My Aunt, Mary Argo was a nuclear physicist recruited along with her husband Harold (also a physicist) from Brown University in 1943 to be a part of the Manhattan Project. She was assigned to calculate what a nuclear blast would do to the Earths atmosphere after detonation. She was the ONLY woman scientist invited to the Trinity test. Herself and husband Harold would say on their only day off (Sunday) that themselves and Edward Teller would hike into the desert mountains and NEVER talk of what they were working towards creating. She died young of a heart attack while hiking in New Mexico in 1986 at 66 years old. In a way seems somewhat fitting. After the war they made Los Alamos their home for good.
@@DvinexOfficial Don't know, haven't seen the movie yet. When she passed in 1986 a large write up in Los Alamos defined her accomplishments for the Manhattan Project and the fact she was the only woman invited to the Trinity test and who stood near Oppenheimer, Groves and Edward Teller (who was a friend) during the first ever detonation of such a devastatingly destructive device. Unfortunately, Hollywood likes to bend the truth for entertainment purposes.
@@DvinexOfficialnow I could be wrong, but I'm 99% sure I'm not. There definitely wasn't a female scientist in oppenheimer , at least not one with any dialogue in the movie.
THE ATOMIC BOMB KILL 350 THOUSAND PEOPLE IN MINUTES WANT NOT IN GERMANY BUT JAPAN? THE USA LIKE THIS POWRT SO MUCH KNOW WE HAVE NUCLEAR READY TO BE USED AGAIN AGAINST HUMANITY; I DO NOT SEE NOTHING GREAT IN THIS CREATION;
I loved watching this before and again after watching Nolan's Oppeneheimer. It is indeed baffling to see all those characters in the movie and the real ones here.
Same. Although this was so much richer in historical commentary and anecdotes, i.e. the babies, and especially the number of Russian sources. This was a fantastic documentary.
There are a myriad of documentaries out there on the Manhattan Project. By far, this one exceeds the rest. The details, inside quirks, interviews with the men there, and the narrator make it so. None of the men who were actually there in July of 1945 at Trinity are alive anymore in 2019, including the men specifically noted in this documentary. Thankfully and gratefully it's survived and now saved via UA-cam for generations to come.
Truly amazing group of individuals brought together. There was no computer, no calculator, no email, just pure brains, paper and pencil / chalk, my grandparents generation were amazing, unfortunately so much brilliance for such a horrific development, although many other amazing side science developments as a result. Very interesting documentary.
...and we sent men to the moon using paper, pencil, chalk, and a slide rule. When I took my Registered Professional Engineer's exam, I brought along a slide rule. I was using it on one problem, and caught a young fellow looking at me and grinning. Hey, it was Y2K compliant!
My first cousin twice removed, Dr Donald MacRae, who was a physicist and later the Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, and yes, he was a Canadian, landed a job at Oak Ridge to find ways to enrich plutonium for the Manhattan program. He worked closely with the Oppenheimer team to undertake, albeit a hurried process, to insure the program was ready for deployment.
Without question… Put this on it anytime but at 3 AM in the morning and you’re guaranteed another good hour of sleep… That ladies voice alone can put you out in a matter of 90 seconds
Lived out there for 22 years near Tularosa. Bits and pieces of the project still remain if you know where to look. Quiet and eerie now, it was the first place of ultimate cataclysm. Overhead, the knowing hawk still screeches in fear. My time on the range was uncomfortable. I won’t go back, though I did enjoy the video.
The Los Alamos Primer is a brilliant book, the Manhattan Project is what literally fueled my passion, and the ultimate reason why I went on to become a physicist.
@@ShellYoung No! Physics is not all about "weapons";the scientist that worked on the Manhattan project didn't care about the bomb as much as they cared about the science. I personally work in nuclear medicine we save lives, technically if we didn't discover the bomb we wouldn't have MRI machines or Chemotherapy.
@@plupkination Pretty simple they use Cobalt 60 and other isotopes in chemotherapy to help with the gamma radiation your body gets blasted with during radiation treatments. Cobalt 60 is found in plutonium, plutonium was discovered while mining for uranium to make the bomb. www.princeton.edu/news/2014/02/27/beyond-bomb-atomic-research-changed-medicine-biology
This is arguably the best documentary on the subject of the making of the first atomic weapons I’ve seen. It is very thorough (for a one hour video) yet understandable for the lay person.
47:32 That's my dad. He was in the photography unit. He's wearing the ID bracelet my mom gave him. 47:40 He's also the one taking aerial footage and stills.
If the critics of the atom bombings had personally experienced the fanatical enemy resistance on Iwo Jima and Okinawa they'd realize that without those bombings the Japanese would've inflicted, and suffered, a great deal many more casualties than those bombings caused. My father and uncle would've been involved in the invasion of the home islands. They were delighted that the war ended when it did, considering what they faced.
General Groves doesn't get the credit he deserves. The amount of stuff he had to envision and plan for to oversee this thing is gargantuan - things that had never been done before, and massive construction projects that had to be built fast - and done without the true purpose being known. An amazing feat of engineering and vision.
@@jendelapermai Groves didn't have the idea for an implosion bomb. Richard Tolman brought up the idea to Robert Serber in the summer of 1942. They sent a memo to Arthur Compton detailing the idea. They spoke to Oppenheimer about the idea in October of 1942. A sketch and discussion of implosion are included in the "Los Alamos Primer" written by Robert Serber. That was required reading for all new scientists coming to Los Alamos and based on Serber's original five lectures given to the first group to arrive at Los Alamos. Groves had NOTHING to do with the idea of implosion.
@@buckhorncortez Your statement, 100% disproven by the words of Edward Teller, as noted above. He was a scientist. If it was at first the idea of scientists, he would have been certain to note that.
My Dad was there. He was drafted into the Army while he was studying electrical engineering at Cal-Tech in Pasadena CA. After basic training they sent him to Los Alamos where he worked on the detonators for the Plutonium bomb. It was him who climbed the tower to install and connect the detonators at Alamagordo. He used to say, "We didn't start the war, but we finished it." Other than that, he didn't have a lot to say about the project. He never looked back, but was always focused on the present, and lived to be 86. He also helped build the rope tow ski lift in Los Alamos that is shown in some reports. He had a brilliant mind. Talking with him was like coming into the light after being in twilight. His biggest fear was of becoming senile in old age, but he stayed sharp, and worked very hard, and very smart until the end. He used to quote Jesus sometimes, who said, "The meek shall inherit the earth."
My grandfather has a certificate for working on Manhattan project at Hanford, WA. He died at 42 when my dad was 2. My grandmother was pregnant with their 8th child. They said he died of enlarged heart. They said due to something else. Not the project. I moved away from the area after high school but live here now. A lot of cancer here and many in my family. Including my daughter.
People made sacrifices they didn't even know they were going to make I mean they had no clue at the time probably of these terrible health issues to come....collateral damage
Lisa Meitner was the first to prove fission was possible. She past her findings to Einstein who brought the news to US by boat in person to Roosevelt. She was finally given credit in the book "The Making Of The Bomb". Einstein was never involved in the Manhattan project preferring to stay meutral.
I agree, but with one exception… 48:30 - Potsdam, Yugoslavia: 😧 🤯 I cannot believe that a documentary produced by an institution of higher-education made such a huge factual error! Potsdam is in Germany, approximately 30 km, west-southwest of Berlin. It is approximately 250 km north of the former Yugoslavia, present-day Czech Republic. This is not just a small goof up. This is roughly the equivalent of saying, “…the conference was held in Versailles, Belgium.” The Neues Palais in Potsdam was the primary residence of several Prussian/German monarchs, the last of which was Kaiser Wilhelm.
I'm in IRLS211 and this was part of my studies this week for a WWII forum question. I never knew the behind the scene story in how the atomic bomb came to be and this documentary explained it very well. It was not boring and it held my attention from beginning to end. Well done!
how about you watch "atomic Soldiers" and tell you that over 400k US soldiers has died in that state testing grounds that we sustain more casualties from that atomic creation then the deployment of the two bombs.
"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed.... a few people cried.... most people were silent. I remembered a line from the Bagavagitha... Vishnu... trying to pursuade the prince to do his duty to impress him takes on his multi-armed form. Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds... I suppose we all felt like that one way or another." If humanity manages to destroy itself... it will all have started here.
Our Creator says what started in the garden, will victorious end when Yeshua crushes the head of the snake . GOD WINS ! YESHUA SAVED US ! I love Revelation 21 & 22.
The Manhattan Project and the role of General Groves and Robert Oppenheimer introduced to me the power of collaboration and project management. Great documentary!
There have only been two U.S. federal programs that had unlimited budgets, the first was the Manhattan Program...and the second was the Apollo Program (a Ph.D. Aerospace/Computer Engineer who works for a large American defense contractor's Missile Systems company.
Wow…I highly recommend this video!! Probably like most people, I’ve seen/heard bits and pieces of this story all my life but this is the first (only?) coherent, compelling and very informative documentary on the subject that puts it all together compactly yet still finds ways to give new insight along with the sense of urgency and importance everyone involved must have endured. Very well done!!! Thank you 🙏👍
I agree, I with one significant qualifier… 48:30 - Potsdam, Yugoslavia: 😧 🤯 I cannot believe that a documentary produced by an institution of higher-education made such a huge factual error! Potsdam is in Germany, approximately 30 km, west-southwest of Berlin. It is approximately 250 km north of the former Yugoslavia, present-day Czech Republic. This is not just a small goof up. This is roughly the equivalent of saying, “…the conference was held in Versailles, Belgium.” The Neues Palais in Potsdam was the primary residence of several Prussian/German monarchs, the last of which was Kaiser Wilhelm.
I’m super excited for the film “Oppenheimer”, Christopher Nolan’s new project expected to release 2023. Knowing Christopher’s work, “Oppenheimer” will probably be one of my favorite movies ever.
Just in time for previously uneducated people on this important history to contemplate madmen with Nuclear Weapons in light of everything in the U.S. since November 2016 and Vladimir Putin and the invasion of the Ukraine. Things are not looking good on this Planet. Things are not looking good at all.
Just think how fast they made this happen. It goes to show what technology could exist under the right pressure the question is is it for the right reasons? Excellent program.
This is a great documentary; certainly the best I have seen on this particular subject. The execution of the Manhattan Project was close to perfect. The greatest scientific minds in the world temporarily buried their egos and cooperated magnificently with each other. U.S. government support was fantastic. A Herculean effort, from countless thousands, gave Manhattan Project scientists the raw material they needed. Only a true superpower could have pulled off the Manhattan Project. If World War Two had erupted at the present time - in the second decade of the 21st century - America would not be able to succeed with something like the Manhattan Project (at least not in the same time period). Our society has deteriorated too damn much.
what are you talking about? They were not having Ego anyway. Scientists like Einstein and Oppenheimer were already doing space discoveries. Dark matter, Galaxy rotation, Big Bang, CMB radiation were being investigated. They were already contributing to humanity.
"The execution of the Manhattan Project was close to perfect. " Not at all. Time to completion is a vital part of any engineering project and this project was finished too late for use against Germany.
@@pauleohl You are wrong. Nothing like this had ever been done before. Of course they needed time to complete it. These men (the most brilliant scientists around) were working 60 hour weeks. The bomb could not have been built faster than it was. It's irrational to say it should have been built faster.
well it’s was used just in time for Japan to unconditionally surrender instead of conditionally surrendering to the Soviet Union within the coming months
Nah - How could it possibly keep on going? The chain reaction only takes place with a critical mass of fissionable material - uranium 235 or plutonium 239. No other substance can sustain such a chain reaction. And the chain reaction results in a massive explosion that destroys the fissionable material along with everything else located within a certain distance of the bomb, thus ending the chain reaction.
