The top secret plan to explode a nuclear bomb in Yorkshire
Вставка
- Опубліковано 13 лют 2022
- In the 1960s, America was running "Operation Plowshare": the idea that perhaps nuclear bombs could be used for peace, not war. At least some British scientists had similar ambitions, and it involved setting off a nuclear bomb under Wheeldale, in the North York Moors National Park.
Based on catalogue reference ES 26 in the National Archives, mainly ES 26/2 and 26/4. "Atomic Weapons Research Establishment and Atomic Weapons Establishment: Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Explosions: Files and Reports". Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/d...
The Open Government License does not cover personally identifying information, so names and signatures on documents have been blurred.
Operation Plowshare footage from the Prelinger Archives: archive.org/details/Plowshar1961 and archive.org/details/Plowshar1...
🟥 MORE FROM TOM: www.tomscott.com/
(you can find contact details and social links there too)
📰 WEEKLY NEWSLETTER with good stuff from the rest of the internet: www.tomscott.com/newsletter/
❓ LATERAL, free weekly podcast: lateralcast.com/ / lateralcast
➕ TOM SCOTT PLUS: / tomscottplus
👥 THE TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES: / techdif
"It's Valentine's Day, Tom! People are doing all sorts of romantic content, what are y- never mind."
ok
ok
That's hilarious, Tom.
wait hold on "5 days ago"?
Is tom single 😳
Cant blame the people that researched it though. They were trying to use one of the most powerful technologies ever developed to do something other than blowing up cities, and actually properly evaluated their ideas before going through with them.
I think we all owe a lot to the scientists hired to look at these kinds of proposals and work out that they were a bad idea before we actually did them.
@@RAFMnBgaming And yet the USSR went and did it all. I suspect the UK just watched soviets from afar taking notes.
@@UkSapyy the USSR made decent use of peaceful nukes, most pointless but there were a few times it worked as theorized
this is 1000% correct
At least someone in the UK actually researched it and tabled it. The US and USSR operations were spectacularly stupid. Think of how many people had to be involved in planning and executing such massive, expensive operations and not have a single person up top ask “but what about radiation?”
There have actually been some good uses of peaceful nuclear explosions. Back in the 60's, a gas well in Uzbekistan had caught fire and been steadily burning for 3 years and was seemingly unstoppable. Soviet physicists decided that the best way to stop the fire was with a deep underground nuclear explosion... and it worked! 20 seconds after detonation, the fire was quenched and this technique would be used a few more times by the Soviets until their collapse!
Interesting, do you have any sources for that? I'd like to read more
Is there any problem that can't be solved with a nuke anyway?
@@MrCamille9999 Good question, nope.
@@HipposaurusRex there are some russian documentaries on youtube with a lot of videos taken at the time!
@@MrCamille9999 Solved? More like dissolved
You make the coolest videos.
So do you tom and jerry
how does this only have 3 comments.
I don't know why
UK nuclear testing in the 1950s - let's do it as far away as possible in the most remote parts of Australia.
UK nuclear testing in 1969 - let's do it in Yorkshire.
Probably just wanted better beer?
To London, those were probably about the same thing.
Underground in Yorkshire
Idea proposed by a Lancastrian?
Trying to get a bit of mutant variety in the cricket side
what I should have taken away from this: they were going to blow up a nuclear bomb about a mile away from my house!
what I actually took away from this: Tom Scott was about a mile away from my house!
haha
Tom Scott: High Five!
You: *surprised by Tom's sudden appearance*
Tom Scott: Too slow! *shimmers out of existence*
You: NOOOOO!!!
yep!
Tom Scott - the peaceful nuclear explosion of the 21st century.
You just doxxed yourself
Until you know all the environmental risks, it's not an irrational idea to consider. They thought about it, fleshed out the major details, and then shelved it pending further review. In other words, exactly what they should have done, given the data at the time. Fascinating, and thanks, Tom. But neither shocking nor horrifying.
I would say it is shocking and horrifying to find something like this in today's day and age, at least until you consider people's knowledge in 1969.
@caffeine_squirrel Yes, exactly that knowledge. What are you actually trying to say?
Nuclear weapons are inherently shocking and horrifying.
@@flinko99 Why? And before you answer, consider: Is that a good and valid reason, or is it overhype?
