Ed Helms

Go right ahead.

I think what makes it feel militaristic and not and candidly, like unscientific is the lack of a hypothesis.

And I don't I don't know the story.

I had never heard this either.

And like you said, instead, it's more, well, maybe this will do something.

And we should probably know what that is in case the Russians also try it.

It's a fear based hypothesis.

result as opposed to some sort of aspirational optimistic you know let's push the frontier of human knowledge forward in a way that could possibly be beneficial for humanity wild one Navy sailor who told his story was on board a ship near the launch site and so obviously a lot closer than Hawaii he said the crew were given badges to measure their radiation exposure and ordered to do anti-radiation washes off the ship and

Years later, he said most of the men he served with on board had died of, quote, weird cancers, which is horrible.

The EMP blast that knocked out electronics in Hawaii created a wave of studies about how an electromagnetic pulse could disable electronic systems from civilian infrastructure to military systems.

It was a big moment in realizing that frying power grids with distant explosions might be a useful trick we hadn't thought about before.

And also just another thing to be terrified of.

On top of all the EMP fallout, there's the orbiting radiation.

Not only did the radiation from the explosion slap satellites out of orbit, but it also disrupted Earth's natural zones of trapped charged particles called the Van Allen belts.

Now, that definitely sounds like a luxury leather emporium, but these belts are like a protective shield around the planet and altering them created a serious risk for future satellites and astronauts.

That September, NASA changed their flight plans because they realized that their astronaut would be killed by residual starfish prime radiation if he flew over 640 kilometers in altitude.

So how wild is that?

He had flown through that radiation.

It just would have –

Well, and also, like, spaceships are hardened against radiation, right?