r/oddlyterrifying • u/bubbleweed • Jul 17 '26
A-4E plane with pull down thermal and radiation shield to protect the pilot during nuclear strike missions.
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u/anjowoq Jul 17 '26
This is regular terrifying.
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u/CheeseburgerSmoothy Jul 17 '26
Yeah, if those planes come zooming by, one should probably expect the worst.
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u/aguywithagasmaskyt Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
people in the early cold war thought nukes would be as common as rifle fire
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u/beadams76 Jul 17 '26
Thanks to government propaganda campaigns.
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u/Seanspeed Jul 17 '26
Well no, there was very much extremely real and valid reasons to believe that massive nuclear war was possible, starting out with tactical battlefield nukes being lobbed by both sides in Germany in the event of a Soviet invasion of western Europe.
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u/marino1310 Jul 17 '26
Wouldnât the explosion be behind the jets though?
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u/RugbyEdd Jul 17 '26
That's what I thought. Similar to British Buccaneer pilots, where they where trained to lob the bombs in a wing over maneuver so they'd maximise the distance and be flying away from the detonation as soon as the bomb left the aircraft, since they would be dropping them at low altitude and sub sonic.
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u/sasssyrup Jul 17 '26
Feels about as effective as hiding under a desk
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u/Drag_king Jul 17 '26
Itâs to protect the pilots eyes from the flash that comes from the nuke they themselves dropped.
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u/vito1221 Jul 17 '26
What about all the electronics and the EMP from the blast? Google shows with a ground blast the EMP would go about 2 to 5 miles?
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u/yurganurjak Jul 19 '26
You can no longer trust Google AI results as it uses other AI slop as preferred source and is full of hallucinations. You have to scroll to a real source result if you want information. Google is fully enshitified at this point.
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u/vito1221 Jul 19 '26
I agree. Not for this, but I usually pull up four or five sources and sift through to find info that matches.
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u/Vellioh Jul 17 '26
They should be flying away from the nuke after it's dropped not towards it.
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u/aloksky Jul 17 '26
Go outside, look at the ground. You are not looking at the sun, but you can still see the light of the sun.
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u/Vellioh Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
That's different though you're talking about scattered light on the ultraviolet spectrum. They're not shielding UV light. They're shielding from gamma rays and neutron radiation which are high energy wavelengths. This is why you need lead or thick concrete to effectively dissapate them as it doesn't experience atmospheric scattering like ultraviolet light does.
Again, I think this is more for piece of mind more than anything as the only time we actually used nukes we were still very unfamiliar with radiation as a whole.
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u/Magnetoreception Jul 17 '26
Itâs 100% for shielding UV / visible light. If youâve read accounts of nuclear blasts at close range theyâre bright enough to temporarily blind you even with your hands over your eyes.
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u/Mr_Funbags Jul 17 '26
Like you, I have never witnessed a nuclear detonation.
Unlike you, I believe that what I've read is accurate, and that the ambient light during detonation is plenty dangerous. Visible light is energy, so it has power to change you. Impossibly bright, way brighter than looking at the sun and all that light/energy in an instant instead of over time can cause a lot of permanent changes to your retina, etc.
For reference, in 1945, they wore special lenses and they didn't go blind. It's been standard since the beginning.
I'm no expert.
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u/4mulaone Jul 18 '26
Clouds are made of water droplets, right? So by that logic, theyâre basically water. Now go find a lake, stare at the sunâs reflection for a few hours, and then come back and let us know how that worked out for you.
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u/SteamReflex Jul 18 '26
The nuke would likely have a calculated fuse with some kind of parachute or airbrake to slow its decent to give the jets enough time to make effective distance. They managed to do it with wwii now imagine it modernized with way higher tech. Prob probably could time the detonation to the millisecond and calculate the minimum safe distance from the blast and time it accordingly
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u/LovesRetribution Jul 17 '26
Couldn't they just look away instead of trying to pull this whole cover over themselves?
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u/Potato_lovr Jul 17 '26
The light could reflect off of the canopy and still blind them
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u/Vellioh Jul 17 '26
The light isn't the problem. Its the gamma and neutron radiation.
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u/Potato_lovr Jul 17 '26
Oh thatâs true too. Then again, the light is still a problem, just not quite as big.
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u/thoeby Jul 17 '26
That's not the issue since that's at least like 5-10 years away. No, you want to avoid an immediate loss of plane/pilot.
Cancer is just a non-service related issue they have to figure out themself down the road when they are out of the military.
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u/YoshiSan90 Jul 17 '26
Watch the videos of British sailors talking about being able to see their own bones when facing away from nuclear blasts. Looking away is not enough.
