Does Bond's Goldfinger math check out?

chrisisall

JWESTBROOK wrote:

To summarize, the only stable forms of gold have a radioactive "half life" of a few days, meaning they would be down to safe levels of radiation for protected human handling within a week of Goldfinger releasing the radiation. And his plan was never to explode the bomb, just irradiate the gold. Even if he did explode the bomb, the radiation emitted couldn't form the unstable isotope of gold anyway. Science.

Science, BAH! Radioactivity is like global warming; if I can't SEE it, it's just fantasy.

Seriously, still a great plot because it doesn't matter if the science/math is correct or not- Goldfinger believed it to be true.

sirseanisbond

The feasibility of Goldfinger's plan does not have to do with the radioactivity of gold. What I think seems to be overlooked here is that the plan is not just to irradiate the gold but to blow up the whole depository with a nuclear bomb! Upon detonation, most of the gold, along with the rest of the depository would simply be vaporized. If any gold did manage to survive the blast, it would be dispersed across a vast area in very small amounts, which would make recovery very difficult. The main point of Goldfinger's plan is to make the gold in Fort Knox useless so that his gold increases in value, and using a nuclear bomb to distort the gold is just as good a plan as making it radioactive. His plan would have worked either way.

JWESTBROOK

sirseanisbond wrote:

The feasibility of Goldfinger's plan does not have to do with the radioactivity of gold. What I think seems to be overlooked here is that the plan is not just to irradiate the gold but to blow up the whole depository with a nuclear bomb! Upon detonation, most of the gold, along with the rest of the depository would simply be vaporized. If any gold did manage to survive the blast, it would be dispersed across a vast area in very small amounts, which would make recovery very difficult. The main point of Goldfinger's plan is to make the gold in Fort Knox useless so that his gold increases in value, and using a nuclear bomb to distort the gold is just as good a plan as making it radioactive. His plan would have worked either way.

Oh really.

Benny wrote:

As always Mi6 has the answers.
;)
http://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/articles/villains_goldfinger.php3?t=gf&s=gf&id=0261


The damage created by an atomic bomb is a combination of the initial blast and the resulting radiation. Unlike most villains who have had their hands on "small nuclear devices", Goldfinger did not plan to blow anything up, instead using the "dirty" effect of irradiating the gold.

sirseanisbond

JWESTBROOK wrote:

sirseanisbond wrote:

The feasibility of Goldfinger's plan does not have to do with the radioactivity of gold. What I think seems to be overlooked here is that the plan is not just to irradiate the gold but to blow up the whole depository with a nuclear bomb! Upon detonation, most of the gold, along with the rest of the depository would simply be vaporized. If any gold did manage to survive the blast, it would be dispersed across a vast area in very small amounts, which would make recovery very difficult. The main point of Goldfinger's plan is to make the gold in Fort Knox useless so that his gold increases in value, and using a nuclear bomb to distort the gold is just as good a plan as making it radioactive. His plan would have worked either way.

Oh really.

Benny wrote:

As always Mi6 has the answers.
;)
http://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/articles/villains_goldfinger.php3?t=gf&s=gf&id=0261


The damage created by an atomic bomb is a combination of the initial blast and the resulting radiation. Unlike most villains who have had their hands on "small nuclear devices", Goldfinger did not plan to blow anything up, instead using the "dirty" effect of irradiating the gold.

Well short answer, the writers were too clever for there own good, making the story more complicated than it had to be. If Goldfinger could have got a dirty bomb into America, he could have got a full fledged atom bomb in too, and that's what he should have used. The real Auric Goldfinger wouldn't have devoted 18 years of his life so something without checking to see if gold remained radioactive fore more than a few weeks. Besides, 'small nuclear device' can cover all matter of sins.

0BradyM0Bondfanatic7

JWESTBROOK wrote:

sirseanisbond wrote:

The feasibility of Goldfinger's plan does not have to do with the radioactivity of gold. What I think seems to be overlooked here is that the plan is not just to irradiate the gold but to blow up the whole depository with a nuclear bomb! Upon detonation, most of the gold, along with the rest of the depository would simply be vaporized. If any gold did manage to survive the blast, it would be dispersed across a vast area in very small amounts, which would make recovery very difficult. The main point of Goldfinger's plan is to make the gold in Fort Knox useless so that his gold increases in value, and using a nuclear bomb to distort the gold is just as good a plan as making it radioactive. His plan would have worked either way.

