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@Murderouscat-jt4qd I was thinking about that while watching. There is no testing it. You just wait for the moment of truth, and It either works or it doesn't.
@@Murderouscat-jt4qd I assume they would probably be testing smaller scale versions of Sundial. A less devastating model that would serve as a proof of concept. They can't test the real thing because... well, yeah.
Oppenheimer: *lives the entire rest of his life after Hiroshima in immense guilt and feelings of hopelessness from the fact that he just gave humanity the capacity to annihilate itself* Meanwhile Teller:
Man uses immense logic and reasoning, to conceive a *"Delete"* -button for humanity. While using none, to actually think if we need or should be trusted with it, in the first place.
actually it does mean something. the fact that we humans can't comprehend the magnitude of the number doesn't meant it has no meaning. In any case, it has no meaning for us humans. but it DOES have a meaning, we only can't understand it.
@@different_stuff do you realize other beings can have intelligence and others could understand it even though he humans couldn't? do you think humans are the only animals with a brain and logic reasoning?
That's the way some thermonuclear bombs works, a first stage which produces gamma rays, it activates a second stage, later this second stage activates a third and later.
I'm fairly certain the more common description was "nuclear layer cake". The Tsar Bomba was 3 layers deep. Presumably Project Sundial would have been several layers deep.
I had something similar happen. I am a physics student and went to a lecture about neutron stars. She was talking about the hot spots on these stars and how they were caused by thermonuclear hurricanes. This made me feel positive that at least earth's weather isn't this fucked
That idea still brings me chills, and I bet that for many who were alive and old enough after 2001. Back in the day you had people in national TV on the US say that the US should turn the ME deserts into glass with nuclear bombs. I cannot dissociate the image with the vitriol that we witnessed back in those days.
Teller was, there is no other word for it, an evil man. Not only did he push fusion bombs and this monstrosity as "saviors" of the West, he also propounded missile defense (Star Wars), which would have been profoundly destabilizing because the Soviets would have been faced with "use it or lose it" for their nukes. Thank heaven Star Wars turned out to be only a scam played on a senile Ronald Reagan.
Man uses immense logic and reasoning, to conceive a *"Delete"* -button for humanity. While using none, to actually think if we need or should be trusted with it, in the first place.
teller: *brings a flamethrower to a chess match* opponent: um, what’s that? teller: if you so much as capture my knight, i’m burning the whole damn board!
The truly insane thing is that Sundial was the smaller of Teller's proposed bombs. Look into GNOMON or one of the other projects being proposed at the time.
I'm so glad there is at least one major youtuber who talks about nuclear disarmament. It's slipped out of the mainstream consciousness so thank you for keeping making videos about it. Remember the probability of nuclear war approaches 100% the longer we have them.
Yeah. Btw, talking about nuclear disarmament is the same as talking about disarmament. I barely see the last, so I don´t wonder why the first is uncommon
Nah, it doesn't, gamblers fallacy, actually if we would know the day of last nuclear weapons expiring then every day probability of nuclear war would decrease. Nuclear race is funny cause it's basically a version of prisoner's dillemma, if no country builds a nuclear weapon - we all get conventional warfare, all the countries build nuclear weapons - we all get conventional warfare with a threat of nuclear attack, one country builds nuclear weapons while other do not - that country can delete any enemy by nuclear attack
Yeah, I’m all for talking about this, I guess I’ve just never seen an actual proposal on how to do this. I feel like the treaties made in the past between Russia and the US are all we have to go on.
And yet... I feel the actual real reason it was never built was the second reason, that it gives no room for any negotiation. Like, "hey, you're attacking me, so I'll destroy the world" sounds... bizarre... like, "you're trying to kill me, so I'll kill myself first and then you'll die too".
Lol. I live in Pennsylvania in the US so I got two political ads. Just to remind me who would be responsible for weapons like these... It made it worse.
The idea was for a smaller version to put it for example underwater and capitalise on deadly tsunamis. Otherwise it would waste energy by just blowing the atmosphere into space… i mean its a mad mad idea… but you see how they were thinking still destroying the enemy (and life) with something they cant even stop… Sundial is a crazy concept
Hearing that most of the information about project sundial is confidential and we don't know almost anything about it is really gonna make me sleep tonight.
"Hey fellow alien what was earth like?" "The dominant species has built 12,000 bombs designed to wipe out millions in a flash" "So, they're an intelligent species?" "Well, they're aiming them at each other, so..."
humanity is probably the most horrifying species in the universe and that's why no one wants to interact with us. They'd rather wait quietly until we destroy ourselves than meet us and have all of those planet obliterators pointed at them
I was just reading one of the Animorph books recently, one of the ones that delves more into the actual sci-fi war happening elsewhere, and the Andalites are both like "Oh, they have Nuclear Weapons and primitive space travel, alright, neat, keep an eye on them" and then also "Wait, you just got out of a war?? But you only have one sapient species, who were you fighting?? EACH OTHER?!??! What?!"
bro im rethinking our place in this vast cosmos like i bet if you ask anybody that isn t mentally ill would you build something that can wipe out the world theyd say no i wouldd never do that
That's good. These horrors are man-made and certainly intimidating, but they're not beyond comprehension, it's pretty well understood physics. That implies we should yet live to see the truly eldrtich ones and who's to say if they will even be scary after the current experiences?
