How do people overseas feel about the 'Demon Core' that caused a tragic accident becoming a meme in Japan?



The '

Demon Core ' is a research-use plutonium lump that was converted from a nuclear weapon that was planned to be dropped on Japan, and is known for dangerous criticality experiments that are performed manually by operating a screwdriver. An article has been published that examines the fact that the Demon Core, a kind of 'insensitive joke' related to a fatal accident, has been spread as an Internet meme mainly in Japan, the only country to have suffered an atomic bomb.

The meme-ification of the 'Demon Core'
https://doomsdaymachines.net/p/the-meme-ification-of-the-demon-core

Of the fatal accidents caused by the Demon Core, the most famous was the second accident that occurred on May 21, 1946. On that day, Canadian physicist Louis Slotin was operating the Demon Core in a room at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, but he was only demonstrating how to take measurements, not actually conducting an actual experiment.

Slotin was due to leave the lab as part of the team conducting the first post-war nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll, and he needed to teach the procedures to the scientists who would take over while he was away.


By

Wayne Hsieh

During this dangerous experiment, described as 'like tickling a dragon's tail', Slotin lost his hand and was exposed to a lethal dose of radiation from the plutonium going critical. He died of radiation poisoning nine days after the accident.

It is said that this accident was the reason why the plutonium lump that Slotin named 'Rufus' came to be called the 'Devil's Core,' or Demon Core.

And what prompted Doomsday Machines, a doomsday-themed newsletter, to write about Demon Cores was the following Japanese meme they came across in 2019:



This

T-shirt , with its Demon Core motif, has been a hot topic in Japan.



I fell in love with this T-shirt at first sight because it was so cute, but then I found out what it meant and was shocked. 'A pale blue light...' 'It's not I LOVE SCIENCE...' - Togetter
https://togetter.com/li/2160000



Doomsday Machines writer Alex Wellerstein recalled his impression of seeing the Demon Core T-shirts for sale online: 'I was pretty surprised at the time, because you have to know the full story of Slotin's experiment to realise that this little kawaii image and the phrase 'I LOVE SCIENCE' are a kind of black humor, so in that sense it was a joke only known to those in the know.'

When Wellerstein looked into the spread of the topic of Demon Core on

Google Trends , he found that Demon Core had become explosively popular in the United States since around 2019.

Below is a graph showing the trends of 'Demon Core (blue)' and 'Slowtin (red)' along with the reference ' NUKEMAP (yellow)'.



In the 2020s, the Demon Core internet meme spread widely, and in 2021 a dedicated page was created on the meme aggregation site Know Your Meme.

According to Know Your Meme, one of the earliest works combining demon cores with cute girl illustrations was posted on April 4, 2018. A similar illustration was posted on April 18.



Since then, various anime and manga characters, even Godzilla , have been depicted with Demon Cores.



Wellerstein analyzed the spread of Demon Core, saying, 'It seems like a classic case of 'humor born of unexpected juxtapositions.' Slotin was a young man, and the accident was caused by the kind of risky bravado that anyone who has spent time around or with young men knows. So it's pretty unexpected that a cute Japanese girl would be engaging in this very masculine experiment, which probably doubly resonates with the 'nerd boys' who are both the primary senders and recipients of this meme.'

In contrast to the cute parody illustrations, the real accidents caused by the Demon Core were extremely horrific, and the medical records of victims whose bodies collapsed while still alive contain shocking descriptions. Although the accidents were caused by Slotin's ambition and carelessness, Wellerstein emphasized that this did not mean that Slotin was a person who deserved to die in pain and not deserve sympathy.

How did the scientist who was exposed to the 'Demon Core' die? - GIGAZINE



Another thing that complicates the Demon Core meme, in addition to being somewhat distasteful, is that it places Japan at the epicenter of the trend. The Demon Core was the third plutonium core after those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and would have undoubtedly been dropped somewhere in Japan if Japan's surrender had been delayed. It is not difficult to imagine how many more civilians, including children, women, and the elderly, would have lost their lives in the atomic bomb or suffered the same pain as Slotin.

'If anyone has the right to make inappropriate jokes at Demon Core, it might be the Japanese,' Wellerstein said. 'Americans have been making similar jokes ever since they detonated the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This wasn't just a passing wartime sentiment, but continued even after the suffering of the Japanese victims became widely known and Japan became a key ally of the United States.'

For example, one comedian appearing on an American television program mentioned that the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2024 and said, 'For the survivors of the atomic bombing, the news of this award must have been the second biggest surprise of their lives,' drawing laughter from the audience.


In closing, Wellerstein said, 'I don't intend to be the 'humor police' or lecture you about demon core being a 'no-go zone' for comedy or that it's too early. Black humor is a strange and perverse way of dealing with the darkness, of taming fear. The atomic bomb has often been the subject of this mechanism, as in the comedy film ' Dr. Strangelove .''

GIGAZINE featured the Demon Core in 2011.

Subcritical mass of plutonium 'Demon Core' - GIGAZINE

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in Science, Posted by log1l_ks