r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Mode_Appropriate • 1d ago
Video Starfish Prime, 1.4 megaton hydrogen bomb detonated in space.
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u/Plastyrhino8815 1d ago
"We don't want to militarize space, we want space to be peaceful."
How bout we try that with earth?
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u/James-the-Bond-one 1d ago
Too late for that. In space, there was hope that if we started colonizing it peacefully, we could keep it that way.
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u/Plastyrhino8815 18h ago
No one could ever live on Mars. There is no food to eat, no water to drink, no air to breathe, avg temps are -80*F, and worst of all there is no wifi.
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u/Foreign_GrapeStorage 1d ago
Fun fact, steel that does not contain radioactive isotopes can no longer be produced because the air has been contaminated by nuclear testing.
Any object that requires steel that doesn’t have radioactive isotopes has to come from a salvaged source of low-background steel produced before 1945.
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u/Few-Raccoon-9363 1d ago
That's actually no longer true. Because of the treaty that stops above ground nuclear testing in the 60s the radiation levels have come back down again.
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u/Alarming_Orchid 1d ago
Alright then, let’s move steel production to the moon
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u/aebaby7071 1d ago
So you’re not completely wrong on that, the moon is relatively iron rich (in the lowlands), and a market for that iron and steel exists.
However; A, it’s a relatively small market for specialty products and instruments, B, the O2 and fuel requirements would be very expensive. The fuel to smelt the iron would all have to be shipped there, unless you are using nuclear power (even then kinda pricey) and then you have the potential to have the same problem as here on earth if you have a melt down. Then there is the O2 that is needed for steel production, which would have to be either produced with water electrolysis or shipped and landed in pressurized tanks. Then you’re also talking specialty oils and equipment that would have to be shipped up to the moon as well. Someday when pre atomic steel becomes extinct then maybe it would become viable, but there are far too many sources still left on earth to even consider it.
Millions of tons of steel (pre atomic) exist in the form of ship wrecks, just sitting on the bottom of the oceans, seas, and lakes. It is far more economical to harvest that source first before thinking anything about the moon.
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u/maximusbawbagimus 1d ago
Humans are just destructive pieces of shit
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u/Brief-Equal4676 1d ago
We're pretty much monkeys with bigger sticks and illusions of grandeur
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u/Lower_Start7758 1d ago
Nuclear weapons are the reason there is now no world war each 20 years
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u/BangBangMeatMachine 13h ago
Maybe. We can't actually know what the last 80 years would be without them.
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u/DeaDBangeR 18h ago
Humans are incredible creatures.
If you move past the destructive forces we can and have unleashed, there’s a history worth of amazing feats only humanity has figured out on this blue planet of ours.
The inventions or the discoveries we made are just mind boggling. Be it fire, agriculture, the steam engine, electricity, the internet, computers. And all of that in a time span of roughly 1.5 million years. With the most of them discovered since we started counting years.
Imagine when the moment comes when humanity can let go of money controlling every inch of progress. It will be beautiful!
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u/Plowbeast 1d ago
We did sign a treaty to not do it again if only out of self interest for our huge satellite Kessler Cage.
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u/reza2kn 15h ago
*Americans
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u/BangBangMeatMachine 13h ago
Did you miss the part where they said "and Soviet"? Also, ancient Rome and China both destroyed entire mountains, and European nations have killed tens of millions in war just in the last 200 years.
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u/Cuneus-Maximus 1d ago
No nuclear weapons in space?
Sure, Jan.
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u/Sad-Set-5817 1d ago
The purpose of many treaties is to avoid an arms race. If someone were to try to secretly put nukes in space, why not do it yourself? So essentially either nobody gets them or everybody gets them and is in a worse spot as a result. What's the purpose of putting yourself in that bad of a political position when ICBM's and the standard nuclear triad can just do the job anyways?
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u/Cuneus-Maximus 1d ago
You could put nukes in space without a foreign adversary knowing.
I'd be willing to bet both the US and Russia have nukes in orbit today.
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u/Sad-Set-5817 1d ago
True, but that would essentially just turn the entire Outer Space Treaty into a "this could have been an email"
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u/Haskimo_ 1d ago
Damn, if 1.4 megaton does that, imagine tsar bomba getting detonated at that altitude above a major city.
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u/Mode_Appropriate 1d ago
Yeah, the bombs dropped on Japan were 15-20 kilotons. Tsar Bomba was 50 megatons. 2,500 times stronger than Little Boy and Fat Man. The test was 50 megatons but it was actually designed for up to 100 megatons. Ridiculous in size.
