This Is What It's Like to Witness a Nuclear Explosion

[L. Coyote]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/27/opinion/nuclear-weapons-ukraine.html

Link to tweet

In the New York Times, a Portland Scientist Describes What a Nuclear Explosion Feels Like
“I thought that the hair on the back of my head might catch on fire.”

..... Buntzen watched a hydrogen bomb detonated on a barge moored offshore of Bokoluo Island in the South Pacific in 1958. In this morning’s edition of The New York Times, he sketches his memories of the nuclear tests known as Operation Hardtack I.

“Sixty-three years later, what I saw remains etched in my mind,” Buntzen writes, “which is why I’m so alarmed that the use of nuclear weapons can be discussed so cavalierly in 2022.” ...

“The heat was becoming unbearable,” he writes. “Bare spots at my ankles were starting to hurt. The aluminum foil hood I had fashioned for protection was beginning to fail.

“I thought that the hair on the back of my head might catch on fire.”

[yagotme]

1. Seems lots of people want war,

until it's time to do war stuff. Time erases memories, as well as die-offs, Those that remember the nuclear scare, are a little more fuzzy about the details, and the younger generation has nothing but a few videos and some pictures to relate.

[Dan]

9. I am going to disagree with you.

No sane person wants war. I think that people from all spectrums are just tired of the dogs of war being unleashed.

I am going on 70 years of age - and there has never been memories of a sustained period of peace.

I think people (for the most part) want peace, but the leadership on both sides - just clamor for more of the same insanity - and no addressing why ‘killing people’ is the answer.

There is no much money in advocating for war or rather conflict - and attacking as ‘unknowing and unrealistic’ those that advocate for peaceful resolutions.

There was a short time in grade school where we were teaching kids on how to seek peaceful resolutions, but now it seems as it was saying everybody has a gun, get yours.

I loved the Hippies of the late 60s and 70s, because for all their issues - they extended the hand of friendship to everyone.

I’m just tired…

[drmeow]

36. Unfortunately

I think there are plenty of people who are perfectly happy with war elsewhere. Like the people who wanted to bomb Iraq or Afghanistan back to the stone age. The first time America was subject to the type of violence we perpetrate around the world (9/11) the reaction was never "OMG, this is what war is like, this is what a drone strike must feel like." No, the reaction to the horrors of being violently attacked was to do the same but 100s of times worse.

Yes, our military industrial complex owned media cultivates that attitude but a lack of empathy makes their efforts to do that easier.

Americans have been mostly spared the true horrors of war since Pearl Harbor and realistically since the Civil War as US wars since that time have either been limited to individual states or have occurred in other countries. We've never experienced modern warfare on our own soil and, quite frankly, far far too many Americans are either cavalierly disinterested or actively support the violence of war as long as we aren't the ones dying and our infrastructure remains intact.

[wnylib]

44. I remember that, during the run up to the Iraq invasion,

while the Bush administration was doing a pretense of getting UN support, people debated over UN resolutions as justifications for war. The debates were chilling to me because of the detached language, as if they were debating whether to take a walk after dinner. There was no attention to the consequences of war, other than some pie in the sky BS about "liberating" Iraqis and phony evidence of WMD to create a sense of urgency and fear.

[ProfessorGAC]

52. My Memory Of That Event...

...was as clear today as it was that moment.
I was waiting for a flight to Atlanta when I actually saw the coverage of the 2nd plane hit the tower.
I picked up my stuff & went to the car, knowing nobody wasn't flying anywhere that day.
As I walked to the car, knowing it was intentional, I remember thinking "Somebody's ass is going to be kicked."
I wasn't hoping for it, encouraging it, or cheer leading for war like a jingoistic fool.
I just knew the response was going to be a slice of war, somewhere. Unfortunately, I got that prediction right.

[yagotme]

54. Sanity is not the issue.

Can a buck or two be made, is probably more to the point. How much is the arms industry making? Follow the money, and you wil probably find the root cause.

[Martin68]

18. Absolutely true, but nuclear war is only unthinkable if both sides know the other side is willing to

respond to a nuclear attack in kind. The same goes for chemical and biological warfare. Unless mutual destruction is guaranteed, an ambitious authoritarian is tempted to test the proposition. There must be no doubt in any one's minds that a nuclear attack of any kind will invite a nuclear attack in return. Yes, nuclear war is madness and unthinkable. But the only way to prevent it is to promise nuclear retaliation in response to a the detonation of a nuclear device. Mind you, if Putin ever employed a tactical nuclear device in Ukraine he would blame the U.S., the Ukranians, or anybody else for the attack. Again, if a response in kind did not occur, it would encourage further use of an unthinkable weapon.

