
A 390-year-old bonsai tree survived an atomic bomb - timr
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/the-390-year-old-tree-that-survived-an-atomic-bomb/2015/08/02/3f824dae-3945-11e5-8e98-115a3cf7d7ae_story.html
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kjell
They mention the tree's trunk in the article but it's shaded in the photo.
It's glorious:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/kjell/3388113528/in/album-7215...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/kjell/3388113528/in/album-72157615939819460/)

The National Arboretum is the coolest place I've been in DC. It's a bit out of
the way, but worth the trip from downtown.

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n0us
I've always thought the culture and heritage surrounding bonsai is amazing. I
was in a local bonsai club when I was younger and the patience required to
produce a really great tree is something to be respected. Sometimes the trees
will just die for no discernible reason and you just have to start over after
months or years of work. Some of the oldest trees are estimated to be over
1000 years old and have been passed through generations of care takers.

~~~
eastbayjake
I always compare software engineering to bonsai. To be happy doing either for
a long time, you need to enjoy the work of becoming a craftsman for its own
sake -- the things you build or cultivate can die quickly and for no good
reason, and all that remains is the appreciation for the work you put in.
Whenever someone asks for a fifth round of changes for a button's color, I
think about a Japanese monk raking gravel. When the Tibetan monks blow away
their mandala after weeks of painstaking work, I see startup pivots and
acquihires.

~~~
timr
That's a really interesting analogy. I struggle with the idea of working so
hard on things that feel pointless and ephemeral, and that's a nice way to
think about it.

I'm not sure that's the point of a mandala, but it's definitely an interesting
idea to ponder.

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Retric
The 'point' of mandala is _everything_ is temporary.

Something might last thousand years or a billion, but it's still going to end.

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cft
One not very often discussed fact is that the effects of even an all-out
nuclear war (detonation of all existing nuclear weapons) are exaggerated, for
various fairly obvious reasons. The total number of people killed will be
"only" 10-15%, and it will be definitely _not_ a threat to humanity as the
species.

[http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/82jpr.html](http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/82jpr.html)

I read somewhere that if all existing weapons in the world were detonated
uniformly over Texas, there would be still some survivors even in Texas
itself.

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sandworm101
I agree that they are overplayed for effect, but there is some math. I saw
Kissinger explain it when asked about nukes killed the whole world ten times
over.

The math started with WWII Germany. They kept reasonably reliable records of
where and when people died during allied air raids. So someone drew up a
formula linking the tonnage of bombs dropped with the number of dead on the
ground. This was then extended to nukes and their power measured in thousands
(kilo) and millions (mega) of tons of TNT. So bombs with explosive power
greater than all of WWII (a common description) could "kill" as many people as
an entire war. Kissinger was correct in saying that all the bombs in the world
would not, could not, destroy everyone ten or twenty times over.

