SNAFU with Ed Helms: Starfish Prime

you'd win tickets to see in seawork holes.

I don't know which is more depressing. [ Music ]

“>> Welcome to Snaffoo, the show about history's greatest screw-ups.”

I'm Ed Helms, and today we'll be covering Starfish Prime. This was actually a roily nuclear screw-up in our history. I'm joined today by a dynamic duo. Both are talented artists combining skills of writing, directing, producing. And together they host the critically acclaimed podcast "What went wrong?"

Which you guys have self-described as a bi-weekly podcast exploring movie-making mayhem behind your favorite films. Welcome to Snaffoo, Chris Winterbauer, and Lizzy Bassett. >> Thank you. >> Thank you so much for having us at.

Although we have since gone weekly, we will say now. We need to update our text clearly. And we are just going to start off with just blowing your audience away. They can have twice as much of us as they thought they might get previously. So that's exciting.

>> Do not correct me on my own podcast. How dare you? What are you? >> If I may. >> Yeah.

>> Come on out of the stakes. >> We should just start off with. >> Great. >> Then I say your name's great. Which is actually an important thing to point out.

You guys have a really cool podcast. Tell us a little bit about it, Lizzy. >> Thank you. Well, yeah, our each episode of our podcast dives into the story behind a different movie. And the theory is sort of that any movie is a miracle because of how incredibly hard they are to make even the bad ones.

And so we're just exploring, you know, the absolute manic mayhem behind movies, which you two both.

“I think know a lot more about from experience than I do.”

>> I know a lot more of my experiences. >> Yes. >> Yes, he does. >> But I know, I'm sure you can appreciate it. Like, you're sure you would agree like nobody goes into a movie hoping they're going to make a bad movie.

And nobody wants to make a bad movie. And in fact, sometimes you think you're making a great movie and it just still doesn't turn out very good. And sometimes you think you're making a terrible movie and somehow it turns out great. And so it's like it's, I just want, I remember I used to be such an asshole when I would watch movies and think, "I would have done this."

And I would have done that. >> Yeah.

>> And I hit my first test screening and there was that asshole who said,

"You shouldn't have done this." And I said, "You don't think I know that." >> Sir. >> Right. >> Right.

>> I couldn't.

“And so we hope that we can get people to appreciate movies and the people that make them,”

not much more because they're just so hard. >> They're so hard. >> I love that. And in particular, I love how you're just making such a great point about how humbling the movie, making experiences.

And it does teach you to appreciate movies in a different way. The more hours and days and weeks and months that you've spent on set,

the more you realize, like, this is incredible.

The amount of cooperation and collaboration and luck that it takes to pull something together. It's just crazy that any movie actually gets made. I'm really excited to dig into today's story because it feels like something out of a movie or that should become a movie. I'm sure screen writers have been pulling details from this event for plenty of

time to do more of the plots over the years. Today's snafu takes us deep into the paranoid void of the Cold War. At the point where the space race meets the arms race. So picture this, you're on vacation in Hawaii. Maybe you're having dinner at a beachfront bar in Waikiki.

It's a warm July night in 1962. You're listening to a Navy band, play some classy dance tunes. Flash lights up the sky. The band goes quiet. A red glow streaks across the sky.

Like someone just opened a zipper to hell. It's not aliens, although that would be a reasonable guess. This is America, baby. That's right. We are literally nuking space in this moment.

Apparently during the Cold War, it really nothing was off the table. Is this a Michael Bay movie? It's 1962. Cold War had pushed the US and the Soviet Union into this intense arms race. It turns out it extended far beyond Earth.

So scientists were asking really hard questions like, what happens if we set off a nuclear bomb in outer space? Because obviously, if you aren't sure of the answer the safest and most productive solution is just to do it and nuke it and see what happens. Because that's science.

Yeah, right? It's a closed system. Let's put some radiation inside of it and see what happens. You know, it's a, we're going to shake the snow globe with some uranium. We're a resilient species.

Right?

“Yeah, I think they'll own our own fallout.”

Is there a why here? Like, is there a reason why it would be advantageous to be able to nuke space? It's a great question, Lizzie.

And I think that the answer is just the cold war brought out terrible judgment in,

especially in our sort of military weapons testing apparatus. People got real excited about nuclear capabilities and just wanted to see what they could do. And so, of course, they just go way out over the middle of the Pacific and just start setting off nuclear bombs. I think they just wanted to see if this was would be an effective weapon. It turns out it kind of is, but in a way that no one quite expected.

And at this time too, we're detonating, I mean, I believe we've detonated nukes under water. We've detonated them underground. We've detonated them at varying altitudes above a theoretical populated area. It's like, what is the maximal effect that we can create by detonating them in these various ways? Well, it's logically, it seems like the higher you go, the greater the impact to Earth.