@@gregparrott Just a thought, have you ever looked at the payments made and the actual cost of the B29 to the US taxpayer. Just for a bit of fun, try and tell us what was the final price for a B29, and who made a killing out of that contract.
@@tomlucas4890 Where were you headed with your question and the provocative 'who made a killing' statement? England had neither the capacity nor security to build nearly 4000 bombers, essential for the war. I see nothing wrong with the B-29 also being selected for the A-bomb mission.
At Oak Ridge, the amount of electricity to do the work necessitated the building of Fontana Dam, one of the 4 largest dams and reservoirs in the world. One question was how long it would take for the concrete to fully harden and the figures showed that it would take 75 years. That dam is now part of the Appalachian Trail. The Great Smoky mountains are on the west of the reservoir and the climb up AND down is quite stressing!
I own a piece of trinitite rock glass. The whole site was scraped and cleaned in the 50's I think and a man had kept dump truck loads of it which later in life was sold to a man who now sells small pieces of it on line. Pretty cool. Trinitite rock glass is what was created by the heat of the explosion. The glass bits are what was originally pieces of sand before the explosion.
From what I know of the Manhattan project there were tests on car parts specifically parts made by people who donated them to the military to help the war. The side name of this project was the philadelphia project named around tools that were tested also. I found that fascinating.
shawnmccori I was talking about nuclear tests on car parts and tools. Like putting them at ground zero blowing a bomb up and storing them away after at a classified facility.
shawnmccori Not really. The so-called 'Philadelphia Project' was to test a limey idea to de-gauss warships to thwart the newly developed magnetic mines and torpedoes invented by the Germans for use in the battles of the Atlantic. That's about it. That this got blown out of all proportion is neither here nor there really.
There were tests on pigs, and then American soldiers later. There are still people out there who would love to set off a nuclear bomb, and become "I am death the destroyer of worlds." But will it do any good? Probably. Give this planet back to the animals.
My mother was recruited by the government right from college because of her grades and test scores on an engineering exam to live and work on the military base in Oakridge Tennessee where much of the work was being done and raw materials (uranium) were being rail shipped in, my mother had the highest clearance a civilian could have, due in part to an uncoded shipment of uranium coming in and she told the base commander she knew it, saw it, but covered it before anyone else found out, the Philadelphia experiment was in 1943 and involved ufo investigation and teleportation experiments involving a navy battleship(Google it) i have no idea what you are trying to connect the dots with regarding the Manhattan project and the Philadelphia experiment, 2 entirely different operations...unless I'm missing something here, I've done a lot of reading, interviewing, journalistic work on the Manhattan project, Oakridge etc.. because of my mothers connection
I remember reading that verse from the Bhagavad-Gita years ago. It really does describe nuclear weapons. And yet some good did come from it, such a medically-useful isotope used in cancer treatment. It's up to us to use nuclear power for good, not destruction.
Yesss exactly!! Use it for good!!! This disgrace of existence of humankind should be self-destructed well never even make it a 1/4 of the amount of time the fucking dinosaurs made it.. We consider ourselves "Intelligent"??? Based on what belief system!!! I'll gladly take the bullseye for the nuke to wipe out this horrible race of self destructive slobs!
@@scottbromage2210 There's a reason that we've never used these weapons in war since then. The stalemate that it brings has stopped wars similar to WW1 and WW2. Whilst the media is pulling people to the far left and far right we can be thankful that such diversions aren't apparent in our, or other countries, military. For the furthest targets time to detonation is ~30 minutes, most are sub 20 minutes for the weapons that most nuclear armed countries have. Some like North Korea will need a few days on a boat to get a weapon close to the US... As for intelligence, maybe a few less expletives, question marks and exclamation points would serve you well. Technologies gained during WW2 and the cold war serve us well today. We don't bat an eyelid when we pull out the smartphone and use maps, powered by GPS, but those satellites weren't put up there in preparation for a future iPhone launch. The B29 that was designed and subsequently heavy modified for the atomic bombings, was the first mass produced pressurized plane - a project that was even more expensive that the Manhattan Project and was the single most expensive project of WW2. Jet technology was developed quickly during the war and combined with the knowledge gained from the B29, we enjoyed trans continental travel shortly after the war. Had the war not happened, such developments may have take decades to achieve.
@@Swampster70 ummm!🤔 "No contest??" Have no clue what your intent is here but 👏👏 thanx for the tid bit of "obvious knowledge anyways "Einstein" hope ya feel better after that ramble.. cuz regardless of your intent! You need to take your arguments to the oval office bubba... But humm🤔 I'm kinda flattered and flabbergasted at the same time here!!! Let me run this by one of my therapists and I'll see how to react to the all that!! Thanks!! I think?🤷🏼🙂
I had a science teacher who worked there during the war. What stories he told us. My brother who was born in 43 and my sister, born in 46 also had teachers that had worked at Los Alamos during the war. It seems that many of them never left New Mexico, that's where we went to school in the 60s. They all had so many interesting stories to tell. They all believed in what they were doing, most had family either in combat in Europe, the Pacific or both. Many even had families held by the Nazis in Europe . My dad was a Marine who fought the Japanese from Guadalcanal to Okinawa, an uncle who was a crew chief on B17s until the B29s replaced them. Another uncle who was aboard a destroyer in the Pacific another aboard the USS Augusta in the ETO. My mother and her sisters worked on building aircraft or on repairing same that were brought back for major refits. Every one of them understood the total defeat of Germany and Japan were necessary to a lasting peace. What is not known by most today is this, WW2 was, in fact, a continuation of WW1. All the countries involved in the 1st were involved in the second and were driven by settling old scores. Germany was not defeated on the battlefield, their leaders who took over after Wilhelm their king was forced from power, signed a peace accord due to their looming collapse from the cost of the war. They decided they had no hope of winning after America entered the war. 20 years after WW1 a rearmed rebuilt Germany set out to reclaim all they gave up in the 1st. Japan also was again in the second war to settle old scores from the 1st and in part, their right to rule over all Asian peoples which for a time they did. Japan was not planning on surrender. They, in fact, had pulled back hundreds of aircraft, ships of all types and thousands of troops for the sole purpose of continuing the fight on the home islands. They were training small children to run out into the ocean carrying packs on their backs, when we tried to land troops on the beaches those packs would contain explosives, older children and old people were trained to charge out also carrying explosives on them, younger adults, mostly women were trained to use spears to attack troops that had made it off the beach. The Emperor decided to surrender only after the second atomic bomb convinced him that Japan could not win. The Army upon learning of the Emperor's plan to surrender attacked the palace killing most of the Palace guards in a plan to stop the Emperor from making a radio broadcast telling the people to lay down their arms. Even after the surrender, there were many top military commanders who still believed they could win. Had the US not dropped the 2 bombs the death toll to all sides would have been in the millions. Another fact not understood was that ever since 43 the US was bombing Japan main islands day and night. The Japanese had factories built in residential areas and by 43 had many factories set up in the workers homes. Therefore "just bombing military targets " was not possible. In one air raid on the Capitol city over 150,000 people were killed. In fact, more people were killed and more cities were destroyed by nonatomic weapons than with. What the 2 atom bombs did do even though less damaging, was to shock the Emperor and many of his subjects into realizing that they could not, would not win. That we could, in fact, destroy them without setting foot on their homeland. That had been the chief point the military leaders kept promising the nation, that the Americans and British would never risk an invasion and in fact, would sue for peace, that would allow Japan to rebuild and fight again, winning the next time because they had learned from their miscalculations about Americans ability to wage war. So, in fact, the use of the atom bomb saved far more lives than it took and kept another world war from happening for, so far 70 years and counting. Both the Korean War and the Vietnam war were the outgrowth of WW2 as were many small wars in far corners of the globe but no full-scale wars like WW1 and WW2. Remember that in WW1 somewhere around 30million people died, another 25 million deaths due to disease spread as a result of the war. WW2 more than 50 million died both directly from the war and disease caused by the war. Thats not counting the millions killed by Stalin before the outbreak of WW2. Japan and Germany are now 2 of our closest allies as a result of how we treated them in the post war years. We helped them to rebuild and also left them to govern themselves.
"All the countries involved in the 1st were involved in the second and were driven by settling old scores." Portugal was in the 1st WW but not on the Second!
Excellent use of my time. Thank you very much. This exceptional documentary recently turned 20 years old and somehow I haven't seen it before... . Subscribed!
Engineering, as noted by several scientists, the complex engineering hurdles to get over to have the bomb come to it’s fruition, that was the prime accomplishment.
I had the honor of meeting the man who said he was detailed in building Los Alamos from the ground up while fixing his chainsaw at Western Auto. He told me he was building a cabin in the mountains when a long line of cars came down a dirt road and stopped. They asked him what he was going to do and he told them he was going to finish this cabin then go join the army. They told no he wasn't he needed more importantly there. His wife was sitting in there big yellow convertabale caddilac said with a very wonderful accent they were all such children always drinkinking Martinii's after 4:00. Wonderful people one heck of a story.
The collection of sheer scientific genius is mind boggling. These are people I only got to read in physics and chemistry books. Their anecdotes used to get me super excited, when our chemistry teacher told us stories of these behemoths of science before starting a new chapter.
so these mind blowing brainiacs,built bombs to kill people,now that is really inteligant...nuke weapons have been around for thousands of yrs,,we,only just discovered how to build them,for the wrong reasons..1 bomb kills millions,& you cant go there for thousands of yrs..plus,it travels around the earth,,now that is a good thing,eh..idiot....sodem & gemorah,,NUKED, mars soil,radio active isotopes,from bombs.get a frigin grip will you..you need to research ancient history,,& find out,WHO, our creators were,,NOT GOD..only reason we are allowed to kill each other,for any trumped up excuse,,is to keep the population down..because were too stupid to regulate it ourselves..
@@phantomwalker8251 Wow, just wow. Name-calling- check. Poor grammar- check. Blatant hipocrasy- check. Half-baked conspiracy- check. Ignorance of history- check. You, sir managed to tick so many boxes on a single comment on youtube that its astounding. You know what these checks are? Troll checks. Now come at me with all your explepletives, keep using immature name calling- prove me right yet again. Beacuse I won't waste my time arguing against an internet troll.
I do not know what to say or think, I was not a Japanese prisoner or a marine, much less a Japanese civilian on that terrible day, much less can I imagine the lives lost or saved by this act. What I can think of is that humanity must strive to avoid getting to this now and forever.
More civilians died the night we firebombed Dresden Germany. The horror of war is something never to forget. We must not fight it unless freedom really is at stake.
1:30 That's the guy that Richard Feynman pulled a prank on when he picked the lock on his file cabinet and stole all of his files. Feynman had been complaining that they have terribly secret files and they need to have better locks and teller said that his was pretty good so during the middle of a lecture (Feynman sitting behind Teller) Feynman snuck out of the room; picked Tellers lock and took the files. Then he runs back to the group just as the lecture was finishing and asks teller to show him his file cabinet. Teller says "Sure" takes him over to the cabinet and says "I'd be happy to show you". Then he opens the cabinet and says "If you hadn't already seen it yourself". Feynman tells the story better in his own lecture titled "Los Alamos From Below" which I have listened to a thousand times and I'll listen to it a thousand more. It will NEVER get boring.