Any idea is a good idea if you don’t consider the drawbacks.
Last I heard (though I vaguely recall something about one of them being decommissioned), there were actually two _drink8ng water_ storage tanks that the Soviets had made with nukes, and then continued to use into at least the 90s. After the initial flush (not sure I want to know what _that_ did), there was so little contamination in comparison to the throughput of the tanks that it didn't pose a safety hazard. However, it _also_ likely was done with thermonuclear devices instead of pure fission devices, and thus much cleaner than anything "Hiroshima scale".
So, some Soviet guys seriously thought they could create *_drinking_* water storage tanks... using nukes!?
Did they ever test the water or care , not a lot of transparency in USSR.
@@TotallyAHuman they could and they did
@@TotallyAHuman they could, they did, it worked, minimal contamination
Saving this
I now need a "a possible future" from Tom talking about what if they did decide to nuke the underground of a national park
Not much would be different. There would just be a large cavity deep underground in a park in Yorkshire. It would have too much residual radioactivity to use as gas storage for a good while. It's possible it could eventually be used as such decades later.
@@piranha031091 and then the inevitable leakage of radiation and contamination of the ground water etc...
@@theJellyjoker bah! a little radiation never hurt no one!
@@theJellyjoker Contaminated drainwater, not great, not terrible.
Well, the world would need to be a _lot_ more cavalier about advanced technology in general and nuclear technology in specific. So, well...has anyone played a Fallout game lately?
Imagine going through with the plan and trying to keep it secret.
"Remember that earthquake a few months ago? Turns out that was nothing to be concerned about. On an unrelated note, we found a massive cavern under the national park that we will use as a gas storage facility once the random radioactive radiation inside of it subsides."
I think it would be more than just an "earthquake".
They couldn't grasp what a nuke does back then.
I've read somewhere that when you detonate a nuke underground,
the ground moves so violently, and more than when an earthquake occurs,
that your legs break immediately when you're standing on the floor.
Whole city's miles away would have flattened in a second.
@@scorchedearth1451 That is completely ridiculous and wrong. The atmospheric test ban came to force in 1963, and by 1969 underground nuclear testing was routine and the general destructive effects were well understood. Between just 1963 and 69 literally hundreds of underground tests had been conducted. (In total there has been over 2000 known nuclear tests, which is an insane number.)
@@scorchedearth1451 source: trust me bro
@@scorchedearth1451 actually nukes are very safe
@Aquarium Gravel
I read that in a book.
They built nuclear bunkers to prevent this effect.
I’ve lived in the North York Moors for 50 years, and never heard that! But I’m remembering the local outcry when it was proposed to frack under Flamingoland just down the road, the reaction was so great that the company pulled out... and that was ‘only’ fracking!!
Watch this be evidence of divine planning
I definitely admire the people who took the whole “nuclear bomb” thing and tried to do something different with it. I mean, nuclear fission/fusion was (and still is tbh) the stuff of science fiction and I’m sure once they started to crack that they felt like it must have a nearly infinite number of uses. Back then, it must’ve felt as close to magic as you could get. I know it was very quickly sorted out that it wasn’t what they thought it was, but in those developmental moments it probably felt like a crazy new world to explore in all fields.
fusion is still the stuff of the future, fission has been in safe use for decades
just thought Id clarify
@@tadpole9264 I know it HAS been, I’m referring to the time when they were testing this out. Even if it was around, it was all the brave new world of the time. Sort of like how when the iPhone came out people assumed Smartphones would become literally every moment of our lives.
It's interesting how in that time period how they wanted to use splitting the atom. From portable mini power stations to making deep water harbours for ships.
Yup, they very optimistically thought it was safer than it is though we do use it for a heck of a lot safely nowadays.
Are nuclear "portable mini power stations" not what power submarines and aircraft carries now?
To be fair, it's always like that. Some new technology comes along and everyone starts musing about all the possible applications. I remember stories and drawings from when rockets were invented and people imagined tiny rockets used to deliver express mail from a city to another. Or a Donald Duck story from back when radar was a new invention, and Carl Barks treated it as this near-magical technology that allowed you to see through walls.
bot
If you have a hammer, every problem will look like a nail...
I grew up in Whitby and I've always said it's one of the most isolated towns in England, so I totally understand why someone thought it would be a good idea to nuke the local countryside.