@@SamWilkinsonn Not because we've seen it. Because we understand the principles behind them. We've understood long before building them in fact. Also, the people at the end of the XIXth century knew enough about physics, that it wouldn't take much filling in of blanks for them to get it too. They knew about atoms, thermodynamics, even x-rays. Some of the most important discoveries (in virtually any field imaginable) used today are from that period. You give them far too little credit.
@@Fossil_Frank if what you’re guessing at had any scientific basis then I could see your point (but still disagree.) Scientists didn’t really have any knowledge about the nuclear process (notably the chain reaction) until the 1930s. The biggest explosions anybody’d seen before 1900s were by dynamite (or similar) so they would have no idea of what a nuclear explosion would look like or how big it would be.
Nope. It's Herman Kahn. If you watch the movie, note when Dr. Strangelove talks about the BLAND corporation. Kahn worked for RAND. Also they are visually similar and - of course - Kahn was the leading doomsday theorist - the job performed by Dr. Strangelove
My dad worked with Edward Teller at Livermore. Edward Teller was actually a very sweet man. His wife cooked my whole family a very nice dinner once. By this time, they must both have been in their 80s. He was a misunderstood genius. I think the media has hyped Oppenheimer up to be a nice person, but he could be vicious in his personal life. The movie is un balanced.
lmao this is actually really damn good. Teller was both insane but completely practical. As Kurzgesagt said, dude basically skipped to the end. With the benefit of decades of additional nuclear arms creation, testing and accumulation behind us but in the years after Teller's pseudo-madness, it really doesn't seem as insane as it should. One would hope that it would basically scare humanity straight, but unfortunately all it takes is one Dave Chapelle type habitual line-stepper to decide they wanna see what happens if they push and push and they either call the bluff or the world ends. If the bluff is called you then have people both no longer respecting the Great Deterrent but you also still have said weapon, and that just opens the door for the worst of all worlds where you have a horrible World War III where someone finally has enough and reverts Earth into a protoplanet.
They made him look much worse than he actually was, he was a Jew and had to leave Europe before WWII yet he still feared the soviets more and that is the reason he wanted to make a deterrent for them.
Sounddesign this episode: PEAK performance! Whenever the narrator spoke about Sundial, the sound effect for the explosion was so good. Really good job with this one!
I absolutely love the music composition of this video. The haunting horn-like sound is an amazingly fitting leitmotif for nuclear weapons. It echoes the sound of air raid sirens. Also, on this topic, I am very proud of my country, Australia.
they were planning to test the smaller one (Gnomon) which is one tenth of the power of Sundial. Also they wanted to test underwater to create deadly tsunamis. I also think they would have tested the components separately (ie the stages but without the final Kaboom… and measure if they can produce the pressure for fusion to begin (they were obsessed with how supernova explodes) - though they failed to realise that a supernova ready star has a massive gravitational pull to keep the material together for the final collapse to reach the critical point (of which sundial (in theory) could not maintain… )
You replace 99.99999% of the material with something inert. You are testing the staging mechanism, not the absolute power, if successful it would match the calculated energy release. Castle Bravo is a hydrogen bomb test that failed successfully when they forgot to remove active material. Want a bigger bomb? Add more hydrogen stages, such design was called a Teller device.
It wouldn't have because it'd be molten glass. It'd only become solid glass if there were some kind of rapid cooling which wouldn't happen on an asteroid like explosion
There were reasons why at the start of the movie there was that disclaimer from the USAF stating that what happened in the movie was impossible. The main reason was that Kubrick almost perfectly guessed US nuclear strategy at the time. The main difference from the movie to reality was that you didn’t necessarily needed to be a general, every single commissioned officer in the US military at the time had the authority to start WWIII on their own discretion. There were no locking mechanisms on Nuclear Weapons or launch codes that were used. A former Minuteman launch officer at the time explained that until 1977, the unlock code for their missiles was just twelve zeros. In an interview he recalled watching Dr. Strangelove and recalled that they had it all wrong. “We were just Lieutenants! We could’ve started WWIII just as easily as General Jack Ripper!” The only safeguard mechanism in the US arsenal preventing a nuclear apocalypse until, in the case of the US Navy, the 1980’s was phycological testing and screening. Had the public known that the movie accurately portrayed the insanity of US nuclear strategy, it would’ve caused such outrage that it would be impossible to ignore.
"the deciding factor was when we learned your country was working on the similar lines - and we were afraid of the Doomsday Gap" "that's preposterous! I've never approved of anything like that!" "our source was The New York Times"
Socialized heathcare is such a problem that only 22 out of 23 industrialized nations figured out how to do it, but at least #23 has world-ending horror weapons...
(gives enough state-of-the-art military material to flatter the Gaza Strip, part of Lebanon, and more) "... we need to cut from social services, we have no money to help people"
I could understand his logic. It's either we stop because the it could end the world, or just end it all. The moment military recoiled from the thought of it really speaks volume about how effective it is in delivering his message.
Plot twist: Maybe he never actually wanted to build that bomb. But by making it a feasible reality, he successfully scared the world into realizing just how absurd an ever-escalating nuclear race would be.
@Alblaka exactly! I would do the same if i were him. Ofcourse i don't want the world to end. I want the madness to end. But how? By making people understand that THIS IS MADNESS
For it to work though, it’s detonation would need to be fully automatic based on predefined conditions. Once set up, humans would need to be taken out of the equation because no human would detonate it.
