The meme-ification of the “Demon Core”

https://doomsdaymachines.net/p/the-meme-ification-of-the-demon-core

by SaberTail • 2 years ago

400 266 2 years ago

doomsdaymachines.net

Topfi• 2 years ago

I'd argue Kyle Hill [0] should have been mentioned since his coverage appears instrumental in this trend.

Also, if you are so inclined, there are also Chernobyl memes [1].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z497lu4t5XI

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQeC06SdicI

blueflow3• 2 years ago

My spouse works in a nuclear research facility. Everytime they talk about radiation or something i make jokes from the HBO "Chernobyl" series like "3.6 Röntgen, not good, not terrible".

Some years ago i gifted them a snow globe for birthday, but not one with a snowman and white particles, but one with a little chernobyl plant and black particles. Their coworkers found it funny. It is still at their desk these days.

MisterTea• 2 years ago

but one with a little chernobyl plant and black particles.

Now I want one. Where did you buy it from if you don't mind me asking?

thewanderer19832• 2 years ago

Sorry to hijack this thread. I'm using a Dec Vt220, 420 and 510. You posted a git link back in 2020 with your improvements to making it useful. The link no longer works. Are you able to provide an updated link?

Ferret7446• 2 years ago

This meme easily predates Kyle Hill's coverage. This is from 2016 https://www.pixiv.net/artworks/55580841 and I'm pretty sure there are examples from earlier years.

Semaphor• 2 years ago

Because it’s a meme derived from human suffering. It’s meant to be in bad taste — that’s the source of the humor.

I don’t agree. To me, it’s derived from many things, like juxtaposing something incredibly stressful and dangerous, with something else.

I’d go further and say the suffering that happened is only important in that it made the demon core popular and well-known, but the memes would still work if it somehow became well-known without the death and suffering because no accident happened.

jonathrg• 2 years ago

The source of the humor is that what Slotin did is extremely funny. So obscenely reckless.

lenerdenator• 2 years ago

Part of me thinks he'd laugh his ass off at the memes.

Hell, when the accident happened, he said, "Well, that does it."

BolexNOLA• 2 years ago

Yeah I’ve always thought the juxtaposition of 1) these high level experts with 2) one of the most dangerous objects we’ve ever created against the ways 2 was treated by 1 is part of the entertainment. Like its own unique and wildly unexpected category of the Darwin awards.

Yeah it’s sad but it is almost difficult to believe, so it ends up being kind of funny

vundercind3• 2 years ago

Yep. It's like someone chain-smoking cigarettes while working with gasoline. There's a "yo, WTF?" humor to how reckless it is.

Off-primary use of a mundane hand tool being the only thing preventing a minor nuclear disaster is simply funny. Like God forming man from mud not with the fine tools of a master clay-worker, but a child's play-doh plastic carving tools and a couple toothpicks.

tokai• 2 years ago

Yeah the article completely misses the mark there. The suffering is not even a part of the meme, nobody really delves into that.

PaulHoule3• 2 years ago

I think it's about that ecstasy in losing yourself in something that can sometimes cause you to lose your life.

moralestapia2• 2 years ago

The author seems to have missed the memo that the era of victimisation and virtue signaling is finally over.

caf3• 2 years ago

The terrible consequences are definitely an implied part of the meme, otherwise it's just someone messing about with some pieces of metal and screwdriver and isn't funny at all.

anon848736282• 2 years ago

juxtaposing something incredibly stressful and dangerous, with something else.

That "something else" to me is the absolute ease of the act. I think we normally expect the scale of the consequences to match the setup difficulty.

Simply bringing two pieces of metal together for instant death? It's absolute magic!

So there's also the wizardry component of it. It tickles our love of fantasy stories and arcane power, and the irresponsible handling thereof.

Elsewhere someone mentions lighting cigarettes at a gas station. That situation has similar aspects, but lacks the magical flair.

mikewarot• 2 years ago

Simply bringing two pieces of metal together for instant death? It's absolute magic!

There wasn't anything instant about the death, from Wikipedia:[1]

  Despite intensive medical care and offers from numerous volunteers to donate blood for transfusions, Slotin's condition was incurable.[2] He called his parents and they were flown at Army expense from Winnipeg to be with him. They arrived on the fourth day after the incident, and by the fifth day his condition started to deteriorate rapidly.
  
  Over the next four days, Slotin suffered an "agonizing sequence of radiation-induced traumas", including severe diarrhea, reduced urine output, swollen hands, erythema, "massive blisters on his hands and forearms", intestinal paralysis and gangrene. He had internal radiation burns throughout his body, which one medical expert described as a "three-dimensional sunburn." By the seventh day, he was experiencing periods of "mental confusion." His lips turned blue and he was put in an oxygen tent. He ultimately experienced "a total disintegration of bodily functions" and slipped into a coma. Slotin died at 11 a.m. on 30 May, in the presence of his parents.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin#Slotin's_death

hinkley4• 2 years ago

You have to admit that the setup of this experiment makes riding a motorcycle, without a helmet, with a .1% BAC, look like more responsible behavior.