I love Whitby. Bought some Whitby jet jewellery last time I visited ^^
Plot twist: it was actually an attempt at nuking the vampire caves deep below Whitby Cathedral
Drove back from Whitby once along the Egton to Rosedale Abbey road. Never felt so isolated anywhere else in England. Only people I saw where in full camo and had shotguns and half the road signs had been shot at some point 😂
@@Oli-Johnson wow, I've never heard of places like that being described like this! England always feels so small and knowing those moors well it all just feels like home.
I grew up in Whitby, too.. Whitby, Ontario; a few towns over from Pickering, Ontario.. very original, we are
Well, we can safely say it's NOT top secret anymore.
As a history undergrad I am extremely envious of Tom being able to casually stroll up to the British National Archives and sieve through the documents I can only wish of accessing (due to costs and covid)
The British National Archives is a fantastic place and honestly it doesn't take much to get a reader's ticket - you don't even have to be resident in the UK, you can get one if you're visiting. (Hopefully you'll be able to in the not so distant future, too.)
Going to the National Archives and looking through the documents is completely free. I’m assuming there’s some travel cost for you, but I hope you’re able to get there sometime soon. I’m going to be studying a history undergrad from September and i’m going to the Archives this saturday :)
@@norwice That plan was in 1953, more than fifteen years earlier. And it concerned nuclear weapons tests, not peaceful applications. And the village was fifty miles away. So no, nothing whatsoever to do with this. As can be seen by reading that Yorkshire Post article.
@@jolyontayrol1028 damn, they really wanted to blow up Yorkshire.
@@rachelcookie321 I blame Lancashire.
In the Fallout universe, the experiment was successfully carried out and repeated multiple times over the decades. The entire national park had been converted into Yorkshire National Gas Storage Park, known only as Gashire to the ghouls inheriting the area after the War.
Pronounced 'gasher' presumably
Ere whats thar lookin at, smoothskin
fallout uk
What, so like, this didn’t happen?
Thanks for reminding me how badly I want the next _Fallout_ game to be set somewhere outside of the US.
I used to live in Bradford and it's hard to argue that a bijou, Hiroshima-scale nuke, like the one in the study, wouldn't have been an improvement.
Just a little dainty nuke-ette
I’m from Bradford now and couldn’t agree more
I think Frankie Boyle said that about Glasgow.
🤣
I second that, who do we contact?
I always found this subject fascinating. I love the concept of using something designed for conflict and destruction in a way that benefits humanity. Such a shame Nukes are so radioactive, it's almost like they were designed to make cities uninhabitable.
You might find Project Orion interesting regarding peaceful use of nuclear explosives
@Soundcitylolbruh get a job
@Soundcitylolbruh No, I don't think I will.
I don't think Hiroshima or Nagasaki are uninhabitable.
Or you could say using the basis of all manifestation for absolute destruction
“When I was a lad, they tried to explode a nuclear bomb in the middle of the road.”
“Luxury”
"3.6 Yorkshiremen. Not great, not terrible."
@@jaakkomantyjarvi7515 outstanding!
Given how rapidly Whitby's cliffs and seaside streets are falling into the sea, plus many of it's buildings being hundreds of years old, an underground explosion like that might just have collapsed several buildings, if not more
for some reason before tom said "lower" i imagined them flying a bomber over a natioanl park for the bomb to perfectly go down the hole and explode
Like the Death Star, you mean?
My favorite nuke testing story is still the manhole cover that got launched into space. … but this is right up there.
for blasted into Space before Sputnik 😁
@@TheMajkla America was always winning the space race. We just didn't tell anyone. 😉
Wait till you see the chicken powered nuclear landmine, look it up it’s real
As someone who enjoys wikipedia dives when they can't sleep, you find all sorts of wild things in random tangent research.
@Gillie Monger dodgy sources are everywhere. I generally take it with some level of questioning attitude. Like media, You read something, poke at it with a "does this sound plausible?" and maybe try to reconstruct what could have happened based on what you know. If it seems like a good answer, then you take it as a reasonable explanation knowing you probably don't have 100% fact...Hopefully >90%.
Really, no matter what, I'm with Socrates when I say, I know nothing. (Didn't someone on Hogan's heros say the same thing?)
Why do random tiny towns in the UK always have some relation to explosions
Perhaps they were not so tiny before the explosions?
