Slashdot Mirror


Peter Kuran:Visual Effects Artist and Atomic Bomb Archivist

Lasrick links to this interview with Peter Kuran, an animator of the original Star Wars and legendary visual effects artist, writing If you saw the recent remake of Godzilla, you saw stock footage from Atom Central, known on YouTube as 'the atomic bomb channel.' Atom Central is the brainchild of Kuran, who among his many talents is an expert on archival films of the atmospheric testing era of 1945 to 1963. Combining his film restoration and photography expertise with his interest in nuclear history, he has also produced and directed five documentaries. He is currently working with Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories to preserve and catalog images from the bomb-testing era, and to produce a technical handbook that will help people understand these images and the techniques used to create them.

37 comments

  1. Nukes in Space by SternisheFan · · Score: 1

    I didn't know the U.S. exploded bombs in space, why?

    1. Re: Nukes in Space by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Investigation of EMP effects, originally. Multiple effects (asymmetric compton scattering, plasma burst distorting earth magnetic field) would generate an EMP but it wasn't clear exactly how strong it would be; Tests with single devices high over the south pacific disrupting Hawaii confirmed that the EMP from even a low yield weapon would be utterly catastrophic. There was also early interest in nuclear explosive propulsion (c.f. Project Orion) and understanding the behavior of nukes in space was a prerequisite. Also consider the use of nuclear weapons in space to attack satellites, in an era when getting the missile within a few miles was the best that could reasonably be promised; Their behavior in low orbit needed to be known.

      Fortunately for civilization, nobody was ever abysmally stupid enough to start a nuclear war so all the space nukes were thankfully for nought.

    2. Re: Nukes in Space by Greyfox · · Score: 1
      Because we fucking well could. We had a shiny new toy and we wanted to play with it. The things we were learning were supposed to usher in a brave new future and in our arrogance we thought we understood and control them. "Oh! It's perfectly safe to explode one of these things in the Van Allen Belt! After all, it's Clean, Atomic, Energy!" That little mess in the pacific pretty much put an end to our fun and games, though. We told the people involved in all that it was safe. A lot of them died of cancer. Oh well, you want to make an omelette, ya gotta break a few eggs.

      My favorite story from back then was about the demon core. Google it.

      --

      I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

    3. Re: Nukes in Space by SternisheFan · · Score: 1, Redundant
      From Wikipedia:

      The demon core was a 6.2-kilogram (14 lb; 1 st), 3.5-inch-diameter (89 mm) subcritical mass of plutonium which went briefly critical in two separate accidents at the Los Alamos laboratory in 1945 and 1946. Each incident resulted in the acute radiation poisoning and subsequent death of a scientist. After these incidents the spherical plutonium pit was referred to as the "demon core."

      The demon core was used in the first atomic bomb test to be conducted after World War II, five weeks after the second fatal accident. It performed normally and with the same explosive yield as the next core used in this set of two tests.

      en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core

    4. Re: Nukes in Space by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

      Just because the US and USSR/Russia got rid of some of their nukes doesn't mean they don't still have plenty. Not to mention the other members of the nuclear club, which now includes the DPRK and possibly Iran.

      So there's still at least some hope for a fiery Armageddon, for those folks who hope for one.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    5. Re: Nukes in Space by Charliemopps · · Score: 2

      Fortunately for civilization, nobody was ever abysmally stupid enough to start a nuclear war so all the space nukes were thankfully for nought.

      Don't worry, Pakistan wont let us down.

    6. Re: Nukes in Space by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "nobody was ever abysmally stupid enough to start a nuclear war"

      We already did, it was called WWII. Well, we ended a nuclear war. Then we had the Cold War, also a nuclear war.

