The problem is Hollywood has drastically altered the reality of nuclear explosions. Owen is basing his knowledge from what he has seen in the movies and not historical records. He thinks that the nuclear blasts depicted in Terminator 2 are factually rather than pure science fiction.
I was aware they used to test more than we do, but I didn't know they still do; thanks. I'd be curious how well they function though. Maybe they put all their chips into the nuclear arena at the neglect of other military resources.?.?.?
I'm still heartened by the fact that their other military equipment just isn't at our level, however: Or maybe even China's now.
I worked with a couple of people that used to sit on an island out in nowhere-waters to track missile tests. Very true that it goes on fairly frequently from our side. Maybe if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Or, maybe we've become complacent.
Nice - after a few days reading up on how they work I have realized it must be one of the funnest jobs that have ever existed, all these new possible optimizations to explore.
So is there an argument now that nukes just don't exist?
I don't tread into conspiracy theories too much- I find that the labeling of things as conspiracy theories is already a bit tiring. For small things like bigfoot, ghosts, aliens and whatnot, I am usually agnostic because these are specific, small-scale incidences that rely on very limited anecdotes, so that leaves room for ambiguity.
But to question an actual, large-scale bomb seems...out there. What rebuttal is made besides to just say that the cameras shouldn't exist, because irrespective of the testing site cameras somehow surviving the incidences, the fallouts in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki should have some other large-scale explanation.
I haven't looked at Owen Benjamin that often, but I'm curious if his path down these conspiracy theories are because this has sort of become what he's known for now, so it just adds to staying relevant within the truthers community. Not sure since I'm just speculating, but it just seems like such an easily falsifiable argument to make.
It's more the argument of balancing ambiguities with the circumstantial evidence provided. I sort of leave room for bigfoot because you're essentially asking people for proof of some random gorilla-like man wandering the forests. That puts into perspective that the burden for evidence would be small-scale: find bones or evidence of some thing that hasn't been discovered yet. There's plenty of species we have yet to uncover, and just because we are not aware of their existence doesn't mean they aren't out there.
But if the original argument is to suggest that the destruction of large cities weren't done by nukes, you're essentially asking us to dismiss large-scale evidence. Brian provides the argument that one can suggest that firebombs would provide a rebuttal to nukes, but unless other grand rebuttals are made it's a rather ridiculous argument to make.
Hopefully that makes more sense for what my position is.
If there were only a few purported videos, little publicly available info about tests, it wouldn't be an outlandish possibility. And that is the limit of what most people are familiar with. But it's very easy to see tons more footage now.
In the 20th Century there were all sorts of technological advances all the time, especially in warfare, so nuclear bombs fit in well. As time goes on it starts to seem weird that we reached such heights but hit the ceiling so quickly, so then you start to wonder if we even really reached the heights.
That's my general interpretation. It'd be one thing if we didn't have actual footage or evidence of some sort of catastrophe happening in Japan, but to base the argument that nukes don't exist because cameras shouldn't exist after the explosion (if that is Benjamin's assertion) doesn't make sense. I don't know what other arguments Benjamin is making, but if that is the foundation for his argument that's a rather weak argument.
Our era is really weird. Maybe there is some term for it in the tech field, but we're sort of at this point where we have experienced so much innovation and yet seem to have hit some plateau, so we now have this perception that we may be near the end of our knowledge base? Not sure how else to put it into words, but it's like we falsely assume that we should have most things figured out by way of us being...modern.
Benjamin addresses Japan but I just didn't bring it up, to keep the post focused. We destroyed Tokyo with firebombs, and that's obviously a bigger city with more deaths. So you really can't rule out faking a bomb just based on the cities being leveled, again if you limit your focus and dismiss the linear burn effects.
I can see that being rationalized then if an argument like that is made. I suppose the way the text shown above is worded is to intentionally be...bombastic!
I call this kind of work "Pest Control" from a scene in the movie Backdraft where Robert Dinero, after meeting Baldwin's character for the first time, tells him "Let's go." Baldwin replies, "Where we going?" To that Dinero replies, "Pest control." They go to the parole board meeting for Sutherland's arsonist character to get him to show the board how jacked up he remains.