@@mina86I would right here, right now. And before any of you ask I don't have major issues, I don't need therapy, but humans on a large scale are not working. We need a hard reset. At least that's my opinion. The only thing I would regret destroying is nature and animals, but we are getting there only on the slower route.
Its why the published this on the main election day in america. Fear of possible war, will tip voter emotions. Or at least thats the hope, its more of a "influence in an legal way we can" method and hope it all adds up.
Seymour Cray was like that too, but his purpose was to build the biggest/fastest computers. Many of them were actually used to design and simulate nuclear weapons :)
7:47 idk why, but the sound used here sparked something inside me, I am in love with this sound I need to know where you got this sound, I want to listen to it on loop
@@BOZ_11 Because Teller emigrated to the US right before WWII and later Hungary was under commie occupation during the Cold War. If Teller would have never emigrated to the US you would either speak german or russian now.
Great video, but at the end: 'we should ask ourselves as a species'. No, just no, we as a species had no say in this at all. It's all geopolitical games,a few men at the top who had a say in this since the inception of nuclear weapons.. if you would poll humanity as a species, would having nukes ever win?
Yes, that’s why it’s still classified… Because classification doesn’t scream “MINE”. 😂😂 You went too far, now let me have those plans…to ahhhh, keep them safe! Yeahhhhh…
Before making a caricature from Teller it's worth listening to the interviews with him. He knew pretty well the Soviets' thinking and that they would not stop until they have nukes like the US. And Teller, having survived one Communist dictatorship in Hungary in 1919, was very motivated to avoid letting the rest of the world fall under Soviet control. There is a great long-format interview with him on the Web of Stories channel. Interestingly, he was also a lifelong friend of Leo Szilard who was, on the contrary, absolutely invested in controlling and reducing nuclear weapons, so much so that he founded the Council for a Livable World, which was one of the first organisations promoting the elimination of the US nuclear arsenal. So, you know - the real story is much, much more nuanced.
Y'all do realize that this was all American? Like this man could've been stuck being a bitchy scientist if the US didn't give him a blank cheque. It's not like they didn't have a choice. This doesn't mean Americans are bad people, just that the American government fully knew what they were getting, and were happy to continue in creating bigger bombs. It wasn't the Hungarians. It was the US.
I would imagine that was the point though. You skip all those steps about advancing that you see how pointless and absurd the concept of the entire arms race really is. It's like two kids being extremely pettier than the other trying to outdo one another until the damage becomes irreparable
KURZGESAGT I love you guys, most well established informative content there is. Very entertaining too obviously. I’m glad your channel does well and I hope it only keeps growing, I started watching you years ago a lot of years ago, I know you from the start and I appreciate your time for creating these videos that help me in every way.
This concept is damatized in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 dark comedy, Dr. Strangelove: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Great movie, I'd give it a watch.
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Cool
Ok
This vid was seven mins ago how is this comment 4 hrs ago😧
Wow
From the screen to the ring, to the pen, to the king. Where's my crown? That's my bling, always drama when I ring
Whoever did the sound design for this episode did an outstanding job
Epic Mountain did.
The music is unbelievably good
That explosion animations was also amazing! The way it blurred the screen made it look like something powerful went off
You saved me from watching this without sound, thank you!
7:47
8:50 - if THE US military responds to your idea with "that's too much bro" then you know you went a little too far.
Clearly! Why did they plan tests as in plural, the highest point in your career would be your last point
after a single succesful test
@Murderouscat-jt4qd I was thinking about that while watching. There is no testing it. You just wait for the moment of truth, and It either works or it doesn't.
@@Murderouscat-jt4qd I assume they would probably be testing smaller scale versions of Sundial. A less devastating model that would serve as a proof of concept. They can't test the real thing because... well, yeah.
thats what makes me believe that sundial actually was created. US military never says too much
@@chromab7713 yes but they had tests SCHEDULED which is the crazy part
7:45 Dude, I absolutely LOVE the sound design on this part.
My favourite part!
Fallout 2 baby!
I need that on imax quality
SAME IT'S SOOO GOOD
Cool
Oppenheimer: *lives the entire rest of his life after Hiroshima in immense guilt and feelings of hopelessness from the fact that he just gave humanity the capacity to annihilate itself*
Meanwhile Teller:
Teller: "That's Bulls#!t Oppenheimer. I can make a bigger, more destructive bomb! Get on my level noob!"
Teller: hold my sundial
Man uses immense logic and reasoning, to conceive a *"Delete"* -button for humanity.
While using none, to actually think if we need or should be trusted with it, in the first place.
The logic behind deterrence is sound, it's just cold mathematics which places national sovereignty above all else@@Sin_Of_Greed
Yeah this dude had 🏀🏀
7:00 “A number so big, it doesn’t mean anything anymore.”
That gave me chills.
actually it does mean something. the fact that we humans can't comprehend the magnitude of the number doesn't meant it has no meaning. In any case, it has no meaning for us humans. but it DOES have a meaning, we only can't understand it.
@@kerolokerokeroloI think what they meant was the number's so big it doesn't matter if it gets any larger
@@kerolokerokerolo no.
The whole concept of "meaning" is figment of our minds. If we can't comprehend it, then there is literally no meaning.
@@different_stuff do you realize other beings can have intelligence and others could understand it even though he humans couldn't? do you think humans are the only animals with a brain and logic reasoning?
@@originzz oh, it makes more sense now haha
I never thought I would hear "Nuclear Matrioska Doll", but now that I have heard it, I don't think I can ever forget it.
