Nuclear Engineer Reacts to Bill Wurtz 'history of japan'

[bipolitthefighter]

Fun fact
When Poland declared war on Japan one Japanese official said "we do not accept"

[pokeperson]

One of my favorite parts of the original History of Japan video is how the video’s speed, commentary, and humor basically come to a halt for a moment of silence in respect towards the lives lost from the two dropped atom bombs.

[martind]

Technically, Japan denied Poland war request during ww2. If I remember correctly both Japan and Poland share the hatred and phobia of Soviet union and their inteligence agencies worked were tightly together. So when Poland was "forced" to declare war on Japan as Poland was technically Allied nation while Japan was an Axis nation. Japanese respectfully denied the war declaration.

[chriswhinery]

Fun fact: when the US was still deciding whether to use the nuclear weapons on Japan or to go ahead with a land invasion instead, they commissioned a bunch of purple heart medals (to any non Americans, these are the medals handed out to soldiers who were wounded in combat) based on the number of casualties they expected to incur during the land invasion. The number of casualties they expected was so high that to this day the purple hearts they give out to wounded soldiers are still from that batch they ordered for the Japanese land invasion, they haven't given them all out yet.

Another fun fact: When they were deciding which cities would be the targets of the nuclear bombs, Kyoto was high up on the list, but the Secretary Of War at the time, Henry Stimson, had had his honeymoon in Kyoto and he lobbied hard to get it removed from the list due to that city's historical and cultural significance. He went directly to President Truman and persuaded him to order the military generals to take Kyoto off the list of targets.

[Anonyomus_commenter]

11:36
Funnily enough Japan actually declined a declaration of war from the polish government in exile. Previously Poland and Japan had good relations because of the soviets (they were both a little scared of Russia) and they felt like the Poles were being pressured by the UK to declare war and so just didn’t accept it.

[HayTatsuko]

I very much enjoyed your reactions to both this and to the World video. Fact is, Hiroshima survived and thrived and now has more than 1 million residents; Nagasaki has over 400, 000. The US used airbursts on both cities, and while they killed many people in the short term, they didn't leave a lot of fallout in either city that would have spoiled them for future habitability. It's a far cry from what happened in Pripyat, Ukraine, after all the radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl reactor fire forced many of the atomgrad's 50, 000 residents to relocate to Slavutych, a new city purpose-built to receive them. It will be decades more before it's truly safe to live in Pripyat, and even 50 km away in Slavutych, the soil was so contaminated by the Chernobyl fallout that for some years, residents were not allowed to harvest food from the land.

[NomadBulldog]

5:10 There wasn’t as much of a tech gap between Japan and Europe other than in gunnery and sailing, and Japan quickly closed that gap.

However in the 1850s, when the Americans followed by everyone else showed up, that was a massive tech gap of pre vs post-industrial revolution societies colliding.

[joeylockie]

It's funny in America almost no one knows who Matthew C. Perry is but cause he opened up Japan to the rest of the world really he's super famous in there every one there knows about him. there are monuments that even survived ww2 to him

[Sanischan]

I cannot recommend Shaun's video enough, as he cites statements and records from not just American officials but Japanese as well- and boy is it so much more of a shit-show than I ever could have imagined.

[minnabaru]

Huh, what a coincidence, I finished watching Bill Wurtz "history of the entire world, i guess" a couple hours ago! Good video, my friend

[beterbomen]

Bill Wurtz is very good at making clear how silly war actually is.

[lassesipila]

War drives progress? Yes. But more generally, challenging our capabilities in the most demanding ways we can imagine drives progress. Trying to kill each other directly is one such way, after all, we can't find more dangerous opponents to challenge ourselves with. Exploring hostile environments, such as outer space or the deep sea are some other ways we can present this level of challenge to ourselves and frankly I favour those hugely over killing each other directly.

[allx]

I really miss this bare bones recording format: It's wholesome, genuine, not bogged down with jump cuts, edits or tech, and it's succinct in its purpose. Great stuff sir. I'd be very interested to know your thoughts on Kyle Hill's research into the proliferation of nuclear energy and why we haven't made greater strides toward it being the replacement for fossil fuels. He has an entire series dedicated to the nuclear age from its beginnings to the present and I'd love to hear you speak on it as well.

[StrunDoNhor]

Just curious: would you be interested in doing a long-form reaction? Like, a full on, "grab a drink & some popcorn, because this is going to be a long one" kind of video?
It's a three-part documentary series about supercolliders. It covers some seriously interesting events, and I think it would be really cool to get your thoughts on it, as an engineer (granted, as a nuclear engineer and not a particle physics engineer).

[imaperson]

14:16 "It's just, humanity, we gotta laugh at ourselves sometimes"

I 100% agree with this

[aneasteregg]

It's funny how differently the atomic bombings are treated between this video and History of the World.

[elitettelbach]

After seeing you react to the history of the entire world video I was hoping you’d also do the Japan one! Great insights and fun reaction!

[jordeahgrosko]

Man i watched both the videos in a row crazy i just found your channel and you just uploaded this. I agree that nuclear reactors could help the would i appreciate you educating people on them due to the "scary" stigma against them ya know

[xitheris]

That idea about nuclear energy driving the Industrial Revolution instead of Fossil Fuels is called Atomic Steampunk. Typically, it's not nuclear driving electricity, but mechanical power driven by smaller (fictitiously much less radioactive) nuclear reactors. It's a niche thing, but it does exist.

[chi]

was hoping you'd do this one too :)