Certainly in terms of fallout, right, you would expect. And so it just seems, the higher you go, the dumber, the experiment. Yeah. Yeah. And also the least effective potentially at what you're trying to do.

Like if this is ideally something targeted, the higher you go, the wider a swathit covers, right?

“That's the logic, and that's why they did it out over the Pacific without a lot of expectation or knowledge for knowledge about what could happen.”

Turns out a lot. So ever since World War II, the US and Soviet Union had been on again, off again, testing nukes. And in the late '50s, the Soviets had decided tests were very much back on. In response to the US launched Operation Fish Bowl, it was a series of high altitude nuclear tests using Thor missiles. Fish Bowl was part of a larger project, which involved 36 nuclear detonations in the Pacific, all done in 1962 alone.

Fish Bowl launches had their own maritime-themed codenames, blue-gill, starfish, kingfish, et cetera. Very creative, right? Also, like I love how Anadine they sound, right? Right. It's a very innocuous.

This is not a big starfish. Jellyfish. Clampfish, nuclear megaladons, swallow's your entire world. Like, you know, let's not give it a scary name as we're doing this thing. No, you're right.

Operation Fish Bowl sounds less like a nuclear testing program, and more like something you'd win tickets to see in the world. I don't know which is more depressing, but yes. I'm curious if this is conjuring any Cold War movies for you guys. You have a favorite Cold War movie that's sort of nuclear-oriented.

The China Syndrome always comes to mind as a favorite of mine.

Jane, that comes to the cup.

“The little, the trimmer's in the cough in the, and right?”

That's where you first see it. Yeah, yeah. It's about this role. The theoretical China Syndrome, a nuclear meltdown, could go through the core of the earth to, you know, the, and typical point on the other side of the planet.

I always loved that one. And then, like war games was always a big one for me growing up. Lizzie, I'm not sure if there anything that come to mind for you. Definitely. I mean, you know, immediately as soon as you were starting to explain the sort of, like, race to blow up more and more and bigger and bigger.

Nukes, it immediately makes me think of the Doomsday Machine and Dr. Strange Love, of course. And, and just, you know, the whole concept there being that you needed to explain the existence of the Doomsday Machine in order for it to be effective. But they didn't do that. They just built it. And I love the sort of, you know, your 10 steps ahead, and yet also 15 steps behind on that one.

That feels applicable.

And then I just always, it's not a movie, but man, I loved the Americans.

Oh, yeah. Show is so good. And such an interesting exploration of the, like, mentality behind both the American and Russian sides of the Cold War. And it's interesting what you're describing is very much the, it is the climax spoilers of the Iron Giant, which the movie ends with a nuclear device detonated in space, because the Iron Giant, as I wept, flies up to meet it and sacrifice himself to protect humans.

And that, that movie is very much about, like, could a weapon decide that it didn't want to be a weapon, which is a really interesting concept when you have all of these incredible nuclear technologies that could be used for energy and, and were being used to greater and greater explosive effect. Yeah, wow, that got deep. Sorry.

This is a disgrace. It is classic.

I didn't think it wasn't a great movie.

I just didn't shed a single tear. So maybe I have no soul. I'm cutting your feet, Lizzie. I'm cutting your feet. This to me is very war games also, that one that you brought up.

“And I think mainly that movie was such a big deal to me as a kid.”

I saw that HBO, like, over and over and over again. Yeah, and like, are these men exploring the frontiers of science, or are these little boys playing very dangerous games? Like, by that, putting it in that context, it really draws a really stark juxtaposition that's interesting. And I think forces some compelling thoughts from the audience. I still think that movie is really effective to this day.

Let's get into Operation Fishbowl.

On June 2, the first attempt at a high altitude test failed, when the tracking system lost the missile after it fired,

the Navy scrambled to destroy it before it could detonate. They got they did. In the second test, the Thor missile malfunctioned again. And Thor head, once again, had to be destroyed mid-flight, showering the Pacific Ocean with plutonium contaminated confetti.

Apparently, this led to special underwater ordinance disposal teams, sweeping the ocean for the next two weeks. It seems like you should stop, right? Like, at that maybe stop, I don't know. If I'm getting into their heads, they're probably like, well, we haven't learned the thing we set out to learn yet.

Yeah. We have learned how to poison the entire Pacific Ocean. Do we made a terrible mess or two? But we cleaned it up.

“There's all this sushi around, we can eat, you know?”

It turns out we have special underwater ordinance disposal teams that we can dispatch it any time. So those are my questions. Those are just people. People with a fancy name.

