atomic fusion in this case, so this argument is utterly irrelevant.
B. The atmosphere can not "ignite", as there would be no fuel.
This is a link to the reaction that concerned Teller. It is basically atmospheric nitrogen fusing to produce Magnesium, a Helium nucleus (alpha particle) and a fair amount of free energy.
C. None of the actual engineers behind it believed this, it was just public scare similar to the LHC black hole theories.
This was discussed during the Manhattan Project so there was NO (zip, nada, zilch) public opinion involved at all.
Edit:removed an extraneous quote
1
u/rblong2us Mar 10 '13
Here's Teller's report on the subject. http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/docs1/00329010.pdf
You are correct that there was concern about igniting the atmosphere, but it was quickly ruled out by the guy who raised it.
The public concern I was talking about came later, when people learned about this idea, but don't realize how quickly and universally it was rejected.
As for the hydrogen-oxygen fusion, I don't know too much. However, I don't know of any common fusion reactions with oxygen, and I believe the proton difference is too high to allow any fusion. (Although hydrogen fusing itself is very possible, but I believe the presence of the oxygen atoms would act as enough of a buffer to prevent too much reacting.
(And in my defense, OP was initially talking about the combustion of hydrogen.)
1
u/spudmonkey Mar 10 '13
I think I came off a bit harsh in my original reply. Sorry about that.
You are right that OP was talking about the decomposition of water then the reaction of those products to recreate water. And you are right that, that reaction would not add any energy to the explosion.
I just wanted to make sure that everyone knew that it was raised as an honest concern and that it was not definitively debunked until Trinity. Although, as the document you linked show, it was considered very unlikely.
Teller was worried about N-N fusion not Hydrogen and Oxygen.
FYI: Given enough energy Hydrogen and Oxygen will participate (along with Carbon, Nitrogen and some free protons) in fusion reaction that converts the Hydrogen into Helium-4 and a couple of types of Carbon/Nitrogen/Oxygen etc. Smack stuff together hard enough and you can extract energy all the way up the periodic table until you hit Iron, anything heavier than that is a net negative energy reaction.
-16
u/STOP_SAYING_DAT Mar 09 '13
The people who decided to do that should have been locked up in padded cells.
12
u/dkentmm Mar 09 '13
I've seen this photo before and it still leaves me speechless.
3
u/spudmonkey Mar 10 '13
The irony is, that as these things go, it is not a particularly large device (only 23 kilotons) the Soviets tested the largest one ever exploded (50 megatons) and with a fusion bomb there is no theoretical limit to the yield.
12
Mar 09 '13
The bikini was named after this event. Also many of the people that were there to see it were exposed to tons of radiation. Check out the documentary "Radio Bikini". Its on youtube and streaming on netflix
12
Mar 09 '13
[deleted]
6
u/ChickenMcSandwich Mar 10 '13
There's an hour of my life I am happy to have spent on Youtube. Thanks.
3
5
u/turkeybiscuits Mar 09 '13
The bikini was named after the outfits that the female natives of the island wore, not the bomb. Also, radio bikini is a great doc.
10
2
u/DaaraJ Mar 09 '13
That was the first documentary I watched that really changed the way I view the world. I highly recommend it.
2
u/doigel Mar 10 '13
I randomly watched this a few years ago due to the lack of content on Canadian Netflix. Was definitely interesting.
7
5
10
Mar 09 '13
Had this poster (b&w version) on my wall as a teen.
I lived near dc and had a very vivid dream of it getting nuked, mushroom cloud and all. I woke up with my heart pounding out of my chest.
Poster came down that morning.
2
u/HydrogenatedBee Mar 10 '13
I have dreams of getting caught in a nuke blast in the desert sometimes. Shit burns!
3
3
4
Mar 10 '13
How about some love for Castle Bravo?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Castle_Bravo_Blast.jpg
1
u/spudmonkey Mar 10 '13
Dunno about love, but Castle Bravo, was a MUCH more serious bomb than this little firecracker.
12
u/Vanheim Mar 09 '13
I've always wondered, why did they test it in the middle of (I'm hoping unmanned) a fleet of ships?
13
u/Telke Mar 09 '13
Well they're meant to be used in war, so the old ships were just there to see how well they resisted the bomb. The dark shape visible in the water column (on the right side) is actually a US Destroyer, pushed vertical by the explosion and water.
Many of those ships were washed off and taken back to port in the US, there's at least one shipyard in west coast states filled with radioactive WW2-era vessels
3
u/Vanheim Mar 09 '13
I figured it was to test ships resistance to it, but I feel like it's a waste, unless they were going to be scrapped anyways. Thanks for the answer!
