The Demon Core 1945
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- Опубликовано: 5 фев 2025
- The Demon Core was the nickname given to a 6.2-kilogram (14 lb) subcritical mass of plutonium that accidentally went critical on two separate instances at the Los Alamos laboratory in 1945 and 1946. Each incident resulted in the acute radiation poisoning and subsequent death of a scientist. After these incidents the mass of plutonium was referred to as the Demon Core.
The Slotin and Daghlian incidents were combined and fictionalized in the film Fat Man and Little Boy. 
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Irl instead of, "I'm dead." The moment it happened he calmly said, "Well that does it." Much more chilling to me.
Well, when you're completely resigned to death and believe (either correctly or not) that you're going to die no matter what and have a bit of time to reconcile that...you experience a bit of a paradigm shift.
I had an experience where it was (moderately reasonable) to assume I was going to die but I myself was 110% sure I was dead. My first thought. "Aw, crap." Couple seconds later, I audibly said "Well, fuck it - whatever!" and laughed.
The mind is an amazing thing. Its primary function is indeed to facilitate survival so you can pass on your genes...but! Mercifully, once it decides there are absolutely no ways out and you've had a few seconds to process your regrets...it's a very freeing experience. Although intellectually we all know we are going to die, at the moment we actually believe we won't see the clock tick to the subsequent minute all that anxiety goes away. Because anxiety is for survival, right? Causes fear, fear causes your heart to beat faster, faster heart rate allows you to fight or flee, and that anxiety allows you to overcome boundaries you could normally never cross (either killing the threat or running away immorally).
It's sort of a 'woosh!' sensation, followed by a surreal conversation with yourself: "You know death is real. But you thought you never were gonna die?" "Kinda." "Well you are gonna die. And guess what? Now is the time! It always was gonna happen no matter what - death would always come." "Yeah, that makes sense." "And it just happens to be coming RIGHT THE F*** now!" "Ah, crap. Really?" "Yes, really." "Now?" "Now. Right. NOW!" "But I don't wanna--" "Listen - you've accepted that death is an actual, real reality. It's just happening NOW. So just accept it!" "...Guess you're right. Huh. Okay - guess I'm dying!"
I understand my response was a bit verbose...but that was the shortest way I could genuinely start to convey a summary of what happens to people who have (or think they have) a few minutes to live. I imagine if it's an experience that is long enough to realize you are dying but short enough to not let you walk through your regrets it would be traumatic...but if you have 30 seconds of coherent thought between realization of death and death itself, you'll be fine. =)
@@angry_zergling what was your exact situation when you were sure you would die? (Only if you wanna talk about it ofc)
Louis Slotin
i mean either way he knew he was fucked because he decided to push things way beyond where it needed to be.
I don't think it's the death part so much as the unbelievable torture he would go through for the following three weeks.
This is a great demonstration how flat head screwdrivers have 1000 different uses, none of which include driving a screw.
But after the screwdriver slipped, he was screwed!
@@mylovesongs2429 10/10 pun
@@mylovesongs2429 10/10 pun x2
Ur mother loves screwdrivers
They screwed up
Things of note:
- What's going on here is a criticality experiment. Reactivity in nuclear fuel is phrased in three terms. Subcritical, meaning that reactivity is slowing down.
Critical, meaning reacitivity is steady
And Supercritical, meaning reacitivity is speeding up on its own.
The experiment is to place a spherical sample of fuel, the core of the bomb, and surround it with a neutron-reflecting beryllium shield, formed in two parts, each a hemisphere. The bottom is already on, and the top is lowered into place. As the core becomes surrounded, the neutrons it emits have nowhere to go, and so keep bouncing around and smashing into each other. Reactivity increases and the core becomes supercritical.
-There was no coffee. Slotin's hand slipped for no other reason than it happened to slip. The film adjusted this to make his own death seem less like his fault
-Slotin was known, and repeatedly warned, for violating safety procedures. He removed the spacers inserted to prevent this very thing. He often gave demonstrations to people who didn't need to be present for the experiments
-The blue tint is real. Its radiation particles giving off flashes of light as they ionize in the air. What they can't show is the intense heat wave they all felt.
To be clear though, yes, it was his fault, but it also wasn't. We have the benefit of hindsight to tell us that he was making a mistake. This was a new field of physics. NO ONE knew just how to approach the safety procedures. The authorship of sound safety protocols is built on the blood of those who didn't know at the time.
Nowadays we build criticality experiments to be fail-safe. This means that a failure in a mechanism results in the experiment lapsing into a safe state. In this case, a fail-safe experiment would be one where the Beryllium cap is raised onto the core rather than lowered, so that a slip in the mechanism causes it to fall away and not on the core
So they all got microwaved in the vicinity of the core?
@@42lookc Not microwaves, neutron radiation and gamma rays.
@@CodaMission Thanks.
Sometimes we need drama and superhero. But thanks very much provideing some facts
@@996dog the real story was compelling enough. it didn't need to change it so the fucktard who killed the 4 of them by his own hubris into a damn accident. he kept fucking with shit because he was a think outside the box sweaty boy who wanted to prove to everyone some bullshit that didn't need proven.
there's something uniquely horrifying about radiation poisoning like this - a mistake that doesn't result in a sudden traumatic injury, or instantaneous death, but rather a realization that you may have 12, 24 or 72 hours, but you are going to die imminently and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.
And it's a horribly slow death
You should Google pictures of what happens with accute radiation exposure in humans,
The event shown in the movie is apocryphal (in reality the entire movie is), however it is based off of two different events, both involving the demon core, that cost two different lives. It most closely resembles the incident in 1946 that resulted in the death of Louis Slotin. After the incident he had third degree burns on the hand that had removed the cover. Doctors described his condition as if he had suffered really bad sunburn on his internal organs. He died in 9 days. It's insane to think that something metallic and benign looking like that can literally go supercritical solely based off of the elements around it, and cause a neutron burst so intense that it will sign your death warrent with less than a second of exposure.
