Follow your passion, and even your job which is a big part of your life. Will be full of satisfaction and joy far beyond milling away at a day job until you retire to old to do or enjoy your hard earned rest.
this guy is the epitome of humanity, with knowledge curiosity is bound to come. if you put curtains up over something and try to hide it youll find it only makes others strive to find out what exactly is behind those even more. by societies standards he may not be qualified to work in physics, but if he can replicate something that took many many great minds coming together to produce it just shows the power of the human thought process.
Referring to my book, “Most amazing document...In all first rate…There are drawings in there that are absolutely correct...He’s got everything exactly: dimensions, materials, and things that have been really classified…He’s an amazing guy. I don’t know how he puts this all together…his cross-section drawings are the most incendiary portions of his book...If I still ran the shop, I’d have him back there in a heartbeat to tell everyone how he did this…It’s mind boggling to me!” - Harold Agnew, Project Alberta and former Director of Los Alamos
I've seen Docu's about spying and it said that a few US secrets were actually obtained simply by mailing in request for info & clerks would gather files (including classified info) and mail it back to the person. I think this was mainly Pre-1960.
@@thepezfeo wow! Do you remember what the documentary was called or where you saw it? That's crazy to think about, but it's easy to understand how something like that could happen, especially back around the 1960's and prior. No computers holding the actual information, in digital form, and allowing/denying access to view it by means of passwords and such. No security software that keeps a "list" of which documents are restricted, classified, or secret, and what level of security clearance is required to view each file. It was probably a secretary, probably a young woman, working in some boring building similar to a library, who's daily job was filing/cataloging new and old documents that were constantly coming and going. They probably received requests from other institutions, schools, and researchers, to borrow research documents and a regular basis. Unless this person had knowledge of what info was in each and every file, what was classified or not, and who the person was that issued the request, it would be very likely that they would fulfill a document request without checking the security level of that info, and possibly not even verifying the identity of the person requesting it.
True and if it wernt for them bombs millions of military personel would have been killed PLUS all the millions of civilians on both sides. Yes I understand thousands have died and more suffered but like I said if these bombs were not dropped the war would have gone on a halla lot longer. Please stop hating on this guy peeps he is so intelligent unlike the people hating on him. NUFF SAID
@trevenman Its not about not being able to subdue Japan, its about the estimated 400,000-800,000 american fatalities, and 5-10 million Japanese fatalities. You must not have been educated about how the Japanese population and military was indoctrinated. They would literally fight to the death, they didnt have to do any convincing to enlist Kamikaze pilots. Japan would not have surrendered in an invasion until the Allies captured every square inch of Japanese territory, fighting tooth and nail the entire way. Everyone likes to revise history and question decisions made decades ago.
Gotta love how the description says "minimal collage education" but yet this guy is smarter than most collage graduates today. says something about our education system.
Toffy Montana Well, the education system is been in a shambles since around the 1950s, if not before. A 2.0 grade average student can be smarter than a 4.0 grade average student. All grade average determines is the level of obedience.
So glad I watched it. I'm pursuing a joint honours degree in physics and math in one of the best unis there are and even though I'm studying day and night, I'm just being crushed by this program. Giving up has crossed my mind more than once and it's difficult to turn to your love for physics and math for motivation when you just feel burned out and you still gotta wake up the next day and give a good 12 hours of studying. This vid gave me some motivation. With all the enormous pressure, I still love physics and can't picture myself doing anything else in life. I don't want to be the guy who in 30 years from now drives a truck and dreams about all the fascinating physics he could have been doing for a living.
As I always said of myself, I am nothing but a scientist without papers that say so. Love physics, chemistry, and all that stuff, heck, when I went to high school, I was the opposite student there, I insisted to get chemistry for 4 years, sadly they never gave it to me, although they said to everyone else that it was a requirement. Since then, I have tried to teach myself through everything I can grab, and hope for the best. Remember, work is simply work, but it is then learned when found and applied. Remember as well that no matter if you have the certificates or not, you'll still be a physicist by heart, a paper is nothing but a sheet composed of nothing but wood cell fibers with other chemicals and ink, which might contain copper, iron, and such. I got no degrees in anything, although I always wanted to have a diploma and PhD in most of the science skills, but right now it seems like I won't be able to have any. Oh how I look at the world, it's as if I can take everything apart with my mind. Go and continue studying, get that paper and be done with it, thus that's only labor work you're doing by memory, later on you'll be able to learn more on your own with what you already know by simply experimenting
Please continue to pursue your dream of being a physicist. The scene where I'm walking along next to Professor Frisch, I'm explaining to him how embarrassed I was at dropping out of the university in my junior year back in 1968 and not getting my BS in physics. He responded by asking me what BS stood for. I responded "Bachelor of Science?" "No, the other BS. MS is 'More of the Same' and PhD is 'Piled higher and Deeper.' They mean almost nothing. You've done what none of them has done, and not for lack of trying. That's why you're here today." I stopped to see him again a month or so ago and presented him with an updated copy of my book. He then asked if I wanted to come back and give another talk. "Absolutely!" If you want to know more, look up my New Yorker interview from 2008. I started my book as a small pamphlet and it is now 422 pages. Look up the "Readers Reviews" on my Amazon page. The National Archives opened up a collection of my papers at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library last year. Not bad for a trucker. BTW. Being alone in a truck for hours at a time with almost no traffic results in an almost limitless amounts of "Ah Ha" moments. My forehead also has a permanent dent from all the Homer Simpson "Doh!" slaps.
i dont see why its a big deal that he's a truck driver, hes a fuckin genius, he put his mind into something and did it, its not your profession that matters but your efforts and capabilities.
The casing/mechanism of the bomb itself is not a big deal. The material used for the nuclear fission (Uranium 235) is the big deal. You need it very highly enriched to make the bomb blow. And to enrich uranium to the level needed, you need big facilities with a lot of very specific equipment. I doubt someone can enrich uranium for a bomb and pass unnoticed by the government (at least on the USA).
In my opinion the facilities are not the problem. They were big to create enough fissionable material in a short time range. If you build them on a very miniature scale, they might be usable for enrichment, but it will take you decades. So you will need a lot of time and a lot of patience. The much bigger problem is in my opinion the following: Even if you have success with a scaled down facility, you still need to move and process tons of raw uran material to get the required amount of U235 for just one bomb. This is the real problem.
iPixels ايبكسلز You can't pretend that Iraq and Syria aren't a growing global problem at this point in time. You have a pretty biased stand point judging by your username.
He lets out a hoot from his gas guzzling big rig because he figured out how to build a nuclear bomb. It doesn't get any more 'merican than that. (wipes away tear)
Five years ago I was told by someone who works for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) that I was "well known to the Feds" and that "the powers that be are scared of you and what you did because you were able to collect from unclassified sources" yet I have never been contacted, visited, or warned in any way not to publish anything. I know for a fact there was some high-level internal Los Alamos discussion back in 2005 about trying to stop me in some way, but they wisely decided otherwise.
The Guy Right Up Your Street YES!!! He is really helpful. Thanks man. I was gonna go finish my degree, but it turns out I already have a mansion waiting for me when I die, so I'm just gonna kind of have fun in ways that slowly make me die. Fuck education, I got *promises* now.
Not into conversation? That's cool. My dog gets bored of me too. Like this one time, I was walking my dog, and his name is donald, and he's a mutt. like, not a mutt mutt, but he's not a pure breed. Do you ever read "bread" when you read "breed"? Yeah, so do I. Sometimes I accidentally type it that way and I'm like "Noooo zack B, you're dyslexic!!", but then I read it and I think "oh, zack B, you are a silly silly man". But when I'm out walking my dog, his name is donald, and I don't capitalize it. I just let him be donald little 'd'. He don't care about no titles. He's a dog. He's just happy someone made his sound. I guess people are really the same way, until they start feeling entitled. Huh. En"titled". Like you demand to have titles and pretense, and not just be you and get what you gets. Nope, you got NAMES, bitch. Anyway, me and little 'd' donald are out walking, and I'm just chatting him up, and I can tell that he's like "zack B, there are *smells* and *bitches* afoot, stfu", and then in my head I'm like"dooonald, your a dog, you don't know how to abbreviate", and then, in my head also, he'll say a little something back, like he gets the joke, but then I remember what happened last time I went on a walk and imagined scenarios where donald, the one with the little 'd', could talk and we joke, and I get back to reality with my dog donald. So, we're out walking and I'll be chatting him up, and he'll not like it, too. Just like you didn't.