Oh really.

I don't agree with that either, considering that the dirty bomb wouldn't do the kind of damage a huge nuclear blast would and Goldfinger and his people would never make it out of there alive unless they got a major, major, major head start before the detonation of the nuclear bomb which they didn't have anyway. I don't follow that logic in the slightest, and Goldfinger himself never once mentions destroying the gold in his plans. He even calls Fort Knox his bank, which would be meaningless if he blew it sky high. It makes the plan more evil if he irradiates the gold and leaves it in Fort Knox to tease the American government who still have it in their possession but now can't even use it because of the radiation. A big tease, if you will.

Thunderfinger

JWESTBROOK wrote:

Thunderfinger wrote:

Very interesting, @Benny. Now it also depends on which isotope of gold we are talking about, as they have different characteristics. No idea what gold isotope was stored in Fort Knox.

It seems you must have.. um.. forgotten my previous post:

JWESTBROOK wrote:

"Gold has only one stable isotope, so all natural gold has an atomic weight of about 197 (called Au-197), and this isotope has a reasonably high neutron activation cross-section. So exploding a nuclear weapon would probably lead to a lot of radioactive gold. However, there is only one isotope of gold that has a half-life of more than a few days (Au-195, 186 days), and it is impossible to produce this isotope by neutron irradiation. So any radioactive gold would lose its induced radioactivity within a month or so."

To summarize, the only stable forms of gold have a radioactive "half life" of a few days, meaning they would be down to safe levels of radiation for protected human handling within a week of Goldfinger releasing the radiation. And his plan was never to explode the bomb, just irradiate the gold. Even if he did explode the bomb, the radiation emitted couldn't form the unstable isotope of gold anyway. Science.

So Goldfinger wouldn't keep the gold irradiated long enough for his gold's value to rise very much.

BUT the concrete and metals surrounding the gold in the structure of the building would be very radioactive for decades. The US government would have to send in a huge 'suicide squad' to retrieve the gold, and even then they probably wouldn't make it very far without waiting a few decades.

Yes,sorry for missing that. I posted something similar on another thread earlier, but without the technical details, (which I had read, but could not remember accurately.) Thanks for digging that up.

sirseanisbond

0BradyM0Bondfanatic7 wrote:

JWESTBROOK wrote:

sirseanisbond wrote:

The feasibility of Goldfinger's plan does not have to do with the radioactivity of gold. What I think seems to be overlooked here is that the plan is not just to irradiate the gold but to blow up the whole depository with a nuclear bomb! Upon detonation, most of the gold, along with the rest of the depository would simply be vaporized. If any gold did manage to survive the blast, it would be dispersed across a vast area in very small amounts, which would make recovery very difficult. The main point of Goldfinger's plan is to make the gold in Fort Knox useless so that his gold increases in value, and using a nuclear bomb to distort the gold is just as good a plan as making it radioactive. His plan would have worked either way.

Oh really.

I don't agree with that either, considering that the dirty bomb wouldn't do the kind of damage a huge nuclear blast would and Goldfinger and his people would never make it out of there alive unless they got a major, major, major head start before the detonation of the nuclear bomb which they didn't have anyway. I don't follow that logic in the slightest, and Goldfinger himself never once mentions destroying the gold in his plans. He even calls Fort Knox his bank, which would be meaningless if he blew it sky high. It makes the plan more evil if he irradiates the gold and leaves it in Fort Knox to tease the American government who still have it in their possession but now can't even use it because of the radiation. A big tease, if you will.

I like to think that Goldfinger was playing everyone who was involved with operation 'Grand Slam' so that he was the only one who ever actually benefited. First he lied about the nerve gas being sleeping gas so that he could kill the American gangsters, then perhaps he lied to his army of Korean soldiers about the bomb being a dirty one so they would think they could get away, when in fact it would be a full-fledged atom bomb that would kill all of them and erase all possible evidence of his involvement. Just he and Pussy would get away in the helicopter, and after she helped him escape he'd probably kill her too so that no one could ever testify to his involvement in the events at Ft. Knox. Goldfinger would be a prime suspect because he had so much to gain from it, and had a residence in Kentucky from which he could launch such an operation. He'd need an alibi and that would start with cleaning up loose ends, and nothing does that better than killing off everyone you worked with in an evidence distorting nuclear explosion.

