Original Video @kurzgesagt • How A Nuclear War Will... Nuclear Engineer Reacts to Kurzgesagt "How a Nuclear War Will Start - Minute by Minute" Further Reading on Nuclear Winter: agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.c...
I had a co-worker ask me what she should do if we ever got hit with a bomb (we live in an area that has a big military presence - our town always shows up on mock target sites). I told her to pray the bomb lands right on her head. I stand by it - we don’t have basements in our area or any infrastructure that would shield us from fallout.
@@cozyjosey1709 It's the most practical answer. Surviving a nuclear war would be a bummer. Not that I wouldn't try if it happened. But I'll always make sure to keep one bullet for myself.
the whole "shelter from a nuclear blast" has for decades been just a dream, an illusion of control to give false sense of hope. even the weakest nuclear bombs from the 1960s would put little boy and fat man to shame, and that's not even considering the hidrogen bombs. there is nothing you can do to protect yourself against a H bomb direct hit. unless you can quickly go to dozens of metres underground (like in a deep subway) and even then the entrance would be completely obliterated, giving you no way to get out or of getting rescued.
The ballons are not meant to block the anti-missiles, but act as decoys, by reflecting radar even stronger than the warheads, thus they try to increase the likelhood of the anti-missiles to go after them and not the warheads.
Sigh. What happens when a high speed balloon decoy encounters any kind of atmospheric drag? There is a reason any actual effective decoy needs be of substantial weight. Look up the British decoy program in the 70s
@@alphabravodelta42 As I understand it, the balloon decoys are intended to spoof radar while the warheads are still in space. By the time the decoys and warheads hit significant atmospheric drag, little time would remain to get anti-ballistic missiles out to intercept.
@@brianzambrano2511 "as I understand" you should have just stopped right there. What happens when a mach 25 object re-enters the atmosphere? It slows the FK down from the atmosphere or it gets destroyed by the atmosphere. Do you not understand how fragile balloons are at that kinda speed? Then there is the issue of changing speed differential between balloon decoy and real warheads when encountering any drag... Something radars are really good at.
@@alphabravodelta42 "As I understand" can be loosely translated as "I know this from prior research I've done on the topic, but I don't care to do the work of properly citing the information for someone who isn't reciprocating good-faith effort beyond exercising their personal intuition". It is trivially easy to find information on mylar balloon ICBM penetration aids (decoys)--that they've been a thing for a long time, that they're nontrivial to cull from legitimate contacts on radar, and that their existence contributed to the end one of the Nike ABM projects as a futile endeavor.
In reference to targeting hardened missile silos, the US and Russians know where all of each other's silo fired missiles are located, and both sides are assumed to have the other side's silos targeted for destruction...and since they are hardened targets, the nukes fired at the silos are generally all fused for ground burst or are even designed to penetrate underground before detonating. And yes...balloons are used as part of the package of penetration aids that are used on ballistic missiles...here is a quote from Wiki: "Decoys such as mylar balloons that can be inflated in space and are designed to have the same radar characteristics as the warhead. As the warhead and the decoy balloons may be at different temperatures, the warhead and the balloons may both be surrounded by heated shrouds that put them all at the same temperature. This defeats attempts to discriminate between decoys and warheads on the basis of temperature, which can confuse an enemy's missile defense systems."
@@alphabravodelta42 The balloon decoys are used only when the warhead bus in in space...they use different penetration aids for the phase after the warhead bus reenters the atmosphere and the warheads separate.
@@iKvetch558 right... It's like you haven't read *anything* on the actual effectiveness and history of penetration aids. Case study Chevaline You should look ip
Man, this really reminded me of an extremely intense “mock UN” thing I did in college. Brief background: went on school for BA poli-sci. As part of that I could study abroad or study “abroad” in DC. I chose to do the latter. It was an incredible experience. One day we did a mock-UN experiment. I’d never done anything like that but I was assigned to the Joint Chiefs. We ended up getting intel that a N Korean warship had fired on a Japanese fishing boat. We had messy, at best, intel, and had units in the area prepared to fire on the Korean vessel. We decided to hold off on the order and it turned out to be one of “those” kinds of misunderstands. I’ll say that, truthfully, I’ve never felt so viscerally connected to an international crisis, and it wasn’t even real! And I don’t pretend to know what it’s like to actually be at the table making those decisions, but as a college kid, it was a great experience.