Also, to the right of the face is a man squatting down on top on a goat's head, he has both hands on the head and the top of the mans head has a dark circle. At frame 6:38 the goat head has it's tongue out and the man on top still has both hands holding onto the top of the head, and you can see his left leg still. The big face in the middle looks like it morphs into someone's face who is wearing glasses.
John, you have achieved more than 99% of people ever achieve in their lives. Your dogged determination in reverse engineering these designs shows a strength of character above and beyond nearly all of us. I look forward to reading your work with immense anticipation and excitement. Bravo
Thanks. I was honestly surprised when Motherboard contacted me back in 2009 and told me they wanted to do a short documentary about me and my research. I'm taken aback that almost 300,000 have viewed this so far! If someone had told me in 1993 that my unique form of research (Nuclear Archeology) would someday wind up as a groundbreaking book, a major cover story ("Atomic John") in the New Yorker magazine, this documentary, screen credit in a dozen films, and a collection of my papers housed permanently in the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, I would have told them they were stark raving nuts!
I dont want to scare you more then you already are but anyone who types in the word nuclear on any internetbrowser is logged and evaluated,that doesnt mean they'll actualy gonne knock on your door for vieuwing one or even a few videos about that,but iff you would spend hours on end watching them and downloading technical data,they would ;-)
"There will always be warfare."--Have we not evolved at least to the point that peace can even be imagined? Thought the last one was "the war to end all wars". Fascinating documentary. Pray for Peace.
Ive worked in academia for 25yrs and its great to see the layman deliver to this standard its a great reminder to the snobs to listen to the "uneducated". Im seriously impressed at your skill and tenacity.. you prove without doubt that todays technical limitations and thresholds are not static but dynamic and over time these limits become available to the mainstream in general.. The last 10,000 yrs of human civilisation are built on this concept but conveniently forgotten but the ignorant and egotistical. Im wondering what are you going to do next??? Reverse engineer the SR71?? Its interesting your comments on Japans covert nuke program. Rest assured that any country that has a public nuclear power program is really just a front for covert enrichment hence the big hard-sell to the public for these assets since the 50s. So add Taiwan and others to the list..
I wonder why he quit his physics degree program?.....any work is honorable work, but it seems a shame that a highly intelligent man(obviously) didn't utilize his talents fully
Although I took trig in HS as part of an advanced math program, and was the assistant for our Chemistry teacher (who worked on the Manhattan Project), I had to take calculus in my Junior year at the University. It may as well have been Martian and that was back when there were no tutors/mentors...sink or swim...and sadly I sank and watched my BS degree vanish in front of my eyes.
John Coster-Mullen I can relate......I was weak in math and I knew calculus would be a struggle...I attempted calculus in my second year at college.....and started the the year with a cold so bad I could hardly see the blackboard....after a couple of weeks I raised the white flag.....its too bad, because I would have liked to have been a pharmacist,(which obviously didn't use calculus) but without that calculus pre-requisite, it wasn't meant to be...... You have accomplished something that very few other individuals would be capable of, and I hope that is a source of pride for you.
FMHammyJ As the University of Chicago Professor explained to me in that scene where we are walking together outside, the reason you are here today giving this talk is that, even though thousands have tried, NONE of the folks with those degrees have done what you have accomplished. I took pride in that. They have even invited me back to give another talk, this time to a huge classroom next month. hep.uchicago.edu/~ykkim/Colloquium-2014-2015/spring2015.html
+John Coster-Mullen A lot of very smart people never complete a degree and a lot of people who aren't very smart complete a degree. I've seen both. Some people with Ph.Ds spend the rest of their days not accomplishing much of anything except writing papers that no one other than other academics will read, whereas your work has earned high praise.
The funny thing is just how easy it is to find out the basics of how to pretty much build an nuke. Granted, this guy here might be the reason I found the info on at least the two that were used on Japan. I did a science fair project on nuclear weapons in 6th grade, this was back in about 05 or 06, and I could literally find the basic information about how to build my own thermo-nuclear device just by using Google. I could even find a breakdown of Hydrogen bombs. It was pretty crazy how simple it is to get your hands on that. BUT I guess it's understandable considering just how hard it is to get plutonium and uranium (at least 235 which is used in the bombs).
When my neighbor helped me finish it late one night, I turned to him and remarked that I now had "Neighborhood Nuclear Superiority." "I can even hit your house from my garage!" he had a nervous laugh.
The video revealed you as a very normal guy John! As a Texas resident, I expected someone less sane, maybe even likely to drive around with the thing in the bed of a pickup truck just for the shock effect. Kind of like a definite statement on gun control. I enjoy bright eccentric people. One set of my neighbors are ex-USAF SAC folks from Minot, ND. B52 people. We had a grim laugh when I told them they had been on the "Dream Team" in the ultimate team sport, strategic nuclear warfare. To me, your model is a grim reminder that we need to control these damn things. Sadly, I don't think we'll be able to eliminate them. Bravo!
I spent almost a week in Hiroshima in 2010. I discovered they already had my book in their Peace Memorial Research Museum library. I presented them with a signed, updated copy. Unfortunately, it was too far for me to travel to Nagasaki in the time allotted.
John Coster-Mullen you're such an incredible guy :'3 You have such a large thirst for knowledge, or at least knowledge on how to kill 100,000's or maybe even millions of people at a time haha. A true inspiration and gentleman! Good work sir! :3
An incredible achievement John, you should be justifiably proud. I've long had a fascination with the nuclear age, in particular the advent of nuclear weapons, their strategy and deployment. So the 2 first tactical weapons, fat man and little boy are of particular interest to me. Any chance you might make some scale models in metal? My orders are here if you do!
Look me up on Google to read some articles, then look up my book "Atom Bombs" on Amazon. BTW. There were some companies in Europe (Brumm, Kora) that made plastic models some years ago, but I don't know if they are still available.
There is a lot more about building the bomb than reverse engineering its various components. For just a glimpse of the calculations involved in creating the first prototype, refer to the "Los Alamos Primer" which presents the problem that they faced before the project was completed. Mr. Coster-Mullen's research is phenomenal but there is a lot more to making the bomb than the measurements and the work that he did. Nice video, Ciao, L
6:19 Russell's Military Museum. Awesome place to visit. Alot of Military vehicles and a HUGE indoor display too. North of Gurnee IL just south of the Wisconsin border
James Bond From Microsoft Tech Suppport Yes, a tragedy caused by Japan's complete unwillingness to surrender up to that point. www.mputtre.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/copy_of_w_p_speech.pdf
James Bond From Microsoft Tech Suppport Japan attacked the US. Just remember who started it. It doesn't matter who ended it or how, it matters who started it. If you shot a bear with an airsoft gun, you should expect no less than to get mauled to death.
***** I didn't quite mean it like that, of course the outcome matters, everything that happens in a war leads up to that point, but I think the end to WW2 was justified. Was it a terrible thing? Yes, war was never a good thing, thousands of years ago worse things than Hiroshima were happening, whole empires would be razed to the ground and the inhabitants slaughtered. I'm sick of seeing everyone talk about how the US was out of line by dropping those bombs. Japan could've prevented it all, the US did NOT want to enter WW2. You can't get mad at the US for ending something that Japan started, regardless of how the US ended it.
The flight crew of the planes dropping those nukes would NOT know the internal specifications of those top secret weapons. They would not have been ALLOWED to know. The point remains that it took hundreds of the best scientists of Europe and the US, all sequestered together in a specially-built town, years of full-time work to figure out how to design and make those weapons.
