HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

This Kurzgesagt video is a much better explainer:

https://youtu.be/5iPH-br_eJQ

These directives are mostly common sense knowledge which anyone in modern world will know. No mention of iodine tablets for fallouts.

Besides if modern nuclear devices are detonated will they be a Hiroshima type? (Hint hint: No. Emphatic No).

The MIRVs of US are typically rated at 275KT going up to several megatons. Similar scale for Russia & China. Unless you're in reinforced bunkers with heavy steel doors, you are most likely toast. Incineration by the thermal blast is most likely outcome.

⬐ jnwatson

Obviously, the message doesn’t matter for those incinerated. It applies to the folks in the outer boroughs and suburbs outside the blast radius.

⬐ ohiovr

MIRVs cover a vast area. The blast area basically surrounds the target and it burns out from the outside to the inside.

⬐ srvmshr

The article doesn't specifically tell these are instructions for people outside the kill zone. And severely lacking survival information.

Either the script should have added more details (instead of a commonsensical fluff piece) or added more practical information such as shelter inside well built closets, underground subway or enclosed spaces (and pay attention to emergency alarms/ alerts of a nuclear strike)

⬐ idontwantthis

A bigger fireball also means more people affected, but not incinerated because the area of less destruction surrounding it will also be bigger.

This advice is always going to be relevant, no matter how big the bomb.

> Unless you're in reinforced bunkers with heavy steel doors, you are most likely toast.

No building in the world, not even Cheyenne mountain can survive being in a nuclear fireball or even close to one. The steel doors are also for people nearby, but not directly hit.

⬐ srvmshr

> No building in the world, not even Cheyenne mountain can survive being in a nuclear fireball or even close to one.

Reference? I thought those were built specifically for inhabitants to survive even an overhead blast.

Edit: My parent comment is not aimed at specifics of detonation, but rather the poor quality of instruction. The focus should not be immediately surviving the blast. If you're caught unaware, survival becomes a matter of luck rather than hurried preparedness. Its more to do with "what" and "how to" after the event. Those are way too crucial. For god's sake, even WikiHow has a better and far more detailed page on this topic:

https://www.wikihow.com/Survive-a-Nuclear-Attack

If history has taught anything, black rain a few hours after Hiroshima killed many more thousands in the coming years.

⬐ survirtual

Although it would not be difficult to locate a reference, I will back up what the post you’re replying to said. Before the concern of nuclear fallout, some thought to use nukes as “mountain movers”. Think about that. How many mountains have humans been able to make? But we have a device that can largely obliterate one.

Bunkers are all about surviving indirect blasts and protecting from radiation exposure. If you have a deep enough underground bunker, you largely protect yourself from a “direct blast,” but if a weapon burrowed anywhere near your bunker and detonated it’s good night. You’d also need nation-scale resources to build a bunker deep enough, and have air, water, vapor barriers, etc.

⬐ srvmshr

> Although it would not be difficult to locate a reference, I will back up what the post you’re replying to said.

Operation Plowshare. It was largely a failure in objectives.

> a weapon burrowed anywhere near your bunker and detonated it’s good night

What are the mathematical chances someone will burrow a sufficiently powerful nuclear device near a Cheyenne mountain type bunker without getting noticed by security, maintaining all the electrical supplies and fusing quietly over months/years, and at the apocalyptic moment manage to detonate it with VVIPs holed in?

I bet the same chances as carrying it inside and detonating it.

⬐ idontwantthis

Wikipedia confirms it’s designed to survive a 30MT blast 1km away. It was designed when missiles were inaccurate and expensive so the warheads were huge and unlikely to hit it directly.

Now most of NORAD is at another, completely unsheltered facility because missiles are so accurate that no protection matters.

Cheyenne exists mainly for lesser threats than general nuclear exchanges.

⬐ namlem

I don't think any active Russian missiles have single warheads anywhere near 30MT. Their big ones are about 500kT, which Cheyenne Mountain could probably withstand just fine.

⬐ srvmshr

Yep. Precisely

The chances of breaching Cheyenne complex is near zero. Here's why:

The mountain face is pure granite atleast a quarter mile thick above the bunker reinforced with steel inside. To breach even 100-odd meters, you need a sufficiently strong impactor on top of your warhead which is made of lead or similar grade material. That drastically reduces the payload of actual weapon.

If you choose a cruise missile, none of them have sufficient range & also again weight limited in the neighborhood of 1000kgs.

If you really want to bore a hole through with multiple impacts, you would need a dozen warhead hitting the exact same spot. CEP of best missiles are still ~10-100 mtrs in the best case. You can do the math how probable is the event something will breach Cheyenne Mountain complex.

To add to another separate comment, NORAD still keeps backup operation alive inside the cave complex (source: Wikipedia). This is in the event a hostile situation disables Peterson AFB.

⬐ dekhn

I imagine one of the hardest parts of survival here is maintaining the air intakes.

⬐ srvmshr

30MT 1 KM away is probably similar to ~5MT directly overhead by back of the envelope calculation. Sufficiently secure still I would say.