Yes, another Kurtzgesagt video! I grew up in the 80s, and we were living with the constant threat of nuclear war over our collective heads. Many a popsong were made back in the day about just that. And in elementary school, I also received the training on what to do when the sirens warn about incoming nuclear warheads. Not that it would matter much in terms of survivability, but that training is still with me to this day.
Actually, it can make quite a bit of difference. Ducking and covering isn't going to do much if you're in the initial blast radius, but outside of it It can protect you from broken glass.
@@ronmaximilian6953 We learned much more than just "duck and cover". Things like; when caught out in the open, lie down in a ditch if there's one around. When you get home, remove your clothes at the front door, and immediately take a cold shower to rinse off radioactive particles/dust, if the water system still works. When inside your home, stay away from any windows, take shelter in the innermost sturdy room, and place something like a matras in the doorway as a shield. Make sure to have an emergency supply of food, water, candles, have a battery powered radio on hand etc. I still have that same emergency storage supply around.
I mean my first thought would be to try to call the enemy and ask if they actually fired upon us. Personally I'm more on the line of thinking of not launching retaliation. Just accepting death and minimizing total deaths
@@Win-tq2uf That would be the Soviet way. Look at the Chernobyl disaster. They only admitted that it happened because Sweden detected the radionuclides, and could trace them back to them. Each reactor has its own unique finger print. Even two of the exact same make and model. The moment they become critical for the first time, they become their own distinct "personality". That's how the Swedes knew it wasn't their own reactor having an issue, but someone else's.
True, but if you survive and others of the nation survive, those of your nation (or former nation) will likely want your head on a stick. My proof is to look at the US and its reaction to 9/11
I uses to have some friends that liked to go through Google Earth to see what they can find. They were supposedly able to find several of our nuclear silos. While they are small, they are visible from space if you know what to look for. Plus Russia and the US had a treaty for years that allowed military personnel to visit nuclear sites of the other country to ensure we were both following the terms of the treaty which is how we went from 70k weapons to 12k weapons. It’s possible that there are some extra silos kept secret and hidden in locations far away from normal infrastructure, like an underground base in the middle of the Rocky Mountains with nothing but a forest service road for the military to access (most silos are out in the middle of farmland near county roads and are heavily guarded so are easy to identify as military if you were doing a comprehensive survey of the US), but given the costs of producing and operating such a site, I find it doubtful that there are many such silos if any at all. Submarines can fulfill the same role of launching from an unknown location far cheaper and more reliably as even if they are detected they can simply move until they lose their detectors while a hidden base can’t be rehidden once discovered.
20:24 a US battleship detonated explosives above the submarine to signal it to surface and the crew mistook it for an attack, they didn't just decided to launch a missile
Funnily enough, precise locations of nuclear warhead cilos (at least in russia) are no secret, you can even see them on google maps, although because of mobile warheads(trucks with warheads on them), knowing a location of a silo wouldn't give you much of an advantage in an attacking scenario
Actually, nuclear winter is possible. It's not on a scale of an asteroid impact like we see in the movies, but it could low the global temperatures for a few degrees for a few years, and this would be very bad for crops and this, added with the radiation fallout, would end millions if not billions of lives. It is unlikely that the hit of this magnitude would be enough to end our civilization or even extinct our species, but it could do real damage. The reason of this is basically the combination of this gigantic explosion: the effect would be similar to several volcanoes around the world that erupt all in the same. The amount of particles launched in the upper atmosphere from several different location would help them soread enough to cover the planet and partially (very partially) reflect sunlight back in to space, thus lowering the global temperature
the problem with nuclear winter, and why it has been discredited by now, is that all models that showcase nuclear winter being possible require everything to go wrong, in the worst way possible. it is possible, sure, but so incredibly unlikely so as to not be a real concern. as for why scientists don't speak out against talks of nuclear winter, though - because it makes you look like a supporter of nuclear war. not to mention, belief in nuclear winter isn't a bad thing, because, while it's unlikely nuclear war will cause a nuclear winter, nuclear war itself is still a very, very bad thing[citation needed], and if people think such a war will cause such a winter, they may be less likely to instigate it. so scientists could either refute the inaccuracies with claims of a nuclear war causing a nuclear winter purely for the sake of accuracy... or they could keep their jobs and social lives to work on stuff that actually matters. the choice is fairly obvious.
