7 ms·

It's amazing how these men have went on to live such long lives. As someone who has only cursory knowledge of atomic explosions and radiation damage, I was alw

by iamdann 14y ago

It's amazing how these men have went on to live such long lives. As someone who has only cursory knowledge of atomic explosions and radiation damage, I was always under the impression that standing under an explosion such as this would almost guarantee a death during or shortly after. I suppose it's a lot like HIV. Unprotected sex with an HIV positive person doesn't * guarantee* disease contraction, which is the impression I was always get. Not worth the risk, by any means, but still different than I had always been taught.

Dylan16807 14y ago
Far safer. You have to remember that they're over three and a half miles from the explosion. They're just in a dramatic direction.
- _delirium 14y ago
  In fact, the entire point of this test was to demonstrate that it was safe to stand under it. While some of the early tests were very unsafe, by the time of this test (1957), the dangers of radiation were well-known, so it wasn't a cowboy-type experiment like the early ones, and the planning would've computed the expected radiation dose and ensured it was safe. The military did it as a publicity stunt to assuage public fears of nuclear-tipped air-to-air missiles by showing that even if they were used in a dogfight directly over a city, they wouldn't pose any risk to those on the ground. The volunteers were even supposed to not wear a helmet or hat to show that it was fine for normal people. If I recall correctly from having seen this discussed previously, they measured radiation doses received, and found that the highest doses (but still not at dangerous levels) were received by the pilots involved in the test, not the ground volunteers. This was from the relatively short-lived era when several militaries were hoping to make a distinction between "strategic" nuclear weapons, the kind that blow up cities and would only be used in doomsday scenarios, and "tactical" nuclear weapons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_nuclear_weapon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_nuclear_weapon), small-yield varieties that would just be like very big regular weapons and could conceivably be used in a non-apocalyptic war. Due to a mixture of public opposition and fears of international chain reactions that might result from "going nuclear", though, that initiative failed, which is why you saw a transition back into really-gigantic conventional weapons in the 1990s, e.g. the MOAB (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-43/B_Massive_Ordnance_Air_Blast_bomb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-43/B_Massive_Ordnance_Air_B...).
fghh45sdfhr3 14y ago
From the article: The thing is, in that particular explosion, those guys would have been in a pretty safe position. The bomb itself was a small one (by nuclear standards — 2 kilotons) and it was way, way above their heads. They weren't in a zone to be too affected by the immediate radiation. The bomb was small enough and high enough that it wouldn't have sucked up dust to produce much fallout. The remaining cloud would have been full of (nasty) fission products, but it would have been extremely hot and most of it would have stayed aloft until it cooled down, by which point it probably would have been spread more diffusely.
- iamdann 14y ago
  Exactly. That's the part I learned from.
  - bigiain 14y ago
    I'm remembering visiting the Nike Missile site just over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. http://www.nps.gov/goga/nike-missile-site.htm http://www.nps.gov/goga/nike-missile-site.htm http://nikemissile.org/site_sf88.shtml http://nikemissile.org/site_sf88.shtml It's both wonderful and creepy. They've restored some beautiful old mechanical computers which are works of art in my eyes, but they also point out that the missiles were capable of carrying nuclear warheads, "but they neither confirm nor deny" whether the missiles at this facility ever had them installed. They _do_ however point out that not only were the missiles capable of taking down incoming aircraft heading towards San Francisco, but they were also pre-targetted at Sacramento… "Just in case" (I'm sure the guys who run the tours are pretty good at setting just the right tone with their stories, but they certainly left me with some interesting impressions). I _highly_ recommend the tour of SF88 to anybody who's got an afternoon spare in San Francisco.
    - seagreen 14y ago
      Why would you pre-target them at Sacramento?
    - archgoon 14y ago
ars 14y ago
No, it's nothing like HIV. HIV is a statistical thing: It's random chance if an infective particle travels. A nuclear bomb like this is deterministic. Based on the distance, altitude, size (power), and type (fission, fusion, specifics of the design - especially the tamper) of the bomb you can calculate exactly what and how dangerous the effects will be. The military was trying to show that they are able to make these calculations correctly, and that used appropriately, this type of bomb an be used without undesired damage. It didn't work for them though, because people have an irrational fear of anything nuclear and are not interesting in hearing about any calculations. It's one of those paradoxes similar to how people are completely unable to correctly calculate how risky an action will be. For example people are scared of flying but not crossing the street (a common event comes to be seen as less risky) or driving a car (if you are in control it seems less risky). > It's amazing how these men have went on to live such long lives. No, actually it was completely expected. If you can manage to internalize this, and actually believe inside your head that these men were quite safe then you will have gone a long way toward conquering an irrational fear. PS. You may be thinking of Cancer when comparing to HIV which is indeed a random thing.
- mturmon 14y ago
  Well, it's deterministic, until you get surprised: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Flat#Baneberry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Flat#Baneberry and then perhaps you wish you had not shelved your "irrational" fear.
  - Symmetry 14y ago
    There's a lot less that can go wrong when you're trying to contain an explosion by distance, then when you're trying to contain it with dirt in the way.
    - mturmon 14y ago
      Here was another oops moment, from an airborne test: "Shot Harry was detonated on a 300-foot tower. The 32-kiloton explosion heaved a vast amount of earth into the air, much of it vaporized, most of it as a fine powder, all of it radioactive..." From http://www.kcsg.com/view/full_story/19217952/article-SOUTHERN-UTAH-MEMORIES--The-Atomic-Test-Named-Dirty-Harry?instance=home_first_stories http://www.kcsg.com/view/full_story/19217952/article-SOUTHER... My point is simply that it's hard to stay safe when within a couple miles of an energy release of that size, no matter what your model tells you. Downvote if you like; this seems pretty non-controversial.
jerf 14y ago
If you read up on the history of the era and combine that with a study of the real effects of nuclear bombs, it becomes evident that there was an uncoordinated, but nevertheless systematic, effort to grossly overstate the dangers of nuclear war. A game of "Telephone" [1] was played, where at each step the nukes got more dangerous. If nukes were as dangerous to the world as popular culture today imagines, there would be no popular culture; most people grossly underestimate the number of test explosions that were set off at various times. Once again, Wikipedia to the rescue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests : "The United States conducted around 1,054 nuclear tests (by official count) between 1945 and 1992.... The Soviet Union conducted 715 nuclear tests (by official count)[3] between 1949 and 1990... France conducted 210 nuclear tests between February 13, 1960 and January 27, 1996..." Fallout isn't as dangerous as it is commonly portrayed, the bomb's effects are often overstated on every dimension, etc. But of course, who really wants to go out of their way to correct the record? A number of people reading this will find a strong emotional inclination to leap to the conclusion that this post is pro-nuclear-war advocacy or something. But the truth is that while nukes can't destroy the world or destroy the entire ecosystem (even "nuclear winter" is highly questionable, especially in light of subsequent experiences with high-atmosphere particles, such as in the Kuwait oil fires), they still can kill millions directly and effectively destroy civilization as we know it by wiping out potentially every major city in the world (and get a good bit of damage on the medium-sized ones, too), killing billions more. Perhaps it isn't so bad that the dangers are played up a bit. The real dangers they pose are much harder to understand than the Hollywood B-grade movie version in popular culture, but still quite bad. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers
- jackpirate 14y ago
  As a former nuclear submarine officer, and current complete pacifist, I completely agree that the threat of nukes is WAY overblown. For example, much bigger threats to the modern world exist in the forms of uncontrolled small arms trading.
  - justinatjustat 14y ago

