Get Nebula using my link for 40% off an annual subscription: go.nebula.tv/joescott I figured KZread needed yet another video about Oppenheimer, so enjoy! 😆

@wrenchin-n-wheels9482

10 ай бұрын

Thanks for another great episode!

@PaulValickas

10 ай бұрын

Hey, barbie movie ;) is also out

@jasperlawrence5361

10 ай бұрын

It isn't "a line we don't want to cross", it is a line we don't want to cross for now. We enjoyed a long period of peace, our ancestors did, after the Napoleonic Wars. It is like the Great Depression, as soon as the generation effected is no longer counted or dies off, we go right back. WW2 is long gone by those measures, it is enshrined in Germany and Russia, and to a certain extent in the UK and France and Italy. But it will be back soon enough. Edit: one to gone above

@rjswas

10 ай бұрын

The "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." line he used was actually what he said, but he said it in an interview, there is footage of it, Veritasium made a good in depth video of it all just recently, very much worth a watch if you haven't seen it yet, it also has the clip in it with him saying that line in the interview and almost crying.

@deadeyedaddy7418

10 ай бұрын

What it doesn't need is another video about that OceanGate Submersible. :)

What would happen if all the bombs went off at once? Some people are definitely getting fired, either literally or figuratively.

@MrTmm97

10 ай бұрын

😂😂😂

@clayongunzelle9555

10 ай бұрын

One way or another... By the hook or the crook😅😅😅

@charliem989

10 ай бұрын

"I did everything right and they ignited me!"

@prapanthebachelorette6803

10 ай бұрын

Good one dude 😂

@alexlabs4858

10 ай бұрын

Jobs won’t matter at that point anyway

The Russian inventor(main designer) of Tsar BOMBA 50 megaton was originally working on a 100 megaton version. He scaled back to 50 as even that was too powerful. When the weapon finally went off he was horrified. He never built other weapons but instead lobbied against these types of weapons

@scrambledmandible

10 ай бұрын

I believe the idea of igniting the atmosphere was again a big fear, contributing to the decision for a half-size version

@indianastan

10 ай бұрын

It's pointless to make it any bigger. For the rest of the blast would just go into space.

@FSAPOJake

10 ай бұрын

Huge nukes like that just aren't needed anymore. All the major nuclear powers have super accurate ICBMs with warheads in the several hundred to couple thousand kiloton range. Rather than lugging a huge bomb on a drone to destroy a city, just pepper a city with a bunch of "small" warheads and do the same amount of damage with less effort.

@JonMartinYXD

10 ай бұрын

@@scrambledmandible The igniting the atmosphere thing was never actually a thing. It was shown to be impossible well before even the Trinity test.

@DrinkWater713

10 ай бұрын

​@@JonMartinYXDhow do you "show it to be impossible"?

In fairness to the line being attributed to Oppenheimer about the "I am become death" I believe this came from an interview later in his life where he claims this was the thought in his head at the time. May not have actually been and he may have made it more poetic in the time prior to the interview but that's why the line seems to be attributed to him. He did not say it at the time of the bomb but he claims he was thinking it.

@jabrokneetoeknee6448

10 ай бұрын

Nah the line first came to him while he was being straddled by Florence Pugh… I saw it in a Nolan movie

@c97f

10 ай бұрын

Oppenheimer's quote was genius. He said (paraphrasing) "some of us laughed, some of us cried" and quoted the Bagiva Ghita. In that part the god is telling the prince, feeling guilty about war "I (the god) am death. You're just my instrument". So those that laughed were the prince, merely the instrument. Those that cried had become death.

@lordgarion514

10 ай бұрын

@@jabrokneetoeknee6448 That's just nasty. Lol

@mrtony3152

9 ай бұрын

​@@c97fBhagvad Gita*

@Outcast257

9 ай бұрын

Indeed, he also says this in the documentary The Decision to Drop the Bomb, he was actually recalling a different quote at that time, he however did not say it outloud, "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one" full quote in the documentary is as follows "We knew the world would not be the same, a few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds" I suppose we all thought that one way or another" with all due respect to scott, its not hard to find this information even with a quick google search, so maybe he should do research better next time false information is already abundant as it is no need to exacerbate it further.

