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[00:00] In the 1960s, the U.S. planned to nuke Israel with hundreds of thermonuclear bombs, and Panama, and Alaska, all in the name of progress driven by a mad scientist to use the most destructive of weapons to build things,

[00:16] excavate canals, carve out harbors, tap oil and gas. This was Project Cowsha. It kept the U.S. busy for two decades, burned hundreds of millions of dollars, and exploded dozens of use for a bright future.

[00:30] in the most feverish years of the Cold War when the world got terrifyingly close to blowing itself up.

[00:44] Newt to Peace Our story begins with the brilliant Hungarian physicist Edward Peller, one of the key scientists for the Manhattan Project, the colossal effort that went to the first nuclear bomb.

[00:56] But almost from the beginning, he dreamt of destroying the world much harder. Traditional mutes, like the Hiroshima and Nagasaki ones, released energy by splitting heavy atoms like uranium. But these are rare, expensive, and the resulting bombs are difficult to scale up.

[01:12] So, Teller lobbied for a different approach. Unleash the nuclear fire by smashing together hydrogen atoms. That would allow for bombs thousands of times more powerful. The problem was technically hard, but in the 1950s, Teller solved it.

[01:27] The terrifying new thermonuclear bomb made Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like firecrackers. Nuclear fire strong enough to end human civilization itself. The Soviet Union followed quickly, and a new madness for destruction took over the world.

[01:43] Teller was having the time of his life as he got to chase his nuclear streams like a bomb so powerful that it would wipe out civilization in one single strike, a real thing the U.S. actually started working on. We told this story before if you want to watch it And as the perfectly sane man he was Teller had other great ideas like nuking the moon to show the promise who lost it And if H could destroy the planet maybe they could also reshape it

[02:10] The logic wasn't entirely unhinged. Humans had been using explosives for mining and engineering for centuries. And H-bombs offered the same service with much more enthusiasm at a decent cost.

[02:22] Why not use them to dig dishes and make holes at a planetary scale? The idea of youths for peace was also pretty convenient. With public opinion increasingly opposed to the arms race

[02:34] and ever more terrified by World War III, nuclear engineering was a way to keep on testing nuclear weapons without saying you were testing nuclear weapons. So, in 1957, the US launched Project Coucher,

[02:47] a bold plan to use nuclear explosions for peaceful engineering. And who would be put at the helm? Exactly. Cutting through continents. In 1956, Egypt had just nationalized the Suez Canal, a vital artery for global trade and ore delivery to Europe.

[03:04] So, one of the first ideas of the new build with new stock troops was to blast open a new one through the Israeli desert. On the other side of the world, the Panama Canal had long been in need of an upgrade.

[03:16] Scientists explored extension routes and found they would need to remove 1.2 billion cubic meters of earth, 500 Great Pyramids of Giza. A monumental task that would cost $6 billion if done with shovels,

[03:28] but only $3.1 billion with nukes. Trying to blast open a panatomic canal. But even Teller understood that before nuking through continents, you should start small. So the first miracle of Project PowerShare would be a new harbor in Alaska.

[03:44] In just a few glorious milliseconds, five nukes with a combined punch of 170 Hiroshima bombs would carve out a 300 by 200 meter trench, opening the region to commerce and prosperity.

[03:56] The local communities weren't thrilled with the idea, but Keller insisted that the dangers of nuke engineering had been greatly exaggerated The major concern was radioactive contamination Hmm canals and harbors were great but no one had been glowing with radioactivity for thousands of years

[04:14] Luckily, Teller had a plan, nuking the land from below. In a nutshell, nuclear excavation works like this. You drill a hole a few hundred meters deep and place the bomb at the bottom. When it goes off, the blast hollows out a cavern in the rock and flash melts its walls into magma.

[04:30] The molten rock pools at the bottom, the ceiling collapses, and the collapse ripples upwards until it reaches the floor where it forms a crater. The result is a massive hole on top, with the radioactive debris sealed under hundreds of thousands of tons of rock.

[04:44] With the fairly looking floor lists on paper, the time had come to actually test it. But before the government bombs anything, let's get some propaganda protection. just in case. Our partner, Ground News,

[04:57] is a website and app built to help you think critically about the information you consume, a mission we fully support. They generate news articles from across the globe and in context on political bias, reliability, ownership,

[05:09] and summaries that highlight what each side is leaving out. You can even compare headlines to see how bias shapes the narrative. Take this story about Finland planning to lift its ban on nuclear weapons. Some frame it as a prudent response

[05:22] to the state of the world, while others warn of escalations. Ground News also reveals Blindspot, stories that only one side is covering, showing you what your usual news feed is hiding. As information bubbles are becoming the norm,

[05:36] thinking critically about the news is no longer optional, and Ground News makes it easier to do just that. If you'd like to give them a try, go to ground.news.net or scan the QR code on the screen. Using this link gives you 40% off an unlimited access subscription

[05:51] and directly supports our channel. And now, back to nuking for peace. The fiasco begins. Towshad debuted in 1961 in the desert of New Mexico A nuke with the power of 3 tons of TNT was buried 360 meters deep in the heart of a salt deposit

[06:12] The goal was to explore a new idea to generate electricity. The explosion would melt the deposits into a pond of red-hot liquid salt whose heat could be pumped up to power turbines. A hybrid of fusion and geothermal power brought to you by H-Bombs.

[06:27] Above ground, hundreds of officials, scientists and international guests had gathered to witness the birth of a new era. Everyone held their breath as the countdown came. And then, with a distant sud, the ground shuddered.

[06:42] Deep below, the explosion hollowed a cavern the size of over ten Olympic swimming pools. But Turner's team had missed a tiny detail. The salt contained far more water than expected, which turned into superheated steam that massively amplified the blast.

[06:57] The hull used to lower the bomb had been designed to collapse and seal itself after the explosion, but the unexpectedly monstrous pressure broke through. So, a few minutes after the blast, the plume of radioactive steam erupted from the shaft,

[07:10] damaging cameras and instruments and bathing everyone in a strangely itchy sauna. The US government tried their best to convince everyone that things hadn't been that bad, but for some reason the masses had a problem with clouds and radioactive fallout even from peaceful nukes.

[07:26] But that wouldn't discourage Taylor. So, to show the world how cool H-1s could really be, he scheduled another test, one 30 times more peaceful. In July 1962, while Cuban officials were visiting Moscow to negotiate a missile deal that would almost spark World War III three months later,

[07:44] a fellow nuclear bomb worth seven Hiroshima nukes exploded 200 meters underground in the Nevada desert. This time, the goal was to test nuclear excavation itself and check how big the crater could get.

[07:56] The blast displaced 12 million tons of soil and hollowed out a gargantuan crater 100 meters deep and 400 meters across, the largest artificial crater.