In a different reality, this video is titled "The giant nuclear gas cavern under Yorkshire" where Tom is wearing a red radioactive suit
Hopefully a red radiation protection suit, not a red radioactive suit! It's probably a bad idea to wear clothing that emits radiation...
Extra points for being a Yorkshire-based fact
"... conveniently right _after_ the US and USSR had found out it was a bad idea". On the one hand, yes, of course. They found out it was a bad idea, so it made sense to ban it, lest others make the same mistake.
On the other hand... I love that kind of humour.
I'm not sure if I'd be that optimistic about their motives
I live in Kiruna, Sweden, where underground explosions occur every night at 1:20am, and a lot of the buildings here have been developing cracks, and even the ground itself is cracking (to the point that they're moving the city 3km west). Now, the explosions here are much closer to the buildings and much smaller than the proposed Yorkshire nuke, but I can guarantee there would've been more than "a few small cracks"!
Facts plz...
@@rikspring Kiruna is the site of a huge, underground iron ore mine, and the explosives used, along with the subsidence from mine workings is causing a lot of problems with the building and infrastructure so they have decided to move the place. The population is about 23,000, so it's not a small job. It seems to be the subsidence that's the main problem (the place is very remote in Northern Sweden, so there's no shortage of land).
The location where Tom was is further away from the nearest towns than Kiruna is from the iron ore mines (about 7km from the nearest village).
As far as the effect of a nuclear explosion, then given the yield being talked about, it's somewhat less than a magnitude 5 earthquake. That's at the level where it would be felt and rattle the ornaments in the affected area, but any damage will be very limited. Also, it's not possible to generalise too much on damage as that will depend on the local geology as well, which can make the effects less or more (for instance, how firm the foundations are). I suspect the North York Moors are fairly solid in this respect as they are primarily sandstone in that area.
@@rikspring If you Google ` Kiruna explosions` then all will be revealed.
This would be an excellent video for Tom. I only know about this because I follow Mia Stalnacke on Twitter - she's kinda the unofficial Kiruna ambassador and has talked about it lots. It's somewhere I'd love to visit
@@TheEulerID I'd only argue that an earthquake of magnitude ~5 would do worse than just rattle ornaments. My city was bit by a 5,6 last year and the damage was significant (not catastrophic). Old town buildings (pre WW2) suffered major damage including complete wall/roof collapses falling roof tiles and chimneys wounded people and damaged cars, some modern buildings were deemed unsafe to live due to new ground conditions (those not on rock foundations), and generally a lot of minor but $$$ damage on building exteriors.
I gained much respect since for Japanese and US wesr coast cities shrugging 7's and higher somewhat often.
I have a sneaking suspicion that whatever was plugging the hole would have been blasted into space.
Also that the resulting cavern might have immediately collapsed in on itself.
This happened before! Fastest manhole cover ever
Depends on the bedrock, and how much of it there would have been between the cavern and the surface.
operation Plumbbob Pascal-A, expected yield 1 kg TNT equiv, got 50 tons worth. Blew the lid off.
there is a theorized orbital defense weapon called a "thunder well" it was used in a novel called Footfall by Larry Niven.
@@theJellyjoker i was about to say that
I just did a report on the plowshares in Colorado. Radiation in the natural gas was not the issue, the cost of the warhead and public outcry were. A lot of natural gas wells go through formations containing uranium and thorium and is naturally radioactive so that can be fixed.
Look up Project Rulison
The uranium in the bomb is not the problem it's the short-lived daughter products
@@personzorz My point is that radio active daughters are already a problem for the Energy industry and that it wasn't the reason for the failure of the project
I seem to recall that the winds changed direction unexpectedly right after one of the major tests at the Nevada Test Site and there was a rush to get everyone in St George Utah to remain inside and close all doors and windows until told otherwise. No need for concern.
The public decided they were done having their own government playing with nuclear bombs like they were part of an erector set.
I feel like the cost of the warhead is a non-issue when we've got thousands of the things lying around.
Public outcry can't be dismissed so easily.
"Is it a good idea to nuke a bit of a national park?"