Owen Prescott A fantastically talented LA Songwriter Gabriele Morgan just created a song about Little Boy based on my book and the New Yorker article about me. gabrielemorgan.com/TracksAgain/big-mama.mp3
Eamon Campbell-June Easy to procure , difficult to refine ,or manufacture the weapons grade 235 uranium is really complex to manufacture , the British had a nuclear weapons program before the Americans in WW2 but they lacked the industrial capacity to refine the uranium , so they handed it to the Americans to develop , interestingly after the war the Brits wanted the A bomb the Yanks told them to fuck off so they developed their own , WE never learn, Anyway you can make a very small reactor at home ,very easy but to do it and not poison yourself with rad very difficult.
Very cool and interesting story. It's unfortunate that you weren't able to obtain your physics degree. The world of physics would have been lucky to have you in it. Be it as it may, being a truck driver is not only a very demanding but also an absolutely essential profession. Because EVERYTHING you buy was brought by truck. I know, my Dad did it for 42 years. Without a single accident I might add. So while the physics world may have lost a good one, it seems the trucking world hasn't. Good Job!
The talk I gave in that film was at the noon luncheon so Henry walked us first down to the University Commissary to buy us sandwiches to eat while I gave that talk. This famous luncheon talk was a tradition started by Enrico Fermi after he returned from working on the Manhattan Project. The physicists would gather in that very lunch room to eat their sandwiches and he would ask them what they were working on at that moment and to tell everyone in that lunch room all about it.
@O G During my quarter century of research on these two bombs, I have had the privilege of hearing many conversations from both scientists and the members of the air group that dropped those bombs. Sadly, almost all of them have since passed away. I tried to include all of the important comments in my book.
people need to know how fucking easy it is to build a nuclear weapon once you have the materials... something needs to be done for the saftey of future generations. i'm glad this guy pointed it out so undeniably.
I am curious as to what provoked interest on such a dark subject to the point of re-creating one of mans greatest down falls toward humanity? Its not that I don't appreciate the efforts and vast knowledge required to undertake such a subject in the ways you have and the drive you posses. But now that you have clearly made your abilities publicly known, do you have any plans to further yourself with something more positive in nature that has some beneficial effect for science, or does this mark the pinnacle of your works?
blogobre OMG! I sought none of that at all. Look me up on Google to get a sense of who I really am. You can start by reading all of my responses posted here. BTW. This is what a Silicon Valley CEO wrote about my 20+ years of research. ---------------- John, Silicon Valley salutes you as one of their own. Clearly, the passion that drove you do do this rages no less fiercely in Wisconsin than it does in garages the length and breadth of Santa Clara county. While you toiled on recreating an atomic weapon, geeks here were crafting Google, Yahoo!, eBay and GolfBalls.com. They made millions, while you did it purely for the intellectual challenge. In fact, let me restate things: Silicon Valley should worship you as a new god. At least our garage-dwelling brethren could argue that there was a chance of fame, fortune and hot babes at the end of their journeys (and particularly in the case of benefit number three this would be their only path to such riches) whereas your passion, burning just as bright but with a flame far more pure, was most unlikely to bring you any of those three gifts. And nothing - but nothing - earns you more street cred than that, at least round these here zip codes. Therefore, I hereby induct you into the SV Hall of Ultimate Geekdom. It's not a complex process, in fact I need only speak the sacred words, passed down from generation (X) to generation (Y), to reflect your joining at the highest level of membership. "Dude. Awesome."
He got the easy part down. The hard part is getting all the equipment involved in safely purifying, transporting, storing and handling uranium/plutonium along with getting the uranium/plutonium, itself. Then you have to prepare it for the accelerator using a series of chemical processes. I'm pretty sure you can't just stick yellow cake in front of a particle gun. Then you need the information on getting the right strength/length particle accelerator to send the right amount of the right type of particles into the uranium/plutonium so that it becomes weapons grade. And then the material needs to be in the right shape. In the case of the Big Boy, the primers have to be spaced so exactly that they create the spherical compression wave required to trigger a nuclear fission event. Also, these primers have to be an exact strength. Basically... Nuclear weapons are a pain in the ass to make. The casing is probably the easiest part. Plus, Devgru... No chance, lol.
lucky43113 Pure Bovine Stuff!! I knew Paul for over a decade, had meals with him, gave talks together, had adjoining hotel rooms, and heard him talk many times. What he said in private is what he said in public. He never changed his story at all. He never regretted what he did nor lost any sleep over it.
John Coster-Mullen it was during desert storm when i met him we had a parade for a few troops here in town and he was here i wanted an autograph but didnt feel it was right to ask
lucky43113 He graciously did autographs all the time. Did you actually hear him say that?? Do you, or anyone else, have a tape of that to verify it? Witnesses?
John Coster-Mullen i didnt record it but my dad was with me i was a young at the time he was just setting at a table they had set up at the end of the parade route. Im aware he did autographs but it felt odd asking
lucky43113 I also knew his best friend, and Enola Gay Navigator Ted Van Kirk for longer than that and he told me the very same thing many times...that Paul never changed his story. Paul was a straight up guy. I have also heard many of the vets say they regretted that it was necessary the bombs had to be dropped, but did not regret doing their job, as awful as that is, which was to help stop the war by making the enemy hurt so much they would surrender. Unless you are a sadist, nobody enjoys killing another person, yet killing the enemy is part and parcel of warfare and has been since the beginning of time. They grit their teeth and did their job no matter how unpleasant. Tibbets, Van Kirk, and Tom Freebee (their bombardier) were veterans of some 60 combat missions together over North Africa, Italy, and Germany before they went to Hiroshima. They were very familiar with "Death From Above."
If our library doesn't have a copy I will have to buy one for them. Keep on truckin '. Sorry , you have probably heard that one ad nause. Enjoyed watching, thanks.
"Coster-Mullen's ambitious project is certainly a neat example of the ingenuity that led America to be the first to develop the atomic bomb." You mean the 'ingenuity' to get a real genius from Germany over to explain it to them. America fooling itself into believing they can build and engineer again.
Thing is, it's true America has a shit education system, but most of the world's best and most prestigious universities in almost all fields are in the US. But if you look at the last names of the people in these top universities or tech companies they are Chang, Kumar, Muller or Kalinsky. Instead of spiriting away scientists, the scientists now head to the US voluntarily.
PolarisIII No, see, America writes its own history, but America is also the only one who buys it. This only implies that you're 'victor' in a meaningless battle with yourselves, which I suppose makes sense in a way, and in practice it just manifests itself in misleading (and frankly often pathetic) propaganda directed at your own people in the same vein that you would accuse the Russians of. The same self-inflated and untrue boasting that led everyone to be surprised when the economy crashed.
Johnny Natrium Einstein and Oppenheimer were both US Citizens at the time which makes the creation American. Ingenuity is a matter of subjectivity and is therefore of no consequence to anyone other than those that view something as ingenuity or not.
This is a part of history, it shouldn't be brushed under the carpet and ignored just because our modern sensibilities recoil from the result of dropping the bombs. We should be celebrating the brilliance of the minds that conceived and built the weapon that stopped a war and ushered in decades of relative peace.
For those who don't get it, this guy made a MODEL, like your model cars you build from a kit in which every part is made of plastic and only LOOKS like the real thing. The amazing feat is he figured it out with no plans, and apparently came pretty close to accurately representing a mock-up of the real bomb. He ought to see about marketing a kit for the hobbyist who wants to be the first on his block with a realistic, easy-to-build, scale or life-size model of Little Boy... a MODEL, OK?
i'm in total awe of this guy and in much respect..even when if i was a little kid i used to dream about nuclear detonations..My mother told me recently she used to work on a nuclear base. I still have the interest of the atomic bomb and how this works and trust me...i hope it will never will be used again, because i've dreamed a lot about it and seen a lot of movies of what the end results. I only admire the science about it and how mankind could accomplish that.
Here's an interesting twist to your story John. 2 years after the war in 1947, the only nuclear weapons carrying base in the world was Walker air force base at Roswell New Mexico. In order to guard over that site there were 3 high power radar sites around new mexico. In the megawatt range of power. ET ships use a resonant field to invoke propulsion and the irony is that high power radar can disrupt that field and did. Not just the Roswell incident but 2 others in 47 and 48. They were retrieved.