"but you are going to die imminently and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it."
So kinda like normal life but faster.
That’s why it’s poisoning
When dealing with plutonium in a criticality experiment, a good rule of thumb would be "If your life depends on handling a screwdriver the right way, you're not doing it right".
Using a screwdriver as anything other than a screwdriver will void the warranty of your screwdriver.
@@lonebikeroftheapocalypse9527 What's a warranty facing nuclear energy.
There shouldn't have been coffee either. The most dangerous thing in the world with the worst cause of death.
No distraction
you have 666 likes
dont want to change it
@@dominicviner6619 this is why we don't consume food and drinks in the damn lab ffs.
It’s as if he’s back in room 1408 and this is another nightmare
Ello ello
LOL... right-o !
And met Samuel L. Jackson to top it off.
1408 was a great movie, it's underrated.
Matsimus what are you doin here lmao.
The reason he told everyone to take off everything metal, was so it could be analyzed. When gold, silver and copper are exposed to high radiation, they produce isotopes that can be measured to determine how high a dose was given.
Actually that's false. His actions immediately following the incidents were illogical and were attributed to disorientation caused by the enormous dose of radiation he received, and possibly extreme stress caused by him understanding the severity of the situation.
Lepe Lol, you're wrong, OP is right, and this comment is oooooold
Neutron radiation can cause relatively nuclear inert elements to transmute into a radioactive isotope. Your belt buckle or buttons could become a radiation hazard.
@@wormwoodbecomedelphinus4131 Correct, only neutrons can activate other elements and this is how they determine whether the best treatment for your exposure is a trip to the hospital, or a bullet.
That’s not it at all. The metal could become hazardous
If I've said it once I've said it a thousand times
No food or drink around the atomic bomb
Lol!
Bro chill, it’s only 3.6 roentgen
In real life he just lowered the screwdriver lightly too low.
Sorry boss.. do you taste metal?
I had the same rule in our restoration studio (Re: works of art...) I almost lost my mind when one of the staff placed her cup of coffee on the same shelf as a Rembrandt...
“Enrico Fermi reportedly told Slotin and others they would be "dead within a year" if they continued performing the test in that manner.” Fermi was right. Extremely reckless and needless deaths.
worse, they knew it was reckless.
there was a safety procedure that Slotin was flaunting. TBF the safety procedure was flawed too and is not that much safer, but it was enough safer to have prevented this.
Slotin enjoyed doing it in a way that shocked people. He liked showing off. It got him killed.
The radiation damaged one man so badly that he turned into a lawyer.
@Cliff Yablonski _Someone _*_always_*_ has to bring fucking politics into normal comments sections, and it's always triggered right wingers._
He was seen driving a Limo in 2012 when the earth was going to blow
Poor bastard
@@SynthVoice RUclips is a public arena. If you don't like opinions there are thousands of echo-chambers out there.
This event also affected his mental health. He almost burned a hotel because of his delusions.
What blows me away is that such smart scientists would set up an experiment such that they were always trying to prevent the upper-half of the sphere from falling down onto the lower one. Why on earth would they not have made their apparatus such that they were lifting the lower-half _UP_, towards the *stationary* upper-half? In engineering we would call this "fail safe." The way they were doing it was NOT...
That's the difference between scientists and engineers. Both need to work together for things to work right.
There were shims to prevent the upper half from falling. Slotin removed them and bypassed all security protocoles by maneuvering the sphere with a screwdriver. Basically he (like others) didn't think there was much risk in nuclear experiments. The irony is that this accident helped build a safety culture.
In engineering we'd call *this* fail-deadly.
Smart or not, this was still new to most people. They were literally fucking around with fire that they couldn't control or fully understand, and it would be a while before engineering safety standards would catch up with the needs of these men.
True. However, stupid is stupid no matter what you are f'ing around with or when you are f'ing around with it! Most safety standards are based on common sense and forethought. That was NOT happening here...
It’s crazy…. He was literally a dead man walking. His body, his cells were dead but he was still fully conscious and able to say “fuck I’m dead” or “well that does it”
That word "literally"... I do not think it means what you think it means.
@@r0ckt3hc4sb4h in a literal manner or sense; exactly. His cells were all destroyed in an instant and from that moment forward ceased to replicate. I think it was a reasonable use of the word.
His DNA was all immediately destroyed, but his cellular structure and proteins were still intact enough to keep him "alive" (if you want to call it that) for several days. He would just be unable to manufacture more proteins so his body immediately started decomposing while he was still drawing breath.
@@JohnSmith-so7mh Nobody asked, nobody cares. Seriously, don't be that guy. Saying this as a friend.
@@JohnSmith-so7mh Don't be the a religious zealot dude. Shoving religion down people's throats is against the very principles you stand for. I'm saying this as a friend, this isn't the best way to share your faith.
Please explain to comrade Shcherbina how a screwdriver isn't a safe laboratory instrument
Screwdrivers dont slide they do not are you a idiot
You did not see screwdriver cause it isn't there!!!!!!
This laboratory is a chain of accountability, i'm following the screwdriver and some is following me
No more than 2000 Rontgen. Let's give them the propaganda number.
You do know that these are Americans right?
The NRC actually no longer allows this experiment to be performed by humans anymore. It can only be performed in a glove box by robotic means.
Well obviously
+WeinerNumismatics Actually, one of the other men in the room, Raemer Schreiber, was assigned the task of producing a remote lab to perform the experiments 1/4 mile away. It was in use 3 months later. In this sort of experiment a glove box would be useless.