@@Ridesdragons In fact I said that nuclear winter is not even similar to the one that people imagined. But its existence is real, we already had one: when we detonated the Tsar Bomba, the amount of particles launched in the atmosphere was so much that for few years the global temperature dropped of half a degree. Of course, it's very unlikely that bombs so powerful will ever be used, but if we imagined a nuclear war than the effect wouldn't be different, it would be even worse. The nuclear winter wouldn't of course be something that would darkened the sky and cause dinosaurs-level mass extinction, but it would low the global temperature for a few degrees for some years. This, combined with all the nuclear fallout, would destroy thousands of crops causing a chain reaction that would reduce the amount of food that humans can produce. This wouldn't be enough to end civilization, but we would live a very bad time: we would face food shortage, skyrocket prices, riots and civil wars, and in the end all the most poor people would die for starvation and absence of medical cures. We are talking about hundreds of millions if not billions of lives. So, nuclear winter is a real thing? Yes, simply it is different from what we usually imagine and it isn't so destructive, even if he could cause a lot of damage. And by the way... scientists have no reason to refuse to say the truth. Today climate change is a far more risk and a hated thing than nuclear weapons, and yet a lot of scientist says that the causes aren't the humans or even that it doesn't exist. They don't risk their work if they said what they think, the world of science doesn't work like that. At most they would earn a lot of hate on their social profile, but nothing more. Of course, a lot of scientists sell themselves for money, but if the majority of them said something, than it's very likely that that something is real
@@fabriziobiancucci7702 I wasn't trying to claim scientists were keeping the truth a secret to keep their jobs, rather just saying that scientists don't go on talk shows or big public events to talk about the validity of nuclear winter because it's such a big can of worms. sorry for the confusion, though. scientists _have_ of course actually looked at the possibilities and remarked on how much the models rely heavily on worst-case analysis. Russell Seitz is one example of an outspoken critic of the idea. in general, the term "nuclear winter" has been more often replaced with the term "nuclear autumn". because that's how much of an overstatement calling it a winter is. Russell Seitz is also the one who pointed out why there isn't much talk on the topic of the validity of the concept, as he has said it would make such scientists look like "closet Dr. Strangeloves". for example, Freeman Dyson is quoted as saying "It's an absolutely atrocious piece of science, but I quite despair of setting the public record straight." Stephen H. Schneider was also blasted as a fascist for writing an article on the topic, by disarmament supporters. it's not about the money, it's about continuing to do important work. work you can't do if you become a persona non grata. that's not to say that there'd be totally 100% no impact on the climate whatsoever, because it is _theoretically_ possible for major firestorms to spread across the world and spark a winter. it's just so unlikely that it's no longer realistic. more realistic models denote a cooling that would last no more than a few days. that's not going to cause massive famine. what _will_ cause massive famine, however, is irradiating the water supply. and it'll be hard to farm once the acid rains start. there's no denying that the result of a nuclear war will be a famine that will last years, if not decades, but it's from the land and water becoming irradiated, not from the land becoming cold. well, that, and the fact that our infrastructure will be thoroughly thrashed. even if we managed to grow some food, how would we get it to where people are? as for the tsar bomba, I'll have to ask for a source on that, because I tried looking it up, and rather than seeing the tsar bomba having any effect on the weather, I'm instead seeing multiple sources pointing out that the tsar bomba _didn't_ (hell, _couldn't_ ) start any kind of weather phenomenon, as there wasn't enough dust launched to actually do anything, especially as it was an airburst bomb, which already has significantly less dust launched to begin with. those sources point out that you would've needed multiple tsar bombas to actually get enough dust in the air to achieve any hypothetical weather phenomenon.