My dad makes me proud hes a professional truck driver and hes a very smart man too. This story reminds me of my him he probably would of been a good drummer or bussines man.
Just a little correction. At the first of the video, it say that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended world war II. Wrong the bombing ended the life of 150.000 to 246.000 innocent people. We need to learn two things, to call things by their real names and to admit that killing innocent people is never the answer. No matter who you are what you do or what you believe in, learn to love each other and raise yourself and your children to be more tolerant and acceptable of other races, believes and religions. Wars are started over greed and egoism and should be stopped by prevention. Why waste trillions of dollars every year just do you can flex your muscles and scare the life of your neighbor, that at his turn will deprive his people from bare necessities so he can afford to acquire the same weapons you own or even worse. Please don't get me wrong, I think this documentary is excellent it shows how anyone can make anything just by putting their mind to it. So please lets learn to put our mind to making things that will benefit humanity other than destroy it. This is just my opinion. I could be wrong. Thank you for reading.
The design of the bomb is actually quite simple. The implosion device probably the harder of the two. Because focused spherical lenses had to be manufactured to reflect every ounce of explosive energy of the det charges. In addition to an electrical circuit that could fire them all exactly at the same time. Like squeezing an orange equally across its entire surface all at once. This put the Uranium pit in to super critical. The gun bomb was just like a giant cannon that fired one piece at the other. Correct me if I am wrong.
I understand that you can actually learn something in college, but when I wrote the comment I was drunk and pissed off, and when i'm drunk and pissed off I tend to forget things. lol
Amazing job, I'd love to have that sort of tenacity to see a massive project like that to its completion. I'm sort of glad that despite these devices being easy to make that weapons quality uranium/plutonium are hard to obtain (at least that's my hope!)
How true. Yet according to historical,record, this horrible weapon caused Emperor Hirohito to finally stand up to his war cabinet and end WWII six days after Nagasaki thus saving countless millions of lives that would have been lost on both sides had the anticipated invasion taken place!
I don't think he hates his life, everyone can have some sadness and regret within but the fact that he is now pursuing his dreams speaks to the opposite. Education does not breed intelligence, education merely forms your mind to be able to learn but there are plenty of brilliant people who never graduated high school.
Love this John; Im interested in nuclear fusion and am, with a few other interested parties, at this moment putting together a ghetto fusor ;) I do the math and the other interested parties carry out the engineering parts kind of putting the pieces of the jigsaw together; I show them what the completed pic should look like, if you get me ;) brilliant job John; wish you lived on our side of the pond; we would definitely be friends :)
He was persuing a B.S. in Physics and dropped out during his junior year. He has a pretty good basic understanding in physics (mechanics/heat, E&M, introduction to modern physics) if he got to his junior year.
Sorry I should've been more specific. By functional i meant a trigger mechanism ready to go. I guess you're right, it would'nt be that hard to modify the replica (if the innards were intentionally miss-built) to the specifications needed. Ever heard of Pelindaba? Google "attack on pelindaba" if you want to see some scary shit.
This is cool and kinda sad. You can tell he really wishes he had stuck it out and gotten his degree. Hes got a red hot passion for this stuff.
ikr
Follow your passion, and even your job which is a big part of your life. Will be full of satisfaction and joy far beyond milling away at a day job until you retire to old to do or enjoy your hard earned rest.
He has a lot of regret and anger and his value of his life is misplaced
passion for turning innocent people to ash?
@@thennekcdcdthennek6417 I think his goal was historical accuracy. We all hope we have seen the last use of such weapons.
this guy is the epitome of humanity, with knowledge curiosity is bound to come. if you put curtains up over something and try to hide it youll find it only makes others strive to find out what exactly is behind those even more. by societies standards he may not be qualified to work in physics, but if he can replicate something that took many many great minds coming together to produce it just shows the power of the human thought process.
Referring to my book, “Most amazing document...In all first rate…There are drawings in there that are absolutely correct...He’s got everything exactly: dimensions, materials, and things that have been really classified…He’s an amazing guy. I don’t know how he puts this all together…his cross-section drawings are the most incendiary portions of his book...If I still ran the shop, I’d have him back there in a heartbeat to tell everyone how he did this…It’s mind boggling to me!” - Harold Agnew, Project Alberta and former Director of Los Alamos
we dont need to hear the story of the guy who worked it out
we just need step by step instructions on how to build it
I've seen Docu's about spying and it said that a few US secrets were actually obtained simply by mailing in request for info & clerks would gather files (including classified info) and mail it back to the person. I think this was mainly Pre-1960.
@@thepezfeo wow! Do you remember what the documentary was called or where you saw it? That's crazy to think about, but it's easy to understand how something like that could happen, especially back around the 1960's and prior. No computers holding the actual information, in digital form, and allowing/denying access to view it by means of passwords and such. No security software that keeps a "list" of which documents are restricted, classified, or secret, and what level of security clearance is required to view each file. It was probably a secretary, probably a young woman, working in some boring building similar to a library, who's daily job was filing/cataloging new and old documents that were constantly coming and going. They probably received requests from other institutions, schools, and researchers, to borrow research documents and a regular basis. Unless this person had knowledge of what info was in each and every file, what was classified or not, and who the person was that issued the request, it would be very likely that they would fulfill a document request without checking the security level of that info, and possibly not even verifying the identity of the person requesting it.
How come everyone is hating on the guy
He just built a damn replica of it
True and if it wernt for them bombs millions of military personel would have been killed PLUS all the millions of civilians on both sides. Yes I understand thousands have died and more suffered but like I said if these bombs were not dropped the war would have gone on a halla lot longer. Please stop hating on this guy peeps he is so intelligent unlike the people hating on him. NUFF SAID
His speech about wars is disturbing. Time to learn something about pacifism... Luckily for the rest of us he dropped out that colleague 😆🤦♂️
@trevenman Its not about not being able to subdue Japan, its about the estimated 400,000-800,000 american fatalities, and 5-10 million Japanese fatalities. You must not have been educated about how the Japanese population and military was indoctrinated. They would literally fight to the death, they didnt have to do any convincing to enlist Kamikaze pilots. Japan would not have surrendered in an invasion until the Allies captured every square inch of Japanese territory, fighting tooth and nail the entire way. Everyone likes to revise history and question decisions made decades ago.
If it's a replica why make a fucking video about it
I bet an Atomic Bomb cant build a truck driver
Aqw aq but in Russia a Atomic bomb builds you
@@NiteMz lol
Aqw aq I bet 5 it can
Are you high?
Aqw aq nice
Gotta love how the description says "minimal collage education" but yet this guy is smarter than most collage graduates today. says something about our education system.
Toffy Montana I didn't write the description. I attended the university for almost three years and left in my Junior year.
***** Are you insane?! The US has the highest number and highest concentration of the top 500 universities in the WORLD. Do your research dude.
CRAZEERUSKEE many students at american universities are foreign.
dingwon That just shows how great American universities are
Toffy Montana Well, the education system is been in a shambles since around the 1950s, if not before. A 2.0 grade average student can be smarter than a 4.0 grade average student. All grade average determines is the level of obedience.
So glad I watched it. I'm pursuing a joint honours degree in physics and math in one of the best unis there are and even though I'm studying day and night, I'm just being crushed by this program. Giving up has crossed my mind more than once and it's difficult to turn to your love for physics and math for motivation when you just feel burned out and you still gotta wake up the next day and give a good 12 hours of studying.
This vid gave me some motivation. With all the enormous pressure, I still love physics and can't picture myself doing anything else in life. I don't want to be the guy who in 30 years from now drives a truck and dreams about all the fascinating physics he could have been doing for a living.
