The content details the top-secret "Project Sundial," a 1950s US initiative to create a single nuclear bomb capable of destroying all human civilization, born from the escalating fear and technological advancements of the Cold War nuclear arms race.
Mind Map
Click to expand
Click to explore the full interactive mind map • Zoom, pan, and navigate
In the 1950s the US began the top secret project Sundial,
most of it is still classified. The goal: a single nuclear bomb so powerful it would
destroy all of human civilization. Conceived in cold logic from the mind of a genius scientist.
Sundial had the energy equivalent of 10 billion tons of TNT. A pyramid of
explosives thirteen times taller than the actual Great Pyramid. Three thousand more
than all the bombs dropped during World War II. If you dropped the bomb that
destroyed Hiroshima every minute, it would take you over 15 months to match Sundial.
How was it even possible for us to achieve this insane level of madness?
Everything is Different Forever
Let’s set the stage. If you were 40 in 1945 that means
you were you had been born in 1905 – back then monarchs ruled over much of the world,
only 3% of homes in the US had electricity, cities were dominated by horses, the first experimental
planes had just flown. Less than a hundred thousand soldiers died in war each year.
Imagine growing up in this world and seeing change almost too fast to keep
up with. By 1945, 24 million soldiers and 50 million civilians had died in
two world wars. And suddenly there were TVs, microwaves,
jet planes and … nuclear bombs. They kind of broke the brains of the people alive back then.
Overnight, nowhere from the edge of space to the bottom of the ocean was safe. It's hard for
us today to understand the level of terror this instilled in people.
The implications were wild. Without nuclear weapons it seemed you would
stand no chance in future conflicts. Nations without that power would get
trampled by those that did have it, no matter how big their armies were.
There was one brief moment where it could all have been stopped: In 1946 the US proposed the
Baruch Plan and promised to get rid of their atom bombs, share nuclear technology with the
world and set up an international authority to make sure no-one ever builtds such weapons
again. But the military advantage of nuclear bombs was too great to let go.
Just three years later the Soviet Union detonated their first atom
bomb. This caught everyone by complete surprise. The Soviets were not decades
behind American technology but had just pulled even.
Shock turned into fear. And fear makes people do crazy things.The whole concept of what war
was and how it would be won was overturned in a hot second. In a world where your enemy
could fly over your soldiers and vaporise your cities, the only answer seemed to be a nuclear
arsenal that could strike faster and harder. The nuclear arms race began. In 1946 there
were just 9 nuclear bombs in the world. In 1950 the number was 300. In 1960 it would be 20,000.
In a way the nuclear arms race was pretty daft. One superpower would develop a powerful new bomb
and detonate it. And then the other side would build something more powerful and blow it up,
and this would continue endlessly. A dirty and wasteful game of creating more and more
horror that seemed totally reasonable at the time. Superpowers spent trillions to
have thousands of the most intelligent people show off how hard they could destroy humanity.
Fear had to be met with much greater horrors, and one man knew how to make nightmares real.
But What if We Destroy Humanity Even HARDER?
Edward Teller was a brilliant Hungarian theoretical physicist. He was among the
first people to realize that the fission chain reaction in uranium could make a bomb. And he
helped to build it. But for Teller, the bombs were not powerful enough.
He was ready to pay any price for security. And to be more secure, to be less afraid,
he urged that larger bombs were the answer. Even in the 1950s this was a
pretty hot take and many scientists were appalled by his ideas. He didn’t care one
bit and incessantly lobbied scared politicians to green light more devastating nuclear weapons.
And lucky for him, his timing was just right. Terrified by the rapid nuclear progress of the
Soviet Union, he got a blank cheque from the military to bring his most destructive fantasy
to life. It took him only a few years to make them a reality: The Hydrogen bomb.
A hydrogen bomb is so powerful that it needs a regular atom bomb just to trigger it.