But you're right, Lizzy, like, do you actually have that? Or is that something you hastily scrambled to get in the water? Is it just like a fishing net that you're, you know, casting wide across the ocean? And then you just gave it a very official sounding name. Yeah.

If you were like in the army, what'd be your enthusiasm level for joining that cleanup crew? It was like, guys, but on your wetsuits. So low, but because, but there has been such incredible bravery from certain, you know,

the Fukushima event in Japan and the individuals who went in knowing they might never,

they wouldn't survive, you know, to clean that up or the divers in Chernobyl that went through the water system and did survive. Like those people are, you know, heroes and those things could have melted down even worse. What's terrible about this and such like a catch 22 ways, the pointlessness, like you're saying. And the question is, to what end are we even doing this to begin with? And now I'm going to die for my country for an ambiguous test that we're not sure why we're doing.

At the end of the day, I think that's the real tricky thing here. I would say no, and I would be court martial, I'm sure. Does it call the mind any particular or specific film set disasters? It definitely makes me think of the abyss because I believe they shot a lot of that inside of an old nuclear reactor.

“That's what he filled with water in order to get all of those underwater sequences.”

And because it's James Cameron, he's like strapping concrete blocks to his shoes and going underwater with a camera and, you know, punching his safety diver in the face because he can't get up fast enough and like it, just that movie sounded like such a nightmare to work on. It also reminds me, you know, the end of Ghostbusters, like all just the Marshmallow everywhere. And then they're just like, all right, let's clean it up, call it a day. Yeah, that sort of thing.

All right, well, so just to be clear, all of these tests that are being conducted, they're not secret. The joint task force conducting the tests warned the public with press releases on June 20th, on June 20th, one Honolulu headline read, quote, in blast tonight, maybe dazzling good view likely in blast. I guess everyone understood that would be a nuclear blast. And for some reason, they didn't want to say nuclear in the headline.

I don't know. I can think of some reasons. Yeah, why you want to spruce that a little bit. Let's save on some ink on that one and blast. It was even reported that the time was set for 11 p.m. and that, quote, the white fireball is expected to spread across the sky,

changing colors as it grows. I mean, that sounds kind of festive. I did, I just, again, let's give it a positive spin. John Wayne, let's go shoot the conqueror in an old nuclear testing site. And everybody is involved.

A lot of folks ended up getting cancer. And it's kind of like, that's another Hollywood tragedy. We need to cover it at some point. There was not a lot of understanding around the nuclear rate. There's a radiation disposal site that's not very well managed in the San Fernando Valley,

Spooky.

“Ed, what did they know about the effects of nuclear testing like this at the time?”

Like, did they had enough time passed since, you know, they were actually detonating these bombs that they understood the long-term health effects on people, or were they just kind of like, ah, blow it up in the sky? That's a great question.

I mean, the first nuclear reactors were built in the 50s.

We're in 1962 now. There is a lot still unknown. I covered another nuclear disaster, a reactor meltdown in Canada, that Jimmy Carter showed up to help fix when he was a young soldier. And part of that story is how the rescue mission to prevent the reactor from melting down.

Their judgment was clouded by how little they knew. And that was just a few years before this. Obviously, we're post world work too. So, you know, the horrible effects and fallout from the Japanese detonations, of hydrogen bombs were well known and the radiation fallout and so forth.

But, but the specific dangers at play,

“I think that they're sort of trying to figure that out with these experiments.”

This is a weird thing because they're putting these ads and that they're not ads. They're putting the news in the newspaper and encouraging the public to sort of like, have fun with the spectacle of unimaginable destructive power. It's almost like pull up a lawn chair and just watch this horrible thing. And I do think that part of that may have been a little bit of a propaganda angle to just sort of be like,

"Hey, don't worry. It's not that big of a deal." But it's also, it also reflects a lack of awareness about the actual dangers at play. So, after these early fireworks shows had failed twice. Naturally, they tried again, but this time they just wanted to go even bigger, even higher, and even stronger.

So, the third test had a new codename and that is Starfish Prime.

On July 9th, at exactly 11pm, a Thor intermediate range ballistic missile, carrying a 1.4 megaton W49 Thurmo nuclear warhead, launched from Johnston, A-Tall, a remote island in the Pacific. It climbed 250 miles into space and then detonated successfully. Now, that's the same altitude as the orbit of the International Space Station,

which I'm okay. I didn't exist at the time. I'm just telling you, first sort of like, it compares. But they were just fire and wildly into the sky, and there's... I mean, kind of hard, but yeah, true.