[Mr.Bill]

2. A hydrogen bomb makes what we dropped

on Hiroshima look like fireworks. I'm old enough to remember film of them being tested on Pacific islands.

[pecosbob]

7. They made a mathmatical error on the potential yield for the first Castle Bravo test at Bikini

The yield was two and a half time what they expected...at 15 megatons it was a thousand times more powerful than Hiroshima. The not-so-lucky Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon No.5 was caught in the fallout and heavily irradiated. One died and the rest were not allowed to talk about what had happened for decades afterward. This test also led to the birth of the kaiju film genre.

[pecosbob]

3. Both my father and uncle worked on Minuteman missiles in the sixties

There were incidents that have never been disclosed to the general public.

[Martin68]

19. Incidents with non-nuclear Minuteman missiles? Or perhaps you are referring to the extremely close

call of a Russian nuclear missile commander who decide not to respond to what turned out to be a false alarm?

[pecosbob]

24. More like maintenance problems and issues...near-repeats of the Titan explosion in Chico in 1962

or the later Titan II explosion in Damascus Arkansas.

[Bobstandard]

4. I witnessed one such test as a kid

In 1962 I was awoken by a strange light glowing outside my window in Honolulu, 900 miles away from an atmospheric nuclear test site in the Pacific. It was an unearthly greenish blue light that glowed everywhere in the part of the sky I could see It was super scary and I ran and woke my Dad who explained what was going on. The weird light lingered, then finally disappeared. I can see that color today in my mind but I’ve never seen it again in nature and hope not to

[kiri]

25. it was Barium

The greenish light came from the metal Barium; its salts are used in fireworks to give a green/blue color. The nuclear blast vaporized a ton? and the cloud was then exposed to solar and cosmic irradiation. The goal was to observe what effect nuclear explosions would have on the upper atmosphere.

As I recall, everyone thought it was very pretty, but they learned little.

[Bobstandard]

34. Its the color of the end of the world

I worry now that when next I see that color loosed on the world I’ll turn to a loved one and my last words to them will be, “that green color comes from the barium being vaporized.”

[wnylib]

45. I often wonder what radiation from

nuclear testing in oceans has done to the water of those oceans, the life in the oceans, the increased earth temperatures, and the water picked up in clouds to drop as rain several miles away.

[3Hotdogs]

5. Guy I worked with was in the army in the 50's. Bunches of soldiers were sent to Utah and ordered

into ditches, miles from where an atomic bomb was detonated. He remembered his body looking like it was in a a red X-ray. He said, II don't have vocabulary or writing ability to describe it any better..... there is nothing I have experienced like it to compare it to."

I was a kid, 18 years old and I was impressed with his memory of the explosion. I asked him to say it again so I could write it down... I don't know why I wrote it but it comes back to me from time to time.

[Martin68]

20. 3Hotdogs, I'm not sure I understand what a red X-ray means. His body changed color? Was burned?

His companions could see his bones through his skin?

[pecosbob]

26. Just like in the cartoons, the ultra-bright light shines right through your flesh

making it appear red or pink but the bones block the light...end result is for a moment you would appear to look like the exposed x-ray film you see at your dentist.

I have read reports of this from some of the people who witnessed tests.

[3Hotdogs]

33. It was how he saw his own body.

[Dial H For Hero]

6. My father went through the fallout from an atomic explosion in the South Pacific when he was

in the Navy on a Fletcher-class destroyer back in the 1950s. They were testing decontamination methods.

[mobeau69]

8. My BIL was a radar navigator on a SAC B52. His crew's plan was to drop their load on the target in

The USSR and then try to make it to the Falkland Islands. I asked what about my sister? Nothing to come back for he said. She’d be vapors. They didn’t carry enough fuel to get back anyway. It would be a suicide mission.

I think the Falkland Islands plan was a joke but I’m not sure. They all had sort of a weird doomsday sense of humor. Probably helped them cope with their job description.

On my visit to his base in ND there were 4 or 5 B52s sitting on the tarmac loaded and ready to fly. Just looking at them freaked me out!

[hunter]

10. My father-in-law was used as a guinea pig in nuclear weapons testing...

... and witnessed an atomic bomb test up close.

The military wanted to see how soldiers would cope in the immediate aftermath of a nearby atomic strike.

All these soldiers were sworn to secrecy. That order was rescinded during the Clinton administration but my father-in-law still didn't tell anyone, not even my wife's mom, until a few years later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_veteran

[Dukkha]

13. Their eyewitness accounts is pretty horrific

When TFG was poking the North Korea hornet's nest, some pundits were actually trying to downplay Nuclear war as something survivable with acceptable losses.