@@Ridesdragons Sorry, I don't remember where I read about the Tsar Bomba, but in any case I'm Italian so even if I remember it probably would be of no use for you since even if you translate it you would have no way to prove that it's true. But in any case, I repeat that I never say that nuclear winter would cause the world to freeze to death. "Lowering global temperature for a few degrees for a few years" means that if the average temperature in Africa is 30 degrees, after a nuclear war would be 28 or at most 27 degrees. Basically no one would notice it, it would exactly be a simply "nuclear autumn". But I'm sure that I don't need to explain you how much our crops are sensible to even the smallest changes. Even altering the global temperature of not even a degree is causing food shortage areound the world right now, since we basically selected our crops in thousands of years to grow in specific conditions. If a nuclear war happens, even if we humans wouldn't notice basically nothing, the crops would do; they would have a very hard time to grow, and this combined with acid rain, radiation fallout, water poisoning and other problems would cause a massive famine. So nuclear winter isn't an actual winter, as I said before, but more a chain of various events that would cause a food shortage. Also, the nuclear winter wouldn't be triggered only by the amount of particles launched in the atmosphere (that could already be sufficient, Kurzsegart made a video about it if you want to verify), but also from the ashes of the burning cities after the explosions (that could last for days since there would be very difficult to send someone to stop them) and, if enough bombs explode, even from the radiation themselves that pounching amongs the electrons in the upper atmosphere would act as seeds for water vapor creating massibe global clouds (about this last part, this would depend from how many and what type of bombs would detonate and how much distant from each other, so it's unlikely that it would happen, but it's a concrete possibility). The closest thing that we can compare here is a series of volcanic eruption all around the world, and the effects of such events in the past were felt around the world for a long time after the event. If we take together all nukes, the energy that they could release would be more than fifteen times the energy of the Krakatoa volcanic eruption in 1883, with the difference that they would be scattered around the world and in different location (and this, ironically, would worsened the effects). So, in conclusion, yes, nuclear winter is something that we humans wouldn't have reason to fear, but it is real and its effects would be felt by our crops, and this combined with all other effects of nuclear war would be devastating. So let's not do it. And again, scientists have no reason to don't talk about this things. Global warming is a far more hot argument today and no scientist have qualms about debeating about it in public. If they want to say something, they just do it. They wouldn't say that nuclear war is good, they would basically say "look, you will all die, simply you would die in the light of the sun instead that in the dark of the night". I don't think that this would cause any scandal for them
The funny thing is, there's not much actual value in a retaliatory strike. All you're doing is killing loads of innocent people. And yet, you need to convince the enemy you'd be willing to do so for MAD to work.
A retaliatory strike doesn't have to be countervalue (i.e. against cities) - it can (and probably will be) counterforce to a greater or lesser extent. Retaliation begins while the enemy's missiles are still in the air, based on the principle of "use it or lose it". Ideally, any strike launched against US silos will not catch any weapons unlaunched. The second order theory behind second strike (the first being that strong second strike capability maintains deterrence) is that enough systems survive a first strike to ensure that our attacker will not be able to effectively prosecute any further warfare, meaning that enemy military and naval bases, depots, airports, supply, support, and command and control networks are likely all going to be on the target list for a retaliatory strike. Inevitably, some cities will be included because they have these resources, but it doesn't inevitably mean that all of the enemy's cities will be targeted in a second strike - that will depend on what the enemy struck at first, and on the details of the specific operating plan in play. The US second strike capability includes a large submarine-based force, which has cities and civil projects on their target lists (power plants, dams, rail systems, communications, etc, etc). The reality is again a bit less clear-cut, and it is likely that a nuclear war might last a couple of days or more before the nuclear exchanges cease, unless a cease-fire is agreed on between any surviving leadership.
Great video as always I feel like you and Mr Terry from Mr Terry History could make a banger of a video on historically significant nuclear events, you teaching us about the technical aspects while Mr Terry adds in historical significance and context. Idk why but I feel like y'all's energy would mesh real well in a collab
Just in case, if you live in a concrete building and you are far enough to see the flash without immediately burning to death, rush to the wall and huddle down NEXT TO THE WINDOW. Also protect your eyes and ears and since the pressure wave is coming, open your mouth so your eardrums won't pop. The blastwave will break the window and the overpressure will kill EVERYTHING in the room apart from right next to the window, the pressure there will be minimal in comparison to everywhere else in the apartment. You'll still get injured in all likelihood, the building may still collapse, but this can still maximize your chances of survival. If you survive the initial strike, best to stay inside if you can or use rags to make yourself a makeshift hazmat suit so you won't breathe in or make direct contact with the fallout that will rain down. Good luck! Hope we won't need it but things in Russia nowadays are crazy enough already so best be safe!