For comparison, airplanes only fly as high as six or eight miles into the atmosphere. We're talking 250 miles up here. So, there was no mushroom cloud. There's no shockwave, just a burst of light. So bright, it could be seen 870 miles away in Hawaii.

So, they're not even close to Hawaii. They're almost 1000 miles from Hawaii. And yes, the expected crowds were watching the sky, and they got a heck of a show.

One newspaper said after the first blinding flash, the spot was hallowed in greenish yellow light,

which spread out, turning pink and then deep red. What followed was a swirling glowing bubble of plasma that distorted the Earth's magnetic field and carved a temporary cavity in the ionosphere. This sounds not good. These are big words, and I don't know if this is...

It's like, we'll get into the specifics, but it did already sound scary. Like you said, it's like, we didn't have a great understanding of how interconnected maybe our world is, and we're about to enter things like the whole and the ozone

“by the 80s and whatnot, and it is interesting. The atmosphere is the only thing maintaining”

the life on our planet. Let's poke a hole in it. Let's see what happens. You know? The New York Times story, the next day described it as a luminous red rim around a fireball created solid walls of heavy color ranging from yellow oranges to deep reds. That's shimmered for a full 15 minutes split by white lines that arched north and south parallel

to one another through the reddish glow. So what's happening here is we essentially created an Aurora Borealis. This is kind of a fun nerdy film thing.

especially the early movies, is the explosions in outer space are not realistic because there's no oxygen in outer space, so you can't have fire in outer space. And so how did these big fiery explosions happen? Well, I was sort of wondering the same thing here. So you might be wondering why an explosion that high would still be so bright and visible

when there's no oxygen. The explosion caused a massive burst of charged particles that collided with atmospheric molecules resulting in an Aurora Borealis. On top of that, despite the lower oxygen levels, the explosion produced such intense radiation that it excited the surrounding atmosphere leading to the bright light observed.

Another writer called it the most spectacular far-flung effects of any man made event in history. And I have to think he's probably right, that's quite accurate. You know, if it's something seen a thousand miles away.

“I think solar flares, I don't know if they were well understood at this time,”

but I believe there was a really big one recorded. I don't know if they knew what it was at the time back in the 19th century, so this would have been like very pre-industrial revolution pre-electricity.

What's interesting, I know we're going to get to this is I think there's always this big concern

an enormous solar flair could have the same effects like this enormous radiation event could disrupt electrical systems for systems itself. And so it is interesting, I'm just curious if they knew was there some thought, "Oh, is this going to be like a solar flair? Does this experiment confirm some hypothesis?" We had about a man-made version of a solar flair.

Or is this really like let's put these lizards in a jar and see what happens? I think that's a very astute question. I'm not sure how much was understood about the effects of solar flares on electrical components at the time, but it's so much better understood now that that's a very cool question. I had to kind of like to dig into that myself.

This created six full minutes of daylight in Hawaii. In the middle of the night. One Navy dance band playing at a beachfront hotel in Waikiki walked out of their gig to watch the night sky joined by hotel waiters. If you didn't know this was coming or even if you did know it was coming and you're just like on that beach in Waikiki and you walk out and the sky just starts to glow these crazy colors.

“I think it depends on how much propaganda they've been fed at this point about the importance of nuclear power”

and how cool it is that we've got it. Because I do wonder about that. I wonder if this was like, yeah, I'm going to go sit out in my lawn chair and watch this. Like, heck yeah, get the commies. If people were excited because if you don't totally understand the fallout literally and figuratively of this,

then it might not be as alarming. I mean, it would be weird for sure. But it's also so biblical, right? I could imagine somebody, let's say you don't know what it is. This is the star of Bethlehem times a billion in a sense, right?

There's something to me. It man has created an artificial sun.

“Not an artificial sun that exists in your living room.”

An artificial sun that lights up half of the world, right, at this point in time. And it feels apocalyptic, promethian, you know what I mean at the same time.

I literally cannot imagine because I know what I know now and I have never seen anything like that before.

And you know, there are certain things I've seen when the LA fires came through last year. You know, the Eaton Canyon Fire and whatnot, you know, and seeing that up close. And you see the power of this natural, well, it wasn't started naturally, but you see the power of fire as it rips through a seemingly sturdy neighborhood. And you know, and it dwarfs a human, right, and it dwarfs our attempts to stop it.

And then you think about this, which is that with human growth or human hormone injected to it, you know, to an exponential level. And I don't know, I, I could see somebody like weeping about it. I could see somebody feeling utterly hopeless and lost. I could like Lizzy said, I could see somebody thinking, wow, we are going to dominate the, like the American Empire is going to win. Yeah, right. It would certainly warrant a strong reaction, you know, in any given direction.

