in human history there is extensive evidence of bread making in ancient egypt okay okay i'll bring it forward a bit more making use of machines to help in the processing of grain goes back surprisingly far to water powered grain meals of asia miner before 71 bc over the coming centuries thousands of grain meals would pop up along rivers across the world like with most tool driven industries the grain processing world would make giant leaps forward in grain production during the industrial revolution the industrial revolution changed human history forever where workers were brought out from the countryside into the factories a side effect of this was a population boom which necessitated ever more food production the improved efficiency in farming milling and bread production because the industrial revolution meant that ever more storage was needed to feed the ever growing population as such grain storage solutions became a very important cog in the machine of food production with the advent of the steam engine greater power was available to enable transport of grain via conveyor belts the first steam powered grain elevator is credited to buffalo new york in 1843 early elevators were housed in wooden structures and produced an insane amount of dust and as such something that went hand in hand with these buildings was explosions and fires let's talk about why grain dust is such a big issue with fires you see grain when processed and transported creates fine dust particles which hang around in the air fine dust has a greater surface area compared to their mass and due to solids only being able to burn on their surface i.e the area that has access to oxygen dust particles can burn much quicker than many other solids the small size of each particle means little energy is also needed to catch fire if in high enough concentrations just a small spark can cause combustion and grain elevators with their power sources of steam diesel petrol or electric being a potential ignition source poorly maintained bearings or a small static shock being all that's needed to start an explosion as technology improved bigger and bigger grain elevators would be built eventually culminating in the debruce grain elevator with each increase in size so did the scale of its disasters for example the washburn mill explosion of 1878 the west to go explosion in 1977 and in the 1990s debruce would be no different but first let's look at the origin of the debruce elevator in the early 1950s the garvey grain company is overseeing a new construction the contractor charmers and burton of hutchkinson kansas are building a new grain storage complex completing it in 1953 the massive building consists of a tall square headhouse centered in line between two identical arrays of grain silos 30 feet in diameter and 120 feet high arranged free abreast but soon this is not enough for the garvey grain co and the facility is again placed under construction being extended symmetrically on each end an additional 33 silos are added leading to a total of 310 every inch of usable area is utilized not just the circular silos but even the star like shapes between after the extension the complex is a whopping 2,716 feet long and 92 feet wide the headhouse was the centerpiece to the whole complex and in all intents and purposes is the most important part of the facility's ability to sort and store grain let's look at the grains journey right well delivery to the site can come in two ways by rail or road let's just say rail car for now it is emptied into a dumper pit below the headhouse here there is a small by comparison conveyor belt this belt takes the grain to the bottom of the elevator debruce has four of these and they consist of a belt with buckets attached for scooping up the grain the elevator takes the grain all the way up to the top of the headhouse from there it is sent down two shoots into bins where it is weighed then the grain is dropped either onto a looped conveyor belt or back down to a rail car now the loop belts are pretty impressive there are four and each is a continuous 3000 foot long conveyor these run along the top of the silos from the gallery floor level to the headhouse all the way along the top of the silos just to clarify there are two in each direction to the south and north wings of the complex grain runs along the top of the silos on the conveyor belts away from the headhouse along the gallery where a device called a tripper diverts the grain into the selected silo the conveyor belt continues along the entire length of the silo array and down the end of their respective end this belt now goes underground underneath the silos in two tunnels per array one for each belt here is where grain can be emptied from a silo where the conveyor belt transports it back to the headhouse for the process to essentially repeat the tunnels underneath the silos have connecting passageways called crossovers these allowed staff to access either tunnel when undertaking work but there is one big issue was such an impressive example of storage and transportation and it has plagued the industry for all of its history that is of dust you see having such massive belts there are multiple take-up pulleys to facilitate the constant flexing expansion and contraction of the belts this produced vast amounts of grain dust in both the galleries and the tunnels but with a problem there was an apparent solution that was in the form of pneumatic dust control and filtration systems garvey grain company had installed pneumatic dust control systems throughout the elevator complex the complex will be taken over by de bruce grain a company that was formed in 1978 the site had several tragedies over its operation with two deaths from being trapped in confined spaces in 1978 and 83 respectively upon taking over the company reportedly spent around $100,000 on updating the dust collection system but this would prove to be not enough over the complex's operation several fires had occurred but luckily the actions of staff had stopped any further spread a fire in early June 1998 spread in the south array but was subsequently extinguished minutes from the accident report pegged the fire to a faulty bearing but history would repeat itself one week later on the 8th of June 1998 the 20.7 million bushel storage capacity de bruce grain elevator was very much below full when it was storing roughly 7 million bushels but this by no means meant it was safer at roughly 918 a fire broke out on the east tunnel of the south array quickly the flames ignited the dust that coated the tunnel floor the heat and pressure caused a dust explosion to occur the blast wave was directed down the tunnel causing further dust to ignite this meant heat was spread to the conveyor belt in the north tunnel through the crossover tunnels the burning grain and dust swept along both tunnels towards the headhouse as the heat and shock waves continued along the structure several silo roofs were blown off the dusty basement of the headhouse blew out spreading hot grain and flames up the four elevators blowing out the front and back of the building a fireball was created in the explosion and traveled along the south and north galley away from the headhouse the blast then traveled back down the conveyor belt tunnels but this time on the north array continuing to blow out concrete chunks from the structure it was estimated that at least 10 blasts occurred resulting in almost every section of the building seeing some form of damage although the explosions happened in such a short period of time the heat generated would result in burning grain for weeks by 945 a request for all on-duty rescue team members was sent out but several staff on duty at the time were missing the surviving grain had spilled and filled the exposed tunnels leaving rescue and impossible and complex task two workers were killed instantly in the blast 11 were injured with some even stranded on various sections of the building's rooftop a helicopter and crane was used to rescue these workers on the next day some 90 rescue workers from wichita, Nebraska and Oklahoma were digging with shovels and bulldozers whilst trying to rescue the missing workers by 11th the death toll would be up to five as bodies were recovered amongst the wreckage rescue workers continued to search the south array for the final person but sadly their body would be discovered in the east tunnel but with the grain elevator in ruins and seven now dead the key question had to be answered what was the cause of the debruce elevator explosion investigators from osha arrived on the site on the 22nd of june and started immediately gathering eyewitness and physical evidence several witness accounts pointed towards the south array being the beginning point of the disaster in the recovery works a lot of tangible evidence was lost as parts of the structure were removed to gain access to victims bodies the ignition source was located in an overheated bearing on the south array east tunnel conveyor belt the same area were just a week before there had been a fire disaster could have been averted if the bearings had been given simple grease applications it was also found that the dust collection system had been out of use for nearly a year and no policy of manual dust clearing had been implemented it was discovered that in some places even after the fire and explosions that dust was still at a depth of seven inches thus the stage was set for the 8th of june even though the blatant warning signs were there the debruce disaster is a classic case of poor maintenance and poor management where the workers become the victims of cost cutting osha cited debruce grain in december 1998 for violations of grain handling standards the company paid a fine of $650,000 in the early 2000s but this wouldn't be the end of deaths linked to the grain industry as a whole in the us or even the elevator in wichita two more would die in the rebuilt grain facility after debruce's merger with gavel on grain in 2018 after being buried in grain on site now where would you rate this disaster i'm going to put into four on my disaster scale as well as a four on my legacy scale this is a plain difficult production all videos are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me john in a currently sunny southeastern corner of london uk help channel grow by liking commenting of subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching this video is the third in a series on the chenobal disaster the first video started with the precursor event the leningrad 1975 meltdown the second video titled chenobal part one covers the fateful failure of the rbmk at chenobal number four and finally this video which will look at the aftermath and clean up from one of the world's worst pollution events i'd recommend watching the previous two videos if you haven't done so already but now let's begin the final episode of my chenobal series it is february 2022 and russian soldiers have crossed the belarusian- ukrainian border and have been ordered to occupy the chenobal exclusion zone the site offers political capital in the russian invasion it has the potential to be a future bargaining chip for any negotiations but maybe more importantly it represents a logistic benefit in that it is in a direct line between belarus and kiv the ukrainian guards are arrested and bundled into a basement the technical staff however are allowed to continue their work keeping the site relatively safe all around the site of the 1986 chenobal disaster russian soldiers dig in they excavate trenches and make dugouts either from ignorance blindly following orders or the fear of catching a ukrainian bullet have led these men to be digging up some of the world's most contaminated soil reportedly they even dig up parts of the infamous red forest although an estimated 1500 soldiers have been told to hold the area a reported 10 000 vehicles have driven through the exclusion zone potentially spreading contaminated soil for hundreds of miles towards the end of march and with hopes of a lightning invasion of ukraine fading away the soldiers are ordered to withdraw this is the most recent chapter in the chenobal story but it only represents a small part of the legacy that continues to cast a shadow over the region my name is john and today we're looking at the cleanup and containment of the chenobal nuclear reactor disaster it is april 1986 and soviet authorities are desperately trying to take stock of the unfolding nightmare at chenobal nuclear power station in the immediate days and weeks after reactor four's failure focus was firmly put on trying to contain the spread of radiation this involved the use of personnel to remove debris from the turbine hall roof in preparation for the construction of the sarcophagus as well as miners working below the reactor hall to install a shield to prevent the core from melting through to the water table these people were known as the liquidators but as i alluded to in my previous video this was just the tip of the human iceberg you see the term liquidator is actually a bit of a catchall that covers the first response teams all the way to the police on the streets directing personnel and vehicles and the doses they received reflected the work they undertook with an official death toll of 28 from radiation sickness in 1986 some 600 000 would be involved in the wider region cleanup activities between 1986 and the present day but in the immediate aftermath of the core uncovering and 10-day fire a massive region wide project was beginning to form in evacuation and decontamination of a 30 kilometer radius exclusion zone the soviet authorities were eager to begin cleaning activities as quickly as possible in a case of trying to snatch some kind of victory from the jaws of defeat if the affected regions could be repopulated quickly then maybe just maybe it would soften the international embarrassment and reclaim some glory for the socialist utopia the ussr claimed to be however this ambition to clean up as quickly as possible came at a cost much like the men sent to top the roofs of the reactor buildings to collect contaminated rubble the exclusion zone will require people and lots of them to work for hours days weeks and months on end amongst the fallout needless to say the health of many would become a long-lasting legacy the exclusion zone was initially an arbitrary 30 kilometer radius around reactor four and was split up into three areas and as such different protective clothing and precautions were required the first of which was a 10 kilometer radius around the nuclear plant and was designated the black zone this had radiation levels of over 200 micro seabets an hour if you were evacuated from here you'll never be allowed to return home the next area was called the red zone and had radiation levels of between 50 and 200 micro seabets an hour and here evacuees might be able to return once radiation levels normalize the final area was the blue zone with levels between 50 and 30 micro seabets an hour here children and pregnant women were evacuated throughout 1986 the region was home to approximately 120 000 people spread out amongst Pripyat the city built for the workers at the plant Chernobyl and just under 200 smaller settlements a total of 92 000 would be evacuated throughout the summer but the number would rise in the wider region with children being evacuated as far away as Kiev as a side note the exclusion zone was home to a pretty horrific local landmark known as the partisan tree and was essentially used by the Nazis as their very own Ukrainian Tibern tree soviet soldiers and partisans were hung from the tree during the second world war by the