"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
BigWallop wrote:
snipped
This is a real doozer
http://www.safetycenter.navy.mil/pho...photo313-1.jpg
It is supposed to be a genuine document, but I think someone is at the
wind
up. :-)
original page
http://www.safetycenter.navy.mil/pho...0/photo313.asp
It's not too far from the truth.
It isn't a wind up?
First that the actual 'explosion' produces no gas like a conventional
one.Its all heat, and the shockwave is at much lower pressure.
But it's heat that is hotter than standing on the sun for just a second or
two (unless it's night time of course), and the pressure front, although
over a short distance, carries a vacuum behind it. When the low but
sustained pressure front hits an object, it first blows it forward. Then a
bloody great vacuum cleaner comes along at the back of the blower and sucks
the object up into the air. And it does all that in a few seconds while
it's microwave cooking everything else.
Ouch !!! :-)
Secondly that the main killer is heat. And the attendant hard gamma,
which is essentially heat in another part of the magnetic spectrum.
I think the first part of the heat spectrum would do me nicely, thank you.
And finally, that the lingering radiation is small compared with the
blast. What killed people in the Japanese bombs, was absorption over
time of people living in the area: This is a war document and they
probably lied a bit about that, knowing that in any case the military
wouldn't be camping in a radioactive pit for long.
I think it also shocked the people who made it. They knew something of what
could have been, but they didn't expect the devastation that was actually
created. I heard that one of the assistant scientists said something like
"My God, we really have brought hell to the earth". So it shocked a good
few people who should have known better.
The document would appear to be based pretty much on the official report
on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, which makes interesting reading.
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/....html#contents
That's bookmarked for future reading. I'm a busy man at the mo' :-) But
it does look ike an intersting read.
Note that the references to people being killed 'several times over'
i.e. they got flattened, burned to death and took enough radiation to
kill them as well..Note also, with respect to the above, that the main
killer was direct gamma radiation - i.e. the other frequencies in the EM
spectrum. There were relatively few deaths from residual radiation. This
was possibly due to the fact that the explosion was done as an air
burst, rather than ground burst. Although many sources claim the death
rate remained higher among the population exposed, actual statistical
studies showed that by around 1950, the death rate post the explosions
of the survivors was about the same as the Japanese norm.
In short, the military made a pretty extensive report on the attacks it
had made, and they showed that although the bombs were devastating, they
were not unsurvivable.
If you go further on into the Cold War, you also see that the
development of he H-bomb, relatively 'clean' in terms of fission
products, became the preferred choice for strategic weapons. Those were
weapons capable of sterilising fairly large areas with very little
lingering radiation. I.e. if you didn't get a direct exposure, you would
probably survive: But if you did, advisory military reports would be the
least of your worries. If you made it through the blast and initial
heat/gamma attack, you would probably live.
Its a far cry from that to today, where any exposure of a few percent
above background, about what you get from flying at 30,000 ft, is a
'major nuclear incident'
It suited both the West and the Sovbloc to play up the threat of nuclear
war during the 50's and 60's. To make it as 'unthinkable' as possible:
Nevertheless, the actual figures are by comparison, a lot less chilling
than the popular press and science fiction of the times portrayed it.
What really shifted the world away from world wars post 1945 - at least
nuclear ones - was the simple fact that it became obvious that for the
first time in warfare, casualties among those who sent the military off
to fight might be orders of magnitude higher than amongst the military
themselves. That provided strong political pressure amongst democratic
populations to avoid it.
Aside, if you read the _official_ accounts of Chernobyl*, what is the
most surprising thing is how *few* people died. And that's from very
close up rather nasty radiation. The firefighters lost several people.
All from direct exposure right at the pile. There have been a few
hundred I think thyroid cancers, but these have been survivable.
Nuclear reactors are in a way nastier than atomic explosions: there is
far more low grade fissionable material in them many of which are
chemical poisons, and the radiation tends to be more lingering, and more
alpha/beta type than gamma.
On the other hand, they don't produce *atomic* explosions. Both
Chernobyl and Three Mile Island were characterized by reactors being
pushed beyond limits by a combination of events, with safety systems
disabled, by personnel who didn't have the correct training in their
operation. The other major incident, Windscale, was similar in that the
reactor was being run beyond design limits to make weapons grade
plutonium in quantity, and was literally 'open' to the skies.
And although there waa steam explosion at Chernobyl, it did relatively
little direct damage. The most damage was done by the reactor fire, and
he radiation encountered by those who put i out.
"What everybody knows' about nuclear weapons and power, is very much at
odds with the actual facts that are contained in the official reports.
Note that there was no reason for the US report on the Japan bombs to be
biased. they were coldly assessing the results of a wartime experiment,
in terms of its precise destructive power, after effects, psychological
impact, and ultimately defense against it.
* as opposed to the anti-nuclear hysterical ones.
I'll reserve further comment until I read through the document you have
linked to. Although, I must say one thing. I did have a sort of inkling
that the bombing must have been less devastating than was reported to the
public and the world by the press releases. And what brought those thoughts
was the fact that, if it had been as bad as was reported, no one in their
right minds would have been willing to build any further weapons of that
sort, ever again. Yet the US and others were willing to continue with a
nuclear weapons assembly industry.
If it was that devastating, no one would have survived, including the people
who made the thing. That secret would have stayed a forgotten secret.