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The thousands of atomic bombs exploded on Earth (2015)
- danielszqzq 1y ago[dead]
- themafia 1y agoYes, the Soviets didn't let a lot of things get in the way of their military goals; however, the US was actually observed dropping those types of weapons on actual cities as an act of war. Cities that were much closer to the Soviet Union than they were to the USA.
- Rover222 1y agoWhat's your point?
- compass_copium 1y agoIt's not very nuanced analysis to say the Russkies don't give a fuck and focus only on them when their enemies (who wanted them annihilated) tested more bombs and directly killed civilians in war with them.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Rover222 1y agooh my bad, I somehow only watched the video without reading the dumb article below it
- FridayoLeary 1y agoI read once the tsar bomba is actually not very efficient. The problem is the explosion is concentrated on one spot and most of the energy gets dissipated upwards. If you really want to cause huge widespread destruction you are better off using multiple smaller megaton bombs. Still, it would probably ruin your day. Apparently they could have even doubled its power to 100 megatons? You have to wonder what that would have been like. In case you were wondering this is what would have happened if they had detonated it under the marinas trench https://what-if.xkcd.com/15/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/15/
- mempko 1y agoDidn't Russia just create some kind of underwater nuclear torpedo to cause tsunamis? I guess they are fans of Dynson
- ben_w 1y agoRussia has claimed to have done many things that, on close investigation, it has in fact not done. If you mean this, it's mostly (and certainly the tsunami part is merely) propaganda nonsense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpose_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpose_...
- cpursley 1y agoWell, they can't exactly test that particular system without causing massive ecosystem damage. As for your first comment - you are commenting from a politically motivated position, not a technical one. Said another way, you are making the warfare 101, chapter 1, paragraph 1 mistake.
- mandevil 1y agoThe 2011 Tohoku earthquake that created the devastating tsunami was an energy release of something like 600 million Hiroshima bombs. Nuclear weapons are just the wrong order of magnitude to make a tsunami, this isn't about politics, it's about scale.
- ben_w 1y ago> warfare 101, chapter 1, paragraph 1 mistake. "All warfare is based on deception" - Sun Tzu What every nation, Russia included, talks about and shows off has very little in common with what they can actually do. In Russia's case we mere civilians can just directly observe the difference a lot of the time, enough for me to be comfortable projecting the same assumption where only real military analysis could actually tell for sure. The claim that this weapon could cause a tsunami is within the set of things even civilians can disprove. This option is not available to us civilians for more competent cases such as China or Iran.
- mannykannot 1y agoI see the ambiguous Vela incident of 22 September 1979 has been excluded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_incident
- JKCalhoun 1y agoYeah, wondering about that. Thanks. The possible responsible parties is interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_incident#Possible_responsible_parties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_incident#Possible_respons...
- compass_copium 1y agoThose dirty commies... American testing had absolutely no consequences for its own citizens or others. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Tooth_Survey https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Tooth_Survey https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_Atoll https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_Atoll
- Finnucane 1y agoMany of the workers at the Nevada Test Site got radiation sickness, cancers, and other health issues from exposure to the bombs and fallout. As did their families (contaminated clothing was worn home). Soldiers taking part in tests, downwinders in Utah and elsewhere, experienced high rates of cancer. Farmers lost livestock and crops. The AEC and DoD did everything they could to cover it up.
- pulvinar 1y agoAnd at least one movie cast and crew: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conqueror_(1956_film)#Nuclear_incident_and_cancer_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conqueror_(1956_film)#Nucl...
- janice1999 1y agoThe authors overt nationalistic tone is really at odds with reality. There are no "good guys" when it came to nuclear weapons testing. The UK nuclear weapons tests in Australia were also a disaster for locals and poisoned large areas.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- adriand 1y agoI went down a rabbit hole of archival recordings (on archive.org) of insane material from the Cold War era, including this gem called "The Complacent Americans" which aimed to instruct Americans on how to survive a nuclear blast. It's really quite mental to listen to: https://archive.org/details/lp_the-complacent-americans_larry-blake-robert-connelly-jack-f-fuller https://archive.org/details/lp_the-complacent-americans_larr... It inspired me to make an EP about the same topic, utilizing samples from that material plus some others, called Leader of all Nations. You might like it if you're into slower-paced dubstep / Boards of Canada stuff, it's on Soundcloud (https://soundcloud.com/taaapes/sets/leader-of-all-nations https://soundcloud.com/taaapes/sets/leader-of-all-nations) plus all the usual places. It's strange to me that some of the basic principles of what to do in the event of a nuclear explosion are no longer taught, despite the fact that the risk of nuclear war is arguably just as high as it once was. For instance, I bet if a bomb went off in the middle distance, most people would look at it: bad move! If you see a big flash, you should actually (it's a cliche, but true), "duck and cover". Duck to avoid flying debris. Cover to avoid burns. I didn't know this until I dug into the archival material making this EP but it's genuinely odd to me that this is not widely known. (I'd heard the phrase before, but had no idea what it really meant.)
- nancyminusone 1y agoIt does bother me that people think duck and cover is completely useless. It is if the bomb explodes directly above you, but if you're a few miles away, it's pretty much the same situation as a tornado, and we still have drills for those.
