Name: 你從未聽說過的最瘋狂武器 (The Most Insane Weapon You Never Heard About)
Uploaded: 2024-12-05T13:54:16.000Z
Duration: 13 min 56 s

In the 1950s, the U.S. began the top-secret project Sundial.

20 世紀 50 年代，美國開始實施絕密項目 "日晷"。

A single nuclear bomb so powerful it would destroy all of human civilization.

一枚威力巨大的核彈就能摧毀整個人類文明。

Conceived in cold logic from the mind of a genius scientist.

天才科學家以冷酷的邏輯思維構思而成。

Sundial had the energy equivalent of 10 billion tons of TNT.

日晷的能量相當於 100 億噸 TNT 炸藥。

A pyramid of explosives 13 times taller than the actual Great Pyramid. 3,000 more than all the bombs dropped during World War II.

一座炸藥金字塔比真正的大金字塔高 13 倍。比第二次世界大戰期間投下的所有炸彈還多 3000 枚。

If you dropped the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima every minute, it would take you over 15 months to match Sundial.

如果每分鐘都投下一顆摧毀廣島的原子彈，那麼要花 15 個多月才能趕上日晷。

How was it even possible for us to achieve this insane level of madness?

我們怎麼可能達到如此瘋狂的程度？

If you were 40 in 1945, that means you were born in 1905.

如果你在 1945 年 40 歲，這意味著你出生於 1905 年。

Back then, monarchs ruled over much of the world.

那時，君主統治著世界的大部分地區。

Only 3% of homes in the U.S. had electricity.

The first experimental planes had just flown.

Less than 100,000 soldiers died in war each year.

每年死於戰爭的阿兵哥不到 10 萬人。

Imagine growing up in this world and seeing change almost too fast to keep up with.

想象一下，在這個世界上成長，看到的變化幾乎快得讓人無法跟上。

By 1945, 24 million soldiers and 50 million civilians had died in two world wars.

到 1945 年，已有 2 400 萬阿兵哥和 5 000 萬平民死於兩次世界大戰。

And suddenly, there were TVs, microwaves, jet planes, and nuclear bombs.

突然之間，電視、微波爐、噴氣式飛機和核彈都出現了。

They kind of broke the brains of the people alive back then.

當時活著的人腦子都快被他們打壞了。

Overnight, nowhere from the edge of space to the bottom of the ocean was safe.

一夜之間，從太空邊緣到海底，沒有一處是安全的。

It's hard for us today to understand the level of terror this instilled in people.

我們今天很難理解這給人們帶來的恐懼程度。

Without nuclear weapons, it seemed you'd stand no chance in future conflicts.

如果沒有核武器，在未來的衝突中你們似乎毫無勝算。

Nations without that power would get trampled by those that did have it, no matter how big their armies were.

沒有這種力量的國家，無論其軍隊規模有多大，都會被擁有這種力量的國家踐踏。

There was one brief moment where it could all have been stopped.

有那麼一瞬間，一切本可以停止。

In 1946, the U.S. 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 built such weapons again.

1946 年，美國提出了 "巴魯克計劃"，承諾銷燬原子彈，與世界分享核技術，併成立一個國際機構，確保不再有人制造此類武器。

But the military advantage of nuclear bombs was too great to let go.

但是，核彈在軍事上的優勢實在是太大了，讓人無法放手。

Just three years later, the Soviet Union detonated their first atom bomb.

僅僅三年後，蘇聯就引爆了他們的第一顆原子彈。

This caught everyone by complete surprise.

The Soviets were not decades behind American technology, but had just pulled even.

蘇聯的技術並沒有落後美國幾十年，而是剛剛拉平。

Shock turned into fear, and fear makes people do crazy things.

震驚變成了恐懼，恐懼讓人們做出瘋狂的舉動。

The whole concept of what war was and how it would be won was overturned in a hot second.