Really important to keep in mind the size of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were small - low kiloton yield weapons.

@demonhighwayman9403

10 ай бұрын

Also I believe they were airburst weapons, which is why those areas are now habitable, had they hit the ground those areas would be no go zones.

@nugboy420

10 ай бұрын

And didn’t work that great. We’ve had what 80 ish years to work on them.

@EC-dz4bq

10 ай бұрын

@@demonhighwayman9403 if they hit the ground... the damage would have been a lot less.

@linkinlinkinlinkin654

10 ай бұрын

I like to think about the fact that conventional explosives were used to detonate uranium/plutonium core in the Fission bombs to create thousand times more output. And now fission bombs are being used to detonate fusion bombs (h-bombs) to improve the output a couple of orders of magnitude lol.

@petercoutu4726

10 ай бұрын

​@@nugboy420Yeah, only the equivalent of less than 1 oz of material experienced fission.

I think Blackadder goes forth has the best commentary on MAD-balance of terror. ^.^ "The idea was to have two vast opposing armies, each acting as the other's deterrent. That way, there could never be a war." "But this is a sort of a war, isn't it sir?" "Yes, that's right. You see, there was a *tiny* flaw in the plan." "What was that sir?" "It was bollocks."

@Forty7-Twenty7

10 ай бұрын

The issue with such a comparison is that the great powers in the Great War believed that they could come out of the war in one piece. They understood the economical and demographic damage would be tremendous, of course, but countries like Germany believed that it could be solved with good planning, essentially ending the war as soon as possible, hence why they massively expanded the scope of the war by siding with Austria-Hungary. No one understood that the true horror of the war would be the stalemate and static warfare that followed. The difference between that and the nuclear situation today is that a Nuclear war would certainly bring about the end of both combatant countries. The huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons both the United States, Russia, and China have would cause such economic devastation on both sides that it would not be worth the risk. As opposed to 1914, the world leaders understand that even the most conservative estimates of damage would result in a great, global depression. Never mind the death toll. It’s like if you were playing a game of chess and you just decided to flip over the table you were playing on. There is no advantage to launching the nukes.

@RyanKeane9

10 ай бұрын

So the poor old ostrich died for nothing

@hazelhazelton1346

10 ай бұрын

@@Forty7-Twenty7 By gum, this is interesting! I always loved history! Battle of Hastings! Henry the eighth and his six knives! All that! ^.^

@antonycharnock2993

10 ай бұрын

"Bibble"

@MySerpentine

10 ай бұрын

@@Forty7-Twenty7 Trump got elected somehow, you can't assume our leaders will know 2+2=4.

One thing to note is that the kinds of explosions you were talking about in the first couple of examples, one's where the fireball doesn't touch the ground, won't produce much fallout. It's why Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still lived in. Radiation in air dissipates pretty fast. It's only when the radiation has other material to irradiated that you have long-term radiation issues. Also, there were worse extinction events

@joshuaortiz2031

10 ай бұрын

The one that ended the Permian period was the worst, a super volcano eruption that went on for half a million years.

@davidvavra9113

10 ай бұрын

Yes And fissile vs non fissile tampers

@mikezappulla4092

10 ай бұрын

It’s going to come back down eventually. Usually through rain or gradually fall over a large area. I live in Saint Louis Missouri and we were even exposed to radiation from Chernoby in the form or aerosolized radiation and gaseous debris although the amount was trivial and not dangerous. They were able to detect small amounts of radiation on the wet coast about 10 days after the incident, again it was not a harmful amount. I have read that the amount was less than 1% of the already present radioactive particulate naturally found in the soil.

@AORD72

10 ай бұрын

Yes, that is why we need a Moon base and Mars colony.

@dusty4835

10 ай бұрын

That's why present-day levels of radiation in Hiroshima are comparable to any other area on Earth.

12:10 First of all Alfred Nobel invented Dynamite, not TNT, they're different, TNT was first made by Julius Wilbrand in 1863. Also the stated reason Alfred Nobel created Dynamite to create a safer alternative to nitroglycerine for use in construction and mining, not to end war.

I picture Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture playing in my head when I pictured the prospect of every nuke going off all at once.

