Did You Know? 🌀 General Electric Made Nukes!
Toasters, hairdryers, blenders, ovens, or... Tactical Nuclear Weapons?!
It's pretty much a sure thing that you either used to, currently, or will own at least one General Electric product...
(Source for Hiroshima detonation left, Nagasaki right.)
It made sense for GE to be manufacturing nuclear weapons. They were involved in the nuclear industry since the days of the Manhattan Project, participating in the development of the first atomic bombs and nuclear reactors, and eventually submarines, and carriers. They still build and work with reactors all over the world. (Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan is one recently made-famous example.)
Two and a half decades ago, General Electric was earning billion of dollars, as their nuclear weapons sales made up 11% of their total revenue. No other corporations were as involved in the production and promotion of Nukes as was GE. Learn from one of the organizers, about the protesting and P.R. campaigns in the early '90s, which eventually lead to them shutting down their nuclear weapons business. (They still do ok $$$...)
Still cool with MiniGuns though, so here's a meme!^^
(Modified from Source 1, Source 2)
They sold 10,000 of these for the war in Vietnam alone. Click to learn about the M134 Minigun.
Just for fun! Here's a related two minute TV Fun House cartoon, which supposedly only aired once on Saturday Night Live...
This post has been ranked within the top 50 most undervalued posts in the first half of Jan 18. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $4.78 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.
See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Jan 18 - Part I. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in our initial post.
If you are the author and would prefer not to receive these comments, simply reply "Stop" to this comment.
Wow... I didn't know they were involved that far ^^
They turn on lights in more ways than one...^^
Good post! I did know about the Vulcan Minigun (We called it Puff the Magic Dragon in Nam...It was 3 of them in a C-130) I met Hank Ketchum who did the Dennis the Menace cartoons in Phoenix. He was waiting for his girlfriend and we talked for a while. He told me his son was one of the designers of the Vulcan and also that there were other weapons he couldn't go into detail about...wonder if it was this???
Thanks!
Yah, I'm sure this thing must have smoked, deserving the title you guys gave it or others like it in the war. 6000 rpm, craziness. They also make anti-aircraft versions, whatever that means, that he could have worked on...
They come in different calibers. The one shown in your pic is the M-134 it fires 7.62 Nato rounds. Puff would cover an area the size of a football field with a round every 4 sq.in. in 3 seconds. The anti-aircraft/anti-tank are either 30 or 40 mm. I watched a video of a 30mm on the front of an A-10 Thunderbolt make a tank glow red it got hit so much! The larger ones don't have the 3000/6000 rpm option, it's something a bit less...but still awesome!
Wow!
Kaboom...
I knew that made Nuclear power, and many other things, but was not aware of the bombs!
From blenders to bombs!
what did you know. sometimes a very harmless company can make a very big shocking whatever.