That's the way some thermonuclear bombs works, a first stage which produces gamma rays, it activates a second stage, later this second stage activates a third and later.
I'm fairly certain the more common description was "nuclear layer cake". The Tsar Bomba was 3 layers deep. Presumably Project Sundial would have been several layers deep.
I had something similar happen. I am a physics student and went to a lecture about neutron stars. She was talking about the hot spots on these stars and how they were caused by thermonuclear hurricanes. This made me feel positive that at least earth's weather isn't this fucked
It's it wrong that I want to build one and light it off on a distant moon or something, just to see the material dynamics?
@@userJohnSmith No. Isn't.
Damn. Deserts spontaneously turning to glass is a horrifying, yet beautiful mental image.
Facts
Warhammer 40k vibes. Casually glassing planets
Slime rancher has one of those.
That idea still brings me chills, and I bet that for many who were alive and old enough after 2001.
Back in the day you had people in national TV on the US say that the US should turn the ME deserts into glass with nuclear bombs.
I cannot dissociate the image with the vitriol that we witnessed back in those days.
We need to do this someday ngl
Edward Teller was the embodiment of the Great Filter
That’s such a unique way to describe someone capable of erasing us from existence. I like it 👍
the what?
@@NostalgicMem0riesgreat filter. If I remember correctly there is a video about it on kurzgesagt
@@NostalgicMem0ries Wikipedia is your friend.
@@aresdivision8277 i dont
Humans are geniuses at self-delete.
We were born to die
What a moronic comment considering we haven't committed self delete even once yet..
T
@@NL-87710I mean... eh??? We reproduce, THEN die.
real
3:20
"One man knew how to make nightmares real." Is a surprisingly cold line.
Well he was insane if that isn't obvious, incredibly smart, yes but insane nonetheless!
Teller was, there is no other word for it, an evil man. Not only did he push fusion bombs and this monstrosity as "saviors" of the West, he also propounded missile defense (Star Wars), which would have been profoundly destabilizing because the Soviets would have been faced with "use it or lose it" for their nukes. Thank heaven Star Wars turned out to be only a scam played on a senile Ronald Reagan.
Benjamín Netanyahu is proving to be the man, then
Man that statement really hits home because I have been having dreams of nuclear bombs lately and it’s kinda scary with what’s going on in the world…
5:35 I LOVE this sound effect, it's so ominous
My favourite of this video is 7:45, the sfx team knocked it out of the park with this one
It reminded me Fallout Tactics OST, it had such moments.
Reminds me of the "City of the Dead" soundtrack from Fallout 2
What's the sound effect name, pls tell :)
chonky cat 😊
the sheer betrayal of finding out this channel isn't run exclusively by little birbs
Yea its run by special interest groups.
Teller: Yo can you give me moderator perms real quick? Just wanna try somethin
Lmao
He was the incarnation of the self destructive intrusive thoughts.
Man uses immense logic and reasoning, to conceive a *"Delete"* -button for humanity.
While using none, to actually think if we need or should be trusted with it, in the first place.
-Deletes the server
teller: *brings a flamethrower to a chess match*
opponent: um, what’s that?
teller: if you so much as capture my knight, i’m burning the whole damn board!
,,And both of us as well,,
"And your house"
And our country
And the earth
"Its for everyone's benefit"
Oh great a totally stress free video for a stress free day.
- SomeOtherBots
Today was just to good Apparently😊
The truly insane thing is that Sundial was the smaller of Teller's proposed bombs. Look into GNOMON or one of the other projects being proposed at the time.
I appreciate education and information. Posting what's possibly their most fear inducing video today feels intentional.
@@BSpinoza210teller is the perfect examples of the enormous difference between intent and actual consequences
I'm so glad there is at least one major youtuber who talks about nuclear disarmament. It's slipped out of the mainstream consciousness so thank you for keeping making videos about it.
Remember the probability of nuclear war approaches 100% the longer we have them.
See: Metal Gear Solid
Yeah. Btw, talking about nuclear disarmament is the same as talking about disarmament. I barely see the last, so I don´t wonder why the first is uncommon
Nah, it doesn't, gamblers fallacy, actually if we would know the day of last nuclear weapons expiring then every day probability of nuclear war would decrease.
Nuclear race is funny cause it's basically a version of prisoner's dillemma, if no country builds a nuclear weapon - we all get conventional warfare, all the countries build nuclear weapons - we all get conventional warfare with a threat of nuclear attack, one country builds nuclear weapons while other do not - that country can delete any enemy by nuclear attack
And we will always have them, you think a country like north korea ever disarm their nukes?
Yeah, I’m all for talking about this, I guess I’ve just never seen an actual proposal on how to do this. I feel like the treaties made in the past between Russia and the US are all we have to go on.
8:58 That is not a crime against humanity, it's a crime against life on earth.
And yet... I feel the actual real reason it was never built was the second reason, that it gives no room for any negotiation. Like, "hey, you're attacking me, so I'll destroy the world" sounds... bizarre... like, "you're trying to kill me, so I'll kill myself first and then you'll die too".
A crime against sanity.
Life don't care about monkeys changing the landscape for petty things.
Gaia-cide 🌎💥
a crime against life as we know it
Had an ad at 10:43 open with "let's get ready rumble". I think the algorithm has something against us
I’m ready!
Lol. I live in Pennsylvania in the US so I got two political ads. Just to remind me who would be responsible for weapons like these... It made it worse.