Fascinating. My great uncle Dr. Rose was in the nuclear health physics division on this project and ended up in charge of that at Argonne after the war.
Famed Danish Physicist Niels Bohr said at the beginning of WWII that it was possible to build the bomb but no one would because it would require one of the big economies to turn their entire economy to just that purpose. After the war when he was given tours of the enormous enrichment plants in Washington state and Tennesse, along with the many universities nuclear reactor research sites and the Los Alamos site, he commented; See, I was right.
It took the British great expense and it wasn't until 1952 that they detonated their first bomb despite starting before the USA. France another 8 years in 1960.
Still boggles my mind (yet pleases me for obvious reasons) that the premier Nazi physicist Heisenberg miscalculated the amount of U 235 needed to make a bomb, which resulted in the abandonment of the Nazi bomb work. Two of his students, who were on the side of the Allies, made the correct calculation. Scared both of them that if they could derive the correct amount surely their esteemed teacher could.
Apparently he was thrown off by the performance of the test reactor, which like the Manhattan Project reactor, was graphite moderated. It is surmised the graphite in Heisenberg's reactor was contaminated with boron, which absorbs neutrons. That led to the infamous heavy water misadventure.
Just one example. Go into the single battle of Iwo Jima and look at the horrors that took place to take that one little piece of dirt and then think how much worse would be the loss of life to everyone involved. If you really want to understand the war in the Pacific find a vet who can bring himself to speak of it. My father was one such man. When I asked about the war he would quietly hang his head and say,” It’s just to horrible to think about.” It’s easy for people to have their opinions safe and secure in the comforts of freedoms won at an unbelievable cost. Freedom more than anything is the most expensive thing on earth. The cost is human life. The cost is in living the rest of life without limbs, sight and an unbelievable array of human conditions. Many come home broken in spirit and soul. No one has any right to make judgements on such things until they have been in the same situation. We need to show respect to those who are willing to serve our nation and make that ultimate price.
I had an uncle who fought in the infantry during the island hopping campaigns of the Pacific. He lived with severe pain from shrapnel in his back and shoulders and drank to deal with it. He couldn’t and wouldn’t talk about the horrors he witnessed. He died from the result of his injuries in 1974. The bomb was horrific but it may have prevented unimaginable future deaths.
The best comment on the site - by far. It's of a piece with Oppenheimer's after the Trinity test - wherein you can see the effect the success of their efforts had on that brilliant and sensitive man. He knew precisely what was at stake, and that the bomb had to, and would be used. He knew that it would become his legacy, and that it was too horrible to think about. My father served in the North Africa and Italian campaigns, and when the film "Saving Private Ryan" came out, I asked him if he wanted to go see it. His answer was, "I've spent my whole life since trying to forget that ---damn war - why would I want to see that?"
Till this Day I watch this Documentary once a week, it's just Extraordinary, Robert Oppenheimer's Biography, then the Atomic Bomb 💣 and how it all began the Documentary is Fascinating Genuinely!!!
This was kind of light on Groves' accomplishments. Before the US entered the war, public sentiment was against any involvement in any European war. Very few people knew or cared that Japan was creating an Empire in the East. Many people in the military and government knew that eventually the US would be involved. Groves constructed the new training camps over the country. They sat empty until after December 7, 1941. Groves was also well educated, having taken many hours of military and college courses.
Yeah, the US constructed ammunition production factories over a year before Peral Harbor. I've also heard the US push Japan to attack us first, bc many Americans wanted to keep out of WW2.
Kind of light - vanishingly light - also on the MAUD Report and the Frisch-Peierls Memorandum, both from the UK, which convinced US scientists that a fission bomb was actually a real possibility. They predate the Manhattan Project, and arguably kicked it off.
@@Dragonblaster1 This is true. The MAUD Report verified to the U.S. government that the American physicists' contention that an atomic bomb was possible was independently verified by British scientists and should be taken seriously. Interestingly, the MAUD Report had been sitting in a safe in Lyman Briggs' office and no one had seen it until Mark Oliphant came to the U.S. to visit U.S. physicists and made them aware of what was in the MAUD Report. At that point, Ernest Lawrence contacted James Conant to ask why the report was not made available to the U.S. Uranium Committee. That started the change from the Uranium Committee to the United States Defense Research Council and the pursuit of fission research.
The planning and execution of this project is truly mind blowing! Groves said when he was flat on his belly during the 1st test. He was wondering what he'd do if the bomb didn't go off 😂.
My mother lived at the base and worked in Oakridge too, recruited before she graduated from college, Grinnell Iowa, she did a number of tasks including clerking in the rail cars of uranium, she had very high civilian clearance, I too have heard many, many stories of all aspects of her life there....she received the presidential framed, signed certificate, specially delivered on the 50th anniversary of Hiroshima, she had very bittersweet mixed emotions about all of this
Dexter Haven True! I served In Iwakuni. I read all that I could find on the Atomic attacks. One book told the story of a Hiroshima survivor making his way home to Nagasaki, and as he was telling his wife"first there was a big flash", and right then it happened again. Great reprise Dex.
TheDustysix Thanks, yes, some people have a knack for finding trouble. One of the people shot in the CO movie theatre was also at a mall in Canada when it was shot up, I heard. She fled to the safety of a theatre in another country and got killed. And how was your week?
There were maybe upwards of 200 in that category. One man saved some of his work mates since when he told if you see that big unearthly flash dive to the floor! Then FLASH, the second bomb hit. Many at the Mitsubishi plant were saved from burns.
50 years later to the date, I stood at ground Zero, and stood in the doorway of the MCDonald Ranch House. Not sure if it is still done, but they used to open the site to small tours twice a year.
Yes they still do. In April and I don't remember the 2nd time. I'm from New Mexico and I have spoken to people in San Antonio who saw the bomb go off. A lot of them literally though it was the end of the world.
I don't know if there's a cooler answer to a journalist's question:"What were you thinking about when the bomb went off" than what Oppenheimer said. Weather he was thinking about that verse from Bhagadvagita or not, that was one of the best quotes anyone who witnessed the Trinity test could have thought about. But imagine being there, witnessing one of the most important and ground braking singular events in a history.
My Aunt, Mary Argo was the only woman nuclear physicist to be invited to Trinity. She dies in 1986 at 66 of a heart attack while hiking in the foothills of Los Alamos where she made her home after the war. I would do most anything to have a sit down conversation with her now. It still blows my mind she was actually there to witness it with all the bigshots like Oppenheimer, Grove and Teller.
Thank you for this brilliant documentry. After reading " The Making Of The Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes, I have no words to describe the enormous task the scientist have taken upon themselves to create the bomb. The genius of man has no boundry.
Mother and Daddy knew many of the scientists during the period the research was being made at the University of Chicago. Daddy was assigned to an entirely different agency, but they were all housed in pretty much the same areas of Chicago and at parties after work apparently the conversation got loose after a few drinks. Daddy told me that just about everyone, at least of the officers who lived and worked around there, had a pretty good idea of what was going on, and when the scientists were moved to Los Alamos, they figured the bomb and the potential end of the war was near.
I like these calmer docos. Unless it's cleverly done and sophisticated, docos with a lot of music and cuts and drama take away from the actual drama and story.
My great grandfather was the chief machinist at Gilman Hall, University Of California, Berkeley College Of Chemistry from 1914-1945 - which is where Plutonium was discovered.
Wow! Very informative and learned a lot, I have visited Hiroshima at ground zero,Los Alamos (now Kirkland AFB) & spoke to 1st LT. Jacob Beser's son (Enola Gay's flight crew radar countermeasures officer,his job was to baby sit the electronic proximity fuse, the only man to fly BOTH missions) in Baltimore.
My great grandparents met at Los Alamos -- which is an hour and forty minute drive from Kirtland AFB -- if you're headed to the museum. It's further if you are headed into the sensitive areas of the lab complex. They are not even remotely the same location. Wanna try that story again? Kirtland AFB is part of Albuquerque International Airport. Los Alamos labs are near Los Alamos, north and a bit west of Santa Fe.
@@donberg01 mildly. Trinitite gives off a mild A/B signature, but is harmless as long as you don’t eat it. Under normal circumstances, radiation isn’t quite as dangerous as morons like Green Peace would lead you to believe.
Los Alamos is about one & a half hours drive from Albuquerque where Kirtland Air Force Base is located. The Bradbury museum at Los Alamos has the letter sent from Einstein to FDR.
I enjoyed the interviews with many of the physicists who were part of the project. One correction: Potsdam, where Truman, Churchill, and Stalin met famously in 1945, is obviously in Germany, not Yugoslavia as the film claims.
Not one of those were good men. But, we are brainwashed to think so. Stalin, without a doubt, is the most Cruel, Evil man to ever exist after 1900, possibly all time. Only Mao is equal. The lies we've been told, how many died to protect the evil families wealth, that still control the world, and at this very minute, have almost completed their Totalitarian takeover of the world. They have all nations under control except Russia, and America. It looks like America may be easier than Russia.
That's correct - it's a suburb of Berlin, and was in the Russian Occupation Zone. Our friend who commented on the location was close phonetically, but about 1200 miles off geographically, Yalta being in Crimea.
If you enjoyed this documentary I would recommend reading "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes. It is a long and detailed work, but so well written--reads almost like a great novel.
I entirely agree. I've read it three times now, and it repays re-reading. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the authors of the script of this documentary had read and in many ways followed the Rhodes book.
@@kirkmattoon2594 Three times! I read it when it was first published and then loaned it to a friend and never got it back. However this is making me want to read it again and I'll make sure to just keep it on my bookshelf so it doesn't wander off. It won the Pulitzer didn't it?
This is bar none, the best documentary on this subject I've ever seen. The interviews, the humanity, the location, baby boom, everything told so well !!!!! Bravo 👏. Bravo everyone who's worked on this !!!! Exceptional ❤
We were taught in school back in the early 60's that in the event of a nuclear exchange we were to get under our desks. " Duck and cover" ... like that would help.
There's a good chance it would, depending on distance from ground zero, most of the risk comes from debris.. Flying glass from shattered windows, collapsing roofs, etc.
@@Evan_Bell I'd argue that most of the risk comes from the heat of the explosion, which can be felt from miles away and even make people far from it catch on fire.
@@lelouchvibritannia4028 Only if you're in line of sight. Hiding behind light cover like a desk will help you with that too. But no, the blast, and associated secondary effects such as building collapse and flying debris is what results in the most deaths.
@@salvadorhpo2030 I mean, I'm an engineer, with qualifications in physics, I've studied nuclear weapons for over 5 years, read thousands of papers on related physics, created a numerical simulator to model their operation and designed one. I have a pretty good idea what I'm talking about, and everything discussed in this thread is very elementary physics.
You're absolutely right. The bombing of Tokyo involved incendary bombs for instance (together with explosives). Deployed on a massive scale they caused a firestorm destroying a major part of the city and killing tenthousands. The only difference with the A-bomb attacks was that the destruction by the latter came, so to say, in a flash and with long term radiation effects included.
Quite right: the firestorm of March 9~10 in the Tokyo Shitamachi, the working-class area walking distance north of the Imperial Palace, killed more people in one night than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
@@TheDavidlloydjones --- Quite right: the firestorm of March 9~10 in the Tokyo Shitamachi, the working-class area walking distance north of the Imperial Palace, killed more people in one night than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Wayne Patterson --- That is incorrect. The death toll from OPERATION MEETINGHOUSE on 9-10 March 1945 is estimated at around 90,000 to 100,000 people. The Hiroshima death toll from LITTLE BOY is estimated at 20,000 soldiers killed and another 70,000-126,000 civilians killed. The Nagasaki death toll from FATMAN is estimated at more than 150 soldiers killed and 39,000-80,000 civilians killed. The total killed by the atomic bombs is estimated to be somewhere about 129,000-226,000. The number of human lives saved by the atomic bombs number in the tens of millions of people.
