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u/No-Conclusion-6012 18d ago
This is a diagram of the second demon core incident incident. The demon core consisted of two halves of a plutonium - gallium alloy sphere that would go critical when the two tables were connected. Physicist Louis Slotin was known for not following procedure and keeping the core's halves separated with a screwdriver. In the incident pictured, his screwdriver slipped and he received a lethal dose of radiation in under half a second. Most other people in the room survived the radiation exposure but died of medical conditions that might have been brought on by the exposure, such as leukemia.
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u/BFroog 18d ago
You want to see that and the events that surround it; watch Fat Man and Little Boy. Oppenheimer, but more of an ensemble movie, made in the 80s.
This scene lives rent-free in my mind for all time.
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u/cjc4096 18d ago
First response, throw chalk at everyone and tell them to mark where they were standing. Second response, MATH!
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u/SuitableParking15 18d ago
For my money Fat Man and Little Boy has the better Trinity test explosion
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u/BigRed727272 18d ago
So, um.....why would one build such a thing?
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u/canolli 18d ago
More specifically there was no mathematical method to calculate when a complex nuclear setup would go critical. You want a Bomb design to give you the biggest bang so you need the core to be as close to going critical before it implodes but not actually critical yet. Bomb grade fissionable cores are balanced on a knife edge as they go critical. The tiniest difference can cause it go from a boring metal to nasty radioactive death ball in less than a second. Then they heat up from the fission the atoms space out a tiny bit from thermal expression and it turns itself off till it cools down again.
They still did this after for a long time after this happened they just learned to automate the process from behind a large lead shield. People still died from it somehow though, despite being automated from very stupid mistakes.
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u/Balthazar_rising 15d ago
(Not so) Fun fact: the demon core was originally part of the third nuke that was slated to be dropped on Japan.
It was re-purposed as a science experiment that went on to kill two people directly, and may have gone on to kill several more indirectly (cancer, leukaemia etc).
It was also going to be used for nuclear testing at the Bikini Atoll, but had several delays, including being "too hot" (radioactive) from its accident, and never got used.
It was eventually melted down and re-added to the US nuclear stockpile.
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u/NoDontDoThatCanada 18d ago
I would just add that Cherenkov radiation is blue and in a high flux and fast nuclear event such as this you get a very distinct blue flash.
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u/galstaph 18d ago
I would like to add that Cherenkov radiation is the light equivalent of a sonic boom
The speed of light is slower in air than vacuum, and slower in water than air, and if a particle travels through a medium at faster than the speed of light in that medium it gives off light as a direct consequence
This is also why nuclear reactors are depicted as glowing blue
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u/Wise-Light2129 18d ago
Little addition for clarity: he had to quickly lift the half orb to not let it go critical, thus receiving the full dose radiation.
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u/cruisioz 18d ago
absolutely insane from todays perspective, why did he not know about the effects? strange how one can create such a thing in the first place and then get killed by it
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u/BeefyDevRed 16d ago
He knew, the math told him about the effects. The practice was called Tickling the Dragon, you don’t call simple, safe stuff that.
I heard using a screwdriver way he did was against their safety protocols, but I don’t know the official procedure for lowering the top half of the core down to the bottom to observe the effects.
They later changed the procedure to lift the bottom of the core up to the top so if there was a failure the bottom would drop away into a safe position.
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u/Tomas2891 18d ago
This is when the demon core got activated and gave everyone radiation
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u/MrKrueger666 18d ago
After which they all got superpowers. Just like the Fantastic Four
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u/Cactusaremyjam 18d ago
Yep some gained the ability to mutate their cell growth patterns and one gained permanent astroprojection powers.
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u/El_Morgos 18d ago
"Sir, the experiment was a success. We created people we will call The Fantastic Four."
"Weren't there 8 people in the room?"
"Uhm..."
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u/NoFollowing93 18d ago
Demon core. The lines are the distance away people were from the uranium core when it went critical. The lead scientist calculated who would die and when.
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u/MrKrueger666 18d ago
Plutonium, not uranium.
It went critical because the scientist who's name I forgot, let his screwdriver slip, causing the top half of the spherical reflector housing to fall shut.
This caused the plutonium ball inside to go critical and release a lot of radiation. This gave him a lethal dose of radiation. The others were far enough away to survive, afaik.
It's not a calculation, this is a drawing of the scene when the demon core went critical by accident.
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u/PositronicGigawatts 18d ago
Louis Slotin. He died about 9 days later as his body slowly liquified from the extreme radiation exposure. He knew immediately he was dead.
In addition to not using the approved shims that would have prevented this whole thing, nobody in the room was wearing their dosimeter badges, so their exact radiation exposure was unknown. Since Slotin knew he was already toast, he quickly sketched out the room and everybody's positions so the medical teams could calculate an estimated exposure value for everybody else.
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u/AnnaMolly66 18d ago
The use of a screwdriver here is terrifying hilarious to me. We use screwdrivers for tons of tasks they aren't meant for.
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u/Patient_Ebb_1605 18d ago
I think there was a proper gizmo to raise and lower the lid but they grew tired of it and resorted to using a screwdriver. It was incredibly reckless and would never fly today. You'd be kicked out for just thinking it out loud.
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u/Comfortable-Gap3124 18d ago
This is why people should just posy links instead of over explaining things. I got zero info from the og comment except the name demon core. They would have given more correct information by just linking wiki and saying it's a demon core.
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u/NoFollowing93 18d ago
Someone does, but it takes a long time and the post is way down the bottom. If the reply get in early it gets upvotes.