@@LiftTheFogThis fay has been nerve-wracking honestly
UA-cam has ads?
Weird. You should block those.
@@wasd____ It was the irony. I wasn't complaining. Sorry if I upset you. I didn't mean to.
I really appreciate the sound effects team. It was terrifying with added with the graphics at 7:48. it sent chills
Sounds like Tenet.
I respect this man, he didn't even play with the idea of there being a winner to nuclear war.
He was the only one that took proliferation seriously.
I don't respect him he was the epitome of a mad scientist trying to create the Doomsday Device to end all Doomsday Devices. An absolute lunatic.
Dr Strangelove intensifies.
You can't fight in here! This is the war room!!!
The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret.
Why didn't you tell the world, eh?
Watching geopolitics is like watching a non-entertaining gangster movie
by them punks living soft while I ride that bomb Dr. Strangelove into the sun look no hands megatons
Mine fuhrer, I can walk!
the way he says "if a bomb can destroy the whole world, why even bother moving it?" had me rolling.
The idea was for a smaller version to put it for example underwater and capitalise on deadly tsunamis. Otherwise it would waste energy by just blowing the atmosphere into space…
i mean its a mad mad idea… but you see how they were thinking still destroying the enemy (and life) with something they cant even stop…
Sundial is a crazy concept
@@mityaboy4639 Good thing we already have such devices.
Hearing that most of the information about project sundial is confidential and we don't know almost anything about it is really gonna make me sleep tonight.
Maybe they couldn't make it work.
@@brodriguez11000 If they made it work, we wouldn't be talking about it.
@@brodriguez11000Or maybe they already have.
Apparently we know it was never built, so that could help?
Real
And this is the best example of why the audio part of a movie is the most important. REALLY great ambience, music and sound effects for this clip!
Basically a realistic version of "you won but at what cost"
SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE
No one wins nuclear war. Stalemate at best.
@@shooey-mcmossBLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD
@@dingo8845 MILK FOR THE KHORNE-FLAKES!
A "Pyrrhic victory" in which a battle costs so much you can't continue the war.
"Hey fellow alien what was earth like?"
"The dominant species has built 12,000 bombs designed to wipe out millions in a flash"
"So, they're an intelligent species?"
"Well, they're aiming them at each other, so..."
more like 80 000 plus 5 that each could factory reset the planet
“So Intelligently Feral?”
“Yeah let’s go with that”
humanity is probably the most horrifying species in the universe and that's why no one wants to interact with us. They'd rather wait quietly until we destroy ourselves than meet us and have all of those planet obliterators pointed at them
I was just reading one of the Animorph books recently, one of the ones that delves more into the actual sci-fi war happening elsewhere, and the Andalites are both like "Oh, they have Nuclear Weapons and primitive space travel, alright, neat, keep an eye on them" and then also "Wait, you just got out of a war?? But you only have one sapient species, who were you fighting?? EACH OTHER?!??! What?!"
bro im rethinking our place in this vast cosmos like i bet if you ask anybody that isn t mentally ill would you build something that can wipe out the world theyd say no i wouldd never do that
I like how the video went from talking about world destroying nukes to getting a whimsical science project for your family
we must have fun even in this chaotic world :)
This guy deserves his own movie.
"are you ok? Do you need a hug?"
"You May Live to See Man-Made Horrors Beyond Your Comprehension."
- Nikola Tesla, 1898
That's good. These horrors are man-made and certainly intimidating, but they're not beyond comprehension, it's pretty well understood physics. That implies we should yet live to see the truly eldrtich ones and who's to say if they will even be scary after the current experiences?
@@Fossil_Frank Worse, we may _be_ the eldritch ones...
@@Fossil_Frankthey’re not beyond comprehension anymore because we’ve seen it. It would’ve been incomprehensible to the people in 1898 though.
@@SamWilkinsonn Not because we've seen it. Because we understand the principles behind them. We've understood long before building them in fact. Also, the people at the end of the XIXth century knew enough about physics, that it wouldn't take much filling in of blanks for them to get it too. They knew about atoms, thermodynamics, even x-rays. Some of the most important discoveries (in virtually any field imaginable) used today are from that period. You give them far too little credit.
@@Fossil_Frank if what you’re guessing at had any scientific basis then I could see your point (but still disagree.)
Scientists didn’t really have any knowledge about the nuclear process (notably the chain reaction) until the 1930s. The biggest explosions anybody’d seen before 1900s were by dynamite (or similar) so they would have no idea of what a nuclear explosion would look like or how big it would be.
NOTE: Teller was the "Inspiration" for the fictionalized lead character in the Movie "Dr Strangelove" - played by the Great Peter Sellers 👍
Nope. It's Herman Kahn. If you watch the movie, note when Dr. Strangelove talks about the BLAND corporation. Kahn worked for RAND. Also they are visually similar and - of course - Kahn was the leading doomsday theorist - the job performed by Dr. Strangelove
Turns out it was the Americans planning to build the doomsday device. Probably the only people who could afford it.
@@toddheartsound5451 Not so much "nope" as "Actually, there were a bunch of people like that."
@@toddheartsound5451 it was an amalgamation of Teller and Wehrner von Braun, according to Sellers himself.
@@NextianGeometry nope is logically correct because that's not what he wrote ;)
Sometimes people just want to watch the world burn, and sometimes they take that WAY too literally.
(Palestine right now)
If Oppenheimer is the father of the atomic bomb, Edward Teller is the abusive stepdad...
