It was August 13, 1945, and the demon core was about to be unleashed onto a stunned Japan.
'Little Boy' and 'Fat Man' had exploded within a week of each other.
The first and only nuclear bombs used in warfare claimed as many as 200,000 lives and if things had turned out differently, a third strike would have followed.
History had other plans.
Japan surrendered on August 15th after Emperor Hirohito conceded to the demands of the Allies.
A recreation of an accident. There is a national laboratory in Los Alamos.
For scientists at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, this was the first time the Japanese public had ever heard one of their emperors' voices, but it was more important than that.
The third atom bomb they'd been working on wouldn't be needed for the war effort after all.
The plutonium core would have been fitted into a second Fat Man assembly and exploded over a Japanese city four days later if the conflict had continued.
The fate gave those souls a reprieve and the Los Alamos device would be retained for further testing.
The leftover nuke became known as the demon core because of the tests that took place.
Daghlian had a burned hand. There is a national laboratory in Los Alamos.
Less than a week after Japan's surrender and two days after the cancellation of the demon core's bombing run, there were two accidents.
The demon core was stranded at Los Alamos and still had an opportunity to kill.
The Los Alamos scientists knew the risks of conducting criticality experiments with plutonium, a point at which a nuclear chain reaction would unleash a blast of deadly radiation.
The Los Alamos Lab was a part of the Manhattan Project, where scientists found a way to find out how far you could go before a dangerous reaction occurred.
They had an informal nickname for the high-risk experiments, which indicated the dangers of what they did. They called ittickling the dragon's tail because they knew they would be burned if they roused the dragon.
Louis Slotin was one of the first people to build a nuclear bomb.
That's what happened to Daghlian.
Daghlian went back to the lab after dinner to tickle the dragon's tail alone, which was a violation of safety protocols.
As Daghlian worked, he surrounded the plutonium sphere with bricks that reflected the plutonium that was shed by the core back at it.
The plutonium was about to go supercritical if Daghlian put more of it around the core.
He accidentally dropped one of the bricks onto the top of the sphere, causing supercriticality and generating a wave of heat.
A recreation of an accident. There is a national laboratory in Los Alamos.
Daghlian felt a sensation in his hand after removing the brick.
It wasn't too late.
He had received a fatal dose of radiation. He was in a coma after weeks of nausea and pain from his burned hand.
The man died 25 days after the accident. A security guard got a dose of radiation.
The demon core was still being worked on.
Changes made to safety procedures after Daghlian's death weren't enough to prevent another accident.
A recreation of an accident. There is a national laboratory in Los Alamos.
One of Daghlian's colleagues, physicist Louis Slotin, demonstrated a criticality experiment on May 21, 1946, in which a dome was lowered over the core.
The dome reflected the neutrons back at the core and pushed it towards criticality. Slotin was careful to make sure the dome didn't completely cover the core, using a screwdriver to make sure there was a small gap.
The method did not work until it did not.
The demon core was completely covered by the dome after the screwdriver slipped and it fell.
Raemer was in the room when the demon core went supercritical for the second time in a year and he saw a blue flash as the dome dropped.
There is a diagram of the accident. There is a national laboratory in Los Alamos.
The blue flash was visible in the room even though it was well illuminated from the windows and overhead lights.
A few tenths of a second is how long the flash could have been. Slotin immediately flipped the piece off.
The damage was already done when Slotin made a fatal mistake.
He, and seven others in the room, including a photographer and a security guard, were all exposed to a burst of radiation, although Slotin was the only one to die.
After an initial bout of nausea and vomiting, he at first seemed to recover in hospital, but within days was losing weight, and showing signs of mental confusion.
There is an operation called "crossroads". The Department of Defence of the United States.
His condition was described in a press release as three-dimensional sunburn.
He was gone after nine days.
Real changes were made at Los Alamos after the two fatal accidents.
Scientists were forced to use remote control machinery to manipulate radioactive cores at a distance due to new protocols.
The plutonium core was no longer called 'Rufus'. The demon core was the name from then on.
The leftover nuke's time was up after everything.
The first post-war nuclear explosion demonstrations were put off because of the Slotin accident.
plutonium was melted down and reintegrated into the US nuclear arsenal to be used in other cores as needed. The demon core was denied detonation twice.
If the demon core had been used in a third nuclear attack against Japan, it would be easy to understand why the scientists named it.
There are strange details in the background of the story.
On the 21st day of the month, Daghlian and Slotin passed away in the same hospital room, despite the fact that both accidents took place on the same day.
It's just coincidences. The demon core was not demonic. Humans rushed to make these terrible weapons in the first place if there is an evil presence here.
The real horror, besides the horrible effects of radiation poisoning, is how spectacularly mid–20th century scientists failed to protect themselves from the extreme dangers they were toying with.
Slotin's first words were simple and he already resigned.
He was comforting Daghlian in the hospital and knew what was to come.
He said that it did it.
There is a version of this post that was published last year.
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