Let’s go with a product for a fairly short failure, smokeless cigarettes, specifically the Premier brand developed by R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, now some of you are going “What, you mean e-cigarettes?”.
No, smokeless actual cigarettes, through some horrible chemical process RJR actually managed to somehow conjure up a cigarette that didn’t generate any significant amount of smoke, but was still functionally a cigarette.
Yeah, that looks a but off.
So what was the problem? It sounds pretty good right? The smoke is one of the biggest complains people have about cigarettes that and the dreadful smell.
At a cost of probably around a billion dollars, RJR released the Premier in 1988, and nobody bought.
Why? It “tasted” like plastic or possibly charcoal, required special instructions in how to light it and was STILL A CIGARETTE!
Just instead of tar, you’re were just breathing some other forsaken chemical mixture of death and more death.
Even the smokers didn’t like it. The lesson was actually learned, RJR withdrew the product within a year and never really bother after that.
It’s 1958, the glory days of utterly unmanaged nuclear
experimentation, any idea involving the term “nuclear” will get coverage and
funds from the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), no matter how insane,
bizarre, derange, mad, impracticable and quixotic, after all, you couldn’t fall
back in the race against the mighty Soviet Union.
The project arose, like a horrible mutated Phoenix, from Operation Plowshare, a reference to the old “beat their Swords into ploughshares” quote from Isaiah 2:3–4 in ye olde Christian bible. The Operation’s purpose was to somehow figure out a peaceful use for nuclear weapons, turning horrible world-ending mass explosives into something that could be useful for civilians.
A wonderful idea right? That is if you want to irradiate the ENTIRE BERING STRAIT!
Chariot was the brainchild and dearest concept of the Father of the
Hydrogen Bomb, Edward Teller, whom I shall know tell you about, because I need
an excuse to tell you about him, so fuck you.
Teller was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist and like most
the amazing physicist, he was a complete weirdo, unlike some physicists who
just collected dolls or lunchboxes or typewriters, he was massive asshole, undeniably
brilliant, huge motherfucker.
Known for the development of the Jahn–Teller effect, which describes
something called Spontaneous symmetry breaking, which I guess makes something asymmetrical,
somehow, somewhere, sometime, fish and the Ashkin–Teller model (Or Potts model)
which has something to do with interacting spins on crystal lattice and I have
never ever written something like that in my entire glorious existence, no clue
what it means.
And finally, the last one, the HYDROGEN BOMB, the biggest, meanest,
baldest and craziest nuclear device you can possibly play with, also known as
THERMONUCLEAR weapons, they are essentially a small fission or conventional
nuclear bomb inside of a shell of fusion fuels, originally deuterium and
tritium, these days something called lithium deuteride, which apparently reacts
absolutely delightfully with water, presumable it reacts even better under the
vast heat and significant pressure of a nuclear blast.
Teller loved his nukes, he loved experimenting with them, he loved to see them exploded, he even loved Ronald Reagan stupid Strategic Defense Initiative, Teller died in 2003 at the age of 95, his deep desire to see shit blow up was the reason for his passionate desire to see Project Chariot become a horrible radioactive reality.
Nothing here at all
Now, for the Project itself, initially Teller’s passion spread like
an STD at a festival, until it reached the environmental groups, who basically
shat themselves in sheer horror, pointing out that this whole idea would almost
certainly just result in massive radioactive damage to the local area, and for once
the AEC actually agreed and put the whole mess in “abeyance”, which is a fancy
way of not cancelling a project while cancelling the project.
Didn’t help that they were lacking a very important factor for any
project in any capitalist country: A buyer, nobody wanted a harbour in the
area.
Fuck! Why would anybody want a harbour there? In the sixties the place was basically ice-packed most of the year!
And obviously, it didn’t end this easily, the madmen did several experiment in the area to test how the radiation could potentially spread in the area and then disposed of the test material from the test sites in Nevada, by just burying the whole mess in the ground, and unlike the dwarves of Moria, they did not dig too deep.
They buried the site in 62, thirty years later some bored student
found the records in the archives, shat himself and told the Alaskan
government, who then shat themselves and basically went straight the site to
see what the fuck the old loonies at the AEC had done, the result? Discovered
radioactive material less than two feet from the flowing water, no fucking
wonder the locals in the nearby Inuit settlement of Cape Hope were all dying of
cancer.