@@waynepatterson5843 So strange that we can compare deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and still see them as just numbers. Not criticizing, just observing.
@@flagmichael --- The decisions to use the atomic bombs was a means of saving the lives of the people who were not engaged in the war as combatants, which is direct evidence that the decisions were far more about saving the victims of the Japanese warfare than just about the numbers.
It took em 3 days and nights 24 bombings form US,UK,and France I forget how many planes and pilots and tons of bombs firebombing Tokyo ....it only took one plane one bomb do same amount of damage in ten seconds and we suffered no casualties ..then next day we drop nother make sure they know it wasn't no fluke or one time thing they had no idea how many we had
I listened to a lecture he gave, "Los Alamos from below" or something like that. Very funny! He was a pain in the ass to anyone with bureaucratic tendencies :-)
the fact that even after the first nuclear bomb was dropped on japan, that hirohito still refused to give up, the second bomb was the determining factor... so I think even if they notified the japanese, hirohito would've said "do your worst" essentially.
we now know that the bombs had nothing to do with Japans surrender. When the War Council in Tokyo were told of the Hiroshima bomb they did not think much of it. The reason Japan surrendered to the US was because Russian troops were just days away from invading the north of Japan and they would rather be occupied by the US than be overrun by Russian troops. Just read 'Hiroshima Nagasaki' by Paul Ham
I was lucky enough to work with some of the folks who worked on that project although most are gone now. The facilities that still exist are interesting and occasionally we still encounter some things left from that era.
@@didadida4920 OKAY thousands more Japanese children would've died had it not been for those bombs. ALL of Japan was willing to fight to the bitter end, the bomb was the best way to get them to realize we could wipe them out. Without losing hundreds of thousands of American soldiers. SO SHUT THE FUCK UP if America hadn't been the first it would've been the Soviets and the world would be ruled by authoritarian Stalinist regimes. ( I can't stand you "perfect society" wishful thinkers who think that you can condemn anything if even a single innocent civilian dies in a war, IT IS A FUCKING WAR PEOPLE DIE GET OVER IT!)
This brings me back to 1956 as a young chemical engineer in charge of the treatment of 130 000 tons per month of uranium bearing ore. This was funded by the Manhattan project , and one did not think that the end purpose was the production of nuclear weapons. This industry died later, discredited and feared, although appears to be finding a new life with the current energy shortage and the new 😊dangers of global warming
Imagine a time When it all began in the dying days of a war A weapon, that would settle the score Whoever found it first Would be sure to do their worst They always had before Imagine a man Where it all began A scientist pacing the floor In each nation, always eager to explore To build the best big stick To turn the winning trick But this was something more The big bang, took and shook the world Shot down the rising sun The end was begun, it would hit everyone When the chain reaction was done The big shots, try to hold it back Fools try to wish it away The hopeful depend on a world without end Whatever the hopeless may say Imagine a place Where it all began They gathered from across the land To work in the secrecy of the desert sand All of the brightest boys To play with the biggest toys More than they bargained for The big bang, took and shook the world Shot down the rising sun The hopeful depend on a world without end Whatever the hopeless may say Imagine a man When it all began The pilot of Enola Gay Flying out of the shock wave On that August day All the powers that be And the course of history Would be changed for evermore The big bang, took and shook the world Shot down the rising sun The end was begun, it would hit everyone When the chain reaction was done The big shots, try to hold it back Fools try to wish it away The hopeful depend on a world without end Whatever the hopeless may say The big bang, took and shook the world Shot down the rising sun The hopeful depend on a world without end Whatever the hopeless may say-RUSH Manhattan Project
The Big Bang, took and shook the world, she downed the Rising Sun.....The pilot of Enola Gay flying out of the shockwave on the August day..... I was GLUED to Power Windows when the 3 boys released it. Saw the tour and was mesmerized by the B-29 flying right into my face from the visual effects and backdrops. More than just some song Neil penned--I lived a piece of history in 1985 that Rush brought back from 1945.
and Iran ... bleugh. This is a very good documentary. Well done. I would also recommend The Day After Trinity, also excellent. Great interviews and archive footage.
@@hdj81Vlimited --- same like any other lie from USA, germany had no bom, irak had no bom, iran had no bom...... N-korea have no bom.... Wayne Patterson --- You're the liar. Germany began its research and development to build an atomic bomb on 1 September 1939,which was twoand on-quarter years before the United States authorized the research and development of an atomic bomb.. Germany's efforts to produce an atomic bomb were a failure, whereas the Allied-Americaneffort toproduce atomic bombs were successful. The United States never claimed Iraq possessed nuclear weapons, but Iraq's research and development plans and facilities used in effort to produce a nuclear weapon/s were captured and documented. Iran' efforts to produce the enriched weapons grade Uranium necessary to produce nuclear weapons is documented by the international inspection teams.
@@waynepatterson5843 and for who is germany working do you think? Who paid the 5 year war, who delivered the steel and oil to fuel and make 1000st tanks and airplanes???? NOBODY can do this when the country is blocked. germany has no oil. all was set up by USA, they made before war selling guns to europe, loanes, after war build back = loanes again. NOW after 100 years the loanes are paid off, so its time for a new war...... THIS is how it works. The whole world war 2 was a TESTPROGRAM.... no budget to be allowed by gouverments and parlements.....nobody against it. It was all a very big testprogram, on people how much they can endure, but also to produce new technologoe. IN peace world, they have to ask money from gouverment, it was never developed then.........
My mom worked in the mail room of the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos Summer 1945 when she was 17! She didn’t know what they were doing. Her brother in law was one of the scientists (Milo Bolstad). Legend has it that some of the scientists were interested in her/ hitting on her, proposing, some combination thereof, I think including Oppenheimer! I have a pic of her in Los Alamos outdoors during that summer.
Check out "Dark Persuasion - The History of Brainwashing from Pavlov to Social Media" here: ua-cam.com/video/bWl8FXhdEio/v-deo.html
Oh fa of 😅
Wow... that was a great 3am "cant sleep" documentary!! It was Soo good, when I woke up I watched with my lunch as well!!
I agree
Same here Scott
Starting at 1:58am.. hate ur comment already
3:24
It was actually one of the good ones
My Aunt, Mary Argo was a nuclear physicist recruited along with her husband Harold (also a physicist) from Brown University in 1943 to be a part of the Manhattan Project. She was assigned to calculate what a nuclear blast would do to the Earths atmosphere after detonation. She was the ONLY woman scientist invited to the Trinity test. Herself and husband Harold would say on their only day off (Sunday) that themselves and Edward Teller would hike into the desert mountains and NEVER talk of what they were working towards creating. She died young of a heart attack while hiking in New Mexico in 1986 at 66 years old. In a way seems somewhat fitting. After the war they made Los Alamos their home for good.
bro is she the woman scientist in the movie oppenheimer??
@@DvinexOfficial Don't know, haven't seen the movie yet. When she passed in 1986 a large write up in Los Alamos defined her accomplishments for the Manhattan Project and the fact she was the only woman invited to the Trinity test and who stood near Oppenheimer, Groves and Edward Teller (who was a friend) during the first ever detonation of such a devastatingly destructive device. Unfortunately, Hollywood likes to bend the truth for entertainment purposes.
@@DvinexOfficialyou may be thinking of Jean Tatlock.
@@DvinexOfficialnow I could be wrong, but I'm 99% sure I'm not. There definitely wasn't a female scientist in oppenheimer , at least not one with any dialogue in the movie.
@@biggiesmalls7939there was a woman. Watch it again. They even mentioned the possible effect of radiation on the female reproductive organs.
I just love to listen to these intelligent, humble, adorable old men tell their experience.😊💖
THE ATOMIC BOMB KILL 350 THOUSAND PEOPLE IN MINUTES WANT NOT IN GERMANY BUT JAPAN? THE USA LIKE THIS POWRT SO MUCH KNOW WE HAVE NUCLEAR READY TO BE USED AGAIN AGAINST HUMANITY; I DO NOT SEE NOTHING GREAT IN THIS CREATION;
This is perhaps the finest documentary on the Manhattan Project I have ever seen.
I loved watching this before and again after watching Nolan's Oppeneheimer. It is indeed baffling to see all those characters in the movie and the real ones here.
Indeed. However I'm a bit disappointed they didn't interview Barbie.
Same. Although this was so much richer in historical commentary and anecdotes, i.e. the babies, and especially the number of Russian sources. This was a fantastic documentary.
Why baffling?
@@peewee678 this comment deserved more love lol
This is by far, the best documentary on the subject I have found!
There are a myriad of documentaries out there on the Manhattan Project. By far, this one exceeds the rest. The details, inside quirks, interviews with the men there, and the narrator make it so. None of the men who were actually there in July of 1945 at Trinity are alive anymore in 2019, including the men specifically noted in this documentary. Thankfully and gratefully it's survived and now saved via UA-cam for generations to come.
.
Or not to come if they wham blam a couple of bombs 🤔😂
@@beans_potatoes l9k96k70 o⁸l7i I Oklahomanill8klklollo8iol8o9 o I'm o 99th poo⁸0⁹l
facts
@@beans_potatoes L
Truly amazing group of individuals brought together. There was no computer, no calculator, no email, just pure brains, paper and pencil / chalk, my grandparents generation were amazing, unfortunately so much brilliance for such a horrific development, although many other amazing side science developments as a result. Very interesting documentary.
You ever use a slide rule? People were pretty smart without computers.
...and we sent men to the moon using paper, pencil, chalk, and a slide rule. When I took my Registered Professional Engineer's exam, I brought along a slide rule. I was using it on one problem, and caught a young fellow looking at me and grinning. Hey, it was Y2K compliant!
My first cousin twice removed, Dr Donald MacRae, who was a physicist and later the Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, and yes, he was a Canadian, landed a job at Oak Ridge to find ways to enrich plutonium for the Manhattan program. He worked closely with the Oppenheimer team to undertake, albeit a hurried process, to insure the program was ready for deployment.
I live in oak ridge tn
Without question… Put this on it anytime but at 3 AM in the morning and you’re guaranteed another good hour of sleep… That ladies voice alone can put you out in a matter of 90 seconds
Probably because shes actually a woman lol
Lived out there for 22 years near Tularosa. Bits and pieces of the project still remain if you know where to look. Quiet and eerie now, it was the first place of ultimate cataclysm. Overhead, the knowing hawk still screeches in fear. My time on the range was uncomfortable. I won’t go back, though I did enjoy the video.
Drove through Tularosa today, cute town
Wow... these first hand accounts are second to none!
Just outstanding!
The Los Alamos Primer is a brilliant book, the Manhattan Project is what literally fueled my passion, and the ultimate reason why I went on to become a physicist.
Passion to create a weapon of mass destruction of your own species?
@@ShellYoung No! Physics is not all about "weapons";the scientist that worked on the Manhattan project didn't care about the bomb as much as they cared about the science. I personally work in nuclear medicine we save lives, technically if we didn't discover the bomb we wouldn't have MRI machines or Chemotherapy.
@@theguy81642 Chemotherapy? How do you come about crediting the bomb with chemo?