invading Germans it is an extraordinary looking tree i mean just look at this picture it is the stuff of nightmares and actually survived 1986 by quite a few years all the way into the 1990s surprising as it was only 1600 meters from reactor four its striking trident shape became somewhat of a local icon but i'd aggress as time went on the boundaries of the zones began to follow the areas more contaminated than arbitrary lines on the map you see the wind in the following days and weeks after the disaster dictated the hot spots of contamination although the plant was in Ukraine some of the most affected areas were in Belarus as time went on the exclusion zone would expand encompassing an area of 2600 kilometers squared but contamination wasn't limited to just the exclusion zone officially to enter the exclusion zone you would need to pass multiple checkpoints and sanitation stations the closer you got to the black zone the more protective equipment was required from a simple mask at the end of the zone to full hazmat towards the epicenter but as the full scope of the cleanup work became ever more apparent for the liquidators some of these rules were relaxed the zone by the summer increasingly looked like a military camp with cleanup teams billeted intense some higher-ranking officials however had taken up residence in the abandoned city of Chernobyl where the nuclear power plant got its name from as april gave way to may and some of the areas have been evacuated the mass cleanup began the task of cleaning up the area would officially and I say in quotation marks start off by a team of dosimetrists driving through the area in a specially shielded vehicle they would work out the safest way to enter and exit an area as well as get readings of the radiation any workers would be exposed to this would determine how long a worker could operate in an area a limit of 25 runkins was set once this was reached the worker should be rotated to a different role away from any contaminated area although in reality this limit was exceeded where the ready-supply of willing volunteers gradually dwindles away once given the okay to enter liquidators would have a free stage process of cleaning up the first was to remove the top layer of soil the official depth was 30 centimeters but reports seem to suggest that as little as 10 centimeters was taken in some places and as much as 50 centimeters in others ranging from hand tools up to diggers the liquidators removed the soil and placed it into metal containers that were sent to a radioactive waste dump the soil was contaminated with but not limited to strontium 90 cesium 137 and plutonium the next stage was to soak everything houses roads heavy equipment and vehicles in a special solution the water then was as best as possible collected and again placed in metal containers to be sent to a waste facility the final stage was to spray the ground with another solution which created a film to encapsulate radioactive dust to then be scooped up and again sent to a waste facility but that is really just the tip of the iceberg in many areas within the exclusion zone houses had to have their roofs removed and replaced roads had to be machine washed or even re ass faulted vences replaced water pipes removed and replaced and new wells dug up to 60 000 buildings were cleaned including 500 population centers of varying sizes conditions for the workers were not great which led to many volunteers refusing to work every person was meant to be issued with a personal dosimeter but unsurprisingly due to the vast scale of the cleanup project this didn't happen many continue to be housed or better described not housed in tents even after proper accommodation was apparently allocated in november 1986 control of the cleanup and remediation project was taken over by a new production association cobinat the organization was based in chenople city and was tasked with operating and decommissioning the npp continuation of decontamination efforts run the supply lines into the zone and oversee the construction of a new city outside the zone for displaced persons the city would be called slavutage but we will come back to this a bit later one of the most polluted areas known as the red forest 10 square kilometers of woodland had its pine trees bulldozed and buried the area was then covered in sand and replanted with new pine saplings the area got its name from the color the trees went after becoming contaminated and subsequently dying but where did the liquidators come from well really it was a mixture initial attendants were ordered to be there for example the firefighters minors transport workers police and military personnel reservists were also employed and any who refused was socially and politically punished but a large proportion were volunteers some were drawn by the money on offer others a sense of public duty and many were students training to become firefighters police or ambulance workers there were many cases of liquidators keeping on working past their 25 runtkins due to the lack of replacement and with others continuing due to bravado the overexposed liquidators have cast a long shadow over the region and has become a medical and social issue even till today it is estimated that 600,000 people deemed liquidators took part in the cleanup needless to say this has proven a terrible headache for healthcare infrastructure in the region liquidators would work on different parts of the exclusion zone for many decades to come strangely although abandoned pripyat swimming pool was kept in use until 1998 for exercise for inner zone workers depending on who's asked the time required for the exclusion zone or locally known as a zone of alienation to become habitable again ranges from between 320 and 10,000 years the former figure was from the ukrainian government and the latter from green peace wildlife within the exclusion zone flourished with nature taking back the previously human occupied areas with no pesky people around to encroach upon their habitat animals populations have soared with even bear sightings animals that were pretty rare pre 1986 studies on birds from the more contaminated areas have shown to have smaller brains than that of species from healthier areas mutation deformations have been observed and population densities are noted to be lower in high contaminated areas throughout the cleanup of the different zones and their eventual return to nature the Chernobyl nuclear power plant loomed in the distance including is often forgotten still running reactors but what of the other reactors the self-deconstruction of unit four didn't negate the need to safely operate the other three operational reactors it didn't even immediately put an end to units five and six which were planned and under construction based with the prospects of energy shortages reactors one two and three were allowed to continue operation by the local authorities the USSR had no choice anyway as its economy wasn't in the best shape and with nuclear power any option would cost a lot of money if they shut down and decommissioned the reactors they would incur the cost of dismantling and dealing with the waste something that has recently started at the Dungeons nuclear power plant in Kent needless to say they needed more nuclear waste like a hole in the head also once gone where are you going to get a power source to pick up the deficit the closure of Chernobyl would create you'd have to build multiple more conventional power plants all the which costs money this left at least for the short term the less costly option of keeping the remaining reactors online because at Chernobyl the reactors were of two designs being that one and two were of first generation and three and four of second generation rbmk the units were paired up this meant to safely operate unit three the connecting areas with four had to be filled in with concrete but the early 90s would see another accident at Chernobyl just a couple of months after ukrainian independence was declared unit two experienced a fire in its turbine hall on the 11th of october 1991 the event wrote off unit two resulting in it requiring decommissioning the fire showed the ongoing risk of operating the plant the first generation rbmk design was showing its age and after the fire was most certainly proving to be a liability because of this a deal was struck between several international agencies including the iaea requiring Chernobyl npp to be shut down and decommissioned this started in 1996 with unit one going offline followed by unit three four years later on the 15th of december 2000 the president of ukraine lenid kuchma turned off reactor number three in an official ceremony although now officially shut down there was an even bigger issue to deal with all of that used fuel the origin site was not sufficient for all the additional waste meaning a new site was required in 1999 a contract to construct a dry waste management area designated isf-2 was signed 12 years later construction began being completed in 2017 isf-2 became the world's largest nuclear fuel storage facility and is estimated to be able to hold more than 21,000 fuel assemblies for at least a hundred years i mentioned in my Chernobyl part one video the construction of the sarcophagus but this wasn't the magic bullet of containment i mean it wasn't ever intended to be permanent because of the speed in which it was built and the amount of radiation it would be subjected to that would eventually cause damage to the structure such intensity was the radiation during the sarcophagus's construction that crane operator cabs had to be lined with thick lead shielding and even working times were closely monitored the sarcophagus made use of some of the walls of the reactor building to support the main roof beam this helped with the speed of installation and although reinforced in places serious damage had been received during the accident multiple boreholes were drilled into the roof to facilitate exhausting and filtering of radioactive gases when it was completed in november 1986 the sarcophagus held in 200 tons of reactive lava like corium 30 tons of highly contaminated dust and 16 tons of uranium and plutonium by 1988 assessment of the structure showed its life expectancy to be a maximum of 30 years this was probably ambitious and as such the international community started to show signs of wanting to help soon enough a more refined form of confinement was beginning to be conceived the sarcophagus was the best in a bad situation and a new safe confinement was intended to go over the sarcophagus and the reactor building after being successfully installed the original confinement structure will then be demolished it is truly an impressive idea requiring the newly independent Ukrainian government to hold an international competition for proposals to replace the sarcophagus in 1992 but it would take over a decade of planning and design competitions but in 2004 a tender was announced generating two bids sadly this wouldn't lead to much eventually a consortium of french companies would be awarded the contract in september 2007 21 years after unit four turned its fuel into molten lava construction costs were estimated at $1.4 billion with a project timeline of five years spoiler alert they may have had to have doubled that but let's look at the design of the new confinement structure the 100-year life expectancy structure consists of 13 arches assembled 12.5 meters apart with a height of 110 meters between the arches a tubular steel lattice was built which was then clad with three layers totaling a thickness of 10 meters polycarbonate panels cover each arch to prevent the accumulation of radioactive particles and warm areas circulated to reduce the risk of corrosion the structures width is 165 meters and is long enough to cover the entirety of unit four and its sarcophagus the height is oversized to allow machinery to be attached to the arches to allow for dismantling of the original structure even more fascinating is that it was built not over the reactor but to its side meaning that upon completion of construction it was designed to slide over unit four it was built on retaining walls independent from the damaged reactor building allowing for a full demolition of the old structure construction began in 2010 and two years later the first steel sections were beginning to be erected in April 2014 the first steel section was moved into a parking position to allow further arch construction and two years later in April 2016 the final arch was completed just a few months after that the vast structure was getting ready to be moved into its final resting place after 15 days of movement on the 29th of November 2016 the new containment structure was in position but yet again another two years would be needed to finish off the project officially when it ended in July 2019 with the sarcophagus being sealed under the monumental steel structure at the time of its movement it was the largest movable man-made structure in the world and the project's final price tag was over 2.1 billion euro although delayed it is a success but this only marks the start of the reactor's dismantling project dust within the shelter is constantly monitored with hundreds of sensors all throughout the structure the radiation exposure of staff is recorded and tallied up allowing for a maximum yearly dose of 20 millisieverts or apparently 12 minutes of standing on the sarcophagus roof so far the whole disaster has cost 68 billion dollars and has affected millions of lives and it looks like it will continue to do so less than 100 deaths are officially linked to the disaster but the long-term effects have caused increased numbers in thyroid cancers birth defects and infant mortality in 2019 a gradual but worrying rise in neutron rates started to be recorded these were thought to be coming from the depths of the damage fuel in the reactor hall it is thought strangely that the drying of water in the reactor hall basement instead of stopping a chain reaction by removing a moderator was actually doing the opposite although to much relief the steady increase of neutrons started to peter out in 2021 unit falls ability to surprise the international community is clearly still a looming specter reminding us we still aren't finished COVID of course affected work on sites slowing down remediation works but just as we thought things couldn't get any worse the risks of one of the world's most contaminated sites came back into the news headlines and this brings us back to the Russian soldiers in the exclusion zone junior initial occupation of the Ukrainian Russian war power was cut to the power station for three days requiring technicians to beg borrow and steal fuel to power generators but with Russia changing its target from Kiev to the Donbas soldiers left the exclusion zone their occupation has made the site far more dangerous as in their wake land mines and contaminated equipment has been left behind but although the occupation of the region represents a political and environmental disaster amazingly scenes of defiance was shown in the city of slavutich the home of many evacuees from Pripyat Russian troops entered the city and detained the mayor Yuri Formitiev outraged by this locals took to the streets to protest the occupation even flashbangs and warning shots from the Russian forces failed to disperse the crowd seeing such resistance to occupation the soldiers agreed to leave and release the mayor after the Russian withdrawal from the exclusion zone Ukrainian soldiers and national guards went in to examine the abandoned dugouts and trenches little precautions seem to have been taken by the