    7. Re: Nukes in Space by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      There were reasons to pursue such programs, although at least one fortunately never worked. There was a US "Star Wars" missile defense program involving fission bomb triggered X-Ray lasers. I'm afraid the design was quite useless for defense, the tracking system would have had to be much better than anything currently available. The design would also be completely useless as defense technologies, since they can't reach lower trajectory weapons such as drones or cruise missiles, and the larger missiles can use quite small amounts of fuel to "junk" in their trajectory and modern missile guidance systems can do course corrections for such jinking at the last moment. The X-ray lasers were a terrifying _offensive_ weapon, an unstoppable satellite killer against orbitally stable targets.

      The overall program was fascinating. The "Star Wars" missile defense program helped bankrupt the Soviet Union trying to pursue the same technologies. So in an economic sense, it was an extremely effective Trojan Horse.

    8. Re: Nukes in Space by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      > can use quite small amounts of fuel to "junk" in their trajectory

      Please excuse my typo. The word I meant to use is "jink".

  2. Shameless plug by sound+vision · · Score: 1

    I've recently went through quite a bit of footage of nuclear bomb tests. This started due to working on a slideshow regarding the bombing of Hiroshima, for YouTube which is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... It's set to the song/poem "I Come And Stand At Every Door", which is about Hiroshima and the larger picture of nuclear war. If you're into poetry or folk music, or just want to see before & after pictures of a bomb blast, you can click.

    1. Re:Shameless plug by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Yes, we are the folk song army!"

                https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  3. Re:amazing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What a lovely way to get past the filters and spam porno!

    There seems to be a plethora (a bundle? a faggot?) of similar urls available: https://www.google.com/search?q="inurl:redirect.aspx"

    What a glorious day!

  4. Re:for much better information about these films.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sometimes I forget how Americans can create a conspiracy theory about everything, anything and nothing.

    From the site: "Proofs that Hiroshima & Nagasaki were not A-Bombed" ...

    If only you have told me this in the middle of the cold war, when the whole world was on the brink of total annihilation. HOW HAPPY WOULD I HAVE BEEN. This would have been the number one news everywhere!

    Also I like how Soviets and the Mao's China played along with this conspiracy! They even developed their own fake bombs, and kind of fake exploded them in the atmosphere (with radioactive fallout) and in the ground (with seismic events).

    You remember how good relations we had then?
    That some weekend we went together fishing some pigs from some bay, I think? ...

    I guess it takes 30 years to forget, and 60 years to turn it upside down.

    Also, it seems that you cannot cure the stupid.

  5. Re:for much better information about these films.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There are some half-funny, half-sad, entirely stupid physics arguments on there. They try to reconcile observed effects of radioactivity, nuclear power, and relativity with their unphysical ideas. Sometimes they get very close to being unable to avoid admitting that nuclear weapons exist, but someone is always quick to point out that Einstein was a dirty Jew -- situation averted!

  6. News for nerds, it's about the cloud by Provocateur · · Score: 1

    Mushroom cloud, that is

    *ducks*

    --
    WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
  7. Re:amazing by Mister+Transistor · · Score: 1

    I love it! "Faggot" shall be my collective noun for more than one pr0n website/URL's/spam from now on!

    "I visited a Faggot of pr0n sites" or "I deleted a Faggot of pr0n spam in my inbox"!

    --
    -- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
  8. Re:for much better information about these films.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Actually, it's rather simple game theory that the USSR would counter with similar psyops.....what would they have to lose? Nothing. Actually adopting the same lies and spitting them back in the face of an opponent would cost them considerably less and provide more benefit. Lies cost substantially less risk in a system where you can brutally suppress your population and restrict freedom of speech.

  9. Re:for much better information about these films.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    cool strawman, bro

  10. Re:for much better information about these films.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    what's even funnier are the photos that supposedly stand as evidence --- for instance of the shadow images of leafs burned into wood and metal, but yet the fragile leaf remains completely intact. Moreover, the outlines of the leafs presented as that which cast the shadows do not match the supposed outline! Another good one is how the shadow of that valve wheel has its pattern "burned" in reverse! OOPS!