It's the housekeeping that some people, including me, feel compelled to perform.
Jul 9, 2023·edited Jul 9, 2023Liked by Brian Mowrey
Fine job at correction.
What's been eating at me for probably 8 years now is just how capable Russia actually is any longer. I noticed on Google Earth about 8 years ago that many of the missile sites were abandoned along the northern Russian border. There could be a perfectly good explanation for this of course.
Also, components degrade. Think of how the window stripping on your vehicle begins to crack after the convenient 5 year mark. How functional could their components made in the former Soviet era be now? And, I have to think they couldn't possibly have made any kind of meaningful addition to their weapon stores since the wall fell.
In a former life, I used to be an electronic/electrical mechanic on aircraft and recall replacing an intercom band pass/reject filter on a T-37 in 1992. The filter had a manufacturing date of 1957. An electronic part that lasted 35 years left all us mechanics marveling. But, that was a 1950's American made part; arguably the best quality the world has ever seen before or since. Even in the Soviet heyday, their quality was notoriously less impressive than America's.
So, if I'm right and they don't have many newly added weapons since the 1989, and their parts are deteriorating (with few ways of actually testing either...which you mentioned in this post), how functional is their nuclear ability today?
But, just one of their big boomers reaching New York City would be calamitous, no doubt. Still, these questions make me wonder to this day...
Apparently Russia tests more than we do, and stocks newer missiles.
"The Russians generally do them more often, at least in part because they have new missiles in development whereas the Minuteman 3 is the only U.S. ICBM. The U.S. Air Force is planning a new-generation ICBM, but it is not scheduled to begin entering the force until about 2030."
“Horror strikes West LA as Russia sends ICBMs that are ‘totally past the expiration date.’”
If the silos are climate controlled I imagine they should hold up. But OTOH none of them could ever be given test runs to begin with, and the 70s were not a good period for QA in the US. If rocket circuitry is first to fail then you have to wonder what keeps duds from going off locally…
lol ok - "The Air Force operates 450 Minuteman missiles — 150 at each of three missile fields in Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota. A few times a year, one missile is pulled from its silo and trucked to Vandenberg, minus its nuclear warhead, for a test launch"
I'm surprised that even Neil DeGrasse Tyson didn't know about Castle Bravo, the test of a thermonuclear (hydrogen) bomb that produced considerably more radioactive fallout than anticipated.
That fallout fell on the crew of the Japanese fishing vessel "Daigo Fukuryū Maru" (Lucky Dragon Number 5), resulting in the death of one crew member and severe health consequences for others.
Trivia note: Castle Bravo took place on March 1, 1954. About three months later, the Japanese film "Gojira" was released. We know it today as "Godzilla". The original movie stands as one of the earliest anti-nuclear weapons movies, and, in its own way, quite powerfully so.
It's quite broadly mystifying. I mean I *knew* immediately that it was wrong, because hydrogen bombs have been around forever and if there was some secret cleanness to them it wouldn't be Tyson in 2023 being the first to bring it to my attention. As for the Castle fiasco maybe he thought those were fission, though I don't know how, because even my oldest memories associate Pacific bomb footage as "now here's a hydrogen bomb, look how much more stronk."
Jul 8, 2023·edited Jul 9, 2023Liked by Brian Mowrey
The last respectable celebrity physicist was Richard Feynman. Oh, and the charming and gracious Freeman Dyson (who I admired so much I named my kid after him).
Today's celebrity scientists and doctors are mostly, dare I say, self promoting deplorables.
After a career in the photographic industry, the first thing that I've always wondered about was how the camera was shielded from the radiation, which would have exposed the film. Probably not a severe technological hurdle.
The fastest cameras at Trinity used the initial x-ray flash to start rolling, and I didn't see any discussion of shielding. Being recessed in the ground, pointing up at a 90º mirror might shield, and the x-ray sensor could have been more exposed. Since the camera information for later programs is harder to find, I can only guess as far as the pole-mounted cameras - maybe the boxes were lead-lined.
'1) The most famous nuclear bomb videos could simply be fakes.' Why only the most famous ones?