soldiers and it is likely this will come back to haunt them in later life some of the radiation monitors found dates back to the 1950s and were far from capable of providing any benefit contamination is likely to be spread to Belarus throughout Ukraine and even back to Russia Chernobyl would likely be in news cycles for decades to come as political scientific and economic uncertainty can all affect the management and clean up operations right where it goes without saying with such a massive disaster as Chernobyl this video is just the tip of the molten uranium iceberg and I strongly recommend having a look at the references in the video description for further reading this should be my last video on Chernobyl but will probably change when we find out the true scale of the Russian army's contamination spread the human face it makes us who we are it is the centre of our senses and as such it is vital in the way we communicate but not what you think yes we use our mouths to talk but our faces are much more than that for broadcasting our thoughts and feelings just one look at a person's expression can tell you so much about the emotional state of the individual a smile a frown a scowl each one can tell you how to interact with someone although this is something we take for granted as a natural part of the human condition some scientists have looked to categorize and study our facial expressions one such study took place in 1924 and in order to create genuine reactions in its test subjects various stimuli were used which would bizarrely culminate in the participants being asked to behead a rat in order to track their facial expressions my name is john and today we're looking at the 1924 facial expression experiment welcome to the dark side of science carney landis was born on the 11th of january 1897 in west alexandria ohio a small town with a population of around 700 at the end of the 19th century carney would attend state university where he majored in psychology graduating in 1921 study would not end for landis however when he gained his masters a year later from dartman college in 1922 this was whilst he was working as a psychology instructor upon completion of his masters landis moved to the university of minnesota to study for his doctorate during his education landis read various scientific studies into facial expressions one of which was darwin's the expression of the emotions of man and animals his third book in his series of works on evolution the book looks to delve into emotions of humans and animals alike and features multiple pictures of faces in various different emotional states but the animal kingdom darwin shows various expressive movements of dogs cats horses ruminants and monkeys he visualizes various facial expressions in the book showing joy affection pain anger astonishment and terror the book also has photographs and illustrations of human faces in various states of emotion from happiness to fear and anger the book was originally released in 1872 with a second edition compiled by darwin's son in 1890 and this was likely the version that landis studied one of the other main works that carney took inspiration from was our schultz's experimental psychology and pedagogy released translated into english in 1912 this work touches on facial expressions and looks at the links between psychology and education there are a number of different photographs of subjects reactions to different stimuli but it doesn't seek out to find the reason why the final and probably the work that carney would take as a basis for his later experiments was herbert langfield's the judgment of emotions from facial expressions in 1918 this study would take place at harvard's psychological laboratory langfield made use of six subjects four men and two women and showed each person 105 images of an illustration made from a photograph of an actor's face each expression was meant to convey a certain emotion after being shown the image the subject was then required to write down their interpreted emotion landis thought that this experiment had a problem though and that was because of the authenticity of the expression of the actor the results from the langfield experiment were pretty interesting however although the study was not unique in finding that we can judge emotion from a picture i mean look at artwork in general from history you can tell we can understand emotion from a still image of a facial expression but it did find that the general consensus from his six subjects was that each picture conveyed a particular emotion even the more subjective images that contained subtle emotional state cues such as half crying and laughing in post experiment interviews each subject was asked where do they look first when judging a facial expression and interestingly each gave slightly different answers for example one person stated they stared at the mouth first and another saying that they try to imagine themselves with that expression and how it would make them feel of course modern-day eye tracking experiments are more reliable seeing what we look at first but langfield's experiment is interesting to see the thought processes of the subjects as examining the images presented to them landis would achieve his phd in 1924 and it quickly led him into the experiment that would put his name down in infamy landis took from the books and papers he had studied and saw a question unanswered what is one's facial expression when exposed to real world stimuli schultz's experimental psychology and pedagogy did touch on this by giving children bitter sour and sweet tasting items and photograph their expressions however landis wanted to go deeper he wanted to see if there was universal expressions for certain stimuli landis started off with his studies of emotional reactions a preliminary study of facial expression in mid 1924 he made use of 19 test subjects all men from dartmouth college the experiment was set up in a regular laboratory room in order to record the facial expressions landis had access to a motion picture and ordinary still producing cameras landis had a specially constructed table behind which the subject was seated this was placed in the center of his setup in a wall eight feet from the subject in front of them several small openings were cut through which cameras were focused before the experiment would begin landis said to the subject i'm making a study of facial expressions all you have to do is to be seated behind the table and act as naturally as possible in the various situations that follow don't try to be emotional or show a poker face try to forget the cameras and act natural various stimuli from nine categories were presented to each subject and after each situation a card was given to the participant with a number of emotions written on it such as boredom abstraction dreamy indifference interest also a space labeled feelings other than those mentioned each situation however would have a slightly different card the experiment stimuli started off pretty tame culminating in a fairly harsh finale first off was classical music a phonographic reproduction of divalki by vagner around a quarter of the subjects indicated interest with the remaining showing indifference or boredom landis noted of the facial expression of a vacant stare in most in the similar vein the second stimuli was jazz music a phonographic reproduction of my man the majority of the subjects indicated a rhythmic feeling with around a quarter indicating boredom or indifference this was shown on the facial expression with 12 cracking a smile and the opposite for the remainder of the subjects the third stimulus was this time visual with georgianis sleeping venus and bogie eros birth of venus both images are of unclothed women most indicated sex appeal and aesthetic appreciation would remaining indicating indifference the facial expressions are shown to be smiling or smirking for the fourth stimulus they were shown paintings of christ and the facial expressions were mainly of a frown which correlated with most indicating sadness religious feelings or indifference from the fifth stimulus all the way to the ninth things started to get a little bit more cruel starting with vulgar pictures of direct sex appeal a strip of pictures depicting various adult acts was used the subjects recorded disgust repulsion sex appeal and feelings of absurdity and grotesque the facial expressions were a mixture of smirking all the way to pure disgust but interestingly each subject let out a noticeable gasp when shown the stimuli the sixth stimulus were pictures to arouse horror or disgust illustrations in the diseases of china by jeffreys and maxwell were used i've looked at the book and it is pretty upsetting with some of the images within interestingly because some of the participants were medical students a high number indicated professional interest with the second highest being pity the expressions shown is most indicated by a frown and a closed mouth number seven on the list was odors this consisted of eight small bottles with various smelling dilute forms of cinnamon oil spirits of peppermint and others but the final was the actual interesting item the bottle was marked syrup of lemon but actually contained ammonia needs to say the reactions to the sweets many items resulted in generally happy expressions but the shock of the ammonia yielded an instant reaction of disgust followed by a small smile the penultimate stimulant was a bucket filled with frogs each subject was told to put their hand inside and feel around instantly a reaction of disgust was recorded until they're allowed to look inside when most showed signs of relief and even a small smile the final stimuli seemed to be the most cruel it too involved a bucket it had around six inches of water inside and the subject was told with his right hand to hold onto a metal rod and with his left hand to feel around in the bucket there was an induction coil placed in the bucket as soon as the hand touched it the circuit was complete and the subject received a substantial electric shock all of the subject's expressions immediately went to surprise and in the questionnaire most indicated surprise and pain landis had discovered that he could generate more accurate facial expressions with his initial experiment but he felt like improvements could be made and set about planning the next step in his deep dive into expression he didn't manage to see any universal expression for any of the stimuli as most of the subjects showed a whole range of slight differences even including smiling during some of the more shocking situations maybe a bigger experiment with more people would help taking what he learned from the earlier 1924 study he wanted to create ever more real emotional disturbances and record the facial expressions generated furthermore landis wanted to make use of as many distinct forms of reaction as possible culminating in significant emotional upset instead of the nine stimulus categories from the first experiment he upped it to 17 and some went well beyond the boundary of ethical also different in the second experiment was that women would be part of the study as well as recording of blood pressure 25 subjects would be used consisting of 12 men 12 women and oddly one male child another part that landis criticized of his original study was that of the setting you see he felt that the previous setup felt too much like a laboratory well it was but that it might have colored the reactions from his subjects as they were always aware of the experimental nature of the situation they were in this time around he sought out to make the experimental room more homely the walls were redecorated drapes were placed at the window and several paintings were hung on the walls so that the final effect gave a minimal suggestion of a laboratory this time around the subjects were seated comfortably at the table behind stood a large screen which served as a photographic background at either side of the subject stood a thousand watt lamp in a diffusing reflector with this illumination was possible to take better photographs at any time a second room was used to house all the equipment including the camera which shot images through a small hole in the wall facing the subject a speaking tube and buzzer was provided between the two rooms so that the experimenter in the subjects room could keep the assistant who was handling the apparatus in step with the procedure each subject before the experiment had a front and profile photo taken and then to assist with facial studying after the experiment each subject had their faces marked with black lines to highlight certain muscle groups then another photograph both front on and in profile were taken with a grid placed over the camera to assist with later measuring every movement of the head was judged after each stimuli and notes were made on every visual change of each subject's face each participant during the study would be subjected to roughly a three hour or deal and much like Landis's previous study each stimuli would increase in severity but the whole experiment was much better choreographed in order to keep the subject guessing and thus hopefully generate a more genuine reaction to the stimulus well I've spoken around it enough let's actually look at the 1924 facial expression study as I mentioned before the number of stimuli was increased over the earlier study and as such there was some crossover between both experiments and this was because Landis reused some of the situations however he did modify them to achieve a greater reaction the experiment was start off with the participant signing a slip stating that they would not divulge any information about the situations they will be exposed to then the subject would be led into the experiment room by an experimenter who in most cases would be Landis himself for the men and a female assistant for the women before mentioned control photographs were taken and the faces would be marked up now ready the first stimuli would begin the first two situations were music that was aimed to calm any nerves of the participants for the first 10 minutes the music was the pop music of the day jazz this disarmed the subjects but things would ramp up in the second section when more complex technical music was played this was marked by their virtuosity and technique almost having no melody photographs and blood pressure measurements were taken this would be for every section although the images would be taken at the closest moment to the reveal of the stimuli the next section brought an interesting subject into the mix and that was being requested to read st. Luke 6 18 to 49 out of the bible this required the participant to pick from two pieces of paper with a letter printed on it a t for truth or l for lie if l was selected points of circumstantial evidence attaching the participant to some crime were written on they were then meant to invent a lie which would clear them of the charges on a cross-examination with the experimenter if t was chosen then an alibi was provided for the crime this situation was used to try and induce anxiety and lengthen the total time of the experiment as well as assert the experimenter's dominance this is another carry across from the early experiment again again like before having several bottles with nice smelling fluids within with the last having ammonia mislabeled again as lemon syrup situation 5 would be the first taste of landis's now trademark of misdirection in order to get a more natural reaction landis continues his misleading antics by having the experimenter say the subject had smudged the marks on their face and as such they would