Overnight open thread. Things that Make You Go Boom (genghis)

Update: As always, YouTube provides, so I've added the clip of China's first atomic weapon test from "Trinity and Beyond" below the fold, along with pushing the related text down so this post didn't become even more of a space hog than it was. Original post below.

Enough grim news for today, so how ‘bout some exploding stuff to brighten up the place tonight?

Over at “SplodeTV.com” they have a heartwarming video in their archives from 2007 titled Lots of Buildings Getting Blowed Up. So it’s practically not old at all. It comes with a danceable soundtrack too…if you’re a Euroweenie that is.

Looks like they found that vid at something called “SonicBomb.com” which surprisingly enough has clips of lots of other things getting blowed up real good (as Dave in South Oklahoma might put it.) Tons and tons (or kilotons) of video. The title of one of their posts intrigued me though. It tells the tale of The Man Who Stuck His Head Into a Particle Accelerator. The subtitle to the article is “A Subatomic Bullet to the Head.” The setup:

As a 36 year old researcher at the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino, Anatoli Bugorski used to work with the largest Soviet particle accelerator, the synchrotron U-70. On July 13, 1978, Bugorski was checking a malfunctioning piece of equipment when an accident occurred due to failed safety mechanisms”

“Bugorski was leaning over the piece of equipment when he stuck his head in the part through which the proton beam was running. Reportedly, he saw a flash “brighter than a thousand suns”, but did not feel any pain. The beam measured about 2000 gray when it entered Bugorski’s skull, and about 3000 gray when it exited after colliding with the inside of his head inflicting about five hundred times the presumed lethal dose.”

Bigger explosions below the fold.

Finally, and also very old, but in keeping with tonights theme: A documentary from 1995 called Trinity and Beyond – The Atomic Bomb Movie. Very well done and narrated by Cap’n Kirk himself (!) The last few minutes of the documentary, with the Chinese soldiers on their horses celebrating their first successful nuke test, has always spooked me a little bit. Most self-respecting readers of AoSHQ probably have this on VHS or DVD already. If you don’t, you simply suck and should leave immediately, heading back to your usual haunts featuring knitting, hobbits and/or deviant sexual practices (often combined).

Update: Here's the video clip discussed in the comments:

The description alongside the YouTube post describes the test in detail, which you can read for yourself. Here's the brief though:

"This pure-fission U-235 implosion fission device named "596" was China's first nuclear test. The device weighed 1550 kg. No plutonium was available at this time."

"596 is the codename of the People's Republic of China's first nuclear weapons test, detonated on October 16, 1964 at the Lop Nur test site. It was a uranium-235 implosion fission device and had a yield of 22 kilotons. With the test, China became the fifth nuclear power."

The musical score is second to none as well. The filmmakers set the perfect apocalyptic tone to it. Keep in mind that North Korea, Iran, the Taliban and Al Qaeda would like to get their hands on one or more of these little atomic firecrackers.

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posted by xgenghisx at 11:52 PM

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