The lessons learned? Don’t FUCKING USE NUKES FOR ANYTHING!
This was basically the Soviet version of Operation Plowshare, same idea, same concept, just on a scale that was so much large and more grandiose and obviously even stupider than the American version, just like the good old days of Soviet Glory.
Starting up later then the American
program, due to various political attempts to limit nuclear tests, when it
started up sometime around 1960, it really went all out.
Like the American project, the Soviets
essentially divided their many, MANY, nuclear tests into two broad categories.
“Employment of Nuclear
Explosive Technologies in the Interests of National Economy” or “Program
Six”.
This was the part of Peaceful Nuclear Explosions
(PNE) designed for massive-scale construction programs: Canals, water reservoirs
and other excavations.
“Peaceful Nuclear
Explosions for the National Economy” or,
surprise, surprise, “Program Seven”.
This one was broadly similar to
one of the American categories, using nuclear explosions to encourage mineral
and gas exploitation, adding in plans about creating underground cavities to
store gas.
The first program resulted in 124 tests
with 135 nuclear devices, the second 115 explosions, most of them were similar
to the American experiments, some 39 of them were used for experiments in using
seismic waves to detected deposits of natural gas, 25 were attempts to
encourage additional oil and gas production with similar irradiated gas results
as the Americans got, the seismic experiments carried on much longer than any
of the rest of them.
Some Twenty-two were used in experiments
with large underground gas cavities for storage, two more for toxic waste
storage, wonderful idea, let’s make toxic waste radioactive, like it wasn’t bad
enough already.
Two were used to crush ore in open-pit
mines, which sounds fucking nuts to me, detonate essentially open-air nuclear
bombs just to crush some fucking rock? Madness as all hell.
Nineteen for various research purposes and
a long one for coal mining? Underground? Holy shit, gotta give the old Soviets
that one, I would never have even dreamt of using a nuclear bomb to mine out
coal, quick, somebody tell President Trump about it, perhaps he’ll blow up West
Virginia.
Now, there are nine of the tests that are interesting
beyond the terror, some of them, actually did good, they worked as intended and
did indeed solve fairly serious problems.
Five explosions you see, were used to stop “natural
gas fountains”, that would be out of control gas fields spewing huge amounts of
flammable gas straight into the atmosphere, in 1966 a thirty kiloton device
were used to stop a gas well that had been blowing since ’63 and they repeated
that success a few months later with a larger devices.
To be fair though, using explosives to stop
well blowouts is actually the norm, usually you’d just use conventional explosives
and not the Bringer of Death, the Destroyer of Worlds herself.
This is the Chagan shot, lovely isn’t it? Didn’t pollute nearly as much as the Sedan test
The last four, were used as tests, for building stuff, the Chagan test, which was basically the Sedan test with a much, much cleaner nuclear device, for those of you who do not care to dream beyond your small niche, radioactive waste from nuclear bombs is essentially unexploded material from the fission process, however, Hydrogen bombs don’t use that much fission, they use fusion, which doesn’t leave anywhere near as much radioactive material around.
The trick is to get as much as possible of
the fissile material, used in hydrogen bombs as a starter, to well fission,
resulting in a “clean bomb”, the Sedan was an older and much more primitive
device compared to the Chagan, so the Chagan didn’t contributed seven per cent
of the total radiation of the Soviet people, it barely contributed at all.
Neither did the Taiga tests, a series of the three remaining devices tested for canal building, all of these projects were deemed failures even by the Soviets delightful standards, the seismic tests continued until 1988, were Gorbachev’s glasnost put a stop to them.
Lovely lake right? WRONG! Made by a fucking nuke!
The lessons learned? Pretty much the same
as the American, the only really “good” results were the blowout stopping power
of nuclear weapons, but there’s a perfectly decent chance that you can get the
same result using conventional high-explosives or thermobaric weapons.
So, nothing gained other than a handful of mildly irradiated lacks in the depths of Mother Russia and hey, who’ll notice another of those.
Project Plowshare was the United States Atomic Energy
Commission’s forlorn attempt to somehow develop civilian uses for nuclear weapons,
the idea being that activities and operations the would require significant
amount of explosives, could use nuclear devices instead of enormous amount of
TNT.