need to reapply them the experimenter would then go behind the screen this would be the point they would signal to the other room to get ready for photographs and blood pressure readings the experimenter then lit and set off a firecracker under the subject's chair needless to say this yielded a shocked expression from the participant although shocking it has so far been a harmless type of diversion not much more than a high school prank this one is more bizarre the subject was given a sheet of paper and a pencil and told to write a full description of the meanest or most contemptible or most embarrassing thing they ever did as soon as they were finished the experimenter would then read aloud this confession again embarrassment and anxiety was the aim of the game here strangely landis wanted to see if he could make a universal joke to invoke a laugh but this section was promptly removed after the second participant shrugged off the apparent humorous quip this section much like the previous experiment showed pretty unpleasant pictures of various diseases but this time from the book atlas they're helped crank her to do yourself a favor and don't look it up i did and it put me off my dinner this again seemed a bit like a padding exercise like the truthful lie section four but involved distracting the participant whilst they undertook mental arithmetic frustration and annoyance with the name of the game here but it also helped cement the authority of the experimenter as they would hold the subject until they got a correct answer Naughty pictures much like before these were intended to elicit a shock response would the experimenter insisting that the subject look these over carefully the pictures were of an illicit nature don't forget that these people were from the 1920s and would have probably have had a greater shock value much like the previous situation and involving nudity again it consisted of pose photographs of feminine artists models again the experimenter would insist on the subject thoroughly looking at the images some of the most salubrious excerpts from the book psychology of sex were presented to the participants and again were instructed to read thoroughly again this was another part taken from the previous experiment but Landis Uplianti once again he combined this with the electric shock stimuli the participant would be told to put their hand in the bucket and after touching the frogs and reacting the experimenter would then say feel longer you've missed something the hand would feel until it touched the electric coil the coil would discharge a shock again photographs and blood pressure readings would ensue although seemingly cruel the next part is arguably why we're here talking about this experiment in the first place the table in front of the subject had been covered with a cloth but a 15th scenario the cloth was removed revealing a tray and a butcher's knife the experimenter then brought out a live rat the instructions were simple but unbelievable hold this rat with your left hand and then cut off its head with the knife 21 of the subjects were given this instruction some willingly perform the execution with little prompting others offered some resistance but after continued orders from the experimenter would eventually capitulate 15 in total would comply with the authority figure and execute the beheading five who would completely refuse would then have to witness the experimenter perform the task themselves one of the subjects beheadings as landis would later note in his paper for various reasons was not performed little did he know but landis had stumbled upon inventing a behavioral study of obedience some 40 years before the infamous milgram experiment clearly landis found electric shocks to be pretty handy in psychological experimentation as he managed to wrangle it in again the subject's arm was connected to an armband and a stethoscope both of these were attached to an inductorium the subject was given a card which had two numbers printed on it and told to multiply these mentally while they received electrical distraction electric shocks were increased and decreased in order to wear the subject down landis would later write this situation following the long grind of the other situations brought about a very real disturbance the electric shocks continued either in landis's own words some very real emotion expression was given or it was apparent that the subject would not give away any marked expression which makes you wonder how long this would have gone on for only one person was actually able to correctly answer the multiplication question this one is also a little bit cruel the experimenter was stepped behind a curtain and make some loud noises as though preparing for another situation after enough stress was exerted on the subject the experimenter would step out and say well that finishes it just as soon as we get the final blood pressure and respiration records you are through the final situation was to see the effects of sudden relief after a period of stress the experiment generated tremendous amounts of data hundreds of observations and around 711 photographs to sift through landis and his assistant started working their way through each photo discounting any that did not show any discernible reaction after sifting through all the data landis settled on a 17 point summary of the experiment and it was a real mixed bag he concluded that he did see a difference between agendas in their reaction to the same stimuli he claimed that men were more animated than their female counterparts he categorized the main facial expressions to pain surprise anger exasperation crying disgust sexual excitement and revolting but did not see any uniform reaction across all the subjects and essentially the study failed to meet one of its key questions if there were certain facial expressions for each emotion but there was not we are after all individuals and the way we react to things unsurprisingly is individual but Landis's results were not really the most important part of the experiment it was his unknowing discovery which has gone down in history the setup of an experimenter and an experimentee inadvertently led to study down the path of showing the human condition of obedience of authority 15 out of the 21 beheaded the rat something that many people I'm sure even in 1924 thought to be a severe action not something many would be willing to do be it on moral grounds or just from being squeamish but someone with authority nudging them was all that was needed to end a poor rodents life this is where the ethical concerns also come into play as it could be considered animal cruelty to kill for no other reason than to kill even the deaths of the rats weren't swift in Landis's notes he said the effort and attempt to hurry usually resulted in a rather awkward and prolonged job of decapitation another big criticism comes from the fact the participants were essentially exposed to some low-level psychological torture with the writing down secrets electric shocks animal murder and scaring them with unexpected loud noises unsurprisingly the most striking photos were from the shock and surprise situations using a male experimenter for the male participants and a female for the female participants also make us the result problematic really there needed to be a control group and a much larger study group nearly all the participants were from a university background and did not represent a good section of society also and on top of all those concerns it was seemingly like Landis wanted to break almost every ethical issue he even had one child participant which brings up the problem for just this one subject of informed consent needless to say Karni Landis and his experiment has aged to history like a fine one pint bottle of milk this period in history was a bit of a wild west for psychiatry experiments with the baby Albert experiment just four years earlier in 1920 and the Gaia and Donald experiment just after in the early 1930s the animal and human cruelty elements of this study definitely wouldn't get past the board nowadays and the experiment didn't really further the study of emotions much the controversial experiment did not however affect Landis's career where he would release multiple papers and books even interestingly speaking out about the issues for psychosurgery he would spend most of his career working at Columbia University from 1932 to his retirement in 1959 but sadly he wouldn't enjoy his retirement for too long as he would die in 1962 I'm going to rate the subject between a five on my ethical scale and a six the reference one being no problems and ten being pure evil where would you rate it let me know this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me John and the currently sunny corner of southeast London UK help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of odds and sods as well as photographs of other things as well as hints on future videos I've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and always have to say is thank you for watching radiation is a valuable asset in the sterilization of materials and because of this hundreds of facilities across the world harness radioisotopes from irradiating food equipment and even blood but history has shown that these facilities are often overlooked when it comes to maintenance funding and training this is because they offer little risk to the outside world in the same way that a facility that regularly assembles critical assemblies or a nuclear reactor does an industrial sterilization facility in Nezvitz Belarus would become center stage in the early 1990s for an overexposure event which would result in death the story would follow a similar route to other incidents where an operator would enter an irradiation room when it was certainly not safe to do so however what is different in this event was that the facility had multiple features that should have stopped an exposure event and on the day they were actually working and the operator was highly qualified meaning they had to actively avoid these safety measures my name is john and today we're looking at the Nezvitz radiological accident it is 1981 and a new facility is being planned for use at the biochemical plant of the pharma industry corporation in Nezvitz USSR modern day Belarus it is going to be built by the all-union scientific research institute of radiation technology of the USSR and is designed to a standard set out by Soviet regulatory authorities it is intended to irradiate peaked for use in fertilizers and makes use of gamma radiation from an original capacity of 6.72 petabecuels of cobalt 60 three years after conception the site would become operational in 1984 but would undergo a significant refurbishment in 1989 where the capacity would be upped by over three times to 30 petabecuels along with the greater reactivity of its source the plant was further modified to irradiate other materials such as medical equipment the design of the facility is of a papal model type and is different to what we've seen on this channel so far when it comes to radiation plants whilst we're here let's take a look at the papal irradiation system there are a number of differences to say a western irradiation machine the first is the way that the source is stored when out of use instead of a pool the radioactive material is in a shielded dry storage pit however the system still makes use of gravity in that when in use the source is raised out of its pit and in the event of a power outage or safety system trip the source is dropped into a safe position another difference from say an atomic energy of canada limited design is the way the products to be irradiated are given their sweet dose of radiation instead of pistons rollers and conveyors the products are rotated at a constant rate around the source in a transport container suspended from an overhead rail the whole irradiation room is surrounded by concrete shielding up to 1.8 meters thick and like many other facilities entry is via an area called the maze the maze here is far more intricate than other facilities i've looked at and this is primarily due to its pretty impressive safety systems that are aimed at preventing and mitigating the risks from an unauthorized entry the first reminds me of something from an indiana jones movie when the source rack is in the radiation or up position a section of the floor at the entrance to the maze is driven back by a motor to reveal a deep pit the only usable ledge is on top of the motor housing itself this acts as a physical barrier entry but it isn't all there is further down the maze hallway is a full width pressure plate too big to be jumped across if stepped on then the source rack will be lowered the source is made up of a rack of pencils and spaces each pencil can have as much as 70 terabetic fuels of radioactivity controller the facility is done at a panel in the control room next to the loading bay for the transport system from here operators can control the source and the transport mechanism as well as the gamma monitoring system the gamma monitoring system is interlocked to the control panel if either of the two monitors outside the room take a reading that exceeds 14 micro cvets an hour then the rack is dropped into the pit during operation the product transport system of material to be irradiated is monitored from its control panel this has illuminated signals that are triggered by micro switches along the track the first hint of a product jam is if a light doesn't illuminate in sequence this requires the operators to remain vigilant from a radiation dose point of view as if the product is held in position for too long it can damage it but unlike the gamma monitors the transport system is not interlocked with the source rack and thus if there is a jam then it is solely down to the operator to make the radiation room safe by dropping the rack via the source down button now before we get onto the fateful event we need to mention the correct procedure for entering the radiation room as no matter the amount of safety systems you can have proper control of staff actions can be the difference between life or death to gain entry to the facility an operator must first push the down button on the control panel this illuminates the down light until the micro switches sense the radiator is fully down the operator is in required to wait four minutes then the key on the control panel should be turned from the ready to the off position and then removed then the dose rate is monitored from the gamma probes if at an acceptable level they must check their portable dose rate monitor on a test source attached to it the key has to be taken to the maze entrance panel where it is inserted and turned to the on position that moves the motorized floor section to cover the entrance pit a final check of the portable monitor to see if there are higher than anticipated radiation levels between 0.2 and 0.5 microcverts an hour when the rack is lowered and if fully exposed three to four microcverts an hour now we know how it's meant to be done we must now look at the disaster it is the early hours of saturday the 26th of october 1991 and two workers are operating the nesvich radiation facility this morning the team consisted of the site's most experienced operator and his assistant the operator was 34 years old had a degree in engineering and had worked in nesvich since the site's construction he was in the control room reading a newspaper whilst the assistant was on the loading bay loading the product into the carriers the assistant became aware of a product jam when the motor drive made as noticeable change in