How Kodak Exposed Nuclear Testing

Veritasium3 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2021–2025

YouTube

explainer · general · evergreen · 2021–2025 on HN

Veritasium tells how Kodak film was fogged by radioactive fallout from the first atomic tests, letting the company detect nuclear testing before anyone announced it. The video also covers the deal to keep it quiet and how fallout contaminated packaging.

HN commenters bring it up as a good related watch in any thread about fallout, nuclear tests or detecting hidden events through indirect evidence.

4 comments from Hacker News

@ourmandave2025-11 · in “How the Atomic Tests Looked Like from Los Angeles”

At least LA wasn't down wind. Veritasium did an eye opening vid on how fallout blew across the country and was ruining Kodak's film on the East Coast. And they stayed quiet it about it. How Kodak Exposed Nuclear Testing ▶ this video

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@29athrowaway2022-01 · in “Nuclear fallout is showing up in U.S. honey, decades after bomb tests”

Veritasium has a cool video about a related topic titled "How Kodak exposed the atomic bomb". ▶ this video

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@jcims2021-09 · in “Why the U.S. once set off a nuclear bomb in space”

Pretty good video from Veritasium o related to this, about how Kodak detected the presence of nuclear weapons tests. ▶ this video

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@sss1112021-07 · in “Bomb Pulse”

It's interesting how powerful these bombs can be. Reminds me of when Kodak was able to detect atomic bomb testing in the US because of fogging on their X-ray films. link ▶ this video

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