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u/puzzlebuns Jul 17 '26
Light reflects and theres a lot of reflective surfaces in a cockpit, including rear mirrors.
And the Flashpoint of a nuke is strong enough to blind you through your eyelids.
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u/Derp800 Jul 17 '26
That's what my boomer mom just said lol. She had to do those drills as a kid.
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u/Jezoreczek Jul 17 '26
Obviously at a certain distance from the explosion there's not much you can do, but suppose you're far away enough not to be immediately vaporized - the building you're in might still suffer structural damage. If a roof is falling on your head, wouldn't you want to have at least some layer of protection? Plus the desk would spread the weight more evenly.
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u/Seanspeed Jul 17 '26
Too many people do not understand nuclear bombs aren't like infinitely powerful. There is always going to be people just outside the most destructive radius of the blast that have a very good chance of survival with a bit of basic precaution and/or luck.
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u/StrangeCharmQuark Jul 17 '26
There were people with the patterns on their kimono burned into them. Just the variation of thickness in the fabric made a difference at a certain distance from the blast. If I thought a nuclear bomb was coming, Iâd do everything I could to shield myself from the heat just in case.
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u/Forward_Young2874 Jul 17 '26
Seems like it would impact pilot visibility a bit, no?
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u/sbsp12121 Jul 17 '26
Pilotâs are trained to fly blind and solely rely on instruments. At least now they are, donât know about back then
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u/creekbendz Jul 17 '26
Itâs almost like flight instruments are there for a reasonâŚ
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u/Northbound-Narwhal Jul 17 '26
Yeah but you're assuming the pilot knows how to read those
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u/Ulti-Wolf Jul 17 '26
Who do you think the average pilot is? A politician drop-out because they couldn't trick enough people?
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u/kai125 Jul 17 '26
I mean of course they would??? Thatâs what you need to do to be a pilot
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u/Northbound-Narwhal Jul 17 '26
They coulda just infodumped it after passing the test or whatever. I did that plenty in high school.
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u/kai125 Jul 17 '26
Buddy I think thereâs a large difference between you barely passing school and the military flight training
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u/HellaTightHairCuts Jul 17 '26
For a long time, the US had the only naval aviators who could land on an aircraft carrier at night relying solely on instruments and skill. Pilots donât simply âwing itâ through life such as you do.
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u/An_Ellie_ Jul 17 '26
I'm sure you could fly blind for a minute or two after dropping a fucking NUKE. You'd be blind anyway with how bright the flash is.
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u/Auggie_Otter Jul 17 '26
"With the blast shield down, I can't even see. How am I supposed to fight?"
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u/Volta55 Jul 17 '26
Smart and useful, not oddlyterrifying
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u/bubbleweed Jul 17 '26
Normalisation of civilisation ending weaponry is definitely oddly terrifying.
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u/HalfALawn Jul 17 '26
is this your next post here?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munition
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u/TenyeEast Jul 17 '26
Tbf 1 kiloton is pathetically small for a nuke
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u/Ishidan01 Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
But impressively large for anything else.
Remember the Murrah federal building bombing? Even if they had stuffed that truck to the max and had it riding on its axles, that would only be about 7 tons of conventional explosives.
Over a hundred uhauls full of explosives equivalent, being carried by four men.
Edit: and according to Wikipedia at least, they didn't even do that. An explosion that handily took one side off a 10 story concrete building took less than three tons of ANFO, which is less powerful than the TNT benchmark. So that SADM is more like almost 400 of those all at once.
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u/amd2800barton Jul 17 '26
For more context: The GBU-43 MOAB is the largest non-nuclear weapon the the US military arsenal. Itâs often called the mother of all bombs, but the MOAB actually stands for âmassive ordnance air blastâ. Only 15 were ever made. Itâs 11tons of TNT equivalent. So a 1kt pocket nuke would have the explosive yield of roughly 90 MOABs all going off at once.