@Alfred-Neuman

10 ай бұрын

We'll Meet Again • Vera Lynn

@Alfred-Neuman

10 ай бұрын

@@geraldh3932 It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works. I first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love... Yes, a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence. I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women, er, women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake... but I do deny them my essence.

@robertnewhart3547

10 ай бұрын

Or that Goonies song.

@danl6634

10 ай бұрын

An interesting thought; could you actually be close enough to "hear" the whole mess go off without being unalived?

@RobertRedland

10 ай бұрын

The Pixies- "Where is my mind". Loved it at the end of Fight Club, seems fitting for the end of mankind.

There is a timed video showing how many bomb tests have been done since 1945 and its pretty wild to see. I didnt realize how many above ground tests had been done

@malcolmhiggins7005

10 ай бұрын

Send me a link!!!

@johnmalone5693

10 ай бұрын

@malcolmhiggins7005 Put "timelapse nuclear test" into youtube search - Boom !

@paulmurphy8549

10 ай бұрын

Alot of the worlds cancers have been from the detonations since world war 2 but it will never be admitted

@PsRohrbaugh

10 ай бұрын

Yup... Over 1000 nuclear bombs have been set off.

@Laz_Arus

10 ай бұрын

An eye-opening movie released in 1995 is "Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie". Highly recommended watching if you're interested in the development of these bombs. Loads of actual test footage are shown. It's available here on YT. 👍

0:31 Ackchually, he did say 'I am become death. Destroyer of worlds', though it was in a news interview years after the tests and the ending of WW2. He had personally translated the 'Bhagavad Gita' from it's natural Hindu language and was quoting a part of the book / story and referring that to himself and how he felt after helping to create nuclear fusion / fission.

With respect to fallout, a ground bust explosion is worst but high altitude bursts typically are more destructive. In any case, a large exchange of weapons would bring the world's economies to a halt which ultimately would kill the most people.

@ellen4956

10 ай бұрын

All it would take to stop the world economy is rendering the satellites unusable. All the ones and zeros become only zeros; traffic including airlines would stop, most people could not communicate by phone and it would be utter chaos. There is no need to destroy anything else.

@MrBadjohn69

10 ай бұрын

If the homeless in Los Angeles survived COVID then this would just be another day in the sunshine for them.

@k1m198

9 ай бұрын

​@@MrBadjohn69guess "covid" wasn't as bad as the media claimed. Gee what else could they be lying about.

@MrBadjohn69

9 ай бұрын

@@k1m198 Never believed COVID was bad. I never bought into mask mandates or the other nonsense. What I am really mad about is that during the health emergency Public Health did not push people to eat right, cut back on alcohol, give up smoking, and try doing some exercise during the week. Exercise could be as simple as a taking 3 1 hr walks a week. BTW If COVID was truly horrible, why did the homeless populations not crash?

@k1m198

9 ай бұрын

@MrBadjohn69 exactly. I was telling people the same thing during the height of the fakery. I was saying "if this was real and as bad as they claim, we'd see entire streets closed off while hazmat airlifts contagious corpses away. Where has there been 1 dead body in the streets?"

The movie "Threads" is a good depiction of the horrors of nuclear war and the ensuing decline of civilization. Those who perished in the blast wave were the lucky ones.

@Wustenfuchs109

10 ай бұрын

I've seen it. It overblows the effects of a nuclear war, turning everything into a Fallout game within a year and an end of humanity. It was a propaganda film done in the 1980's to scare the people as much as possible. Nuclear war is above everything - still a war. Two countries, or two alliances, fighting it out. So at worst, it would lead to a destruction of the two entities and that's it. The rest of the world will face a turmoil of the changing world market, but would hardly feel any long term physical effects. And in the places that bombs did hit would recover over the years, just as Japan did. You won't have enemies carpet bombing each other with nukes across the entire territory. Major cities would be hit, yes, but that still leaves huge areas of two main players (USA and Russia) with no destruction. They would definitely no longer be world powers after that and would suffer greatly, but the world won't end, even for them. And that is the thing that Threads got wrong (intentionally), it turned everything into a Fallout world populated by retarded mutants. As Joe pointed out, even if you fired all of them, at worst you'd destroy around 1% of the land area, maybe cause a year or two of bad harvests for the rest of the world... but that's about it. Disaster for those hit, a nuisance for the rest of the world not directly affected by it. It takes A LOT of energy to actually destroy humanity.