The other people in the room got a couple years’ worth of rads from his mistake didn’t they?

I’m sure they rationalized not using an apparatus for this due to embrittlement, thermal expansion, response time, or all three. But from the perspective of someone looking back on this era 50 years later (now 80), Jesus fucking Christ.

Carpenter’s pencils as spacers would have saved his life.

In fact Wikipedia says he was a dumbass:

The standard protocol was to use shims between the halves, as allowing them to close completely could result in the instantaneous formation of a critical mass and a lethal power excursion.
By Slotin's own unapproved protocol, the shims were not used. The top half of the reflector was resting directly on the bottom half at one point, while 180 degrees from this point a gap was maintained by the blade of a flat-tipped screwdriver in Slotin's hand. The size of the gap between the reflectors was changed by twisting the screwdriver. Slotin, who was given to bravado,[11] became the local expert, performing the test on almost a dozen occasions,

caseyy3• 2 years ago

I also disagree with the author. They don't consider the relationship between the meme makers/viewers and the demon core incident. And while it was horrific to those involved, most people have experienced maybe 0.1% of that terror – and that is good. They can and should make light of it.

Expecting everyone to be deeply affected by all traumatic experiences throughout history is unrealistic. We have defence mechanisms to cope with the overwhelming weight of global suffering, and breaking them down is a bad idea. So shaming those who managed to distance themselves from such events (by saying their dark comedy is in bad taste) is condescending. I say it's good to have healthy coping strategies and not be overly affected by awful events we were not exposed to directly – that is called healthy mental resilience. Not everyone should suffer because anyone else has.

People should and will still joke, even when awful things have happened to billions in every conceivable niche of life. Really, I would even argue one should not absorb more suffering and terror than they would have been exposed to in one life-time, even if the internet and news media makes it easy. One should certainly, without any doubt in my mind not internalize every tragedy in history in an effort to stifle humour.

whoopdedo• 2 years ago

Most comedy is tragic.[1] And laughing is an inherently selfish act, as Mel Brooks observed when he said, "comedy is when you fall in an open sewer and die."[2]

[1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/06/25/comedy-plus/

[2] https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/mel-brooks-film-exc...

dominicrose• 2 years ago

I wouldn't joke about a nuclear bomb, but a nuclear scientist who died because of messing with that stuff?

feoren• 2 years ago

It doesn't sound like you really do disagree with the author at all. I never had the sense that he was trying to shame anyone. In fact he almost exactly echoes your 2nd paragraph:

I’m not here to be the humor police, or to say things should be “off limits” for comedy, or that it’s “too soon,” or make any other scolding noises. Dark humor, in its own strange and inverted way, is arguably a sort of coping mechanism — a defense against the darkness, a way to tame and de-fang the horrors of the world.

cwkoss• 2 years ago

American propaganda likes to paint the nuclear scientists as heroes, but I think the younger generation likely views them much more as "evil scientists who worked to create apocalyptic weapons" and feel comfortable with a lack of empathy for them harming themselves in the process.

julianeon• 2 years ago

I can't help but feel like this (completely overlooked) facet played a part in the humor for its original audience. From a certain point of view, he was 1 more casualty of a weapon that went on to kill 150-240k people thereafter. Live by the sword, etc.

o11c• 2 years ago

I wonder how much of that is all the WWII vets being gone and not being able to hear their thankfulness at not having to invade Japan the hard way (after what happened on Iwo Jima and Okinawa).

bell-cot2• 2 years ago

More important is that physically dangerous workplaces have mostly been written out of popular culture over the past half-century.

Vs. if your day job routinely involves high voltages, roofing, heavy equipment, or other "one stupid slip, and your life is effectively over" situations, then you have a rather different outlook on this.

dessimus• 2 years ago

If one wants to ignore that German scientists were working on the bomb as well, and the American scientists just had more resources to pull it off first.

jchw2• 2 years ago

The first time I saw the Demon Core as a "meme" is from the Japanese creator からめる, a person most known for short absurdist humor animations.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=6ZIjbX1gj88

I'm not sure if this is the genesis of the demon core meme (probably not), but it definitely came fairly early on.

cdchn• 2 years ago

I was going to comment that I'm disappointed there is no mention of Demon core-kun.

thih9• 2 years ago

If anyone is interested, there are more animations like this e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNZnfbl_Z7M , https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Od_RTVirPCo , https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Eyl3WQCttQ8 . Sadly I see english subtitles only in the last one.

jchw2• 2 years ago

If you scroll far enough in the comments of most of からめる's videos, there will almost always be a English-translated transcript somewhere. Of course, in many cases you barely need them, since most of their videos don't really need much explanation, or maybe more accurately, utterly defy attempts at being explained.

