Cakra, Destroyer Of Planets: Did Ancient Nuclear Technology Exist?
Nuclear power has caused some serious disasters throughout the world. Is it a modern phenomenon, or is there evidence of its existence in the ancient world? The worst nuclear disaster in the United States occurred in Rhode Island at Wood River Junction in Richmond in 1964 when a production operator at United Nuclear Corporation’s Fuels Recovery Plant poured a concentrated uranium solution into a tank containing a sodium carbonate solution. He died shortly after. In 1957 a radioactive contamination accident occurred at the plutonium production center Mayak in Chelyabinsk-40 (now known as Ozyorsk), where nuclear weapons were made.
"Chernobyl. Last day of Pripyat" (April 26, 1986) by Alexey Akindinov (CC BY-SA 4.0)
In 1986, the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl exploded, and five percent of the radioactive reactor core was released into the environment and ended up contaminating various European countries. Approximately 335,000 people were evacuated. Many died, and cancer spread. Recently, in 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Okuma, Fukushima, Japan was rocked by an earthquake and tsunami. The active reactors shut down and the emergency generators failed, leading to three nuclear meltdowns and three hydrogen explosions. Approximately 154,000 people were evacuated from the plant and surrounding area and many died. Obviously, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were targeted with nuclear bombs, killing 40,000 people instantaneously in Nagasaki and 80,000 instantly in Hiroshima, though countless others died in subsequent days.
Destroyer Of Worlds
Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) was a theoretical physicist and the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory during the Manhattan Project, in which the first modern atomic bombs were developed and tested. He is called the ‘father of the atomic bomb’, but while he was a student at Harvard University, he also studied ancient historical accounts and ancient languages, including Sanskrit, and he read the Bhagavad Gita, the Mahabharata, and other Indian ancient texts. He often quoted ancient verses when talking about physics and nuclear power in particular, and when he first created the atomic bomb and witnessed its explosion, he quoted the Bhagavad Gita, exclaiming, “I have become the Destroyer of Worlds.” Years later, during a classroom lecture, one of his students asked if the atomic test at Alamogordo was the first nuclear blast in history. Oppenheimer responded, “Yes, in modern times,” indicating he perhaps believed that nuclear reactions, both natural and artificial, might have occurred in antiquity. Is this possible?
Nuclear reactor site, Oklo, Gabon Republic. (NASA)
Ancient Nuclear Energy
The standard historical view of nuclear reactors holds that the first one known to produce electricity was created in 1951, and it did not produce much, however, there is a nuclear reactor more than two billion years old in Okla, Gabon, but it is naturally created: a mass of radioactive uranium responsible for nuclear reactions, which was first discovered in 1972. It contains uranium 238, 234, and 235; the last of which can sustain nuclear chain reactions, but it was found that approximately 440 pounds of uranium 235 was missing, and an investigation determined that nuclear fission had occurred and it split into other atoms, so an ancient, naturally formed nuclear reactor exists. Nuclear energy was not unknown to the ancient world. But is it possible that someone created nuclear weapons in the ancient world? Some believe that this is the case, and there are some ancient Indian texts that seem to support this possibility.
The five Pandava princes- heroes of the epic Mahabharata - with their shared wife-in-common named Draupadi. (Public Domain)
Mahabharata War
Supposedly, during the Mahabharata War in which more than a billion soldiers allegedly died within a short span, weapons of mass destruction (nuclear weapons) were used. In approximately 5000 BC (during the Dvapara Yuga in the traditional Indian cyclical description of time, which lasted for 864,000 normal years or 2,400 divine years) a battle broke out between the Kauravas and the Pandavas, Kaurava referring to Kuru’s descendants. (Kuru, the legendary ancestor to many individuals in the Mahabharata, one of the ancient epics written in Sanskrit, was supposedly an Indian king.) Pandava referred to the descendants of King Pandu and his wife Kunti, though much of the Mahabharata involves deities and magical, divine mantras: sacred sounds or expressions that supposedly can be used to impart magical powers to those who utter them (much like the concept of kotodama that is found in Japanese Shinto and similar concepts found in Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism). Therefore, the text might not be historical at all, though contrarily, it might have accurate historical information that was embellished with legendary stories, as many ancient texts do.