As I always said of myself, I am nothing but a scientist without papers that say so. Love physics, chemistry, and all that stuff, heck, when I went to high school, I was the opposite student there, I insisted to get chemistry for 4 years, sadly they never gave it to me, although they said to everyone else that it was a requirement. Since then, I have tried to teach myself through everything I can grab, and hope for the best. Remember, work is simply work, but it is then learned when found and applied. Remember as well that no matter if you have the certificates or not, you'll still be a physicist by heart, a paper is nothing but a sheet composed of nothing but wood cell fibers with other chemicals and ink, which might contain copper, iron, and such. I got no degrees in anything, although I always wanted to have a diploma and PhD in most of the science skills, but right now it seems like I won't be able to have any. Oh how I look at the world, it's as if I can take everything apart with my mind. Go and continue studying, get that paper and be done with it, thus that's only labor work you're doing by memory, later on you'll be able to learn more on your own with what you already know by simply experimenting
Keep going man. Hang in there and I'm sure you will make it :-)
Please continue to pursue your dream of being a physicist. The scene where I'm walking along next to Professor Frisch, I'm explaining to him how embarrassed I was at dropping out of the university in my junior year back in 1968 and not getting my BS in physics. He responded by asking me what BS stood for. I responded "Bachelor of Science?" "No, the other BS. MS is 'More of the Same' and PhD is 'Piled higher and Deeper.' They mean almost nothing. You've done what none of them has done, and not for lack of trying. That's why you're here today." I stopped to see him again a month or so ago and presented him with an updated copy of my book. He then asked if I wanted to come back and give another talk. "Absolutely!"
If you want to know more, look up my New Yorker interview from 2008. I started my book as a small pamphlet and it is now 422 pages. Look up the "Readers Reviews" on my Amazon page. The National Archives opened up a collection of my papers at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library last year. Not bad for a trucker. BTW. Being alone in a truck for hours at a time with almost no traffic results in an almost limitless amounts of "Ah Ha" moments. My forehead also has a permanent dent from all the Homer Simpson "Doh!" slaps.
Well this title was misleading
"do you have a sandwich?"
"do you have sandwiches?"
"put the stuff down and were going to go have a sandwich"
Science! but first: Food!
i mean sandwich is good
This guy reminds me of Walter White
liamwhite3 shit i was gonna say the same thing
liamwhite3 Do you mean Walter black?
me to
Who cares
@@williambergener7820 Everyone here except one narcisstic dumbass.
i dont see why its a big deal that he's a truck driver, hes a fuckin genius, he put his mind into something and did it, its not your profession that matters but your efforts and capabilities.
The casing/mechanism of the bomb itself is not a big deal. The material used for the nuclear fission (Uranium 235) is the big deal. You need it very highly enriched to make the bomb blow. And to enrich uranium to the level needed, you need big facilities with a lot of very specific equipment. I doubt someone can enrich uranium for a bomb and pass unnoticed by the government (at least on the USA).
Absolutely correct!
It only uses 1.3 percent or something close to that of the Uranium 235, the rest just disintegrates.
In my opinion the facilities are not the problem. They were big to create enough fissionable material in a short time range. If you build them on a very miniature scale, they might be usable for enrichment, but it will take you decades.
So you will need a lot of time and a lot of patience.
The much bigger problem is in my opinion the following:
Even if you have success with a scaled down facility, you still need to move and process tons of raw uran material to get the required amount of U235 for just one bomb.
This is the real problem.
Lots and lots of smoke detectors
Vague Ginger the only thing is that smoke detectors contain Americium, not uranium.
A shame he put so much work into it and didnt get to test it properly. Syria or Iraq would have been a good starting point..
iPixels ايبكسلز You can't pretend that Iraq and Syria aren't a growing global problem at this point in time. You have a pretty biased stand point judging by your username.
Do you have any idea of "jihad"?
ALLAHU AKBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR
RandomStoof sorry, apparently i didn't ask you!
Fokusu first of all you are wrong aecond jihad is a holy war defending our land from any kind of religion its defending not attacking
He lets out a hoot from his gas guzzling big rig because he figured out how to build a nuclear bomb. It doesn't get any more 'merican than that. (wipes away tear)
*Diesel
I'm surprised our ridiculous government hasn't labeled this guy a terrorist and thrown him in jail.
Five years ago I was told by someone who works for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) that I was "well known to the Feds" and that "the powers that be are scared of you and what you did because you were able to collect from unclassified sources" yet I have never been contacted, visited, or warned in any way not to publish anything. I know for a fact there was some high-level internal Los Alamos discussion back in 2005 about trying to stop me in some way, but they wisely decided otherwise.
John Coster-Mullen Perhaps that "someone" was talking out of their ass. People do.
John Coster-Mullen
Holy shit, I think it's gone to his head. Figures.
i cant' hear you over my freedom 'murica. lol
Finish your degree!!! It's never to late. LEARN WHAT INSPIRES YOU! God can help you get through anything! Cheers mate!
All good advice. What's God's phone number? He sounds really helpful. Is he easy to reach?
zack B 1-240-776-2323
The Guy Right Up Your Street YES!!! He is really helpful. Thanks man. I was gonna go finish my degree, but it turns out I already have a mansion waiting for me when I die, so I'm just gonna kind of have fun in ways that slowly make me die. Fuck education, I got *promises* now.
zack B Okay.
Not into conversation? That's cool. My dog gets bored of me too. Like this one time, I was walking my dog, and his name is donald, and he's a mutt. like, not a mutt mutt, but he's not a pure breed. Do you ever read "bread" when you read "breed"? Yeah, so do I. Sometimes I accidentally type it that way and I'm like "Noooo zack B, you're dyslexic!!", but then I read it and I think "oh, zack B, you are a silly silly man". But when I'm out walking my dog, his name is donald, and I don't capitalize it. I just let him be donald little 'd'. He don't care about no titles. He's a dog. He's just happy someone made his sound. I guess people are really the same way, until they start feeling entitled. Huh. En"titled". Like you demand to have titles and pretense, and not just be you and get what you gets. Nope, you got NAMES, bitch. Anyway, me and little 'd' donald are out walking, and I'm just chatting him up, and I can tell that he's like "zack B, there are *smells* and *bitches* afoot, stfu", and then in my head I'm like"dooonald, your a dog, you don't know how to abbreviate", and then, in my head also, he'll say a little something back, like he gets the joke, but then I remember what happened last time I went on a walk and imagined scenarios where donald, the one with the little 'd', could talk and we joke, and I get back to reality with my dog donald. So, we're out walking and I'll be chatting him up, and he'll not like it, too. Just like you didn't.
Anyone else notice the face at 6:37 ?
Also, to the right of the face is a man squatting down on top on a goat's head, he has both hands on the head and the top of the mans head has a dark circle. At frame 6:38 the goat head has it's tongue out and the man on top still has both hands holding onto the top of the head, and you can see his left leg still. The big face in the middle looks like it morphs into someone's face who is wearing glasses.
how the fuck did you spot that
ung427
you have either a: been up WAAAY too long, or b: eaten some badass hallucinogens that you should share with the rest of us ;)
if you watch other videos of that blast and most other blasts those faces look very disturbing.
***** It is the face of GOD
5:31 I was driving next to him when he let out that "whoop" and pulled the air horn. It was loud.
Stop lying
@@GuyGuy599 it’s a joke
John, you have achieved more than 99% of people ever achieve in their lives. Your dogged determination in reverse engineering these designs shows a strength of character above and beyond nearly all of us. I look forward to reading your work with immense anticipation and excitement. Bravo
Good on the guy for building his pet project
Great little documentary there, congratulations on all your hard work, and finally getting some recognition.
Thanks. I was honestly surprised when Motherboard contacted me back in 2009 and told me they wanted to do a short documentary about me and my research. I'm taken aback that almost 300,000 have viewed this so far! If someone had told me in 1993 that my unique form of research (Nuclear Archeology) would someday wind up as a groundbreaking book, a major cover story ("Atomic John") in the New Yorker magazine, this documentary, screen credit in a dozen films, and a collection of my papers housed permanently in the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, I would have told them they were stark raving nuts!
John Coster-Mullen you clearly are the smartest trucker i've ever listened to. cool video.
