11–20 of 89 posts
my favorite detail is the evaporating (almost explosively converted into plasma by the sheer intensity of the energy being radiated) tower that the weapon was placed on top of and the cables which were keeping the tower vertical - the 5 spikes at the belly of the fireball https://youtu.be/woR7j72zE0U?t=9
I was a child of the 1950's. Only 50 miles south of New York City, we little grade school kids were routinely drilled in cowering under our desks in case of a nuclear attack. Every time I heard an airplane, I was afraid it was going to drop bombs. Popular Science ran features about how to build your own fallout shelter, and how Dad could prepare his family for the coming nuclear apocalypse. The understated, tragic ho…
> while deranged world leaders measure each other's manhood by "mine's bigger than yours Not much has changed in 70 years.
my favorite detail is the evaporating (almost explosively converted into plasma by the sheer intensity of the energy being radiated) tower that the weapon was placed on top of and the cables which were keeping the tower vertical - the 5 spikes at the belly of the fireball https://youtu.be/woR7j72zE0U?t=9
That's what those are? Wow, thanks for the explanation! I always thought that was some weird quirk of the mushroom cloud.
Hard to really say the difference between a nuclear war and the U.S., Russia, UK France and others setting off vast numbers of atmospheric nuclear weapons in the 20th century.
Spoiler alert: about four fifths of Americans end up dead, and about one third of all humans on Earth. The survivors contend with famine and plague on a scale never before seen. Most of the world's industrial capacity is destroyed.
I find it fairly easy to distinguish that scenario from the world we live in, personally.
Hard to really say the difference between a nuclear war and the U.S., Russia, UK France and others setting off vast numbers of atmospheric nuclear weapons in the 20th century.
Population density near the blast sites? Not that they all did the right thing, and real people were absolutely affected. But there is a significant difference.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/secrets-out-soviets-did-not-target-cities-20120805-23ny1.html
Continental Europe, especially Germany, was an exception because of expectations of immediate ground warfare and the likelihood of tactical nukes. But arguably that's less an exception and more a variation of the same logic.
[1] Decapitation means you've nobody to negotiate with in a timely manner, ensuring the enemy will resort to unleashing every last nuclear weapon at their disposal. Neither side was stupid enough to have unleashed everything at once. All scenarios I've read described an escalation in launches over 1 or 2 days, sometimes longer, with opportunities for negotiated or even unilateral ceasefires.
my favorite detail is the evaporating (almost explosively converted into plasma by the sheer intensity of the energy being radiated) tower that the weapon was placed on top of and the cables which were keeping the tower vertical - the 5 spikes at the belly of the fireball https://youtu.be/woR7j72zE0U?t=9
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> while deranged world leaders measure each other's manhood by "mine's bigger than yours Not much has changed in 70 years.
Not much has changed since recorded human history.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Population density near the blast sites? Not that they all did the right thing, and real people were absolutely affected. But there is a significant difference.
FWIW, declassified intelligence purporting to show Soviet nuclear targets in Australia suggest that large cities would have been spared direct strikes. http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/secrets-out-soviets-did-not-target-cities-20120805-23ny1.html Various other outlets and blogs at the time also made the point that, generally, both the Soviets and Americans avoided population centers as well as (I…
Most US air and naval bases are in close proximity to population centers.