
Nuclear Test Films Declassified and Uploaded - coloneltcb
https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/62-rare-nuclear-test-films-have-been-declassified-and-u-1821302584
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r-bryan
I was a child of the 1950's. Only 50 miles south of New York City, we little
grade school kids were routinely drilled in cowering under our desks in case
of a nuclear attack. Every time I heard an airplane, I was afraid it was going
to drop bombs. Popular Science ran features about how to build your own
fallout shelter, and how Dad could prepare his family for the coming nuclear
apocalypse. The understated, tragic horror of _On the Beach_ was complemented
but not countered by the mordant humor of Dr. Strangelove.

The clips here don't have the bizarre choreographic beauty of the Dr.
Strangelove finale, but they bring back the all too keen anxiety and
existential terror of being powerless, while deranged world leaders measure
each other's manhood by "mine's bigger than yours." Fine, you proved that
yours is big enough, it doesn't really matter whose is bigger any more than
whose hair is dumber, now can we _please_ return to sanity?

~~~
sjcsjc
Born in the late 60s, so teenager in the 80s in the UK. I recall that exact
same fear of every passing aeroplane. In our case the cultural equivalents of
OTB and DS were Threads and The Day After, and the Protect and Survive
announcements that Frankie Goes To Hollywood sampled in Two Tribes.

I find it interesting that the terror of the global thermonuclear war seems to
have disappeared from the popular psyche, even though exactly the same weapons
are still there ready.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
What does OTB and DS mean in this context?

~~~
krylon
I guess OTB = "On The Beach" and DS = "Doctor Strangelove"

~~~
sjcsjc
Thanks - sorry, I should have just put the full names.

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gh02t
There's a big scramble in the Department of Energy to preserve (and
declassify, where possible) a lot of the data from the days of atmospheric
testing, which is literally rotting. It's some of the only real world data we
have on e.g. fallout dispersal, which is important for building the
simulations that would allow emergency workers to safely operate in the
aftermath of a nuclear attack. It's also of interest for nuclear forensics,
which is highly relevant at the moment with the situation in Korea.

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sigsergv
Btw, here is one of recently declassified soviet videos about first nuclear
bomb test.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BIDzZygIq0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BIDzZygIq0)

It's a kind of report, explaining experiment setup, equipment, test process
and results. Russian, no subtitles but picture itself explains a lot.

~~~
Harelin
There are suffering animals in this video, if anyone cares to avoid that.

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vonnik
If you're ever in Vegas, the National Atomic Testing Museum is a great place
to go:
[http://nationalatomictestingmuseum.org/](http://nationalatomictestingmuseum.org/)

~~~
retSava
And if you are in Hiroshima, the museum dedicated to the atomic bombing of the
city is worth visiting. Makes you really sad.

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MrBlue
Direct link to the videos:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/LivermoreLab/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/LivermoreLab/videos)

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trhway
my favorite detail is the evaporating (almost explosively converted into
plasma by the sheer intensity of the energy being radiated) tower that the
weapon was placed on top of and the cables which were keeping the tower
vertical - the 5 spikes at the belly of the fireball

[https://youtu.be/woR7j72zE0U?t=9](https://youtu.be/woR7j72zE0U?t=9)

~~~
telesilla
I feel conflicted that these explosions are so beautiful to watch, and I
always wanted to see one in the sky where the ground didn't interfere with the
cloud. Now I have but I'm not really satisfied because it references a
possible destruction of humanity?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n3uane1UT8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n3uane1UT8)

~~~
trhway
>it references a possible destruction of humanity?

imagine a guy who has a gun in a drawer at home and who smokes 2 packs a day.
What is going to kill him with pretty high probability? The same way the
humanity is with nuclear weapons and climate change.

~~~
Houshalter
How is climate change anywhere near as dangerous as a nuclear war?

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Climate change is already happening, and well on its way to being both
catastrophic and irreversible.

~~~
Houshalter
So? What's the worse that can happen? Some cities slowly get flooded and some
storms become more frequent? The worst case of nuclear war is all cities get
destroyed and humanity is sent back to the stone age. They aren't even
comparable.

