Atomic Shark

Watch the full movie, online. Available on: TV Computer Tablet Phone. 2016 90 min PG-13 Horror, Comedy, Sci-Fi/Horror, Science Fiction TV Movie. A lifeguard assembles an unlikely team to embark on a suicide mission to save the west coast from a dangerous anomaly. A radioactive shark is on the loose and it's up to a group of lifeguards to save everyone.

Survivors of the USS Indianapolis are taken to medical aid on the island of Guam. Photo from Wikipedia Commons.

The USS Indianapolis had delivered the crucial components of the first operational atomic bomb to a naval base on the Pacific island of Tinian. On August 6, 1945, the weapon would level Hiroshima. But now, on July 28, the Indianapolis sailed from Guam, without an escort, to meet the battleship USS Idaho in the Leyte Gulf in the Philippines and prepare for an invasion of Japan.

The next day was quiet, with the Indianapolis making about 17 knots through swells of five or six feet in the seemingly endless Pacific. As the sun set over the ship, the sailors played cards and read books; some spoke with the ship’s priest, Father Thomas Conway.

But shortly after midnight, a Japanese torpedo hit the Indianapolis in the starboard bow, blowing almost 65 feet of the ship’s bow out of the water and igniting a tank containing 3,500 gallons of aviation fuel into a pillar of fire shooting several hundred feet into the sky. Then another torpedo from the same submarine hit closer to midship, hitting fuel tanks and powder magazines and setting off a chain reaction of explosions that effectively ripped the Indianapolis in two. Still traveling at 17 knots, the Indianapolis began taking on massive amounts of water; the ship sank in just 12 minutes. Of the 1,196 men aboard, 900 made it into the water alive. Their ordeal—what is considered the worst shark attack in history—was just beginning.

As the sun rose on July 30, the survivors bobbed in the water. Life rafts were scarce. The living searched for the dead floating in the water and appropriated their lifejackets for survivors who had none. Hoping to keep some semblance of order, survivors began forming groups—some small, some over 300—in the open water. Soon enough they would be staving off exposure, thirst—and sharks.

The animals were drawn by the sound of the explosions, the sinking of the ship and the thrashing and blood in the water. Though many species of shark live in the open water, none is considered as aggressive as the oceanic whitetip. Reports from the Indianapolis survivors indicate that the sharks tended to attack live victims close to the surface, leading historians to believe that most of the shark-related causalities came from oceanic whitetips.

The first night, the sharks focused on the floating dead. But the survivors’ struggles in the water only attracted more and more sharks, which could feel their motions through a biological feature known as a lateral line: receptors along their bodies that pick up changes in pressure and movement from hundreds of yards away. As the sharks turned their attentions toward the living, especially the injured and the bleeding, sailors tried to quarantine themselves away from anyone with an open wound, and when someone died, they would push the body away, hoping to sacrifice the corpse in return for a reprieve from a shark’s jaw. Many survivors were paralyzed with fear, unable even to eat or drink from the meager rations they had salvaged from their ship. One group of survivors made the mistake of opening a can of Spam—but before they could taste it, the scent of the meat drew a swarm of sharks around them. They got rid of their meat rations rather than risk a second swarming.

The sharks fed for days, with no sign of rescue for the men. Navy intelligence had intercepted a message from the Japanese submarine that had torpedoed the Indianapolis describing how it had sunk an American battleship along the Indianapolis’ route, but the message was disregarded as a trick to lure American rescue boats into an ambush. In the meantime, the Indianapolis survivors learned that they had the best odds in a group, and ideally in the center of the group. The men on the margins or, worse, alone, were the most susceptible to the sharks.

As the days passed, many survivors succumbed to heat and thirst, or suffered hallucinations that compelled them to drink the seawater around them—a sentence of death by salt poisoning. Those who so slaked their thirst would slip into madness, foaming at the mouth as their tongues and lips swelled. They often became as great a threat to the survivors as the sharks circling below—many dragged their comrades underwater with them as they died.

After 11:00 a.m. on their fourth day in the water, a Navy plane flying overhead spotted the Indianapolis survivors and radioed for help. Within hours, another seaplane, manned by Lieutenant Adrian Marks, returned to the scene and dropped rafts and survival supplies. When Marks saw men being attacked by sharks, he disobeyed orders and landed in the infested waters, and then began taxiing his plane to help the wounded and stragglers, who were at the greatest risk. A little after midnight, the USS Doyle arrived on the scene and helped to pull the last survivors from the water. Of the Indianapolis’ original 1,196-man crew, only 317 remained. Estimates of the number who died from shark attacks range from a few dozen to almost 150. It’s impossible to be sure. But either way, the ordeal of the Indianapolis survivors remains the worst maritime disaster in U.S. naval history.