I'm also, I'm just wondering about populations on some of these remote. Oh, yeah. Or Archipelago's and and just all around. That's true.

That we're that never received any kind of notification and saw this stuff.

And just must have thought the end of the world was happening. Yeah, it's a God arriving on our planet.

While it looked incredible, the shock wave of the explosion was as you might guess from a massive

nuke pretty devastating, almost immediately the explosion triggered a powerful electromagnetic pulse, which sent a power surge through the grid on a wahoo again. Hawaii is almost a thousand miles away, but the burst destroyed over 300 streetlights, tripped burglar alarms and fried the equipment of a telephone company. Here are a few eyewitness accounts from the night collected by the Honolulu Star Advertiser.

I love a newspaper that just calls itself an advertiser. By the way, we have news, but like mainly we just sell a YouTube should learn something from this. Let's be honest, exactly. Anyway, here are actual eyewitness accounts. One eleven year old was asked what he thought.

He said he was both scared and a little at down because he'd been waiting to see a mushroom. He thought he'd see a mushroom glove. And I'm just like, where are your parents? Another guy who honestly doesn't seem that different from the eleven year old said he had been following along with the news of all the different failed tests said he was actually a little disappointed

and that it didn't quite live up to his expectations. I mean, what do you what? I would love to see the army general reading these reviews saying, like, let's prep the bigger bomb. Let's do it. Let's show these assholes what we're capable of.

“Well, that's what I mean, they've been advertising this.”

Like, this has been set up for years at this point, not this specific thing. But like, the idea of nuclear power has become so ubiquitous for these for an eleven year old that he's like, hey, yeah, mushroom cloud. Can't wait to go outside to eleven PM and see it. A reporter embedded with a naval observation team in American Samoa

said the men around him were cool as quakes. Most, quote, simply stood or sat quietly by their equipment and watched it run praying that it kept running. I think they're talking about their equipment. Not being affected.

It was one of the earliest and most dramatic demonstrations of how a high altitude detonation could disrupt electronics over vast distances. Chris, this is the electromagnetic pulse which you brought up at the beginning. EMP as it's also known. It was a warning in bright neon lights about the fragility of our growing

technological infrastructure. Does the EMP make an appearance in cinema? I mean, in matrix. Oh, what's the matrix? The EMP is to fight the the squitties, the machines, of course.

There is the book. There's a book. I don't know how well known it's called.

It's called one second after and it's written by somebody who's long.

Try to want it to warn, you know, our government about the effects of an EMP.

“Specifically, I believe detonated somewhere over Kansas roughly central to the United”

States, which would effectively black out most of the country. And a lot of things that people, you know, unless your equipment is very specifically hardened or predate something or is like in a fairer day box or whatever. It's gone. I mean, planes are going down.

Cell phones don't work and by the way, it's like you said, Ed, it's fried. They cannot be rebooted. They cannot be hard to turn back on. They can't know. This is not, you know, blow in the cartridge, put the Nintendo 64 back on.

Right. It's done. This again, this was my understanding when I read this book. And that is a much more terrifying outcome when you really think about it than a detonation, you know, slightly above the surface in like Chicago, for example, which is the premise of

how's a dynamite, which just came out, you know, the Catherine Biglow film.

Because ultimately, you see the fragility of our entire system, which is based on electronic infrastructure.

You know, not only is our, our power grid, all of our information systems. We really don't have, you know, paper based information system backups for most things at this point in time. Of course, everything would fall apart. You know, your food system, your refrigeration systems, your medical systems, your utility systems. You could be back to the Stone Age.

“This is a little, this is Blade Runner, too, right?”

There was, I believe a nuclear setback in, or something like that. There was a information, a dark age in Blade Runner, 2049 that they referenced. Yeah. And they're back into the paper. Yes, as a protective measure.

And I think, and I believe in Dune, this is, I'm going to get this wrong. Somebody in your audience correct me. I think Frank Herbert, the way he describes their technology in Dune is like a different technological branch than the computerized systems that we used. I don't know if that's because of any sort of reference to MPs, etc.

But it's just, again, it's an example of a different way of, you know, creating information systems than what we've relied on. It's wild to think about it would set us back to roughly what, like, 1850. Yes, I would think earlier because we don't have any of the skills that folks had.

That's a, that's a great point. So we don't have, we have to relearn all of our. You'd be going back pre agricultural, you know, revolution.

I think you'd be going basically back to hunter gather and a lot of senses.

You'd have, it's funny how you realize how surface your knowledge really is. I could tell you that I vaguely understand solar flares. If anything goes wrong with any piece of equipment in my life, I could not diagnose it. Right, right, of course, to take it to the geeks quad and they only know how to, you know, do x, y, or z things. And it's, we've, that's been the benefit of specialization, right, is that you can make advancements on the specific tech trees.