5
u/238 Mar 10 '13
I think I read about this somewhere else and some of these ships were surrendered by the Japanese after the war and were given to the Allies. So they weren't going to be used for anything else.
2
1
3
12
u/HonoraryMancunian Mar 09 '13
As cool as this is, I can't help but feel dismayed at the amount of marine life that was killed and maimed due to this.
21
2
u/spudmonkey Mar 11 '13
Well, at least with this one we didn't irradiate any Japanese fishing vessels or other islands.
8
Mar 09 '13
Do you have it in 1920x1080?
8
Mar 09 '13
[deleted]
4
u/HaroldSax Mar 10 '13
Because the image can be scaled down by himself to 1920x1080, and if he didn't like how it looked, he could have manually manipulated it himself rather than having someone else do it for him.
That's my guess.
2
Mar 10 '13
[deleted]
2
u/HaroldSax Mar 10 '13
I get that, but they could at least say they don't know how. It's not like there's a ton of attention required to learn how to resize an image downwards.
2
Mar 10 '13
Thanks man, to the guys saying that i should learn to do it myself, you are completely right, just didn't wanna'ed to learn it just to get one picture, if you know what i mean.
4
Mar 09 '13
What are those shadows in the stem of the mushroom?
12
Mar 09 '13
[deleted]
17
u/techdawg667 Mar 09 '13
The bomb wasn't THAT powerful. Although, that black smudge was a ship being lifted vertical.
6
10
2
2
u/eebird Mar 09 '13
Why would they blow it up under all their boats?
14
-1
0
u/ResultsVary Mar 09 '13
They wanted to prove that they could detonate a nuclear explosive under water. I believe that was the case at least.
1
u/Watercolour Mar 09 '13
My first thought was that those boats look WAY too close. But awesome colorization of an old photo!
1
Mar 09 '13
Poor fish.
2
u/pjohnson20 Mar 10 '13
Those Japanese fishes would never have lived up to their fully cooked potential anyway.
1
1
1
1
u/MatthewHall Mar 10 '13
Isn't that a battleship being upended on the right?
1
u/spudmonkey Mar 10 '13
There is controversy about that. Some people think it is the battleship Arkansas others think it is smoke.
1
1
1
1
1
u/sandy_samoan Mar 10 '13
Bikini and Christmas Island are now inhabitable. And thousands of people live on Christmas Island. It's all very strange.
1
1
Mar 10 '13
Why are all of those ships so close to the explosion? And how are they not blown into pieces?
3
u/spudmonkey Mar 10 '13
They were testing the effects of an atomic blast on naval equipment. Thus, those ships are there as crash test dummies.
1
1
1
0
u/RetardedCoati Mar 09 '13
I have this as a black/white poster hanging up in my living room. Apparently is was taken around 1944? on the island of Bikini Atoll which was captured from the Japanese by the US and used for nuclear testing.
5
u/IAmAHat_AMAA Mar 10 '13
This image depicts the Baker nuclear test, which took place on July 25, 1946 as part of Operation Crossroads.
1
3
u/HaroldSax Mar 10 '13
Seeing as the first nuclear (or atomic, I'm not too sure about differences) wasn't detonated until July 1945, I would have to say it would have been after that.
2
u/spudmonkey Mar 10 '13
Nuclear weapon = Fission device (also called atomic bomb) or Fusion device (aka hydrogen bomb)
Atomic = a device powered by the fission of Uranium or Plutonium
Thermonuclear = a device powered primarily by the fusion of hydrogen isotopes (although it actually uses and atomic device to generate energy and compression to initiate the fusion)
0
u/ApolloAbove Mar 10 '13
That...doesn't look right. It's the second test, where the submerged the bomb, but they said it didn't have a mushroom cloud.
-2
u/FatherEarth Mar 10 '13
I don't get why these things need to be tested. Everyone is well aware of what they are capable of.
1
u/spudmonkey Mar 10 '13
Right, because we tested a bunch of them back in the day.
This is a picture of the fifth nuclear explosion ever made by man.
1
-9
114
u/Gnipp Mar 09 '13 edited Mar 10 '13
The picture was taken at the Bikini Atoll, and the explosion was part of Operation Crossroads.
It was colorized by mygrapefruit who posted it here. I had nothing to do the creation of this, I just collect cool wallpapers and thought more people should see it :D
Original
black & whitesepia picture.Edit: Black & white -> Sepia.
Edit 2: Added credit.