'2) Isn’t it absurd that only two bombs have still been actually used after all this time?' I'm assuming that 'actually used' means 'deployed during wartime'? There were so many tests, which seems to me to qualify as 'using' them. But that's just a semantic quibble.
I don't really grok people who claim stuff like atomic bombs and moon landings are fakes. When I was a teenager in the 70s, my mother's husband-at-the-time had been in the Navy. He told us how he had witnessed atomic tests in the South Pacific, where they had stationed shiploads of sailors to watch. (He mentioned offhandedly it had made him sterile. I wish I'd had the wherewithal to ask him for more details, how far away were they, what did it look like, etc.). I guess all those sailors had been instructed or brainwashed to repeat stories about fake bomb tests.
Then of course there's the documented fallout in southern Utah drifting over from test sites to the west, purportedly causing increased cancer.
Just because at the time I was having the thought, I rummaged through my memory and wasn't sure I had ever seen more than 3 different videos over and over, I had one visual recollection for b/w and two visual recollections for color, didn't seem hard to fake.
RE 2, the point is that it is absurd that they haven't been used, given that non-use requires that every one capable of causing one to be used has to constantly not do so, no matter what else is happening. If I had to bet back in 2003 whether we'd go another 20 years without any bombs being used, I would have lost the bet. It's essentially the same argument as "why haven't we been back" RE moon.
That point can't really be satisfied except by weird multiple universe thought experiments. But the first point was obviously just satisfied by seeing that there were many more videos and types of videos on youtube.
That's why I highlighted an arial video. Less because of the plane, which could just be a prop over faked video, but the lighting effects etc. You could maybe try to simulate something like that with dyed liquids but at a certain point, it's easier just to make a nuclear bomb, and it's not clear why a hoax would bother with so many recreations that no one was ever going to see unless they went looking.
An anecdote - a good friend's mother was a teenager in Hiroshima and had been sent to school in the city by her family of farmers. She decided to spend some time in church the morning of the bomb, and was nearly right under it when it went off - but she was in one of the only stone buildings in the city, and survived the blast. She walked outdoors to find everything gone. She spent several days trying to help out survivors and then realized her family must be terribly worried about her, so she walked the nearly 20 miles to her farm, and when she got there, and the family saw her, covered in dirt and dust, they thought she was a ghost and wouldn't let her in the house.
She suffered from mild anemia in her old age, but lived to be 92. I knew her and her husband.
For a great documentary on our testing, check out "Trinity and Beyond". Bonus: it's narrated by Bill Shatner.
As for Tyson, I had high hopes for him, but quickly discovered he's an unserious thinker and often says whatever pops into his head without thinking about it, and is often dead wrong. Of course, pseudointellectuals like Maher slurp up whatever he says as if it were the wisdom of the ancients themselves. Celebrity hasn't been good for Tyson, if he were ever a scientist of any real ability.
Most residential buildings will be destroyed with a relatively diminutive 8-12 psi pressure wave - this is because they are not designed to withstand, say, 500,000 lbs applied to a flat wall. However, this blast wave, and much stronger blast waves, are very simple to design for, particularly when you know what direction the blast is coming from.
"I hope the most powerful government on Earth appreciates that I am the only one still bothering to stick up for it."
Strategically, it may be the desire of the government for people to not believe anymore in nuclear bombs of any kind. If so, Owen Benjamin, a.k.a. Agent Smith, would be doing a fine demolition job.
The problem is Hollywood has drastically altered the reality of nuclear explosions. Owen is basing his knowledge from what he has seen in the movies and not historical records. He thinks that the nuclear blasts depicted in Terminator 2 are factually rather than pure science fiction.
Where was the camera that filmed the flying buildings in Akira? #thinkaboutit
I was aware they used to test more than we do, but I didn't know they still do; thanks. I'd be curious how well they function though. Maybe they put all their chips into the nuclear arena at the neglect of other military resources.?.?.?
I'm still heartened by the fact that their other military equipment just isn't at our level, however: Or maybe even China's now.
I worked with a couple of people that used to sit on an island out in nowhere-waters to track missile tests. Very true that it goes on fairly frequently from our side. Maybe if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Or, maybe we've become complacent.
my grandpa designed hydrogen bombs in the USSR - they are real :-)
He even got a car called "Pobeda" for his efforts.