@@plupkination Pretty simple they use Cobalt 60 and other isotopes in chemotherapy to help with the gamma radiation your body gets blasted with during radiation treatments. Cobalt 60 is found in plutonium, plutonium was discovered while mining for uranium to make the bomb.
www.princeton.edu/news/2014/02/27/beyond-bomb-atomic-research-changed-medicine-biology
plupkination you got SERVED!!!!!
This is arguably the best documentary on the subject of the making of the first atomic weapons I’ve seen. It is very thorough (for a one hour video) yet understandable for the lay person.
Richard Hotvedt fair enough mate, you do you.
The best one I've seen is "The Day After Trinity" and was on PBS. Historically accurate with good physics.
Who's going to argue with you? Nobody else has seen the same set of documentaries as you. Duh.
Look for "The Day After Trinity", which was a docu on PBS for a while. From a great book by Peter Goodchild.
You've not seen too many then?
This is the best documentary I've seen. Can't image the movie being any better than this?
Its not.
47:32 That's my dad. He was in the photography unit. He's wearing the ID bracelet my mom gave him. 47:40 He's also the one taking aerial footage and stills.
really?
If they only knew what they were doing and how many lives they would kill ..
someone shit in your brain and forgot to flush @@charleswilson7518
Gary Bob . Your Another evil and wicked person . May God Bless you soul .
If the critics of the atom bombings had personally experienced the fanatical enemy resistance on Iwo Jima and Okinawa they'd realize that without those bombings the Japanese would've inflicted, and suffered, a great deal many more casualties than those bombings caused. My father and uncle would've been involved in the invasion of the home islands. They were delighted that the war ended when it did, considering what they faced.
General Groves doesn't get the credit he deserves. The amount of stuff he had to envision and plan for to oversee this thing is gargantuan - things that had never been done before, and massive construction projects that had to be built fast - and done without the true purpose being known. An amazing feat of engineering and vision.
Grove's idea of implosion is laughed by the top scientist but finally Grove was right, they used his idea.
@@jendelapermai Groves didn't have the idea for an implosion bomb. Richard Tolman brought up the idea to Robert Serber in the summer of 1942. They sent a memo to Arthur Compton detailing the idea. They spoke to Oppenheimer about the idea in October of 1942. A sketch and discussion of implosion are included in the "Los Alamos Primer" written by Robert Serber. That was required reading for all new scientists coming to Los Alamos and based on Serber's original five lectures given to the first group to arrive at Los Alamos. Groves had NOTHING to do with the idea of implosion.
@@buckhorncortez 21:02 He basically said Groves sparks the 'stupid' idea of implosion before it was considered seriously by the scientists , right?
@@buckhorncortez Your statement, 100% disproven by the words of Edward Teller, as noted above.
He was a scientist. If it was at first the idea of scientists, he would have been certain to note that.
@@buckhorncortez I believe Groves was an engineer and knew squat about fission or fusion.
My Dad was there. He was drafted into the Army while he was studying electrical engineering at Cal-Tech in Pasadena CA. After basic training they sent him to Los Alamos where he worked on the detonators for the Plutonium bomb. It was him who climbed the tower to install and connect the detonators at Alamagordo. He used to say, "We didn't start the war, but we finished it." Other than that, he didn't have a lot to say about the project. He never looked back, but was always focused on the present, and lived to be 86. He also helped build the rope tow ski lift in Los Alamos that is shown in some reports. He had a brilliant mind. Talking with him was like coming into the light after being in twilight. His biggest fear was of becoming senile in old age, but he stayed sharp, and worked very hard, and very smart until the end. He used to quote Jesus sometimes, who said, "The meek shall inherit the earth."
Not to many of these guys are alive now..but I am glad that the history of this weapon can be explained by the people who made it
Derrick Hand You will see hell soon with this plaque my tough little friend
Derrick Hand Huh?
Opinhimer was into mass marketing as well millions of bombs
@Derrick Hand No they are not, for hell is not. Cretin.
Ken Sturm Why would someone go to hell over having bad dental?
My grandfather has a certificate for working on Manhattan project at Hanford, WA. He died at 42 when my dad was 2. My grandmother was pregnant with their 8th child. They said he died of enlarged heart. They said due to something else. Not the project. I moved away from the area after high school but live here now. A lot of cancer here and many in my family. Including my daughter.
The incidence of cancer all over the USA skyrocketed because of this shit.
People made sacrifices they didn't even know they were going to make I mean they had no clue at the time probably of these terrible health issues to come....collateral damage
Amazing times
Move away
Lisa Meitner was the first to prove fission was possible. She past her findings to Einstein who brought the news to US by boat in person to Roosevelt. She was finally given credit in the book "The Making Of The Bomb". Einstein was never involved in the Manhattan project preferring to stay meutral.
Fantastic documentary! This, along with The Day After Trinity, are some of the best docs I've seen on this subject.
I agree, but with one exception… 48:30 - Potsdam, Yugoslavia: 😧 🤯 I cannot believe that a documentary produced by an institution of higher-education made such a huge factual error! Potsdam is in Germany, approximately 30 km, west-southwest of Berlin. It is approximately 250 km north of the former Yugoslavia, present-day Czech Republic. This is not just a small goof up. This is roughly the equivalent of saying, “…the conference was held in Versailles, Belgium.” The Neues Palais in Potsdam was the primary residence of several Prussian/German monarchs, the last of which was Kaiser Wilhelm.
I'm in IRLS211 and this was part of my studies this week for a WWII forum question. I never knew the behind the scene story in how the atomic bomb came to be and this documentary explained it very well. It was not boring and it held my attention from beginning to end. Well done!
Yelp
Cool
how about you watch "atomic Soldiers" and tell you that over 400k US soldiers has died in that state testing grounds that we sustain more casualties from that atomic creation then the deployment of the two bombs.
@@huntermay8322 I made a note to check that out. Thanks!
You would also be well-served to read Rhodes’ book the Making of the Atomic Bomb if your area of study is nuclear science.
"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed.... a few people cried.... most people were silent. I remembered a line from the Bagavagitha... Vishnu... trying to pursuade the prince to do his duty to impress him takes on his multi-armed form. Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds...
I suppose we all felt like that one way or another."
If humanity manages to destroy itself... it will all have started here.
Our Creator says what started in the garden, will victorious end when Yeshua crushes the head of the snake . GOD WINS ! YESHUA SAVED US !
I love Revelation 21 & 22.
The Manhattan Project and the role of General Groves and Robert Oppenheimer introduced to me the power of collaboration and project management. Great documentary!
There have only been two U.S. federal programs that had unlimited budgets, the first was the Manhattan Program...and the second was the Apollo Program (a Ph.D. Aerospace/Computer Engineer who works for a large American defense contractor's Missile Systems company.
Wow…I highly recommend this video!! Probably like most people, I’ve seen/heard bits and pieces of this story all my life but this is the first (only?) coherent, compelling and very informative documentary on the subject that puts it all together compactly yet still finds ways to give new insight along with the sense of urgency and importance everyone involved must have endured. Very well done!!! Thank you 🙏👍
I agree, I with one significant qualifier… 48:30 - Potsdam, Yugoslavia: 😧 🤯 I cannot believe that a documentary produced by an institution of higher-education made such a huge factual error! Potsdam is in Germany, approximately 30 km, west-southwest of Berlin. It is approximately 250 km north of the former Yugoslavia, present-day Czech Republic. This is not just a small goof up. This is roughly the equivalent of saying, “…the conference was held in Versailles, Belgium.” The Neues Palais in Potsdam was the primary residence of several Prussian/German monarchs, the last of which was Kaiser Wilhelm.
One of the best documentaries I have ever seen!
I’m super excited for the film “Oppenheimer”, Christopher Nolan’s new project expected to release 2023. Knowing Christopher’s work, “Oppenheimer” will probably be one of my favorite movies ever.
Tom Hanks for the role?
@@RobertJamesChinneryH No Cillian Murphy is the lead.
Just in time for previously uneducated people on this important history to contemplate madmen with Nuclear Weapons in light of everything in the U.S. since November 2016 and Vladimir Putin and the invasion of the Ukraine. Things are not looking good on this Planet. Things are not looking good at all.
KmI’m zilphu
Just think how fast they made this happen. It goes to show what technology could exist under the right pressure the question is is it for the right reasons? Excellent program.
This is a great documentary; certainly the best I have seen on this particular subject. The execution of the Manhattan Project was close to perfect. The greatest scientific minds in the world temporarily buried their egos and cooperated magnificently with each other. U.S. government support was fantastic. A Herculean effort, from countless thousands, gave Manhattan Project scientists the raw material they needed. Only a true superpower could have pulled off the Manhattan Project. If World War Two had erupted at the present time - in the second decade of the 21st century - America would not be able to succeed with something like the Manhattan Project (at least not in the same time period). Our society has deteriorated too damn much.
Stop on №@+ok+=0
what are you talking about? They were not having Ego anyway. Scientists like Einstein and Oppenheimer were already doing space discoveries. Dark matter, Galaxy rotation, Big Bang, CMB radiation were being investigated. They were already contributing to humanity.
"The execution of the Manhattan Project was close to perfect. " Not at all. Time to completion is a vital part of any engineering project and this project was finished too late for use against Germany.
@@pauleohl You are wrong. Nothing like this had ever been done before. Of course they needed time to complete it. These men (the most brilliant scientists around) were working 60 hour weeks. The bomb could not have been built faster than it was. It's irrational to say it should have been built faster.
well it’s was used just in time for Japan to unconditionally surrender instead of conditionally surrendering to the Soviet Union within the coming months
I remember a documentary stating that some of the physicists were worried that the chain reaction would keep on going. Scary.
And they did it anyway.
Nah - How could it possibly keep on going? The chain reaction only takes place with a critical mass of fissionable material - uranium 235 or plutonium 239. No other substance can sustain such a chain reaction. And the chain reaction results in a massive explosion that destroys the fissionable material along with everything else located within a certain distance of the bomb, thus ending the chain reaction.
One of the best documents I've seen, so fascinating and well made! I wanna watch these before Oppenheimer movie comes this year.
woah.. i have to watch that
Quite an intense documentary, with more detail and history than any I've seen before.
I couldn't agree more!
Just an afterthought, Watch a wee vid in here, 'Hiroshima 1945, british atomic attack'. facts get hidden when they do not suit the politicians.
@@tomlucas4890 I've seen that. But I don't see the significance relative to what aircraft and which country actually DID build and 'deliver' the bomb.
@@gregparrott Just a thought, have you ever looked at the payments made and the actual cost of the B29 to the US taxpayer. Just for a bit of fun, try and tell us what was the final price for a B29, and who made a killing out of that contract.
@@tomlucas4890 Where were you headed with your question and the provocative 'who made a killing' statement? England had neither the capacity nor security to build nearly 4000 bombers, essential for the war. I see nothing wrong with the B-29 also being selected for the A-bomb mission.
At Oak Ridge, the amount of electricity to do the work necessitated the building of Fontana Dam, one of the 4 largest dams and reservoirs in the world. One question was how long it would take for the concrete to fully harden and the figures showed that it would take 75 years. That dam is now part of the Appalachian Trail. The Great Smoky mountains are on the west of the reservoir and the climb up AND down is quite stressing!
I’m a Tennesseean; approximately an hour NE of Oak Ridge.
@@pattih7ok, so? My mother was recruited right out of college to live at the base in Oakridge and work on the project, so what?
I own a piece of trinitite rock glass. The whole site was scraped and cleaned in the 50's I think and a man had kept dump truck loads of it which later in life was sold to a man who now sells small pieces of it on line. Pretty cool. Trinitite rock glass is what was created by the heat of the explosion. The glass bits are what was originally pieces of sand before the explosion.