戰爭是什麼以及如何贏得戰爭的整個概念瞬間被顛覆。

In a world where your enemy could fly over your soldiers and vaporize your cities, the only answer seemed to be a nuclear arsenal that could strike faster and harder.

在這樣一個世界裡，敵人可以飛越你的阿兵哥，蒸發你的城市，唯一的答案似乎就是能夠更快、更猛烈地打擊敵人的核武庫。

In 1946, there were just nine nuclear bombs in the world.

1946 年，世界上只有 9 枚核彈。

In a way, the nuclear arms race was pretty daft.

從某種程度上說，核軍備競賽是非常愚蠢的。

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.

一個超級大國會研製出威力巨大的新炸彈並引爆，然後另一方會製造出威力更大的炸彈並將其炸燬，這樣的情況會無休止地持續下去。

A dirty and wasteful game of creating more and more horror that seemed totally reasonable at the time.

一場骯髒而浪費的遊戲，製造出越來越多的恐怖，這在當時看來是完全合理的。

Superpowers spent trillions to have thousands of the most intelligent people show off how hard they could destroy humanity.

超級大國花費數萬億美元，讓數以千計的最聰明的人炫耀他們可以如何摧毀人類。

Fear had to be met with much greater horrors, and one man knew how to make nightmares real.

恐懼必須以更大的恐怖來應對，而有一個人知道如何讓噩夢成真。

But what if we destroy humanity even harder?

但是，如果我們更猛烈地毀滅人類呢？

Edward Teller was a brilliant Hungarian theoretical physicist.

愛德華-泰勒是一位傑出的匈牙利理論物理學家。

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.

他是最早意識到鈾的裂變鏈式反應可以製造原子彈的人之一，並幫助製造了原子彈。

But for Teller, the bombs were not powerful enough.

但對特勒來說，炸彈的威力還不夠大。

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.

為了更安全，為了減少恐懼，他敦促使用更大的炸彈。

Even in the 1950s, this was a pretty hot take, and many scientists were appalled by his ideas.

即使在 20 世紀 50 年代，這也是一個相當熱門的觀點，許多科學家都對他的觀點感到震驚。

He didn't care one bit, and incessantly lobbied scared politicians to greenlight more devastating nuclear weapons.

他一點也不在乎，不停地遊說膽戰心驚的政客，為更具毀滅性的核武器開綠燈。

And, lucky for him, his timing was just right.

幸運的是，他的時機恰到好處。

Terrified by the rapid nuclear progress of the Soviet Union, he got a blank check from the military to bring his most destructive fantasy to life.

蘇聯核技術的飛速發展讓他惶恐不安，軍方給他開了一張空白支票，讓他把自己最具破壞性的幻想變成現實。

It took him only a few years to make them a reality, the hydrogen bomb.

他只用了幾年時間就把氫彈變成了現實。

A hydrogen bomb is so powerful that it needs a regular atom bomb just to trigger it.

氫彈威力巨大，需要普通原子彈才能引爆。

It's basically a nuke, the first stage, next to a capsule of fusion fuel, the second stage, encased by dense materials like lead.

它基本上是一個核彈（第一級），旁邊是一個聚變燃料艙（第二級），由鉛等緻密材料包裹。

When the atom bomb is detonated, it releases ungodly amounts of X-rays that get channeled onto the capsule.

原子彈爆炸時，會釋放出大量的 X 射線，這些射線會被導入膠囊。

The capsule's surface explodes, pushing inwards and compressing the fusion fuel so violently that for a brief moment, it simulates a star.

太空艙表面爆炸，向內推擠並猛烈壓縮聚變燃料，在短暫的時間內，它模擬出一顆恆星。

When this bomb was first tested in 1952, it instantly erased a Pacific island from the map.

1952 年，該原子彈首次試爆，瞬間將一個太平洋島嶼從地圖上抹去。

Two years later, he tested an even bigger nuke, 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.

兩年後，他試驗了一枚更大的核彈，威力是廣島原子彈的 1000 倍。

With weapons this powerful, war stopped being about winning and total human annihilation became very real.