💀💀💀
My dad worked with Edward Teller at Livermore. Edward Teller was actually a very sweet man. His wife cooked my whole family a very nice dinner once. By this time, they must both have been in their 80s. He was a misunderstood genius. I think the media has hyped Oppenheimer up to be a nice person, but he could be vicious in his personal life. The movie is un balanced.
lmao this is actually really damn good.
Teller was both insane but completely practical. As Kurzgesagt said, dude basically skipped to the end. With the benefit of decades of additional nuclear arms creation, testing and accumulation behind us but in the years after Teller's pseudo-madness, it really doesn't seem as insane as it should. One would hope that it would basically scare humanity straight, but unfortunately all it takes is one Dave Chapelle type habitual line-stepper to decide they wanna see what happens if they push and push and they either call the bluff or the world ends. If the bluff is called you then have people both no longer respecting the Great Deterrent but you also still have said weapon, and that just opens the door for the worst of all worlds where you have a horrible World War III where someone finally has enough and reverts Earth into a protoplanet.
They made him look much worse than he actually was, he was a Jew and had to leave Europe before WWII yet he still feared the soviets more and that is the reason he wanted to make a deterrent for them.
bro turned years of wars into an after thought
Human are good at solving problems, but even better at creating them.
Yeah that is right we do more harm than good and that's the frequent nature of humanity 😑😑😑😒😒😒
Based humans
@@tv_thats_dumb_i_guess ain't that the truth for us to say where the smartest species out there we do some pretty dumb shit
@peternandi5362 hey if we ain't making problems then what is there to fix? 😂
@@JohnDublin-h5x You know that's so fucking true It's so fucking true It's not even funny anymore because it is 😂😂😂😂😂
Finally, a weapon to destroy my brother's minecraft city
Lol
Big Bertha
I thought you said my brother's city...
oops
hahaha
Sounddesign this episode: PEAK performance!
Whenever the narrator spoke about Sundial, the sound effect for the explosion was so good. Really good job with this one!
12:31 *Thinks back to all the murdered birbs... 😢
OCH NO
Kurzgesagt situation is crazy???
You know it’s going to be good when it’s a video about bombs.
Yep.
It’s perfect for when you’re on the toilet 😊
babe wake up a new kurzgesagt bomb video just dropped.
Honey run! Im dropping sundial over here!!!
@ it’s more like “don’t worry honey there’s no point in running”
I absolutely love the music composition of this video. The haunting horn-like sound is an amazingly fitting leitmotif for nuclear weapons. It echoes the sound of air raid sirens.
Also, on this topic, I am very proud of my country, Australia.
First 10s into the video: "usa is developing a nuclear bomb to wipe out all civilization"
Bruh
you know, that's really funny and all, but i think i gave you herpes...
They were always up to no good >:(
SCORPOOOO LOVE UR MUSIC
6:03 “tests were planned” what😭😭 how would one even test that
they were planning to test the smaller one (Gnomon) which is one tenth of the power of Sundial. Also they wanted to test underwater to create deadly tsunamis.
I also think they would
have tested the components separately (ie the stages but without the final Kaboom… and measure if they can produce the pressure for fusion to
begin (they were obsessed with how supernova explodes) - though they failed to
realise that a supernova ready star has a massive gravitational pull to keep the material together for the final collapse to reach the critical point (of which sundial (in theory) could not maintain… )
You replace 99.99999% of the material with something inert. You are testing the staging mechanism, not the absolute power, if successful it would match the calculated energy release. Castle Bravo is a hydrogen bomb test that failed successfully when they forgot to remove active material. Want a bigger bomb? Add more hydrogen stages, such design was called a Teller device.
you blow up that on the moon 😊
@@mityaboy4639 lol it is still one gigaton tnt with radiation fallout 😂
What do you think all those launches to mars are for (:
7:45 It would've been insane if the glass shattered with the blast wave
It wouldn't have because it'd be molten glass. It'd only become solid glass if there were some kind of rapid cooling which wouldn't happen on an asteroid like explosion
@ You must be great at parties
@@andredelacerdasantos4439 So there would be a tsunami of molten glass?
@@thatonefuyu nah that was actually a fun fact
@@sukenberg4685 Actually, I think so, yes. There are 2D simulations of asteroid impacts on UA-cam which I highly recommend.
Sound effects/background music in this episode is superb
7:48 cool sfx, need a 'doom" type music with that sound.
You know how some people rage quit at monopoly when they are about to lose. He made that into a bomb.
*US hegemony gets contested*
"WITH THIS TREASURE I SUMMON...."
US Army: "Talk about wiping the board..."
Teller: "Haha, you meant *planet* right?"
Strangelove has turned out to be way more plausible than is healthy for my piece of mind.
If we learned anything these past few years, it should be that satire is dead as reality is far more ludicrous than anything a satirist can dream up.
They probably already built it and the bunkers too. Wasnt that movie released before the 60’s too?
There were reasons why at the start of the movie there was that disclaimer from the USAF stating that what happened in the movie was impossible. The main reason was that Kubrick almost perfectly guessed US nuclear strategy at the time. The main difference from the movie to reality was that you didn’t necessarily needed to be a general, every single commissioned officer in the US military at the time had the authority to start WWIII on their own discretion. There were no locking mechanisms on Nuclear Weapons or launch codes that were used. A former Minuteman launch officer at the time explained that until 1977, the unlock code for their missiles was just twelve zeros. In an interview he recalled watching Dr. Strangelove and recalled that they had it all wrong.
