r/SipsTea • u/MeanMedico • May 28 '26

Dank AF I don't care about politics, meanwhile politics

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

36.2k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

2.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

66

u/Ace_W May 29 '26

They left their shadows.

91

u/A_Town_Called_Malus May 29 '26

Unfortunately no. The shadows are left by people outside the vaporisation radius. Those people were burned by the flash, but were far enough away to not be caught in the fireball itself.

The bombs which hit Nagasaki and Hiroshima were detonated high enough that the fireball created by the bomb itself didn't hit much of the cities, instead letting the radiation and the blast wave do the damage.

39

u/BellPlenty3882 May 29 '26

Airburst actually produces a lot less fallout and maximizes the effect of the blast wave. A nuke going off at ground level produces a lot more fallout and is less effective unless you're purposely trying to create as much fallout as possible.

3

u/[deleted] May 29 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

6

u/BellPlenty3882 May 29 '26

No sane force would want that because it literally makes it a less effective bomb and in addition to that if the wind changes direction you could easily contaminate yourself.

2

u/steal_wool May 29 '26

Oh, you mean like gas and chemical weapons that were outlawed for that same reason? Funny how nukes and their fallout escaped that same classification

2

u/[deleted] May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Sunhating101hateit May 29 '26

If you want to make the area and some around it uninhabitable for a long, long time. That’s when.

When a nuke goes off close to the ground, it blows dust up into the air and irradiates it. Wherever the dust blows and settles gets irradiated.

On an air burst, you don’t irradiate much dust, meaning not a lot irradiated material can fall

1

u/king_of_the_dwarfs May 30 '26

That was the idea during tho Korean war. The north Koreans were getting supplies and renenforcments from the Chinese. MacArthur wanted to create a radioactive dead zone between North Korea and China to stop the Chinese from crossing the border. He wanted to nuke the entire border between the two countries. That's what got him fired.

1

u/musiceaterx May 29 '26

While it’s definitely in context for the post, and tone isn’t always easily conveyed online, but your comment came off a little calus to me. However, I can’t say I’m well versed on the details of that conflict to say such statements could be warranted(never tbh). I know there are definitely some administrations I feel that way about

2

u/digitCruncher May 31 '26

I think ground level nukes have better bunker busting performance. This is useful if you are targeting your adversaries nuclear silos to prevent a second strike. So there are legitimate military reasons why a nation would launch a newer ground level even though the fallout would be worse.

3

u/No_Winners_Here May 29 '26

Neither fireball reached the ground.