noise he then called out to the operator the operator pushed the source down button as per the rules but failed to remove his key before making his way to the maze entrance investigators would later speculate that this was to speed up the resumption of operations after the jam was cleared without his key the operator had a problem how to move the motorized floor to bridge the entrance pit gap well his experience from previous incidents had shown an alternative method of entry you may remember that i mentioned that the motor housing is the only protruding thing in the entrance pit as it turns out it is enough to support the weight of a person and gives a big enough ledge to step over the gap although he was flouting the rules he did however take a portable radiation monitor with him and next he started to approach the pressure plate this is where the narrative gets a little bit shaky the operator post event was reluctant to tell investigators how he managed to get over the plate without triggering an emergency source down situation but there are a few theories one was that he climbed over the plate by grabbing the transport rails or he did walk on the plate but the rack was jammed and thus didn't go into the shielding pit the final theory was that the rack raised on its own accord regardless the operator made his way into the radiator room upon entry the transport containers would have obscured his view of the rack but its counterweights would have been visible which could have indicated its position it's unlikely that he realised the position of the rack as he started to clearly obstruction after approximately one minute he started to experience a headache and he looked around the room to discover the rack was in the irradiation position he ran out of the irradiation chamber and told his assistant that he had been exposed immediately telephone calls were made to the local hospital and to the police within 20 minutes an ambulance had arrived on the scene and transported the operator to hospital quickly it was realised after the operator explained what they had been exposed to that the Nezvić hospital didn't have the appropriate experience needed to deal with such a patient he was transferred via Minsk to the clinic at the Biophysics Institute in Moscow for specialised care within the first seven days bone marrow and gastroenal issues started to manifest themselves in the operator during this period investigations were made into the dose received during the incident the operator's clothing was analysed and this gave an estimate of between 11 and 18 grey roughly three times a fatal full body dose eight days post exposure the patient had started to experience a fever and 11 days post exposure he began to manifest severe skin injuries around a 40 his general state was relatively stable but would start to show symptoms of pneumonia and his condition would deteriorate by day 104 he was showing typical acute adult respiratory distress syndrome the patient's blood pressure decreased on day 112 and sadly the following day he would die while in a hypoamic coma caused by respiratory distress we have to jump back to the day of the disaster after the exposure and before the operator was transferred to Moscow local authorities spoke to him to try and find out how the event played out the operator was not particularly forthcoming and tried to pass off many questions to feeling tired during his shift and not being able to remember a government-led investigation looked into the event and concluded that the following facility modifications should be implemented for future safety enlarging the pit and moving the motor providing an audible alarm for movement of the source rack within the facility and providing visible warning signals inside the facility to indicate the position of the source rack the site's license was suspended until these modifications were implemented but there was still the looming question if the operator pressed the source down button how did the rack go back up in the time between walking from the control room to the entrance of the maze the rack being jammed seemed unlikely as no debris was found that could have caused an obstruction the other cause is likely linked to the fact that the operator did not remove his key and thus in theory left the system with power this left the system open to the rack being raised either from accidental or unnoticed oppression of the exposure button temporary failure of a component in the control circuit or the logic of the electrical circuits which could have provided power to the lift circuit the initiating events are all too common with these types of facilities and that is product jam this coupled with the pressures of production targets has shown to lead operators to undertake reckless actions if the rules have been followed properly the nearer exposure would have likely not happened now as always if you want to read more about this event you can check out the IAA report the link will be in the description below this is a plain difficult production all videos are creative commons attribution share like licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me john in the currently sunny southeast and corner of london uk help channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching depression and isolation are some of the worst conditions a social creature can endure this is why it is such a potent punishment in prisons of both past and present today we return to harry harlow and his pivot in career from studying love to studying depression in his previous 1958 paper harlow outlined the effects on infant rhesus monkeys which were removed from their biological mothers at birth to be reared using surrogate cloth and wireframe mothers the experiment created socially and emotionally stunted test subjects but showed that bonds can be created even with a bare bones maternal figure but as harlow's personal life started to have issues so would the cruelty of his experiments by attempting to create depression in his subjects his partial and total isolation studies would take harlow's experiments one step further completely removing any parental figure from the lives of the infant rhesus monkeys the experiments would garner even more criticism compared to his earlier mother studies and would ultimately lead to an apparatus called the pit of despair my name is john and welcome back to the dark side of science our story starts in the wake of harry harlow's monkey mother experiments by the late 1950s his primate laboratory had become a controversial but generally accepted part of the university of wisconsin madison sure the studies involved separation of infant rhesus monkeys from their mothers at a young age which most would consider cruel but at least important discoveries were made harlow had touched upon isolation studies during his nature of love experiments where infant monkeys were given an inanimate cloth or wire mother as the only form of social interaction the surrogate mother offered at least something in terms of company but harlow wanted to go deeper into the isolation side of the experiment starting off in 1959 harlow devised the first of his social isolation experiments the concept was pretty simple and made use of an empty yk that allowed the subjects to see hear and smell their peers but not be able to make physical contact this was named by harlow as the partial isolation study and sought out to observe the social effects and withholding physical contact during the 1960s harlow and his colleagues published several papers on the subject of partial isolation in 1965 a study looked at comparing one and three year old rhesus monkeys in social isolation alongside non-isolated control subjects they found that the partial isolates exhibited greater clutching and chewing behaviour as well as showing greater anxiety the study showed that partial isolation didn't affect the subject's intellectual development but their social maturity was very much stunted in a 1971 paper harlow summarized the decade of partial isolation experiments and set up another partial isolation study involving 48 subjects 24 male and 24 female the ages observed ranged between three months and 13 and a half years each subject had been raised in partial isolation taken from their mothers as early as possible this meant that the oldest of the subjects had spent over a decade in partial isolation they divided the participants into four groups of six males and six females zero to two years old pre-adolescents two to five years old adolescents five to ten years old early adulthood and ten to thirteen years old later adulthood to act as a control group 12 feral rhesus monkeys were employed before the experiment most of the subjects have been housed in small two and a half feet wide wire mesh cages the control group were monkeys captured from india and shipped to the laboratory they too were partially isolated for a similar amount of time and in some cases over years but have been born and raised in the wild thus they had experienced a natural social upbringing before captivity they found that the laboratory raised subjects showed less social maturity and the older the group the more introverted they became even when compared to the control group similar aged and isolated feral monkeys were shown to be more active and exhibited less external signs of anxiety the results although pretty predictable i mean if you isolate a person they become less adept at social interaction were not enough for harlow and because of this he sought out to take his experiments to see what would happen under total isolation conditions whilst a pastoral isolation studies played out harlow started looking at a concept for a total isolation experiment he devised an isolation chamber where the rhesus monkey would be placed the chamber was always lit had some moving around space and most crucially was not designed to invoke any sensory deprivation apart from social interaction to reduce the risk of noise from the outside a white noise generator was used to mask any ambient sounds the subjects were isolated from human and monkey alike observations were made by one-way vision slits and a test area in a 1965 paper on the total isolation studies harlow describes the experiment setup three groups of newborn monkeys were isolated in individual chambers for three six and 12 months respectively in addition one group was kept in partial isolation in individual cages in a laboratory nursery for the first six months then placed in the isolation chamber for six months there were six monkeys in the three month group and four monkeys in each other of the groups mental ability tests were undertaken during their isolation to map their intelligence to measure the difference in social development between the partially and totally isolated harlow paired up monkeys that had been in the study for the same amount of time for example two from the three month total isolation group were paired with two from the partial isolation group all the monkeys were of the same age and were released into a playroom scenario the four monkeys were allowed to be in a room for 30 minutes five days a week for 32 weeks for these young fully isolated monkeys being placed with others was a complete sensory overload and nearly all went into shock showing anxious body language such as self-clutching two of the monkeys in the three month isolation group refused to eat were moved to the integration phase of the experiment one sadly would die after five days the other was force-fed and subsequently survived although severely socially affected the three month group did show signs of being able to recover gradually improving after each session playing with their control group but that was the most positive of outcomes it only got worse with the next group the six month isolated monkeys were split into two groups one of which were isolated straight away whereas the other was isolated after six months of partial isolation they after being introduced with the control monkeys would avoid all contact and play the three month group would engage with play fighting after a few days but this was not observed with the six month subjects the late six month group the subjects who are initially partially isolated showed a better ability to interact with the control group albeit only in the form of aggression but the 12 month isolated monkeys there were no signs of interest in themselves or their control playmates in Harlow's own words 12 months almost obliterated the animals socially in contrast the controls were pretty quickly playing and enjoying their social interactions amongst one another in follow-up sessions post 32 weeks the three month group had seemed to have adjusted relatively well the six month had some improvements but were socially stunted and the 12 month group were completely ruined now this study was yet again like before a stepping stone down the stairs to hell as Harlow looked to extend his experiments into the examination of depression Harlow throughout his life was susceptible to depression periods usually only lasting a few days and was fueled by drink stress and a constant fear of failure as his symptoms got worse throughout the 1960s so did his experiments he saw in his isolated monkeys especially the 12 month subjects the signs of depression as they rocked back and forth staring off into the distance refusing to interact with their peers Harlow thought that this could be used in the path of understanding the condition and maybe even find a cure he would require a reliable method of creating a depressive state and that leads us on to the next stage of Harlow's progressively cruel series of experiments Harlow would experience his worst depressive phase so far in his life in the last years of the 1960s his second wife Margaret was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1967 and this understandably played on the scientists mind Harlow's career was at its peak but his anxiety about his wife and the fear of failing at the zenith of his life's work sent him into aspiring depression before his bouncer depression rather strangely had been set off by any accolades achieved for his research and in 1967 it was no different he had won the national medal of science given by Lyndon B Johnson no less for the rest of the year he couldn't shake his depressive state but unlike before it would last more than just a few hellish days he would be admitted to the Mayo Clinic in March 1968 here he would receive electroshock therapy and although initially reluctant Harlow would later admit that his recovery was good after 59 days Harlow was discharged and he returned back to his primate lab he noted his feelings of isolation during his stay but his experience inspired Harlow to delve into depression and he did this by the only way he knew how by terrorizing rhesus monkeys he knew from previous studies that six or more months of total isolation created depression like symptoms in his monkeys Harlow had also dabbled in age mate separation where two monkeys were allowed to bond with one another only to be separated in Harlow's own words the fact that these behaviors did not extinguish within the sixth month period attest to the punishing pain of separation and the vigor and violence of protest he wanted a surefire way to crush the spirit of any subject ideally quicker than the six month needed from total isolation this is where the pit of despair comes into our story although officially it was referred to as a vertical chamber in a 1974 paper by Harlow and one of his students Stephen J. Sume the pit of despair was outlined in the use to create depression in monkeys over several previous