~~~
trhway
Roman Empire closed shop when grain production in Mediterranean basin became
no more due to the warming up of the climate. At the same time the rest of
Europe warmed up and dried up a bit so it stopped being a cold swamp, and it
allowed for the European civilization to get started. During the peak of heat
1000 years ago the Mediterranean basin belonged to Caliphates - the world
leading, at the time, in many respects civilization which came out of dry and
hot Arabia and which was significantly pushed back by Europeans during the
next several hundreds years of cooling down. That cooling down became Little
Ice Age during which we have Black Death, famines, etc. with European
population getting decimated from time to time. Whole human history is
basically history of changing climate and its effects upon
empires/cultures/civilizations. Viking Age. Mongols ruling all the connected
space covered with grasses - ie. where cavalry is unstoppable - during period
with just enough rain/snow for such a huge space to balance between swamp and
desert, and the period of such delicate balance was naturally relatively short
with Pan-Mongolia splitting relatively quickly into pieces separated by
deserts/rivers/swamps. Or check out the Late Bronze Age collapse for example.

The point here is that couple degrees change over several centuries have very
profound effect upon human civilization. These days we've stepped into the
territory of couple degrees (and probably more with the process having
significant chances to become runaway) over several decades. That is bound to
result in dramatic changes.

One can try to argue that our civilization today is well insulated from
climate changes. And that one will be wrong. Just consider the very recent
examples. 198x were the coldest point in the 80 years cycle and that resulted
in low grain yields in USSR. It coincided with low oil prices thus resulting
in food shortages in USSR, and as result the USSR just disappeared as the
hungry people couldn't care less. The same thing with Arab Spring which was
triggered by the drought and resulting food shortages :
[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-
an...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-and-rising-
food-prices-heightened-arab-spring/)

So :

1\. human civilization is very vulnerable to climate change effects and

2\. the climate change, more severe than the ones which have destroyed
civilizations in the past, is happening now orders of magnitude faster than
those climate changes of the past.

~~~
Houshalter
Your theories on the rise and fall of civilizations is pretty speculative.
I've heard dozens of theories of why Rome fell. Everyone and their brother has
a pet theory.

But even if you are right, it's irrelevant. Yeah, ancient civilizations were
sensitive to famines and climate. We are way past that. Some of our biggest
cities are in regions that were near uninhabitable before air conditioning or
insecticides. Our modern irrigiation technology give us the ability to grow
crops in areas that used to be desolate. We produce several times more food
than we actually need. If the absolute worst case scenarios of climate change
happened, our civilization would easily continue.

~~~
trhway
> it's irrelevant. Yeah, ancient civilizations were sensitive to famines and
> climate. We are way past that. Some of our biggest cities are in regions
> that were near uninhabitable before air conditioning or insecticides. Our
> modern irrigiation technology give us the ability to grow crops in areas
> that used to be desolate. We produce several times more food than we
> actually need. If the absolute worst case scenarios of climate change
> happened, our civilization would easily continue. Our modern irrigiation
> technology give us the ability to grow crops in areas that used to be
> desolate. We produce several times more food than we actually need. If the
> absolute worst case scenarios of climate change happened, our civilization
> would easily continue.

tell those triumphal words of our civilization glory to the 800M people today
who is officially live in hunger. Or to the next couple of billions who will
quickly find themselves deep in the extreme poverty/hunger if economy gets
noticeably worse, food price increase and/or some shortage of food/water/etc.
happens.

I suppose that you, like me, is in the top 5-10% of the global Pareto
distribution of our civilization goodies, and even if there are severe
food/water/energy/etc. shortage and/or food prices increase even 10 times,
we'd still not be going to bed hungry even though we'd possibly have to give
up some of the less necessary things. So from our point of view "civilization
would easily continue". Not so to the majority of the world population though.

~~~
Houshalter
First of all, you are arguing against a straw man. I never said "climate
change wouldn't be bad". I said it wouldn't be anywhere near as bad as a full
nuclear war. You can't even compare the two.

Anyway I'm sick of this meme that we should care about everything that happens
to the third world. Look at Africa. Their population is growing exponentially.
It's already far above of any reasonably sustainable size. And their economy
is actually deindustrializing. They are going to suffer no matter what
happens. Climate change is the least of their problems. And there is nothing
we can do the help them.