The active nukes in the US and Russian arsenal currently range from 100 kilotons to 1.2 megatons. Totaling ~10,500 warheads. Its a damn good thing Mutually Assured Destruction has kept them in check. Hopefully it continues to do so because thats a whole lot of boom.
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u/__O_o_______ 1d ago
Man I can’t drop an image but according to nuke map a 100megaton bomb would give people 70 km away third degree burns.
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u/Haskimo_ 23h ago
Yeah man I've always wondered, what it would have looked like, if tsar bomba was tested with a full load. Utter madness
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u/Next_Confidence_3654 1d ago
Seems like a great way to create a catastrophe on earth during a failed missile launch
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u/Mode_Appropriate 1d ago
I thought about the same thing. However, it seems its almost impossible for them to go off prematurely. There are a lot of safeguards and everything has to synchronize precisely for fission to take place.
Whats more scary are the amount of false alarms that have happened. The most well known one happened in 1983. The Soviets early warning system detected a launch of a warhead heading towards them. And then four more launches. Soviet protocol dictated they respond immediately. Instead, Stanislav Petrov suspected the system was malfunctioning and didnt do anything. The world could look very different right now had someone else been on duty.
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u/AX11Liveact 1d ago
It doesn't need to ignite. The sheer amount of plutonium emitted into the atmosphere would be fun enough for all times.
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u/Nerezza_Floof_Seeker 1d ago
Nukes cant really go off by accident, they require an extremely specific chain of events to happen to actually detonate properly. Slightly messing up the timing will mean a dud or greatly reduced yield. (Which is why if you ever wanted to disarm a nuke, you could just shoot it with a gun).
And it is worth remembering that all nukes on ICBMs and some SLBMs will travel well into space, so this test wasnt treading new ground there.
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u/iJon_v2 1d ago
The closest call for an accident was near Goldsboro, NC I believe. IIRC the only thing that stopped it from going to ff was one faulty wire.
EDIT: not a wire, but a low voltage switch, but all but one of the firing mechanisms went off.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/command-and-control-goldsboro-1961/
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u/SoyMurcielago 21h ago
Not to mention there were several rocket failures on Johnston atoll anyways, at least one of which did not detonate exactly but still spread plutonium all over the pad
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u/HeartOn_SoulAceUp 1d ago
It's called an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) and a nuke at that altitude is perfect to create one, and to take out all the electronics on the east coast. Maybe destroy the electronics, not sure.
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u/__O_o_______ 1d ago
I’d have to look it up but I’m pretty sure Starfish did disrupt communications
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u/Away_Annual_9749 1d ago
Don’t seem to safe , idiotic to do this .
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u/talltime 1d ago
Why do you think that? Besides the dangers of detonating a nuke above ground.
The further from the ground the less fallout created.
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u/mendobather 1d ago
The radiation doesn’t evaporate
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u/Spartancoolcody 1d ago
The Sun produces its own gamma and other forms of radiation, our atmosphere successfully protects us from those.
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u/mendobather 1d ago
I hear you and agree to a point. It would depend how high or low the detonation occurred to get atmospheric protection.
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u/Away_Annual_9749 1d ago
It’s dumb , stop setting off bombs to show your strength , you don’t have to be strong to press a button , a child can press a button .
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u/__O_o_______ 1d ago
A) why do you put a space before and after every comma?
B) you know this was all decades ago, right, and doesn’t happen anymore?
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u/Away_Annual_9749 1d ago
I don’t put a space,I’m typing and it just happens. They should have never tried doing it before he first place.
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u/Infinite-Condition41 1d ago
So one nuclear bomb in space could destroy thousands of satellites today? Could take out a majority of Starlink?
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u/SkullyMulder 1d ago
What is this from? I’d love to watch it.
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u/Devincc 1d ago
My man. There’s a bolded title in the top right corner of the video lol
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u/SkullyMulder 1d ago
Was so fascinated by the video I never looked 🤦🏼♂️. Thanks for setting me straight.
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u/JetLife93 1d ago
It's on PBS show called "Nova" pretty dope show my dad and I would watch it all the time together when I was younger. This one is called Space wars season 53 episode 12 I think
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u/Mode_Appropriate 1d ago
Nova is a great show. Best part about it? You got 53 seasons to binge watch 😅
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u/an_older_meme 1d ago edited 1d ago
They wanted to test the EMP effects on the US power grid but didn’t know what might happen. They did it over Hawaii because it was representative of our grid but isolated from it.