experiments the vertical isolation chamber initially conceived in 1969 was constructed of a stainless steel trough with sloping downsides this was to create a trapped feeling by reducing the subject's ability to climb the chamber was dark with the only light coming from the top which was almost impossible to reach it had a three eighths inch wire mesh floor one inch above the bottom of the chamber to allow waste material to drop through the drain and out of holes drilled in the stainless steel the chamber also had a food box and a water bottle holder thus stopping any interaction with the outside world Harlow would later describe the design's intent being in the depths of despair sunken in a well of loneliness helplessness and hopelessness the first test study took place in 1971 when four monkeys ranging in age between six and 13 months old were placed in their own pit for 30 days all four showed immense psychological damage upon release in 1971 his wife's cancer progressed and would subsequently end in her death that year which no doubt added to Harlow's depression Harlow and Sume would continue with a more formal study in 1972 this again would involve four monkeys being placed in the chamber at 45 days old for a period of 45 days after removal from the chamber the subject exhibited intensive self-clasp and self-huddling coupled with low levels of movement and environmental exploration the difference was night and day between them and their control subjects who were partially isolated but allowed to socialize Harlow found that even a year after their isolation his subjects still showed signs of depression and severe social stunting the next study using the pit was also in 1972 and took eight monkeys at the age of three and split them up into two groups of four these groups were then placed in a social housing cage together for four weeks one group was taken and placed in separate cages for nine days then placed in the pit Harlow wanted to see if he could create depression in otherwise well adjusted and healthy monkeys you see all eight have been raised by their mothers and have been well socialized the sentence for the test group was 10 weeks in the vertical chamber after removal from the chamber the monkeys were observed severe clinging and lack of movement were noted it seemed that the chamber could guarantee a depression like state in Harlow's monkeys and this seemed to follow his personal life strangely in 1972 Harlow remarried his first wife it could be inferred that the creativity of the cruelty increased as Harlow's personal life became ever more complicated but Harlow wasn't just creating loads of depressed monkeys for no reason his parent plan was to try and rehabilitate his subjects initially his total isolated monkeys would be introduced to his cloth mothers and sure enough the body contact they provided showed some signs of rejuvenation next he attempted to see if real monkey contact could work but there was a problem his subjects wouldn't initiate contact instead preferring to hold themselves in a corner but Harlow had an idea this came in the form of therapy monkeys he had seen in previous studies that infants of dysfunctional monkey mothers were very clingy he thought that maybe this could be harnessed in bringing around his depressed subjects the young therapy monkeys from dysfunctional mothers were introduced to some six-month isolates like he predicted the therapists clung to the isolates and in a later observation were found to almost be normal within a year but this would not be the case of the pit of despair candidates now Harlow would retire from the University of Madison Wisconsin in 1974 leaving the task of continuing his work with his old students such as Sumi the regularity of Harlow and his team's publication of her work allowed their studies to be followed at the time quite closely as such the cruelty of the experiments received criticism at the time even some of Harlow's own students were concerned for the increasing cruelty of the pit of despair experiments it wasn't helped by Harlow's ability to use shocking language to describe his experimental devices originally he wanted to call a vertical chamber the dungeon of loneliness Harlow's studies can largely be regarded as questionable as the way a rhesus macaque experiences depression or any other psychological condition for that matter is very different and hard to translate to humans also it does seem pretty obvious if you lock up a largely social animal in total isolation for extended periods of time from young ages that they would exhibit developmental difficulties now where would you rate this subject on my ethical scale i'm going to say around a six or a seven this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me john and the currently sunny south eastern corner of london uk help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of odds and sods and photos as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching sugar is one of the most important materials in human history such is its influence on mankind that it has been implicated in the blight of obesity diabetes cardiovascular disease and tooth decay refined sugar being bad for your health is a bit of a given nowadays but not always the way you think especially if you work in a sugar refinery much like grain and flour sugar is susceptible to dust explosions and it is a driving force behind a disaster in 2008 in port wentworth georgia which would result in 14 worker deaths my name is john and today we're looking at the imperial sugar explosion it is december 1997 and the imperial sugar company is acquiring a new production site at port wentworth from savannah foods and industries incorporated there is nothing really of note here it was doing what businesses do and that is acquiring to expand the site has been home to food production and processing since the early 1900s savannah industries incorporated began construction of granulated sugar production facilities at port wentworth during the 1910s completing it in 1917 over the years production capacity would be added to culminating in its final arrangement with multiple screw and bucket conveyors all for storing and transporting sugar granules in three large silos each silo was 140 feet in diameter and 105 feet tall constructed from concrete and sat atop a foundation in the packing building floor below was a 130 foot long tunnel used for conveyor belts each silo has a capacity of five million pounds the screws and bucket conveyor system was originally intended to be fully enclosed to prevent the escape of dust which as we know from my de bruce grain explosion video can be pretty deadly the factory production facilities received raw sugar and refined it into granulated sugar once refined it was transferred via screws and conveyor belt to the top of silo three from here it is fed to the other two silos via a belt which discharged the sugar into an elevator pit this pit fed a bucket conveyor which took the sugar to a penthouse and from there multiple belt conveyors to the other silos when needed 18 inch holes are opened in the base of the silos and the sugar is then transported to the powdered sugar mills for packing equipment or the bulk sugar building the imperial sugar facility has large open work areas but little thought during its operation was given to dust build up as such no dust extraction system was in operation and dust accumulated on overhead conduits piping ceiling beams lights and equipment the site has two packing areas each four stories tall and were named the bosh and south buildings respectively equipment in the packing areas filled paper bags with sugar like the type you may find in your cupboard the machines had protective glass to prevent workers from getting caught in the moving parts but it's still allowed for inspection and there was vacuum duct work provided to remove some of the dust from the machinery on the fourth floor there was also a powdered sugar facility sugar powder in dangerous situations was a daily part of working life at imperial spillages were also common requiring regular cleanups as well as a constant generation of dust from packing the supposedly sealed conveyor screws also allowed deadly dust to propagate around the facility and all of this meant that disaster was inevitable it is the evening of February the 7th 2008 and imperial sugar is welcoming its CEO for a tour of the facility there are four people in this tour group and nothing out of the ordinary has been seen so far but at approximately 7 15 p.m this would change allow bang startled the group as they walked through the south packaging building which would later be described as a heavy roll of packing material dropped from a forklift somewhere nearby just a few seconds later they were blown off their feet as debris blew through the building flames blew out the roof as the concrete floors of the south building buckled as explosions spread throughout the different areas of the facility intense fireballs ripped through the entire north and south packing and palletiser buildings sugar dust shaken loose from overhead surfaces from the explosions ignited intensifying the fires workers were pummeled with equipment and debris as the heat of the fireball burned away any flesh escape proved to be difficult as smoke obscured this the passages of escape several exits were also blocked by fallen brickwork further hindering any chance of safely getting out heat travelled up the enclosed conveyor screws igniting more powdered sugar eventually spreading the series of explosions back to the south packing building in total the fireball and explosions would continue for 15 minutes before the last explosions emergency workers were on the scene but they were confronted with the thick flames and a partially demolished facility as soon as they could the first responders started working towards recovery of victims some of the staff had already started rescue and recovery work helping out some of the injured taking the worst burnt to a makeshift triage at the facility gatehouse smouldering would continue for over a week after the initial explosions nine local and state organizations helped with the rescue efforts but sadly the disaster would result in fatalities eight workers died at the facility on the day during the explosions and another four would die later in hospital from severe burns 36 would require medical attention with several receiving life-changing injuries with millions of dollars of damage and 15 dead one question loomed why did impeal sugar experience such a catastrophic explosion dust explosions have been a known risk to sugar production going way back to before the turn of the century impeal sugar was even aware of this since 1925 in a 1961 internal memo the need for proper cleanliness and dust suppression was highlighted however proper collection and disposal of dust requires a fair amount of man hours and thus costs needless to say you can probably see the root cause it was found that equipment was in vital need of overhaul and repair the likely ignition source was a faulty bearing in an overhead conveyor a cause almost identical to the debruce grain explosion staff from impeal sugar were interviewed by the csb and they gave a pretty damning description of the facility sugar leaked down from worn seals broken or missing sections of the screw conveyor and failed pressurized air seals resulting in more sugar and dust being spilled all over the packing buildings due to the large size of the buildings dust floated up to above the light fittings piping and support beams a company cleaning policy was in force for planned daily weekly and monthly cleaning of the packing areas but these weren't enacted by management the csb also found that staff weren't properly trained in dust handling you see the packaging machines required constant cleaning of dust to work properly sometimes water and steam were used to clear any issues but often compressed air was employed which only made the dust situation worse rather worryingly staff had said in interviews that leading up to the explosion there had been several small fires which were successfully extinguished a quality assurance survey undertaken in late 2007 found multiple issues with housekeeping and general dust management it just seemed that even with decades of knowledge of the risks of dust explosions from both the sugar and grain industries that imperial sugar were not interested in the safety of its staff sadly this story is just another in a long list of instances where companies have prioritized profit over safety but even though the site was pretty destroyed imperial was committed to rebuilding it was a vital part of the local economy and in the wake of the disaster the area struggled as local businesses lost trade in the demolition of the site 1.3 million kilos of hardened sugar had to be smashed up and removed the rebuilding would cost 220 million dollars and the company would report full production in november 2009 osha cited the company for 124 violations but the us attorney for the southern district of georgia said there wasn't enough evidence to prove criminal intent what a surprise 44 lawsuits were brought against the company and many were settled out of court now where would you rate this disaster on my legacy scale one having a significant impact on history and 10 being very influential in history i'm going to say today that this one is around a four this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain different videos are produced by me john in the currently wet and miserable southeast in corner of london uk help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out to be fancied supporting the channel financially and all this left to say is thank you for watching in the march floridian weather of 2018 investigators are picking through the results of a disaster six are dead and 10 more injured but the only question on the investigators minds is how does a new uncompleted bridge fail in such a way that no one picked it up until it was too late well this is what we'll be looking at today the florida international university pedestrian bridge collapse our story starts with a safety concern students crossing the ape street and 109th avenue intersection numerous reports from students at florida international university have come over the years of near misses with traffic across the eight lane highway the university concerned with the risks to their students began to put into motion a plan for a new pedestrian walkway finances were secured in 2013 from the department of transport for the bridge across the highway between the fi u and the town of sweetwater sweetwater was a popular place for students to find accommodation outside of the university campus and as such the crossing of the multi-lane highway is frequently used by both students and faculty members alike the main organizations to be involved in the project were manila construction management a miami-based construction management firm an fig bridge engineers a tallahassee based firm the project was different to other similar structures in the state as the florida department of transport did not oversee the design instead this task was taken on by the university itself but the unusual plan did on the face of it makes sense the university was known for his expertise in accelerated bridge construction as a side note this is a technique that allows bridges to be installed with minimum disruption to traffic often in the space of a few days this is done by constructing the bridge near to its final installation location and after assembly placing the structure in its final location the bridge was to be 320 