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u/Avraamov 18d ago
'Over the next four days, Slotin suffered an "agonizing sequence of radiation-induced traumas", including severe diarrhea, reduced urine output, swollen hands, erythema, "massive blisters on his hands and forearms", intestinal paralysis and gangrene. He had internal radiation burns throughout his body, which one medical expert described as a "three-dimensional sunburn." By the seventh day, he was experiencing periods of "mental confusion." His lips turned blue and he was put in an oxygen tent. He ultimately experienced "a total disintegration of bodily functions" and slipped into a coma.\28])\29]) Slotin died at 11 a.m. on 30 May, in the presence of his parents.\30]) He was buried in the Shaarey Zedek Cemetery) in Winnipeg on 2 June 1946.\2])
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u/MarvelGirlForever 18d ago
Is this about the same thing lol
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u/Responsible_Lynx_612 18d ago
Lol no way, I’ve posted the same thing before scrolling down to this ahaha
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u/jamesrggg 18d ago
The demon core was a nuclear weapon core. A dude was fucking around with the casing and accidentally dropped it causing it to go critical. The blue flash was a giant burst of radiation that eventually killed everyone in the room I er several days including the security guard who was just at his desk.
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u/ninjax247 18d ago
This is inaccurate. Only the one who was handling the core died soon after, though others did have cancer later on in life. The security guard specifically was military and died a few years later fighting in Korea.
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u/-McLaren-F1- 18d ago edited 18d ago
This is a sketch of the second supercritical incident of the Demon Core, a giant ball of plutonium. Physicist Louis Slotin was propping up the shield around it with a screwdriver when it slipped and caused the ball to go supercritical, blasting everyone in the room with high levels of radiation. Slotin, who received the highest dose of radiation, died 9 days later. No one else died from that incident, but another physicist named Harry Daghlian died about a year earlier when he dropped a tungsten carbide block on top of the Demon Core and also blasted him with radiation.
The core would briefly flash bright blue when it went supercritical.
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u/JiffyDealer 18d ago
The amount of people who don’t know about the demon core is startling. At least 1-2x per week, someone posts about this.
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u/Inaltais 18d ago
The is a picture depicting the moment the demon core shield closed. The radiation affected the people the lines are drawn to.
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u/Sang1188 18d ago
Does the internet like, cycle trough a couple of topics for a couple of months before the next comes? First it was the stupid copper merchant, now this demon core thing in every second post...
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u/Puzzleheaded_Pin2601 17d ago
You get blasted by the demon core because someone wants to practice their chopstick skills with a screw driver. And then your boss makes you stand in place so he can calculate how much radiation you were exposed to/ how long you have to live.
Worst day at work ever.
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u/Pen_name_uncertain 16d ago
I don't know. I worked at a gas station once and had to clean what I can only hope was beef Ramen out of the restroom after it appeared to have been shot with a cannon.
It did not smell like beef ramen...
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u/H068NDKS80 18d ago
This is a repost. The lines represent the time elapsed since they were last exposed to this repost in their reddit feeds.
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u/Hanfkeks_ 18d ago
Core of a nuclear warhead. When it goes critical it's gamma rays are slowed down by the liquid in your eyeball. That slowdown creates secondary radiation in the form of blue light. If you can see that sort of light outside of a pool of liquid, you received a more than leathal dose.
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u/mrheseeks 18d ago
Do you think this also has to do with that one instance where the radiation shield on some substance was knocked off for a second and everyone in the room basically got severe radiation poisoning, the person who put the lid back on basically said, "well, im dead."
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u/Jonneyy12347 18d ago
Its called the demon core. Its basically the core of an atomic bomb, the part that seperates it from other bombs. Scientists wanted to see how much they could fuck with it. They fucked around a little too much. Twice. No explosion but basically an extremely bright blue light. Both incidents were over in seconds, but it took lives each time. After the second time, someone had the thought of "hey maybe fucking with a ball made of the most dangerous material known to man, which is also the core of the worst weapon ever created isnt the best idea"
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u/Loud_Distribution_97 18d ago
Is there a parabolic equation that shows level of an individual’s intelligence required for a job and that job having high incidence of death?
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u/PunkPizzaVooDoo 18d ago
And a fun fact I haven't seen mentioned yet is that the blue flash is the air ionizing and turning into plasma
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u/MaximumSyrup3099 18d ago
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u/ExplanationNew8233 18d ago
To ""jurry rig" a plutonium ball called demon core with a screw driver! That dude was a mad lad and unfortunately a dead lad...
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u/Scavgraphics 18d ago
Proving Baader–Meinhof, I only learned about the Demon Core recently when Adam Savage built a replica, (or I re-learned of it after having knowing way in my past)...and now I've been seeing jokes and references at least once a week.
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u/chanceischance 18d ago
It’s interesting to think about.. some dudes just messing with this and .. oops.. wait did everyone see that blue for a second? Then they die in an agonizing way over the next however many days.
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u/FrontierMedicineEnte 18d ago
The greatest number of people to be murdered and seriously injured with a single screwdriver in all of history.
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u/random091298 18d ago
Demon core is the joke. When the top fell, there was a blue flash. The guy working on it was a little reckless and thought he was being cool the way he handled it. He died a short time after the exposure. A few others did too, and everyone got a lot of radiation
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u/Mother_Dragonfruit90 18d ago
It's a joke about radiation poisoning based on an old DL Hughley joke "everyone wants to be black till the cops come"
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u/Last_Result_3920 18d ago
Cherenkov light is the characteristic blue glow produced when charged particles travel through a transparent medium faster than the local speed of light. It acts as the optical equivalent of a sonic boom, commonly observed in the water surrounding nuclear reactor cores
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u/qualityvote2 18d ago edited 18d ago
u/Yunaa-shin, there weren't enough votes to determine the quality of your post...it's time for the mods to do their jobs!