Lawrence Livermore: Scanning and analysing old Nuclear Tests

[Flint]

This is so cool. My uncle was a part of these programs and has spoken quite a bit about them, but now I can watch the results of his work. I find it amazing and fascinating. Now that we are no longer detonating nuclear weapons above ground, or even underground, anymore, this is the only way to learn new things they weren't looking for back when the films were made.

Groovy stuff, man.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvGO_dWo8VfcmG166wKRy5z-GlJ_OQND5

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

Film from almost all of the nuclear tests has been digitized and available since the early 90s. Peter Kuran's SFX facility did a lot of the restorations and had a series of videos featuring these tests.

 

[Flint]

Film from almost all of the nuclear tests has been digitized and available since the early 90s. Peter Kuran's SFX facility did a lot of the restorations and had a series of videos featuring these tests.

The first video on the Lawrence Livermore channel suggests there are thousands of film not yet scanned. Or, is that interview very old and only recently been declassified?

 

[Towen7]

If you find this sort of thing fascinating you may be interested in Dan Carlin's podcast Hardcore History. His most recent episode explores the geopolitical climate during the height of the nuclear and thermonuclear arms race as well as the modern implications of those weapons being used. Very interesting stuff.

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

The first video on the Lawrence Livermore channel suggests there are thousands of film not yet scanned. Or, is that interview very old and only recently been declassified?

Oh, I'm sure there are thousands of films and images which have not yet been scanned. If you have seen the history of Lookout Mountain Air Force Station Hollywood, who did the filming of the vast majority of nuclear blasts, they massively over-filmed and documented every blast with every conceivable type of camera in slow motion, normal motion and everything you can think of. I don't imagine more than a tiny fraction will ever get converted, given the massive number of films and such that were generated. As I mentioned before, Peter Kuran was one of the original driving forces in getting a lot of this material digitized and cleaned up. Some of the footage he did this to was used in the film "Thirteen Days" at the head of the film (there's also several shots of the sounding rockets being launched before the shot).

It costs money to convert all this stuff, plus somebody with either a lot of time on their hands or who is getting paid to do it. Both are not infinite resources. Also, all of it has to first be cleared by authorities who vet it for classified material (which might still be classified), and that of course takes a lot of time and manpower beyond simply digitizing the footage. I imagine the OP is referring to somebody new who is taking up this task. In reality though, the atomic blasts pretty much look the same, give or take, so restoring all of it would not exactly make for riveting entertainment.

 

[Flint]

I know my dad created thousands of hours of extremely slow motion footage of hydrogen exploding between 1988 and 1997. His test facility had dozens of cameras that captured thousands of frames per second. When he died a few years ago he was trying to get NASA to release that stuff to archives to be converted.

 

[Towen7]

An article I stumbled on today at cnet said there are an estimated 10,000 films of 210 nuclear tests. Approximately 4,200 have been converted to digital and 500 of those reanalyzed. 750 have been de-classified and the first set was put on YouTube this week.