John Coster-Mullen your story is very inspiring goes to show with drive and effort everything is possible thanks for the inspiration.
Are we all being watched by the NSA now? Just for watching this? Probably.
I dont want to scare you more then you already are but anyone who types in the word nuclear on any internetbrowser is logged and evaluated,that doesnt mean they'll actualy gonne knock on your door for vieuwing one or even a few videos about that,but iff you would spend hours on end watching them and downloading technical data,they would ;-)
All you need to do now build a replica B-29
Well.. all the drawings exist online, so it should be no real problem... just expansive.
well the B-29s had to be modified, so all you have to do is rebuild either Enola Gay or Bockscar.
*****
Not quite there were lots of Silverplate B29's made that were not Enola Gay or Bockscar
This man deserves a scholarship to pursue his dreams!
I feel bad for this brilliant man :/ i'm studying physics myself ... makes me angry and sad that he didn't have this opportunity
To paraphrase Vizzini from The Princess Bride "Fermi, Oppenheimer, Einstein? Morons."
"There will always be warfare."--Have we not evolved at least to the point that peace can even be imagined? Thought the last one was "the war to end all wars". Fascinating documentary. Pray for Peace.
Ive worked in academia for 25yrs and its great to see the layman deliver to this standard its a great reminder to the snobs to listen to the "uneducated". Im seriously impressed at your skill and tenacity.. you prove without doubt that todays technical limitations and thresholds are not static but dynamic and over time these limits become available to the mainstream in general.. The last 10,000 yrs of human civilisation are built on this concept but conveniently forgotten but the ignorant and egotistical.
Im wondering what are you going to do next??? Reverse engineer the SR71??
Its interesting your comments on Japans covert nuke program. Rest assured that any country that has a public nuclear power program is really just a front for covert enrichment hence the big hard-sell to the public for these assets since the 50s. So add Taiwan and others to the list..
Happy New Year Robert.
Steven
Xing Pan
Happy year of the horse.... lets catch up sometime
......do you have a sandwich?......do you have sandwiches?........-_-
I wonder why he quit his physics degree program?.....any work is honorable work, but it seems a shame that a highly intelligent man(obviously) didn't utilize his talents fully
Although I took trig in HS as part of an advanced math program, and was the assistant for our Chemistry teacher (who worked on the Manhattan Project), I had to take calculus in my Junior year at the University. It may as well have been Martian and that was back when there were no tutors/mentors...sink or swim...and sadly I sank and watched my BS degree vanish in front of my eyes.
John Coster-Mullen I can relate......I was weak in math and I knew calculus would be a struggle...I attempted calculus in my second year at college.....and started the the year with a cold so bad I could hardly see the blackboard....after a couple of weeks I raised the white flag.....its too bad, because I would have liked to have been a pharmacist,(which obviously didn't use calculus) but without that calculus pre-requisite, it wasn't meant to be......
You have accomplished something that very few other individuals would be capable of, and I hope that is a source of pride for you.
FMHammyJ
As the University of Chicago Professor explained to me in that scene where we are walking together outside, the reason you are here today giving this talk is that, even though thousands have tried, NONE of the folks with those degrees have done what you have accomplished. I took pride in that. They have even invited me back to give another talk, this time to a huge classroom next month.
hep.uchicago.edu/~ykkim/Colloquium-2014-2015/spring2015.html
+John Coster-Mullen A lot of very smart people never complete a degree and a lot of people who aren't very smart complete a degree. I've seen both. Some people with Ph.Ds spend the rest of their days not accomplishing much of anything except writing papers that no one other than other academics will read, whereas your work has earned high praise.
Guy: builds an A-bomb
Japan: why do I hear boss music?
Your on the wrong side of the internet
The funny thing is just how easy it is to find out the basics of how to pretty much build an nuke. Granted, this guy here might be the reason I found the info on at least the two that were used on Japan.
I did a science fair project on nuclear weapons in 6th grade, this was back in about 05 or 06, and I could literally find the basic information about how to build my own thermo-nuclear device just by using Google. I could even find a breakdown of Hydrogen bombs. It was pretty crazy how simple it is to get your hands on that.
BUT I guess it's understandable considering just how hard it is to get plutonium and uranium (at least 235 which is used in the bombs).
I bet the neighbors just love it!
When my neighbor helped me finish it late one night, I turned to him and remarked that I now had "Neighborhood Nuclear Superiority." "I can even hit your house from my garage!" he had a nervous laugh.
The video revealed you as a very normal guy John! As a Texas resident, I expected someone less sane, maybe even likely to drive around with the thing in the bed of a pickup truck just for the shock effect. Kind of like a definite statement on gun control.
I enjoy bright eccentric people. One set of my neighbors are ex-USAF SAC folks from Minot, ND. B52 people. We had a grim laugh when I told them they had been on the "Dream Team" in the ultimate team sport, strategic nuclear warfare.
To me, your model is a grim reminder that we need to control these damn things. Sadly, I don't think we'll be able to eliminate them.
Bravo!
Pete Flynn
Thanks for the kind comments. If you want to know more, put my name in Google and read the New Yorker article about me.
John, have you ever been to Hiroshima or Nagasaki? - Foreigner living in Japan.
I spent almost a week in Hiroshima in 2010. I discovered they already had my book in their Peace Memorial Research Museum library. I presented them with a signed, updated copy. Unfortunately, it was too far for me to travel to Nagasaki in the time allotted.
John Coster-Mullen you're such an incredible guy :'3 You have such a large thirst for knowledge, or at least knowledge on how to kill 100,000's or maybe even millions of people at a time haha. A true inspiration and gentleman! Good work sir! :3
ThaGamer Kid, no one cares about your tears. Or those who tried to dominate the world in WW2. Why didnt we bomb germany and russia is more like it...
Cynical Zombie Hey, at least you stick to your name; because you're obviously brainless!
Cynical Zombie people do care but only to a certain extent not really enough to do anything so in a way your right
This story is vastly more interesting than the drivel that's served up on television these days. Good work.
An incredible achievement John, you should be justifiably proud. I've long had a fascination with the nuclear age, in particular the advent of nuclear weapons, their strategy and deployment. So the 2 first tactical weapons, fat man and little boy are of particular interest to me. Any chance you might make some scale models in metal? My orders are here if you do!
Look me up on Google to read some articles, then look up my book "Atom Bombs" on Amazon. BTW. There were some companies in Europe (Brumm, Kora) that made plastic models some years ago, but I don't know if they are still available.
Why does this guy remind me of Walter White?
Is motherboard somehow connected with vice? The quality of these "docs" would certainly suggest so..
yes motherboard is a branch of vice
Vice and Motherboard make many excellent documentaries!
There is a lot more about building the bomb than reverse engineering its various components. For just a glimpse of the calculations involved in creating the first prototype, refer to the "Los Alamos Primer" which presents the problem that they faced before the project was completed. Mr. Coster-Mullen's research is phenomenal but there is a lot more to making the bomb than the measurements and the work that he did. Nice video, Ciao, L
6:19 Russell's Military Museum. Awesome place to visit. Alot of Military vehicles and a HUGE indoor display too. North of Gurnee IL just south of the Wisconsin border
The Americans Bomb Japan,
A few decades later they say it was tragic.
James Bond From Microsoft Tech Suppport Yes, a tragedy caused by Japan's complete unwillingness to surrender up to that point.
www.mputtre.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/copy_of_w_p_speech.pdf
They Just didnt want to give up.
they wanted to protect there country
James Bond From Microsoft Tech Suppport Japan attacked the US. Just remember who started it. It doesn't matter who ended it or how, it matters who started it. If you shot a bear with an airsoft gun, you should expect no less than to get mauled to death.
Chace "It doesn't matter who ended it or how" I think how a war ends is very important.
***** I didn't quite mean it like that, of course the outcome matters, everything that happens in a war leads up to that point, but I think the end to WW2 was justified. Was it a terrible thing? Yes, war was never a good thing, thousands of years ago worse things than Hiroshima were happening, whole empires would be razed to the ground and the inhabitants slaughtered. I'm sick of seeing everyone talk about how the US was out of line by dropping those bombs. Japan could've prevented it all, the US did NOT want to enter WW2. You can't get mad at the US for ending something that Japan started, regardless of how the US ended it.