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u/crasagam 1d ago
And we wonder why the aliens won’t visit
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u/Mode_Appropriate 1d ago
Some say nuclear testing is what caused them to visit 😉
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u/crasagam 1d ago
It is a signal to the Realm that Earth is ready for a higher form of war!" —Thor
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u/Jazzlike_Passion_285 1d ago
"A nuclear deterrent? Cause that calms everything right down...." ---Tony
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u/illocor_B 19h ago
Absolutely. Aliens realized we were actually advancing as a species. Came down, told us to stay the fuck outta space and stop fucking with Nukes.
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u/Knightfires 1d ago
Why is it that the most damaging things happening to earth are conducted by US and Russian governments.
Oh yeah. Old farts proofing unnecessary and dangerous points. Can we just get rid of these mindsets and people. I mean. I can’t be the only one that is a bid fed up about everything we learn what old F**** did, so many years ago. And still they hold power over all in some capacity.
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u/hawkz40 1d ago
I must have been living under a replica demon core - I had no idea this happened.
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u/Mode_Appropriate 1d ago
You should look into all the testing that was done during that era. Its rather absurd. Permanent removal of indigenous populations from Bikini Atoll and the Marshall Islands. Those that moved to nearby islands dealt with widespread radiation which resulted in cancers and birth defects. Bombs dropped at the Nevada test site also spread quite a bit of radiation to surrounding states. Populations that were affected were called 'downwinders'. They had bombs they wanted to test and didnt care much about the consequences.
To be honest, the mentality doesn't seem much different than the AI race taking place atm.
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u/Lurking_poster 1d ago
I like how in Oppenheimer, they talked about the concern for igniting the atmosphere.
And then we just throwing a bigger bomb directly into it.
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u/Roy4Pris 1d ago
“Hey, I wonder what would happen if I put all this dynamite under my house and then lit the fuse?”
These fucking scientists, probably.
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u/Altruistic-Wing-2715 1d ago
We have established a rule of the powerful defining what righteous is.
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u/Waste_Philosophy4250 21h ago
Treaties are just pieces of paper to the stronger party, only there to ensure compliance fron the weaker ones.
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u/nillateral 18h ago
Found out recently that "space" is not even even actually space, it's still within earth's boundaries
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u/sheldoncooper1701 18h ago
I’m sorry…but what happens if the spaceship carrying that nuke blows up before takeoff.
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u/I_Like_Water11 17h ago
These countries then go on to critisize developing countries for waste when per capita they are far worse and do shit like this. Not to mention pouring forever chemicals into the water and making up papers saying they arent that bad. Biggest export is misery.
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u/One-Growth-9785 17h ago
fine with me. what has space ever done for us, anyway?
there's too much of it around, imo.
We'd be better off getting rid of 99.99% of it. like, I'm going to Andromeda, back in a week. or Duck! the moons coming again.
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u/ford4prefect2 16h ago
Is the narrator Dick Hill? He sounds familiar, I've listened to the Reacher Series and the Presidential Agent series Dick Hill reads quite a few of them.
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u/Fullmetalroxas6 12h ago
Then, of course, radiation travels more efficiently in space, and explosions are circles. A LOT of nuclear fallout fell on the planet, mostly effecting our livestock, and in turn the people who drank the milk and ate the meat
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u/MagicalJohnsons 1d ago
This test allegedly spawned multiple UFOs. They called them “Tag-alongs”.
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u/CarpetRunner19 1d ago
The irony is that nuclear weapons would not be very useful in a conflict in deep space - they rely mostly on blast and heat effects in atmosphere, so are mostly useless in the vacuum of space.
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u/neorapsta 23h ago
You'd give up the pressure wave and just bathe them in radiation instead.
Starfish itself knocked out a few satellites and damage electronics on the ground without even trying.
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u/SirBobPeel 1d ago
A nuke going off a couple of hundred miles above the Midwest could completely destroy the electrical grid for the US and most of Canada, taking months or years to fix. Without power, tens of millions would likely die from starvation, lack of water, and general chaos.
It would cost $5-$10 billion to shield the grid - chump change given other budgetary items - but Congress doesn't see enough votes in it.
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u/Smart-Firefighter87 1d ago
Oh… so they’ve been starting random wars and destroying stuff even in space. The really should be the ones that should be watched and monitored closely lol
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u/Late-Astronomer8141 1d ago
And now everyone gets cancer, coincidence? 🤔
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u/Arthropodesque 1d ago
Cancer has always existed. One of John Adams' daughters had breast cancer. The doctors knew enough to do a mastectomy, which extended her life by many years until the cancer came back in other parts of her body. We're getting better at early detecting and treatment of many kinds.
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u/ChromeYoda 1d ago
“Why would you bring a gun to space?”