But you're very vulnerable if it's disrupted.

“Yeah, that's why we should all go to trade school.”

Yes. Yeah, exactly. This is also, this is why the MPs are also a big deal in the survivalist community because. Yeah, there, there's a lot of obsession about, as you mentioned, fair day cage protection. Having vehicles that are, that use no electronics.

Yeah, all the source to start cars with computer chips. I mean, like, I think the average vehicle has dozens of computerships in the, yeah. Oh, yeah, what could you even get something from like the early 90s and before? Yes, you'd have to go back to like a purely, even the, the ignition has to be mechanical and not electrical. Yeah, so it's a, yeah, it's a wild and that, yeah, you're going back to the 70s.

I, I worked with a gentleman when I was at Intel years ago who was kind of a Mormon prepper and he had a homestead out in Arizona.

“And he, aside from a wall of guns and a wall of flashlight, he also had a tractor that I believe ran on like, it was a wood burning engine.”

What? Like a steam engine, effectively. Yeah. And, and that was, you actually, I believe can see a version of it in the movie Train Dreams, which I also highly recommend. But anyway, he was a hardcore prepper and that was he had all of these redundancies that did not require any electricity. Wow. Yeah, that's cool. Do you have his number?

Uh, you know, he didn't give it out to anybody. I don't know why. He just didn't want to show it up at his spot. Yeah, exactly. He had the coordinates of that. And he's like, so skills. And I was like, I can craft a tight 90 minute podcaster. Yeah, would you let me in?

So the EMP waxing the power grid was bad enough, but the long-term effects were worse. So the military had made sure that all the satellites orbiting Earth in 1962 were safely out of range of the blast. So we're good, right? Well, no, not quite. Because not only was the initial EMP blast way larger than expected. I'd love that, by the way. They just didn't know how big the explosion would be.

The detonation also launched high energy particles into Earth's magnetic field. It created an artificial radiation belt that spread out from the spot we nuked. And it definitely was not harmless. It became a wave of radiation that caused extensive damage to satellites.

American Canadian British and even one Russian satellite, including the first ever satellite to broadcast a TV signal,

Telstar 1. So that satellites run in with the new Starfish radiation belt made it just the first victim. The charged particles lasted in our atmosphere for at least 10 years. Zapping satellites that passed through it and damaging fully a third of all satellites around the Earth in 1962. I was not familiar with the story before a few months ago and was floored by this. Yeah, it just feels like the sort of scientific approach to this kind of experimentation is what a child brings to a bug.

And it's like what happens if I smash it with a hammer? Like what? Let me just see. And it's kind of weirdly heartless and thoughtless. But the curiosity is so powerful or something. Yeah, this is strange because, you know, we've talked about this quite a lot across this episode. But like, no, they may not have known the exact effects of this clearly. They didn't know that a lot of this was going to happen. But I feel like for sure, they knew enough in terms of how powerful these things were that they should have been more careful than just that.

I'm just sure that they're trying to get them three times. There are times the charm like that kind of recklessness with something this powerful does feel crazy. Like it feels like there was some level of like mess psychosis happening in terms of the arms race or people were just like,

“"Yep, good plan, good right ahead." I think what makes it feel militaristic and candidly unscientific is the lack of a hypothesis.”

And I don't know what this story. I had never heard this either, Ed. Like you said, instead it's more, well, maybe this will do something.

aspirational optimistic, you know, let's push the frontier of human knowledge forward in a way that could possibly be beneficial for humanity.

Wild.

“Wissenschaft gegen Wirtschaft, the Einsatz of the Erde, Ed and weitertitle from best cellar auto-markelsberg”

yet torrent, nor by audible. One Navy sailor who told his story was on board a ship near the launch site, and so obviously a lot closer than Hawaii. He said the crew were given badges to measure their radiation exposure and order to do anti-radiation washes off the ship. Years later, he said most of the men he served with on board had died of "weird cancers," which is horrible. The EMP blast that knocked out electronics and Hawaii created a wave of studies about how an electromagnetic pulse could disable electronic systems

from civilian infrastructure to military systems. It was a big moment in realizing that flying power grids with distant explosions might be a useful trick we hadn't thought about before.

“And also just another thing to be terrified of.”

On top of all the EMP fallout, there's the orbiting radiation, not only did the radiation from the explosions slap satellites out of orbit, but it also disrupted Earth's natural zones of trapped charged particles called the Van Allen belts. Now, that definitely sounds like a luxury leather-emporium, but these belts are like a protective shield around the planet and altering them created a serious risk for future satellites and astronauts. That's September. NASA changed their flight plans because they realized that their astronaut would be killed by residual starfish prime radiation if he flew over 640 kilometers in altitude.