Sorry, no. The management of Los Alamos (long before the NRC, or even the AEC, was a gleem in a politician's eye) banned such experiments immediately after the accident, and one of the men in the room, Raemer Schreiber, analyzed the accident and then developed technology to safely do the experiment from a range of a quarter mile away. Such experiments are not really any longer required; the physics of plutonium cores are well enough known to no longer require them, but similar experiments are done remotely, not in a glove box.
+puncheex2 Although criticality accidents occur even today. In 1999, two guys in Japan were hit with a lethal dose of radiation while trying to mix up some nuclear fuel (using sub-par techniques - their bosses cut corners horribly and the fuel was mixed in a container that was the wrong shape.) It's shocking that after all we know, people could still be nonchalant with radioactive material.
Neutrons killed them not radiation. A few photos are online showing the skin falling off after a 83 day death. VERY hard way to go.
Alien movies: not scary for me
Killer dolls: not scary for me
Ghost movies: not scary for me
Working with radiation movies: is scary for me.
what about #animaticbattle demon core??
Let’s just say I started wearing brown trousers.
Right after chernobyl the series came out, someone did a brilliant fanart of like the top 30 scariest fictional characters cowering in absolute terror behind a wall from a big drum with the radiation symbol.
The actual men in the room at the time: Louis Slotin (died nine days later), Alvin Graves (died 19 years later of a suspected radiation-caused heart attack, had cataracts and severe thyroid problems - he was three feet away), Stanley Kline (died of natural causes 55 years later - eight feet away), Dwight Young - (died 29 years later from a blood disorder that stunts development of white and red blood cells and an infection of the lining of the heart - six feet away), Guard Pat Cleary (KIA in Korea), Raemer Schreiber (died of natural causes at age 88 - 16 feet away), Theodore Perlman (Alive and in good health as of 1978 - 16 feet away), Marion Cieslicki (died of Leukemia, and his liver and spleen were abnormally large at autopsy - he was eight feet away). The bottom line, Louis Slotin (portrayed in this scene) really endangered his co-workers. The biggest mistake? Removing the shims (supports) and using a screwdriver instead - which slipped.
+KOHF34 cool!!
Radiation causes a heart attack nearly 2 decades later? Anyway, Slotin was referring to the known dangers of acute radiation exposure, not the as yet unknown risks of Acute radiation exposure on long term cancer risks. Most of those risks would only be known from 30 year studies of the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which could obviously not have been completed by 1946.
+Treblaine Well, they suspect radiation led to the heart attack - that victim already had severe cataracts at his age. He had that heart attack while skiing.
it's absolutely plausible even if it doesn't seem connected at first glance. subtle changes to body chemistry (or not so subtle in this case) can have far-reaching effects that may not manifest for years. most heart attacks begin with plaque formation in the arteries decades before the first signs of heart disease manifest. but heart attacks can be caused by so many reasons and sometimes multiple reasons coming together that i have no doubt they could have been connected.
Yes a thousand ways to die show had this in an episode ,never new they made a move from it .awsome
From the Wiki:
The standard protocol was to use shims between the halves, as allowing them to close completely could result in the instantaneous formation of a critical mass and a lethal power excursion. Under Slotin's own unapproved protocol, the shims were not used and the only thing preventing the closure was the blade of a standard straight screwdriver manipulated in Slotin's other hand. Slotin, who was given to bravado, became the local expert, performing the test on almost a dozen occasions, often in his trademark blue jeans and cowboy boots, in front of a roomful of observers. Enrico Fermi reportedly told Slotin and others they would be "dead within a year" if they continued performing the test in that manner. Scientists referred to this flirting with the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction as "tickling the dragon's tail", based on a remark by physicist Richard Feynman, who compared the experiments to "tickling the tail of a sleeping dragon". On the day of the accident, Slotin's screwdriver slipped outward a fraction of an inch while he was lowering the top reflector, allowing the reflector to fall into place around the core. Instantly there was a flash of blue light and a wave of heat across Slotin's skin; the core had become supercritical, releasing an intense burst of neutron radiation estimated to have lasted about a half second. Slotin quickly twisted his wrist, flipping the top shell to the floor.
I've been fascinated (in a rather morbid way) lately with radiation sickness. I could understand why it could do enough damage to kill, but what I couldn't understand was the pattern of progression toward death. To me, death from such a thing should be fast and linear, and actual reports don't reflect this at all. I couldn't understand how the person would be first sick and in pain, then reasonably ok, then back to being sick, then suddenly in a hellscape of deterioration. Thus, I did a lot of reading and discovered that the actual cause of death isn't so much the immediate destruction as it is the crippling of the cells' ability to reproduce, via the damage caused to the DNA within them. In effect, the cells can't function properly anymore, and simply die without undergoing division, or, they divide into two very messed up cells that don't work right. It's not like a burn, where tissue is outright killed. It's more like the upkeep process fails. Without the process of cellular replication, cells slowly die off over time without being replaced, and the machine as a whole begins to fall apart. This is the exact same phenomenon that is exploited in radiation treatment of cancerous tumors, but in the case of full body exposure, EVERYTHING begins to erode away over time. It's the "Children of Men" effect on a microscopic level.
Fascinating and absolutely sickening at the same time. I would wish such a thing on no living thing, period.
@@NightRunner417 I know what you mean. I think it's because the initial "killing blow" as it was is not violent and is seemingly mundane.
Touching a metal ball or being close to it kills you within days.
Your body basically rips itself apart.
@@NightRunner417 it's like a 3 dimensional sun burn
@@domkennedy6 I almost replied instantly with "No it isn't!", but then I thought about it for more than two seconds... Like "Well, what do you think a sunburn is, anyways?" and then went on a reading binge about sunburns. Never had thought about that until now. It is in fact a kind of radiation burn, just caused by UV radiation rather than betas, gammas and etc. Very interesting, thank you for that.