It also developed into, essentially, early experiments with
fracking, just instead of using water pressure to fuck around with the geology
of an area, they used smaller nuclear bombs, ranging from 29 kilotons to 43
kilotons.
Now the “civilian” uses of nuclear explosions were concentrated
into two broad categories:
Using the explosions to essentially eliminate large
formations for specific purposes.
Project Carryall from 63 suggested using TWENTY-TWO
nuclear devices to outright blow a canyon out of a mountain range, so two of
the partners, California Division of Highways and the Santa Fe Railway, could
build a motorway and railroad.
Project Chariot: LET’S BLOW UP ALASKA.
Various fracking experiments primarily aimed
towards encouraging natural gas fields.
Now, fortunately, none of the first ever get anywhere, which
the people of California and Alaska are probably very happy about, seeing as
Californians don’t have to wear protective suits and gieger counters when
driving along Interstate 40, nor do Alaskan have even more radioactive shit in
their food.
However, the fracking experiment resulted in 27 test explosions,
of whom, three were practical tests, actual detonation near gas fields, to
observe he results.
I do enjoy the irony of “gnomes” being underground creatures.
Now, almost all of the experimental explosions were done at the Nevada test site, except the first one, Gnome, done near Carlsbad, New Mexico, close to several oil and gas fields, and right inside a salt field.
The explosion was actually a remarkable success, six months later a team drilled their way into the underground cavity created and found that the radiation was only five milliroentgen, nothing special, temperatures inside the cavity was around 60 degrees Celsius, again, nothing spectacularly dangerous.
Yeah, let’s dig into a cavity created by a nuclear explosion deep underground, what could go wrong?
So they plowed on, the Sedan test was next, this was a test of Option One, using nukes for large-scale construction, 105 kilotons, caused an event of the Richter scale of 4.75, displaced eleven million tons of earth and created a crater 100 meters deep and 360 meters in diameter, it’s also the source of seven per cent of all the radiation Americans have gotten as part of US nuclear tests, so well done there.
BOOOOOOOOOM MOTHERFUCKERS!
A side effect here, is the fact that the crater left behind, helped with developing new theories on how impact craters from meteor happened.
Hey, mildly radioactive tourist attraction is always cool, seeing as the wind gave Mississippi most of the radiation anyways.
Now, three fracking detonations were conducted too, let’s
not forget them, they were Gasbuggy, Rulison and Rio Blanco 1-3 and all three
had something utterly not surprising in common:
Radioactive gas, which someone figured that Californians might not enjoy radiation from their gas ovens and furnaces.
None of the gas from any of the fields were ever used for
commercial purposes, only industrial, and the entire program was quietly defunded
and stopped.
The lesson learned? Nuclear weapons are nuclear weapons,
they are designed for the sole purpose of destruction, the radiation they carry
with the massive destructive potential, render them utterly unsuitable for any
other real purposes.
And if you think the Americans just stopped the quickly?
Then join me tomorrow, as we discuss the Nuclear Explosions for the National
Economy program of the Soviet Union, the red Version of Project Plowshares and
I’ll illuminate your staggeringly misguided desire for more explosions.
On the 13th
of May 1788, eleven great wooden ships departed from the south of England, two
of them were Royal Navy Escorts, the remainder carried supplies and convicts,
this was indeed the beginning of the story for Australia and for the literally
and liberally fucking rabbits that now plague it’s interior.
They brought the very
first rabbits with them to Australia, initially, this wasn’t much of a problem,
as they were all in cages and eaten with great relish.
However, this came
crashing down, as the local Australian predators were gleefully obliterated in
the name of sheep herding and general agricultural nonsense, turns out they had
kept the population of rabbits fairly stable, until evolution came along and
went “ha, HARDIER BREDS” and everything went straight into uncontrollable growth.
Apparently the entire
present horrible rabbit infestation can be traced back to twenty-four rabbits
released in 1859 by Thomas Austin, a moronic idiot who thought it was a great
idea to just randomly introduce English species of animal into a totally alien environment,
a true vanguard of the kind of ineptitude that to this day continues to thrive among
the Australian political class.