@bloganc

10 ай бұрын

@@Wustenfuchs109 I call bullshit, Imagine every major city and surrounding areas burning for months, and every single nuclear power plant gone chernobyl as they also have been nuked. Its over for humans.

@mill2712

10 ай бұрын

​@@Wustenfuchs109 Though you have to also take a look at population densities as well. While Russia is huge, I think the majority of Russians live within the European region of Russia west of the Ural mountains rather than spread evenly across there and Siberia.

@matthewcstraney

10 ай бұрын

@@Wustenfuchs109 think you’re underestimating just how much of the world relies on the US, Europe, and Russia for food and fertilizer exports. Millions would starve in the Middle East and Africa. And the radiation from hundreds of ground bursts is not going to respect national borders. Even if nuclear winter theory is 100% false, it would still be the deadliest event in human history. And the “retarded mutants” featured in threads were a result of radiation affecting mothers and their children, something we have actually seen happen near pacific island test sites.

@smallpeople172

10 ай бұрын

Ugh realistically the climate would not change much and the radiation would not affect the southern hemisphere much

Well, all I know is that cochroaches, scorpions and Twitter would definitely survive.

@MCsCreations

10 ай бұрын

@@geraldh3932 And does it surprise you?

There actually is a sound strategic reason for having way more nukes than you seem to "need." For one, you want to have plenty left over in the event that your enemy manages to hit you first. For another, a lot of the targets you'd be sending those bombs against are hardened against nukes and would need need more pounding than you might initially think. And as another plus for the "nuclear war won't end the world" those hardened targets are often way out in the middle of nowhere.

@robo5013

10 ай бұрын

Mainly to make sure some get through anti missile defenses

@rustomkanishka

9 ай бұрын

Or better yet, the military industrial complex will decide that there is a 'missile gap', and more weapons are needed. On the other side, hey, we got all these manufacturing plants and living in atomgrads is just nicer.

@danelynch7171

9 ай бұрын

Some are getting shot down too. Gotta plan for sending multiple warheads to the same place

@jimmym3352

4 ай бұрын

And finally some may not work. Some of these weapons have been stored for decades.

@shacktime

4 ай бұрын

A nuclear war would collapse all of global civilization. This would lead to the abandonment and failure of all the world’s industrial infrastructure. This, in turn, would unleash a totally destructive domino effect that would ultimately scorch the entire planet and thoroughly acidify its oceans. All complex life would go extinct. Nukes would merely be the shove that sent the snowball of Armageddon in motion.

Love how you always tie the conclusion of the video back to its opening. Always makes me smile when you return to a phrase or quote that you mention in the beginning

"What would happen if all the nuclear bombs went off all at once" is the most 'Joe Scott video' topic EVER! 😂

I love how the title/thumbnail graphic is almost exactly the same as the one History Channel put on their video a couple days ago. Except this one is actually GOOD. 🤣

Since the "we have enough nukes to destroy humanity" thing emerged during the cold war, I'd honestly be more interested in seeing what would happen back then, when there were a lot more nukes around than with the present number.

Austin from Shoddycast did a video kind of like this where he calculated how many nuclear bombs it would take to turn the entire planet into the world of Fallout. The answer he got was around 5,000 LESS than how many nukes actually existed at the height of the Cold War.

@AORD72

10 ай бұрын

Sounds like he can't do mathematics. Already there has been over 1000 nuclear tests, how muck damage has that done? The majority of radiation is short lived. The area covered by all the bombs with deadly radiation is not that big. Humanity will easily survive a nuclear war.