@@NightRunner417 FWIW, "3 dimensional sun burn" was the term used by a doctor treating Slotin after the accident.
One of the scariest story I've ever heard. You see the bluish flash, you're done in a fraction of a seconds. But you feel completely normal (or a little bit sick, I've heard) at least for a while. The worst part of this story is the man who got this can calculate how much damage he've already got. He's 100% sure he's already dead and he ain't got nothing to do about it.
Worst is the movie was inaccurate in this case. Everyone in that room suffered a long painful death.
I would feel so scared, that the end of my life would soon happen. I would be scared shitless!
@@darkpaw1522 that one guy died in 9 days. The rest of them either died normally or in some freak way.
@@thedankgnasty1890 Eh… I’ll meet you halfway.
@@darkpaw1522 That... Isn't true.
"I'm dead"
This man is delusional, take him to the infirmary
Ruptured condenser line, the feed water is mildy contaminated. I've seen worse
fu**ing funny. people are dying by the worst way and you laugh at this. get 1.000.000 roentgens.
Dunno if serious or joking.
Basically just flooded himself with enough radiation to fry his dna, his cells will just malfunction all manner of ways, usually just necrotizing or becoming tumorous.
No worse way to go, not really, just rapidly decaying.
bruh that short time that the core went critical killed 4 out of the 7 scientist there. No matter how short the exposure was the pure amount of radiation was enough to kill him in 9 days.
Tis a fine reference.
Use rad-away
Sorry this was almost 100 yeas before it was created . . . Nice try c:
Yes
fabiano fava not gonna help, the damage is already done
I liked these comments
Vodka will do the trick too
The blue light was perfect, it felt so real. No big flashy noises or effects, just a sudden blue light, like a chemical reaction.
Same thing happens when you hoist a ghetto blaster over your head!
Like a nuclear reaction.
yes, its the blue Cherenkov-radiation
Flesh of death 🕊️
Richard Feynman called it tickling the tail of the dragon.
tickling the dragons balls
More like tickling the butthole of the dragon.
I think it was also Feynman who said "if you keep doing that shit, you'll have yourself killed in two weeks."
@@Yora21 It was Enrico Fermi, though Feynman for sure was the one who said "tickling the tail of the dragon". Incredible to note how even some of the most brilliant of minds like Slotin can consciously and repeatedly do some really stupid shit, Darwin Awards level, even when warned by not one but two Nobel laureates.
@@richardmaccagni8690 It's fascinating, isn't it? I believe there are many aspects of intelligence. General IQ and common sense beeing two of them. It boggles my mind how there are some people who have a seemingly high IQ but almost no common sense sometimes. It seems there are no mandatory connections between the two at all.
If I'm not mistaken, in this movie they mixed the two incidents into one, the first would have been when Daghlian dropped a berrilyium brick on the core, the second was Slotin manipulating two hemispherical reflectors wrapping the plutonium core with his hand and a screwdriver. So, In that later one, there were no brick reflectors as depicted in that scene and he actually held the berrilym sphere with his bare hand. Clever.
i noticed that too. but it didnt click in my head right away; didnt put it together in my mind that they were showing both incidents together, i thought it was just hollywood adding things for whatever reason although my first thought went back to that brick dropping incident.
He held it with his bare hand? LOL man, natural selection...
@@Shrouded_reaper He held half of the beryllium sphere, not the actual Demon Core. That was the standard protocol and didn't cause any issues up until that point. The Demon Core goes critical if the neutrons it releases are reflected back into itself with no escape. Beryllium reflects neutrons, so by opening and closing the beryllium sphere you can change how many neutrons get reflected, and thus how much radiation is produced.
The standard protocol was to put thin metal shims between the two beryllium halves so that they won't ever close completely even if you drop it. The incident occurred because Slotin removed those shims for some reason and was only separating the halves with a screwdriver. So eventually the screwdriver slipped out one time, and since he wasn't holding the beryllium and the shims weren't there, it closed around the Demon Core and released a burst of radiation.
What movie is this? I wanna watch the whole thing.
@@Shrouded_reaper This is 1946. Doing stuff by hand was the standard procedure for a lot ot things. Also, the exact shape of the core and the shells were very accurately calculated to not create a criticality incident. Just few more or less millimeters of plutonium or beryllium would either instantly lead to meltdown or would make the fuel almost completely inert. The shape was so accurately calculated that the neutron reflection of the hand of the scientist in wrong spot had huge influence over whenever the core would go critical or no.
Slotin:
Bypassing all the safety procedures for a quick test.
Exposing yourself and everyone around you to dangerous amounts of radiation.
Letting your ego get the best of you
*Dyatlov: "You're hired comrade".*
Ah, the taste of 3.6 roentgen. Not great, but not terrible. Just the way I like it.
ScarecrowZP I’m told it’s the equivalent of a chest X-ray.
I don't believe there is a core!
@@mikelincoln2984 This man is delusional.
What play are you plaing?
@@rusampler1877 whatever do you mean?
If this was Stolin, he died a horrible death 9 days later. Now kids, let this be a lesson to not carelessly play with Plutonium!
+SyDiko How the fuck does a kid get Plutonium?
+SyDiko Yeah, that's what I tell my kids too.
+Eduardo I'm sure that in 1985, plutonium was available in every corner drugstore. :)
tybo09 Ya, good for measles.
Alan Sandpotato No shit.
Not a day goes by without me seeing a random demon core video suggestion in my feed.
As it should be
Why do I laugh every time I see the dial caliper come in like John Cleese saying "halllooohhh?"