RajT88• 2 years ago

I feel like this had to emerge on 2ch. The mix of cute/death is very much that community.

wruza• 2 years ago

What is going on here? I am not exceptionally well-versed in anime or manga tropes, but I think the “obvious” reading of this is a classic case of “unexpected juxtaposition creates humor.” That is, moving something from one context (“Demon Core,” radiation experiment, horrible death) into another (cute, anime, girls) creates something that feels novel and unusual

Ah, sir, I guess you’re completely unfamiliar with anime tropes. From absurd brutality to dark drama (much worse than your Titanic Ending and Futurama Dog), everything can be found in anime. Thinking that these are cute animations for teens and children is a big mistake. I, a grown up adult, usually dread when an anime plot is too nice to its actors and think if I want to watch it further. This juxtaposition is well-expected.

bitwize• 2 years ago

There's a lot of light and fluffy fare in anime. Even back in the 90s when I was used to sex, violence, drama, and strong character lore in my anime, I discovered You're Under Arrest and was a bit surprised to discover that it pretty much went nowhere, just an episodic series full of funny things for the characters to do. Especially surprising for a show about police officers, which in American media usually means it's a "procedural" with particularly dangerous criminals and high stakes. But in YUA the officers mainly deal with petty criminals and get up to wacky hijinks. More recent series, like Azumanga Daioh and Lucky Star, are pretty much just schoolgirls doing cute things. And maybe that's just the energy you need sometimes rather than, say, the horror and drama of Attack On Titan.

To paraphrase Brad Bird, anime is not a genre. It's a broad art form that encompasses all genres. This is a common mistake for Western viewers of anime; even in the 90s it was marketed to us as being all dark, twisted Liquid Television stuff. But yeah, actually, most anime is created for and marketed to kids and teens. In Japan, if you're an adult consumer of anime, your peers may wonder what the hell is wrong with you and why won't you grow up. (Manga is different; plenty of manga are produced for adult consumption, and these are fairly serious in tone, and may lack the fantastic settings or big-eyed character designs Westerners associate with the medium.) Adult anime otaku in Japan are viewed with the same bemusement and contempt we might have for, say, the grown-ass men who are fans of My Little Pony. This may have changed more recently, as the Japanese government has leaned into the idea of anime and manga being important cultural exports through its "Cool Japan" publicity program.

cr3ative• 2 years ago

I feel like some conclusions of the intent here are born from being very well versed in the actual outcomes, including what I can only assume was a very painful end to someone's life.

But on the surface level of it, it's a scientist doing something knowingly incredibly dangerous and dumb for no particularly justifiable reason.

We've all felt a bit like that at some point. We just probably didn't have a core and a screwdriver.

vundercind3• 2 years ago

It's a master-tier Darwin Award win. That's why it's funny. Same reason should-have-known-better accidents often get a laugh even when the consequences were pretty grave.

"I'm a highly-trained scientist who helped develop the bombs that leveled two cities and usher in the nuclear era... yeah, lemme just fuck around with this bomb core and a screwdriver such that I'm one muscle-twitch from killing everyone around me, that seems fine."

PaulHoule3• 2 years ago

Oddly the art is largely Japanese in style, not just the musume (e.g. "girl") images but that first one.

Between that accident and the year 2000 there were about 60 criticality accidents causing about 20 fatalities

https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ml0037/ML003731912.pdf

After a software project failure that overturned my life I got interested in the quality movement, Deming, Toyota Production System and all that. I was also interested in nuclear energy, actually opposed to it at that time, an opinion I have changed.

Before the Fukushima accident I became aware that Japan was leading the world in nuclear accidents, especially this criticality incident

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-sec...

as well as the comedy of errors at

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monju_Nuclear_Power_Plant

which I could summarize as "makes Superphenix look like a huge success"

Causes floated for that were that (1) Japan was more aggressive at developing nuclear technology post-1990 more than any country other than Russia (who is making the FBR look easy today) and (2) the attitudes and methods that served Japan well in cars and semiconductors served them terribly in the nuclear business. Workgroups in a Japanese factory, for instance, are expected to modify their techniques and tools to improve production but takes detailed modelling and strict following of rules to avoid criticality accidents.

marcosdumay2• 2 years ago

Workgroups in a Japanese factory, for instance, are expected to modify their techniques and tools to improve production

If you go through the Fukushima disaster handling, that doesn't seem to have happened at all. In fact, people seemed to be super inflexible and actions seemed to have a long authorization chain.

The Toyota Production System wasn't actually that free, it expected people to report the changes before they happen and had plenty of opportunities for a manager to step in and stop it. Anyway, I'm not sure how widely it was adopted in Japan, the system famously came from there, but the country isn't famous for applying it.

fwip4• 2 years ago

I feel like it's a totally different scenario. In usual times, you can afford to innovate - trade some risk for potential improvement.