- unyttigfjelltol 1y agoA tornado leaves only local destruction. Duck-and-cover implies that with proper preparation, total thermonuclear war is survivable by a society, which is not the correct mindset.
- slt2021 1y agoit is survivable according to the Soviet doctrine, which denied the concept of MAD. Soviets focused on the survival of small military command in hardened bunkers, rather than survival of entirety of civilian population. This doctrine allows unlimited pre-emptive nuclear strikes to achieve decisive victory over the enemy, and avoid attrition-style prolonged nuclear war
- doctorhandshake 1y ago“What are a few thousand destroyed homes” … I would have asked how many tens of thousands of animals probably died as a result of this.
- ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 1y agoAll it takes is a certain level of cavalier attitude. I would say the world is barrelling toward that again today.
- chiffre01 1y agoDoes this prove/disprove the idea of nuclear winter? I know these bombs were blown up at different times, but it seems an event like nuclear winter would probably not happen.
- Rover222 1y agoYeah I think the nuclear winter idea came from if the US and Soviets both launched their full arsenals in a MAD exchange, and society now associates nuclear winter with just a few nuclear explosions.
- lazide 1y agoNuclear winter is kind of like ‘AGI will take all our jobs and is ANY DAY NOW’. Aka a combination of unrealistic extrapolation + fearmongering. We’ve had volcanic eruptions orders of magntitude larger than both countries nuclear arsenals combined, and we’re all still here.
- dylan604 1y agoIs that what society thinks, or just some random people on the interwebs? Does society think the earth is flat, or just some random people on the interwebs? It's easy to find oneself in a bubble and think everyone else thinks the same way, when stepping out of the bubble for a moment brings reality crashing back
- Rover222 1y agoweird take
- bobmcnamara 1y agoNo, either way. Presumably the operational devices are more consistent and higher yield than the early pre-fusion cores. There are outliers on both sides in the test data. Much of the soot generated from a nuclear blast comes from the surrounding environment, cities presumably, which seems to be less flammable than in the past(armchairing here). Time of year will always be a factor. I'm sure there are things I'm not thinking of off the cuff.
- sowbug 1y agoBomb pulse: a global increase in atmospheric carbon-14 resulting from the large-scale nuclear bomb testing conducted primarily between the 1950s and mid-1960s. Used by scientists as a chronological marker to date a wide variety of materials and study environmental processes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_pulse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_pulse
- sschnei8 1y agoSo sad. Humans are so smart and yet soooo dumb.
- dylan604 1y agoHence, mostly harmless
- jebarker 1y agoGiven the huge number of tests, I wonder how many people alive have seen a nuclear detonation
- mandevil 1y agoMost of those tests (almost all since the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963) were underground, where no one could witness them except in photographs. Since the LTBT over 60 years ago, China has done 22 above-ground tests, and France did 50. France stopped atmospheric testing in 1974 (over 50 years ago), China in 1980 (45 years ago). So the last test at which it is feasible that someone watched with their own eyes would be the Chinese nuclear test at Lop Nor on 16 October 1980, at 04:30:29.67 UTC. That was a test of the JL-1 missile, which was fired off and then flew all the way through reentry to nuclear detonation. At the time, a lot of people in the West doubted that Chinese missiles were capable of delivering a working warhead (1) so they proved their capability by firing an actually armed SLBM and it detonated in the atmosphere, exactly like it would do against a city. 1: Much like a lot of people discount North Korea's missile delivery today. No one doubts that Israel, France, Russia or the UK have missiles that can deliver nuclear warheads successfully (the US, like China, has actually done a full SLBM launch-to-warhead detonation test, the only two countries to do so- though the US Operation Frigate Bird was before the LTBT). I wonder what it is that connects China and North Korea, and makes Westerners doubt their abilities in ways that they don't doubt the French or the UK?
- OkayPhysicist 1y agoFrance and the UK are not desperately poor like North Korea, or China in the 70's.
- franky47 1y ago“But if they have thermonuclear power, where then do they conduct their tests and detonations?” “On their own planet, sir.” Naron rose to his full twenty feet of height and thundered, “On their own planet?” “Yes, sir.” Slowly Naron drew out his stylus and passed a line through the latest addition in the smaller book. It was an unprecedented act, but, then, Naron was very wise and could see the inevitable as well as anyone in the galaxy. “Silly asses,” he muttered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silly_Asses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silly_Asses
- zenmac 1y agoHmm forgot where I saw an interactive map for the explosions it was on HN awhile ago. All I can find now is this: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Time/index.html?appid=b8540a8a2500472c8037bdd2a35c4be0 https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Time/index.html?appid=b8540a8a25...
- aworks 1y agoThe book Nuclear War: A Scenario was eye-opening. US systems make it hard to move from a default of escalation, once a missile is detected as likely inbound. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_War:_A_Scenario https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_War:_A_Scenario
- watersb 1y agoI'm reading "Tomorrow!" by Philp Wylie, a novel published in 1952 about the preparation (or lack thereof) of the citizens of a fictional Midwestern US city, and the aftermath of nuclear war. Wishful thinking, terror, social climbing, anti-American activities... and bravery, civil defense, common decency. Wealthy owners of mass media don't want the government telling them what to do, so they destroy civil defense efforts. The good old days.