feet long and span the roadway and the canal that runs parallel to the street this is formed the two sections of the bridge 175 foot long and a 99 foot long section for the roadway and canal spans respectively to tie it all together a faux tower and cable arrangement was intended for the structure to make the bridge look like a cable staid arrangement the total structure length was added to further by an escalator and lift on the southern end and a lift on the northern end the design of the bridge was intended to have a hundred year plus life expectancy and could apparently withstand a category five hurricane although looking like a cable staid bridge the structure strength actually came from its truss construction the bridge had a 30 foot wide deck and a 16 foot wide canopy 15 feet above the canopy and deck were connected by a single row of concrete diagonal and vertical supports in the center the canopy and deck were designed to act like an eye beam with the concrete walkway deck acting as the horizontal bottom flange of a wide eye beam and the roof canopy was to function as also a horizontal but narrower top flange of the eye beam having the walkway on the bottom of the truss allowed for less depth up to the bridge and due to its only using one truss it was a non-redundant design as the whole structure strength came from the single collection of supports the concrete was to be a post-tension design this is achieved by casting the concrete with a protective sleeve duct within it for steel cable tendons once the concrete is cured these tendons are tensioned and held in place with a lock-off wedge adding strength to the beam the deck and canopy had tendon cables which were permanently tensioned and while the mainspan was still located in the staging yard before it even got installed on the bridge however the diagonal truss members had two to four post-tensioning rods that could be tightened or loosened allowing for alterations to be made by the engineers to allow for the extra stress is expected during installation these were to be de-stressed after the mainspan was in place the plan for the bridge was to have it pre-built in a staging area next to the bridge site and then lifted into situ construction began in 2016 but just over a year later on a sunday in august 2017 the death of a student alexis dale vindicated the need for a pedestrian bridge she was crossing the very busy intersection at southwest eighth street and 109th avenue like many students do any day of the week in february 2018 the mainspan of concrete including the walkway the canopy and diagonal and horizontal members were cast once it had cured inspections of the mainspan showed some cracking around truss member 11 and 12 at the truss members intersection with the deck cracking is not uncommon in concrete casting and this was to be monitored during the installation process thus the mainspan was prepared for installation which would involve movement from the fabrication yard to the bridge site in order to get the assembled bridge in place it had to be lifted to its final location using self-propelled modular transporters and that took place on the morning of the 10th of march 2018 traffic on the southwest eighth street was detoured during the planned installation period leaving the entire roadway closed because the whole structure was vulnerable to twisting for transport and installation and maximum tolerance of plus or minus 0.5 of a degree was set beginning at 4 30 am on the 10th of march the mainspan was moved by the spmt's and placed on the permanent pylon and south pier supports the movement was completed by 12 30 pm during the operation the twisting tolerance was exceeded twice occurring for about four minutes as the bridge came in contact with one of the bearing pads on the south pier after it was in its final place the mainspan's diagonal members 2 and 11 were detentioned as part of the original plans and photographs were taken of the cracks at the 11th member to see if they were active or dormant on the 12th of march more photos of the cracks around the 11th and 12th nodes were taken and were now worryingly getting larger manila construction management viewed the photos and indicated that the cracking was not a safety issue and recommended that plastic shims be placed underneath the diaphragm the part that attaches to the pier on march the 13th and faced with growing cracks mcm and figg building engineers decided that retentioning the two and 11 supports may lessen the cracking but figg determined that the cracking was still not a safety issue on the 14th of march the cracks still causing concern were discussed between the contractor companies a day later on the morning of the 15th an inspection team went to the bridge to evaluate the cracking in preparation for a 9am meeting to discuss potential remediation action it was then decided that member 11 which at the bottom end formed the 11th and 12th node amazon the pylon pier would be restored to its original tension pre-installation of 280,000 pounds this was to be done in increments alternating between the top and bottom rod the way i understand it is similar to how you install an engine sump or a valve cover as to even out the load during tightening if you've ever owned a Honda and forget to tighten the tappet lock nut properly then you'll get a lot of practice doing this on valve covers a six-man team was given to go ahead for the restressing and ahead they went the retightening of member 11 would begin on the 15th all while traffic still flowed below the structure the contractors thought that the operation couldn't compromise the structural integrity of the bridge due to the contractor's insistence that the structure was still safe how wrong they were at roughly 1345 the traffic lights changed and cars came to a stop at the southwest 8th street and 109th avenue junction at 1346 the northern ended a bridge at the joint of the 11th and 12th supports blew out under the applied tension of the tendons within a fraction of a second the bridge sagged at the northern pile on pier cars on the road below continued to wait under the stricken structure a driver of one of the cars under the bridge would later say that small rocks had landed on her vehicle moments before the bridge failed the bridge immediately dropped the heavy full span onto the roadway below crushing anything underneath five were immediately killed after the collapse and one would die later in hospital the victims were Navarro Brown age 37 a worker on the bridge Alberto Arias 53 Brandon Brownfield 39 FIU student Alexa Durran 18 Ronaldo Fraga 60 and Oswaldo Gonzalez 57 a further 10 were injured including passengers of cars and workers on the bridge in total eight cars were crushed during the collapse emergency 911 call handlers would be inundated with calls starting at 1347 the dispatcher sent multiple emergency responders to the bridge location with the first police officers reaching the site at 1352 Miami Dade fire rescue was sent to the scene and assisted in transporting the injured Kendall Regional Medical Center although one person self-transported to the hospital what was perplexing is how could something so one of the mills of footbridge fail so catastrophically well the ntsb would find out that the bridge was more complex in design than it possibly needed to prioritizing form over function and that the warning signs seemingly were ignored during the bridge's design and installation the ntsb dispatched a 15 person team to pick over the wreckage on the 16th of March the bureau in a press conference stated that tensioning was being undertaken and they were aware that there had been cracks but this did not necessarily mean it was the cause of the failure originally the ntsb team suggested that the investigation of the wreckage would take around a week after this another press conference was held in which it was told that certain items of the bridge required further investigation at the Turner Fairbank Highway Research Centre in McLean Virginia in May a preliminary report was released but investigations were still being undertaken on the failure mode of the bridge in 2019 the ntsb released their final report and the results were mixed but at the same time all too familiar the root cause was a miscalculation in overestimating the strength of supports 1 and 2 and 11 and 12 which was compounded by underestimating the loads which would be put on critical portions of the structure the design was also flawed in that it was non-redundant meaning if the main portion failed then the whole thing would go which conjures up similarities with the silver bridge collapse you see when compared to a more traditional truss bridge design two trusses are used and this spreads out the load across the whole structure the design of the fru bridge only had one truss section and thus concentrated the load on the nodes where the supports met the ntsb discovered that when the loads on the bridge were calculated figg erroneously used a factor redundancy of one which is commonly used for structures with redundant load paths this hints at figg were assuming the bridge had a redundant design the distressed and increased cracking of the concrete was the main indicator of the poor design of the main span although cracking is not uncommon in concrete just look at this path but the location and increased severity should have provoked a more worried response than retightening the diagonal supports in the hope of it fixing itself no one involved in the bridges assembly not florida international university mcm figg bridge engineers nor bolton pares and associates the consulting engineers took the responsibility for declaring that the cracks were beyond any level acceptability when discovered after casting in february disaster could have been averted even after the bridge was in situ by stopping and diverting traffic during the restressing of support 11 multiple opportunities to catch the poor design were missed by all involved and due to university taking the oversight of the construction florida state department of transport took a back seat and did not discover any of the safety issues the first of the legal cases were brought on march 19th 2018 against figg bridge engineers mcm bolton pares and associates the project's consulting engineer lewis berger and network engineering services for reckless negligence needless to say the case against the companies didn't go too well with such a damning ntsb reports and to add more evidence osha cited multiple contractors for safety violations on the 1st of march 2019 manila construction management the main contractor of the pedestrian bridge construction announced a chapter 11 bankruptcy petition plan of reorganization the company reached a settlement with the victims and their families in may 2019 the remnants of the bridges peers remained on the site as a gruesome reminder of the disaster and the risks to pedestrians continued with loads more near misses between cars and students reported the original problems still existed and as such a bridge is still needed on site the need will be started to be fulfilled as the remnants of the walkway were removed in september 2021 a replacement is pegged to be built by 2025 this time under the guidance of the florida department of transport and the ntsb playing difficult videos are produced by me john in a currently sunny but windy suburban southeastern corner of london uk all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share like license help the channel grow by liking commenting of subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of odds and sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching hello and welcome to a pilot of sorts of a new series it will delve into the history of some of the world's worst scandals some you may know and some you may not it's been inspired in part by an rte program called scannel although rather than focusing on events linked to ireland i plan to widen the scope of what i'll cover well without further delay let's get started it is the late 1950s and a woman is at a regular pregnancy checkup in a doctor's office in kilburn north west london she mentions to the doctor that she is experiencing morning sickness nothing unusual as this is quite an often complaint for a pregnant woman she has offered a drug that may help with her symptoms but for whatever reason she decides to turn it down this would turn out to be a very good decision the drug she was offered was called distable and would turn out to be a worldwide scandal that would burden the lives of many innocent young children used in the correct situation the drug can really change lives for the good but its name would become synonymous with sadness and pain it would forever be tied to what many contemporary news reports would dub the biggest man-made medical disaster in modern history the drug was also sold under a number of different names contigan tallidex phallomid or its better known name phalidomide welcome to scandal a new plainly difficult series it is the early 1950s and swiss company seba is working on a new tranquilizer for animals they were hoping to synthesize a drug less harmful than barbiturates during the research they synthesized phalidomide in 1953 but chemical industry basal seba quickly abandoned their creation due to it not yielding the preferred results in animals in 1954 and this in many cases would have been the end of the drug's legacy but a chance discovery would renew interest in the drug and its money making potential in the mid 1950s german company kemi grunen tau stumbled into the drug but i should first pause to talk about the company that would be the center of the future scandal here comes one of my side notes kemi grunen tau was a company with some pretty shady beginnings with high up members of its management and research team having in some cases a few million skeletons in the closet i'll be brief but i think you'll find this interesting nonetheless founded by herman vert senior a nazi party member and an advocate of racial hygiene and eugenics hardly a surprise now for a plainly difficult video well kemi grunen tau had set up in 1946 in the wake of world war two originally as a soap company but we're looking into various places for their revenue routes as part of this vert's put out the word for the need of scientists with experience in antiviral research well with the war over concentration camps closed and the doctor's trial being undertaken in nuremberg prosecuting the leaders of the human experimentation programs there were a few unemployed and most importantly unimprisoned nazi scientists kicking around well vert saw this as an opportunity at gaining some valuable scientific experience for his fledgling company he hired a handful of scientists who had committed multiple crimes on many poor concentration camp inmates his new team would be headed by 32 year old dr heinrich mukta who was the director of the krakow institute for typhus and virus research during the nazi occupation he had experimented on prisoners in berkenwald concentration camp against their will mukta narrowly avoided justice from a polish war crimes court by fleeing back to germany and into the open arms of vert's and a position of head of research in his new company as a side note to the side note vert's also took on otto ambrose as an advisor after he had come out of prison he was serving an eight year sentence but released after four for crimes against humanity for his work at ig farben developing poisonous gases which he had also been testing on forced labor camp inmates his work also helped bring around another infamous product zyklon b kemi grunantal had a fascist