by iamdann 14y ago

Dylan16807 14y ago

Far safer. You have to remember that they're over three and a half miles from the explosion. They're just in a dramatic direction.

_delirium 14y ago
In fact, the entire point of this test was to demonstrate that it was safe to stand under it. While some of the early tests were very unsafe, by the time of this test (1957), the dangers of radiation were well-known, so it wasn't a cowboy-type experiment like the early ones, and the planning would've computed the expected radiation dose and ensured it was safe. The military did it as a publicity stunt to assuage public fears of nuclear-tipped air-to-air missiles by showing that even if they were used in a dogfight directly over a city, they wouldn't pose any risk to those on the ground. The volunteers were even supposed to not wear a helmet or hat to show that it was fine for normal people. If I recall correctly from having seen this discussed previously, they measured radiation doses received, and found that the highest doses (but still not at dangerous levels) were received by the pilots involved in the test, not the ground volunteers. This was from the relatively short-lived era when several militaries were hoping to make a distinction between "strategic" nuclear weapons, the kind that blow up cities and would only be used in doomsday scenarios, and "tactical" nuclear weapons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_nuclear_weapon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_nuclear_weapon), small-yield varieties that would just be like very big regular weapons and could conceivably be used in a non-apocalyptic war. Due to a mixture of public opposition and fears of international chain reactions that might result from "going nuclear", though, that initiative failed, which is why you saw a transition back into really-gigantic conventional weapons in the 1990s, e.g. the MOAB (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-43/B_Massive_Ordnance_Air_Blast_bomb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-43/B_Massive_Ordnance_Air_B...).

fghh45sdfhr3 14y ago

From the article: The thing is, in that particular explosion, those guys would have been in a pretty safe position. The bomb itself was a small one (by nuclear standards — 2 kilotons) and it was way, way above their heads. They weren't in a zone to be too affected by the immediate radiation. The bomb was small enough and high enough that it wouldn't have sucked up dust to produce much fallout. The remaining cloud would have been full of (nasty) fission products, but it would have been extremely hot and most of it would have stayed aloft until it cooled down, by which point it probably would have been spread more diffusely.

