question for billvon or any brainiac type about nukes

[lurch 0]

So I find this kickass video of various nuke tests. The blasts are beautiful in an "unholy hosannah" sort of way. I find myself puzzled by some of the effects that happen during the blasts though and figured I'd ask, see if anyone here knows anything about it. One effect in particular was quite striking because of its structure... looks like the EMP induced a symmetrical field of some kind resulting in what appeared to be regularly spaced lightning strikes along some dividing line separating normal space from whatever exactly is happening inside the fireball. Then the blast wave reaches down and wipes out the whole thing. I'm curious...is it lightning? Or a smoke and dust effect or what?

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[Tink1717 2]

What you are seeing is smoke rockets that were launched just prior to the blast. Their purpose was to give a frame of reference to gauge the size of things observed during the blast.

Skydivers don't knock on Death's door. They ring the bell and runaway... It really pisses him off.
-The World Famous Tink. (I never heard of you either!!)
AA #2069 ASA#33 POPS#8808 Swooo 1717

[Gleb 0]

wow thats amazing. Do u mind giving me a link to the website with videos or sending them to me in email?

[KenGoff 0]

They are smoke rockets, but the purpose was to allow the testers to see and estimate the speed of the invisible shock wave as it passed through the air.

Not trying to argue, but it just so happend that I just read the book "100 Suns" today which is a book about above ground nuke tests. It was great.

[Tink1717 2]

Uh, I didn't learn that from the web. I learned it in physics class at U of MD. Sorry.

Skydivers don't knock on Death's door. They ring the bell and runaway... It really pisses him off.
-The World Famous Tink. (I never heard of you either!!)
AA #2069 ASA#33 POPS#8808 Swooo 1717

[lurch 0]

No shit? The effect appears halfway through the blast event in the video which led me to believe it was caused by the blast....first the flash, then as everything is illuminated the lines become visible. I thought it looked artificial as hell, too regularly spaced, but figured maybe it was an electrical thing where its borders and spacing were defined by some kind of exotic electrical or EMP effect along the flat shockwave plane. Thanks for the answer, it wasn't what I was expecting. The video itself should give you the creeps, many different angles, closeups of what the blastwave does to a house, (instant toothpicks) a heavy propane tank looking thingy, (makes the hull of the tank actually flap and ripple like it was a flag, not made of solid steel.) ships, (erases them. Just erases them.) Its fascinating stuff, I think because its the only time you'll ever see cosmic scale forces unleashed on the surface of a planet. The overall impression I get is its just the wrongest thing you'll ever see. You're not supposed to be able to erase the local reality.
I got the video from www.big-boys.com, kinda like bangedup or ogrish, a freaky video website. I'll warn you they won't allow you to download it, they use that shit where windows media pretends its part of your browser, disables the save-as functions and tries to keep you from keeping what you view. I was able to hijack the video and save it anyway, the user restriction scheme isn't too bright, the file just gets downloaded to cache and renamed into a text file. I kept it just by looking in the cache. You just watched the video and theres an 8.5 meg text file with a name thats just numbers (for opera, oprOGF85.txt for example...I don't know about I.E. ) in your cache now that you can't open that wasn't there 5 minutes ago before you watched the video. Figured thats got to be where the file was stashed. Copy and paste it elsewhere so it can't get flushed with the rest of your cache, then rename the file nuketest.wmv and presto, instant saveable movie.
I could email it but you gotta have room for at least 9-10 megs.

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[jakee 1,596]

Quote

The video itself should give you the creeps, many different angles, closeups of what the blastwave does to a house, (instant toothpicks) a heavy propane tank looking thingy, (makes the hull of the tank actually flap and ripple like it was a flag, not made of solid steel.) ships, (erases them. Just erases them.) Its fascinating stuff, I think because its the only time you'll ever see cosmic scale forces unleashed on the surface of a planet. The overall impression I get is its just the wrongest thing you'll ever see. You're not supposed to be able to erase the local reality.

One of the great effects in nuclear test videos is the gap between the heat/radiation wave and the shockwave. Houses catching fire, paint melting off cars etc. just before they get blown away.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[billvon 3,120]

>One of the great effects in nuclear test videos is the gap between the
>heat/radiation wave and the shockwave.

Speed of light vs speed of sound. That was the rationale behind the 'duck and cover' drills of the '60s and '70s - at ten miles you had almost a minute to get to shelter (if you survive the EM effects, that is.)

[Amazon 7]

Quote

Speed of light vs speed of sound. That was the rationale behind the 'duck and cover' drills of the '60s and '70s - at ten miles you had almost a minute to get to shelter (if you survive the EM effects, that is.)

Unless it was Tsar Bomba.. 50 megatons.. the largest thermonuclear device ever detonated. Since the weapons the Soviets had were not as accurate they tended to make them a LOT larger to affect larger areas . The biggest we detonated was a 15 Megaton.

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Russia/TsarBomba.html

The area of effectively complete destruction extended to 25 km, and ordinary houses would be subjected to severe damage out to 35 km. The destruction and damage of buildings at much greater ranges than this which occurred was due to the effects of atmospheric focusing, an unpredictable but unavoidable phenomenon with very large atmospheric explosions that is capable of generating localized regions of destructive blast pressure at great distances (even exceeding 1000 km).

[Gawain 0]

For anyone that is interested, there is a decent video called "Trinity and Beyond - The Atomic Bomb Movie". It's narrated by William Shatner and is a very decent production.

Those smoke columns are used to provide the scientists, or nuclear weaponeers, a frame of reference when they are calibrating weapon designs.

Before the bans on surface testing were in place, the US detonated more than 300 weapons in testing in the US and south Pacific during the "heat" of the cold war.

If you think the blast wave is neat, you should see footage of the "Y" wave that scoots along the ground, wiping stuff out of its way as is moves.

So I try and I scream and I beg and I sigh
Just to prove I'm alive, and it's alright
'Cause tonight there's a way I'll make light of my treacherous life
Make light!

[billvon 3,120]

>The area of effectively complete destruction extended to 25 km, and
> ordinary houses would be subjected to severe damage out to 35 km.

So you'd have two minutes to get under that desk! At 35km it might give you a better chance, and at 10km it at least gives you something to do.