Oh my! Sort of like volcanic glass, huh?
Cool
I'll take that off your hands for safekeeping please.
You can find the exact same thing in the Sahara desert...
From what I know of the Manhattan project there were tests on car parts specifically parts made by people who donated them to the military to help the war. The side name of this project was the philadelphia project named around tools that were tested also. I found that fascinating.
shawnmccori I was talking about nuclear tests on car parts and tools. Like putting them at ground zero blowing a bomb up and storing them away after at a classified facility.
shawnmccori Not really. The so-called 'Philadelphia Project' was to test a limey idea to de-gauss warships to thwart the newly developed magnetic mines and torpedoes invented by the Germans for use in the battles of the Atlantic. That's about it. That this got blown out of all proportion is neither here nor there really.
There were tests on pigs, and then American soldiers later. There are still people out there who would love to set off a nuclear bomb, and become "I am death the destroyer of worlds." But will it do any good? Probably. Give this planet back to the animals.
My mother was recruited by the government right from college because of her grades and test scores on an engineering exam to live and work on the military base in Oakridge Tennessee where much of the work was being done and raw materials (uranium) were being rail shipped in, my mother had the highest clearance a civilian could have, due in part to an uncoded shipment of uranium coming in and she told the base commander she knew it, saw it, but covered it before anyone else found out, the Philadelphia experiment was in 1943 and involved ufo investigation and teleportation experiments involving a navy battleship(Google it) i have no idea what you are trying to connect the dots with regarding the Manhattan project and the Philadelphia experiment, 2 entirely different operations...unless I'm missing something here, I've done a lot of reading, interviewing, journalistic work on the Manhattan project, Oakridge etc.. because of my mothers connection
I remember reading that verse from the Bhagavad-Gita years ago. It really does describe nuclear weapons. And yet some good did come from it, such a medically-useful isotope used in cancer treatment. It's up to us to use nuclear power for good, not destruction.
“it’s up to us to use nuclear power for good, not for destruction.”
Therein lies the rub.
@@msimp0108 Precisely.
Yesss exactly!! Use it for good!!! This disgrace of existence of humankind should be self-destructed well never even make it a 1/4 of the amount of time the fucking dinosaurs made it.. We consider ourselves "Intelligent"??? Based on what belief system!!! I'll gladly take the bullseye for the nuke to wipe out this horrible race of self destructive slobs!
@@scottbromage2210 There's a reason that we've never used these weapons in war since then. The stalemate that it brings has stopped wars similar to WW1 and WW2. Whilst the media is pulling people to the far left and far right we can be thankful that such diversions aren't apparent in our, or other countries, military. For the furthest targets time to detonation is ~30 minutes, most are sub 20 minutes for the weapons that most nuclear armed countries have. Some like North Korea will need a few days on a boat to get a weapon close to the US...
As for intelligence, maybe a few less expletives, question marks and exclamation points would serve you well. Technologies gained during WW2 and the cold war serve us well today. We don't bat an eyelid when we pull out the smartphone and use maps, powered by GPS, but those satellites weren't put up there in preparation for a future iPhone launch. The B29 that was designed and subsequently heavy modified for the atomic bombings, was the first mass produced pressurized plane - a project that was even more expensive that the Manhattan Project and was the single most expensive project of WW2. Jet technology was developed quickly during the war and combined with the knowledge gained from the B29, we enjoyed trans continental travel shortly after the war. Had the war not happened, such developments may have take decades to achieve.
@@Swampster70 ummm!🤔 "No contest??" Have no clue what your intent is here but 👏👏 thanx for the tid bit of "obvious knowledge anyways "Einstein" hope ya feel better after that ramble.. cuz regardless of your intent! You need to take your arguments to the oval office bubba... But humm🤔 I'm kinda flattered and flabbergasted at the same time here!!! Let me run this by one of my therapists and I'll see how to react to the all that!! Thanks!! I think?🤷🏼🙂
I was absolutely riveted by the explanations and observations of Drs. Edward Teller and Hans Bethe. 🤔
I had a science teacher who worked there during the war. What stories he told us.
My brother who was born in 43 and my sister, born in 46 also had teachers that had worked at Los Alamos during the war.
It seems that many of them never left New Mexico, that's where we went to school in the 60s.
They all had so many interesting stories to tell.
They all believed in what they were doing, most had family either in combat in Europe, the Pacific or both. Many even had families held by the Nazis in Europe .
My dad was a Marine who fought the Japanese from Guadalcanal to Okinawa, an uncle who was a crew chief on B17s until the B29s replaced them. Another uncle who was aboard a destroyer in the Pacific another aboard the USS Augusta in the ETO. My mother and her sisters worked on building aircraft or on repairing same that were brought back for major refits.
Every one of them understood the total defeat of Germany and Japan were necessary to a lasting peace.
What is not known by most today is this, WW2 was, in fact, a continuation of WW1.
All the countries involved in the 1st were involved in the second and were driven by settling old scores.
Germany was not defeated on the battlefield, their leaders who took over after Wilhelm their king was forced from power, signed a peace accord due to their looming collapse from the cost of the war.
They decided they had no hope of winning after America entered the war.
20 years after WW1 a rearmed rebuilt Germany set out to reclaim all they gave up in the 1st.
Japan also was again in the second war to settle old scores from the 1st and in part, their right to rule over all Asian peoples which for a time they did.
Japan was not planning on surrender. They, in fact, had pulled back hundreds of aircraft, ships of all types and thousands of troops for the sole purpose of continuing the fight on the home islands. They were training small children to run out into the ocean carrying packs on their backs, when we tried to land troops on the beaches those packs would contain explosives, older children and old people were trained to charge out also carrying explosives on them, younger adults, mostly women were trained to use spears to attack troops that had made it off the beach.
The Emperor decided to surrender only after the second atomic bomb convinced him that Japan could not win.
The Army upon learning of the Emperor's plan to surrender attacked the palace killing most of the Palace guards in a plan to stop the Emperor from making a radio broadcast telling the people to lay down their arms.
Even after the surrender, there were many top military commanders who still believed they could win.
Had the US not dropped the 2 bombs the death toll to all sides would have been in the millions.
Another fact not understood was that ever since 43 the US was bombing Japan main islands day and night.
The Japanese had factories built in residential areas and by 43 had many factories set up in the workers homes. Therefore "just bombing military targets " was not possible.
In one air raid on the Capitol city over 150,000 people were killed.
In fact, more people were killed and more cities were destroyed by nonatomic weapons than with.
What the 2 atom bombs did do even though less damaging, was to shock the Emperor and many of his subjects into realizing that they could not, would not win. That we could, in fact, destroy them without setting foot on their homeland.
That had been the chief point the military leaders kept promising the nation, that the Americans and British would never risk an invasion and in fact, would sue for peace, that would allow Japan to rebuild and fight again, winning the next time because they had learned from their miscalculations about Americans ability to wage war. So, in fact, the use of the atom bomb saved far more lives than it took and kept another world war from happening for, so far 70 years and counting.
Both the Korean War and the Vietnam war were the outgrowth of WW2 as were many small wars in far corners of the globe but no full-scale wars like WW1 and WW2.
Remember that in WW1 somewhere around 30million people died, another 25 million deaths due to disease spread as a result of the war. WW2 more than 50 million died both directly from the war and disease caused by the war. Thats not counting the millions killed by Stalin before the outbreak of WW2.
Japan and Germany are now 2 of our closest allies as a result of how we treated them in the post war years.
We helped them to rebuild and also left them to govern themselves.
"All the countries involved in the 1st were involved in the second and were driven by settling old scores."
Portugal was in the 1st WW but not on the Second!
Richard C Good synopses!
Richard C I wanna hear some
@@ramirorodriguez7816 stories from my teacher?
@@karagi101 thank you
Excellent use of my time. Thank you very much. This exceptional documentary recently turned 20 years old and somehow I haven't seen it before... . Subscribed!
Engineering, as noted by several scientists, the complex engineering hurdles to get over to have the bomb come to it’s fruition, that was the prime accomplishment.
I had the honor of meeting the man who said he was detailed in building Los Alamos from the ground up while fixing his chainsaw at Western Auto. He told me he was building a cabin in the mountains when a long line of cars came down a dirt road and stopped. They asked him what he was going to do and he told them he was going to finish this cabin then go join the army. They told no he wasn't he needed more importantly there. His wife was sitting in there big yellow convertabale caddilac said with a very wonderful accent they were all such children always drinkinking Martinii's after 4:00. Wonderful people one heck of a story.
It is amazing how Oppenheimer instantly recognized the world ending potential of this weapon
Go to the start, Leo Szilard got the idea crossing a street. He drove the concept’s acceptance.
If it can be done once it can be done a thousand times.
The collection of sheer scientific genius is mind boggling. These are people I only got to read in physics and chemistry books. Their anecdotes used to get me super excited, when our chemistry teacher told us stories of these behemoths of science before starting a new chapter.
so these mind blowing brainiacs,built bombs to kill people,now that is really inteligant...nuke weapons have been around for thousands of yrs,,we,only just discovered how to build them,for the wrong reasons..1 bomb kills millions,& you cant go there for thousands of yrs..plus,it travels around the earth,,now that is a good thing,eh..idiot....sodem & gemorah,,NUKED, mars soil,radio active isotopes,from bombs.get a frigin grip will you..you need to research ancient history,,& find out,WHO, our creators were,,NOT GOD..only reason we are allowed to kill each other,for any trumped up excuse,,is to keep the population down..because were too stupid to regulate it ourselves..
@@phantomwalker8251 Wow, just wow. Name-calling- check. Poor grammar- check. Blatant hipocrasy- check. Half-baked conspiracy- check. Ignorance of history- check. You, sir managed to tick so many boxes on a single comment on youtube that its astounding. You know what these checks are? Troll checks. Now come at me with all your explepletives, keep using immature name calling- prove me right yet again. Beacuse I won't waste my time arguing against an internet troll.
Just for curiosity what is sannyamath
I do not know what to say or think, I was not a Japanese prisoner or a marine, much less a Japanese civilian on that terrible day, much less can I imagine the lives lost or saved by this act. What I can think of is that humanity must strive to avoid getting to this now and forever.
Therefore stop Iran
More civilians died the night we firebombed Dresden Germany.
The horror of war is something never to forget. We must not fight it unless freedom really is at stake.
@@rydplrs71
Therefore stop Iran
Never mind the partisan stuff. No more.
"A nuclear war can not be won. And so, must *never* be fought.
"
-Reagan, addressing US congress
@@hoodatdondar2664 true
1:30 That's the guy that Richard Feynman pulled a prank on when he picked the lock on his file cabinet and stole all of his files. Feynman had been complaining that they have terribly secret files and they need to have better locks and teller said that his was pretty good so during the middle of a lecture (Feynman sitting behind Teller) Feynman snuck out of the room; picked Tellers lock and took the files. Then he runs back to the group just as the lecture was finishing and asks teller to show him his file cabinet. Teller says "Sure" takes him over to the cabinet and says "I'd be happy to show you". Then he opens the cabinet and says "If you hadn't already seen it yourself". Feynman tells the story better in his own lecture titled "Los Alamos From Below" which I have listened to a thousand times and I'll listen to it a thousand more. It will NEVER get boring.
Really great documentary about a fascinating period in our history. Thank you.
Fascinating. My great uncle Dr. Rose was in the nuclear health physics division on this project and ended up in charge of that at Argonne after the war.
Interesting!