~~~
trhway
>First of all, you are arguing against a straw man. I never said "climate
change wouldn't be bad". I said it wouldn't be anywhere near as bad as a full
nuclear war. You can't even compare the two.

my point is that nuclear war is a straw man while climate change presents
clear and imminent planet-scale danger to our civilization.

>Anyway I'm sick of this meme that we should care about everything that
happens to the third world.

Well, beside that caring about weak and less fortunate is our normal human
trait, we brought the climate change upon the whole planet, so we should bear
at least some responsibility. Anyway, hunger and poverty isn't limited to the
third world -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_in_the_United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_in_the_United_States)

"Research from the USDA found that 14.9% of American households were food
insecure during at least some of 2011, with 5.7% suffering from very low food
security.[3] Journalists and charity workers have reported further increased
demand for emergency food aid during 2012 and 2013."

>Look at Africa. Their population is growing exponentially. It's already far
above of any reasonably sustainable size.

Africa is big and with a lot of resources. It can sustain much bigger
population.

>And their economy is actually deindustrializing.

there is a bunch of very different countries with very different population,
economy, society. Some countries have recently or currently have civil wars
and as result are in chaos. The same is Syria which was pretty highly
developed country just 7 years ago.

>Climate change is the least of their problems.

it is one of the major causes of the current (Arab Spring) and future civil
(and may be between states) wars which would wreak havoc upon the involved
countries/societies.

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greglindahl
One fun thing about photos of early nuclear tests is that the US accidentally
published enough info that revealed the top-secret yield of the Trinity test
bomb in photographs in Life Magazine:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_yield#Calculati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_yield#Calculating_yields_and_controversy)
\-- all you need is dimensional analysis. Whoops.

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credit_guy
“Let’s just hope we don’t see a new atomspheric nuclear explosion (test or
otherwise) before they’re done with their preservation project.”.... fat
chance. North Korea will do an atmospheric nuclear test in the next six
months, if not three .

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brunoqc
Do we have high def color footage of nuclear explosions? That would be cool.

~~~
sho
Check out the documentary "Trinity and Beyond" \- it has a lot of quality
footage, much of it colour.

~~~
reti
There's ten minutes on youtube here -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvnWXf6UZXY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvnWXf6UZXY).
Captures the essence of the film nicely. There's this weird 'end of the world'
kind of undertone to the film. Genuinely scary stuff.

~~~
nerdponx
This is some absolutely incredible footage. I had no idea there was color
footage of the actual bombings in Japan.

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nasredin
Well, like TFA says hopefully we won't have any _new_ videos of above-ground
nuke "tests".

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hoodoof
Hard to really say the difference between a nuclear war and the U.S., Russia,
UK France and others setting off vast numbers of atmospheric nuclear weapons
in the 20th century.

~~~
mikeash
Here's a realistic look at what an all-out nuclear war in 1988 might have been
like:
[http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/nuclearwar1.html](http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/nuclearwar1.html)

Spoiler alert: about four fifths of Americans end up dead, and about one third
of all humans on Earth. The survivors contend with famine and plague on a
scale never before seen. Most of the world's industrial capacity is destroyed.

I find it fairly easy to distinguish that scenario from the world we live in,
personally.

~~~
mlindner
That's pretty fake and assumes a lot of capabilities the USSR never had.
Satellite mounted nuclear weapons, anti-ICBM missiles, ground to space lasers,
"killer satellites", etc never existed. I think the writer enjoys pro-USSR
fantasies.

~~~
mikeash
The Soviets had and the Russians still have anti-ICBM missiles:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-35_anti-
ballistic_missile_sy...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-35_anti-
ballistic_missile_system) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-135_anti-
ballistic_missile_s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-135_anti-
ballistic_missile_system)

Killer satellites were developed starting in the 60s and deployed
operationally in 1991. It seems reasonable to think that some pre-operational
capability might have existed in 1988:
[http://www.russianspaceweb.com/is.html](http://www.russianspaceweb.com/is.html)

I'm not sure where the nuke satellites and lasers came from.

When it comes to answering the question of "what would a post-war world look
like?" the only significant system out of these is the nuke satellites causing
an EMP. That could (and probably would) have been just as easily done with
standard ICBMs so I don't think it changes the answer very much.

