00:00At Los Alamos in 1945, scientists called it the Demon Core, a softball-sized sphere of plutonium.
00:06Weapons grade. Deadly beyond imagination, it killed twice. First victim, Harry Daglian.
00:12August 21st. He was stacking tungsten blocks around the core when one slipped.
00:17The core went critical for a split second. Harry absorbed a lethal dose of radiation instantly.
00:22He died 25 days later, in agony. Eight months later, Louis Slotin was showing the core to
00:27colleagues. He used a screwdriver to separate two metal hemispheres around the plutonium.
00:32One tiny slip. The screwdriver slipped. The hemispheres closed. Critical again. Slotin threw
00:38the pieces apart with his bare hands, saving everyone else in the room. He died nine days later.
00:43His body destroyed from the inside out. These weren't freak accidents. This was daily life for
00:48atomic scientists. Racing to build the bomb with tools from a garage. Working inches from instant
00:53death. Every single day. The demon core was melted down after Slotin died. But the horror of those
00:59early nuclear days lives on.
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