Now that's a sentence I didn't know that I needed to hear today
Somehow it never occurred to me to use nuclear bombs the way explosives are used although it is acutally a fairly obvious idea (not a good one though, as one might have noticed)
Unfortunately the radiation inherent to nuclear weapons makes them not practical for large scale excavation works. The Soviets of all people though did find a peaceful use for the bomb. They used one to seal a natural gas well that had blown out and was burning out of control. There is a video of it. You can see the flame just go out moments after the detonation. A flame that was over 50 meters tall and burning at over 2000 degrees.
Often bad ideas just keep getting put on the bottom of the stack until it is sufficiently old to just archive and forget about it. In other words, this is likely the 'bad idea' that was never even properly acknowledged.
These sorts of things were seriously considered. We know now that it's clearly a bad idea, but the only way we found out they were bad ideas were from doing things like (carefully) making craters in the Nevada desert to see what happened.
@@adamsbja bruh, nevada has more radiation in it than it does people
Tom mentioning Wheeldale just gave me PTSD flashbacks of a GCSE Geography school trip to the Moors to measure the widths of depths of the ravines the streams had dug over the millions of years.
There were a few different streams allocated to the groups, and mine was Wheeldale Gill
I fell in a river when I did that in y9
I cycled my bike across the North York Moors in my teens and stayed a night at the Wheeldale Lodge Youth Hostel - that was my flashback from this video.
Imagine taking a nice stroll in the park and you just hear a loud rumbling from below...
Well, it's just a regular earthquake
This video feels like WE are in the alternate universe of the universe where Tom Scott makes a video saying "I wish I could make this video on an untouched land, talking about what might have been".
Wow Tom Scott makes a video about a topic I've heard about before.
Incredible work!
Not the only time the British Gov thought about nuking a part of Great Britain. In 1953, when the nuclear programme was still being developed, they thought about testing them in the north of Scotland. Reason they didn't? "Too wet". (Specifically, rain may have interfered with triggers and cloud cover could have reflected the shock waves back onto settled areas).
So they moved to Australia and nuked some bits of there instead - showing even less concern for local inhabitants than they did for people in Scotland.
Figures
"Well, they're just local fauna; no one's gonna care about them anyways"
😡😠🤬
The Western nuclear powers all did a lot of tests in areas far from their own soil. The US is big enough to test nukes far from civilization, but we still preferred to nuke tropical islands where they could be farther from prying eyes. Most tests were conducted underground or in the upper atmosphere, though.
@@evilsharkey8954 "Nuke The Sky!" as George Carlin described the massive amount of atmosphere tests the US did in a 3 year period until the Russians objected to the UN. "But watch out for those Russians, THEY'RE trying to kill us!" :)
@@KaleunMaender77 If you're talking about the indigenous inhabitants, be assured that the British government didn't care much about the welfare of a bunch of colonial convicts either.
With Tom's videos it's always the same for me...
"I wonder what this could be about, it can't be just what the title says right?"
"Oh, it is wtf?!?"
Every damn time
You seen the one about Swiss shooting range? Or anthrax island?
The _Thunderbirds_ equivalent would be a conventional digging machine powered by a nuclear reactor.
Those actually exist. They're unimaginatively called "Nuclear tunnel boring machines". How they work is simple enough. A liquid-metal cooled reactor is used to heat up the boring face of the TBM sufficiently to melt the rock and soil in front of it. As the TBM moves forward the molten rock cools and re-solidifies to form the tunnel walls making a perfect gas-tight seal.
If you think about it, in the long run, Chernobyl was a successful use of nuclear fission to create a wildlife reserve
Plants and animals flourished in the exclusion zone after all the people were evacuated
except that the radiation has affected wildlife as well
Not the best way to do it. Not that the purpose was to do it. And many, if not all big animals, were shot to avoid scattering radioactive dust. After thousands of dead prople related to that.
Next time better set up a boring park.
Perhaps out there somewhere in the UK they actually succeeded with a nuclear excavation. Then found it was unfeasible to use the resulting cavity. We need Scully and Mulder to work with Tom to sort this all out. Thanks for the video.
It's probably more likely that whomever was running that project got some info from US's Operation Plowshare and the underground detonations they'd already done by that point, which likely would've greatly changed their cost estimates, and they changed their opinion on the project's viability and presented a final report saying as such. Mind you, because the final report would've been submitted to someone higher in HMG, it probably wouldn't be in the same part of the National Archives; it's probably there tho; sitting in some collected papers of a Cabinet Minister...