Louis Slotin was a mild mannered physicist, until on day he accidentally touched a piece of critical plutonium, exposing himself to an intense dose of radiation.
He then became... Disabled Man. Then Coma Man. Then just Dead Man.
I read that in the narrator voice from south park. Lol
I even read this in that sort of early 70's narrator voice. LOL
Well he was the #1 man for: bomb putting togetherness 😁
There was no other way of getting the half’s of the core away from each other once they had collided and the small chance of saving 1 or two lives made him instantly throw away his own live, especially because his slippery fingers (and possibly silly ideas) made the core half’s collide
He was "Better off Dead" 😂
3 words you never want to hear. "Mark where you're standing and get out."
Where did you learn to count?
misterkunnyfunt i only have 5 words for you. Elementary school.
John majored in Trolling.
I think there is a Master's Degree on his wall.
3 words? I only count 2 tho 🧐
ruclips.net/video/WbJf9QnSB3Q/видео.html
Stockton Rush: "This looks very safe. What could go wrong?"
$250,000 just to be in the room!
SADLY the movie depicts the experiment in a very inaccurate way. First there were no tungsten carbide bricks involved. Louis Slotin had his left hand on the core, thumb in the hole on top (not there in the movie) as foreseen. The screwdriver in his right hand was to prevent the 2 halves of the outer beryllium sphere from closing up. Normally shims were in place to prevent this for happening. Twisting and tilting the screwdriver "controlled" the distance in between the halves, giving different readings. Till the screwdriver slipt. (no falling cup startled him) Slotin removed the upper half, within half a second after the flash (not 5 seconds) by just flipping his left wrist right away, stopping the reaction. Of course, the damage was done.
@SleepyGirl I see you failed high school physics.
He knew the effects, he knew the damage... he was aware that he was going to die when he calculated his dosage.
He was also warned by Enrico Fermi that if he carries on doing the "screwdriver trick" he and the others would be dead within a year.
It was the bravado and egotistical behaviour of Slotin that ultimately lead to his death.
I know that this comment is 9 years old, but Slotin saw his friend Daghlian die a slow, excrutiating death after recklessly messing around with the very same core. There is no excuse to be that dumb.
@@awetistic5295 9 years or not, I still agree.
@@rationalgazer I'm glad you don't mind the very late reply. Louis Slotin is kind of an inspiration for me. Whenever I feel like a total failure, I tell myself that I never messed up as badly as this very intelligent man.
To be honest, i think he just had too much experience to run the test. He had it safely to a degree of thousands of times when it comes to radiation. It was a one time, truly fatal mistake
He deserved every single spec of radiation for this.
This is the most terrifying thing I can imagine. And to think this happened on two occasions with the same core.
My brother had this teacher in High School who was a retired nuclear physicist who had done some work in a nuclear power plant here in Mexico. He had some intermittent aphasia (mixing up words, but not realizing it) every now and then, along with sudden changes in mood and sometimes using excessive force for petty things. He also had these little scars all over his skin. But what really took the cake was a huge round blister on his right hand palm: They called him IRON MAN.
Radiation poisoning.
Laguna Verde es una bomba de tiempo su vida útil estimada era para el 98 pero 21 años después sigue funcionando.
The guy displayed here died 9 days after this incident
This incident always blows my mind that after all of the cutting-edge science and engineering to *create that element*, plutonium, that they would work with it in such a janky, bootleg way. They knew what it could do. Why were they so careless after so much had been put in to get to this point?
What was the experiment for exactly? To see how much radiation they can get it to emit before going critical?
@@kethmarhkfy7luf.263 One year before this accident Harry Daghlian died the same way experimenting with this same plutonium core. Of course they knew.
Slotin referred to himself as "Chief Armorer of the United States" because of how many bombs he'd assembled. He was very cocky. Until he died.
@@drovoseg He didn't die the exact same way. He used tungsten carbide to build a neutron reflector around the core and accidentally caused criticality that way but sure, by today´s standards they were unbelievably careless. A big factor was probably getting the work done in time but this was basically just the first of many "aha moments" where the dangers of radioactivity had been grossly underestimated. People had no idea of cancer and thought something like under 100 rad is acceptable. Later 50, 10, 1, 0.1, 0.001, etc. A long and painful process.
@@haraldhimmel5687 No no, they knew what radiation would do, marie curie had died of radiation poisoning more than a decade before.
"hey we gotta be really careful, okay?"
"kay"
*sneezes*
*bright flash of light*
The movie scene is an eliding of two separate accidents at Los Alamos, one in August 1945 and the other in May 1946, involving the same core.
In the first one, the guy was alone, and it involved a different thing that caused criticality.
@@maksphoto78 Not alone. There was a guard who died some time after.
Hey, a new word!
Aka, the demon core.
@@Enderplays12 Yeah, in the Korean War.
"everyone ready?"
"yup"
"everyone not wearing protective gear?"
"check"
"alright let's go"
"Rickety wooden shack adequately shielded? ...never mind"
There is no protective gear that can protect you from 1000 rads
@@DeepSpaceBass1 I guess but you can at least try to reduce it a bit.
@@drfunk1986 10 SVs of radiation is lethal %100 of the time with treatment, this guy got 21SVs. There is nothing you can "wear" that reduces it enough to matter.
@@DeepSpaceBass1 it was a faulty experiment from the start, they should have handled it more professionally
Keep in mind that this accident happened twice and this video shows the second accident. The first one was 7 months earlier and the physicist that died even was his friend. They used slightly different methods but still pretty similar. He diee 9 days later
It took Harry Daghlian 25 days to die.
It took Louis Slotin 9 days to die.
生きてるけど細胞は既に死んでるって怖いわ……
Did everything just taste purple for a second
I believe it tasted sour, lol
@@ryanspencer3106 Futurama reference went over your head
@@jessegardner33 I was making a historical reference though
It tasted metallic.