So, how wild is that?

“He had flown through that radiation, it just would have...”

Well, and also, like, spaceships are hardened against radiation, right, because when you break through our atmosphere, you're exposed to all the radiation from the Sun that is a lot of it is blocked or deflected, right, by our atmosphere. So then you think about this astronaut who's in a radiation hardened to a certain extent environment, right, would still be killed by this amount of excess radiation, so, you know, lingering in our atmosphere in this moment. It's just not even like he's like naked out there, you know what this thing is just crazy.

Obviously, this wasn't just a local issue over a particular spot in the Pacific Ocean. It affected the entire near Earth environment. The artificial radiation belt slowly faded, but the lesson lingered. Dead-nating nuclear weapons in space had consequences we didn't understand at the time. Nations around the world, especially the Soviet Union, we're watching, of course, Russian radio called the test a crime perpetrated by, quote, "American atom maniacs". I love that term, sounds like "Animaniacs". Which we kind of live up to that, we're atom maniacs.

I'm gonna say they're not wrong. No, they're either of those counts, yeah. But even taking all of this into consideration, the test was considered a success. They were like, "Wow, we did so much damage, we didn't expect, and we got so much useful data." Look at what we're learning. Let's check it up to a win. Take the win, guys. In all, between 1958 and 1962, there were eight known nuclear tests in space, four by the US and four by the USSR.

But Starfish Prime was the highest, the most powerful, and the most consequential.

And when US satellites started falling, President Kennedy canceled the next high altitude test, which had been planned to go three times higher. No, you don't need to. You just don't need to. I will be honest, and I'm curious what you guys think about this, but I have absolutely zero desire whatsoever to ever go to space. Like, I don't even understand the desire.

Other kids wanted to be astronauts, and I said, "Good here. I just was never interested."

The idea of not having an exit is so scary to me.

Oh, yeah. That's so scary. That's a whole separate thing. Is that what it is? Because I know my issue.

My space is, I don't like the point. Exactly. It's the void.

“It's that if I'm okay in a small space, if I know that there's stuff out beyond my small space.”

But this idea that I'm just out in a vacuum and not tethered to the only habitable rock at this point in time is just existentially crushing to me. So I mentioned that President Kennedy canceled the next high altitude test. Turns out that was just a pause, because they wound up doing at least a few more what they considered successful high altitude test. Later in 1962. Ultimately, these crazy high altitude tests in combination with the Cuban missile crisis lead to the 1963 partial test band treaty, which prohibited nuclear tests in space under water and in the atmosphere.

And in 1967, the outer space treaty followed. Banning weapons of mass destruction from Earth's orbit and beyond, because at the very least, Nuking space is a great way to get everyone to agree on a few ground rules. That is our story. It's been fun taking these diversions with you already and all of this to me.

Like, I feel like we've gone to some sort of interesting philosophical places already. But I do want to pick your brains just a little bit more because the way that our governmental and military institutions approached testing of this nature. To me, feels a lot like the way that we are just lurching blindly into this artificial intelligence era. And of course, that also has reverberations very directly to our business, our industry of filmmaking and television. But in a larger sense, we don't know. We have so many warnings and so many people saying that this could be so catastrophic.

And yet it feels like we're just not taking any steps to mitigate that danger in the same way that they were just like, Hey, we gotta just do it and see what happens with these high altitude nuclear tests. Well, it's back to Dr. Strangelove because the whole motivation to your point about AI is, well, if we don't do it, someone else is going to do it.

And it's more important that, you know, this incredibly powerful technology is in our hands because we're the good guys and we understand how to navigate this.

And that's exactly what Kubrick is making fun of with that movie because there's so much hubris involved in that thinking that you can control what is essentially uncontrollable. But that is the path that we're all hurting down. Well, if I may, my anti-AI, I screwed briefly. I think the cynical difference with AI. It's being sold as an existential conflict.

But what's interesting is that on the one hand, you have somebody like Sam Altman or, you know, the folks, the CEO of these companies or Elon Musk. And they're saying, this is going to be universally beneficial in so many ways. It's not going to replace your job. It's going to, you know, obviously, not Brian. Right. Right.

“This is, I believe this is so much like an offshoot of their, the Silicon Valley desire for transhumanism.”

It could this be a stepping stone to uploading my brain. It's effectively a group of men, candidly, who are deeply uncomfortable with the fact that they're going to die at some point in time. And I think that the tragedy with AI right now is, there is very little actual evidence that these tools make anybody. More productive. You can look at the evidence that's presented for coding tools.