-Tom's Language Files-
Tom's X-Files
"What I find implausible, Mulder, is the notion that the British government would knowingly endanger its own people by using nuclear bombs to excavate caverns!"
"Pack your bags, Scully; we leave for the very plausible county of North Yorkshire in the morning."
I just thought this was gonna be how some people from Lancashire wanted to one-up their rival county by... blowing up their rival county.
Second war of the roses = third Punic war.
“Nuclear Fraking” is not a pair of words that should ever be together.
I've ridden the heritage line between Pickering and Whitby before! Absolutely stunning country, what a shame it would have been if this plan went through
I very much enjoy the documentary "To Mars by A-Bomb: The Secret History of Project Orion", it's very easy to find online with a quick search. It details how far not just the theoretical research went but even the practical experiments that were carried out to see if peaceful nuclear explosions were a viable alternative to the methods of rocket propulsion, at the time.
Having been to Brimham Rocks myself, it's good to know I wasn't born in the alternate universe where this thing was set off.
I watched this thinking about how reckless and naïve they were with nuclear energy back then and how little they knew.
Then I remembered that only a couple years ago a sitting US president suggested nuking a hurricane.
I believe that was in the last year wasn't it?
@@nicholasholloway8743 2019
And now people are way too scared of it, even though it is probably the best source of energy we have, oh the irony
Your videos are amazing mate, Your production quality is unquestionable and your delivery hits perfectly. Keep up this amazing work.
If something like this actually happened in an alternate universe, that world would be a completely different place to say the least.
don´t think it would make a big difference. There have been over 2500 nuclear test / explosions worldwide.
I mean we'd have a few dozen underground gas silos whooptie doo
Dude at least watch the whole video this makes no sense
Well... instead, we live in a world where old homes and buildings are laced with lead paint and cancerous asbestos-wrapped pipes making renovations more dangerous and more expensive.
it's not as if all those nukes that were set of on the sacred lands of the people of so called "australia", the pacific islands, the "soviet" lands or indeed the sacred lands of turtle island were located in an alternate universe. they happened to us all, as we all are living, breathing Placenet Eairth. Living in the heartlands of empires and colonisators, it is easy to forget or dismiss that, but these things never happened in a "pristine, uninhabited wilderness".
This idea still has potential, they should do it in the centre of Bradford or Milton Keynes...
Who’d notice the difference?
I'm from Bradford and I agree
I wouldn’t be surprised to find out they relocated the idea to central Wakefield. Would explain why it’s already a dystopian wasteland.
My reactions whilst reading the title:
Tom… you probably shouldn’t be showing this
WAIT WHAT… YORKSHIRE!
My reaction: Lancashire is probably behind this somehow. 😀
The things you can discover by accident when conducting research at the National Archives!! (Mine was stumbling across a document signed by Admiral Lord Nelson!)
Found a lot of interesting ways Porton, UKAEA and AWRE used to test equipment. They'd have Indians, Gurkhas, Sikhs, etc digging holes in gas masks while they'd essentially just play a game of pool in the masks or something ridiculous.
Nothing quite beats the suggestion Atomic Energy Authority senior staff made to Porton to include a special port for smoking in all gas masks to make their jobs easier.
1. This plan would have made for a great Yes, Minister episode.
2. Imagine the explosion going ahead, but something goes a bit wrong, and it all collapses down into a large crater. The famed Atomic lake at the heart of a Yorkshire nature preserve!
That is the kind of job for Jim Hacker.
There were also a lot of plans for 'wacky' (apocalyptic) thing in Scotland. For a while it was considered running a less efficient grid by placing all the nuclear plants up north in case something went wrong, or by building several plants in the highlands and migrating heavy industry up there, again to keep it away from London if something went badly wrong (which at the time was considered a genuine possibility)
Perhaps this will be revived to bring real meanining to "levelling up" the North? ;)
Actually... given Scotland's relative wealth of renewables and massive coastline for Nuclear maybe it's not a stupid idea? Just the motivations werre wrong
@@armadillito
It could certainly severly change the balance of power on Great Britain.
In 1968 I was present at a project plowshare simulated nuclear blast. They had bleachers set up but placed them too close to the blast site. When debris started raining down on the crowd everyone grabbed their kids, scrambled for their cars and raced away. The test was code named “pre-gondola” and conducted near fort peck in Montana.
