Ed Helms

Because when you break through our atmosphere, you're exposed to all the radiation from the sun that is—a lot of it is blocked or deflected, right, by our atmosphere.

So then you think about this astronaut who's in—

a radiation hardened to a certain extent environment, right, would still be killed by this amount of excess radiation sent, you know, lingering in our atmosphere in this moment.

It's just, it's not even like he's like naked out there.

You know what I mean?

Getting hit with this thing.

It's just crazy.

Obviously, this wasn't just a local issue over a particular spot in the Pacific Ocean.

It affected the entire near-Earth environment.

The artificial radiation belt slowly faded, but the lesson lingered.

Detonating nuclear weapons in space had consequences we didn't understand at the time.

Nations around the world, especially the Soviet Union, were watching, of course.

Russian radio called the test a crime perpetrated by, quote, American atom maniacs.

I love that term.

Sounds like animaniacs.

Yeah, the atom maniacs.

The atom maniacs, which I think we kind of live up to that.

We're atom maniacs.

I was going to say they're not.

Wrong.