

Animated map of nuclear explosions, 1945-1998 - gnosis
http://pinktentacle.com/2010/08/animated-map-of-nuclear-explosions-1945-1998/

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AngryParsley
I didn't think so many nukes had been set off. Before knowing that fact, I'd
have thought 2,000 nukes would give radiation poisoning to a decent portion of
the the world.

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pjscott
Most of these are underground; that's the least fallout-producing way of
setting off a nuke, since there's no irradiated debris going up into the sky.
The second least fallout-producing nuking method is an air burst. The ground
bursts are the worst, and also the rarest in the doomsday plans.

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arethuza
Enemy missile silos and other hardened sites would all receive ground bursts -
in the case of the Soviets they had (and Russia may still have) multiple
extremely large warheads (25Mt) targeted at places like Cheyenne Mountain and
Raven Rock Mountain - these would have been ground bursts and _incredibly_
messy.

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jewbacca
Original Source (acknowledged in the article, though its embed links a YouTube
flamewar): <http://www.ctbto.org/specials/1945-1998-by-isao-hashimoto/>

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parallax7d
In the 50's and 60's it looked like the US was just trying to maintain a 2:1
lead over the Soviets. I wonder if it was driven mainly by bragging rights.

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pjscott
It was driven by the desire to be able to guarantee that, even if the Soviets
attacked first and took out as many military and infrastructural targets as
possible, the US would still be able to launch a crippling nuclear
counterattack. The Soviets wanted the exact same thing, but in reverse. It
wasn't driven by bragging rights; it was driven by the dangerous fact that the
advantage in a nuclear war goes with whoever strikes first.

The development of ICBMs, missile submarines, and so on, actually made us a
lot safer by making the "strike first and strike hard" approach much less
effective. The situation was more volatile back when it took a month or so to
put together the bombs for a nuclear attack. When you look at it from such a
ruthless perspective, the Cold War made a weird kind of sense.

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gacba
And as pointed out in Wargames, whoever strikes first still loses.

MAD (mutually assured destruction) is not a pretty thing.

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pjscott
The point is to make it so that whoever strikes first still loses. If the
first-striker advantage is big enough, then the country that strikes first
could survive with their population, government, and military capabilities
largely intact, while pretty much destroying the other side.

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nhnifong
I know that nuclear fuel must be a precious resource, and to see that we
wasted so much of it during those years is unsettling. We could have set that
fuel aside to power civilization for centuries. Might we be able to recover
any valuable radioactive material from the test sites? Since most of the
warheads were detonated at just a few sites, there might be high
concentrations.

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brazzy
The amount of fuel used by a warhead is tiny compared with a power station
reactor. A typical nuclear warhead contains less than 50kg of fissible
material. A typical reactor contains 50 tons or more.

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zokier
Makes me really wonder if those explosions had any scientific need, or were
they just displays of power. I would think that those test sites would be so
polluted that any fallout analysis would be very hard if not impossible.

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nickpinkston
I just think it's interesting how mch territory has been used as a test
facility for nukes. Russia seems like a nuclear wasteland, and it even appears
we detonated nukes (underground I presume) in the SE US - wild!

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sean12345
Most of the testing was done at the Nevada Test Range. Today this is probably
the most polluted place in the US. Check it out on google maps, the place
looks like the surface of the moon. Area 51, incidentally is very close to
that area as well.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Test_Site>

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SpacemanSpiff
Google maps link:
[http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...](http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=las+vegas,+nv&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=64.664844,74.267578&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Las+Vegas,+Clark,+Nevada&ll=37.084488,-116.032619&spn=0.129958,0.145054&t=h&z=13)

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Retric
Thanks for that link, it's amazing to me that they detonated that many nukes
underground in that grid like pattern.

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blahblahblah
Here's a thought to ponder: The intense x-ray/gamma radiation given off by the
above-ground nuclear tests may very well be the most powerful indicator of
intelligent life on this planet that has ever been broadcast into outer space,
purely in terms of signal power. It's kind of sad to think that the first
message received by E.T. (if they're out there) could potentially be, "Yes,
there are sentient beings on Earth but, unfortunately, they're a bunch of war-
mongering a-holes."

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riffic
Does it feel like we're at war with the pacific islands here?

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treeform
Or the sand in the desert!