Aah, my sperm!
Listen I'm not going to pretend like I'm some brilliant nuclear physicist, but if they say "these two things touching makes a shit ton of radiation" and the only thing stopping them from touching is a guy with a fucking screwdriver then I'm going to call everyone in the room an idiot and to not do the experiment until we have some kind of remote lever to ensure we don't get fucking microwaved.
Safety is critical. Get it?
im not sure all the people who died doing this would appreciate your humor
Safety is number one priority...
they need to keep the core sub critical, no?
Cimmy Jarter O see what you did there.
Ha ha ha ha ha (slow sarcastic handclapping).
As I understand, Louis Slotin (portrayed in this scene) was warned by no other than Enrico Fermi that he would be dead within a year if he handled the nuclear core as mindlessly as he was at the time.
The crazy thing is Louis was warned about conducting this test about the dangers.
And he did this exact test several times.
"Guys guys I have a really REALLY stupid idea!"
Go on, I'm listening
Also known as.... Hold my beer.
Using two screwdrivers to push the limits of a neutron reflector? SEEMS LEGIT
One screwdriver only*
worse, the real Slotin did it with one screwdriver and his bare hand.
He had also been warned if he continued to violate the tests safety protocols like that it would get him killed.
According to the movie, they received 6 seconds of radiation from the Core. This would've killed EVERYONE in that room in reality. The Time-Frame actually happened instantly, as soon as Slotin realized he dropped the sphere on the core, he immedianty removed it. All of which happened in a fraction of a second. Everyone except Slotin had 12-22 years removed off their life. Slotin died 9 days afterwards this incident.
The Radiation Slotin Received was much, it's comparable to just been standing in the Elephant's foot for about 10 seconds.
Emphasis on the, "Standing in the Elephant's foot" Not near it, I mean standing directly on top of the tar. I
Will it explode if he didn't move the sphere?
@@vadkazargaming1766Yes!
it wasnt radiation it was neutrons goofy
@@-MackAirsoft- neutrons give off radiation...
"I saw it go critical"
*"YOU DID-DENT"*
Did you see the graphite?
1:24 The Cherenkov effect. Completely normal phenomenon. Can happen with minimal radiation.
Did you copy one of the top comments from this video ruclips.net/video/Yjx0BSXa0Ks/видео.html ? Haha
I know ive read halo
Only in water.
If you see cherenkov radiation in air, you're basically dead.
That's not great. I mean, not terrible.
Only happens in water. What you're seeing is the ionization of air.
Imagine doing one of the most dangerous experiments in the world eith a screwdriver.
His fellow scientists believed he was reckless and predicted he could cause a serious accident one day. Most didn't like his "rodeo cowboy" mentality when dealing with this dangerous experiment.
Today, we have progressed to Whiteclaws.
Where the fuck were his supervisors, I wanna know!
Was there nobody around to even say "Put those shims back in or I'll have you scrubbing latrines until your birthday!"
The demon core is a very fitting name for a core like this. Only the devil himself would come up with something as bone chilling and terrifying as this.
Yup! Scarier than any horror movie!!!
In our country, a worker was exposed to blue light trying to carry uranium in a bucket. He was not allowed by the government to die for experiments. His skin collapsed alive, and died after horrible pain.
wasn't he alive for 89 days and considered the most radioactive man in Japan?
Hisashi Ouchi was his name. he lived for nearly three months. He wasn't kept alive for experimentation. While doctors did use a new form of treatment to help his body produce new cells, he was alive for so long because his family insisted that he be treated and there was no DNR order which is legally binding.
This very accident (prompt critical) happened more than once and happened relatively recently in Russia and a different criticality excursion happened in Japan when mixing chemicals used in nuclear fuel production. Slotin received at least 10 Grays of radiation. In 1999 Hisashi Ouchi absorbed the most radiation of any known person (who didn't immediately die) when he received approximately 17 Sieverts whole body radiation which destroyed his DNA and caused his cells to stop dividing, which led to horrible death 87 days later. While the care he received was experimental, it did prolong his life whereas Slotin died 9 days after his failed "tickling the tail of the dragon" demonstration.
Slotin died in nine days I think. Slotin received mostly gamma. Ouchi may have a higher dose of alpha and beta. So depending upon the system of measurement and how dose is calculated Slotin received the most radiation with those at Hiroshima and Nagasaki receiving half of what Slotin got.
It's like watching a bunch of novice necromancers trying to summon a Daemon Prince.
Yeah, the only difference is that this was not real.
But Daemom Princes are in fact real
@@Cardinalbins >draws bolter
In some way you are very very right.
If you wanna make it Lovecraftian you could look at them as a cult of science. They performed a ritual and there god answered.
good comparison lol. except that (technically) necromancers animate dead, not summon daemons ;)
It’s a sad and tragic story. He should have listened when his colleagues told him that his screwdriver method or “ tickling the dragons tail” as he called it was extremely dangerous.
Now that I think about it, it's too scary to experiment in such conditions.
Remember, coffee is dangerous.
This movie reenactment is quite inaccurate, nowhere in the report did it say that the accident happened because of someone disturbing Slotin, it was his own mistake, and he was told that he's playing with fire but ignored it
What people don't realize is that the cores were designed to be at -5 cents, or 5% below critical mass. Leaving a small safety margain from outside factors making them go supercritical or prompt critical. These factors aren't common in the environment, such as compression of the core, which was how the plutonium cores were detonated, addition of more nuclear material or an external reflector that would cause more neutrons to be reflected back to the core. The last one is what they were doing in both of the deadly experiments, albeit with different reflectors. In this video of Slotin's accident you don't see the core. It's between those two half hemispheres of beryllium, the reflector.
