Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is Operation Fishbowl and why is it significant?
Operation Fishbowl sounds less like a nuclear testing program and more like something you'd win tickets to see at SeaWorld. I don't know which is more depressing.
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Chapter 2: How did the Cold War influence nuclear testing in space?
Although we have since gone weekly, we will say now, we need to update our text clearly. And we are just going to start off with just blowing your audience away. They can have twice as much of us as they thought they might get previously. So that's exciting. Do not correct me on my own podcast. How dare you? What are you thinking? If I may.
A couple of other mistakes that we should just start off with. Did I say your names correctly? That's actually an important thing to point out. You guys have a really cool podcast. Tell us a little bit about it. Lizzie? A thing? Thank you. Uh, well, yeah, our, each episode of our podcast dives into the story behind a different movie.
And the theory is sort of that any movie is a miracle because of how incredibly hard they are to make even the bad ones. And so we're just exploring, you know, the, the absolute manic mayhem behind movies, which you two both, I think know a lot more about from experience than I do.
I just, I just research it.
Yes. Yes, he does. But I know I'm sure you can appreciate it. I'm sure you would agree. Like nobody goes into a movie hoping they're going to make a bad movie. Nobody wants to make a bad movie. And in fact, sometimes you think you're making a great movie and it just still doesn't turn out very good. And sometimes you think you're making a terrible movie and somehow it turns out great.
And so it's like it's I just want I remember I used to be such an asshole. when I would watch movies and think, I would have done this and I would have done that.
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Chapter 3: What happened during the Starfish Prime test?
And then I made a movie and I hit my first test screening and there was that asshole who said, you should have done this. And I said, you don't think I know that, sir. I couldn't. And so we hope that we can get people to appreciate movies and the people that make them that much more because they're just so hard. They're so hard. I love that. In particular, I love how
You're just making such a great point about how humbling the movie making experience is. And it does teach you to appreciate movies in a different way. The more hours and days and weeks and months that you've spent on set, the more you realize, like, this is incredible. The amount of cooperation and collaboration and luck. that it takes to pull something together.
It's just crazy that any movie actually gets made. Well, I'm really excited to dig into today's story because it feels like something out of a movie or that should become a movie. I'm sure screenwriters have been pulling details from this event for plenty of doom-worthy plots over the years.
Today's snafu takes us deep into the paranoid void of the Cold War at the point where the space race meets the arms race. So picture this. You're on vacation in Hawaii. Maybe you're having dinner at a beachfront bar in Waikiki. It's a warm July night in 1962. You're listening to a Navy band play some classy dance tunes when suddenly ā A massive flash lights up the sky. The band goes quiet.
A red glow streaks across the sky like someone just opened a zipper to hell. It's not aliens, although that would be a reasonable guess. This is America, baby. That's right. We are literally nuking space in this moment. Apparently, during the Cold War, literally nothing was off the table.
Is this a Michael Bay movie?
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Chapter 4: What were the immediate effects of the Starfish Prime explosion?
Maybe.
It's 1962. Cold War had pushed the U.S. and the Soviet Union into this intense arms race. It turns out it extended far beyond Earth. So scientists were asking really hard questions like, what happens if we set off a nuclear bomb in outer space? Because obviously, if you aren't sure of the answer, the safest and most productive solution is just to do it and nuke it and see what happens.
Because that's science. This is, you know, that's... I guess it's like using our entire universe as a guinea pig feels safe to me. Yeah, right. It's a closed system. Let's put some radiation inside of it and see what happens. We're going to shake the snow globe with some uranium. We're a resilient species, right? We can handle our own fallout. Is there a why here?
Like, is there a reason why it would be advantageous to be able to nuke space? It's a great question, Lizzie. And I think that the answer is just the Cold War brought out terrible judgment in especially in our sort of military weapons testing apparatus. People got killed. real excited about nuclear capabilities and just wanted to see what they could do.
And so, of course, they just go way out over the middle of the Pacific and just start setting off nuclear bombs. I think they just wanted to see if this was would be an effective weapon. It turns out it kind of is, but in a way that no one quite expected. So and at this time, too, we're detonating. I mean, I believe we've detonated nukes underwater. We've detonated them underground.
We've detonated them at varying altitudes above a theoretical populated area.
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Chapter 5: How did the Starfish Prime test affect satellites?
It's like, what is the maximal effect that we can create by detonating them in these various ways? And just logically, it seems like the higher you go, the greater the impact to Earth. Certainly in terms of fallout. Right. You would expect. And so it just seems the higher you go, the dumber the experiment. Yeah.
Yeah. We're not there yet.
The least effective potentially at what you're trying to do. Like if this is ideally something targeted, the higher you go, the wider a swath it covers. Right. That's the logic, and that's why they did it out over the Pacific without a lot of expectation or knowledge, foreknowledge about what could happen. Turns out a lot. So ever since World War II, the U.S.
and the Soviet Union had been on again, off again, testing nukes. And in the late 50s, the Soviets had decided tests were very much backlogged. on. In response, the U.S. launched Operation Fishbowl. It was a series of high-altitude nuclear tests using Thor missiles. Fishbowl was part of a larger project which involved 36 nuclear detonations in the Pacific, all done in 1962 alone.
