What was Operation Plowshare?

# Summary

This Stuff You Should Know episode dives into Operation Plowshare, a wild Cold War-era program where the U.S. government seriously considered using nuclear weapons for civilian engineering projects like building harbors, carving canals, and moving mountains. Born out of the 1956 Suez Crisis and inspired by the idea of beating swords into plowshares, the program conducted 27 experiments across 12 years, moving millions of tons of earth and creating America's largest manmade crater in Nevada—but ultimately failed because it was expensive, environmentally catastrophic, and there were cheaper ways to accomplish the same goals. The hosts explore the increasingly absurd proposed projects, the public backlash over radioactive fallout, and how even Edward Teller's optimistic Popular Mechanics articles couldn't convince people that nuking Alaska for a new harbor was actually a good idea.