In disasters, you want to follow the established procedure, to minimize risk in an already confusing and unusual situation.

shdh2• 2 years ago

So perhaps if anybody has a “right” to make jokes in poor taste about the “Demon Core”… it might be the Japanese?
I’m not here to be the humor police, or to say things should be “off limits” for comedy, or that it’s “too soon,” or make any other scolding noises. Dark humor, in its own strange and inverted way, is arguably a sort of coping mechanism — a defense against the darkness, a way to tame and de-fang the horrors of the world.

moate• 2 years ago

I am always of the opinion that as long as the joke lands with the audience or does what the teller intended, it's a good joke. Comedy is about a give and take between the comedian/artist/whatever and their audience.

The problem arises when people think they are an intended audience when they are not (the pope going to a Bill Hicks show), or when a comedian thinks that they're in front of their intended audience when they are not (a conservative comic at the Appolo). A lot of people need to learn this on both sides, and more importantly need to stop complaining when they come to this realization.

shdh2• 2 years ago

Yeah, I concur.

I know someone who saw a Carlin skit where he jokes about prisoners escaping... Basically the person got triggered.

Either way, I don't believe in censoring humor in most cases.

ndsipa_pomu4• 2 years ago

Fun fact - if you eat the demon-core, at 124 trillion calories, it will provide enough energy for the rest of your life.

cainxinth• 2 years ago

All 30 seconds of it.

ndsipa_pomu4• 2 years ago

I can count on the fingers of one hand, the number of times I've been to Chernobyl

Hamuko• 2 years ago

You won't die in 30 seconds unless you shoot yourself in the head afterwards (which may be the preferable option).

BobaFloutist2• 2 years ago

Which is the equivalent of ~4,000,000 gallons of gas, or 10,700,000,000 Tesla powerwalls.

Bear in mind, however, that some napkin math suggests that this is gross overkill, 2,250365100 = 82,135,000, suggesting that even a fairly long lived person only needs a mere 2,650 gallons of gas, or ~7,070 Tesla powerwalls, and that the demon-core can easily supply enough lifetime calories for a solid large city of ~1,500,000.

throwawee• 2 years ago

I'm so sick of these fad diets. All the kids show up to school with plutonium in their teeth.

caseyy3• 2 years ago

For comedy one needs to subvert expectations, and this is why making light of grave events (Black Comedy) is a big phenomenon.

There are many examples from WW2 comedy to 9/11 memes. Sometimes the examples are more indirect, like in film: American Psycho, American Beauty, Wolf of Wall Street, The Big Short, Fargo, Don't Look Up, Fight Club, Quentin Tarantino's stuff, etc. All of them deal with dark themes in a light way.

Given the prevalence of this in our culture, the author seems a bit surprised. Maybe they didn't connect it to dark comedy.

ziddoap2• 2 years ago

Maybe they didn't connect it to dark comedy.

I think they made the connection to dark comedy:

this somewhat kawaii rendering of the Slotin experiment, along with the “I love science” phrasing, was a form of dark humor.

And later

Dark humor, in its own strange and inverted way, is arguably a sort of coping mechanism — a defense against the darkness, a way to tame and de-fang the horrors of the world.

caseyy3• 2 years ago

Oh yeah. My bad. I maintain the author reads as surprised though.

derektank• 2 years ago

Yeah, in spite of the author's claims to not want to be the humor police, this really just reads as someone who takes their work as a historian of nuclear weapons 'very seriously' and doesn't want it to be joked about. The SNL joke he identified as being particularly offensive ("Having received the Novel Peace Prize, the survivors of the nuclear bombings called the award the second biggest surprise of their lives") is ... pretty anodyne? It's not making fun of the survivors or glorifying cruelty, it's just contrasting the banal things people say when receiving awards with the extreme reality of having endured one of the most awful events in human history. That kind of juxtaposition is pretty par for the course in comedy, let alone dark comedy. And when it comes to engaging with the reality of awful events, not everyone wants to or has the capacity to treat them with the grave solemnity the author seems to expect.

Verdex• 2 years ago

IIRC John Cleese has a talk from years ago where he makes a very interesting point that seriousness and solemnity are two very different things.

In his opinion, killing humor is the same as killing creativity and killing creativity is the same as inviting disaster and/or failure for the sake of your ego.

Not being solemn is not the same as not being serious.

I think your last sentence there really is the right take away here. But even more than that, I think the right way to prevent future tragedies is with humor not solemnity.

arethuza2• 2 years ago

Also Dr Strangelove... the subject matter doesn't get much darker but it is also quite hilarious.

WeylandYutani• 2 years ago

Strangelove is funny because it was true. Serious people really were doing studies on how to survive a nuclear war.

But just as in the movie it was politicians who weren't down with it. On both sides. Khrushchev was removed when his colleagues figured out just how close he got them to WW3.