War never changes!
Thank God it remains a state secret! I hope it always remains so! MiF
The flight crew of the planes dropping those nukes would NOT know the internal specifications of those top secret weapons. They would not have been ALLOWED to know. The point remains that it took hundreds of the best scientists of Europe and the US, all sequestered together in a specially-built town, years of full-time work to figure out how to design and make those weapons.
This guy is way too cool.
I'm not surprised feminists would cheer the female role in the Atomic bomb.
You man have won life. 👍🏾
Owen Prescott A fantastically talented LA Songwriter Gabriele Morgan just created a song about Little Boy based on my book and the New Yorker article about me.
gabrielemorgan.com/TracksAgain/big-mama.mp3
+John Coster-Mullen i have been trying to find your book but to no avail. Are you going to be selling anymore?
You can contact me at john.costermullen@gmail.com.
I look at it more like “reverse cowgirl”
;)
Much too humble. Not a lot of people could've constructed a 1:1 replica of an automobile much less a sophisticated atom splitting weapon.
Nietzsche Ban gun type fission weapons are less complex than cars. I can design hydrogen bombs. I can't design a whole car.
You sir, did a verry good job in saving a piece of history, respect for you and the guys of the 509th.
war never changes
That made me want to play fallout
@@mediocrebrony HAhahaaaaaa same here it quotes this saying in fallout 4
It is not the bomb it's self that is difficult to make ,but the active ingredients for example the uranium , refined weapons grade uranium .
Even then, it's pretty difficult to even procure these ingredients.
Eamon Campbell-June Easy to procure , difficult to refine ,or manufacture the weapons grade 235 uranium is really complex to manufacture , the British had a nuclear weapons program before the Americans in WW2 but they lacked the industrial capacity to refine the uranium , so they handed it to the Americans to develop , interestingly after the war the Brits wanted the A bomb the Yanks told them to fuck off so they developed their own , WE never learn, Anyway you can make a very small reactor at home ,very easy but to do it and not poison yourself with rad very difficult.
Very cool and interesting story. It's unfortunate that you weren't able to obtain your physics degree. The world of physics would have been lucky to have you in it. Be it as it may, being a truck driver is not only a very demanding but also an absolutely essential profession. Because EVERYTHING you buy was brought by truck. I know, my Dad did it for 42 years. Without a single accident I might add. So while the physics world may have lost a good one, it seems the trucking world hasn't. Good Job!
The first thing a particle physician asks them when they walk in: Do you have sandwiches?
The talk I gave in that film was at the noon luncheon so Henry walked us first down to the University Commissary to buy us sandwiches to eat while I gave that talk. This famous luncheon talk was a tradition started by Enrico Fermi after he returned from working on the Manhattan Project. The physicists would gather in that very lunch room to eat their sandwiches and he would ask them what they were working on at that moment and to tell everyone in that lunch room all about it.
@O G During my quarter century of research on these two bombs, I have had the privilege of hearing many conversations from both scientists and the members of the air group that dropped those bombs. Sadly, almost all of them have since passed away. I tried to include all of the important comments in my book.
Do you have a sandwich? Do you have a sandwich? How about you? Lets get some sandwiches.
Well, that ended on a rather morbid, depressing, and unnecessarily dark note/tone...
reality's a dark bitch bro #nighttime #bitches #longexposuretimes #doremefasolatido
John Doe #votesrepublican
lol at 15:00 the blurred out Coca-Cola truck xD
Blurring didn't really work there, guys!
people need to know how fucking easy it is to build a nuclear weapon once you have the materials... something needs to be done for the saftey of future generations. i'm glad this guy pointed it out so undeniably.
I am curious as to what provoked interest on such a dark subject to the point of re-creating one of mans greatest down falls toward humanity?
Its not that I don't appreciate the efforts and vast knowledge required to undertake such a subject in the ways you have and the drive you posses.
But now that you have clearly made your abilities publicly known, do you have any plans to further yourself with something more positive in nature that has some beneficial effect for science, or does this mark the pinnacle of your works?
speaking true
What provoked interest.... Just like everyone else, fame and importance because he doesn't have it inside.
blogobre
OMG! I sought none of that at all. Look me up on Google to get a sense of who I really am. You can start by reading all of my responses posted here. BTW. This is what a Silicon Valley CEO wrote about my 20+ years of research.
----------------
John, Silicon Valley salutes you as one of their own. Clearly, the passion that drove you do do this rages no less fiercely in Wisconsin than it does in garages the length and breadth of Santa Clara county. While you toiled on recreating an atomic weapon, geeks here were crafting Google, Yahoo!, eBay and GolfBalls.com. They made millions, while you did it purely for the intellectual challenge. In fact, let me restate things: Silicon Valley should worship you as a new god. At least our garage-dwelling brethren could argue that there was a chance of fame, fortune and hot babes at the end of their journeys (and particularly in the case of benefit number three this would be their only path to such riches) whereas your passion, burning just as bright but with a flame far more pure, was most unlikely to bring you any of those three gifts. And nothing - but nothing - earns you more street cred than that, at least round these here zip codes. Therefore, I hereby induct you into the SV Hall of Ultimate Geekdom. It's not a complex process, in fact I need only speak the sacred words, passed down from generation (X) to generation (Y), to reflect your joining at the highest level of membership.
"Dude. Awesome."
You couldn't have said it better.
Thank you for sharing.
John Coster-Mullen
gay
as an arab, i find this interesting
ok you want to make an atomic bomb?
Lmao
Uh oh
Amazing! The only thing that keeps us all from building an A-Bomb in our garden shed is the availability of the radioactive isotopes
He got the easy part down. The hard part is getting all the equipment involved in safely purifying, transporting, storing and handling uranium/plutonium along with getting the uranium/plutonium, itself.
Then you have to prepare it for the accelerator using a series of chemical processes. I'm pretty sure you can't just stick yellow cake in front of a particle gun.
Then you need the information on getting the right strength/length particle accelerator to send the right amount of the right type of particles into the uranium/plutonium so that it becomes weapons grade.
And then the material needs to be in the right shape. In the case of the Big Boy, the primers have to be spaced so exactly that they create the spherical compression wave required to trigger a nuclear fission event. Also, these primers have to be an exact strength.
Basically... Nuclear weapons are a pain in the ass to make. The casing is probably the easiest part.
Plus, Devgru... No chance, lol.
he kind of looks like an older leonardo dicaprio
i met Paul Tibbets once he was the pilot who dropped the bombs. He said if he had to do over he would never have dropped those bombs
lucky43113 Pure Bovine Stuff!! I knew Paul for over a decade, had meals with him, gave talks together, had adjoining hotel rooms, and heard him talk many times. What he said in private is what he said in public. He never changed his story at all. He never regretted what he did nor lost any sleep over it.
John Coster-Mullen it was during desert storm when i met him we had a parade for a few troops here in town and he was here i wanted an autograph but didnt feel it was right to ask
lucky43113 He graciously did autographs all the time. Did you actually hear him say that?? Do you, or anyone else, have a tape of that to verify it? Witnesses?
John Coster-Mullen i didnt record it but my dad was with me i was a young at the time he was just setting at a table they had set up at the end of the parade route. Im aware he did autographs but it felt odd asking
lucky43113 I also knew his best friend, and Enola Gay Navigator Ted Van Kirk for longer than that and he told me the very same thing many times...that Paul never changed his story. Paul was a straight up guy. I have also heard many of the vets say they regretted that it was necessary the bombs had to be dropped, but did not regret doing their job, as awful as that is, which was to help stop the war by making the enemy hurt so much they would surrender. Unless you are a sadist, nobody enjoys killing another person, yet killing the enemy is part and parcel of warfare and has been since the beginning of time. They grit their teeth and did their job no matter how unpleasant. Tibbets, Van Kirk, and Tom Freebee (their bombardier) were veterans of some 60 combat missions together over North Africa, Italy, and Germany before they went to Hiroshima. They were very familiar with "Death From Above."
