How about Israel and South African Republic?
I guess the Vela Incident didn't make the cut...
Time lapse of all nuclear exlosions from 1945 - 1998
11–20 of 29 posts
Re: Time lapse of all nuclear exlosions from 1945 - 1998
#12It doesn't have the Aum Shinrikyo Australia event. So it's good that they're not including speculation.
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/21/science/seismic-mystery-in...
> LATE on the evening of May 28, 1993, something shattered the calm of the Australian outback and radiated shock waves outward across hundreds of miles of scrub and desert. Around the same time, truck drivers crossing the region and gold prospectors camping nearby saw the dark sky illuminated by bright flashes, and they and other people heard the distant rumble of loud explosions.
[...]
> The evidence was ominous. Investigators discovered that the cult, Aum Shinrikyo, had tried to buy Russian nuclear warheads and had set up an advanced laboratory on a 500,000-acre ranch in Australia near the puzzling upheaval. At the ranch, investigators found that the sect had been mining uranium, a main material for making atomic bombs.
Re: Time lapse of all nuclear exlosions from 1945 - 1998
#13Estimated world nuclear stockpile: 5000 megatons total yield [1] Estimated total yield of tests up to 1980: 510 megatons (418 atmospheric) [2] It's hard to find good numbers on the total yield of all nuclear tests to date, but the ballpark figure is 10% of current stockpiles. This is actually somewhat comforting. We've all heard scary stories saying that we have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world dozens of t…
serious question: does nuclear radiation scale linearly with explosive yield? That question aside, the destructive power of a explosive does not scale linearly with yield [1] > This relation arises from the fact that the destructive power of a bomb does not vary linearly with the yield. The volume the weapon's energy spreads into varies as the cube of the distance, but the destroyed area varies at the square of the d…
We also, historically, tend to test in ways that limit damage. We doubtless have enough weapons to eliminate 95% + of the global population if that were the intent.
Re: Time lapse of all nuclear exlosions from 1945 - 1998
#14For anyone who hadn't read it yet, there is a relevant very short story by Isaac Asimov called Hell-Fire: http://www.tep-online.info/short/hell.htm
“That these bombs are man’s death sentence. We don’t seem to be able to learn that.”
These must have been incredibly scary times. The first time in our modern history that we came close to our own extinction.
Re: Time lapse of all nuclear exlosions from 1945 - 1998
#15Eerie feeling: what a weird war, "won" by detonation bombs over one's own territories.
Re: Time lapse of all nuclear exlosions from 1945 - 1998
#16It doesn't have the Aum Shinrikyo Australia event. So it's good that they're not including speculation. http://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/21/science/seismic-mystery-in... > LATE on the evening of May 28, 1993, something shattered the calm of the Australian outback and radiated shock waves outward across hundreds of miles of scrub and desert. Around the same time, truck drivers crossing the region and gold prospectors ca…
That was far more likely to be a meteorite impact: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2285/did-the-aum-sh...
Re: Time lapse of all nuclear exlosions from 1945 - 1998
#17Estimated world nuclear stockpile: 5000 megatons total yield [1] Estimated total yield of tests up to 1980: 510 megatons (418 atmospheric) [2] It's hard to find good numbers on the total yield of all nuclear tests to date, but the ballpark figure is 10% of current stockpiles. This is actually somewhat comforting. We've all heard scary stories saying that we have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world dozens of t…
I take comfort in the fact that we can only destroy ourselves, not the planet.
Re: Time lapse of all nuclear exlosions from 1945 - 1998
#18Typo in title...
Re: Time lapse of all nuclear exlosions from 1945 - 1998
#19It's very sad to see a spam blog submission like this on HN. Create a page with a short description of a 3 year old video, embed the video, welcome to the front page.
Please flag this crap.
Re: Time lapse of all nuclear exlosions from 1945 - 1998
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
serious question: does nuclear radiation scale linearly with explosive yield? That question aside, the destructive power of a explosive does not scale linearly with yield [1] > This relation arises from the fact that the destructive power of a bomb does not vary linearly with the yield. The volume the weapon's energy spreads into varies as the cube of the distance, but the destroyed area varies at the square of the d…
We also, historically, tend to test in ways that limit damage. We doubtless have enough weapons to eliminate 95% + of the global population if that were the intent.
Actually, only underground tests truly limit damage. There are three destructive effects from a bomb. The explosion itself, the fission products from the bomb, and the radioisotopes bred from high neutron flux impacting surrounding materials.
Tests are conducted away from civilization, which lowers the impact of all forms of damage. However, the above ground tests were conducted generally on the surface with only a few exceptions, which would have increased the amount of radioactive fallout due to neutron activation. In contrast, actual use of a nuclear weapon would be in air bursts which would generate very little activated fallout.
Also, the total number and yield of nuclear weapons now in all arsenals would probably not be sufficient to kill even 50% of the world's population. Much of the world lives in high density areas, but much does not. The total area that the world's population lives on is extremely large and only a small percentage of it could be destroyed through nuclear weapons. Though the industrial and economic collapse would lead to massive starvation which would cause even more delayed deaths, but it's difficult to estimate such things.