Sources: Richard Bedser. Ocean of Fear: Worst Shark Attack Ever . Discovery Channel: United States, 2007; Cathleen Bester. “Oceanic Whitetip Shark,” On the Florida Museum of Natural History. Accessed August 7, 2013; Nick Collins. “Oceanic whitetip shark: ten facts,” On Telegraph UK, December 6, 2010. Accessed August 6, 2013; Tom Harris. “How Sharks Work,” On How Stuff Works, March 30, 2001. Accessed August 6, 2013; Alex Last. “USS Indianapolis sinking: ‘You could see sharks circling’” on BBC News Magazine, July 28, 2013. Accessed August 6, 2013; Raymond B. Leach. The Tragic Fate of the USS Indianapolis. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000; Marc Nobleman. The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis. North Mankato, MN: Capstone Publishers, 2006; “Oral History -The Sinking of USS Indianapolis,” On Naval Historical Center, September 1, 1999. Accessed August 7, 2013; “The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis, 1945.” On Eyewitness to History, 2006. Accessed August 6, 2013; Doug Stanton. In Harm’s Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors. New York, NY: Macmillan, 2003; “The Story.” On the USS Indianapolis CA-35, March 1998. Accessed August 6, 2013; Jennifer Viegas. “Worst Shark Attack,” On Discovery Channel. Accessed August 6, 2013.

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I thought it was almost impossible to find a concept for a shark movie that was too outlandish to be true, but 2014's Atomic Shark seemed like it would be the one. I mean, a shark outfitted with a nuclear bomb is so ridiculous that it can't possibly be true, right? How could it be possible that atomic sharks are real? Well, while there's never been any nuclear warheads strapped to the side of a shark's body, there have been sharks who were affected by nuclear energy.

In connection with Shark Week 2016, Philippe Cousteau, Jr., grandson of famous oceanic explorer and Life Aquatic inspiration Jacques Cousteau, traveled to the Marshall Islands to see the effects of American nuclear testing on the area's local shark population. Cousteau's trip to Bikini Atoll showed how both American and Japanese bombs decimated the undersea wildlife. Cousteau's wife, Ashlan, told the New York Post, 'Normally when you go down 160 feet you see everything .. sharks, maybe you see whales .. But when we went into the crater, there was nothing.'

The Cousteaus' eerie trip to the former testing grounds was documented in Nuclear Sharks, where they were ultimately successful in finding a population of indigenous sharks who have taken up residence among the sunken ships that were a part of the tests. Unix commands for mac.

There's also some history of sharks being found in and around nuclear power plants, at least judging by this video uploaded by some fishermen who saw one shark being attacked by another shark while fishing near a nearby plant.

Atomic Shark Images

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And while atomic bombs have never been strapped to sharks of any kind, there is one famous, tragic connection between the American military and shark attacks: the 1945 sinking of the USS Indianapolis. As National Geographic explains, after delivering components that would be used to make an atomic bomb to Pacific Islands, the war ship sank quickly after being attacked by Japanese forces, leading to 'what is considered the worst shark attack in history.'

Atomic Shark Carnage Count

After the ship, which was staffed by over a thousand crew members, sank, the men were floating in the middle of the ocean. Unfortunately, sharks 'were drawn by the sound of the explosions, the sinking of the ship and the thrashing and blood in the water,' according to National Geographic. 'Though many species of shark live in the open water, none is considered as aggressive as the oceanic whitetip,' which just so happened to be the type of shark that was waiting for the crew. Casualties from days of the survivors waiting for rescue in the water may have numbered as high as 150. It's the same tragedy that provides Captain Quint with his solemn monologue in the middle of Jaws.

Cast Of Atomic Shark

I won't condescend to you: There's obviously no way that a shark will ever be outfitted with a nuclear bomb, and if you possibly thought that Atomic Shark was based on the truth, you may need to spend a little less time watching television. But even if there's no such thing as a comedically cartoonish oversized Great White with a radiation-filled backpack, there is somehow a history between sharks and nuclear technology. The truth is stranger than fiction, even if that fiction is a Sharknado-level film.