Building bombs is a felony, but everything is anymore. Love the Walter White School of Technology approach to making an A-Bomb.
we studied the blueprints when I was in university, very simple design, a gun barrel, uranium/plutonium, a projectile, an explosive
Ur number
Compare Nagasaki to Detroit and make up your mind !
lol he recreated a atom bomb but he drives a toyota
FYI. That was the film crew's rental car. I drive a Ford Taurus.
John Coster-Mullen oh ok sorry
John Coster-Mullen
Lots of respect to you sir, the were right the bad guys have such plans already. We should not been, withheld this at all.
***** yes, yes it is
I'm sure many of the scientists involved with the Manhattan Project drove Toyotas.
I too would rather build destructive weapons rather than ones that would save lives, where's the awesomeness in that man????
If our library doesn't have a copy I will have to buy one for them. Keep on truckin '.
Sorry , you have probably heard that one ad nause. Enjoyed watching, thanks.
watch out for my atomic bin. this guy made the body of an atomic bomb not a real atomic bomb.
"Coster-Mullen's ambitious project is certainly a neat example of the ingenuity that led America to be the first to develop the atomic bomb."
You mean the 'ingenuity' to get a real genius from Germany over to explain it to them.
America fooling itself into believing they can build and engineer again.
Thing is, it's true America has a shit education system, but most of the world's best and most prestigious universities in almost all fields are in the US. But if you look at the last names of the people in these top universities or tech companies they are Chang, Kumar, Muller or Kalinsky.
Instead of spiriting away scientists, the scientists now head to the US voluntarily.
That just goes with the saying the victor writes history, and guess who won?
PolarisIII
No, see, America writes its own history, but America is also the only one who buys it. This only implies that you're 'victor' in a meaningless battle with yourselves, which I suppose makes sense in a way, and in practice it just manifests itself in misleading (and frankly often pathetic) propaganda directed at your own people in the same vein that you would accuse the Russians of. The same self-inflated and untrue boasting that led everyone to be surprised when the economy crashed.
Johnny Natrium Einstein and Oppenheimer were both US Citizens at the time which makes the creation American. Ingenuity is a matter of subjectivity and is therefore of no consequence to anyone other than those that view something as ingenuity or not.
Which real German genius would that be?
This is a part of history, it shouldn't be brushed under the carpet and ignored just because our modern sensibilities recoil from the result of dropping the bombs. We should be celebrating the brilliance of the minds that conceived and built the weapon that stopped a war and ushered in decades of relative peace.
For those who don't get it, this guy made a MODEL, like your model cars you build from a kit in which every part is made of plastic and only LOOKS like the real thing. The amazing feat is he figured it out with no plans, and apparently came pretty close to accurately representing a mock-up of the real bomb. He ought to see about marketing a kit for the hobbyist who wants to be the first on his block with a realistic, easy-to-build, scale or life-size model of Little Boy... a MODEL, OK?
The real tag for this video should have been: kids don't drop out of college, you will dearly regret it.
i'm in total awe of this guy and in much respect..even when if i was a little kid i used to dream about nuclear detonations..My mother told me recently she used to work on a nuclear base. I still have the interest of the atomic bomb and how this works and trust me...i hope it will never will be used again, because i've dreamed a lot about it and seen a lot of movies of what the end results. I only admire the science about it and how mankind could accomplish that.
Here's an interesting twist to your story John. 2 years after the war in 1947, the only nuclear weapons carrying base in the world was Walker air force base at Roswell New Mexico. In order to guard over that site there were 3 high power radar sites around new mexico. In the megawatt range of power. ET ships use a resonant field to invoke propulsion and the irony is that high power radar can disrupt that field and did. Not just the Roswell incident but 2 others in 47 and 48. They were retrieved.
LOL you watched that too? That one trucker was a BOSS! The bananas in the axle were awesome.
kids, stay in school!
is pretty much the take-home message of this video.
My dad makes me proud hes a professional truck driver and hes a very smart man too.
This story reminds me of my him he probably would of been a good drummer or bussines man.
Just a little correction. At the first of the video, it say that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended world war II. Wrong the bombing ended the life of 150.000 to 246.000 innocent people.
We need to learn two things, to call things by their real names and to admit that killing innocent people is never the answer.
No matter who you are what you do or what you believe in, learn to love each other and raise yourself and your children to be more tolerant and acceptable of other races, believes and religions.
Wars are started over greed and egoism and should be stopped by prevention. Why waste trillions of dollars every year just do you can flex your muscles and scare the life of your neighbor, that at his turn will deprive his people from bare necessities so he can afford to acquire the same weapons you own or even worse.
Please don't get me wrong, I think this documentary is excellent it shows how anyone can make anything just by putting their mind to it. So please lets learn to put our mind to making things that will benefit humanity other than destroy it.
This is just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Thank you for reading.
He's probably riding around with this live bomb in the back of his 18 wheeler waiting for someone to totally piss him off.
That's Optimus Primes alter ego, in his spare time he pretends to be normal but still gets super hero status.
The design of the bomb is actually quite simple. The implosion device probably the harder of the two. Because focused spherical lenses had to be manufactured to reflect every ounce of explosive energy of the det charges. In addition to an electrical circuit that could fire them all exactly at the same time. Like squeezing an orange equally across its entire surface all at once. This put the Uranium pit in to super critical. The gun bomb was just like a giant cannon that fired one piece at the other. Correct me if I am wrong.
hes not making an atomic bomb. he's replication the bombs for not only personal pleasure, but for the public to lear more about such a guarded secret.
oh, I've just watched the WHOLE video and see he sussed out the schematics of little boys internal mechanisms. Very impressive.
Absolutely awesome! Thanks VICE!
I understand that you can actually learn something in college, but when I wrote the comment I was drunk and pissed off, and when i'm drunk and pissed off I tend to forget things. lol
I clicked on this thinking this guy straight up built an actual nuke.
Amazing job, I'd love to have that sort of tenacity to see a massive project like that to its completion. I'm sort of glad that despite these devices being easy to make that weapons quality uranium/plutonium are hard to obtain (at least that's my hope!)
what a pride... u created something that wiped out thousands of ppl in a moment
How true. Yet according to historical,record, this horrible weapon caused Emperor Hirohito to finally stand up to his war cabinet and end WWII six days after Nagasaki thus saving countless millions of lives that would have been lost on both sides had the anticipated invasion taken place!
You guys make really good and interesting documentaries. CARRY ON !!!
I don't think he hates his life, everyone can have some sadness and regret within but the fact that he is now pursuing his dreams speaks to the opposite. Education does not breed intelligence, education merely forms your mind to be able to learn but there are plenty of brilliant people who never graduated high school.
This guy has such a great past, sometimes people wish they could be who they want without having circumstances in life.
He chose to be a truck driver
plot twist: He actually made a nuclear weapon but he hides the truth with different story to avoid any trouble
August 6/1945 Little boy is released, 43 seconds later the world changes forever.
Make another one and cut the side open and smoothen the edges add some cushioning in the shell
Then you have a awesome looking couch
Love this John; Im interested in nuclear fusion and am, with a few other interested parties, at this moment putting together a ghetto fusor ;) I do the math and the other interested parties carry out the engineering parts kind of putting the pieces of the jigsaw together; I show them what the completed pic should look like, if you get me ;) brilliant job John; wish you lived on our side of the pond; we would definitely be friends :)
He was persuing a B.S. in Physics and dropped out during his junior year. He has a pretty good basic understanding in physics (mechanics/heat, E&M, introduction to modern physics) if he got to his junior year.
Sorry I should've been more specific. By functional i meant a trigger mechanism ready to go. I guess you're right, it would'nt be that hard to modify the replica (if the innards were intentionally miss-built) to the specifications needed.
Ever heard of Pelindaba? Google "attack on pelindaba" if you want to see some scary shit.
at 12 minutes in, he says the truth. It's a bitter remark, but it's missing foreknowledge of just how that particular conflict came about.
This guy's a boss