The car looked like this:
https://auto.mail.ru/image/92341-56e85928836f6798c0b50263b45bac8f/840x0/
This car had 3mm thick steel cab and lasted forever, right now it is owned by a movie studio
Fascinating Igor. How well do you believe they've lasted the test of time...and do you think Russia's been able to build many since the wall fell?
are you referring to cars or to hydrogen bombs?
Heh. The boomers.
Nice - after a few days reading up on how they work I have realized it must be one of the funnest jobs that have ever existed, all these new possible optimizations to explore.
So is there an argument now that nukes just don't exist?
I don't tread into conspiracy theories too much- I find that the labeling of things as conspiracy theories is already a bit tiring. For small things like bigfoot, ghosts, aliens and whatnot, I am usually agnostic because these are specific, small-scale incidences that rely on very limited anecdotes, so that leaves room for ambiguity.
But to question an actual, large-scale bomb seems...out there. What rebuttal is made besides to just say that the cameras shouldn't exist, because irrespective of the testing site cameras somehow surviving the incidences, the fallouts in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki should have some other large-scale explanation.
I haven't looked at Owen Benjamin that often, but I'm curious if his path down these conspiracy theories are because this has sort of become what he's known for now, so it just adds to staying relevant within the truthers community. Not sure since I'm just speculating, but it just seems like such an easily falsifiable argument to make.
Agreed on "out there." I would put Bigfoot in that list as well given that there's been no bones...
It's more the argument of balancing ambiguities with the circumstantial evidence provided. I sort of leave room for bigfoot because you're essentially asking people for proof of some random gorilla-like man wandering the forests. That puts into perspective that the burden for evidence would be small-scale: find bones or evidence of some thing that hasn't been discovered yet. There's plenty of species we have yet to uncover, and just because we are not aware of their existence doesn't mean they aren't out there.
But if the original argument is to suggest that the destruction of large cities weren't done by nukes, you're essentially asking us to dismiss large-scale evidence. Brian provides the argument that one can suggest that firebombs would provide a rebuttal to nukes, but unless other grand rebuttals are made it's a rather ridiculous argument to make.
Hopefully that makes more sense for what my position is.
That makes sense. Thank you. And agree...especially on the scale of lotacracy difference.
If there were only a few purported videos, little publicly available info about tests, it wouldn't be an outlandish possibility. And that is the limit of what most people are familiar with. But it's very easy to see tons more footage now.
In the 20th Century there were all sorts of technological advances all the time, especially in warfare, so nuclear bombs fit in well. As time goes on it starts to seem weird that we reached such heights but hit the ceiling so quickly, so then you start to wonder if we even really reached the heights.
That's my general interpretation. It'd be one thing if we didn't have actual footage or evidence of some sort of catastrophe happening in Japan, but to base the argument that nukes don't exist because cameras shouldn't exist after the explosion (if that is Benjamin's assertion) doesn't make sense. I don't know what other arguments Benjamin is making, but if that is the foundation for his argument that's a rather weak argument.
Our era is really weird. Maybe there is some term for it in the tech field, but we're sort of at this point where we have experienced so much innovation and yet seem to have hit some plateau, so we now have this perception that we may be near the end of our knowledge base? Not sure how else to put it into words, but it's like we falsely assume that we should have most things figured out by way of us being...modern.
Benjamin addresses Japan but I just didn't bring it up, to keep the post focused. We destroyed Tokyo with firebombs, and that's obviously a bigger city with more deaths. So you really can't rule out faking a bomb just based on the cities being leveled, again if you limit your focus and dismiss the linear burn effects.
I can see that being rationalized then if an argument like that is made. I suppose the way the text shown above is worded is to intentionally be...bombastic!
I call this kind of work "Pest Control" from a scene in the movie Backdraft where Robert Dinero, after meeting Baldwin's character for the first time, tells him "Let's go." Baldwin replies, "Where we going?" To that Dinero replies, "Pest control." They go to the parole board meeting for Sutherland's arsonist character to get him to show the board how jacked up he remains.