0BradyM0Bondfanatic7

sirseanisbond wrote:

0BradyM0Bondfanatic7 wrote:

JWESTBROOK wrote:

sirseanisbond wrote:

The feasibility of Goldfinger's plan does not have to do with the radioactivity of gold. What I think seems to be overlooked here is that the plan is not just to irradiate the gold but to blow up the whole depository with a nuclear bomb! Upon detonation, most of the gold, along with the rest of the depository would simply be vaporized. If any gold did manage to survive the blast, it would be dispersed across a vast area in very small amounts, which would make recovery very difficult. The main point of Goldfinger's plan is to make the gold in Fort Knox useless so that his gold increases in value, and using a nuclear bomb to distort the gold is just as good a plan as making it radioactive. His plan would have worked either way.

Oh really.

I don't agree with that either, considering that the dirty bomb wouldn't do the kind of damage a huge nuclear blast would and Goldfinger and his people would never make it out of there alive unless they got a major, major, major head start before the detonation of the nuclear bomb which they didn't have anyway. I don't follow that logic in the slightest, and Goldfinger himself never once mentions destroying the gold in his plans. He even calls Fort Knox his bank, which would be meaningless if he blew it sky high. It makes the plan more evil if he irradiates the gold and leaves it in Fort Knox to tease the American government who still have it in their possession but now can't even use it because of the radiation. A big tease, if you will.

I like to think that Goldfinger was playing everyone who was involved with operation 'Grand Slam' so that he was the only one who ever actually benefited. First he lied about the nerve gas being sleeping gas so that he could kill the American gangsters, then perhaps he lied to his army of Korean soldiers about the bomb being a dirty one so they would think they could get away, when in fact it would be a full-fledged atom bomb that would kill all of them and erase all possible evidence of his involvement. Just he and Pussy would get away in the helicopter, and after she helped him escape he'd probably kill her too so that no one could ever testify to his involvement in the events at Ft. Knox. Goldfinger would be a prime suspect because he had so much to gain from it, and had a residence in Kentucky from which he could launch such an operation. He'd need an alibi and that would start with cleaning up loose ends, and nothing does that better than killing off everyone you worked with in an evidence distorting nuclear explosion.

I think you're giving the fat man too much credit. For one thing he brings the gangsters clear across the country to get off on explaining his plan, then kills them anyway. As I said before, that nuclear blast would have absolutely demolished everything within a massive radius of Fort Knox, so much so that Goldfinger wouldn't be able to outrun it. He would have to be out of range for a long time ahead of the blast to escape a vaporizing death, which he wouldn't have been in the film.

Listen, I know you love Goldfinger and realize you'll do anything to defend it. It's a natural human response to treat those things we love with an often blind love, no matter the faults they may have because of exactly that: we love them. I'm like that with my favorite Bond films too, so I can respect that.

sirseanisbond

0BradyM0Bondfanatic7 wrote:

sirseanisbond wrote:

0BradyM0Bondfanatic7 wrote:

JWESTBROOK wrote:

sirseanisbond wrote:

The feasibility of Goldfinger's plan does not have to do with the radioactivity of gold. What I think seems to be overlooked here is that the plan is not just to irradiate the gold but to blow up the whole depository with a nuclear bomb! Upon detonation, most of the gold, along with the rest of the depository would simply be vaporized. If any gold did manage to survive the blast, it would be dispersed across a vast area in very small amounts, which would make recovery very difficult. The main point of Goldfinger's plan is to make the gold in Fort Knox useless so that his gold increases in value, and using a nuclear bomb to distort the gold is just as good a plan as making it radioactive. His plan would have worked either way.

Oh really.

