For those who have persevered and gotten through: THANK YOU! My hosting provider Dreamhost sucks. Think I’ve been down more than I’ve been up the last few months. I’m now talking with two other providers to find out what it will cost to get their help migrating to an actual hosting provider. Particularly one that can handle basic blogging. I will add that to the fundraiser (getting hit by lightning and being out of work this long sucks even worse than Dreamhost, and that’s going some) and see what can be done.
Okay, in Nuclear 101 we sort of glossed over the effects and just went with a form of “bad” to describe them. We’ve alluded to some effects in 201, but now is the time to start exploring what happens when a bomb detonates. So, today we are going to get into what happens and what it means to you.
There is a good bit of information out there, though on a personal basis I tend to avoid anything from the Union of Confused Scientists (or those that travel with them). If someone is focusing on the politics and max damage, check out another site. Also, watch for the use of the “terror terms” like ‘zone of total destruction’ and those describing massive radiation effects. Remind me and I will get more into the types of ionizing radiation (the bad stuff) next week when looking at practical preparedness. For a fictional but accurate account, see Tom Clancy’s Sum of All Fears.
If you could somehow watch the process, as the bomb detonates you would see a massive burst of radiation. While X-rays are part of the detonation cycle, what results from the reaction is a wave of neutrons. This pulse is going to fry any and all electronics nearby, including the bio-electric computer that is the human nervous system. Immediately after is a burst of heat. Well, to describe it as intense heat is a bit of understatement.
Immediately thereafter is the pressure wave. Referred to as overpressure, this blast takes the damage up and can devastate a large area. How large depends on the size and type of bomb, as well as where it detonates. More on that in a bit. Now, also depending on the type and size, you can get a preliminary vacuum effect where the blast first sucks in all the air around it, then sends it back out again with the pressure wave. Look at some of the old above-ground test footage to see that in action.
Now, along with all this, you are going to get various types of radiation spreading out as well. This is going to come, in large measure, from incomplete reactions within the bomb and the surroundings it consumes. Again, next week we will get a bit more into this and the concepts of radiation versus ionizing radiation.
I admit this is rather simplistic. Then again, this is the 201-level course and not physics 990.
What it means is that what we have to consider in planning is:
An initial wave of neutron radiation, for 201 purposes we will assign this the smallest area of effect;
An intense burst of heat, potentially several hundred million degrees, in a larger area; and,
A pressure wave that will race out and damage a significantly larger area.
Now, thanks to the heat and pressure, you are also going to have an area subject to (potentially massive) fires.
An easy way to think of it is as an onion. The core area is the initial burst of radiation. Just out from it you have the area subject to the intense heat. The next area out from that is what is damaged by the overpressure. Out from that, you have an area that between that blast of intense heat and damage short-of-massive-destruction is probably going to catch fire and burn. There is a concept known as firestorm that is really a 301- or even a 401-level course that suggests large cities are going to basically go up in flames, particularly if thermonuclear weapons are used.
Now, does this mean you can sit down to a map and plot out a uniform damage area no matter the target? No. Not only does the radius of those bits of “onion” change with the size and type of device, it also changes with the location of detonation.
If you want to cause the most damage to the widest possible area, you set your nuclear bomb to go off in the air, what is called an air burst. For each size of bomb, there is an optimum height above ground for detonation to ensure maximum damage to the largest area. This is why I went, in previous discussions, with an airburst attack on Indianapolis. Doing an airburst will do the widest possible destruction, ensuring that interstates, rail, air, etc. are taken out even as leadership and corporate leadership based downtown are destroyed as well. To be honest, my worst-case estimates of such an attack have pretty much everything within 465 as toast given the potential for fires. If Indiana is lucky, 465 may serve as a firebreak on all but the south side.
Now, let’s say that Vladimir likes High Tax Holcomb about as much as most voters, and learns that he has a bunker stocked with caviar, fois gras and champagne in the basement of the circle jerk (state government complex) so that he can ride things out in style while the peasants get what they deserve. In that case, he might use a ground-burst. In that case, the nuclear device would explode at ground level. This will maximize destruction downtown, but limit the blast zone. While downtown will be heavily damaged/destroyed, the areas out from there are not as likely to suffer blast damage and/or fires afterwards though fallout is going to be much heavier.
Now, let’s say that High Tax Holcomb’s WEF buddies chipped in and got him a deep bunker to ride out riots, revolutions, or war. In that case, Vladimir might opt for a deep-penetration vehicle which would take the bomb deep underground before detonation. Unlike an underground nuclear test, such a detonation will breach the surface. Thing is, there will be little of the traditional effects above ground, though an area (size depending on the size of the bomb, depth, etc.) is going to rise up and then subside. Overpressure and thermal damage will be minimized at the surface, though fallout could be massive depending on how much of the blast does make it out. To get an idea of what the ground will do, check this out.
Now, when you read about zones of total destruction and the like, keep in mind that all explosions, including nuclear, are peculiar beasts. Various things, including atmospheric phenomena, can alter or shape blast fronts. If you look at Hiroshima, you can see a toroid-effect around the exact center of the blast where things were heavily damaged but not completely destroyed/vaporized. Even with an airburst, structures on the ground may shield areas. As I noted earlier, I’ve seen some amazing things happen with blast fronts.
Surviving in the immediate zone of damage/destruction depends in large measure on luck, on being underground (deep even), and well protected. The closer you are to the target, the deeper you need to be. You also better be prepared to dig yourself out and get out. The further away from ground zero the better the odds of your survival.
Next week, we will start taking a look at what is needed to survive in a nuclear environment. Keep in mind that quite a lot can be done to prepare within the precepts of practical preparedness, as while there are an almost infinite number of potential disasters, there are less than five types of damage. Makes planning and preparation much, much easier.
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SOME PREVIOUS POSTS:
Nuclear 201 Posts In Order
Nuclear 201: Will You Be My PAL?
Nuclear 201: Additional Thoughts On Coms
Nuclear 201: Targeting, Take 2
Nuclear 201: Policy, SIOP, and Escalation
Nuclear 101 Posts In Order:
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I saw a cellphone video of that Beirut harbor explosion from a couple of years ago that had been taken from more than a mile away. IIRC, the explosion, rated around 2 kilotons, was caused by some sort of nitrogen fertilizer or fertilizer precursor stored improperly in a warehouse that had caught fire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkIYjNGiaoA ; it’s well worth the watch.
I mention it because you can sort of ‘watch’ the shock wave expanding outwards; I say “sort of watch” it because it’s a couple of city blocks away when you first get a glimpse of it, and then in literally the blink of an eye it smashes through the apartment window it was filmed from. They show again it in slow-motion after the first, real time shot and even that happens almost too fast to see.
Very, very scary.
It will likely be in the prep episode, but glass windows are just nasty in any explosion. The much derided midcentury “duck and cover” drills were directly driven by studies of modes of injury from WWII bombing, where being upright and exposed near any glass when a blast wave came along meant being subjected to a wave of flying razor sharp glass knives, and folding ones self up on the floor protecting ones head under just about anything, yes even a school desk, yielded vastly hugely massively enormously better survivability outcomes than what one would get standing at the window looking at the pretty fireworks.
Fer sure. Check out the 20 story apartment building in the center right in the 3rd, super slo-mo version of the YouTube video of the Beirut harbor explosion posted above. Kinda looks like it was built with nothing but steel girders and glass. Anybody inside was surely ripped to shreds. Yucch.