It's the housekeeping that some people, including me, feel compelled to perform.
Fine job at correction.
What's been eating at me for probably 8 years now is just how capable Russia actually is any longer. I noticed on Google Earth about 8 years ago that many of the missile sites were abandoned along the northern Russian border. There could be a perfectly good explanation for this of course.
Also, components degrade. Think of how the window stripping on your vehicle begins to crack after the convenient 5 year mark. How functional could their components made in the former Soviet era be now? And, I have to think they couldn't possibly have made any kind of meaningful addition to their weapon stores since the wall fell.
In a former life, I used to be an electronic/electrical mechanic on aircraft and recall replacing an intercom band pass/reject filter on a T-37 in 1992. The filter had a manufacturing date of 1957. An electronic part that lasted 35 years left all us mechanics marveling. But, that was a 1950's American made part; arguably the best quality the world has ever seen before or since. Even in the Soviet heyday, their quality was notoriously less impressive than America's.
So, if I'm right and they don't have many newly added weapons since the 1989, and their parts are deteriorating (with few ways of actually testing either...which you mentioned in this post), how functional is their nuclear ability today?
But, just one of their big boomers reaching New York City would be calamitous, no doubt. Still, these questions make me wonder to this day...
Apparently Russia tests more than we do, and stocks newer missiles.
"The Russians generally do them more often, at least in part because they have new missiles in development whereas the Minuteman 3 is the only U.S. ICBM. The U.S. Air Force is planning a new-generation ICBM, but it is not scheduled to begin entering the force until about 2030."
https://www.pressherald.com/2016/02/26/u-s-continues-to-test-cold-war-era-minuteman-missiles/
What I wonder is the likelihood that the nukes, as designed, tested, and installed in situ, several decades ago, remain in good working order.
“Horror strikes West LA as Russia sends ICBMs that are ‘totally past the expiration date.’”
If the silos are climate controlled I imagine they should hold up. But OTOH none of them could ever be given test runs to begin with, and the 70s were not a good period for QA in the US. If rocket circuitry is first to fail then you have to wonder what keeps duds from going off locally…
lol ok - "The Air Force operates 450 Minuteman missiles — 150 at each of three missile fields in Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota. A few times a year, one missile is pulled from its silo and trucked to Vandenberg, minus its nuclear warhead, for a test launch"
https://www.pressherald.com/2016/02/26/u-s-continues-to-test-cold-war-era-minuteman-missiles/
What would they even do about the other 149 if the test missile failed...
I'm surprised that even Neil DeGrasse Tyson didn't know about Castle Bravo, the test of a thermonuclear (hydrogen) bomb that produced considerably more radioactive fallout than anticipated.
That fallout fell on the crew of the Japanese fishing vessel "Daigo Fukuryū Maru" (Lucky Dragon Number 5), resulting in the death of one crew member and severe health consequences for others.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/castle-bravo-the-largest-u-s-nuclear-explosion/
Trivia note: Castle Bravo took place on March 1, 1954. About three months later, the Japanese film "Gojira" was released. We know it today as "Godzilla". The original movie stands as one of the earliest anti-nuclear weapons movies, and, in its own way, quite powerfully so.
It's quite broadly mystifying. I mean I *knew* immediately that it was wrong, because hydrogen bombs have been around forever and if there was some secret cleanness to them it wouldn't be Tyson in 2023 being the first to bring it to my attention. As for the Castle fiasco maybe he thought those were fission, though I don't know how, because even my oldest memories associate Pacific bomb footage as "now here's a hydrogen bomb, look how much more stronk."
The last respectable celebrity physicist was Richard Feynman. Oh, and the charming and gracious Freeman Dyson (who I admired so much I named my kid after him).
Today's celebrity scientists and doctors are mostly, dare I say, self promoting deplorables.
Maybe I should have included Carl Sagan, but he was an astronomer.
FWIW Neil Degrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist, if we want to split hairs.
After a career in the photographic industry, the first thing that I've always wondered about was how the camera was shielded from the radiation, which would have exposed the film. Probably not a severe technological hurdle.