My mind was blown when you said the towns pickering and Whitby. As I live in Whitby, Canada ontario… the city next to me is also called, pickering 🤯
Pickering and Whitby are about 40mins distance in North Yorks as Pickering is my hometown.
The naming of old colonial towns like Pickering, Whitby and Scarborough was definitely a choice made by colonists trying to Anglicise Canadian settlements by using UK town names 😅
I’m a bit nervous realizing that governments still thinking about different horrible things that will be declassified only decades later.
Yup, it's like "we only used to do horrible things in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. But that was a long time ago, you can trust us now."
Governments are made of people, lots of people. Most of those people are trying very hard to help other people. Only a very tiny number are thinking up stupid or evil things to do and they'd be doing the same thing if they were in the private sector.
@@cholten99 unfortunately it is the few that affect the many disproportionately.
@Tin Watchman and they "do" more than we are told....
@Tin Watchman thank goodness ! It's the oldest fault of humans, power corrupts , absolute power corrupts absolutely 💯 😑
Sometimes, when I find, shall we say, _members of a particular older generation_ to be irrationally resistant to things like nuclear power plants that could provide millions upon millions of megawatts of relatively clean energy, I have to remind myself that their parents were constantly trying to do absolutely mad things like this.
It's got vigor!
Especially given that coal fired power plants also release radioactive material directly into the atmosphere, far, far, far more than a nuclear plant in normal operation.
@@sc149 THIS. People don't realize coal fly ash has wayyyy more radioactive particles than the steam released from cooling towers at a nuclear plant.
You'd still probably have a hard time convincing them, since "nuclear" often had a strong connection with "bombs".
...And the fact that their parents came up with insane ways of using them "peacefully".
Did they put Dounreay where they did because it was "totally safe"?
Interesting that you mention the possible effects on Pickering. The Canadian namesake of Pickering, Ontario is home to an 8 reactor nuclear power station and when you stopped at the local railway station there are (or at least used to be) signs that read "We radiate happiness " 😄😄
I love these crazy stories from the cold war era, I remember reading about Operation Plowshare, I didn't realize they UK planned it also.
In the USA, they did a few of these. Most were in the West, but one that stands out as being in a "populated area" like this one was in Mississippi, about 25 km southwest of Hattiesburg. They were looking at its effect on a salt formation and whether they could make a storage tank.
The tests in the US were on nuclear testing gounds in Nevada. They have never actually did them in a populated area.
@@shrimpflea The site in Mississippi where they had an underground "peaceful nuclear explosion" was quite definitively NOT in Nevada, and not on a "nuclear test site".
@@hbowman108also, Bikini Atoll, which despite also not being Nevada, did have people on it before the US nuked the island to bits
@@wilyriley_ Bikini Atoll was permanently evacuated. Mississippi was not.
Nth Yorkshire may have been saved but earlier (1950's) British tests carried out in Australia contaminated large areas of land. British and Australian soldiers were deliberately exposed to fall out.
As were the Indigenous Australians.
@@kashiichan Who?
Pros: big craters and underground storage without digging.
Cons: radiation that will contaminate the area for thousands of years.
Seems worth it. I'm surprised the big corporations didn't manage to make this happen.
This is a great story! Thanks Tom
Also really pleased to see the National Archive - I used to cycle past it and never knew that's what it was, but recognised the building the instant you showed it.
I wish you would make more videos, I think you are the most interesting youtuber I have ever watched, and even better than most TV presenters. Thank you for all your hard work on researching for these videos Tom, you always make my week when I see you've released a new video.
Yeh the massive earth-moving via thermonuclear weapon had the nasty effects of contaminating the earth and water involved. This means it can't be used to create reservoirs of any sort without having to wait 100s of years for it to cool down.
About the only use that even came close to making sense is a shipping canal where the water would be discharged into an open ocean and not used for anything else. Then it may have been OK for the few days a ship may be present in the canal, but making sure it doesn't leach anywhere else is very difficult.
“Reading old classified documents and having one’s jaw drop” is literally the entire appeal of SCP.
I wonder when Tom will pay Site-19 a visit...
I thought SCP was all fiction?
@@krashd It is
Another incredibly interesting video! Love your work Tom
Tom you come up with some amazing stuff!