I don't agree with that either, considering that the dirty bomb wouldn't do the kind of damage a huge nuclear blast would and Goldfinger and his people would never make it out of there alive unless they got a major, major, major head start before the detonation of the nuclear bomb which they didn't have anyway. I don't follow that logic in the slightest, and Goldfinger himself never once mentions destroying the gold in his plans. He even calls Fort Knox his bank, which would be meaningless if he blew it sky high. It makes the plan more evil if he irradiates the gold and leaves it in Fort Knox to tease the American government who still have it in their possession but now can't even use it because of the radiation. A big tease, if you will.

I like to think that Goldfinger was playing everyone who was involved with operation 'Grand Slam' so that he was the only one who ever actually benefited. First he lied about the nerve gas being sleeping gas so that he could kill the American gangsters, then perhaps he lied to his army of Korean soldiers about the bomb being a dirty one so they would think they could get away, when in fact it would be a full-fledged atom bomb that would kill all of them and erase all possible evidence of his involvement. Just he and Pussy would get away in the helicopter, and after she helped him escape he'd probably kill her too so that no one could ever testify to his involvement in the events at Ft. Knox. Goldfinger would be a prime suspect because he had so much to gain from it, and had a residence in Kentucky from which he could launch such an operation. He'd need an alibi and that would start with cleaning up loose ends, and nothing does that better than killing off everyone you worked with in an evidence distorting nuclear explosion.

I think you're giving the fat man too much credit. For one thing he brings the gangsters clear across the country to get off on explaining his plan, then kills them anyway. As I said before, that nuclear blast would have absolutely demolished everything within a massive radius of Fort Knox, so much so that Goldfinger wouldn't be able to outrun it. He would have to be out of range for a long time ahead of the blast to escape a vaporizing death, which he wouldn't have been in the film.

Listen, I know you love Goldfinger and realize you'll do anything to defend it. It's a natural human response to treat those things we love with an often blind love, no matter the faults they may have because of exactly that: we love them. I'm like that with my favorite Bond films too, so I can respect that.

You're right, I love Goldfinger and I am willing to overlook his shortcomings, like being stupid enough to continue his card cheating and gold smuggling right up until a few days before Operation Grand Slam, or the stupidity of buying a farm in Kentucky when he planned to undertake such a plot so close buy, or how he didn't kill Bond with the laser at Auric Industries in Switzerland when he had the chance. At the end of the day, Goldfinger was the first Bond movie I ever saw, and it blew my young little mind. It is the reason that I am the mega-Bond fan that I am today, so no matter how silly his plan may be in some parts, the film is always going to have a special place in my heart.

MusicMan

Getting back to the math calculations:
- If there was $15 billion worth of gold in Fort Knox, is that 10,500 tons, as Bond calculated? No. Since the price of gold in 1964 was $35 per ounce (fixed by U.S. law), the amount of gold in ounces would be $15 billion/$35, which works out to 13,392 tons.
- Would the gold be unusable for exactly 58 years, as Goldfinger said? No. That's not how radioactivity works. Depending on whether the gold was irradiated and became radioactive, or whether the bomb sprayed radioactive cobalt onto the gold, the radioactive half-life would be different. But in any case, Bond's statement that the gold would be radioactive for 57 years, and Goldfinger's correction "58 years, to be exact", are absurd. Radiation doesn't last for X years and then abruptly stop. If a radioactive isotope has a half-life of, say, 10 years, then after 10 years, it's half as radioactive. After 20 years, it's 1/4 as radioactive. After 30 years, it's 1/8 as radioactive, etc. The radiation continues at gradually lower levels, so there is no "exact" time where the radioactivity ends.
- Goldfinger estimated that his gold will increase in value ten fold. Does this mean that the US holds 1/10th of the worlds gold?. No. Perhaps if Fort Knox held 90% of the world's gold (which it didn't), then after it blew up, there would be 10 times less gold in the world, so the price might go up tenfold. But supply and demand isn't that simple, and the gold market would undoubtedly have a panic reaction to Fort Knox blowing up, so Goldfinger's estimate of a tenfold price increase could be correct (but not because the US held 10% of the world's gold).

Thunderfinger

They should just have let Goldfinger get on with it. The look on his face when he realized how worthless his plan was would have been priceless. Unlike the gold.