The fastest cameras at Trinity used the initial x-ray flash to start rolling, and I didn't see any discussion of shielding. Being recessed in the ground, pointing up at a 90º mirror might shield, and the x-ray sensor could have been more exposed. Since the camera information for later programs is harder to find, I can only guess as far as the pole-mounted cameras - maybe the boxes were lead-lined.
'1) The most famous nuclear bomb videos could simply be fakes.' Why only the most famous ones?
'2) Isn’t it absurd that only two bombs have still been actually used after all this time?' I'm assuming that 'actually used' means 'deployed during wartime'? There were so many tests, which seems to me to qualify as 'using' them. But that's just a semantic quibble.
I don't really grok people who claim stuff like atomic bombs and moon landings are fakes. When I was a teenager in the 70s, my mother's husband-at-the-time had been in the Navy. He told us how he had witnessed atomic tests in the South Pacific, where they had stationed shiploads of sailors to watch. (He mentioned offhandedly it had made him sterile. I wish I'd had the wherewithal to ask him for more details, how far away were they, what did it look like, etc.). I guess all those sailors had been instructed or brainwashed to repeat stories about fake bomb tests.
Then of course there's the documented fallout in southern Utah drifting over from test sites to the west, purportedly causing increased cancer.
Awful.
Just because at the time I was having the thought, I rummaged through my memory and wasn't sure I had ever seen more than 3 different videos over and over, I had one visual recollection for b/w and two visual recollections for color, didn't seem hard to fake.
RE 2, the point is that it is absurd that they haven't been used, given that non-use requires that every one capable of causing one to be used has to constantly not do so, no matter what else is happening. If I had to bet back in 2003 whether we'd go another 20 years without any bombs being used, I would have lost the bet. It's essentially the same argument as "why haven't we been back" RE moon.
That point can't really be satisfied except by weird multiple universe thought experiments. But the first point was obviously just satisfied by seeing that there were many more videos and types of videos on youtube.
And the photographic evidence seems so legit, too.
I intended *sarcasm* - somehow it did not get through.
http://mileswmathis.com/trinity.pdf
That's why I highlighted an arial video. Less because of the plane, which could just be a prop over faked video, but the lighting effects etc. You could maybe try to simulate something like that with dyed liquids but at a certain point, it's easier just to make a nuclear bomb, and it's not clear why a hoax would bother with so many recreations that no one was ever going to see unless they went looking.
An anecdote - a good friend's mother was a teenager in Hiroshima and had been sent to school in the city by her family of farmers. She decided to spend some time in church the morning of the bomb, and was nearly right under it when it went off - but she was in one of the only stone buildings in the city, and survived the blast. She walked outdoors to find everything gone. She spent several days trying to help out survivors and then realized her family must be terribly worried about her, so she walked the nearly 20 miles to her farm, and when she got there, and the family saw her, covered in dirt and dust, they thought she was a ghost and wouldn't let her in the house.
She suffered from mild anemia in her old age, but lived to be 92. I knew her and her husband.
A reasonable precaution on the part of the family, but I'm glad to hear she wasn't really a ghost in the end.
For a great documentary on our testing, check out "Trinity and Beyond". Bonus: it's narrated by Bill Shatner.
As for Tyson, I had high hopes for him, but quickly discovered he's an unserious thinker and often says whatever pops into his head without thinking about it, and is often dead wrong. Of course, pseudointellectuals like Maher slurp up whatever he says as if it were the wisdom of the ancients themselves. Celebrity hasn't been good for Tyson, if he were ever a scientist of any real ability.
For my part, I demand an explanation of what he imagines he is pantomiming with that down up rub clutch.
ROFL!
Most residential buildings will be destroyed with a relatively diminutive 8-12 psi pressure wave - this is because they are not designed to withstand, say, 500,000 lbs applied to a flat wall. However, this blast wave, and much stronger blast waves, are very simple to design for, particularly when you know what direction the blast is coming from.
"I hope the most powerful government on Earth appreciates that I am the only one still bothering to stick up for it."
Strategically, it may be the desire of the government for people to not believe anymore in nuclear bombs of any kind. If so, Owen Benjamin, a.k.a. Agent Smith, would be doing a fine demolition job.
Well if all the youtube links in my post go dead then we'll know