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.

Comments

Re: Nukes in Space

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Nukes in Space

[Charliemopps]

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.

Re:Frist Texas psot

[durrr]

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.

Rope trick photos

[NormalVisual]

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.