A brief, yet depressing, video history of nuclear testing |
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| By: BoxTurtle Thursday August 4, 2011 4:52 pm | |
I’ve never seen the history of nuclear testing displayed in this manner. Educational and depressing.
And you just know they’re quietly discussing how to test the bunker buster.
Boxturtle (I have a suggestion about that involving rectal insertion, but this is a family blog)
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21 Comments
Excellent method of showing what has gone on with nuclear “testing”!!!
Hellishly appalling …
Absolutely RECOMMENDED!!!
Thank you, BoxTurtle.
DW (Did we WIN … yet?)
I think we won, we set off more than everybody else put together.
Some things I think I learned from this. I gotta fact check, but:
1) Notice how it would quiet for a bit, then the Soviets would set off one, then we’d set off a bunch? Then quiet a bit. Wonder how political the test decisions were.
2) Notice the Chinese tests? They ran just enough tests to prove a megaton level design, provided they were very well planned tests. Or they had inside information.
3) Notice how few blasts were set off in Russia, they were almost all in the republics. And the Russians ran the Soviet Union. Kinda makes me wonder what other time bombs may be waiting for the republics.
Boxturtle (And that video doesn’t even show the denied Israeli/S. Africa tests in the Indian Ocean)
The “light show” combined with the sound effects while having the “safe” vantage point, far above the surface of a dark land-mass map of the world adds an especial creepiness to the whole experience … and one notes that Nagasaki and Hiroshima are included, as the USA claims, as “tests”.
As you point out, BoxTurtle, certain “events” are not included, so we may consider this “demonstration” to be based upon offically certified events as determined by the American Gummint.
I hope this diary will receive the attention it rightfully deserves, as a sobering reminder of our relatively recent past. Many at FDL are old enough to have remembered, if not the actual “events” then certainly the times and the “attitudes of the times when the boom-booms took place.
“Remember, children, you will be safe under your desks.”
DW (I consider that those last words were what prompted me to wonder at the sanity of “adults”. I still wonder at the moyives of those who proclaim themselves the only “… adult in the room”.)
Very cool Boxturtle,
Never would have come across this on my own. Had no idea that the test total was over 2000.
I was offered a job more than once at the Nevada test site. Always said nah, thanks anyway. But once, when I was workin’ a gold mine called “The Gooseberry” outside of Reno, they set off one of those tests while we were underground, from maybe 100 miles away I guess. Was like bein’ in a 3.5 earthquake nearby, and couldn’t breathe for about 15 minutes, for for all the dust it shook down on us even from that far away.
Rec’d.
When I was a kid during that time period, we always speculated how many nukes were directed at Dayton and where we’re be safest. Guesses ranged from 0-5. I always figured 2, because they couldn’t take out the air base and Mound labs with the same bomb.
The Chinese hit 1 megaton on their 6th test. I suspect the rest of their tests were for miniturization. We didn’t hit a megaton for at least 30 tests.
Boxturtle (Thinks they stole the w88 design solely because because of the eggshaped primary))
This week is the sixty-sixth anniversary of the ‘testing’ in Japan.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/162543/great-hiroshima-cover-how-us-hid-shocking-footage-decades
Do you have any idea if the fallout effects climate? I can’t help but think that some of the excessive heat and drought we are having may be related to Japan’s spill/leaks. Call me crazy, I don’t care because I know that there is some other forces causing some of this. Even my grass and flowers are behaving differently than in the past 10 years. Oh and the squirrels, birds, and other animals are coming much closer and are more aggressive.
AKA Massive Ordnance Penetrator Integration
Here’s some more pictures
Hiroshima: The Lost Photographs
More here
Hiroshima, the pictures they didn’t want us to see
The survivors were called Hibakusha
Parameters: the nuke tests and the current situation in Fukushima (and spreading across Japan) are entirely different types of events and are orders of magnitude separate in both the scale and extent of their effects.
But neither type of event has been noted to effect climate on the scales that have been observed. While the radiation is deadly to life the actual environment has not been altered.
(Of course if you kill off enough life interesting things can happen to the climate as a consequence but we’ll be dead ourselves long before we notice those effects…)
Nope. That’s a gift from the Big Carbon side of the energy faction of the oligarchy.
Missed you Blue tell Leen high you should read the new guy Tambershall’s diaries they are picking up on some of the topics you and Leen used to cover here quite well:)
Why the Fuck so many tests on the American mainland ?
America is only number 7 for cancer rate deaths
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jan/24/worldwide-cancer-rates-uk-rate-drops
I saw this video and did some checking of course given our lousy healthcare maybe we die before cancer can take us.
Given the amount of bomb tests we did I though we would be first.
This deserves more study but going to the weeds on medical stats is beyond my skills.
Nice to see you, too. I do read the diaries and agree that they are good. I don’t know how to contact Leen, so can’t say ‘hi’. Leen excelled at speaking the truth. Someone who used to be around here sure made hers and my lives a bit of a trial. Interesting times, indeed, those were. If the comment system was returned to the way it was, it would be a good thing. I’m sure I’m not the only one who avoids participating because of it.
You forget the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963.
Most of the tests after that, and all of the U.S. tests, were confined underground.
And yes, it did make a difference… fortunately.
Amazing that those pictures survived. Truman sure was a real piece of work. He slaughtered the Japanese civilians, covered up the true physical devastation of the cities, and then a few years later helped give the world Israel. How sad that the survivors was ostracized by their fellow citizens.
I miss Leen.
Boxturtle (Ya gotta have really thick skin around here sometimes)
Secrecy, mainly. We got tired of seeing soviet fishing trawlers show up whenever we ran a south sea test.
That, plus the Castle Bravo test scared a lot of people in high places.
I wonder what we’d find if we dug up one of those test pits today.
Boxturtle (Probably Godzilla or Giant Ants)
Fallout itself does not effect climate. But the megatons of dust and dirt that get blown into the stratisphere from an open air certainly can.
Like zapkitty says, the Japan catastrophe is innocent of that charge. We owe it to big carbon. And Al Gore’s weight problem.
Boxturtle (The only positive thing about Nuclear power is that it does not emit greenhouse gasses)
Reading your links, it appears they’ve cancelled the nuclear version of this and are producing (in small numbers) a conventional bomb similar to the WWII grand slam.
Good. Probably means that the nuke idea simply didn’t work.
Boxturtle (Or that we lack the skills to quickly product a new nuke design)
Really really really thick sometimes in order to shield oneself from some people’s reasoning power or the lack thereof..’g’.
Yeah..me,too.
They don’t emit, but…
Although nuclear power plants do not emit greenhouse gases when generating electricity, certain processes used to build and fuel the plants do. This is true for all energy facilities. Nuclear energy life-cycle emissions include emissions associated with construction of the plant, mining and processing the fuel, routine operation of the plant, disposal of used fuel and other waste byproducts, and decommissioning.
http://www.nei.org/keyissues/protectingtheenvironment/lifecycleemissionsanalysis/