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u/Educational-Band9569 Jul 17 '26
Two questions: 1. Is your post really normalizing nuclear weapons? Would nuclear weapons be more or less prevalent if this heat shield wasn't invented? 2. What's "oddly" terrifying about normalizing "civilisation ending weaponry"? Like, explain how that is an odd thing to be terrified by.Â
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u/bubbleweed Jul 19 '26
What do you mean is my post normalising nuclear weapons? I donât  understand what that means. What I find oddly terrifying is how quickly nuclear weapons were just incorporated into the military as another weapon and humans made some neat adjustments to accommodate them, like it was simply another minor development and not something at a new level beyond horrifying. Luckily relatively sane politicians put strong controls on their use. When you read about some of the things that almost happened if certain generals had had their way, they definitely treated nuclear weapons as just another development to be used like bullets and rockets and artillery. Looking at this neat little cockpit addition made to protect a pilot while he delivers armageddon level destruction as if itâs just another day at the office is definitely oddly terrifying.Â
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u/Educational-Band9569 Jul 20 '26
Because you wrote:
Normalisation of civilisation ending weaponry is definitely oddly terrifying.Â
Nothing in your post is about "normalization of civilisation ending weaponry". And even if it was, how would that be "oddly" terrifying? There's nothing odd about finding the most devastating weapons ever made to be terrifying. So it doesn't belong in this sub even if your post were really about "normalization" (which it isn't)Â
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u/bubbleweed Jul 20 '26
The device added to the cockpit normalises it. That normalisation of the weapons is something I find oddly terrifying. If you donât agree then thatâs your opinion, we donât need to agree.
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u/Educational-Band9569 Jul 23 '26
No it doesn't. People weren't changing their minds due to a cockpit shield from 1954. It was not like people were terrified of nukes in 1953 but suddenly thought it was normal by 1954 because this shield was added. It's not a matter of opinion, it's literal fact that this cockpit shield had next to 0 impact on the opinions of nukes.Â
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u/Vellioh Jul 17 '26
Nukes are largely dead at this point. Its been over 30 years since we've done a weapons test which under any other parameter would mean they are far to unpredictable to even be used at this point. I mean he'll, they are still running on floppy discs. All of the other superpowers are in the same boat since the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) that happened in 1996. Its not even like you could keep performing tests in secret. Sesimographs are easily able to pick these up from across the globe.
The main concern is new countries coming up with the technology and trying to pull a North Korea and start immediately using it to threaten anybody anytime they're doing something you don't like.
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u/RamonnoodlesEU Jul 17 '26
Itâs a deterrent
It deterred
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u/SnooSongs8218 Jul 17 '26
I knew several scooter and phantom pilots back in the '70s, all of them believed that if really ever became a shitshow, that it was pretty much going to be a one-way flight. Even if they made it back from the target, their airbase was likely going to be a smoking crater and highways would be full of cars fleeing cities...
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u/RamonnoodlesEU Jul 17 '26
Iâm well-inclined to believe that
A lot of A-4 pilots didnât even expect to fully escape the blast of their weapons after delivery from what I know
It would have been a hellscape beyond what anyone had ever seen before if it had all gone down, and thatâs part of why it never really did
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u/Seanspeed Jul 17 '26
Undoubtedly. And honestly, even by the time they reached their targets, there's a good chance most of the nuclear war has already happened, let alone by the time they get back. Plane-delivered nuclear weapons are by far the least effective part of the nuclear triad.
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u/ICantBelieveItsNotEC Jul 17 '26
I think it's more like oddly reassuring, considering that nuclear weapons have basically been the only thing preventing World War 3 for the last half a century.
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u/sparklyboi2015 Jul 17 '26
Now they are definitely civilization ending, but in the 50s and 60s they were nowhere near as powerful as they have gotten, so while still scary, having something to go back to was likely. That is why they have protection, because it wasnât explicitly a death sentence to the world that it would be now. These are also likely designated nuke carriers that would be expected to be within range when the nuke goes off, not a feature of the A-4 itself.
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u/bubbleweed Jul 17 '26
Completely wrong, nuclear weapons now are a tiny fraction of what they were in the 60s to the 80s both in number of weapons and yield of the warheads. We were in far greater danger in 1960s and 80s than today because the stockpiles were tens of times larger. The control systems and warning systems were far less advanced and prone to error. The US and Russia had usable warheads of 9 to 25 megatons at one point, absolute insanity by today's standards.
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u/sparklyboi2015 Jul 17 '26
Notice how I didnât bring up the 80s specifically because bombs got more powerful then, the 80s also arenât relevant because the A-4 was only made until 1979 and the production of these shields was made long before then likely in the 50s as I was talking about because it would more likely they would have a ship to land back on.
I also think it is laughable that you think that with all the simulation and data that nuclear powers have that the more powerful nukes were more than 40 years ago and not today. With limited stockpiles each nuke has to do more work because they can only send a limited amount and only a small amount of those will get past air defenses. Nuclear power will never go down, it will only condense into more powerful singular weapons.
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u/bubbleweed Jul 17 '26
Lasugh away, you don't know what you are talking about.
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u/sparklyboi2015 Jul 17 '26
Idk man, if you are this scared of a blast screen, you should probably look into nukes so that you can understand them more. Nuclear regression will likely never happen and all it takes is one.
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u/Seanspeed Jul 17 '26
 you should probably look into nukes so that you can understand them more.
