Another post so soon? Crazy lmao. Well anyway, I just read the one shot “Stampede: The Story of Professor Minovsky” which has been on my list of things to read for a good bit. I want to discuss it a bit in this post. There will be spoilers, so I do recommend reading it for yourself, it’s only 49 pages long including the cover and artwork and stuff, you can read it on mangadex here.
*SPOILERS*
Alright, before I actually get into the one shot, I just wanna discuss Minovsky particles for a sec. So we’re ofc heard the term a ton in all of the gundam series. Minovsky particles is the thing that lets gundams be a thing in the gundam universes. It’s the main thing that seperates gundam physics from our real world physics as far as I understand. Minovsky physics however isn’t really explained that much in the animes other than saying things like blocking radar and radio, being emitted by the nuclear reactors and stuff used by the gundams and the such. There’s probably more info about it in something that I haven’t seen yet, but by 1990, when this oneshot was written, there was very little info about Minovsky physics.
Now I’m not very knowledgeable about physics, I didn’t take AP physics in high school since I didn’t want to do all the math lmao, I only took AP chem and AP bio. I do actually have several physicists in my family though, my grandfather and granduncle were both physics professors, and another relative of mine worked on particle accelerators which is insane. I didn’t inherit any of that physics brain stuff though lmao. But regardless, I’ve always been curious about this Minovsky physics stuff and how it works, and also what exactly the Minovsky particle is.
Alright, onto the oneshot itself. So this didn’t actually get into the details of Minovsky physics, but it did get into Trenov Y. Minovsky’s story and past which is interesting.
Alright, so this is the first page in the oneshot, and it has a lot of good information, so let’s break it down a little. So we know that Minovsky was born in 1983 in the Ural region of the USSR. If we look at the historical context of this, he was born in the later part of the Cold War. 1983 was during Reagan’s first term where the tensions between the US and USSR increased a bit before his more detente 2nd term. During this time we’re well into the nuclear age lead by America and the Soviets. By this point nuclear reactors were being used, and we’ve already had major nuclear accidents such as 3 mile island.
We also learn here that he had to evacuate following the Chernobyl disaster, which occurred in 1986, so around when Minovsky was 3. Also I gotta point out that the author here saw Chernobyl and 4 years later was like, yeah, this would fit the gundam lore perfectly lmao. Not that often that something gets irl lore added to it after that series has already been going on for over a decade. The rest of the paragraph in the image is gone over in the rest of the oneshot, so I’ll move to the oneshot pages now.
In the opening scene, Minovsky says “I never imagined that I’d be killed by something I created” which is an interesting statement because inventors being killed by their own inventions isn’t uncommon in the real world. Couple of famous examples is the creator of the Titanic dying on the Titanic, and Franz Reichelt who famously died when he jumped off the Eiffel Tower to display the parachute he created. I haven’t seen it yet, but from what I know, in Gundam the Origin Minovsky dies to a Zaku while defecting from Zeon. And unfortunate twist of irony where he died to something he helped create.
So following the Chernobyl disaster, Minovesky was forced to leave his home, and he eventually ended up in America. Chernobyl sparked Minovsky’s determination to overcome nuclear power, so he started researching it in America. Many great scientists found their calling as a kid like this. A great example is Charles Walcott who famously made major contributions to the study of pre-Cambrian life with his fossil discoveries. Walcott spent his childhood days hunting for fossils in upstate New York with much success, starting his lifetime ambition for studying fossils. His story and the story of many other naturalists can be found in the book “Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origin of Species” by Sean B. Carroll, great book.
So next we skip to 1999 where Minovsky (now 16) is studying physics and his own Minovsky physics theory in America. I also gotta point out real quick how this is taking place in 1999 when this oneshot was written in 1990, so the characters here have very 80s looks rather than 90s lmao. Look at the 80s hair on this woman lmao.
But anyway, Minovsky’s research was seen as bunch of BS by the people around him, and his teacher called it “a sci-fi novel”. It’s a pretty common thing for science that goes against the modern accepted theory to face much backlash, and as frustrating as it may be in hindsight, I think it’s important that that backlash does occur in order to test the theory. Some great examples of such backlash is how heliocentrism challenged geocentrism, which was believed for thousands of years by the likes of the greek, romans, and everyone else, but eventually heliocentrism became accepted and now is considered the correct theory. This change completely flipped everything upside down, so it’s important to challenge modern theories such as physics, but only after extensive testing, criticism, and overwhelming evidence that disproves the existing theory. And there are scientist that do challenge modern physics and study ways to disprove it as there is still plenty of gaps in the theory of modern physics.
