December 17, 2017

Old 'Splodies, Newly Released

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories has released another dump of declassified films of above ground nuclear tests. While none are as visually spectacular as some of the ones in the previous release, they're nevertheless interesting and this batch seems to focus mostly on very small (including sub-kiloton) blasts and some of the big multi-megaton tests at the Pacific test range. 


Regarding the latter, I do wonder if the great distances these high yield tests were filmed from in comparison to the first is related to the debacle that was Castle Bravo

One thing about these films only fully registered with me recently. There are several  sequences that attempt to film the actual physics as it is happening, and push the 1950s filmmaking state of the art to the limit. Remember, this was captured with film...there was no such thing as a digital camera then... this is a fission/fusion explosion...just really...sloooooowwwwwww. 


Amazing!



Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:28 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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