This well-known photograph was taken (extremely) shortly after the detonation of a nuclear device during Operation Tumbler-Snapper.
Ars Technica has an article up about recently declassified nuclear tests, which are now being plastered on youtube. I watched two of the videos, and realized I was physically pulled back, half turned away, in cringe mode. Yes, I can see where someone could find these mesmerizing, but I don’t, I just find them terrifying. I find every single thing about it terrifying – that we ever reached this point at all is a terror.
From 1945 until the practice was ended in 1963 with the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the US conducted 210 above-ground nuclear weapons tests. The majority of those took place at the Nevada National Security Site, then on remote Pacific atolls. Obviously, since the purpose of the tests was to understand this powerful new class of weapon, all of the tests were captured with multiple high-speed cameras (running at roughly 2,400 frames per second). And until now, many of those films have languished in classified vaults. But Greg Spriggs and his colleagues at Lawrence Livermore National Labs (LLNL) are rescuing and declassifying many of them, posting them on YouTube in the process.
The first 64 declassified films were uploaded this week, with footage from Operations Upshot-Knothole, Castle, Teapot, Plumbbob, Hardtack I, Hardtack II, and Dominic. And they’re utterly mesmerizing. In fact, they’re truly awesome, in the literal sense of the word.
No, I don’t find them awesome, either. They don’t fill me with awe, they fill me with dread. I find them disgraceful, discouraging, darkly dystopian, and we are now tottering on the edge of actual deployments, not tests. What I find even more dismal is that there will be too many people who will shout “oh cool, look at that, destroyed!” or some such, like cheering on destruction in a video game, rather than enough people who will take these for the warning they should be. And yes, I know there is a fascination to watching shock waves intersect and all, but these make me want to hide in a cave. Not that it would help.
Via Ars Technica.
Memorizing and awesome can coexist with terrifying, disgraceful, discouraging, and darkly dystopian. As one of the scientists releasing these videos wrote “I think that if we capture the history of this and show what the force of these weapons are and how much devastation they can wreak, then maybe people will be reluctant to use them.”
Yeah, dudebros will get a hard-on, but that’s the fault of the dudebros, not the videos. I hadn’t really thought about that aspect when I first watched the videos, but you are right to point out that aspect. Not hanging out with such idiots often makes me forget they exist, and in much greater numbers than rational people.
I saw the art from physics. Beauty within the crudeness of the destruction. Fascination with the explanation of, physically, what what happening. None of this diminished the horror of the scene I was watching, nor did the horror diminish the terrible beauty.
A friend of mine used to work at the IIT Research Institute in a group that developed some of the sensors used in these tests. The academic and engineering work was fascinating while also disturbing, and that wasn’t lost on him either. We sometimes discussed such issues and his work informed much of his anti-war attitudes.
I’m glad, despite your revulsion, you decided to post about them.
If you don’t know the source or reason behind those photographs, they can be mesmerizing and awesome -- to be honest, knowing what they’re of, colours them in a completely different light for me, too. Something about the power on demonstration is terrifying -- that people can do this, that people would use this and have used this on each other. There is beauty in destruction, but one must never forget the devastating, horrible consequences of that beauty. In a way, it’s even more terrifying because it can seem interesting or fascinating to look at, effacing the danger behind it.
I really, really hope that this is how it works out.
Do you know the video clip of Two Tribes by Frankie goes to Hollywood? At the end of the video, the world explodes. I remember I was quite shocked when I saw that the first time. We were in the middle of the Cold War. And though the super powers were not able to make the entire world explode, what they were able to was close enough.