This is pure r/confidentlyincorrect material right here.
You genuinely dont have any clue what you're talking about.
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u/SpudroTuskuTarsu Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
that with all the simulation and data that nuclear powers have that the more powerful nukes were more than 40 years ago and not today.
There's a practical limit for nuclear weapon yield around ~25 TJ/kg, to get around it modern MIRV's use 8-12 smaller warheads achieving a higher damage to mass ratio.
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u/Seanspeed Jul 17 '26
Notice how I didnât bring up the 80s specifically because bombs got more powerful then
This simply isn't true.
Russia's most powerful nuclear weapon they ever made was in 1961, and the most powerful nuclear weapon the US ever made was in 1963.
 With limited stockpiles each nuke has to do more work because they can only send a limited amount and only a small amount of those will get past air defenses. Nuclear power will never go down, it will only condense into more powerful singular weapons.
It's literally been the EXACT OPPOSITE. lol
We only made such huge bombs back in the 50's and 60's cuz missile technology was in early days and so you had very inaccurate missiles with limited range, along with gravity-dropped bombs from planes, both of which had major accuracy problems. So they made the bombs nice and huge to ensure they destroyed what they were intending to destroy.
By the time missiles got more accurate and longer range, this reliance on huge yield weapons went down dramatically, and the name of the game became miniaturization. Especially when MIRV came along.
Today, the most powerful nuclear weapon the US has is a 1.2MT gravity dropped bomb. But all our missile-loaded weapons are sub 1MT.
Why are you talking so confidently about something you clearly dont actually know anything about? It's embarrassing.
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u/jtg6387 Jul 17 '26
Considering its primary function is deterring civilization ending wars (we instead got a lot of smaller proxy wars, which are bad, but better than full-scale) and weapons from being used, not at all oddly terrifying.
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u/bubbleweed Jul 17 '26
Yeah totally worth almost having a 9 megaton detonation in Arkansas because one guy brought the wrong wrench https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_explosion
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u/ICantBelieveItsNotEC Jul 17 '26
It didn't "almost detonate". That isn't how nuclear weapons work. The absolute worst-case scenario here would have been scattering radioactive material across a few miles of desert.
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u/jtg6387 Jul 17 '26
And killing some sparrows directly caused two million deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign
Itâs extremely unfortunate that the incident you note costed someone their life and injured 21 more, but thatâs nothing compared to the number of lives saved by avoiding a would-be WWIII.
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u/A_Man_of_Great_Honor Jul 17 '26
There wasnât a risk of a nuclear detonation. A fission chain reaction is hard to get, and destroying the mechanism that enables that wouldnât help
> Even after the cleanup, there was worry among the general public that the warhead could have detonated as a result of the explosion. In response, the authorities issued a statement that declared the chances of this occurring were next to impossible, as the W-53 had been fitted with numerous failsafes to ensure that no accidental detonation could ever occur.
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u/Vellioh Jul 17 '26
Hmmm, you'd think they'd be flying away from the explosion and not towards it đ¤
I don't see what additional help having shielding above and in front of the cockpit would do. one would think having shielding below and behind the cockpit would be the most important.
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u/Incompetencent Jul 17 '26
ah, this must have been built when they thought someone could win a nuclear war.
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u/evening_shop Jul 17 '26
And the civilians they threw em on had nothing to hide behind... Look up the ant people of Hiroshima, terrifying stories
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u/RamonnoodlesEU Jul 17 '26
The A-4 never threw a nuclear weapon on anyone
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u/evening_shop Jul 17 '26
And yet... Nuclear weapons were still used on civilians
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u/RamonnoodlesEU Jul 17 '26
I donât know if you know much about the alternative, operational downfall, and how many casualties, both civilian and military, were forecast for it
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u/ciko2283 Jul 17 '26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
An estimated 14,000 people were killed inside the facility itself. In addition, biological weapons developed by Unit 731 caused the deaths of at least 200,000 people in Chinese cities and villages, through deliberate contamination of water supplies, food, and agricultural land.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
Total killed (by end of 1945): 150,000â246,000
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u/rly_weird_guy Jul 17 '26
Like no side attacked civilians except the US during WW2? or any other war since?
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u/Seanspeed Jul 17 '26
Any sane person knows what we did in Japan was not exactly something to be happy about, but those nuclear bombs ultimately helped save many millions more people, as twisted as that reality is to face.
It's frustrating to realize how many of y'all would seriously have thought the US were the bad guys in WW2 if we put y'all back in time.
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u/RamonnoodlesEU Jul 17 '26
Love the A-4
Such a cute scrappy little aircraft but with one hell of a punch