Alright, so skipping the romance and personal story stuff to get to the next bit of meat, Minovsky is offered to have his researched sponsored by Anaheim Electronics, which is a famously a massive company that builds mobiles suits and such in the gundam universe. So this is where all that started, when they basically acquired Minovsky. Here Minovsky got the resources to really study his theory and discovered the Minovsky particles in UC 40. Minovsky finally achieved his goal that he’s been working for since he was a child.
However, Minovsky’s research gets heavily criticized and even “debunked” by his friend, Ionesco who betrayed Minovsky after being a key partner to Minovsky in his research. Things like this happen in real life too. Great example is evolution. After Darwin posted his book “On the Origin of Spieces” (great book btw), he was faced with heavy criticism by the commonly accepted creationists of the time. It wasn’t until after Darwin died that his theory of evolution and natural selection finally gained wide acceptance. The backlash only led to more research in the theory of evolution getting it to the point where there is overwhelming evidence that supports it now. The same goes for Minovsky, his theory was finally accepted years later, though for him he was still alive by that time.
Luckily for Minovsky, he was able to escape to space to continue his research, but this time in side 3 with Zeon. Minovsky finds much success, but Zeon uses his discoveries to have him create weapons. Minovsky becomes obsessed with his because through the usage of Minovsky particles, this like BVR combat, missiles, drones, and the such become useless. Minovsky particles forces combat to go back to being based on line of sight, like how it used to be before WW2 and the cold war era where war became so much more devastating due to things like missiles. This seems like it might lead to reduced death since you’d have to be more careful about sending out your troops instead of slinging an ICBM thousands of miles away to kill 10s to 100s of thousands of people. But as humans have proved time and time again, we will find ways to weaponize things and make it more devastating. This correlates to the machine gun. The machine gun, or first known as the gatling gun, was created during the American Civil War with the intention that if you can create 1 gun that has the same firepower as hundreds of men, you only need to send a few people with gatling guns to war instead of sending hundreds of people into battle, thus reducing the number of deaths. However, we get to WW1 where machine guns see their first widespread usage, and well, we know how that went. Similar thing happened here with Minovsky particles unfortunately. Gundam yet again showing a repeat of history.
Also Minovsky’s wife leaves him because of him making weapons and stuff.
So then we go through time a bit, Zeon becomes a dictatorship, they militarize, ect ect. Minovsky is being given a award for his contributions to Zeon, but as we see knocks the medal away as he questions himself for starting all this devastation. Yet again, there’s such parallels to the real world. Oppenheimer who famously led the manhatten project and its development of atomic bombs felt a deep moral regret for the loss of life and devastation that occurred following Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Einstein felt similar feelings of remorse and regret for encouraging the US to build atomic weapons and stuff. They both didn’t know how bad the devastation of nuclear weapons would be and ended up regretting it for its devastation.
At the end of the oneshot, Minovsky says this:
This has a lot of vagueness to it, but here’s how I’ll interpret his words. The thing that he’s beaten was disproving the previous theory of physics and getting a grasp on atomic power. His success in achieving what he set out to achieve as a kid after Chernobyl. But in doing so, he’s created more destruction with mobile suits and in elevating Zeon. He brought humanity into devastating war, worse than anything we’ve seen in the atomic era and with Chernobyl. Because of that, Minovsky says that he lost. He wanted to overcome atomic power and find a way to prevent such disasters as Chernobyl. He succeeded in overcoming it, but ended up creating worse disasters, even dying to his own creations.
Alright, so that’s about it. There’s definitely more info in this oneshot that can be analyzed even better by someone more knowledgeable and qualified than I, but I wanted to ramble a bit about all this since I thought it was really interesting. This definitely gave me more insight into the lore of Minovsky physics, why it was created, and why mobile suits were created. It also provided info on how Zeon became so powerful and why the conflicts in UC occur in the first place. That’s about all there is to say, so yeah, bye