Tom is one of the few that can make a video about a place wehre nothing happened and keep it super interesting
This was actually really fasinating. I live about 3 miles from that exact spot in Wheeldale, in a tiny village. To know this is actually really cool. Makes me wonder what would happen if it were to happen today
Amazing video Tom. Thank you for sharing this local history I never knew about.
This is literally right on my door step , wish I knew you were here!
If I have learned anything about the 50s and 60s, it's to no longer be surprised when I learn about someone planning to blow something completely bizarre up with a nuclear bomb.
1:04 “There’s your new canal” or “There’s your nuke canal”?
That's right near my house, in fact that map at 2:08 has my house on it. Its great the hear something new about the place. Great video as always.
Absolutely crazy, well made video as always!
Having been too Yorkshire I am not convinced this wasn’t actually done without anyone noticing.
*to
"A few weeks ago, I was looking through records in the British National Archives for a separate video idea that didn't end up going anywhere"
He's hiding something from us, and I'm scared to find out what
Tom is probably not a secret service agent that answers directly to the Queen. Probably.
@@Niohimself We've gotta be careful
@@Niohimself king*
Awesome when you mentioned capping the drilled hole it made me think of operation plumbob. In the states I did a similar thing of blowing up underground and the concrete cap may have been the fastest thing ever created by humans.
Another piece of history, tks TS :)
I've heard variations on this story and the fracking for years, but mostly Texas and Alberta, I've always thought it was some BS the teller was using to impress me. Thanks for brining it to light. In Alberta we use underground Salt Caverns for LNG storage, as they do in the US.
Underground salt caverns comprise a very, very small percentage of LNG storage in Canada. We mostly use depleted oil and gas fields.
Wikipedia entry on Project Oilsand is interesting.
Imagine being the author of that paper and 50 years later there's a video about it.
I enjoyed this video very much thanks Tom 😁👍
Hey I've just came across your channel & after looking through your videos I've definitely sub'd to you, you have a huge range of topics so it'll keep me busy during these cold months ahead, keep up the good work your doing. X😎🐘
As the prime minster at the time was Harold Wilson, a Yorkshireman representing a Yorkshire constituency maybe the whole thing was a troll by the characters concerned. Can't see it passing muster if it ever rose to the attention of the cabinet of the day.
Now if the site was above ground and in Surrey, they might have been tempted (rictus grin).
And that's how yorkshire tea was mutated to taste good
I live in Scarborough, and frequently visit the the Yorkshire Moors. There’s a tale that there are still tunnels running through the dales, still to be discovered. Maybe it’s time to dig up some archives on go on more of many discovery hikes I have been partaking in through the Moors recently. It’s also home to RAF Fylingdales, an OTH radar. Used to be known for its distinctive golf ball-like radar balloons.
Incredible, thanks for the research!
I see tom has started new types of thumbnails, an image along with a bold arrow and a few words in bold!
I’m still not used to the video titles not being in Title Case anymore.
Tom !
I'd love to see you dissect conspiracies.
Your concise and informative delivery would be a great take on some more bizarre mysteries throughout history.
One such that comes to mind is the Banjawarn Station seismic disturbance of 1993. Supposedly, a cult mined Uranium in outback Western Australia and may have made a small nuclear device!
a look back at the Bielefeld conspiracy, I agree
You can´t make a nuke from mined Uranium, you have to enrich it using hundreds of centrifuges, which is not that easy even when you have the resources of a whole country. You would need a cult of the size of the catholic church to pull it off.
plot twist, tom is actually standing on two of a top secret gas storage facility
Nice video Tim!
As a person with anxiety, I have to see this.
What
Never fails to amaze me where Tom actually finds these stories. The ideas for these vids must be job in itself. Love this channel
I mean, that's literally Tom's job. (Large part of it)
it does make a lot of sense when you have used dynamite and other explosives to make caverns, they just didn’t quite realise radiation existed
Completely agree. We were probably always going to experiment with this stuff and realize it's a bad idea.
Great research Tom ;)
50s and 60s were crazy times. These people were socialized in the world war, so didn’t really care about the consequences. CIA, KGB and apparently the British had ideas which would sound like a crazy conspiracy theory today. In most cases they didn’t follow through, but still, the fact that they considered these is frightening.