Like can you generate a great deal of code? The answer is yes. Is that code replicable, widely usable, bug free? No. It's oftentimes created in a way that it doesn't make a lot of sense for this specific application that you're using it.

And then it requires more time by the engineer to debug and to defrag this thing that's been created.

But because it's been this incredible economic engine, we would be in a recession right now.

If we're not for AI investment, like that is 100% true. And as a result, it is in the best interests of all incumbent parties to pump this as much as possible. But it's effectively just management selling it to management. These are just the heads of these companies are saying to the heads of other companies. Your employees could be five times more effective if they were using AI.

“But the truth is, again, a lot of studies have shown.”

And if you use CHEPT frequently, cognitive abilities decline very rapidly. It turns out when you stop thinking for yourself, it's harder for you to think for yourself. And it turns out the brain is a muscle.

And I think the best thing that a human has is like, you know, semantic awareness and contextual understanding and judgment.

“The difference between the nuclear tests, right?”

Yes, maybe a lot of people were radiated and our government has done a poor job of providing Recompense for the people who were affected by these impacts. But the difference is this nuclear bomb is being detonated inside of every home. And it's just insane that we're not regulating this.

I'm not saying there couldn't be good aspects to this technology, but it's incredibly powerful and destructive.

And we need to come up like you said, Ed, with some way of regulating it. But, you know, the mark and reasons of the world have convinced us that that, or Peter Teele has convinced us that regulation is literally the anti-Christ anti-AIS Creed done. I apologize. I apologize.

Boy, I just was very frustrating. My headphones are on fire. That was, yeah, my ear drums are burned scorched and I love it.

“I think some really salient points in there, Chris.”

I appreciate you going there. There's also a with in the AI, which, and I think this is related to sort of nuclear research in a way. AI research and rapid development also has this, almost like a supernatural component to it, where there's this compulsion to be the first contact with this sort of alien in the case of nuclear energy and alien energy source or something. Or something so hit like, hit or too completely unknown to humanity, much like you brought a promethias earlier in that way that like promethias was like that first touch of fire to man and nuclear energy was the same.

And with AI, it's that first contact with this being that we're creating that might be sort of bigger grandeur and more intelligent than all of us.

That is so intoxicating that certain people just cannot resist being that first, that one who's going to get there first. Yeah, well, I think it comes back to the same thing about Chris you and like you and I not really wanting to go to space at you were kind of asking like why and for me. The answer is that there's too much here, like there's there's so much unexplored here, there's so much we don't understand here about people in earth and everything that I don't I do not see the appeal. That's necessarily of feeling the need to go out and and know what's out there. I don't know that I need to know and I kind of feel the same way about AI. I don't really need to know what it's capable of and what it can do and we don't know.

And I want to be clear, do you think it's important in any society to have individuals who look at the hill and say I want to know what's on the other side of the hill. Otherwise you become stagnant and you don't move forward, so but I do think there is it cannot simply be a zero some game of reckless abandon as we like you said at rush headlong into something we don't fully understand and simply point at the stock market and say number go up we're good.

“All right, so well, I think that's a great place to wrap it up. Thank you so much Chris and Lizzie for joining me on snafu. This was a really fun and stimulating chat.”

Thank you so much for having us. I'm about to go dive into starfish prime and orbital nuclear explosions for example hours. Right. It feels like we're maybe we have a movie on our hands. I will say the screenwriter and me thinks great way to get pesky cell phones out of a script.

Yes, because they are so annoying when you're writing a script because the question's always like why wouldn't they just look this up why wouldn't they just call somebody.

I'm doing a rom com because and I want them to be more like but we're just going to start it within the mp. I am perfect for each other, but then like it's pretty much a straight rom com from the eights. That's it. I watch it. Let's make it happen. Meet it. All right, guys. Well, thank you so much. Snafu is a production of iHeart Podcasts and snafu media, a partnership between film nation entertainment and Pacific electric picture company. Post production and creative support from good egg audio. Our executive producers are me Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Glenn Bazner, Andy Kim and Dylan Fagan.

This episode was produced by Alyssa Martino and Tory Smith. Our managing producer is Carl Nellis. Our video editor is Jared Smith, technical direction and engineering from Nick Doolie, additional story editing from Carl Nellis. Our creative executive is Brett Harris, logo and branding by Matt Gosson and the collected works. Legal review from Dan Welch, Megan Halson and Caroline Johnson. Special thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein and everyone at iHeart Podcasts.

While I have you, don't forget to pick up a copy of my book, Snafu, the definitive guide to history's greatest screw ups. It's available now from any book retailer just go to snafu-book.com. Thanks for listening and see you next week.