Joel_Mckay• 2 years ago

Many argue the basis for true comedy is dealing with fear, rejection, and embarrassment...

With Thermonuclear War: no one is around to experience anything after a comedian bombs on the world stage.

Stanley Kubrick was famous for making actors miserable, but reminded us film is ultimately a collaborative art form. =3

itishappy2• 2 years ago

No mention of the earlier XKCD mentioning the demon core? It's what set in motion my particular interest in nuclear accidents.

I don't agree with the author's analysis here. I think the demon core is simply memorable. It has a scary name and the beryllium sphere is iconic in a way the Kelley and SL-1 accidents simply aren't.

https://xkcd.com/1242/

Vecr• 2 years ago

What's the Helvetica Scenario? Just a joke? I know all the other ones.

dole• 2 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y-yKmzP-4U

A bit from Look Around You, a (fantastic) British comedy show made to look like retro science classroom educational videos, from the minds of Peter Serafinowicz and Robert Popper

coremoff• 2 years ago

Explain XKCD to the rescue: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1242:_Scary_Names

dale_glass4• 2 years ago

Despite it being so famous, and the memes, I still don't understand what Slotin was doing.

So I get it, it was a demonstration of how to perform an experiment. But I can't understand how the screwdriver makes any sense at all. What's being measured? What does success and failure look like? What does the experiment produce, what data in what format?

Because in my head, a proper experiment has data collection and precise measurements. Somebody's working on a data table that says "At position X, we measured value Y". But randomly wiggling stuff around with a screwdriver, I can't see how one can do anything of the sort. And I figure at this level, "more coverage = more radiation" is kind of a trivial point that doesn't really need to be demonstrated.

sho_hn3• 2 years ago

My understanding is that he was demonstrating a technique for how to bring the system to near supercriticality, without causing it. I.e. the objective was to look at the measurement devices they had and monitor them, and build an understanding of what the data was showing. This would then (in principle) be repeated by others with more specific objectives later.

Obviously they should've built a rig for that (at least), but I guess there was a "ain't nobody got time for that" attitude.

dale_glass4• 2 years ago

Right, but shouldn't distance be a critical part of such a measurement?

Like if we measure the amount of noise a device makes, we do it in a quiet room and at a standard distance. Without precision there's no useful data being generated.

So that's the part that I don't get. Shouldn't there be a screw being turned precise amounts, precisely made shims, or at least calipers be involved?

lm284693• 2 years ago

It's all in the wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core

It required the operator to place two half-spheres of beryllium (a neutron reflector) around the core to be tested and manually lower the top reflector over the core using a thumb hole at the polar point. As the reflectors were manually moved closer and farther away from each other, neutron detectors indicated the core's neutron multiplication rate. The experimenter needed to maintain a slight separation between the reflector halves to allow enough neutrons to escape from the core in order to stay below criticality. The standard protocol was to use shims between the halves, as allowing them to close completely could result in the instantaneous formation of a critical mass and a lethal power excursion.
Because in my head, a proper experiment has data collection and precise measurements.

In your head yes, in early nuclear science it seems protocols weren't that important as long as it went boom in the end. As with many industries, regulations are written in blood

dale_glass4• 2 years ago

I've read that and it doesn't really answer those questions. How can you measure the core's neutron multiplication rate if you're not exactly controlling the distance? Isn't the measurement going to be all over the place?

GTP• 2 years ago

Regardless of the outcome, this still looks like a poor demonstration: what's the point of showing how it is done, if you're not following the protocol anyway? My understanding is that those in the room where nuclear experts, so they didn't need a demonstration to know that, the closer the two cores where, the higher the radiation.

atomicnumber3• 2 years ago

I've read about this in a few different mediums before and no it's not just that protocols weren't that important.

The guy doing this experiment was *notorious* for it and multiple other manhattan project people had already told him he was going to die if he kept doing it. But he had the kind of bravado and personality that he kept doing it.

So to be clear: all of the other people whose risk tolerance levels already had them handling weapons-grade plutonium as a career ALSO thought this guy was insane for doing this.

grecy• 2 years ago

Another thing I've always wondered - what would have happen if everyone in the room freaked out and just ran away, leaving the two reflector halves completed closed?

Would it have actually gone bang like a bomb, or more like just get insanely hot and give off an insane amount of radiation, but over the span of many seconds?

Grimblewald2• 2 years ago

The problem with this image of science is that in order to properly collect things we have to properly understand things we could be collecting. We can certainly do our best, but sometimes unexpected things happen. Take x-rays and their incidental discovery via the effect of x-rays on nearby photo-film. Totally accidental data collection from work at the bleeding edge, which was work that has transformed society as we know it. Another point is that in order for things like the lab equipment to be sleek and well built, we need to understand needs. This means that any research that meets your criteria is quite likely not at the cutting edge of anything. Most cutting edge labs I know look more like someone raided the hardware/electronics store to build some abomination than the Hollywood sleek and shiny labs you might be picturing. The sleek well built shiny labs you are picturing tend to be corporate labs and the like, doing work on safe and predictable things with well defined scopes. Translating existing knowledge into marketable products is a lot easier than discovering genuinely new knowledge.

dale_glass4• 2 years ago

This was after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in a secret, government lab staffed by the utmost experts.

