Looks like radiation makes it stronger. Theoretically some pine species can have around 700 years lifespan. As it comes out from dendrochronological data. But America is the first here - meet Nevadan pine Pinus longaeva. The oldest known living specimen is a tree, somewhere in the White Mountains of California. The tree was sampled by Schulman in the 1950s. Its great age, 5,060 years. Its still there.
A 390-year-old bonsai tree survived an atomic bomb
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Re: A 390-year-old bonsai tree survived an atomic bomb
#42I've always thought the culture and heritage surrounding bonsai is amazing. I was in a local bonsai club when I was younger and the patience required to produce a really great tree is something to be respected. Sometimes the trees will just die for no discernible reason and you just have to start over after months or years of work. Some of the oldest trees are estimated to be over 1000 years old and have been passed…
I always compare software engineering to bonsai. To be happy doing either for a long time, you need to enjoy the work of becoming a craftsman for its own sake -- the things you build or cultivate can die quickly and for no good reason, and all that remains is the appreciation for the work you put in. Whenever someone asks for a fifth round of changes for a button's color, I think about a Japanese monk raking gravel.…
Thanks for this. Recently I've been getting frustrated by some code. Your message helped me sort it out :-)
Interestingly, when I was a child I saw some artists making chalk drawings on the side walk outside of a church. It started raining, slowly ruining the drawings. The artists didn't budge, but kept on drawing until they were finished. They didn't care about the drawing (the thing), only the drawing (the action). Since then I've tried to live my life that way, but sometimes it is hard to remember.
Re: A 390-year-old bonsai tree survived an atomic bomb
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eh, I think that's underplaying it a bit. Of course you can't literally turn a state the size of Texas into a plate of glass with nukes, but a couple thousand dropped in the most economically productive parts of the world? In terms of the nuclear blast and radiation itself, it's true that probably only a half a billion people or so would die. But you'd be essentially ripping out the entire economic and political nerv…
EMP would probably feature in a nuclear war as well, so there goes most of your power grid, cars, computers, and everything that comes from them like modern finance and modern agriculture. Humanity would be fine, but civilization would be in for some real trouble. I imagine that deaths from starvation and disease would rival or exceed immediate deaths in the nuclear exchange. The novel War Day is an intense and fasci…
> I imagine that deaths from starvation and disease would rival or exceed immediate death ...
This is the case for nearly every war ever fought.
Re: A 390-year-old bonsai tree survived an atomic bomb
#44One not very often discussed fact is that the effects of even an all-out nuclear war (detonation of all existing nuclear weapons) are exaggerated, for various fairly obvious reasons. The total number of people killed will be "only" 10-15%, and it will be definitely not a threat to humanity as the species. http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/82jpr.html I read somewhere that if all existing weapons in the world were detonated u…
I agree that they are overplayed for effect, but there is some math. I saw Kissinger explain it when asked about nukes killed the whole world ten times over. The math started with WWII Germany. They kept reasonably reliable records of where and when people died during allied air raids. So someone drew up a formula linking the tonnage of bombs dropped with the number of dead on the ground. This was then extended to nu…
Quite; particularly considering that the strategies of the bombings were reversed.
In WWII, Germany was bombed so that strategic bombers (B-17) attacked strategic targets (civilians and factories in cities), and tactical bombers (P-47) attacked tactical targets (tanks or trains near combat).
In Vietnam war, Vietnam was bombed so that strategic bombers (B-52) attacked tactical targets (jungle with suspected Viet Cong activity in combat area), and tactical bombers (F-4) attacked tactical targets within strategic targets (a bridge in Hanoi).
And WWII was the last "good" war for Americans.
Re: A 390-year-old bonsai tree survived an atomic bomb
#45Looks like radiation makes it stronger. Theoretically some pine species can have around 700 years lifespan. As it comes out from dendrochronological data. But America is the first here - meet Nevadan pine Pinus longaeva . The oldest known living specimen is a tree, somewhere in the White Mountains of California. The tree was sampled by Schulman in the 1950s. Its great age, 5,060 years. Its still there.
To those downvoting me. I spent 2 years planting pines in experimental plantations to study radioactivity effects on pine in mixed forest plantations in 1993-1994. So I know a thing or two.