Famed Danish Physicist Niels Bohr said at the beginning of WWII that it was possible to build the bomb but no one would because it would require one of the big economies to turn their entire economy to just that purpose. After the war when he was given tours of the enormous enrichment plants in Washington state and Tennesse, along with the many universities nuclear reactor research sites and the Los Alamos site, he commented; See, I was right.
It took the British great expense and it wasn't until 1952 that they detonated their first bomb despite starting before the USA. France another 8 years in 1960.
If I recall correctly, at the height of the project, 10% of the entire electric power output of the US was being used by the 2 enrichment plants.
Still boggles my mind (yet pleases me for obvious reasons) that the premier Nazi physicist Heisenberg miscalculated the amount of U 235 needed to make a bomb, which resulted in the abandonment of the Nazi bomb work. Two of his students, who were on the side of the Allies, made the correct calculation. Scared both of them that if they could derive the correct amount surely their esteemed teacher could.
Apparently he was thrown off by the performance of the test reactor, which like the Manhattan Project reactor, was graphite moderated. It is surmised the graphite in Heisenberg's reactor was contaminated with boron, which absorbs neutrons. That led to the infamous heavy water misadventure.
Watching this so I can be more informed before watching Oppenheimer I believe it’ll be one of the greatest movies made in the last ten years
Yes
My grandparents met working on the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, TN
That's were. I live now I've worked at the DOE plants here worlds largest super computer is at y-12 now
Just one example. Go into the single battle of Iwo Jima and look at the horrors that took place to take that one little piece of dirt and then think how much worse would be the loss of life to everyone involved. If you really want to understand the war in the Pacific find a vet who can bring himself to speak of it. My father was one such man. When I asked about the war he would quietly hang his head and say,” It’s just to horrible to think about.” It’s easy for people to have their opinions safe and secure in the comforts of freedoms won at an unbelievable cost. Freedom more than anything is the most expensive thing on earth. The cost is human life. The cost is in living the rest of life without limbs, sight and an unbelievable array of human conditions. Many come home broken in spirit and soul. No one has any right to make judgements on such things until they have been in the same situation. We need to show respect to those who are willing to serve our nation and make that ultimate price.
... couldn't have said it any better 🙏🏾💯🇺🇸
I had an uncle who fought in the infantry during the island hopping campaigns of the Pacific. He lived with severe pain from shrapnel in his back and shoulders and drank to deal with it. He couldn’t and wouldn’t talk about the horrors he witnessed. He died from the result of his injuries in 1974. The bomb was horrific but it may have prevented unimaginable future deaths.
The best comment on the site - by far. It's of a piece with Oppenheimer's after the Trinity test - wherein you can see the effect the success of their efforts had on that brilliant and sensitive man. He knew precisely what was at stake, and that the bomb had to, and would be used. He knew that it would become his legacy, and that it was too horrible to think about. My father served in the North Africa and Italian campaigns, and when the film "Saving Private Ryan" came out, I asked him if he wanted to go see it. His answer was, "I've spent my whole life since trying to forget that ---damn war - why would I want to see that?"
You sound defensive.
I think we should not mustache
48.30 What do they mean by "Potsdam Yugoslavia"? Potsdam is right next to Berlin. The house the conference took place in is still there.
Till this Day I watch this Documentary once a week, it's just Extraordinary, Robert Oppenheimer's Biography, then the Atomic Bomb 💣 and how it all began the Documentary is Fascinating Genuinely!!!
This was kind of light on Groves' accomplishments. Before the US entered the war, public sentiment was against any involvement in any European war.
Very few people knew or cared that Japan was creating an Empire in the East.
Many people in the military and government knew that eventually the US would be involved. Groves constructed the new training camps over the country. They sat empty until after December 7, 1941. Groves was also well educated, having taken many hours of military and college courses.
Yes - Groves pulled of a project that boggles the mind in size and scope.
Yeah, the US constructed ammunition production factories over a year before Peral Harbor. I've also heard the US push Japan to attack us first, bc many Americans wanted to keep out of WW2.
Kind of light - vanishingly light - also on the MAUD Report and the Frisch-Peierls Memorandum, both from the UK, which convinced US scientists that a fission bomb was actually a real possibility. They predate the Manhattan Project, and arguably kicked it off.
@@Dragonblaster1 This is true. The MAUD Report verified to the U.S. government that the American physicists' contention that an atomic bomb was possible was independently verified by British scientists and should be taken seriously. Interestingly, the MAUD Report had been sitting in a safe in Lyman Briggs' office and no one had seen it until Mark Oliphant came to the U.S. to visit U.S. physicists and made them aware of what was in the MAUD Report. At that point, Ernest Lawrence contacted James Conant to ask why the report was not made available to the U.S. Uranium Committee. That started the change from the Uranium Committee to the United States Defense Research Council and the pursuit of fission research.
The planning and execution of this project is truly mind blowing! Groves said when he was flat on his belly during the 1st test. He was wondering what he'd do if the bomb didn't go off 😂.
My father worked on the Manhattan project he was a supervising engineer in Oak Ridge Tennessee. What an intense experience it was and what he told me.
i wonder if your father and mine knew each other. i bet they did.
My mother lived at the base and worked in Oakridge too, recruited before she graduated from college, Grinnell Iowa, she did a number of tasks including clerking in the rail cars of uranium, she had very high civilian clearance, I too have heard many, many stories of all aspects of her life there....she received the presidential framed, signed certificate, specially delivered on the 50th anniversary of Hiroshima, she had very bittersweet mixed emotions about all of this
54:19 I heard that some people fled the ruins of the first bomb to find shelter in Nagasaki. And how was your week?
Dexter Haven True! I served In Iwakuni. I read all that I could find on the Atomic attacks. One book told the story of a Hiroshima survivor making his way home to Nagasaki, and as he was telling his wife"first there was a big flash", and right then it happened again. Great reprise Dex.
TheDustysix Thanks, yes, some people have a knack for finding trouble. One of the people shot in the CO movie theatre was also at a mall in Canada when it was shot up, I heard. She fled to the safety of a theatre in another country and got killed. And how was your week?
There were maybe upwards of 200 in that category. One man saved some of his work mates since when he told if you see that big unearthly flash dive to the floor! Then FLASH, the second bomb hit. Many at the Mitsubishi plant were saved from burns.
50 years later to the date, I stood at ground Zero, and stood in the doorway of the MCDonald Ranch House. Not sure if it is still done, but they used to open the site to small tours twice a year.
Yes they still do. In April and I don't remember the 2nd time. I'm from New Mexico and I have spoken to people in San Antonio who saw the bomb go off. A lot of them literally though it was the end of the world.
Excellent documentary, great film footage and interesting to listen to the people who actually worked on the devices.
Great documentary - To know more about the topic a great book is the Making of the Atomic Bomb - Very detailed story on all the views on the topic!
... By Richard Rhodes.
Brilliant,this stuff was done in the early 40s,incredible ingenuity,drive and purpose.
@@phuckewe5876 the bomb was built in '38? Okay I guess I and the rest of the people with a > than 0. I.Q got it wrong.
I don't know if there's a cooler answer to a journalist's question:"What were you thinking about when the bomb went off" than what Oppenheimer said. Weather he was thinking about that verse from Bhagadvagita or not, that was one of the best quotes anyone who witnessed the Trinity test could have thought about.
But imagine being there, witnessing one of the most important and ground braking singular events in a history.
My Aunt, Mary Argo was the only woman nuclear physicist to be invited to Trinity. She dies in 1986 at 66 of a heart attack while hiking in the foothills of Los Alamos where she made her home after the war. I would do most anything to have a sit down conversation with her now. It still blows my mind she was actually there to witness it with all the bigshots like Oppenheimer, Grove and Teller.
Whether not the weather, C'mon people, learn to spell
Thank you for this brilliant documentry. After reading " The Making Of The Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes, I have no words to describe the enormous task the scientist have taken upon themselves to create the bomb. The genius of man has no boundry.
Similar to mankind's predilection for destruction, selfishness and cruelty. Boundless.
I don't know about all that now
gosh, hard to imagine the weight of both pride & guilt that weighed on oppenheimer....
Well, at least when they began the project, they had to beat Hitler to it for the rest of the world's sake.
''Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds!
Shreemad Bhagvad Geeta ❤️ Lord Krishna a form of Lord Vishnu.
Mother and Daddy knew many of the scientists during the period the research was being made at the University of Chicago. Daddy was assigned to an entirely different agency, but they were all housed in pretty much the same areas of Chicago and at parties after work apparently the conversation got loose after a few drinks. Daddy told me that just about everyone, at least of the officers who lived and worked around there, had a pretty good idea of what was going on, and when the scientists were moved to Los Alamos, they figured the bomb and the potential end of the war was near.
Same story as Ajjodi Remus
@@Caleb_Mandrake872 just horrible
I like these calmer docos. Unless it's cleverly done and sophisticated, docos with a lot of music and cuts and drama take away from the actual drama and story.
I wish they would keep the ads clean and respectful !!
My great grandfather was the chief machinist at Gilman Hall, University Of California, Berkeley College Of Chemistry from 1914-1945 - which is where Plutonium was discovered.
Something got hot there and went through a few floors during development
Wow! Very informative and learned a lot, I have visited Hiroshima at ground zero,Los Alamos (now Kirkland AFB) & spoke to 1st LT. Jacob Beser's son (Enola Gay's flight crew radar countermeasures officer,his job was to baby sit the electronic proximity fuse, the only man to fly BOTH missions) in Baltimore.
I wonder if these places are still radio-active!
My great grandparents met at Los Alamos -- which is an hour and forty minute drive from Kirtland AFB -- if you're headed to the museum. It's further if you are headed into the sensitive areas of the lab complex. They are not even remotely the same location. Wanna try that story again? Kirtland AFB is part of Albuquerque International Airport. Los Alamos labs are near Los Alamos, north and a bit west of Santa Fe.
TX for the info!
@@donberg01 mildly. Trinitite gives off a mild A/B signature, but is harmless as long as you don’t eat it. Under normal circumstances, radiation isn’t quite as dangerous as morons like Green Peace would lead you to believe.
Los Alamos is about one & a half hours drive from Albuquerque where Kirtland Air Force Base is located. The Bradbury museum at Los Alamos has the letter sent from Einstein to FDR.
Been searching for this. 4 over 40 yrs. This is it the explanation. Damn phone won't let me send or save. Truth and trust. My advice is step up.
I've downloaded this video for my class discussion in Physics. My students learned a lot on the pros and cons of Atomic Bombs..........
Pros: You can kill a lot of people
Cons: You can kill a lot of people
@@azff Good comment
@@azff pros: you can kill a lot of people.
cons: you can kill everything
I enjoyed the interviews with many of the physicists who were part of the project. One correction: Potsdam, where Truman, Churchill, and Stalin met famously in 1945, is obviously in Germany, not Yugoslavia as the film claims.
Not one of those were good men. But, we are brainwashed to think so. Stalin, without a doubt, is the most Cruel, Evil man to ever exist after 1900, possibly all time. Only Mao is equal. The lies we've been told, how many died to protect the evil families wealth, that still control the world, and at this very minute, have almost completed their Totalitarian takeover of the world. They have all nations under control except Russia, and America. It looks like America may be easier than Russia.
Was in Malta
That's correct - it's a suburb of Berlin, and was in the Russian Occupation Zone. Our friend who commented on the location was close phonetically, but about 1200 miles off geographically, Yalta being in Crimea.
The power of the explosion moved Potsdam to the Adriatic sea,I vacation there every year,beautiful...