It wasn't the "oh look, something funny happens if I do this!" stage of experimentation. This was after they understood what they were dealing with well enough to build and successfully use two bombs. And Slotin was supposedly about to move elsewhere and was working on passing on knowledge.

That's why it's so weird to me.

Aardwolf• 2 years ago

Put a half-sphere reflective shield around a nuclear substance which will make the substance more reactive due to neutron reflections. Due to a slip-up with the screwdriver that was supposed to hold it up, accidentally fully drop down the shield, causing the too large radioactive reaction

I think with his reaction afterwards to remove it again, he saved the others in the room, but not himself

alt187• 2 years ago

Nothing. Richad Feynman said they were "tickling the tail of a sleeping dragon". The only goal of these experiments was to see how close they could flirt with criticality.

mensetmanusman2• 2 years ago

I still can’t believe that there exists rocks on this world that will make a room glow blue and kill everyone in the room if the rocks are brought close together.

lm284693• 2 years ago

Heavily processed rocks that very few nations can produce. A bit like your cpu is just sand, heavily processed sand

jayrot2• 2 years ago

Right? Also there are an awful lot more totally boring and simple things that “if brought together” make exciting stuff happen.

Sodium and Chlorine? Potassium and water?

vanderZwan3• 2 years ago

Honestly, we don't spend enough time feeling appropriately amazed at the processed sand we're using to communicate right now either.

krisoft3• 2 years ago

I likewise “can’t believe” we have CPUs. The two things are equally wild to me.

Sometimes i imagine how I would explain our current tech to someone clever and curious from the past. Like what would Jules Verne, Edison or John von Neumann do if you took your iphone out of your pocket and show them as you unlock it with your face, click youtube and search their name. (Just as an example of something super pedestrian and mundane which might just blow their minds.) We are trully living in an age of wonders.

willis9362• 2 years ago

Well, a determined individual could make a few grams a year, but they'd likely be told to stop early on by one of those few nations.

dragonwriter• 2 years ago

Heavily processed rocks that very few nations can produce.

“Are allowed to” is probably more accurate than “can”, given that the main constraint is other nations looking for signs that you are doing it and... reacting negatively if they see them.

caf3• 2 years ago

Fifteen nations that currently do so, if anyone is interested: Russia, United States, France, United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, China, Japan, Argentina, Brazil, India, Pakistan, Iran, Israel, and North Korea.

Gazoche• 2 years ago

Reminds me of this XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2115/

SoftTalker3• 2 years ago

Origin of the idea for the Loc-Nar?

dllthomas• 2 years ago

Plutonium is heavy metal.

ndileas• 2 years ago

The alchemists are still with us, more powerful then they ever could have imagined.

layer8• 2 years ago

It’s because “rocks” aren’t the fundamental nature of our reality. There are also ugly giant bags of mostly water posting comments in this very thread.

mensetmanusman2• 2 years ago

Water bags and HN brought together!

vanderZwan3• 2 years ago

The author mentions 2019. That was the year that the "Demon Core Kun" videos were put on YouTube[0]. There's no mention of them in the article, which is a bit odd. I don't know if that was the first to "memeify" the demon core, but it certainly is one of the most popular memeifications, with each of the eight videos having somewhere between three to six million views.

This also would explain the relatively large presence of anime memes in particular, since the "main" meme is a series of Japanese animations.

EDIT: knowyourmeme.com actually has an article about the Demon Core and its popularity in Japan as a meme[1]. Apparently the latter predates the Demon Core Kun series by about a year at least. Still, the latter being on YT made it a lot more accessible to non-Japanese people which might explain the spike in meme popularity in 2019.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjjzx95hXRLvbVeHuE8fT...

[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/demon-core

anilakar• 2 years ago

Memes are fun. Crossover memes doubly so. There's no need to overanalyze.

niemandhier2• 2 years ago

Part of the reason why we slowed down in our progress in science is that we do not take risks like that anymore.

Now the risk takers are at private companies.

thfuran2• 2 years ago

Would science have progressed more slowly if they had spent a few hours building a decent rig for that that can't slip like a screwdriver instead of losing a scientist?

bigstrat20032• 2 years ago

Yes, but not in the way you're implying. Safety measures don't exist in a vacuum, they exist in a whole system of other similar safety measures. In aggregate, this system of safety measures does slow science down (or anything else). One might argue that it's worth it to slow down output for the sake of safety, but I don't think one can reasonably argue that output doesn't slow down.

coldpie• 2 years ago

What? We're making incredible progress. mRNA vaccines, CRISPR, access to space research, materials sciences, the upcoming AI-driven research boom. It's crazy out there, and as a bonus, we're not irradiating anyone due to clumsy screwdriver techniques.

