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Nuclear explosion impact on humans indoors (2022)
- idlewords 4y agoAnother great argument against open plan offices.
- commitpizza 4y agoComment of the year, so far
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bigmattystyles 4y agoI don’t know, I’d want to look at my manager and say ‘you arrogant ass! you’ve killed us’
- iJohnDoe 4y agoI would have liked to have seen Montana.
- mattkrause 4y agoI guess a submarine is kind of an open-plan office....
- alexfoo 4y agoYou Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!
- piyh 4y agoNone of that sounds pleasant or survivable. Air pressure is hard to grok, and a 5 PSI shockwave doesn't sound like alot until you realize how many square inches your shadow has.
- imoverclocked 4y agoYeah, from a rough calculation, 5 psi would be 4500 lbs (2000 kg) of force across the average human standing up.
- Teknoman117 4y agoEssentially it's like someone dropping a car on you for several seconds.
- rullelito 4y agoNot dropping, placing.
- Teknoman117 4y agoYou are absolutely correct.
- ivandenysov 4y agoBest kind of correct.
- saboot 4y agoStay away from windows, shards of glass flying at high speeds are a big factor in indoor deaths from blasts. Many embassies have breathable curtains with weights on the bottom, to catch any glass while letting air pass through
- twblalock 4y agoNot just glass. Some people in Hiroshima had to have surgery later in life to remove other people's teeth from their bodies.
- simonebrunozzi 4y ago> Some people in Hiroshima had to have surgery later in life to remove other people's teeth from their bodies. This is one of the scariest and ugliest thing I've ever read about Hiroshima.
- inglor_cz 4y agoSame, and I thought that at 44, I have seen and read pretty much everything.
- saboot 4y agoWhere did you read this? It's something I haven't heard before
- inglor_cz 4y agoI have security foils in my windows, though more against thieves than against a nuclear blast. The glass should break, but either stay in the window, or fall out in one blob kept together by the foil.
- saboot 4y agoThis will likely lead to a worse situation, by creating one giant projectile travelling through the air https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eCd3qYCC6E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eCd3qYCC6E With the bomb curtain I mentioned, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKiig392a3I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKiig392a3I There are bomb films similar to what you described, but they need to be added with a blast resistant window frame https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKjVbytYFHA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKjVbytYFHA I presented these videos during a class discussing the effects of nuclear weapons and explosions
- sklargh 4y agoOverpressure is no joke. That said the conclusions of the study encourage me to stand in front of a concrete wall as soon as I am aware of incoming ICBMs. My sincere hope for my family and I in a mid-grade to all-out nuclear exchange is that we perish immediately. This would spare us exposure to subsequent famine and the loss of things like acetaminophen and central heating, not to mention civil society. I do not subscribe to nuclear winter scare-theory. My greater concern is that the petrochemical supply and complex chemical chain will be largely destroyed in any kind of a material nuclear exchange. Without fossil fuel subsidies for agriculture mass starvation is certain.
- alwayslikethis 4y agoOn the plus(?) side, there will be plenty of remaining fertilizers in stock to grow food to feed the now much smaller population for a good while.
- Swizec 4y ago> This would spare us exposure to subsequent famine and the loss of things like acetaminophen and central heating, not to mention civil society Obviously MAD has changed things, but Hiroshima was back to normal in about 2 years. Power was restored in just a few days for example. https://davidson.weizmann.ac.il/en/online/askexpert/recovery-time-nuclear-disaster https://davidson.weizmann.ac.il/en/online/askexpert/recovery... https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/18/story-of-cities-hiroshima-japan-nuclear-destruction https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/18/story-of-citi...
- lordgroff 4y agoIt's... Not even comparable. That bomb is a quaint toy compared to modern nuclear arsenal, and of course nobody would be launching one or two nukes today because it isn't 1945. Mass starvation, disease, loss of key infrastructure and any sort of industrial capacity would await those "lucky" to survive initial blasts. I'm not as convinced nuclear winter is a scare theory either, I think it's hard to say, but it frankly doesn't even have to factor in the slightest.
- 4y ago
- toss1 4y agoThe FEA images seem to show that the best place is to huddle right below or beside the window/door, and the blast will largely pass you by. Considering it is a shock wave, best to be sure to open your mouth slightly and not hold your breath, so as to not trap pressure differentials This is a good thing to publish, because most people seem to casually think nuke=dead, period. But the fact it that the simple geometry means that the areas of medium and lower damage are more than 10X the area of extreme damage, so any random location is much more likely to see effects that are survivable depending on your actions. Lets hope it never comes to that
- User23 4y agoContrary to what the RAND corporation would have had us believe, there are significant steps that can be taken to improve survival odds. Oak Ridge published a nice handbook[1]. I strongly recommend getting a hard copy, because duh. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_War_Survival_Skills https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_War_Survival_Skills
- sklargh 4y agoI mean, depending on the scale of the conflict and explosion, nuke generally does equal dead. The variable is just how proximate to the explosion your death is going to be.