  11. for far better information about all these films by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    and the propaganda center named "lookout mountain studios", visit nukelies.org

  12. Re:Frist Texas psot by durrr · · Score: 2

    We need to make new footage.
    For 8K high FPS glorious nuclear fireballs I'm willing to accept a few percentage increase in cancer risk.

  13. Rope trick photos by NormalVisual · · Score: 2

    I'm still impressed by the extremely fast photos taken of early nuclear tests - so fast that they show the guy wires on the test towers being vaporized. I think it's way cool that we had the technology to take those photos way back in the 1940s.

    --
    Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
    1. Re:Rope trick photos by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think it's cool that anyone still bothers to research the history of technology. It would certainly stop all those breathless "we only have computers because of NASA" sewage so common on nerd websites.

  14. Gotta always wear shoes... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Because if Mr. Kuran's bare feet touch the floor, he has been defiled and must be buried out of respect immediately. Major drag.

  15. Lifeform Central or: aesthetics and amnesia by Mister+Liberty · · Score: 1

    There's a whole field of opportunity for this guy: restoration of footage from Nagasaki and or Hiroshima years and years since.
    Destruction, deformities, and a host of other de-ities.

  16. Thanks by Marquis231 · · Score: 1

    I've been studying the history of rocketry and nuclear science for years and never did I come across this YouTube channel before, thank you! The Starfish Prime video is particularly amazing, but then they all are.

  17. remember, check out nukelies.org by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes, it is an amazing piece of con-artistry. Sounds like a prime area of research for a special effects artist!

  18. To develop a knowledge base by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There were many contemplated uses for nukes in space ranging from anti-ICBM use (destroy/disable inbound missiles) to peaceful uses on the moon (for things like mining and construction). Remember: this was the era of both "Our Friend the Atom" and "Dr Strangelove" with both a public and policy makers having VERY schizophrenic set of views of high energy physics and the applications therefof. The first question that must be asked for ANY of these imagined uses is "does this even work in space?" and the second is "can we make one that works there?" shortly followed by the obvious "WOW, that worked! - what sort of data did we get?"

    Every nuclear-capable nation at the time was testing all sorts of things above and below ground, in space, and underwater - and they were each gathering and keeping as much data as possible. Each of these countries still has that data and uses it to inform any new designs and plans (which can move far further forward without any new testing thanks, in part, to a lot of that old highly-classified data)

    The world endured a massive bloodbath WORLD War I, and then an even bigger and bloodier WORLD War II only a few years later. There's no reason a third world war should not have happened a few years later (perhaps in the 60s) and a fourth (in the 80s?) and by now even a fifth. The fact that WWI was so bloody and yet WWII came right along is pretty solid evidence that the bloodiness of WWII would not in itself have deterred a convention WWIII. Nukes changed that. Once the US had nukes, conventional world wars were off the table. Once the Soviets got them and the world was polarized along that east-west nuclear line, the only world war possible was a massive nuclear one - which was very unlikely given that the guys on both sides wanted to live and advance their civilizations. I have never seen nukes in the hands of reasonably responsible leaders as much of a threat; it's only nukes in the hands of either [1] apocalyptic crazy jihadis whose religion teaches them to WANT an apocalypse, or [2] totalitarians who want more and are convinced they themselves have too many people (and have implemented population controls, of which war is a fantastic sort) that I fear.

    The "brush wars" of the post-WWII era have been bad, but I fear that a return to a nuclear-free world would be a return to massive bloody world wars of genocide and conquest - and, of course, there would be absolutely no way to guarantee that somebody had not kept a few or re-constituted the ability to make new ones.

  19. Re:Frist Texas psot by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    You know what I don't get (apart from any, obviously)?

    I'm surprised they can't do CGI mushroom clouds that actually look subjectively more like mushroom clouds than real mushroom clouds do.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."