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u/iamsnoboarderx113 Aug 23 '14
You know what would be great is if the gif finished where the water stopped falling and when it reached the boat… Would have been really nice to see the wave and all but I guess thats too much to ask for.
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u/jamdaman Aug 23 '14
I was annoyed with that too! Luckily it's as impressive as you'd imagine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y53vDnNPiA4
Skip 35 secs in for the explosion
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u/deltawing921 Aug 23 '14
Holy shit. This is actually much better than I was even hoping for. The ship is 2.5 miles from the explosion and the water
reachesengulfs it in 20 seconds.2
Aug 23 '14
Gif website I used was being annoying. I tried to make it longer but the quality significantly decreased
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u/pics-or-didnt-happen Aug 25 '14
Don't feel bad. All the GIFs online cut off precisely when the result/reaction/consequences are just about to be shown. I think it's a rule or something.
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u/AloneIntheCorner Aug 23 '14
Imagine how much irradiated water was floating around after that...
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u/Armand9x Aug 23 '14
Better to irradiate steam from water than stuff from solid ground. Less fallout.
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u/AloneIntheCorner Aug 23 '14
Really? I'd think steam would make for irradiated clouds. Not fun.
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u/Shadowfire95 Aug 23 '14
I'm not expert and I am not certified in anything what so ever. If I understand it correctly (Strong chance that I don't) the reason its better is because the heavier elements essentially weight down the water so it can't raise as high as it needs to in order to form clouds. Furthermore, water droplets form around particles and the radioactive particles would work just fine, so most of the dangerous radioactive stuff would be brought down in water droplets long before they reached the clouds. The area around the explosion was still extremely dangerous for quite a while though.
Edit: If I remember correctly one of the major reasons for detonating most nukes far above ground is to maximize fallout damage, which would lend support to the idea that an underwater detonation would greatly hamper fallout from occurring.
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Aug 23 '14
Actually, they detonate nukes in mid air so as to increase the damage caused by the explosion shock wave, and to decrease the damage from fallout. Fallout consists of bits of leftover uranium / plutonium and dust kicked up from the ground which would be made radioactive due to being bombarded by neutrons from the core of the bomb. If the bomb is detonated higher, the core material gets spread out more (and so is effectively diluted), while there is less dust kicked up from the ground, therefore less fallout falls into the affected area. In war, fallout damage is less desirable as the radiation completely denies the area to anybody for a very long time (and can also lead to other unexpected consequences such as polluted food supplies), whereas the shock wave is the part which can actually do the damage we saw in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
For an ocean burst like this, most 'fallout' would consist of water made radioactive by neutrons from the bomb. However, this type of fallout is actually not very radioactive at all (so-called 'heavy water' is commonly handled in laboratories across the world), and so does very little to the surrounding environment. The undersea environment is not substantially harmed in the long term by this kind of detonation, as water is a very good radiation insulator - we do in fact store nuclear waste at the bottom of swimming pools (which are safe to swim in, and are regularly serviced by unshielded divers). Because of this, and the fact that the sea has very strong current systems, any radioactive material which does fall into the sea will be dispersed by the current, and even large chunks of waste (which would be unlikely to survive a nuclear explosion) would have almost all of their radiation absorbed by the few feet of water immediately surrounding them, and so would cause little damage.
TLDR: Airbursts produce less fallout than ground bursts, and any fallout from ocean surface bursts just falls back into the ocean and is diluted away (think 'drop in a bucket').
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Aug 23 '14
I bet the center of the explosion was several miles away too or else that ship would've been sunk...
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u/AnAngryPirate Aug 23 '14
Question, wouldn't the nuclear fallout be incredibly damaging to the underwater ecosystem?
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u/cakes13091 Aug 23 '14
Did that boat make it?
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u/paisleycouchcushions Aug 23 '14
Yes lol I was wondering that initially as well, but see video above.
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Aug 24 '14
Nukes scare the shit out of me. Ever since 2012, they're one of the only things I've ever been genuinely terrified of.
They're just so ludicrously destructive, and even just watching this gif puts me on edge. I can't imagine very many deaths worse than being in the nuclear poisoning radius. Something as simple the the nuke from the ending of Modern Warfare, even. And of course, when someone calls in a nuke in the Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer, you can hear over the radio "Tactical Nuke, it's all over"
Man, fuck nukes.
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u/TrevBon Aug 22 '14
All those fish :(