- echelon 4y agoStores of food, water, fuel, and the means to defend oneself can also increase odds and duration of survival. Food scarcity will place survivors into an unpleasant dog eat dog world. Zombie and disaster films are probably not far off in their portrayals of these apocalyptic survival scenarios. All of the niceties of modern civilization - friendly and neighborly coexistence - will likely be replaced with the desperate animal need to eat and survive. And without a central governing authority, or aid or help of any kind, the new social order will be brutal and unforgiving. I hope this never comes to pass.
- XorNot 4y ago
- sclarisse 4y agoI am modestly underwhelmed by the scope here. They basically picked one symmetrical floor plan to simulate, sent a blast wave straight at it, and noted that in some areas, the forces involved could still fling people against walls hard enough to kill them. Okay, sure, ouch, but what about other floor plans? Could you simulate them at lesser fidelities? I feel like a few different real world house layouts with the blast from a few different angles would paint a more coherent picture. Maybe that’s a follow up paper?
- defrost 4y agoThe results exist in bloodied form for the effects of high pressure high explosive blast waves from the air and subsurface bombs of WWI and WWII. Straight trenches kill people - zig zag trenches with sharp turns save lives.
- scotty79 4y agoSaving lives in context of war sounds so silly. If the point was to save lives then honest action would be to evacuate everyone from the frontline. The point of war is to kill soldiers. Just ours hopefully a bit slower than enemy's.
- nine_k 4y agoSo, would you evacuate everyone when facing an enemy attack? Would you have any room to evacuate your people to if you never try to fight back? (Hint: pacifism works only if you have very strong non-pacifist allies.) And if you need to resist an invasion, you want to save lives of your fighting forces as much as possible, even if you sadly can't save everyone. Look at the center of Europe right now. How to dig good trenches is not theoretical knowledge.
- scotty79 4y agoI get all that but it still sounds bad to me. Like saying I'm saving you 3 hits on the face by hitting you 7 times instead of 10. I won't be thanking you for saving my life through digging a trench correctly if you put me in it.
- nntwozz 4y ago[flagged]
- doubled112 4y agoIt'll be OK. I'll be hiding under my desk.
- daxfohl 4y agoDumb question: would wearing a seatbelt help? (assuming the chair is fixed)
- nine_k 4y agoA seatbelt is designed to help when the chair is yanked back. But likely anything that prevents you from gaining velocity before hitting a wall should help, as long as it's not holding you so tight that you'd be ripped apart by an incoming wave.
- initramfs 4y agoEverything I learned from surviving a nuclear impact I learned from Indiana Jones 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn4Vhkmb4Lw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn4Vhkmb4Lw
- greesil 4y agoIt seems like duck and cover is still good advice. Possibly lying down is better.
- ericd 4y agoObligatory link to the very thorough free book, Nuclear War Survival Skills: https://ia800501.us.archive.org/35/items/NuclearWarSurvivalSkills_201405/nwss.pdf https://ia800501.us.archive.org/35/items/NuclearWarSurvivalS... , originally published by Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
- ajxs 4y agoI live in a highrise apartment building close to the center of a major city. It has an parking garage below the building which stretches many floors underground. During the several minutes it takes to get my car from the 6th floor underground out to the street, I've thought numerous times about how survivable a nuclear blast would be in a civilian structure that far underground, presuming of course that the upper floors didn't just collapse and bury me there forever.
- elihu 4y agoPossibly pretty survivable in the short term as long as a nuclear warhead doesn't go off very close to where you are. Just because you're in a major city doesn't necessarily mean you're a high priority target. (In nuclear war, there are what is called a "counter-force" strategy where you target military bases, and a "counter-value" strategy where you target things with the highest value to the defender like cities.) In the short-to-medium term the issue becomes: can you stay underground for the next week or so until the sky stops emitting gamma rays? Cement and dirt are both good barriers, but you'll need food and water eventually. I'd also wonder if the air might become unbreathably bad or too hot due to everything burning.
- tablespoon 4y ago> Possibly pretty survivable in the short term as long as a nuclear warhead doesn't go off very close to where you are. Just because you're in a major city doesn't necessarily mean you're a high priority target. (In nuclear war, there are what is called a "counter-force" strategy where you target military bases, and a "counter-value" strategy where you target things with the highest value to the defender like cities.) Though counter-force requires so many warheads, that if you're doing that it wouldn't be hard to do counter-value as well. I read somewhere that a single sub's worth of warheads is enough to implement a credible counter-value strategy.
- elihu 4y agoYeah, it depends on what your objective is really. Killing a lot of people is easy with nuclear weapons, but it doesn't necessarily equate to "winning". The impression I get as a non-expert in this area is that the only countries with a big enough arsenal to plausibly do counter-force are the U.S. (along with its NATO allies) and Russia. China doesn't have enough for counter-force so we assume their strategy is counter-value and it's mostly there as a deterrent because they'd expect to get obliterated as well. It seems kind of weird to expect Russia to conduct a nuclear war in a manner that's relatively humane, but I suppose there's also the possibility that in a nuclear confrontation with the U.S. they wouldn't want their own cities to get nuked either so maybe there's a sort of "let's not be the first to do counter-value" dynamic at play. Really, there's no way to know what's going to happen until it happens, and we can hope it never does. Best case for survivability in a nuclear war is probably just: don't live near a military base or near anything important. Most rural land is relatively safe, since there just aren't enough nukes in the world to evenly blanket a large country. Nuclear winter though might kind of doom everyone through food shortages if there's a full counter-value exchange, even if the cities are spared.