“We were just Lieutenants! We could’ve started WWIII just as easily as General Jack Ripper!”
The only safeguard mechanism in the US arsenal preventing a nuclear apocalypse until, in the case of the US Navy, the 1980’s was phycological testing and screening. Had the public known that the movie accurately portrayed the insanity of US nuclear strategy, it would’ve caused such outrage that it would be impossible to ignore.
"the deciding factor was when we learned your country was working on the similar lines - and we were afraid of the Doomsday Gap"
"that's preposterous! I've never approved of anything like that!"
"our source was The New York Times"
a desert turning into a giant plain of glass sounds like a SICK place for a post-apocalyptic story
0:44 that is Grove street
You picked the wrong house fool
- Home. At least it was before I fucked everything up.
"Ah shit, here we go again"
Me everytime I see a cul-de-sac: "Grove Street, home..."
cue: GTA music
>project sundial
>looks inside
>no actual sundial
>looks inside project sundial
>project sundial doesn’t exist
>tfw no actual sundial
0/10, literally unplayable.
It's good tho
there is a sun, though. for a little bit.
"Seventy thousand nukes" public healthcare is too expensive though guys
Socialized heathcare is such a problem that only 22 out of 23 industrialized nations figured out how to do it, but at least #23 has world-ending horror weapons...
Cool Sigma-Nukes > Lame Beta-Healthcare
Ya but now our enemies will be extra dead so it all works out
(gives enough state-of-the-art military material to flatter the Gaza Strip, part of Lebanon, and more) "... we need to cut from social services, we have no money to help people"
Hew-mons are a hideous intelligence.
3:20 "And one man was about to make those nightmares real, MAKAROV"
An alien visiting us and asking if we need a hug is somewhat disturbing and wholesome at the same time.
I could understand his logic. It's either we stop because the it could end the world, or just end it all.
The moment military recoiled from the thought of it really speaks volume about how effective it is in delivering his message.
Plot twist: Maybe he never actually wanted to build that bomb. But by making it a feasible reality, he successfully scared the world into realizing just how absurd an ever-escalating nuclear race would be.
@Alblaka exactly! I would do the same if i were him.
Ofcourse i don't want the world to end. I want the madness to end. But how? By making people understand that THIS IS MADNESS
@@MichaelHarto
It's the ultimate Mom/Dad answer:
"I don't care who started it or how; I end it now!"
For it to work though, it’s detonation would need to be fully automatic based on predefined conditions. Once set up, humans would need to be taken out of the equation because no human would detonate it.
@@mina86I would right here, right now.
And before any of you ask I don't have major issues, I don't need therapy, but humans on a large scale are not working. We need a hard reset. At least that's my opinion.
The only thing I would regret destroying is nature and animals, but we are getting there only on the slower route.
2:22 "Fear makes people do crazy things"
Its why the published this on the main election day in america.
Fear of possible war, will tip voter emotions. Or at least thats the hope, its more of a "influence in an legal way we can" method and hope it all adds up.
Who would that influence people to?
@@Stevenwinrar take your meds psycho
Yes, i also heard that, thanks for this very useful comment
"They're eating the dogs"
They were afraid of it because it was an actually great idea.
Fear makes people do crazy things. That is happening in the world right now in so many different ways.
As we've seen during Corona
Glorified flu.
Least the rest of the universe will no longer have to worry about us spreading our evolutionary dead end.
Is Palestine one of those? I'm not sure if fear fits it
1:45 Poland lore
If poland wasnt entered into nato and had a solid nuclear program this would be it XD
It's not funny but true
Polands making a comeback now
@@endoghost4396 Huh? How?
@typicaluser697
It's 20th in world military and increasing in gdp and military
The explosion sound effects is insane💯💯
Great, now there's gonna be a War Thunder player that's gonna leak the entirety of Project Sundial on a discord server for the world to see
OH GOD NO
I like how Edward Teller's life purpose was always to make the biggest bomb
Seymour Cray was like that too, but his purpose was to build the biggest/fastest computers. Many of them were actually used to design and simulate nuclear weapons :)
As an alien, I would like to give humans a hug.
Hug them and u end up as their permanent captive. No thanks
@@christeanaz
Don't hug them and you end up dead.
Save yourself. We'll self destruct very soon.
Thank you. We’re offering three tiers of relationship: Partner, pet or perish. Choose wisely
@@TheRealBelisariusCawl Pet, as long as you treat us like we treat cats I wouldn't mind.
7:45 is absolute banger, terrifying but awesome sfx
It's already scary what harm an antisocial dummie can do to others but geniuses who have no regards for human life are on another level of menace
4:42 holy! That animation looks so good!
„Would not shake the hand of Teller“ - wife of Oppenheimer
13:35 BAD HUMAN!!! DOWN!!! DOWN!!!
7:47 idk why, but the sound used here sparked something inside me, I am in love with this sound
I need to know where you got this sound, I want to listen to it on loop
I love that it was a Hungarian guy who proposed a speedrun to Apocalypse.
why does that matter?
@@BOZ_11 Because Teller emigrated to the US right before WWII and later Hungary was under commie occupation during the Cold War. If Teller would have never emigrated to the US you would either speak german or russian now.
Classic Hungarian behavior
@@WARXion the bomb didnt win the war. you might need to revise your understanding.
