I am weirdly gratified to learn that the depiction of the Trinity test in OPPENHEIMER disappointed someone other than me. It just didn't look...*atomic* enough. Given how much time and labor Nolan put into a scientifically accurate CGI depiction of the black hole accretion disk in INTERSTELLAR (Kip Thorne advising, 100 hours to render one individual frame; etc.) I find it odd that he made the choice to go practical for the Gadget.
DAY ONE is, by far, my favorite film treatment of the story of the Manhattan Project. It's not streaming anywhere, but it's available on DVD for US$28, and is worth every penny. Based on the nonfiction book DAY ONE: BEFORE HIROSHIMA AND AFTER by Peter Wyden, it's both factually accurate and dramatically compelling.
David Strathairn brings many more layers to Oppenheimer than Cillian Murphy did; Brian Dennehy gives a nuanced portrayal of Groves; and Michael Tucker — in the role he was born to play — simply knocks it out of the park as Leo Szilard.
And, intriguingly, Hume Cronyn, who was the first to play Oppenheimer on film (in THE BEGINNING OR THE END) here plays Secretary of State James Byrnes.
— Robert J. Sawyer, author of THE OPPENHEIMER ALTERNATIVE
Strathain was just as nuanced in the PBS special on Oppenheimer's security trial, so it's not surprising he was able to bring that to 'Day One' : he's a massivly underated actor.
Certain conspiracy-minded folks often claim large conventional detonations such as the Coalition bombings in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, and even the nitrate explosion in Beirut, are nuclear detonations or so closely resemble fast criticality events as to be arguably nuclear reactions. Often, for example, there is pixilation in video that is cited as proof of ionizing radiation and therefore proof of low-yield nukes (but any electron burst will cause pixilation). Their claims are more wishful thinking than being grounded in knowledge of fission events. Above, you make important points about scale. Nuclear warhead detonations are "prompt"; they are instantaneous. The human eye cannot see the speed-of-light emissions of the wall of neutrons (solid particulate) and gamma radiation (photon energy). The eye cannot see directly nor detect in a video, a "process" or evolution in a nuclear detonation's life cycle. Criticality events are not "deflagrations". They precipitate deflagrations, though. These should not be confused. But, if one does not appreciate the vast scale difference and speed of nuclear vs conventional detonations, then maybe the most obvious, visible-to-the-eye proof that a nuclear detonation has NOT occurred is the absence of target ignition, combustion and flash burns. Gamma radiation at the scale emitted by an atomic or a thermonuclear detonation ignites several elements in its environment. These phenomena occur to flammable, combustible and exposed surfaces up to several kilometers from the epicenter.
Alex, I found your Substack today and I love it. Have you by any chance seen the video of a Trident launch from a UK sub? It's basically the XO, a bald middle-aged man giving instructions in the tannoy. You can even hear the thud as the missile catapulted (with steam, I think). What got me is how mundane it was: no flashing red light, nobody's shouting KILO ALFA AT TEN CLICKS.
Great post as always. You mentioned that there's no sound recordings of most nuclear tests, so do you think you could at some point do a post on that? Nuclear test videos in Youtube usually have no or obviously fake audio and even descriptions are hard to come by. Until now the only one I had found was in Feynman's memoirs, "huge BOOM and then rumbling like thunder", which intrestingly is not totally consistent with the Brixner quote on this post.
Some believe that the main explosion at the Fukushima #3 reactor was a criticality event. Not as fast or hard as a nuclear weapon's detonation but there is sound that accompanied that explosion, which was originally on the video feed and can be found on some of the 2011 YouTube vids still online. There is the initial detonation and then there is the rumble sound of the pressure wave and ballistic forces that follow. That detonation has features not explained as a "hydrogen" explosion and is likely to be the closest we have to an unaltered recording of the sound of a nuclear explosion.
My biggest complaint about the Nolan Trinity shot was that he seemingly forgot about the inverse square law. There is a shot of I think Teller being lit up by the flash, but nothing behind him is lit up. It's clearly just a flashbulb out of frame. In reality a massive explosion would light up the entire area, not just those close to the camera.
You're right, the Oppenheimer explosion seemed too small, like a bunch of gasoline lit off on a backlot.
Also I think they used the dye trick for mushroom clouds in The Day After, a movie with an otherwise comical nuclear attack sequence.
'The Beginning Or The End' seems to have had one uninteded consiquent inasmuch as the overall 'look' of the film and the reactions of the actors in it somehow became a template for the same things in every 1950s B sci-fi flick,...Be intersting to know if the flick had any influence on film directors of the era.