iamdann 14y ago
Exactly. That's the part I learned from.
- bigiain 14y ago
  I'm remembering visiting the Nike Missile site just over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. http://www.nps.gov/goga/nike-missile-site.htm http://www.nps.gov/goga/nike-missile-site.htm http://nikemissile.org/site_sf88.shtml http://nikemissile.org/site_sf88.shtml It's both wonderful and creepy. They've restored some beautiful old mechanical computers which are works of art in my eyes, but they also point out that the missiles were capable of carrying nuclear warheads, "but they neither confirm nor deny" whether the missiles at this facility ever had them installed. They _do_ however point out that not only were the missiles capable of taking down incoming aircraft heading towards San Francisco, but they were also pre-targetted at Sacramento… "Just in case" (I'm sure the guys who run the tours are pretty good at setting just the right tone with their stories, but they certainly left me with some interesting impressions). I _highly_ recommend the tour of SF88 to anybody who's got an afternoon spare in San Francisco.
  - seagreen 14y ago
    Why would you pre-target them at Sacramento?
  - archgoon 14y ago

ars 14y ago

No, it's nothing like HIV. HIV is a statistical thing: It's random chance if an infective particle travels. A nuclear bomb like this is deterministic. Based on the distance, altitude, size (power), and type (fission, fusion, specifics of the design - especially the tamper) of the bomb you can calculate exactly what and how dangerous the effects will be. The military was trying to show that they are able to make these calculations correctly, and that used appropriately, this type of bomb an be used without undesired damage. It didn't work for them though, because people have an irrational fear of anything nuclear and are not interesting in hearing about any calculations. It's one of those paradoxes similar to how people are completely unable to correctly calculate how risky an action will be. For example people are scared of flying but not crossing the street (a common event comes to be seen as less risky) or driving a car (if you are in control it seems less risky). > It's amazing how these men have went on to live such long lives. No, actually it was completely expected. If you can manage to internalize this, and actually believe inside your head that these men were quite safe then you will have gone a long way toward conquering an irrational fear. PS. You may be thinking of Cancer when comparing to HIV which is indeed a random thing.

mturmon 14y ago
Well, it's deterministic, until you get surprised: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Flat#Baneberry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Flat#Baneberry and then perhaps you wish you had not shelved your "irrational" fear.
- Symmetry 14y ago
  There's a lot less that can go wrong when you're trying to contain an explosion by distance, then when you're trying to contain it with dirt in the way.
  - mturmon 14y ago
    Here was another oops moment, from an airborne test: "Shot Harry was detonated on a 300-foot tower. The 32-kiloton explosion heaved a vast amount of earth into the air, much of it vaporized, most of it as a fine powder, all of it radioactive..." From http://www.kcsg.com/view/full_story/19217952/article-SOUTHERN-UTAH-MEMORIES--The-Atomic-Test-Named-Dirty-Harry?instance=home_first_stories http://www.kcsg.com/view/full_story/19217952/article-SOUTHER... My point is simply that it's hard to stay safe when within a couple miles of an energy release of that size, no matter what your model tells you. Downvote if you like; this seems pretty non-controversial.

jerf 14y ago

If you read up on the history of the era and combine that with a study of the real effects of nuclear bombs, it becomes evident that there was an uncoordinated, but nevertheless systematic, effort to grossly overstate the dangers of nuclear war. A game of "Telephone" [1] was played, where at each step the nukes got more dangerous. If nukes were as dangerous to the world as popular culture today imagines, there would be no popular culture; most people grossly underestimate the number of test explosions that were set off at various times. Once again, Wikipedia to the rescue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests : "The United States conducted around 1,054 nuclear tests (by official count) between 1945 and 1992.... The Soviet Union conducted 715 nuclear tests (by official count)[3] between 1949 and 1990... France conducted 210 nuclear tests between February 13, 1960 and January 27, 1996..." Fallout isn't as dangerous as it is commonly portrayed, the bomb's effects are often overstated on every dimension, etc. But of course, who really wants to go out of their way to correct the record? A number of people reading this will find a strong emotional inclination to leap to the conclusion that this post is pro-nuclear-war advocacy or something. But the truth is that while nukes can't destroy the world or destroy the entire ecosystem (even "nuclear winter" is highly questionable, especially in light of subsequent experiences with high-atmosphere particles, such as in the Kuwait oil fires), they still can kill millions directly and effectively destroy civilization as we know it by wiping out potentially every major city in the world (and get a good bit of damage on the medium-sized ones, too), killing billions more. Perhaps it isn't so bad that the dangers are played up a bit. The real dangers they pose are much harder to understand than the Hollywood B-grade movie version in popular culture, but still quite bad. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers

jackpirate 14y ago
As a former nuclear submarine officer, and current complete pacifist, I completely agree that the threat of nukes is WAY overblown. For example, much bigger threats to the modern world exist in the forms of uncontrolled small arms trading.
- justinatjustat 14y ago