The effect from the nuclear winter likely would not be long-lived, but the devastation would take agriculture as a casualty; crops failing from lowered temperatures worldwide would likely lead to global famine, in addition the likely massive agricultural loss from the destroyed countries. The USA and Russia both are large exporters of agricultural products worldwide. At the very least it would be similar to that year a few hundred years ago known as "The Year without Summer"
Have you ever seen the movie "Threads"? It's a pretty horrifying British movie from the 80s about how a nuclear war would happen and the aftermath of it
Then he should watch "The Day After" as well. I watched that with my class in the early 80s (yes, I'm old😅), and you better believe that put the fear of God into each and every one of us.
Yes, Threads hits home so hard because of its realistic docu-drama style focusing on how quickly and innocuously the escalation to an attack could happen and the failure of the preparations of response with no Hollywood BS.
theres a roblox game called realistic boiling water reactor simulator. some of the people on the dev team are real nuclear industry professionals, like yourself. as such, the game is quite detailed and worth checking out!
A friend of a family member in charge of facilitating the "key turn" was often asked "How could you follow an order that would kill millions of innocent people'" His sentiment was always "If that order comes my family is already dead". If that time comes and it will develop in minutes, the damage beyond the numerous blasts will cripple infrastructure for decades.
About the laser satellite that would destroy ICBMs, look up Project Excalibur. It was an US project during Cold War where the idea was they would have satellite that would emit X-ray lasers to destroy missiles. You might be thinking, "how to power it?", well they would detonate a nuke and use it's energy to power lasers.
YES to answer your question For the USA for our air defense systems WE do have weapons that can intercept a missile during its launch/ boost phase BUT the problem here is the launcher must be close to the launch site to be effective. Something like GMD can hit something during midcourse phase of its flight. BUT just like before this requires you to shoot early and be somewhat close to the target. So for America GMD is placed in allied countries Like THAAD is based in other territories so in the vent of an attack these systems can engage a threat earlier rather than later. Same with the guided missile destroyers in the various naval fleets stationed around the world they carry sm 3 and sm6 which are meant to engage ballistic missiles, these ships need to be in range to fire . If you fail to hit the missile during boost or mid course you are left with its terminal phase the hardest to intercept this is where THAAD and other systems like it come in. These are often kinetic kill where they slam directly into a missle, some systems may try proximity fused HE to take them out Terminal is hardest because its moving the fastest and usually has multiple warheads and decoys to contend with increasing the chances of a miss. The only way to truly be safe is by having More warships everywhere around the world with sm3-6 and more GMD's based everywhere else that way you can hit them as they launch. Patriot can sorta do this but this needs to be really close like how close ukraine is to russia close and right on the border to even pull it off
i think the casualties they are saying are "low" because the target in not to blow up every village so it's mainly fev big cities, like DC, new york, LA, moscow, st Petersburg, most of people in big countries don't live ion big groups
6:10 Kgs: "Emergency broadcasts are being sent out to shelter in place and away from windows." Folse: "Ain't gonna help ya." Here's a question: wouldn't it depend on what they're hitting you with and how far away the impact site is? If there's a warhead heading towards your livingroom, then okay yeah, RIP. But what if you're sort of just barely inside range of the thing? Where it might perhaps turn your windows to shrapnel, but not necessarily flash-fry you or rip you apart or bring your building down on top of you? Or would the radius of untreatable lethal radiation exposure just always be bigger than the radius of window-destruction?
Tooling around on the nuclear blast simulator the lethal radiation radius is MUCH smaller than the window breaking radius. In fact, the windows will break at a MUCH larger radius than the structure being even moderately damaged. Also the flash might blind you even outside of the 1st degree burn radius. This is why test observers had to wear eye protection even at safe distances. If you are even a few miles away from a strategic target then sheltering in place could save you (at least from the blast) of anything under a megaton (which is MOST currently in service missile deliverable weapons, any larger warheads still in existence have to be delivered by gravity bomb, the largest missile based yield currently is I think a 5MT Chinese ICBM of limited quantity).
9:02 - Yeah, knowing Kurzgesagt's mindf*ckery, I'm assuming we're committing to a real response to a misunderstanding and showing how easy and fraught this all is.
