Atomic Aerials

Atomic Aerials A collection of photos and videos things that I find most personally interesting, fascinating, or compelling. Mostly big machines and nuclear history.

Information here is presented to the best of my knowledge, I welcome any feedback or corrections.

Giant derelict structures of industry are part of what made me fall in love with the Seattle aesthetic - always sad to s...
28/05/2026

Giant derelict structures of industry are part of what made me fall in love with the Seattle aesthetic - always sad to see parts of it go.

3 legacy cranes from Terminal 30 headed to scrap. An older crane from Tacoma was barged up to Bellingham for scrapping last year, I think. Wonder where these are headed.

Does anyone know when these were first operational or when they last operated? I'm guessing late 70s / early 80s and they definitely haven't lifted anything in the last 15 years. I dont even think they used them to pull open the big Matson boat that sat at T30 for a few years...

The Tiger I was the best tank of World War 2 and other jokes you can tell yourself... Tiger 131 is a German Tiger I heav...
28/05/2026

The Tiger I was the best tank of World War 2 and other jokes you can tell yourself...

Tiger 131 is a German Tiger I heavy tank captured by the British in Tunisia during World War II, and today it's preserved at The Tank Museum in Bovington, England - it is currently the only operational Tiger I in the world.

On 21 April 1943, British Churchill tanks scored three hits on the Tiger at a hill called Djebel Djaffa. A shot ricocheted into the turret ring, jamming its traverse, wounding the driver and front gunner, and destroying the radio. The German crew abandoned the tank, leaving it largely intact.

Tiger 131 was repaired with parts from other destroyed Tigers and evaluated to judge its performance. It was displayed in Tunis and formally inspected there by King George VI and Winston Churchill. The tank was sent to England in October 1943 where it was displayed as a trophy at various locations to raise wartime morale before it was subjected to extensive testing and evaluation. The tank was transferred to what is today known as The Tank Museum by the British Ministry of Supply in 1951

Between 1990 and 2003, the tank underwent an exhaustive overhaul at the museum, and Tiger 131 became the only working Tiger among the nine survivors of the more than 1,300 built during WWII.

In 2014, Tiger 131 was rented by the production team of the David Ayer film 'Fury.'

27/05/2026

Real Stonehenge vs Maryhill Stonehenge

The newly-rennovated National Chornobyl Museum in Kyiv was destroyed yesterday by a russian ballistic missile, during a ...
24/05/2026

The newly-rennovated National Chornobyl Museum in Kyiv was destroyed yesterday by a russian ballistic missile, during a large-scale attack on the city.

St. Joseph's Church in Kraków's Podgórze district is one of the most striking examples of neo-Gothic architecture in the...
23/05/2026

St. Joseph's Church in Kraków's Podgórze district is one of the most striking examples of neo-Gothic architecture in the city. Built between 1905 and 1909, the red-brick church rises dramatically above the surrounding neighborhood with its soaring twin towers and pointed arches, making it a defining landmark of the Podgórze skyline. The interior is equally impressive, featuring elegant vaulted ceilings, richly decorated altars, and stained glass windows that bathe the nave in colorful light. Podgórze itself carries deep historical significance as the site of the WWII-era Jewish ghetto established by the N**i occupation, making St. Joseph's Church not just an architectural treasure but a quiet witness to one of history's most tragic chapters.

Can we have these here, please? Imagine crossing from Port Angeles to Victoria, BC in 15 minutes! Hovercraft have always...
22/05/2026

Can we have these here, please? Imagine crossing from Port Angeles to Victoria, BC in 15 minutes!

Hovercraft have always fascinated me, all the way back to the first time I sat on a hovering chair bolted to a piece of plywood at a science center, or my older brother ripping over ponds and snow with his remote controlled Tyco Typhoon in 1991. I was blown away when I learned about the massive hovercraft that used to carry 60 cars and up to 400 people across the English Channel from the late 1960s up until 2000.

Today, there are only two regular passenger hovercraft ferry services in the world, this one between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight in Great Britain and one in Kyushu, Japan. HoverTravel operates two Griffon Hoverwork 12000TD craft, which can carry up to 80 passengers at 50mph, crossing beach to beach in about 10 minutes!

These things are about as loud as a medivac helicopter, going from fully powered down to departure in about a minute. Riding one truly feels like flying because, well it is! It feels exactly like the first/last 50 feet of being in the air in an airplane. On my crossing I barely had time to get my camera out before the skirt inflated and we were turning onto the sea. The craft crabbed sideways to avoid a much larger passenger ferry and then floated smoothly over the giant wake of a container ship, crossing without any bumps.

