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It was pretty clear that teaching kids to hide under their desk in case of an atomic attack was utterly meaningless. We still did it, and now have the occasiona
by nitwit005 8y ago
It was pretty clear that teaching kids to hide under their desk in case of an atomic attack was utterly meaningless. We still did it, and now have the occasional laugh about it.
It makes the parents and school administrators feel better. "Something must be done" in action.
- sopooneo 8y agoI encourage you to read up on the "duck and cover" before dismissing it. Many people feel as you do, but it is a deeply ignorant stance.
- kejaed 8y agoObligatory 99pi episode link: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/atomic-tattoos/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/atomic-tattoos/
- bootlooped 8y agoI think calling it deeply ignorant might be a bit harsh. It's a pretty common misconception, and it does intuitively seem like duck and cover would not protect against the most powerful weapon in human history.
- sopooneo 8y agoYou're right. That was an uncalled for. I'll leave the comment there for continuity, but apologies to the parent poster.
- nitwit005 8y agoOh, I'm not dismissive of it helping with avoiding debris falling on your head and perhaps the blinding flash. The issue is the world ending shortly after that due to world war 3.
- Invictus0 8y agoWould you mind sharing some of your knowledge about it?
- reshie 8y agoits the shockwave blast that can go quite far. it can protect from glass and such and "may" help even from debris and colapses. nothing is helping you at ground zero except a deep bunker. there is the fallout but thats another story.
- rolph 8y agowhen you see the flash its too late to avoid the gamma ray xray and neutron blast that happens [lets call it Rad dosage for now]. The only thing that can be done about that is to know ahead of time that incoming ordinance is on its way and put the greatest series of high density material between you and a direct line of transit to the centre of the detonation. Next comes the thermal blast and the [latent] acoustic shock/pressure wave. this is where depending on yield of the munitions, you want to be in a very sturdy shelter, or perhaps out in the open to make the suffering very short lived. I think one of the most famous ground zero survivors was a file clerk that had gone to a basement to retrieve some reams of documents. a long story about it all is in here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_a...] this survivor was underground, and surrounded by a tightly packed library of documents btween themself and an >ATOMIC< blast. you may duck and cover and avoid shrapnel but RAD dosage espescially from neutrons is something else. neutrons interact very weakly if at all via charge as they are neutral [but do oscillate type] neutrons do have a small amount of mass, they dont seem to interact strongly in a gravitational sense but the extreme velocity of the neutron flux creates a substantial momentum and plays billiards with the nucleii of your body and surrounding materials, like a subatomic shotgun all over you.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- nitwit005 8y agoWhy would the fallout be another story? People were certain the world would literally end. Living another week or two isn't much of a public safety goal.
- 8y ago