Fishbowl launches had their own maritime-themed code names, Bluegill, Starfish, Kingfish, et cetera. Very creative, right? Also, I love how anodyne they sound, right? Right. It's very innocuous. This is not a big... Starfish, jellyfish. Clownfish. Nuclear megalodon swallows your entire world.
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Chapter 6: What long-term consequences arose from the Starfish Prime test?
Let's not give it a scary name as we're doing this thing. No, you're right. Operation Fishbowl sounds less like a nuclear testing program and more like something you'd win tickets to see at SeaWorld. Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know which is more depressing, but yes. I'm curious if this is conjuring any Cold War movies for you guys. Do you have a favorite Cold War movie that's sort of nuclear oriented? The China Syndrome always comes to mind as a favorite of mine. That coffee cup. The little, the trimmers in the coffee, in the... Right? That's where you first see it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's about that theoretical China syndrome and nuclear meltdown could go through the core of the Earth to the antipodal point on the other side of the planet. I always loved that one. And then... like war games was always a big one for me growing up. Lizzie, I'm not sure if there are any that come to mind for you. Definitely.
I mean, you know, immediately as soon as you were starting to explain the sort of like race to blow up more and more and bigger and bigger nukes, it immediately makes me think of the doomsday machine and Dr. Strangelove, uh, of course. And it, And just, you know, the whole concept there being that you needed to explain the existence of the doomsday machine in order for it to be effective.
But they didn't do that. They just built it. And I love the sort of, you know, you're 10 steps ahead and yet also 15 steps behind on that one. That feels applicable. And then I just always it's not a movie, but man, I loved the Americans. Oh, yeah. That show is so good and such an interesting exploration of the like mentality behind both the American and Russian sides of the Cold War.
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Chapter 7: How did the public react to nuclear tests like Starfish Prime?
And it's interesting what you're describing is very much the it is the climax spoilers of the Iron Giant. Which the movie ends with a nuclear device being detonated in space because the Iron Giant, as I wept, flies up to meet it and sacrifice himself to protect humans. And that movie is very much about, like, could a weapon decide that it didn't want to be a weapon?
Which is a really interesting concept when you have all of these incredible nuclear technologies that could be used for energy and were being used to greater and greater explosive effect.
Yeah. Wow. That got deep.
Sorry. Well done. Watch The Iron Giant. It's a great movie. Lizzie disagrees. It is.
It's a classic.
I didn't say it wasn't a great movie. I just didn't shed a single tear. So maybe I have no soul. I'm cutting your feed, Lizzie. I'm cutting your feed. This to me is very war games also. That one that you brought up. And I think mainly that movie was such a big deal to me as a kid. I saw it on HBO like over and over and over again.
Yeah, and are these men exploring the frontiers of science, or are these little boys playing very dangerous games? Exactly. By putting it in that context, it really draws a really stark juxtaposition that's interesting, and I think forces some... Compelling thoughts from the audience. I still think that movie is really effective to this day. Let's get into Operation Fishbowl.
On June 2nd, the first attempt at a high altitude test failed when the tracking system lost the missile after it fired.
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Chapter 8: What lessons can we learn from the Starfish Prime incident regarding technology and ethics?
The Navy scrambled to destroy it before it could detonate. Thank God they did. In the second test, the Thor missile malfunctioned again, and the warhead once again had to be destroyed mid-flight, showering the Pacific Ocean with plutonium-contaminated confetti. Apparently, this led to special underwater ordnance disposal teams sweeping the ocean for the next two weeks.
Seems like you should stop. Right. Maybe stop. I don't know. If I'm getting into their heads, they're probably like, well, we haven't learned the thing we set out to learn yet.
We have learned how to poison the entire Pacific Ocean.
We've made a terrible mess or two, but... We cleaned it up. There's all this sushi around we can eat, you know? It turns out we have special underwater ordnance disposal teams that we can dispatch at any time.
Do you? That's my question.
Those are just people. People with a fancy name. But you're right, Lizzie. Like, do you actually have that? Or is that something you hastily scrambled together in the last second? Is it just like a fishing net that you're, you know, casting wide across the ocean? And then you just gave it a very official sounding name. Yeah.
If you were like in the army, what would be your enthusiasm level for joining that cleanup crew? If your superior was like, guys, put on your wetsuits. So low, but because but there has been such incredible bravery from certain, you know, the Fukushima event in Japan and the individuals who like went in knowing they might die.
They wouldn't survive to clean that up, or the divers in Chernobyl that went through the water system and did survive. Those people are heroes, and those things could have melted down even worse. What's terrible about this in such a catch-22 way is the pointlessness, like you're saying. The question is... To what end are we even doing this to begin with?
And now I'm going to die for my country for an ambiguous test that we're not sure why we're doing at the end of the day. I think that's the real tricky thing here. I would say no. And I would be court-martialed, I'm sure.
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