It is basically a nuke, the first stage, next to a capsule of fusion fuel, the second stage,
encased by dense materials like lead. When the atom bomb is detonated,
it releases stupendousungodly amounts of X-rays that get channelled onto the capsule.
The capsule’s surface explodes, pushing inward and compressing
the fusion fuel so violently that for a brief moment it simulates a star.
When this bomb was first tested in 1952 it instantly erased a
pacific island from the map. Two years later he tested an even bigger nuke,
1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. The world recoiled in horror. With weapons this
powerful war stopped being about winning and total human annihilation became very real.
Teller celebrated. In just two years he had enabled the creation of American
warheads a hundred times more powerful. He had stolen the nuclear fire from the
gods and awoken cosmic horrors but he insisted that it was still not enough.
His dream was to have a bomb of almost unlimited power. And once again, his timing was pretty
great. When the Soviet Union detonated its own hydrogen bomb, it sparked a new wave of fear.
This is where we get the top secret project Sundial.
The bomb to make all other bombs irrelevant.
The Final Bomb
Teller skipped right to the end. The end of the nuclear arms race. He wanted to build a world
destroyer. Something so breathtakingly destructive, so incredibly scary,
that it made no sense to continue playing. Almost everything about it is still classified,
but what we do know about it is terrifying. Work on it actually began and tests were planned.
Sundial wouldn’t be some warhead loaded up onto a bomber and dropped on a target. No. It would be a
backyard bomb. After all, if a bomb can destroy the world, why bother moving it at
all? No need to bring it close to your enemies, you could as well just put it in your backyard.
Maybe it would have actually been put in the center of the country,
maybe it would have been put on a remote island or stored on a ship,
we don’t know what the actual plans were. But this underlines how
insane this weapon was and that Teller knew exactly what he was proposing. In his mind,
the rationale was the ultimate deterrence – If you attack us or our allies we will destroy the world.
On a technical level his concept was not even that complicated. It was probably some
kind of nuclear matryoshka doll. The truly breathtaking thing is the idea
itself and that he actually attempted to make it real. From what we know,
Sundial would have weighed at least 2000 tons, as massive as a 250 meter long cargo train.
It would explode with the power of at least 10 billion tons of TNT. A number so big it doesn’t
mean anything anymore. So let’s make this a bit more graphic and explode it in Nevada.
One wild thing about it is that humanity never tested anything remotely like it,
so this is the best speculation we developed together with experts.
For a brief moment a fireball of pure energy appears, up to 50 kilometres in diameter, larger
than the visible horizon. It radiates blistering heat at the speed of light. Everything within 400
km is instantly set on fire – every tree, house, person. The energy would reach much further, but
the explosion is so big that the Earth’s horizon curves away from it. The surrounding deserts turn
into a field of glass. Then comes the blast wave. The atmosphere above the explosion is violently
shot into space, a magnitude 9 earthquake shakes the United States while the sound of
the blast reverberates around the world. North American forests burn, adding their soot to the
bomb’s radioactive fallout to create toxic death clouds that shroud the world like a dark curtain.
Sundial is like a nuclear war happening all at once. But it's more like a giant volcano erupting
or an asteroid striking, than a nuclear war. Sundial would bring about an apocalyptic nuclear
winter, where global temperatures suddenly drop by 10°C, most water sources would be contaminated and
crops would fail everywhere. Most people in the world would die. So uhm. Congratulations, you won?
Good News! Wait no, Bad News!
The good news is that Sundial was never built. Most details are still top secret.
But we know that scientists reacted with horror and politicians who were secretly
informed responded with disbelief. Even the US Military thought this
was a bit much. In the insane world of nuclear arms, this madness was too much,
building it considered a crime against humanity. And it had other problems too.
A single apocalypse weapon leaves you no wiggle room. Would you press the button if enemy soldiers
crossed a distant country’s borders or attacked one of your distant bases? Would you end the world
if your rival overthrew a friendly government? Can you protect an ally with a bomb that would
kill them too? The elephant in the room is that while Sundial is clearly insane – humanity still
kind of did build it. At the peak of the cold war humanity had over 70,000 nukes.