None of the published warheads specs are 30MT & even 5MT would be the combined strength of few MIRVs. And note that most warheads are airbursts not ground penetration type. That can make a lot of difference

⬐ idontwantthis

The point is that it's an immobile target with known protections, and missiles are accurate enough to hit it directly as many times as necessary. I'm sure it's specifically targeted by sufficient weapons to destroy it. It could survive a lot, but not enough.

And, like I said, the proof is that it doesn't actually handle much of NORAD anymore. NORAD is mostly above ground because any immobile target is hopelessly vulnerable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterson_Space_Force_Base This is where NORAD is based now.

Also, I read the article wrong, it's 30MT at 2km away.

⬐ srvmshr

The move to Peterson AFB was not a security measure, but a cost saving measure by the USAF & GAO. Lot of concerns were posted about the same by few Congressman.

https://armedservices.house.gov/2008/7/skelton-and-hunter-ex...

Plus, THAAD is meant to speed up ABM capabilities over time. Going by experience following this area, one of the reasons why you don't hear much about it is probably because USAF is pretty serious to keep the specifics under cover as long as possible.

⬐ sebazzz

> No mention of iodine tablets for fallouts.

That only works when you know _exactly_ when to take them.

⬐ King-Aaron

> The MIRVs of US are typically rated at 275KT going up to several megatons.

Yep, that last line in the OP video really gets me... "All right? You've got this!"

No, you don't got this

"Thought experiment" from Kurzgesagt: What if We Nuke a City? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iPH-br_eJQ

I like this nice video from Kurzgesagt on the horrors of nuclear weapons on cities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iPH-br_eJQ

⬐ MrFoof

The biggest takeaway people should have from this video is that a modern nuclear strike is effectively an overwhelming Denial of Service attack against emergency services, infrastructure, and supply chain... all at once, on an immense scale.

Enough so that quickly scaling a "proper response" just isn't possible. Even if just a single large city (500K+ pop) was hit with a single, typical modern warhead (200-300kt), the results would be covered in history books for the rest of the millennium.

A large scale exchange? The best you could hope for is that you're living in the Southern hemisphere to avoid the immediate horror, though the next 20 years would still be horrific.

⬐ madacoo

# August 6, 1945

  In the Enola Gay
  five minutes before impact
  he whistles a dry tune

  Later he will say
  that the whole blooming sky
  went up like an apricot ice.

  Later he will laugh and tremble
  at such a surrender, for the eye
  of his belly saw Marilyn's skirts
  fly over her head for ever

  On the river bank,
  bees drizzle over
  hot white rhododendrons

  Later she will walk the dust,
  a scarlet girl
  with her whole stripped skin
  at her heel, stuck like an old
  shoe sole or mermaid's tail

  Later she will lie down
  in the flecked black ash
  where the people are become
  as lizards or salamanders
  and, blinded, she will complain
  Mother you are late. So late

  Later in dreams he will look
  down shrieking and see

  ladybirds
  ladybirds

Alison Fell

⬐ daveslash

I had not seen or hear-of this poem before. I'm familiar with the bombing of Hiroshima from a historical standpoint, but I can't say that I really understood this poem. I searched online for an explanation. I found this document. It looks like some sort of literature homework. It helped quite a bit.

http://essalanglit.weebly.com/uploads/1/0/5/4/10543533/augus...

⬐ jscheel

In my agency days, I produced this video (which was part of a larger campaign about surviving a nuclear attack in a city). Was a ton of fun, and quite sobering: https://vimeo.com/29382035

⬐ victoro0

A nuke would not "desintegrate" steel-reinforced concrete buildings.

⬐ edpichler

For me, throwing bombs like this in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are as evil as the holocaust.

⬐ bitlax

What's your reasoning?

⬐ edpichler

I don't see a difference on the evilness rate of who kills a two hundred thousand or who kill a million civilians. I understand each side had different reasons, but I am talking just about the evilness on that. During the war, everybody is evil.

⬐ bitlax

Oh ok, so your personal definition of evil just includes every belligerent act.

⬐ edpichler

Yes, when civilians are involved.

⬐ bitlax

Right, so if someone takes military action with a non-zero chance of civilian death then they have committed an evil on par with the holocaust, no?

⬐ edpichler

If he kills thousands, for sure. No difference between thousands or millions, it is the same evilness rate. After some point, there is no difference in cruelty.

⬐ bitlax

What is that point? What is the moral difference between hundreds and thousands, or dozens and hundreds.

⬐ trashE

I've got some bad news for you... https://youtu.be/LLCF7vPanrY

⬐ zelienople

This is brain dead. The animation shows a ground detonation, but fails to make any distinction between that and an air burst. Nor does it mention the yield of the weapon.

Details are important. This should be called "Nuclear Weapons Explained to Morons By Morons".

⬐ clSTophEjUdRanu

You never nuke a city once. To overwhelm missile defense you must send many nukes to increase your odds of success.

So imagine multiple nukes peppering the same city.

⬐ flyingfences

One of the greatest articles that I have ever read was a narrative of some of the people who survived the Hiroshima bombing, recounted a year after the event. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima

Kurgezagt just posted a video “What if we nuked a city” https://youtu.be/5iPH-br_eJQ

⬐ ThrowMeAwayOkay

I watched, and clearly explains the horrible facts and timeline of what happens.