WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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To most people,
mushroom clouds mean nuclear explosions:

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the threat of radioactive fallout,

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of mutually assured destruction
and of the end of the world.

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But they don't have to be:

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any large enough explosion
will cause a mushroom cloud.

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And it's happened in Britain: right here.

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This crater was once RAF Fauld,
an old mining operation

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converted to an underground bomb storage depot
for the Royal Air Force.

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Underground storage was meant to be safer:

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one of the problems with munitions dumps is
that the enemy

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just needs to hit them with one bomb and the
whole lot goes up.

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This site seemed perfect:
but there was a problem.

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Because this was built in the 1930s
for small bombs,

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the sort that one person can carry,

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the sort that you can move on a conveyor belt,

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the sort that the Army can fire from
a field gun across the trenches.

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That's why these old quarries with all their
tunnels and caverns were perfect.

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But then the Second World War moved on,

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and bombing became a job for the Air Force,

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and the bombs got bigger and bigger and bigger,
fast: half a ton, one ton, two tons.

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And the war effort needed many, many
more bombs than had been predicted.

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Rapid changes in supply and demand meant that
the underground depots were filled

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far beyond anything like their original capacity.

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By the end of 1944, the men here at RAF Fauld
were storing stacks of high incendiary bombs

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outside the mine
until they could find space inside.

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There was a war on.

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They had to make it work.

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Monday, 27th November, 1944.

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The commanding officer was on leave.

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The officer responsible for the underground
stores was also on leave --

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and it was his deputy's day off too.

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Everyone who was down in the depot and in
charge was inexperienced and massively overworked.

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According to the official inquiry,

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someone tried to remove a detonator from a
live bomb with a brass chisel.

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And brass chisels cause sparks.

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In Morocco, 1500 miles away, seismographs
recorded what felt like a distant earthquake.

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A hundred miles away, people heard a rumble
carried on the wind.

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Four miles away,
a shock wave blasted out windows.

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And here: a mushroom cloud rose into the sky.

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4,000 tonnes of bombs had gone up
in one terrible chain reaction,

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the largest explosion ever
in the British Isles.

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This crater was once a hill,
with a farmhouse on top of it:

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no trace of that farmhouse, or the people
who lived there, was ever found.

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The bombs that hadn't immediately exploded
were thrown into the air

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and rained down for miles around, along with
millions of tons of debris.

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A nearby dam collapsed, sending floodwaters
down into factories and houses in a nearby valley.

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The exact death toll will never be known;
at least 60, perhaps 90.

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It took months before all the bodies were
recovered, and some were never found.

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And in the Air Force reports, held classified
for years and years after the explosion,

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along with the names of the dead
and page after page

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itemising every bit of the destruction,
there is this phrase:

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"columns of black smoke and debris rose in
gigantic mushroom form".

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When you're rushed, when you're inexperienced,
anyone can get complacent,

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anyone can cut corners,
anyone can make a mistake.

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Even working with high explosives.

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Now slowly, over years, the crater was cleared
and reclaimed; decades later,

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what remains is an odd scar on the landscape.

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About half the bomb store actually managed
to survive the explosion;

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and while the bombs were removed, there are still
tunnels and storage rooms hidden under the crater.

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But after careless explorers
started damaging the site,

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all the known entrances were filled in.

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And given the warnings about unexploded bombs
still in the crater,

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I'm not about to climb this fence
and go any further.

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There is one little interesting note, though,

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right at the end of the story:

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through the late 40s and the 50s,

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the American military kept asking for records
and details of the explosion.

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How big was it, exactly?

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What was the damage to the nearby land,
and was it by earthquake or by blast wave?

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What happens if you, essentially,

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detonate something with the yield of a tactical
nuclear bomb underground?

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Britain never answered.

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And America went on 
to make its own mushroom clouds.

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