The Scourge of God would be proud
dude the sound design in this video is nuts
Oh so that's how Spongebob began 4:53
That's an ongoing fan theory.
Lol
Yeah…hence bikini bottom.
It used to be bikini atoll, now it’s on the bottom. 😂
Elon said in our recent uncensored something which might be too crazy to be real, but it happens
Trump is trying to save us here with this
Joining the crew, you guys are amazing
When was this released?
Do not think that is a bad joke they know their thing
This won't save Elon's X
Great video, but at the end: 'we should ask ourselves as a species'. No, just no, we as a species had no say in this at all. It's all geopolitical games,a few men at the top who had a say in this since the inception of nuclear weapons.. if you would poll humanity as a species, would having nukes ever win?
Literally. And this applies to all geopolitical subjects really. We're at the mercy of power hungry psychopaths
0:14 Genius or Stupid?
Pretty dumb if you ask me
Both, probably
Obviously Genius ...because you can't even make a single Bowl of Oats and he made a Weapon of mass destruction
It’s why I, and others say Warhammer 40K is a lot more plausible and realistic than Star Trek. It acknowledges our innately destructive human nature.
@@lgg052 Still, learning to make Oats is far much better than learning to destroy thyself!
When the US military says your weapon is "too much" you know you went too far...
We want to bring some freedom to other countries...no NOT that much freedom tho
Yes, that’s why it’s still classified…
Because classification doesn’t scream “MINE”. 😂😂
You went too far, now let me have those plans…to ahhhh, keep them safe! Yeahhhhh…
0:10 holy crap the animation and art is mind blowing (and the thumbnail art too)
2 KURZGESAGR VIDEOS IN A WEEK LES GOOO 🔥🔥🔥
Edward Teller in his winter arcs went mental lol
winter arcs?
6:36 guys this is literally attack on titan wtf 😭
Right
7:48
OK the sound design absolutely nuked it with that sound right there!
3:13 "Civil powers spent trillions to have thousands of the most intelligent people show off how hard they could destroy humanity"
that was chilling 😬
Man, the sound design of this video slaps!
Before making a caricature from Teller it's worth listening to the interviews with him. He knew pretty well the Soviets' thinking and that they would not stop until they have nukes like the US. And Teller, having survived one Communist dictatorship in Hungary in 1919, was very motivated to avoid letting the rest of the world fall under Soviet control.
There is a great long-format interview with him on the Web of Stories channel.
Interestingly, he was also a lifelong friend of Leo Szilard who was, on the contrary, absolutely invested in controlling and reducing nuclear weapons, so much so that he founded the Council for a Livable World, which was one of the first organisations promoting the elimination of the US nuclear arsenal.
So, you know - the real story is much, much more nuanced.
5:36 and 7:47 amazing sound effect
Sound effects fit so good, i literally had goosebumps in some parts.
People: "USA is the strongest!", "No! Russia is the strongest!", "NO! Germany is the strongest!".
While Hungarians:
Hungarians when they try
Hungary: Call us "Hungry" one more time and we're pressing the big red button.
Y'all do realize that this was all American? Like this man could've been stuck being a bitchy scientist if the US didn't give him a blank cheque. It's not like they didn't have a choice.
This doesn't mean Americans are bad people, just that the American government fully knew what they were getting, and were happy to continue in creating bigger bombs. It wasn't the Hungarians. It was the US.
Hungarian-American. We made sure to adopt that genius 😊
this specific hungarian lived in america for seventy years, and worked with americans for the entirety of his time there.
“You’ve won, but at what cost” ahh bomb
No, it's the "Nobody wins" bomb.
It's the "you lose" bomb.
it’s the “if I ain’t living, you ain’t living” bomb
Brainrot comment.
7:07 i love it when kurzgesagt starts exploding stuff :3
Oppenheimer explained in Kurzgesagt language
8:50 if the US MILITARY thought it was too much then you have gone way too many steps too far
REAL.
I would imagine that was the point though. You skip all those steps about advancing that you see how pointless and absurd the concept of the entire arms race really is. It's like two kids being extremely pettier than the other trying to outdo one another until the damage becomes irreparable
The US military practices proportionality all the time. MacArthur was fired for his plan to casually use nukes as a tactical weapon in Korea.
Teller feels better described as a nuke fetishist rather than just genius. And it's dismissive to pretend he's the only creator of the hydrogen bomb.
Teller is breedable. I would want to adopt and raise his babies.
@@seal7513Posting comments is optional
@@seal7513 your comment has been screenshot and immortalized.
@seal7513 Sanest bad boys enjoyer:
The track around 7:50 specifically harkens back to the old Fallout scores. Great reference.
4:34 stupendousungodly
unstupendousgodly
KURZGESAGT I love you guys, most well established informative content there is. Very entertaining too obviously. I’m glad your channel does well and I hope it only keeps growing, I started watching you years ago a lot of years ago, I know you from the start and I appreciate your time for creating these videos that help me in every way.
What if we destroy humanity, EVEN HARDER???
7:19 That’s terrifying. Absolutely terrifying.
8:10 - i mean, at least we would solve the climate crisis like this. am i right folks?
Ofc, thatgenius dude
😂😂😂
No climate, no crisis, problem solved!
Replace your climate crisis with a bigger, worse climate crisis
That's so incredibly insane
Props to the music and sound team on this one. Scary stuff
This concept is damatized in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 dark comedy, Dr. Strangelove: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Great movie, I'd give it a watch.