Even today we still have about 12,000 nuclear weapons, enough to destroy human civilization.
Instead of a single world burner, the superpowers built tens of thousands of
nuclear weapons of all types and sizes. Hidden in submarines or waiting in bunkers and silos.
And this sounds so much more reasonable, doesn’t it? But this also makes them a much
more credible threat. Because if people feel they can risk setting off a smaller nuke, they
might actually get launched. And we don’t know what kind of chain reaction this might trigger.
So in reality the difference between Sundial and what we have today is not
even that big. Humanity didn’t build a doomsday bomb but a doomsday machine.
Today the world may be on the verge of another nuclear arms race. The US is on track to spend
a trillion dollars on nuclear modernization programs while China is expanding its arsenal
and might have more than 1000 nuclear weapons ready to be deployed by 2030. So
far we've escaped the existential threat these weapons pose – but if an alien visited earth,
it might ask us if we are ok and need a hug. We should ask ourselves as a
species if we really want to be ready to destroy ourselves at a moment's notice.
Phew, that was a lot. Science is never inherently good or bad. It’s up to us to use our
sense of curiosity and exploration for something positive. If you want to impart this spirit onto
the kids in your life from early on, our sponsor KiwiCo is a great start.
This is one of their science project crates that delivers you
all the ingredients for a science adventure right to your doorstep.
Let’s explore: There is a wooden board and pieces...a motor and
wires...some marbles and...googly eyes?! It’s the Maze Arcade Kit, that teaches
kids about the intersection of mechanics and physics in a playful and intuitive way.
This crate is part of the new KiwiCo Labs learning club – a program that takes you
along on a learning journey for young scientists to be. Consecutive hands-on projects help develop
and strengthen problem-solving skills on things like science, engineering and robots over time.
There are also different programs available on topics like world geography, or art & design,
all with their own high-quality crates and exclusive online content to unlock.
This holiday season, a KiwiCo subscription could be the gift that literally keeps on giving for
your kids or any niece, nephew, godchild or other little one in your life, with a new box of wonders
arriving every month. We like KiwiCo because with their new learning club program they are fostering
a mindset of making learning something that's an ongoing exploration, just like we want to.
If you want to try out the new KiwiCo clubs, click on the link in the description,
or use the code KURZGESAGT to get 50% off your first crate of a monthly club with KiwiCo.
It’s time to reveal our darkest secret. This may come as a surprise to you but kurzgesagt
is not actually run by birbs… but by humans. Now you might wonder: 'How is this possible'?
So many people spending hundreds of hours on research,
writing and animating the kurzgesagt videos that are then released for free?
Well, the answer is simple: it’s possible because of our shop.
Our products are a piece of kurzgesagt that you can touch, read and have around you.
Just like our videos, they are a vital part of our dream to inspire people all around the world.
Our carefully researched infographic posters are now part of so many people’s homes
teaching them about Evolution, Black Holes and the Night Sky.
While our Gratitude Journal helps improve lives every day.
A special thank you goes out to everyone who appreciates our weirder product ideas.
Every kurzgesagt product you buy directly funds another moment we
get to spend working on our videos – and you get a special piece of kurzgesagt in return.
Thank you so much for being a part of our story and for making this
channel possible. The birb-humans of kurzgesagt are eternally grateful.
Click on any text or timestamp to jump to that moment in the video
Share:
Most transcripts ready in under 5 seconds
One-Click Copy125+ LanguagesSearch ContentJump to Timestamps
Paste YouTube URL
Enter any YouTube video link to get the full transcript
Transcript Extraction Form
Most transcripts ready in under 5 seconds
Get Our Chrome Extension
Get transcripts instantly without leaving YouTube. Install our Chrome extension for one-click access to any video's transcript directly on the watch page.