Stop paying attention to whatever source is leading you to believe scientific progress has slowed down. They're lying to you.

niemandhier2• 2 years ago

I am professional scientist. I am not allowed to use certain substances, because exposure is damaging to the unborn child. I am a man. I am not allowed to perform certain procedures, unless I rebuild half the lab. I am not allowed to use lasers you can buy as costumer products in the US and china unless I write a safety manual .

Innovation needs creativity and fast iterations, in our current setup that is incredible hard.

MRNA tech is a good example: It was stuck in limbo for ages due to safety concerns, COVID allowed people to ignore these and push forward.

sfelicio• 2 years ago

Looks like you found a new Umeshism [0]. "If you don't lose a few lives to lab accidents, you are not progressing fast enough".

[0] https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=40

jayrot2• 2 years ago

As Shaw said, “Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.”

Things can be, and often are, both at the same time.

numpad07• 2 years ago

Oh they still haven't figured this one out at knowyourmeme?

Demon Core meme came from KanColle(2013) communities in Futaba, and permeated to nicovideo.jp as well as to Twitter. That's why it is predominantly image based with few GIFs inbetween, why it is Demon Core and Demon Core only, and why there are few comical non-girl versions created years after inception.

I'd guess overlap between outspoken (ex-)Futaba users AND HN readers(hops_max=3) OR knowyourmeme users is exactly 1.0f, and this won't ever go on record anywhere unless someone say it somewhere, so here you go.

guerrilla• 2 years ago

Can you elaborate? What's the context? I have no idea what those communities are.

numpad07• 2 years ago

The Crossroad trio was ~2015 addition to the game so it doesn't quite date back to 2013, but I doubt others enjoy inevitable wall of text for complete context at this time. I suspect it will take few more years until enough with Anglosphere background gains enough Japanese literacy to document this. For now I'd leave just pointers here.

throwaway37387• 2 years ago

Futaba Channel is a Japanese imageboard website originally born as a mirror backup for the textboard website 2ch (now 5ch). You may be aware of 4chan, which was directly based on Futaba and from which it took much of its culture.

Nico Nico Douga is a video hosting website that was created soon after YouTube's boom. It's famous for having user comments scrolling across videos and for being one of Japan's biggest meme factory from 2007 to 2012. Forcing users to login to watch videos, the push for premium accounts, and a rough transition from FLASH to HTML5 are considered some of main reasons of its decline.

resoluteteeth• 2 years ago

Demon Core meme came from KanColle(2013) communities in Futaba

Do you have some source for this being the origin? Could you cite some examples from prior to 2018 which is earliest date of other Japanese demon core memes cited by https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/demon-core ?

numpad07• 2 years ago

Oldest mention to Demon Core as local favorite I could find was timestamped 2016/12/05 23:51, but they don't keep formal logs and they really don't like things "brought outside", so I'm not going to link it.

Maybe there could be mht files in someone's basement somewhere, but I have no data to present at this instant, mostly just oral history. Sorry for that.

edit: oldest post tagged Demon Core on Pixiv dates back to 2016/01/17, so kym is verifiably off by years.

edit: there's a KanColle themed image post in Nico nico seiga dated 2017/06/18 featuring a "borrowed" Demon Core-chan 3D model, which meams the design existeed for some time.

edit: this blog post dated 2014/09/30 links to a deleted Touhou video with Demon Core in title: https://1ni.co/2014/09/30/project20140930_6/

ziddoap2• 2 years ago

Oh they still haven't figured this one out at knowyourmeme?

Why not contribute your knowledge there, instead of (or in addition to) here, where it will surely be forgotten about?

aaron695• 2 years ago

Everyone doesn't have to know everything.

The Demon Core meme, for instance is getting pretty lamestream, no longer some shared affinity.

It's nice even mommyTok is doing it I guess, but we are one step away from a CNN story, then it's definitely over.

So for a brief moment make the most of the fact your smarter than "knowyourmeme"

numpad07• 2 years ago

It's just too much work for me, and there aren't a lot of logs on the WWW, let alone in the English bubble where this meme only exist as filler repost materials.

The situation might change in 5-10 years, but as Prof. Oak said, "this isn't the time to do that"; I think it doesn't quite going to just work.

philipkglass• 2 years ago

There's also this one from last year:

https://old.reddit.com/r/nuclearweapons/comments/12x9rxi/the...