It was a wild, incredible experience. I genuinely wish I had gotten to ride the enormous SR.N4's, or that we at least had a regular hovercraft service stateside!

80 years ago today, Canadian-born physicist Louis Slotin, 35, received a lethal dose of radiation at Los Alamos Laborato...
21/05/2026

80 years ago today, Canadian-born physicist Louis Slotin, 35, received a lethal dose of radiation at Los Alamos Laboratory while performing a very dangerous criticality experiment known as “tickling the dragon’s tail” with a plutonium bomb core. He died from acute radiation syndrome nine days later.

The Demon Core - as it later became known - was a sphere of plutonium alloy that was involved in two fatal radiation accidents when scientists tested it as a fissile core of an early atomic bomb. It weighed 14 lb and was 3.5 in in diameter; the core was prepared for shipment to the Pacific Theater as part of the third nuclear weapon to be dropped on Japan, but when Japan surrendered, the core was retained for testing and potential later use in the case of another conflict.

Nine months to the day before Louis Slotin’s fatal criticality accident, only 12 days after the “Fat Man” plutonium bomb exploded above Nagasaki, another Los Alamos physicist conducted a similarly dangerous criticality experiment using the same plutonium core and suffered the same agonizing fate.

The demon core was intended for use in the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests, but after the second criticality accident, time was needed for its radioactivity to decrease and for it to be re-evaluated for the effects of the fission products it held, some of which were very neutron poisonous to the desired level of fission. The next two cores were shipped for use in Able and Baker, and the demon core was scheduled to be shipped later for the third test of the series, provisionally named Charlie, but that test was canceled because of the unexpected level of radioactivity resulting from the underwater Baker test and the inability to decontaminate the target warships. The core was melted down during the summer of 1946, and the material was recycled for use in other cores.

This was quite the detour, but if you know my family then you'll understand my appreciation for farmland. There were tim...
20/05/2026

This was quite the detour, but if you know my family then you'll understand my appreciation for farmland. There were times I wasn't fully certain if I was on a road or a bike path; if I ever die overseas there is a high priority it was death-by-Scania, and the rental car with lane assist acting as accomplice ☠️

Snaking through banded hills of green and gold is the village of Sułoszowa. The first historical mention of Sułoszową dates to 1315. In the 14th century, King Casimir III the Great built a castle called Pieskowa Skała on the edge of the village, along with fortifications to protect a trade route from Kraków to Silesia. Apparently towns like these are called "linear settlements."

Straight out of SimCity, one of the coolest buildings I've ever seen. The Waste Thermal Treatment Plant ZTPO is the larg...
19/05/2026

Straight out of SimCity, one of the coolest buildings I've ever seen. The Waste Thermal Treatment Plant ZTPO is the largest waste-to-energy in Poland. It handles 220,000 tons of waste annually, producing 65,000MWh of electricity and 280,000MWh of district heating in Krakow. The ash is used for road making and raw material manufacture.

During the Cold War, the United States deployed the LGM-118 Peacekeeper ICBM as one of its most formidable nuclear deter...
19/05/2026

During the Cold War, the United States deployed the LGM-118 Peacekeeper ICBM as one of its most formidable nuclear deterrents. The nerve centers behind these missiles were hardened underground command posts called Missile Alert Facilities (MAFs), located across the missile fields of Wyoming. Buried 50-70 feet beneath the prairie, these Launch Control Centers were designed to survive a nuclear first strike and house the missileer crews who stood watch around the clock.

Life inside a MAF was unqiue. Two-person crews would descend into a shock-absorber-suspended capsule for 24-hour alert tours, operating under the strict "two-man rule" both crew members had to turn their keys simultaneously to initiate a launch. This redundancy was a cornerstone of nuclear safety, ensuring no single person could ever act alone with the fate of millions at stake.

The Peacekeeper carried up to 10 independently targetable warheads with a range exceeding 8,000 miles, and each MAF controlled a flight of 10 hardened missile silos spread across a several miles. Crews trained extensively in launch procedures while carrying the profound moral weight of their mission; technical precision matched with an awareness of the devastation their actions could unleash.

Retired in 2005 following post-Cold War arms reductions, only one Peacekeeper MAF has since been preserved for the public - Quebec 01, about 30 minutes north Cheyenne. All other MAFs have been decommissioned, but not yet been demolished. Looking like haunted ranch homes, they stand today as silent reminders of the crews who served on alert, and to the grim logic of nuclear deterrence: a peace maintained by the ever-present threat of overwhelming force.

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