And now rabbits are everywhere
in Australia, causing havoc, rabbits aren’t picky eaters, basically devouring
every single plant, which has the consequence of erosion, in Europe our plants have
evolved alongside the rabbits, so they are much hardier breeds, much better suited
for the kind of grazers we have.
It does help we didn’t
manage to wipe out all our foxes and wolves, one wonders if the Dingo might be
slightly more helpful in keeping them down, in Australians didn’t consider them
a pest.
Oh well, the Australian government will just BIOLOGICAL WARFARE against the rabbits, having learned an important lesson from the Emu War, that they so comically lost.
Either that or just make massive fences everywhere, at least we have gained the enlightenment of how Trump got his idiotic wall from.
A Great Big Fence in the Country!
The lesson? Don’t
released animals, at all, you don’t do that, it’s bad. This is one of those
lessons that animal rights activists that have become radicalized don’t seem to
understand, releasing fur-producing animals into foreign environments are
REALLY fucking bad for it.
So, for those who are commiserable wretches with lacunae the size of the Pacific, Nauru is an island in the Pacific Ocean, it has some ten thousand really fat people living on it, it has basically two things going for it, fishing rights over its economic exclusivity zone and guano.
Thank you Atlas of Economic Complexity, for showing us just how bad it really is. (2017 Exports)
Guano? Right, bird shit, enormous staggering
quantities of solidified bird shit, accumulated over thousands of years by vast
flocks of marine birds, now turned into phosphate rock, which you can strip mine
with utter banality of ease.
The mining started in 1906 and terminated utterly in 2002, thousands of years of birds shitting obliterated utterly in less than a century, not a bad track record, not bad at all. The unbelievable environmental damage is a totally different story, the interior of Nauru was basically a nightmare of jagged limestone pillars, with absolutely zero agricultural value and frankly very ugly.
Note the slight drop in the early 2000’s
Remember the first thing they had going for
them? The fish? Yeah, the run off from the Phosphate mining basically wiped out
forty per cent of the marine lifeforms within reach of the island, and island
that doesn’t have a harbour due to ragged coral reefs surrounding then entire
island, the only way they got the damn phosphate off the rock was using a large
ram reaching above the reefs to pour the materials into the ships.
Now, Nauru did something very sensible,
they established a Sovereign Wealth Fund, just like the Norwegians and several
Arab nations have done, the Nauru Phosphate Royalties Trust, which began
investing in various real estate projects around the globe, at it’s height, it
amount to almost a billion US dollars.
It included:
Fiji: The Grand Pacific Hotel
India: Paradeep Phosphate
New Zealand: Auckland Sheraton Hotel, Roturua Sheraton
Hotel
Philippines: Manila Pacific Star Hotel, Philippines
Phosphate & Fertilisers
Contiguous United States: Pacific House (Washington),
Singer Building Development (665 acres – Houston), Hillside Property (600 acres
– Oregon)
Hawaii: Nauru Tower, Hawaiki Tower
Guam: Pacific Star Hotel
United Kingdom: 3 Chesham Street (London)
Samoa: Properties at Vaitele and Sogi
Australia: Nauru House
Not bad right? Sure,
but overspending and relentlessly poor management of the wealth contained,
began to make itself known, they managed to burn off the cash reserves they had,
meaning loans, that they couldn’t pay.
How mismanaged? One of
the advisors to the fund, Duke Minks (A music producer, famously known for Unit 4 + 2, yeah I don’t know who that is either) recommended they
invest two million pounds sterling in a musical, which he wrote.
Leonardo the Musical:
A Portrait of Love, a giant of a musical, took four hours to perform, nobody
stayed to watch, ran for five weeks, lost all the money.
In the end, the fund
ran out of cash, it’s last attempt was a consolidation of their loans,
essentially taking a giant loan from General Electric to pay everything off, it
failed and GE seized what they could.
Yup, a railroad, it still counts!
The Phosphate was gone,
the money was gone, hell, most of the island was gone. Nauru now survives from
hosting a “processing center” for refugees arriving to Australia and not much else.
Add to that the
literally most obese people on Earth, due their diet being mainly processed
food, no cash, no tourism and no prospects.
But hey, at least they’ve got an airport and a railroad.
The lesson? That mineral
wealth is very much finite and don’t waste it if you’re a stupid little island
in the Pacific.