有了如此強大的武器，戰爭不再是為了勝利，人類的徹底毀滅變得非常現實。

In just two years, he had enabled the creation of American warheads a hundred times more powerful.

僅僅兩年時間，他就製造出了威力大百倍的美國彈頭。

He had stolen the nuclear fire from the gods and awoken cosmic horrors, but he insisted that it was still not enough.

他從眾神那裡竊取了核火焰，喚醒了宇宙恐怖，但他堅持認為這還不夠。

His dream was to have a bomb of almost unlimited power.

他的夢想是擁有一枚威力幾乎無限的炸彈。

And once again, his timing was pretty great.

When the Soviet Union detonated its own hydrogen bomb, it sparked a new wave of fear.

當蘇聯引爆自己的氫彈時，引發了新一輪的恐懼。

This is where we get the top secret Project Sundial.

在這裡，我們瞭解到了絕密的 "日晷項目"。

The bomb to make all other bombs irrelevant.

讓所有其他炸彈都失去意義的炸彈。

Something so breathtakingly destructive, so incredibly scary, that it made no sense to continue playing.

破壞力如此驚人，可怕得令人難以置信，繼續玩下去毫無意義。

Almost everything about it is still classified, but what we do know about it is terrifying.

關於它的一切幾乎都還處於保密狀態，但我們所知道的一切都非常可怕。

Work on it actually began and tests were planned.

實際工作已經開始，並計劃進行測試。

Sundial wouldn't be some warhead loaded up onto a bomber and dropped on a target.

日晷不會是裝在轟炸機上投向目標的彈頭。

After all, if a bomb can destroy the world, why bother moving it at all?

畢竟，如果一枚炸彈就能毀滅世界，那還動它幹什麼？

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.

也許它真的會被放在國家的中心。

Maybe it would have been put on a remote island or stored on a ship.

也許它會被放在一個偏僻的小島上，或者存放在一艘船上。

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.

但這恰恰說明了這種武器是多麼瘋狂，也說明特勒非常清楚自己在提出什麼建議。

In his mind, the rationale was the ultimate deterrence.

在他看來，這樣做的理由是最終的威懾。

If you attack us or our allies, we will destroy the world.

如果你們攻擊我們或我們的盟友，我們將毀滅世界。

On a technical level, his concept was not even that complicated.

在技術層面上，他的概念甚至並不複雜。

It was probably some kind of nuclear matryoshka doll.

這可能是某種核瑪特里奧什卡娃娃。

The truly breathtaking thing is the idea itself and that he actually attempted to make it real.

真正令人歎為觀止的是這個想法本身，以及他真的試圖將其變為現實。

From what we know, Sundial would have weighed at least 2,000 tons, as massive as a 250-meter-long cargo train.

據我們所知，"日晷 "號至少重達 2000 噸，相當於一列 250 米長的貨運列車。

It would explode with the power of at least 10 billion tons of TNT, a number so big it doesn't mean anything anymore.

它的爆炸威力至少相當於 100 億噸 TNT炸藥，這個數字大得已經沒有任何意義了。

So let's make this a bit more graphic and explode it in Nevada.

所以，讓我們把這個問題說得更形象一點，在內華達州爆炸吧。

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.

它的一個瘋狂之處在於，人類從未測試過任何類似的東西，是以這是我們與專家一起得出的最佳推測。

For a brief moment, a fireball of pure energy appears, up to 50 kilometers in diameter, larger than the visible horizon.

剎那間，一個純能量的火球出現了，直徑達 50 公里，大於可見的地平線。

It radiates blistering heat at the speed of light.

Everything within 400 kilometers is instantly set on fire.

400 公里範圍內的一切瞬間化為灰燼。

每一棵樹、每一棟房子、每一個人

The energy would reach much further, but the explosion is so big that the Earth's horizon curves away from it.

能量會到達更遠的地方，但爆炸的威力太大了，以至於地球的地平線都遠離了它。