Based on The Ol' Spicy Keychain:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-ol-spicy-keychain

louthy• 2 years ago

Didn’t read it, just went for the memes. The kinder surprise one is absolute genius!

frozenlettuce• 2 years ago

As per Aquinas, every joke is a disguised form of sadness. You can only laugh at something that is sad.

willis9362• 2 years ago

They didn't include my favorite example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymbal-banging_monkey_toy

bigstrat20032• 2 years ago

I had never heard of this story. What an absolutely horrible way to die. Not only do you have ample time to suffer with the knowledge of your impending death, but you get to do so in agony the whole time. I wouldn't wish that upon anyone.

Lammy• 2 years ago

Azumanga Daioh mentioned :)

I like the pun on “hot girl stuff” https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/glossary/hot.html

pawelduda• 2 years ago

My favourite one is the flail with the demon core attached to it. Memes aside, I find it fascinating how absurd was thinking that experiment was a good idea

kps3• 2 years ago

Mine is the cup-and-ball style toy.

Vaslo• 2 years ago

Im on the internet a ton. Very familiar with the two horrible nuclear research accidents that occurred around this time. Never once seen these meme.

Also, I love how the author tries to argue for who should be allowed to make the joke, like there is some arbiter who can tell you “oh you don’t fall into that group so you are not allowed to make that joke.”

Razengan• 2 years ago

The "Demon Core kun" short anime series on YouTube is the most hilarious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZIjbX1gj88

treflop• 2 years ago

Let me tell you about 9/11 memes…

00N8• 2 years ago

IMO the demon core incident resonates with people as kind of the ultimate case of "playing with fire". Humans have always played with fire, so we see the attraction, but also the dangers of it. It's a primitive behavior that's put us at risk, but also been the origin of most of our technology. The juxtaposition of a top nuclear weapons scientist taking such a "caveman" approach, playing with a new kind of "fire" that's millions of times more powerful, is poignant in the way it's absurd, but also relatable, sad & darkly funny.

ngruhn• 2 years ago

Well said

vibrolax• 2 years ago

Twice bitten, three times shy. After the Slotin incident, prompt critical assemblies by hand were prohibited. Los Alamos then built a series of remotely operated critical assembly machines. There is a fair amount of open source literature on them, especially the "Godiva" series. Some of these machines have experienced criticality excursions that damaged the machine, but spared the biological organisms operating them by remote control.

formerly_proven• 2 years ago

Which reminds me, I can unfortunately not turn this up, but iirc at one of the national labs they've been working on dismantling a particular set of hot cells and iirc the whole thing has been stalled for a couple years trying to figure out how to do it. Sort of like a "demon hot cell".

jkestner• 2 years ago

I really liked this telling of the story with illustrations: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230719-the-blue-flash-l...

GauntletWizard• 2 years ago

The front page of hacker news is not where I expected to see Gura fanart today.

kapp_in_life• 2 years ago

Remember learning about this from the crossover with fake "bowling alley animations" like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q6MQwsJCA4

nothacking_• 2 years ago

Just about all humor derives from some degree of suffering. Compared what the core could have done, the three deaths from the accident are nothing. Even things that are joked about often have much higher death tolls like wars and natural disasters.

cocodill• 2 years ago

It's pretty funny to see so many anime memes when you consider that demoncore was originally planned as the third bomb for japan.

the_af• 2 years ago

I can honestly say I don't understand this meme. I don't understand what it's trying to say.

I know what the Demon Core is (there was a similar, lesser known accident in my country, but it only killed the operator) and I'm all for bleak humor, but...

... I don't understand this one. What's with the animé girls and the cutesy style? What is this mocking exactly?

I'm not offended by it or anything, I just don't get it. Seems completely random as well as obscure.

HelloUsername• 2 years ago

Though not really a meme, I always found Anatoli Bugorski in the same, amazingly interesting area as the Demon Core accident. (A real life Gordon Freeman?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Bugorski

danielodievich• 2 years ago

It just so happens that I am reading Andrei Sakharov's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Sakharov) memoirs, he was heavily heavily involved in USSR's thermonuclear weapons design and development, and then became a peace activist, dissident and eventually a Nobel Peace prize winner. His memoirs are a mix of highly technical details and lovely descriptions of people. He mentions "demon core" in passing in an early part of the book, and I am paraphrasing/translating here, their "object" (barbed-wire walled off city, similar to Los Alamos, except USSR had way more of them) had technician who was measuring things just like the guy doing it with demon core - neutron flux, neutron absorption, etc; the measurements were using gaskets of standard width, with multiple layers in between the half-spheres; the technician was a) very capable, b) getting there in age and crucially c) prone to hitting the bottle at work. He eventually got caught and was immediately sacked and replaced with someone a) less capable and b) younger but c) not drinking, who eventually did something similar and I quote "although no lives were lost like in american incident, lots of equipment was ruined". He proceeds to add that they added lots of procedures and fail checks and safety equipment, and it slowed things a lot. He also quips then that after he learned about USA mishaps, he wasn't surprised that stuff like that went on "over there" too.

The meme-ification of the “Demon Core”

Related Stories