Thnx for uploading!
It is a fantastic historical document.
::h1
I was just thinking the same thing. They really did an amazing job.
Very well researched and produced documentary.
Excellent report, thank you for the information, lots of people don't know that, thanks again.
If you enjoyed this documentary I would recommend reading "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes. It is a long and detailed work, but so well written--reads almost like a great novel.
I entirely agree. I've read it three times now, and it repays re-reading. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the authors of the script of this documentary had read and in many ways followed the Rhodes book.
@@kirkmattoon2594 Three times! I read it when it was first published and then loaned it to a friend and never got it back. However this is making me want to read it again and I'll make sure to just keep it on my bookshelf so it doesn't wander off. It won the Pulitzer didn't it?
I will do just that 😊
This is bar none, the best documentary on this subject I've ever seen. The interviews, the humanity, the location, baby boom, everything told so well !!!!! Bravo 👏. Bravo everyone who's worked on this !!!! Exceptional ❤
We were taught in school back in the early 60's that in the event of a nuclear exchange we were to get under our desks. " Duck and cover" ... like that would help.
There's a good chance it would, depending on distance from ground zero, most of the risk comes from debris.. Flying glass from shattered windows, collapsing roofs, etc.
@@Evan_Bell I'd argue that most of the risk comes from the heat of the explosion, which can be felt from miles away and even make people far from it catch on fire.
@@lelouchvibritannia4028 Only if you're in line of sight. Hiding behind light cover like a desk will help you with that too. But no, the blast, and associated secondary effects such as building collapse and flying debris is what results in the most deaths.
Lol...you gotta love the scientist / nuclear experts on the comment section...
@@salvadorhpo2030 I mean, I'm an engineer, with qualifications in physics, I've studied nuclear weapons for over 5 years, read thousands of papers on related physics, created a numerical simulator to model their operation and designed one.
I have a pretty good idea what I'm talking about, and everything discussed in this thread is very elementary physics.
This turned just one second into an eternity ! Even a microsecond was a long time !
Go watch the housewives of… something that can hold your attention !
You're absolutely right. The bombing of Tokyo involved incendary bombs for instance (together with explosives). Deployed on a massive scale they caused a firestorm destroying a major part of the city and killing tenthousands. The only difference with the A-bomb attacks was that the destruction by the latter came, so to say, in a flash and with long term radiation effects included.
Quite right: the firestorm of March 9~10 in the Tokyo Shitamachi, the working-class area walking distance north of the Imperial Palace, killed more people in one night than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
@@TheDavidlloydjones --- Quite right: the firestorm of March 9~10 in the Tokyo Shitamachi, the working-class area walking distance north of the Imperial Palace, killed more people in one night than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
Wayne Patterson --- That is incorrect. The death toll from OPERATION MEETINGHOUSE on 9-10 March 1945 is estimated at around 90,000 to 100,000 people. The Hiroshima death toll from LITTLE BOY is estimated at 20,000 soldiers killed and another 70,000-126,000 civilians killed. The Nagasaki death toll from FATMAN is estimated at more than 150 soldiers killed and 39,000-80,000 civilians killed. The total killed by the atomic bombs is estimated to be somewhere about 129,000-226,000. The number of human lives saved by the atomic bombs number in the tens of millions of people.
@@waynepatterson5843 So strange that we can compare deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and still see them as just numbers. Not criticizing, just observing.
@@flagmichael --- The decisions to use the atomic bombs was a means of saving the lives of the people who were not engaged in the war as combatants, which is direct evidence that the decisions were far more about saving the victims of the Japanese warfare than just about the numbers.
It took em 3 days and nights 24 bombings form US,UK,and France I forget how many planes and pilots and tons of bombs firebombing Tokyo ....it only took one plane one bomb do same amount of damage in ten seconds and we suffered no casualties ..then next day we drop nother make sure they know it wasn't no fluke or one time thing they had no idea how many we had
Gives me the chills. Horrifying!
Feynman disturbing Teller's sleep with bongo drumming, nice anecdote! :-)
Feynman has always been my favorite wish I could have met him.
I listened to a lecture he gave, "Los Alamos from below" or something like that. Very funny! He was a pain in the ass to anyone with bureaucratic tendencies :-)
Teller disturbed everyone’s sleep with his piano playing so there’s that 😉☕️🐸
Actually it's cango bongo
Sheldon cooper
I feel very privileged to have seen Phillip Morrison deliver a lecture in the early 70s for a UCLA extension course at the Claremont Colleges.
Privileged to have seen Bethe give a talk about Heisenberg back in the day...
the fact that even after the first nuclear bomb was dropped on japan, that hirohito still refused to give up, the second bomb was the determining factor... so I think even if they notified the japanese, hirohito would've said "do your worst" essentially.
we now know that the bombs had nothing to do with Japans surrender. When the War Council in Tokyo were told of the Hiroshima bomb they did not think much of it. The reason Japan surrendered to the US was because Russian troops were just days away from invading the north of Japan and they would rather be occupied by the US than be overrun by Russian troops. Just read 'Hiroshima Nagasaki' by Paul Ham
Great documentary. I grew up in Los Alamos and left at age 17........now I know why I glow in the dark :D
Lies
Serious?
Lol
Yep. I had a girlfriend from Los Alamos. Her public hair was on fire. Seriously. So hot!
Hahahaha!!!!!
I was lucky enough to work with some of the folks who worked on that project although most are gone now. The facilities that still exist are interesting and occasionally we still encounter some things left from that era.
This had my nerd favourites, Teller, Feynman,Behr and of course Oppenheimer. They had personality difficulties but they dug down and got the job done.
I would never feel lucky or proud to have crossed paths with the creators of the most destructive weapon and the minds behind a genocide.
@@didadida4920 They wouldn't have liked to meet you either. They stopped a World War you did nothing
@@456swagger by killing ten thousands of civilians?? By killing Kids?? Oops yeah I forget, that's how America deals with its wars.
@@didadida4920 OKAY thousands more Japanese children would've died had it not been for those bombs. ALL of Japan was willing to fight to the bitter end, the bomb was the best way to get them to realize we could wipe them out. Without losing hundreds of thousands of American soldiers. SO SHUT THE FUCK UP if America hadn't been the first it would've been the Soviets and the world would be ruled by authoritarian Stalinist regimes. ( I can't stand you "perfect society" wishful thinkers who think that you can condemn anything if even a single innocent civilian dies in a war, IT IS A FUCKING WAR PEOPLE DIE GET OVER IT!)
This brings me back to 1956 as a young chemical engineer in charge of the treatment of 130 000 tons per month of uranium bearing ore. This was funded by the Manhattan project , and one did not think that the end purpose was the production of nuclear weapons. This industry died later, discredited and feared, although appears to be finding a new life with the current energy shortage and the new 😊dangers of global warming
Amazing hearing the scientists involved tell the story. Great work to the movie makers.
The letter was written on this day 78yrs ago. Talk about this moment in history eh!
What do you think it is a great ! it looks like 😈 devil story
Imagine a time
When it all began in the dying days of a war
A weapon, that would settle the score
Whoever found it first
Would be sure to do their worst
They always had before
Imagine a man
Where it all began
A scientist pacing the floor
In each nation, always eager to explore
To build the best big stick
To turn the winning trick
But this was something more
The big bang, took and shook the world
Shot down the rising sun
The end was begun, it would hit everyone
When the chain reaction was done
The big shots, try to hold it back
Fools try to wish it away
The hopeful depend on a world without end
Whatever the hopeless may say
Imagine a place
Where it all began
They gathered from across the land
To work in the secrecy of the desert sand
All of the brightest boys
To play with the biggest toys
More than they bargained for
The big bang, took and shook the world
Shot down the rising sun
The hopeful depend on a world without end
Whatever the hopeless may say
Imagine a man
When it all began
The pilot of Enola Gay
Flying out of the shock wave
On that August day
All the powers that be
And the course of history
Would be changed for evermore
The big bang, took and shook the world
Shot down the rising sun
The end was begun, it would hit everyone
When the chain reaction was done
The big shots, try to hold it back
Fools try to wish it away
The hopeful depend on a world without end
Whatever the hopeless may say
The big bang, took and shook the world
Shot down the rising sun
The hopeful depend on a world without end
Whatever the hopeless may say-RUSH Manhattan Project
The Big Bang, took and shook the world, she downed the Rising Sun.....The pilot of Enola Gay flying out of the shockwave on the August day.....
I was GLUED to Power Windows when the 3 boys released it. Saw the tour and was mesmerized by the B-29 flying right into my face from the visual effects and backdrops. More than just some song Neil penned--I lived a piece of history in 1985 that Rush brought back from 1945.
Getty Lee sucks
I heard that in Geddy Lee’s voice
and Iran ... bleugh. This is a very good documentary. Well done. I would also recommend The Day After Trinity, also excellent. Great interviews and archive footage.
Whats about iran?
same like any other lie from USA, germany had no bom, irak had no bom, iran had no bom...... N-korea have no bom....
@@hdj81Vlimited --- same like any other lie from USA, germany had no bom, irak had no bom, iran had no bom...... N-korea have no bom....
Wayne Patterson --- You're the liar. Germany began its research and development to build an atomic bomb on 1 September 1939,which was twoand on-quarter years before the United States authorized the research and development of an atomic bomb.. Germany's efforts to produce an atomic bomb were a failure, whereas the Allied-Americaneffort toproduce atomic bombs were successful. The United States never claimed Iraq possessed nuclear weapons, but Iraq's research and development plans and facilities used in effort to produce a nuclear weapon/s were captured and documented. Iran' efforts to produce the enriched weapons grade Uranium necessary to produce nuclear weapons is documented by the international inspection teams.
@@waynepatterson5843 and for who is germany working do you think? Who paid the 5 year war, who delivered the steel and oil to fuel and make 1000st tanks and airplanes???? NOBODY can do this when the country is blocked. germany has no oil. all was set up by USA, they made before war selling guns to europe, loanes, after war build back = loanes again. NOW after 100 years the loanes are paid off, so its time for a new war...... THIS is how it works. The whole world war 2 was a TESTPROGRAM.... no budget to be allowed by gouverments and parlements.....nobody against it. It was all a very big testprogram, on people how much they can endure, but also to produce new technologoe. IN peace world, they have to ask money from gouverment, it was never developed then.........
@@hdj81Vlimited shut up you conspiracy loving hippie
My mother worked on the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge,Tenn. which would be known as "The Atomic City".
Did Shee know the rosenbergs who died they where spies
I've always heard it called 'The Secret City'
My uncle was in the OSI. He worked on background checks for workers at Oak Ridge.
@Northern Lad you are full of shit , just spewing moron rhetoric
So did my mother and father
Feynman was beating his drum, I can't stop laughing 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Slight correction: Szilard was Hungarian, not German.
Zanichbug True most physicist s were Hungarian Jews who escaped. Shalom
Damn, now, I don't believe anything.
Seven, CyberspacedLoner... where the fuck where you two born? A Barn?
CyberspacedLoner now that is an ideological basis on what you can start a fascist movement.
@@kellyedey549 no Africans as in none? That's harsh
My mom worked in the mail room of the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos Summer 1945 when she was 17! She didn’t know what they were doing. Her brother in law was one of the scientists (Milo Bolstad). Legend has it that some of the scientists were interested in her/ hitting on her, proposing, some combination thereof, I think including Oppenheimer!
I have a pic of her in Los Alamos outdoors during that summer.
I have no idea why but that is incredibly interesting. Can you send a pic? Lol.
Cool