10:05 yes, penetration aids are mylar balloons, which are inflated in space. This is so chosen to reduce the size and weight during launch. Because the missile is ballistic (as the name suggests), the balloons will fall back to earth at the same speed as the actual warheads. It is only when they hit the atmosphere that they get slowed down enough to distinguish them from the real thing on radar. But at that point the warhead probably goes mach 10, giving you just a few seconds to intercept them. The interceptors will need to be placed perfectly and be extremely high performant in terms of speed to get to the target before it blows up. Those measures have been developed and tested with the "sprint" interceptor missile, but were discontinued due to being cost ineffective and impractical against large volumes of warheads. Nowadays the US depends on TBM defense by putting ships with missiles off the coast of north korea to shoot them down during their boost phase, instead of waiting for the reentry side of things. But again that doesn't work for large volumes of missiles from countries like russia or china.
The thing to keep in mind about the BC and Australian wildfire smoke effects is that 1) they show that the effect of smoke being lofted into the stratosphere, either by thermal self lofting or firestorms, is real, and 2) smoke from forest fires contains much less black carbon (soot) than what would be produced by burning cities. There is a body of recent peer-reviewed literature on this. It's not a myth, and a global famine is plausible in such scenario. However, it would not be like the extinction of the dinosaurs or anything of that magnitude.
Since the video's scenario shows the nukes mainly targeting nuclear silos, I imagine there would be way more fallout compared to airbursts that target civilian population centers, while the deaths from the direct explosion would be lower.
Kinda random question, have you heard about the glitter mystery? Do you have any thoughts? Noone yet knows who the biggest consumer is, people speculate military, maybe chaff? I know that it (glitter) was accidentally created during the Manhattan project.
So I had the intention early in this video to make a short comment, but that changed. So: Considering the video assumes an attack from Russia to the US, when it comes to early confirmation, Sweden has been monitoring Russia since the beginning of the cold war. Though mostly for the safety of the baltic states and Finland. There was actually an incident that was declassified just some year ago when two viggen-pilots, without pay-load helped a blackbird in trouble and was chased by migs. They were eventually relieved by two armed planes. And now, with Finland and (soon to be) Sweden in Nato right on the border... When it comes to nuclear winter, yes probably exagerated but not to disregard. A simulation of a full-out nuclear war between Pakistan and India showed a probable global temperature drop of a few degrees. However as you said volcanos are much more potent because of the SO2 but also partly because of the ash. Volcanic ash isn't ash, it's minerals. So imagine taking santa Monica beach and making it into a cloud. But the SO2 got it's demonstration in 1991 (or -92?) when pinatubu erupted. SO2 reacts with water vapor in the atmosphere and creates sulfuric acididities H2S04 and mostly H2SO3 which break down into sulfates. That blocked out sunlight to lower global temperature with 0.5C degrees for three years. From one volcano. So that was my short comment. Hope you make more of these reacts. Loving them.
Am I crazy, or could we use our own nukes to counter theirs, as in launch our nukes to explode in space or over our own skies in an attempt to knock them offline or off-course if they’re in space? I know the fallout wouldn’t be great for everyone here, but it has to be better than direct hits from multiple nukes.
I don't get why the general insists that there has to be a nuclear counterstrike (inside the scenario of course, I realize what the goal is on the meta level). A counterstrike won't save your own country, it will only make things worse. The purpose of a nuclear second strike is to act as a deterrant, otherwise it's essentially a bluff - for reasonable people anyway. I think in this situation it would be better to do nothing. Your own country will be destroyed, but humanity as a whole will probably survive. The only effect of a counterstrike would be to a full nuclear apocalypse.
we have space lasers lol 3:25 No in all seriousness we do have multiple methods. that much is obvious we have terrestrial launch detection courtesy of an early warning radar network consisting of BMEWS -> PAVE PAWS -> SSPARS (SSPARS is the current technology) radar sites in CA, AK, NJ, Canada and the UK in addition to satellite IR launch detection. so yeah there is redundancy for obvious reasons. in addition to that we have a WOPR whos Joshua who likes to play tic tac toe.
I have a Question Tyler. If a Nuclear power plant was Shut down in the best way possible and Civilization collapsed, Could you and as many normal people as you need get it back up and running for power in your area? Restarting a Power plant after the End of the world❔😁
You need power to get the plant going in the first place, so it would likely depend on whether the backup generators are still functional to provide the power needed for the startup process?
@@iKvetch558 The initial state of my thought experiment is that the plant is mothballed in such a way that the machinery is ready to go. I guess part of my question is Is it even possible to leave a Nuclear power plant in that condition.