- 29athrowaway 4y agoYou should watch Threads (1984), the most messed up film ever made, produced in part by the BBC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgT4Y30DkaA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgT4Y30DkaA (trailer only) It's about the lives of average people before, during and after a fictional nuclear attack in the UK.
- gibspaulding 4y agoI just listened to Atomic Hobo's podcast about Threads, and as someone with a bit of a fascination with nuclear history, I sort of want to see it, but I can't quite decide if it's something I want to put myself through.
- 29athrowaway 4y agoIt gets incrementally harder to watch. You can decide what's a good stopping point for you.
- semireg 4y agoI watched it a year ago. The imagery sticks with you - you sigh a lot. It’s subtle and bleak with little to no “modern movie drama” (gasps, pop outs by bad guys, scares) other than a few run of the mill drawn out pregnancies. Watch it alone so you can digest it without the distractions of audible sighs (or crying) from people near you. I recommend it, much like On The Beach (the book or the movie).
- 29athrowaway 4y agoI guess the retro aesthetic, the lack of CGI and an orchestral soundtrack, makes it check fewer "this is a movie" boxes in your brain, making it interesting to a modern audience in a way.
- heavyset_go 4y agoCame here to post this. It's a movie that really bothered me on a visceral level enough that it's stuck with me and consistently makes me pause every once in a while when I remember it. That movie would have been terrifying with just firebombing alone, something that has/had happen all over the world. Nukes somehow surpass the hell on Earth that is conventional total war. It's also impressive what they made on such a small budget, with something like ~$500k.
- 082349872349872 4y agocf https://www.babs.admin.ch/en/aufgabenbabs/schutzbauten.html https://www.babs.admin.ch/en/aufgabenbabs/schutzbauten.html (note that shelters-for-all could only be a viable strategy for countries that do not have first strike capabilities)
- Metacelsus 4y agoSo, would it be better to be outside? Thermal radiation may be a problem though.
- Synaesthesia 4y agoDeoends on how far you are from the blast. You have to consider the heat wave, the secondary blast wave and the radiation afterwards.
- rdevsrex 4y agoI think the way things are going nuclear war is likely, and the worse part is may be not fully intentional. I think nuclear war is survivable if you are in a good location and already prepped to survive 2+ years on your preps and have the means to grow all your own food and are in a solid community that doesn't go bonkers after shtf. But that's not the vast majority of us, so it would be quite the shit show. If you aren't prepped, I don't know why someone would want to survive the attack.
- empathy_m 4y agoSo what's your plan -- do you live somewhere that's unlikely to get a direct hit and do you have the food and gear ready?
- tablespoon 4y ago> I think nuclear war is survivable if you are in a good location and already prepped to survive 2+ years on your preps and have the means to grow all your own food and are in a solid community that doesn't go bonkers after shtf. If that's the criteria, it's survivable by practically no one. I mean, there won't be any "solid communities" left if you need 2+ years of stored food to survive, since practically no one has that.
- midoridensha 4y agoSome places far from the northern countries taking part in that war will probably be survivable: think South Africa or Argentina and maybe Australia/NZ.
- tablespoon 4y ago> Some places far from the northern countries taking part in that war will probably be survivable: think South Africa or Argentina and maybe Australia/NZ. Yeah, but the OP seemed to be talking about targeted countries. I just think he was setting his minimum "prepping" in a contradictory way that spelled doom. Also, those southern countries may be severely affected, since the big northern countries are also big (staple) food exporters.
- simonebrunozzi 4y agoI would be curious to hear your 2 cents on what you think the chance of a nuclear war are, for any given year. I would say perhaps 1%, which in a sense is very little, and really a lot. Also, if you think 1% is way too high, consider that in 1983 a nuclear war was averted by the decision of a single individual [0]. I'm pretty sure the chance that year would have been more than 20%. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
- schiffern 4y agoA similar thing thing happened in 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis.[0] The math is sobering. Even if we assume 'only' a 1% chance per year, that implies a 63% probability per century. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov
- mach1ne 4y ago1% per year is too high though. I’d estimate it’s closer to 1% per risk-year, e.g. Cuban Missile Crisis.
- wizofaus 4y agoIt's not so hard to believe we're living in a 50%- probability world though (assuming roughly 99% chance of no nuclear strikes for each year since 1945). Just the missile crisis and the Petrov incident alone had a decent chance of swinging the other way. The question is if it could really be demonstrated we had barely 50% chance of making it through the next 70 odd years without some sort of self-inflicted civilization-ending event based on current human behaviour patterns, would it actually be enough to force us to change those patterns?
- mach1ne 4y agoYeah and survivorship bias extends here too. I think we could actually do the math to derive the maximum probability for a nuclear apocalypse within a given timeframe from the fact that we’re not in the middle of it.