This false analogy was also part of debates during Vietnam. Many, on both
sided of every argument, used the math to estimate the number killed by US
bombing raids, ignoring the fact that German cities and Vietnam jungle are in
no way analogous.

~~~
ptaipale
Quite; particularly considering that the strategies of the bombings were
reversed.

In WWII, Germany was bombed so that strategic bombers (B-17) attacked
strategic targets (civilians and factories in cities), and tactical bombers
(P-47) attacked tactical targets (tanks or trains near combat).

In Vietnam war, Vietnam was bombed so that strategic bombers (B-52) attacked
tactical targets (jungle with suspected Viet Cong activity in combat area),
and tactical bombers (F-4) attacked tactical targets within strategic targets
(a bridge in Hanoi).

And WWII was the last "good" war for Americans.

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ihuman
Since it was so close to the blast, wouldn't it still be radioactive, like
Marie Curie's journals?

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ars
No. Airburst nuclear bombs for the most part don't make things radioactive,
air pretty much can't become radioactive (pure water also can't become
radioactive, although you can mix radioactive elements into it of course).

Ground blasts are worse, but it's the ground itself that becomes radioactive,
not the things that are far away and are affected by the blast.

And no one purposely does ground bursts, because they don't do a good job of
damaging things with a blast - most of the energy ends up reflected into
space, or absorbed into the ground. (I guess a terrorist might want to, since
they don't have military strategic goals.)

The material of the bomb itself is radioactive of course, but there isn't
usually all that much of it, and it's dispersed quite widely.

Her journals did not become radioactive because they were neutron-activated,
but because they were contaminated by radioactive material. But there's a
limited amount of that, so only a small amount of material becomes radioactive
that way.

(Note: I'm speaking relatively here, if you have a sensitive enough detector
you'll find stuff of course. That's one of the things that makes people so
scared of radiation - it's so easy to detect at even minuscule levels, while
far more dangerous things are harder to detect so no one reports them.)

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InclinedPlane
Water can and does become radioactive through neutron capture breeding
tritium.

However, neutron flux falls off quickly with range, and for an airburst
explosion it would not have been high enough at the surface to cause
significant neutron "activation" of local materials. Almost all of the fallout
from the blast came from the material in the bomb itself.

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ars
That's true, but atom bombs make very very little tritium.

To make tritium you need to start with deuterium, which is already rarely made
by atom bombs. So you have two rare events that have to happen in sequence.

So that means that atom bombs pretty much don't make any.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Right, quite true.

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fit2rule
I think the value of this tree is in the idea that one day America might give
it back to Japan as an act of peace, since it is clearly a very special
organism and the value of the act would truly communicate the idea of
transcending the causes of hostility. Exchanging such a beautiful life form as
an act of peace would surely be the penultimate act of bonsai...

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JoeAltmaier
Quibble: surely that should be 'ultimate act'. The meaning of 'penultimate'
implies a further ultimate act. Since bonsai are essentially immortal, you
would never be able to tell if an act involving one was penultimate?

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Falcon9
Essentially immortal? The article seemed to indicate the expected lifespan of
this tree was around 200 years, despite it having lived nearly twice that
long.

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JoeAltmaier
There's no biological limit to their age - only accident/disease statistics.

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brokentone
I get trying to humanize stories, but Moses Weisberg does nothing for this
story. I spent as long reading the article as trying to find out why this guy
was interesting... other than he once walked a bike past it.

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jchrisa
I've been getting into bonsai also. If anyone reading this wants to do a
meetup, it'd be fun to get together with tech bonsai people in Portland.

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justizin
Why not just get together with tech folks over tech, and bonsai people over
bonsai, and cross-pollinate your life a bit? :)

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fit2rule
Umm .. wouldn't that be not cross-polinating?

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roghummal
He's suggesting jchrisa cross-pollinate his life with people other than "tech
people".

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mml
For some reason, I worked on a bonsai farm for a few years. The old trees are
amazing as they are beautiful. We had some in the 200 year range, no more than
18 inches tall.

I still visit the farm in my mind 30 years later.

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primus202
I love the arboretum! Remember going there as a kid growing up as my mom is
obsessed with trees. That bonsai exhibit is spectacular in every way.

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ommunist
Looks like radiation makes it stronger. Theoretically some pine species can
have around 700 years lifespan. As it comes out from dendrochronological data.
But America is the first here - meet Nevadan pine <i>Pinus longaeva</i>. The
oldest known living specimen is a tree, somewhere in the White Mountains of
California. The tree was sampled by Schulman in the 1950s. Its great age,
5,060 years. Its still there.

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ommunist
To those downvoting me. I spent 2 years planting pines in experimental
plantations to study radioactivity effects on pine in mixed forest plantations
in 1993-1994. So I know a thing or two.

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pedro50
Am a bit disappointed that there are no respect here for the origin of the
bomb and its success.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Events_on_the_ground)

Does the HN realise there is anotehr world outside of Silicon Velley ??

~~~
mikeash
What exactly are you looking for and why would you expect to see it in these
comments?