Imagine walking around feeling perfectly fine and knowing that you've just gotten killed.
We saw this movie in my junior year US History class when we were learning about the Manhattan Project. My teacher said that John Cusack’s character was one of the few fictional ones made for the movie, so I thought that this whole scene, including the core itself, was also fictional. Still terrified the shit out of me at the time.
It was a fictional character based on the two people who died from recklessly handling the Demon Core: Harry Daghlin and Louis Slotin
This has to be one of the most avoidable deaths ever.
You would think messing around with something that has the potential to wipe out a city, would have been giving more thought to during experiment planning.
1940's man..
Scientists are crazy for science, they don't care even if they die, but there is a difference between idiotism and bravery... He actually risked the life of others.
If I remeber correctly it wasnt a serious experiment. Dude litteraly just went " hey guys check out what I can do with this". Probably changed in the movie because reality is so crazy its not "realistic" enough
The power of foresight is what your experiencing
@@magusperde365 No it was a serious experiment, and it was his last time doing it, becasue we was teaching another cientist how to continue the experiment.
This was one of the most poorly conceived nuclear experiments done in history, and this shows the second time it was done and someone got killed. Cusack portrays Slotin as a serious man here, but I have a feeling in reality he was rather more flippant and nonchalant about it, which is why he got fucked.
“Everyone is guna make except me”
“Ok.... see you tomorrow”
It wouldn't have created a nuclear explosion without the explosives to compress it, though it would have continued to superheat and melt just like a nuclear powerplant meltdown.
Great dude. I was wondering why the little boy was over 1 tonne. so it needed some dynamite to explode and compress this? ? I still don't get the full picture
@@davemwangi05 Unlike fat man little boy just shot a piece of putonium into another piece, sort of like an internal gun.
@@davemwangi05 there were three weapon types developed:
Little Boy - 1 piece of U-235 Shot into a second piece of U-235 to create the boom
Thin Man - Little boy, except with Pu-239, Was thought to not be viable due to too much Pu-240 fissioning away the mass below super-criticality
Fat Man - Using explosive lensing to crush 2 spheres of Pu-239 around each other, and a Be Neutron initiator to make a lump of Pu-239 under it's super critical density for it's size.
Essentially a dirty bomb.
@@thefacelessmen2101 In order for it to be a like dirty bomb there should be some means for the radioactive material to be spread over a large area (for example by a non-nuclear explosion). As somebody mentioned, in this scenario, the core would just emit radiation, heat up and melt. Aside from some probably insignificant evaporation, and flowing of the melted radioactive material, there would be no significant spreading of radioactive material, so it's not like a dirty bomb scenario at all.
imagine knowing you just got exposed to more radiation than any human in the entire history of mankind and all because someone dropped a mug
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Stevens
Peabody?
the first rule of safety in any situation is: get someone else to do the job.
No shit.
@Anton Zuykov
Pride is your projection and your comment isn't really comprehensible.
FYI The reality was not like this video portrays.
get someone else instead of using your brain and taking into consideration the welfare of others?
a commentnby a fake a coward TBH
preferably a D-Class!
Congrats, you got Cherenkov Blue in air.
If you see the Cherenkov Blue Flash and the thing you're looking at isn't underwater, you're in very deep shit, because Cherenkov radiation can't be seen in air: what you're seeing is the blue flash FROM INSIDE YOUR WATER FILLED EYEBALLS as huge amounts of gamma rays pass through them. I bet they also got the metallic taste in the mouth, which is another sign you done fucked up and are probably going to die.
@@jasoncarswell7458 Thought it was air ionizing that caused the blue glow
@@jasoncarswell7458 You can get Cherenkov in air. The only place you can't get it is in a vacuum. The cause is photons (in this case ionizing radiation such as gamma and X-ray) being emitted at slightly faster speeds than the speed of light in the surrounding medium, so they emit a blue photon to dump some energy and slow down.
It does take more radiation to make Cherenkov visible in the air, true. But it can be done.
Do you taste metal?
@@Fajaradibuana Probably your tongue's water ionizing. Or just some other part of you just going haywire as you just signed the ferry trip to helltown.
I saw this scene when I was a kid (13) and it scared the absolute shit out of me. It's an excellent usage of music, tension, and emotional reaction to the incident. Cusack later dying from radiation poisoning is a brutal scene.
This wasn't the only fatal criticality accident. One incident a worker was exposed to 10,000+ rads when plutonium flakes in a blender of some kind causing a brief blue flash and within seconds he was screaming IM BURNING IM BURNING and died 36 hours later
There has been quite a few actually
Kuartus more than what we have read about on the net and heard about on documentaries
There's a whole list of criticality excursions on wikipedia.
didn't this happen after the trinity test?
実験している最中に緊張感が増すBGM流して､
気が緩んだタイミング(コーヒーを落とす直前)で音楽を止めるのこっわ
what makes this so scary is: yeah, not understanding radiation and its possible threat to your being is scary. but studying and understanding what they went through is absolutely horrifying.
I would have immediately just started screaming, "god fucking damnit!" Repeatedly. Fucking horrific.
what he actually said was colder, and belies that he was warned flaunting safety procedure would get him killed.
His actually first words afterwards were "well that does it for me"
The moment when you dont know how to use calipers correctly but You are scientist
Yeah I wanted to point that out 🤣
Yep. That was the first thing I noticed.
He probably didn't want to put the calipers into the gap and measure it "properly" by touching the shell, in which case using the calipers that way round makes sense.
@@MattLyte He likely had them set to the target and was adjusting the gap to visually match. The glance after maaybe suggests different (double check?...), but you can definitely use calipers like that when you want an approximate visual measurement of something you don't want to touch. And it's clearer than using the normal gap measuring side.
