Good stuff from popular mechanics. Read just the last 2 paragraphs if you are short on time...
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Last night's episode of Lost, "Jughead," had its fair share of "Holy cow, what did he just say!?" moments. Like when we learned that uber-rich (and uber-mysterious) businessman Charles Widmore was funding physicist Daniel Faraday's time travel research. Or that Widmore himself was once a Latin-speaking Other on the very island he's spent the last 20 years trying to find. And then there's that little fact that, oh my, there's a nuclear bomb on the island!
It's that newest introduction of the island's itinerary of strange objects that we're looking at today (we can only hope an explanation for that four-toed statue is still to come). While being held captive with Charlotte and Miles, Faraday decides the key to their survival is to let the Others continue to assume that their motley, multi-ethnic crew is a part of the American military-but they're not just standard troops, they're scientists, sent there to recover their hydrogen bomb. We asked nuclear bomb expert Ivan Oelrich, vice president for the strategic security program at the Federation of American Scientists, to give us a primer on the workings of hydrogen bombs and to weigh in on whether last night's plot was as realistic as Widmore sinking a plane in waters too deep for recovery or if it's as unlikely as Hurley throwing out a jug of Dharma ranch dressing.
Before we begin, here's a little nuclear weapon history: The bombs the US dropped on Japan during WWII, "Little Boy" and "Fat Man," were not hydrogen bombs; those were atom bombs, a different kind of nuclear weapon. An atom bomb relies on nuclear fission to create its explosion, while a hydrogen bomb relies on fusion (though much of the explosive energy is also created through fission), and is many times more powerful. No H-bomb has ever been detonated against an enemy, but the US has tested them. A series of thermonuclear weapon tests that took place on the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific in the 1950s was called "Operation Castle." The first attempt at a dry-fuel thermonuclear hydrogen bomb device, an operation called "Castle Bravo," was successfully detonated on March 1, 1954 at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Because of Castle Bravo's early success, a second type of nuclear weapon, a cryogenic hydrogen bomb, was not tested. That group included a cryogenic h-bomb nicknamed, that's right, "Jughead."
Radiation Burns from Proximity to a Hydrogen Bomb
Faraday is able to deduce that there's a bomb on the island by glancing at the bandaged hands of one of the Others, which he tells Alpert are radiation burns, indicating that the housing has been compromised. However, getting radiation burns from simply being near a hydrogen bomb-compromised or not-isn't possible. "People think that the fuel that drives an atomic bomb must be intensely radioactive, but in fact it's not," Oelrich says. "It becomes radioactive after the reaction." Basically, if the bomb was emitting the kind and quantity of radiation that would burn someone, more than this gentleman would be affected. "Part of the problem of detecting nuclear weapons is that they don't emit much radiation," Oerlrich says, "It would be kind of nice if they emitted a lot of radiation because then you could just hold a Geiger counter over it and say 'Ah ha! Someone is trying to get a nuclear bomb into the country!' But it's not like that." Of course, there's always the chance that those burns were incurred through exposure to a different source of radioactive material.
Leaky Housing
When Faraday is first brought to the bomb, he climbs the tower housing it with the caution one would expect when near a nuclear weapon, but he's not particularly worried. It's not until he spots the foamy material leaking through a seam in the casing that he starts to freak. "It's unsafe, we need to move," he says to Ellie, the Other assigned to watch him, and tells her to back up. If you're unversed in the workings of hydrogen bombs, you'd assume that any leakage is bad news. And that's correct, to a certain extent. "It is not as if there are quantities of liquids in a nuclear weapon that would corrode out," explains Oelrich. "If I saw that coming out, I would assume that some battery had corroded, acid had escaped, and corroded some other material, like a plastic, and leaked out." While he personally thinks it's not likely, Oelrich admits that it is possible. But if this "Jughead" is indeed supposed to be the cyrogenic "Jughead" that was part of Operation Castle, it would be most likely that this seepage was some of the foam insulation that somehow dissolved, Oelrich says.
From here, there are two ways this bomb could be dangerous: First, it might be leaking plutonium, which can be dangerous if you inhale or ingest it. Oelrich speculates that if it is indeed a battery that is leaking, plutonium leakage is more likely. "If acid from a battery leaked, then it might dissolve the plutonium into a form that could leak out," he speculates. Secondly, as Oelrich puts it, "it's a bomb-it's also dangerous if it blows up!" In the most basic terms, here's how a nuclear bomb works: Surrounding a ball of plutonium is another ball of very carefully arranged explosives. When those first explosives go off in a perfectly timed synch-designing this first explosion is the most difficult part of building a bomb-it squeezes the plutonium down, making it super dense and thus setting off the nuclear explosion. If just part of the conventional detonator was to be set off-say by a stray bullet fired by trigger-happy Other Ellie-the high explosive might be set off, but a nuclear explosion would probably not happen. "Worst case is that you would scatter plutonium around, which would still be dangerous, but it would be a lot better that the alternative," explains Oelrich.
Rendering a Hydrogen Bomb Inert
Faraday gets the Others to lead him to the bomb by saying that he can "render it inert." The first step would be to disable the detonator. "It depends on the particular design of the bomb," explains Oelrich, "but in the 1950s you would be able to see the detonator wires. The first thing to do would be to cut them so it wouldn't set the bomb off symmetrically." Then, says Oelrich, to quell any worry of the device accidentally exploding somehow, you'd ruin the explosives. "If it were me, I would soak the high explosive in water or dissolve it with alcohol. I'm just worried that explosives can accidentally go off. There's not a big chance of it, but if it's attached to a hydrogen bomb, well, that would ruin your whole day." Once the explosives are taken care of, you have to take care of all that radioactive material? That's where the lead and concrete come in. As Faraday suggested, burying the disabled bomb underground in a lead or cement housing would contain any radiation the bomb might be emitting now or in the future. Eventually, however, the plutonium could leak into the ground water, and since it will be dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years and concrete might last hundreds, burying the bomb would not be a permanent solution.
Of course, the Lost-aways left for another place in time before we found out if they actually buried Jughead-but not before John Locke urged Richard Alpert to visit him when he is born, two years in the future, to prove that Locke actually is the leader of the Others (cue gasps, goosebumps and "Cabin Fever" flashbacks here)-so the bomb could still be out there, somewhere. Uncontained, there are a couple of things radiation can do: Cause radiation sickness, cure cancer, maybe even have ill effects on pregnant women. We'll let you connect the dots from here.
[Reply]
:-) He was kind of a punk back then so maybe he ends up getting kicked off the island then goes on to form the Dharma Initiative to find and study the island's paranormal properties? Then, in the future, Ben (who was a Dharma employee) turned on Dharma and killed everyone (the purge). This would explain why Widmore wants to kill Ben. Revenge for Ben killing Widmore's entire crew and their families, destroying all the work Dharma had done. See the attached photo for the polar bear painting in Widmore's office.