@@VECT0R777 My guess is that it would be possible for most types of reactors, but not all of them? I think I would definitely defer to the actual engineer at that point. 😁💯
I think it'd be easier and safer to just use wood burning steam generators. Nuclear power is the sort of thing you need a whole country for, and you only need if you have a country.
thy will only go away when thy are replaced with anti matter or similar which is good due to the fact thy are the best thing we have to protect from threats from space whether it is a asteroid or xeno ship
Regan's SDI wasn't implemented, but you can bet that the idea sank into our military minds. Think about what we're actually told, and then think what we know about 'told' vs. 'what we actually have' and I suspect things would not be quite as severe - not that I'm understating the horrors we would endure - and the enemy would likely endure far more than we say they would. The secrecy is a good thing. But, the absolute best scenario would be never starting nuclear war to begin with.
Believing or not, this happened in real life, there was a bug in the system and person didn't launch bombs in retaliation to the bug even tho the person didn't know it was bug.
Learning about periodic table of elements right now I keep on bringing up subjects she is like that’s not 8th grade that’s high school chemistry to the point where she won’t let me raise my hand anymore this is the problem with school they shut down the kids who are interested in this stuff guess you could say like my atoms im a little quarky I know you get that Tyler I know you get that
One thing I kind of am curious about, we have Lasers that are capable of melting materials, and destroying most materials after a few seconds, so why do we not just amp them up to create something that could possibly destroy the Nuclear weapons, if not atleast cause them to explode over the ocean.
There are ways of intercepting nuclear missiles actually. Don't forget that in case of a nuclear war there are multiple warheads being launched - Which would make it near impossible to stop all of them especially when you don't know when and where they were aimed at.
22:00 But progress is being made. 5 years ago it used to be 15K, not 12.5, which means they had dismantled over 2000 nuclear missiles in the last few years.
Most of that progress isnt out of good will, its because the US and Russia could no longer justify spending to maintain that many warheads, alot of those were older ones too.
Yeah, this was a bit of a headscratcher scenario, as generally if you are going to first strike a country like the US, youre going to want to empty your silos on the first strike because there won't be any silos left to use after the retaliatory strike The Russians have a fairly even split between fixed silos and mobile launchers, with the assumption being that the mobile launchers might be able to launch and then scoot sufficiently far away to survive to potentially launch again. How feasible this will actually be in strategic exchange is not clear.
So, it has been a few days, but I think I can also shed some light here, since we did some nuclear war simulation training in my political science classes in international relations for obvious reasons. This looks like a India v Pakistan scenario, dressed up a bit. And so, yeah, a few dozen megadeaths in the first month would be fairly reasonable an assessment. Like, despite large scale damage to social infrastructure, and the potential for a nuclear winter, the total number of actual deaths from the initial month of an exchange like that are shockingly low. Mostly because nukes follow the inverse square law. To double the blast radius, you need to quadruple the energy, and thus city buster nukes are thus insanely expensive to make and deploy compared to other warheads. You need Tsar bomb scale nuclear weapons or mass coverage of urban centers with many nuclear warheads in order to shove that number up. The real killer is the disruption to the nation-state. Which can and will cause a humanitarian crisis of immense scale basically instantly. That will kill a great many people in the months to years scale, but on the days to month scale, not so much.
I don't think it helped that I played Black Ops 2 recently, and having the idea of major populated areas being attacked is a horrifying thing to think about, lol
Hiroshima and nagasaki bomb used just about 1% of the nuclear material for fission the rest was just spread around. they were more dirty bombs than nuclear ones. Today many of them are thermo nuclear meaning they are 1000 times more powerful, but they are way more efficient meaning they are less radioactive. Of course being near the detonation zone is like hell even after the detonations, but Tschernobyl still open would release more, way more nuclear radiation... However it would be different if a few 50 Megaton tsar bomba (6000 times hiroshima) nukes would hit a single place. However, the radiation would be hell nonetheless...
I wonder if its ethical to deciminate the information that the nuclear winter scenario is exaggerated, given that the belief in humanity's extinction in the event of a nuclear exchange is one of the most powerful deterrants for such an exchange. Even if the leaders who would initiate such a strike don't believe it, the belief serves to galvanize the populace against such an idea. Of course, there are plenty of other reasons to avoid, but I imagine that this is the most visceral in peoples' minds.
