The untaught history of nuclear technology, one episode at a time. The experiment ended. The consequences didn't. Full stories on Substack ↓
St. Louis, MO
Joined February 2022
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US officials say Russia is developing a nuclear anti-satellite weapon.
We don't have to guess what one does. In 1962 the US set off an H-bomb in space while Honolulu watched from hotel rooftops.
What it did to satellites surprised the people who ran it.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviets set off a nuclear bomb in space over their own land.
Retellings say it burned a power plant to the ground.
The best record I could find is six words: "Destruction of power supply at Karaganda."
What really broke is stranger.
A 1998 IEEE paper by the engineers who investigated: a 500-km aerial communications line "experienced a failure due to the damage of its protective devices."
Retellings turned that into 570 km of fused wire and a power plant burned to the ground.
Episode 2 is how that legend grew, what the record actually backs up, and why it matters again now that Russia is reported to be building a nuclear anti-satellite weapon.
thedeepreach.substack.com/p/…
On the ground it was smaller than people think. About 300 streetlights on Oahu blew their fuses and a microwave link on Kauai likely failed. It didn't black out Hawaii.
But that was a blast over open ocean. Today there are about 17,000 working satellites up there.
I wrote up the whole story: the two botched launches before it, the pulse nobody managed to measure, and what the Soviets did over Kazakhstan three months later.
thedeepreach.substack.com/p/…
The Deep Reach retweeted
I don’t want to be that guy
But
You know what usually happens in the markets when metals go wild?
If you don’t you should look back.
Stay frosty.
The Deep Reach retweeted
Tobi Vail and Kathleen Hanna of the punk band Bikini Kill found a brand of deoderant in a store in Olympia Washington one night in 1990. They both found the name hilarious. It was called ‘Teen Spirit’.
It was marketed to teen girls with girly type fragrances. Vail was Kurt Cobain’s girlfriend at the time and was creatively ransacking Cobain’s apartment one night with pal Hanna. Hanna scrawled a suitably riot grrrl insult on a wall with a black sharpie…Kurt smells like Teen Spirit.
Cobain mistook the context and regarded it as a pat on the back, a reference to his concern about teenage alienation and apathy.
It was not until months after the song was released that he was made aware of the irony. In spite of the misunderstanding, the single struck a chord with disaffected youth and resulted in Nirvana’s stunning rise to grunge infamy and the unintentional empowerment of a generation.
The Deep Reach retweeted
BREAKING NEWS: Out of the top 200 insider trades over the last week (by value). 0/200 were buy orders. I have never seen anything like this in my life.
