What I find so strange about the awe and horror of the atom bomb, its utter power and violence, is how it was the result of decades - well, centuries - of abstract thinking in mathematics and theoretical physics. And how it required particularly new paradigms about the nature of the material world.
Imagine a cosmic being looking at the Earth through a microscope, and seeing this bubble pop on the surface in mid-20th century. Then another, and another pop. Some of them evaporated hundreds of thousands of human beings. Later these organisms learn to harness its violence for more useful purposes, powering their cities and data centers for machine intelligence.
> And physicist George Kistiakowsky found himself certain that “at the end of the world—in the last millisecond of the Earth’s existence—the last human will see what we saw.”
I highly doubt it. The last human will likely live many years in agony, fighting disease and starvation.
One of my big gripes with the film Oppenheimer was the blast itself, obviously a climactic moment in the film.
It looked like someone set off a bunch of chemical explosives. That’s not how it looked in real life. Totally bizarre decision. I don’t know if they were trying to avoid effects on purpose of go gritty and retro or something but the “unearthly cosmic horror” feel of the first a-bomb blast is important. It’s what led Oppenheimer to recite “I am become death, destroyer of worlds.”
With the films budget they could have sourced a small nuclear bomb the size of the original Trinity test and detonated it just for the movie. Just make sure the camera is rolling as it's a one take shot.
Because that's exactly what it was. I agree with you, the puritanism around special effects doesn't make sense when there's plenty of high quality archival footage out there, and instead of using that or CGI to look similar, you do something that looks completely wrong.
I suspect the actual first frames are still classified as they likely evidence detonator tech/performance. So the real first moments of the nuclear age will never be shown. (The high-speed cameras would have started filming shortly before the blast.)
Imagine a cosmic being looking at the Earth through a microscope, and seeing this bubble pop on the surface in mid-20th century. Then another, and another pop. Some of them evaporated hundreds of thousands of human beings. Later these organisms learn to harness its violence for more useful purposes, powering their cities and data centers for machine intelligence.
I highly doubt it. The last human will likely live many years in agony, fighting disease and starvation.
It looked like someone set off a bunch of chemical explosives. That’s not how it looked in real life. Totally bizarre decision. I don’t know if they were trying to avoid effects on purpose of go gritty and retro or something but the “unearthly cosmic horror” feel of the first a-bomb blast is important. It’s what led Oppenheimer to recite “I am become death, destroyer of worlds.”
/hah very articulate of me for this early in the morning