stream team of nazi scientists vert's put them to work and this leads us back to the 1950s thalidomide was rediscovered as a byproduct during research into glutamic acid with this new substance the company patterned it in 1954 and they set about finding a use for it it was found by scientists that kemi that thalidomide did work as a sensitive on humans brilliant something to sell it was found that thalidomide produces deep sleep without hangover or risk of dependency before it could be brought to market the drug was tested on rodents and much to the joy of the zig hiling scientists no lethal dose could be discovered and in 1956 it was introduced under the name contragan and sales began in october 1957 initially it was marketed to epilepsy sufferers but the market was pretty small time to expand it was discovered that the drug also had the benefits of being an effective and thematic that is a substance that can reduce or stop nausea and vomiting something that pregnant women can experience known as morning sickness although pregnant women became the target for contraganic marketing tests on the effects of the drug on unborn life were not undertaken although seemingly a terrible decision today in the 1950s it was not even considered for many medications this was due to the conventional knowledge at the time thinking that anything taken by pregnant women couldn't pass across the placental barrier towards the end of the 1950s contragan was one of the best selling sedatives in germany it was relatively cheap and accessible without a prescription but the product wouldn't be confined to just germany under license thalidomide was produced internationally and sold across the world 14 pharmaceutical companies would sell the product in 46 countries under 37 different product names in the uk british pharmaceutical company the distillers company biochemicals limited were producing and selling the drug to customers across the uk new zealand and australia under the name destable aimed at mothers with its license being granted in 1958 it was even advertised using the following in its marketing destable can be given with complete safety to pregnant women and nursing mothers without adverse effect on the mother or child questionable to say the least on top of this in some markets it was touted as a cure all medication again the hallmark of less than trustable advertising somewhat reminiscent of the quackery of magic tonics of the last couple of centuries with the money rolling in to groon and tile the company must have been loving the financial boom by the end of the 1950s roughly 14 tons were being sold per year there had been rumors amongst medical communities in the countries for midi hide have been sold that a number of people had started to develop peripheral neuritis and were still a spike in miscarriages still births and children born with birth defects were starting to be seen the issues with patients experiencing nerve issues made groon and tile start to place inserts into its medication boxes with the following warning of side effects including prickling and a sensation of numbness in hands or feet in 1960 but the link between drug and birth deformities proved a tough issue in 1961 reluctantly groon and tile applied to make thalidomide prescription only but the downfall of the profitable drug was only just beginning groon and tile had heard complaints from several sources of the drug causing issues in newborns and adults alike initially just batted off as rare allergy cause reactions publicly privately the company set out to investigate not the health links but to put complainants under surveillance it's arguable if it was a type of surveillance that made it obvious whether you're being watched or not but pressurizing and discrediting victims was the ultimate goal Dr. Wooducund Lenz in West Germany in November 1961 had started to suspect the issues with thalidomide and birth defects I should also note here that Lenz was also an ex-Nazi party member and part of the SA his concern led him to investigate a link between the two and he found that as early as 1956 that a child had been born with deformities likely caused by the drug with this ongoing concern and mounting evidence Lenz contacted groon and tile and warned them of his findings on the 16th of November 1961 after 10 days of arguing the points reluctantly groon and tile withdrew the drug on November 21st but Lenz wouldn't be the only concern and this time it would come from well outside of Germany's borders it's late 1961 and an Australian midwife sister Pat Sparrow was starting to notice a worrying trend with children born with limb defects she has seen birth defects before but not in such numbers this worrying trend has started after a Dr. William McBride had started prescribing thalidomide to mothers at the Crown Street Hospital in Sydney Sparrow put her concerns to Dr. McBride but initially saw no concern from the doctor but not long after the concern led McBride to reevaluate his thoughts on the new wonder drug in doing so he wrote a letter to the Lancet a weekly peer reviewed general medical journal the short letter asks if anyone else in the medical community had seen a sudden increase in birth deformities the letter helped inform the wider medical community of the drugs damaging effects to unborn children and in Australia New Zealand and the UK thalidomide was removed from sale in 1961 even though taken off the shelves scientists had to find what the actual link was Lenz would not be the only one Dr. George Summers chief pharmacologist at Distilla's company the organisation responsible for UK distribution of the drug started testing repeated experiments showed the damage that the drug could inflict but rather cruelly it would only damage the fetus in a very short window during early pregnancy of just 42 days it was found that the earlier the mother took the drug into pregnancy the more drastic the birth deformities if taken from the 20th day of pregnancy central brain damage would be caused day 21 would damage the eyes day 22 the years and face day 24 the arms and leg damage would occur if taken up to day 28 although we may never know the exact numbers estimates are around 10,000 children born with various health issues one thing we'll never know is the countless miscarriages and stillbirths caused by flamida hide usage even after 1961 and it's withdrawal from many countries it was still marketed in Canada until 1962 and Spain all the way into the 1970s but one country that usually appears in my videos is missing and this thankfully is down to one person can you guess the country medical reviewer for the US FDA Francis Cafflin Oldham Kelsey had valedomide come across her desk in 1960 pretty late in the game and because of its rumors about the drug from Europe had made their way to America she refused to authorize the drug in lieu of further studies into reported cases or peripheral neuritis in addition she requested proof that the drug wouldn't cause damage to any unborn foetuses even under pressure from Richardson Merrill the pharmaceutical company looking at licensing the drug in the USA and manufacturer Grunentale Kelsey refused the license unless the appropriate test had been undertaken unsurprisingly the drug companies were not too happy about being made to pay out for extra testing and they didn't which doesn't inspire confidence in the product they were trying to sell but we'll come to the reasons why shortly her failing to crumble under the pressure saved thousands of children from developing health issues as such in 1962 Kelsey was awarded the President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service by John F Kennedy on the 7th of August although not officially sold valedomide did cause some birth defects in the USA these were mainly caused in clinical testing in roughly 20,000 people of which around 17 would be born with defects scarily though around 2.5 million tablets made their way into the US all throughout the discovery of valedomide's horrific side effects Grunentale vehemently denied liability the company was first made aware of complications from pregnancy when valedomide was involved as early as 1956 when one of its own employees gave birth to a child suffering from birth deformities the company actively ignored multiple warning signs hiding behind the fact it had conducted the relevant tests and industry standard tests on rodents but this is just a convenient way to shirk the responsibility if they were just following the standards of the day how did the FDA find so many holes in the evidence given to it for the safety of valedomide grunentale's lack of enthusiasm for further testing requested by the FDA tells us all we need to know and that is they too knew of the dangers and a published study would have removed any plausible deniability hence why so much pressure was put onto Kelsey even dr. Lenz mentioned in his 1992 lecture to the un ith congress kemi grunentale continued to deny pterotogenic effects of valedomide for years but there was a growing suspicion that this was not due to honest ignorance but to the purpose of weakening the accusations against the firm although mostly off the shelves by 1962 the story didn't end there as the german authorities couldn't ignore so many dead and injured children and this would lead to the 1968 grunentale trial at the first grand criminal chamber of the regional court of arken the trial of the worst human tragedy in human history since the holocaust began on the 27th of may 1968 and it was the culmination of six years of investigations grunentale was less than helpful to say the least requiring the police to raid the company's vault several times the company had asserted the deformities of the thousands of children affected were merely an act of god grunentale meant business showing up to court with a team of nearly 40 lawyers nine senior company staff members were indicted 451 coplanetiffs and 351 witnesses were against them the prosecution had over 70 000 pages of evidence herman verts one of the eldest accused in his 70s was allowed to not attend court due to health issues don't forget that point the main tactic on display for the formidable defense team was stall stall stall waste time delay and even threatened multiple times to walk out lenses 11 hours over four days of testimony was attacked by the defense for 11 full days only for it to be thrown out of court a year and two months later into the trial due to an apparent bias of lens against grunentale i think you might be able to see the bias towards the large pharmaceutical company instead with so much delaying and slowing down of proceedings many feared the trial would eat considerably into the 1970s but abruptly just two years and six months later in december 1970 the trial would end you may be thinking surely this is due to the overwhelming weight of legal and moral strain led to a guilty plea from a sudden change of heart of the accused or maybe some magic golden bullet of evidence so impossible to rebut became available into the trial or even the link between birth defects and philidomide wasn't so strong as originally thought well actually none of these the state and prosecution just decided it wouldn't be in the public interest to continue the nine men were set free and made immune from further prosecution and even more repulsive two thousand five hundred and fifty four of the most affected german families were slapped with a gagging order all of this was linked to one thing grunentale had offered to put their hands in their pocket but only on their very favorable terms no admission of guilt and everyone has to shut up about it this deal was brokered in secret between grunentale's founder herman vert's you know the ex-nazi and supposedly too old and ill to attend court and the german ministry of health without the knowledge of the victims or the wider public but the conflict of interests in this scandal goes even deeper dr. joseph newburger the minister of justice had previously worked with words when his law firm newburger pic and grievance had been contracted by the pharmaceutical company in 1966 newburger had tried at every corner to hinder the prosecution's case the price grunentale offered to make it all go away under the guise of concern for the affected families was a hundred million deutschmarks not directly paid outmined but to a fund to find the best use for the money a slap in the face might have been a better payment to the families it would work out roughly ten percent the figure claimed by the victims which was around 40 000 marks per child around 22 000 for a lifetime of suffering it wouldn't be paid out all at once though instead a poultry lump sum would be followed by a monthly stipend as a result the financial burden fell squarely at the feet of the state the compensation story would be similar in other countries with victims in the uk for example reaching a settlement with distillers biochemical limited in 1968 the scandal would not only scar a generation but so much deeper distrust between pregnant women and the medical community even in the current day olidomide is mentioned when the question came up of covid vaccination during pregnancy needless to say the damage caused by the drug has traumatized society the drug would never fall out of use though in 1964 it was discovered in israel to have benefits in leprosy treatment from 1965 the drug was used as the first choice of leprosy in brazil but the olidomide story doesn't even end here it would go on to actually find some use in the treatment of certain cancers such as multiple meloma after a clinical trial in 1999 the fda this time around would license the drug but only under strict circumstances an apology from the company wouldn't arrive until 2012 which to many victims felt was an insult especially as by then the german government had picked up most of gruden tolls stipend payments to victims now i hope you enjoyed this new type of video let me know if you liked it in the comments below this is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed plain different videos are produced by me john in the currently wet and miserable southeast in corner of london uk help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odds and sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well so check them out to be fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching it is the 15th of october 1958 and a little known nuclear disaster is about to unfold in vincia yugoslavia republic modern-day syria in its wake one would be dead and four would be seriously injured although largely forgotten now in its aftermath an uncharacteristic cooperation agreement between east and west will result in several medical and nuclear research first the desire to explore the radiological consequences of the accident resulted in french british and yugoslav cooperation the results would benefit all sides of the political spectrum and prove the usefulness of a budding international nuclear organization my name is john and this is a brief history of the vincia reactor excursion and dosimetry experiment our story starts in the late 1940s and the establishment of the vincia institute of nuclear sciences yugoslavia had become a communist country in 1946 after the country had been liberated at the end of world war two and after the abolishment of its monarchy in november 1945 in its early years yugoslavia was tentatively aligned with the ussr and it was amongst this background that the vincia institute was formed politically the country would start to become more independent from the soviet union in 1948 with the tito starlin split needless to say this brought the fear of w