They actually conflated two different accidents to tell it this way.
idk what the fuck my mental process would be after that. i pretty much would know immediately after taking that much radiation that my body is a ticking time bomb and that the few hours after are the only moments in my life i'll ever feel normal again. that's terrifying basically just knowing your painful death is inevitable just from one split second.
A bullet might be a quicker and more humane way to go
@@justadummy8076 Ouchi Hisachi should have gotten one
Movies dealing with radiation like this scare me more than actual horror movies. this shit is real. Just watching this made my palms sweat.
The craziest part of radioactive material is when you describe it, it sounds like fiction shit.
This is a power rock. It emits power at a near constant rate, it's not constant but it's reducing over a scale of hundreds of years so it might as well be.
Power rock produces power pretty much regardless but you can speed it up or slow it down.
If you speed it up too much, it will explode.
Power rock can also kill you by being too close to it, but you wouldn't know till later because it's kills you by turning off your bodies ability to stay alive rather than actively killing you.
Power rock! fine some at your local mineral retailer.
P.s. power rock only naturally forms inside the heart of burning stars, but this one species found a way to artificially make super power rocks. They're like power rocks only more powerful, more dangerous, and more unstable.
This was so unbelievable unprofessional to test it like that
Creepy shit, since it really happened.
This scene and Cusack’s character’s physical deterioration still creeps me out every time I watch it. A great, underrated film.
A failsafe spacer; even a second screwdriver.
The thoughts of what he could have done differently must have flooded through his mind in that instant.
lemme just stick my uncovered face closer to this death trap
In that range even if he was in lead lined suit, he would be dead.
He was dead already
This is more chilling than most horror movies.
How about more chilling than ANY horror movie? This is real life, and he did suffer an agonizing death.
@@mylovesongs2429 Slotin is a total alpha here. Alphas take the hit, man. Betas go home. Oh wait
深刻さを理解した上で見ると凄く不安になるし怖い…
Say he hadn't reacted so effectively, and instead, leaping away was his first response... then the entire team would just be standing there with a critical mass in front of them, so of course everyone would panic and run out of the room in seconds... this is where the story would have gotten interesting...imagine the team of scientists now outside the room helplessly freaking out as this thing just melts down all the way
it was just 1.5 seconds accident.
And it looked not so stupid like here (scheme with screwdrivers).
Two incidents
Slotin was known for being a "cowboy" who took unnecessary risks by showing off for his colleagues which ultimately cost him his life. But as a result of this accident and his cool head and quick thinking, scientists learned valuable information about exposure levels which have been used to protect scientists to this day.
Slotin: "Hey I have these screwdriver. Let's test this out, what can go wrong?"
It went horribly disastrously predictably deathly
Cusack is such an underrated actor. Loved him in 1408
Watch PAPERBOY
@@thecloneguyz Respectfully disagree. He's a terrible actor. Same monotone actions. All characters are portrayed the same. He's horrible. Pause & think about it.
He's overated. Terrible! Characters portrayed are always the same! It's actually a family joke how horrible he is.
@@mickeyleebluebird1746 Spoken from somebody who probably only watched a handful of his movies and never watch the movie Paperboy.
Judge NOT lest YE be JUDGED
@@mickeyleebluebird1746 "SHOW me on this DOLL where Flux Capacitors words hurt you the most"
PFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTTTBWUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
2 responses to 1 comment!?
'TRIGGERED' is more like it!!
Living RENT FREE in that TINY LITTLE MIND!!
The funniest part is that you left a comment and then felt a need to leave an additional comment!!!!
PFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTTTBWUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I'm surprised you didn't like your own comment while you were at it
In reality Slotin was pretty much incapacitated in a few minutes, as you'd expect with this level of irradiation.
He attempted to walk away from the building before vomiting and had to be coerced to go to the hospital.
He was out of it. But not incapacitated.
Comics alike, radiations gave him a superpower. The superpower to not be alive anymore.
A neutron walks into a bar. He asks the bartender how much for a beer, the bartender says "For you? No charge!" (rimshot!)
That's clever! ^^
Also, the whole thing needn't have happened if Slotin hadn't of removed the shims that prevented the hemisphere from dropping completely. They were the fail-safe measure, but Slotin didn't like them because he could get more accurate readings if he used the screwdriver.
Some mistakes are fatal.
Ah - so there was indeed a reason besides bravado as to why he performed the experiment this way? I thought he was just trying to show off - but it does make sense that hunks of beryllium spaced atop the plutonium could throw off the readings a bit.
@@angry_zergling No he was definitely trying to get more precise measurements. Bearing in mind they all believed they were in a 'race' for this technology and so rather than just waiting for better safer modes to get those precise measurements he opted for the ol' screwdriver.
@@lenajohnson6179 I see. That makes sense. =)
Amazing that he did the math so quickly to determine who would die.
~ Manipulating the most Lethal mineral on the planet with ...screwdrivers : i dunno who hired that dude, but oh boy ! What a gem of a guy !
Why they used a screw driver will never not cease to confuse me
Lous Slotin became careless over time when investigating the critical mass of plutonium, he was said to be a showman with the experiment and very careless so much so that Enrico Fermi told him that if he continued doing that he would be dead in less than a year.
Crazy to think this was the second time a catastrophe like this happened with the same ball due to unsafe conditions testing the ball
Intelligence is not an indication of wisdom. That is perhaps the greatest take away of this accident.
"Sir, shouldn't we use spacers or some kind of fail safe to keep the two halves apart?"
"haha screwdriver make plutonium go brrr"
Fun fact, this video is two days older than me
you’re too young to know who i am
Lil bro
"Tickling the dragon's tail." ~ Richard Feynman