Well I tought of sometinhg. What if we destruy the nukes with more nuke. The ICBM missles are like rockets so other ICBM missles should be abel to destroy the nukes. (Also forgive my ingles I'm not a native ingles speaker).
Technically patriot missiles can intercept nuclear missiles, but the percentage chance is not great. Also, Kurzgesagt is contradicting themselves since they said we don't have anything to intercept, then said we do.
I honestly don't think their balloons but given they look like the warhead but are empty shells, basically its a conic balloon. And you have to remember missiles very rarely impact kill things because of statistics, only kinetic kill vehicles impact targets to destroy them in space to reduce the chances of creating a Kessler Syndrome. Though if it were me, i would say detonate all our arsenal in the upper atmosphere and low earth orbit, take out as many satellites and orbiting junk as possible and create a kessler syndrome, this gives us two benefits, retailation strikes will be less likely to be successful as the amount of space junk flying around is tremendous and the enemy would be firing blind into the country potentially wasting 80% of their ordance on targets with little to no active population left. At this point we would have the highest Chances of success in retaliation as we know where to tell our subs to shoot, and with no satellites, they're chances of defending against a coordinated submarine launch against known targets before the satellites went down would be close to absolute zero.
Kessler syndrome, as far as I understand, doesn't really work that way. It's still a problem if it happens, as any new satellite launches are likely to only survive somewhere between months and days, but it's hardly an impassable barrier that would immediately destroy all objects. Even in the worst case scenarios of Kessler syndrome, it's extremely unlikely they'd be hit with debris. Pair that with the fact that icbms don't quite reach orbital velocity and generally try to stay quite low in order to avoid ground based radar, and I would be shocked to see even one hit.
Is it just me or is that general sus as all hell? He's your only source of information and really puts on the pressure for one option over the other. We might have a general Ripper situation on our hand, especially given how common those kinds of conspiracy theories have become.
If i was put into that scenario, I would not retaliate, id do everything i could to stop the incoming missiles along with contacting the aggressor to see if they would be willing to remotely disarm if possible. After that whatever deaths on our side would be the only ones, As said its the leaders that caused this, no point causing millions to billions more deaths just to retaliate, Sure we will lose the war, probably become controlled by our enemies, but whats a nation without its people, why waste lives by further escalating. Why kill civilians of the enemy when they had nothing to do with their leaders mistakes.
10:13 balloons? Modern radars have the ability to discriminate targets based on radar profile,trajectories and weight. So a decoy should have the same reflection pattern, speed and flightpath as the real warheads or else the radar (and computer) would classify them as decoy. Try to go supersonic with a balloon haha
so to me the best option is to set up many many many high powered laser anti missle defences, we should have doesens in every majar city, and military base, whith some dotted across our borders, these lasers could cancel a lot of missiles nuke or otherwise very quickly. its not perfect, id rather have some form of energy shielding over cities and such, but we dont have such tech and its not even possible in the near future, it may never exist sadly, 16:11 same with super volcanos, one of which is brewing in yellowstone park, super volcanos can potentioly erupt with enough force to take out half of america and the after math the poisonous vulcanic ash clouds would stretch far over the whole continant choking and freezing many more. adendum oh, you cover this ^^; 21:03 i cant support this self destructive goal of disarming all nukes, they are our single defence against inevitable death by asteroid impact.
I’d just scream “HIROSHIMA 2.0 COMING IN HOT BABY” and press that red button. But regardless of nuclear war there would be ALOT of deaths under my reign so yk. Don’t give me any power as it is.
Some one was going to build one, so how do you blame the entity that wants to be first? You can never put that genie back in the bottle. Genetic engineering is going to allow for a smaller actor to do worse anyway.
any country who dont have nuclear weapons will be vulnerable to nuclear attacks.. just ask japan about it.... there are reason why more country are building nuclear missiles...
Mylar balloons are used as decoys on pretty much all nuclear armed ballistic missiles...at least all the ones that go out into space before arriving at their targets.👍
For the last point: That nuclear disarmament in the Cold War came about because of reason and mutual understanding is a very romantic view of the facts. In reality it is much more pathetic: with this number of warheads and the maintenance and upkeep, national bankruptcy was inevitable! But I do not want to destroy ones believe in humanity ... hehehe Thanks for the video and your views:)