I am weirdly gratified to learn that the depiction of the Trinity test in OPPENHEIMER disappointed someone other than me. It just didn't look...*atomic* enough. Given how much time and labor Nolan put into a scientifically accurate CGI depiction of the black hole accretion disk in INTERSTELLAR (Kip Thorne advising, 100 hours to render one individual frame; etc.) I find it odd that he made the choice to go practical for the Gadget.
DAY ONE is, by far, my favorite film treatment of the story of the Manhattan Project. It's not streaming anywhere, but it's available on DVD for US$28, and is worth every penny. Based on the nonfiction book DAY ONE: BEFORE HIROSHIMA AND AFTER by Peter Wyden, it's both factually accurate and dramatically compelling.
David Strathairn brings many more layers to Oppenheimer than Cillian Murphy did; Brian Dennehy gives a nuanced portrayal of Groves; and Michael Tucker — in the role he was born to play — simply knocks it out of the park as Leo Szilard.
And, intriguingly, Hume Cronyn, who was the first to play Oppenheimer on film (in THE BEGINNING OR THE END) here plays Secretary of State James Byrnes.
— Robert J. Sawyer, author of THE OPPENHEIMER ALTERNATIVE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_One_(1989_film)
https://www.amazon.com/Day-One-Brian-Dennehy/dp/B01LTHOR42
Strathain was just as nuanced in the PBS special on Oppenheimer's security trial, so it's not surprising he was able to bring that to 'Day One' : he's a massivly underated actor.
Certain conspiracy-minded folks often claim large conventional detonations such as the Coalition bombings in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, and even the nitrate explosion in Beirut, are nuclear detonations or so closely resemble fast criticality events as to be arguably nuclear reactions. Often, for example, there is pixilation in video that is cited as proof of ionizing radiation and therefore proof of low-yield nukes (but any electron burst will cause pixilation). Their claims are more wishful thinking than being grounded in knowledge of fission events. Above, you make important points about scale. Nuclear warhead detonations are "prompt"; they are instantaneous. The human eye cannot see the speed-of-light emissions of the wall of neutrons (solid particulate) and gamma radiation (photon energy). The eye cannot see directly nor detect in a video, a "process" or evolution in a nuclear detonation's life cycle. Criticality events are not "deflagrations". They precipitate deflagrations, though. These should not be confused. But, if one does not appreciate the vast scale difference and speed of nuclear vs conventional detonations, then maybe the most obvious, visible-to-the-eye proof that a nuclear detonation has NOT occurred is the absence of target ignition, combustion and flash burns. Gamma radiation at the scale emitted by an atomic or a thermonuclear detonation ignites several elements in its environment. These phenomena occur to flammable, combustible and exposed surfaces up to several kilometers from the epicenter.
Alex, I found your Substack today and I love it. Have you by any chance seen the video of a Trident launch from a UK sub? It's basically the XO, a bald middle-aged man giving instructions in the tannoy. You can even hear the thud as the missile catapulted (with steam, I think). What got me is how mundane it was: no flashing red light, nobody's shouting KILO ALFA AT TEN CLICKS.
Great post as always. You mentioned that there's no sound recordings of most nuclear tests, so do you think you could at some point do a post on that? Nuclear test videos in Youtube usually have no or obviously fake audio and even descriptions are hard to come by. Until now the only one I had found was in Feynman's memoirs, "huge BOOM and then rumbling like thunder", which intrestingly is not totally consistent with the Brixner quote on this post.
Some believe that the main explosion at the Fukushima #3 reactor was a criticality event. Not as fast or hard as a nuclear weapon's detonation but there is sound that accompanied that explosion, which was originally on the video feed and can be found on some of the 2011 YouTube vids still online. There is the initial detonation and then there is the rumble sound of the pressure wave and ballistic forces that follow. That detonation has features not explained as a "hydrogen" explosion and is likely to be the closest we have to an unaltered recording of the sound of a nuclear explosion.
Now is a good time to watch Twin Peaks. The episode featuring Trinity explained everything.
“Got a light?”
My biggest complaint about the Nolan Trinity shot was that he seemingly forgot about the inverse square law. There is a shot of I think Teller being lit up by the flash, but nothing behind him is lit up. It's clearly just a flashbulb out of frame. In reality a massive explosion would light up the entire area, not just those close to the camera.
You're right, the Oppenheimer explosion seemed too small, like a bunch of gasoline lit off on a backlot.
Also I think they used the dye trick for mushroom clouds in The Day After, a movie with an otherwise comical nuclear attack sequence.
You're so right! I'm glad someone explained why it looked so weirdly small.
'The Beginning Or The End' seems to have had one uninteded consiquent inasmuch as the overall 'look' of the film and the reactions of the actors in it somehow became a template for the same things in every 1950s B sci-fi flick,...Be intersting to know if the flick had any influence on film directors of the era.