[hunter]

17. What kind of psychopaths set up these experiments?

Sure, we're pretty sure we can place humans this far in, but beyond that we'll have to use pigs...

And they did use pigs.

[Martin68]

21. Psychopaths who needed to know the effects of radiation and a nuclear bomb. The fact is, no one

knew what the effects would be. I'd rather they tested it on pigs than humans. The fact is, it was a weapon that would be used. We learned more about nuclear weapons from the results in Hiroshima than any tests on pigs. That was a horrific experiment. But it probably saved millions of lives. Reality sucks.

[hunter]

48. Nagasaki was the experiment. That was the "bomb of the future" and the psychopaths...

... were eager to see how well a plutonium bomb worked against a living city.

The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima was a uranium bomb. Those bombs were too dangerous and too expensive for mass production.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was December 7, 1941. At the latest, physicists and the military were convinced they could build plutonium bombs by 1943. In October, 1943, ground was broken for the construction of the B-Reactor at Hanford.

The plutonium production facilities at Hanford were built big, fully intended for the mass production of atomic bombs. After the success of the Trinity test on July 16, 1945, Japan's fate was sealed. The plan was to keep dropping atomic bombs on Japan until they surrendered or there was nothing left of them. That would have been Germany's fate as well, had they not previously surrendered.

The "millions of lives saved" claim is a myth we tell ourselves after the fact to feel better. Atomic weapons were inevitable.

War is a horrible business. There's no balancing "lives saved" versus "lives lost."

[Martin68]

49. I've done a lot of research on the topic. I believe the preponderance of the evidence suggests Japan

was stalling in negotiations and had no intention of surrendering. There was a fanatic belief that Japan should never surrender, and that it was honorable to die for the Emperor. An invasion of the Japanese mainland would have resulted in horrific fatalities. The invasion of Okinawa killed 12,500 Americans and 110,000 Japanese. I lived in Japan for 20 years and explored some of the miles of caves dug out along the coastline for the final defense of the Japanese homeland - by civilians as well as military personnel. The second bomb on Nagasaki persuaded the Emperor to surrender against the advice of his military chiefs. I've talked to Americans who were slated to participate in the planned invasion of the Japanese mainland. They are very appreciative of the use of the bombs. Remember, the death toll among Japanese would have been even higher than the US.

[hunter]

53. Neither the U.S. invasion forces nor the Japanese knew those bombs were coming.

I'm sure a lot of U.S. soldiers, when they heard the news, thought something like, "Holy shit, those bombs sure saved my ass! Keep 'em coming! God Bless America!"

A lot of Americans said similar things, or worse, including some incredibly racist things.

But that sounds crass. Instead history is changed so the bombs "saved lives" and it is left unsaid that the U.S.A. was building even more bombs in anticipation of the next war.

Plutonium production at Hanford was shut down only briefly after Japan surrendered in order to make safety improvements which had been overlooked in the rush to build the first atomic bombs. And some workers and corporations who had fully supported the development of atomic weapons during the war did not support the escalation of nuclear weapon production after the war. They didn't want to be in that business.

In Stalin's nuclear weapons program there were few concessions to safety at all. Radioactive waste was dumped in open trenches and many laborers, the political prisoner slaves, were treated as disposable commodities. I imagine North Korea's nuclear weapons program is a lot like that. Clearly some really bad shit.

History is messy.

[Martin68]

55. Yes, history is messy and difficult to categorize as good vs evil or black and white.

People are fallible by definition, but have to make life and death judgements in the moment. What is important is to learn from the past and make better decisions going forward. But the goalposts keep moving and the situations are never exactly the same. No wonder presidents who act on principle age in office.

[thucythucy]

35. There were also studies that used disabled children

as "test subjects."

https://ahrp.org/1944-1956-radioactive-nutrition-experiments-conducted-by-harvard-and-mit-on-disabled-children/

These were kids who had been institutionalized and had absolutely no power whatsoever. Their parents--those who hadn't abandoned them entirely--were never told that the studies involved radiation.

[Warpy]

30. Some talked, especially online

and especially when they got the terminal cancer diagnosis.

One I knew was in the Castle Bravo disaster. He died about 20 years ago and I miss him.

[pecosbob]

27. In the story I heard everyone volunteered except the poor cameraman

who thought he was going to be filming from a safe distance.

[hunter]

32. Young men "volunteer" for a lot of stuff in the military.

Heck, both my dad and my father-in-law volunteered for military service itself, both figuring they'd be less likely to serve as cannon fodder than if they were drafted.

My dad was a nearsighted Radar O'Reilly Army medical clerk and my father-in-law was a Navy corpsman assigned to the Marines.

Somehow I doubt any of these young men knew what they were actually getting into, "nuclear secrets" and all.

[Shermann]

11. Sounds like he got significantly irradiated

That EMR would have been a mix of ultraviolet, infrared, visible, gamma and x-ray. On top of that there would be particulate radiation.

The gamma radiation is the real killer.

[Martin68]

23. How would you know if at the time you were irradiated with UV, gamma or X-rays?

Infrared is heat, visibler is visible, but there would be no way to feel or detect the others in the moment.

[Shermann]

47. After further review, he probably didn't get that much.

The bomb in the OP is the Hardtack I Oak, an 8.9 megaton explosion. The effects of thermal radiation are a much bigger concern at those higher yields.

Using this table, you can assume he was farther away than 20 km or so to not suffer fourth degree burns.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions#Summary_of_the_effects

He would have had to have been around 3 km away to get a fatal dose of radiation.

I still wouldn't want to have been in his shoes.

[niyad]

12. "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." quoted by Oppenheimer as he

wtnessed the first atomic explosion. A line from the Hindu Bhagavad Gita.

[bucolic_frolic]

14. We'll never know it's coming

To prevent panic, they can't tell us about it in time. So relax. You'll never know what hit you.

[Warpy]

16. I hope not

There are few places with basements here, so few places to go and probably not enough time to get there even if sirens go off.

I'm about a mile from an air base. If there's warning, I'll drag a chair out into the yard and watch the show. I have absolutely no intention of living through it.

I imagine the only warning will be all the fighters taking off one after another. Then electricity will fail, electronics go dark.

Then flash, boom, maybe a little while of suck, and it's over.

I will resent the hell out of having it ended due to military stupidity.

[MuseRider]

50. My exact plan.

Why try to live through something that will just be a time of misery before you die horribly. Pull out the chairs, get a bottle of wine and let 'er rip. I live a mile or so from what used to be an air base. It is still used for a lot of practice and we get every kind of fancy, fast and loud aircraft all the time. A nuclear plant an hour away and who knows? Boom, a nice quick show and over.

[Martin68]

22. Just bend over and kiss your ass goodbye. It's called "taking the position." I did it with my

friends in our school's hallway during the Cuban missile crisis when we had a nuclear attack drill in our elementary school in 1962.

[MuseRider]

51. Yeah,

that was fun wasn't it? Fucked us up a bit I figure.

[Polybius]

38. This is what it could be like:

[bucolic_frolic]

41. Will theft and plunder begin before the strike, or after?

[Polybius]

43. After

Before would be a suicide mission. Stay inside for two weeks, and pray that you're not within 25-50 miles of impact.

[spike jones]

15. Where is the best place to be during an atomic explosion?

Anywhere you can say, "What was that?"

[marie999]

40. In a nuclear war the best place to be is at ground zero.

[marked50]

28. Can't remember all of the Nuclear Holocaust documentaries/movies I saw in the the 60's to 70's, but

the most impactful ones' were not the technical, factual, scientific, or predictive ones- the ones that were set to scare the bejesus out of you - but the ones that presented the results to you that you could relate to.

I recommend two of these movies- Fictional of course. #1- "On the Beach". #2 "Testament"

[L. Coyote]

29. I remember people building nuclear bomb shelters and keeping them supplied so they could live ...

in a hole in the ground for weeks on end. Also, new public buildings were required to have nuclear war shelters.

We also knew exactly what to do if there was a nuclear attack, just bend over and kiss your arse goodbye.

[marked50]

31. I remember the Bomb Shelter thing too.

In 1958 the folks wanted to move and we went on house hunting trips. One house we checked on had a bomb shelter. Way cool for a 6 year old. Didn't make the cut for the Mom and Dad tho.

[Polybius]

37. Why didn't we end the USSR when it was hinted that they were working on a nuke?

We had nukes for 4 years before anyone else.

[L. Coyote]

39. Because that would be an act of war!

We worked to create the United Nations to bring peace to the world.

Also, we didn't end France or Britain for "working on a nuke" as you say. Israel and China also developed nuclear arsenals.

[Polybius]

42. But a good act of war

They deserved to be stopped by any means necessary before they ever got as nuke. France and the UK were not enemies and didn't have anyone like Stalin as their leader.

[hunter]

46. Russia had just kicked Hitler's ass and smashed his face into the icy mud.

It's best we left it at that.

What we did do was build more than 100 "Fat Boy" type bombs ( the type that destroyed Nagasaki ) as fast as we could. By 1950 we were already replacing those atomic bombs with new and improved atomic bombs.

Th Cold War was stressful, but I don't think the U.S.A. as we know it would have survived if we had immediately invaded Russia. World opinion would have shifted against the U.S.A. and we'd have been despised by all as a revival of the Nazis.