@timmortalone8579

10 ай бұрын

Nuclear fallout and radiation are very different. Yes, radiation is short-lived. Given it is pure energy, it travels at the speed of light. It will shoot itself into space, the ground, or through your body in the second you see the explosion. But the world of Fallout is not simply a ruined world left behind by large explosions and consequent inferno. It is irradiated, ravaged by dirty bombs and plagued by the eponymous fallout produced by nuclear armaments. Nuclear fallout lasts much longer, and is more sadistic than radiation. The unexploded nuclear material reduced to tiny radioactive particulates will be spread far and wide; carried by both wind and water. Once it reaches the ground, or is mixed in with soil, the problem has not yet been eradicated. Vegetation are incapable of breaking down the nuclear material or even rendering them inert. Any plant matter on the contaminated or irradiated soil will absorb the particulates of nuclear material and store them. Passing it on to any human or animal that consumes it, neither are able to break it down as well. Meaning they will also pass it on or return it to the soil in a vicious cycle. Heavy metals (like lead, mercury, gold, selenium) by themselves are poisonous for any living-breathing human or animal. Nuclear material such as Uranium and Plutonium are likewise heavy metals, but with the added caveat that their mass naturally breaks down into radiation over time. Not only will you have heavy metal poisoning when you ingest plant or animal matter with nuclear fallout but you will also suffer radiation poisoning. It takes 400 rads for instant death in humans. Mind you that I said instant death, it takes a fraction of the same to start destroying the cells in your body albeit slowly. Likewise, irradiated matter is a health hazard. Calling to mind the Chernobyl exclusionary zone, and the items in it. As well as the irradiated soil imported from Operation Chrome Dome's Spain incident . FUN FACT. Uranium 238 and 235 have a half life of 4.4 Bn and 700 Mn years respectively. A half-life being the time it takes to break down half of the Uranium's initial mass. Nuclear fallout will remain in the soil, water, and air for far longer than you can fathom. So yeah. Humanity doubtless has the means and the knowledge to survive. But there is more to a nuclear explosion than the inferno, EMP, and initial radiation. There is also the fallout. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

@AORD72

10 ай бұрын

@@timmortalone8579 I think you are overthinking the amount of radioactive material that will be left. A lot of the bombs in a nuclear war are probably going to be air blasts with less radiation. The fallout is just dust/debris of which some will be radioactive elements. There will be shorter life radioactive material and long life material. A lot will have decayed in the first few weeks. The human body can handle some radiation, we live in an environment full of radiation (there is 4 billion tonnes of uranium in the sea). There have been 528 atmospheric test and 1,528 underground tests (a total of about 540 MT of explosions, average of 260 kT, (some current USA bombs: W78 = 170 kT, W87 = 300/475 kT)). *Average annual human exposure to ionizing radiation in millisieverts (mSv) per year 2.40 from natural sources. 0.61 from artificial sources. From the nuclear testing it is 0.005 (2008), with a peak of 0.11 mSv in 1963* If we had a nuclear war it is likely the only bombs used will be the ones that are currently ready, roughly 3700. So the globe might average out with a radiation level of something like 4.27 mSv per year. So we would average 3 times the normal level for a few years. In AU, if you are designated a radiation worker than you can receive up to 20 mSv per annum.

@Flaschenteufel

9 ай бұрын

@@AORD72 "the majority of radiation is short lived"....where do you people always get these wild infos from....jeah it's so very short lived that those tests even pushed the standard background radiation of earth for several % (about 2.5 if i remember right). 80 % short time radiation sounds easy if the last 20% wouldn't take up to several hundred thousand years....

@tlpineapple1

9 ай бұрын

​@@timmortalone8579​ This is why random people arent given ted talks. First, in general radiation doesnt travel at the speed of light. There are 3 main types of ionizing radiation (the type that can actually give you radiation sickness) alpha, beta and gamma. Gamma is the only type that travels at the speed of light, because its light. Both alpha, a fast moving hydrogen atom, and beta, a fast moving electron or positron, are both massive particles, and while high speed dont travel at the speed of light. Secondly, yes, radioactive contamination is an issue, however you are vastly overblowing it. Plants arent just going to start absorbing and holding onto these particles, they need to be incorporated into the plants structure, which uranium and plutonium dont. Things like cesium are a major problem because animal bodies will incorporate it into bones more readily then calcium. For the most part, the largest issue with contaminated food sources will be dust that has coated the plants, as well as isotopes the plants can actually absorb and incorporate into themselves. Thridly, your fun fact is useless without context. Radioactive materials are dangerous based upon their half-life. By definition the amount of radiation released is dependent on the half-life of their isotope. The shorter the half life the more radiation released, the longer the less. Isotopes with shorter half-lifes, while more radioactive, are rarely ever a concern because they decay so fast that they're inert long before they become a problem. Isotpoes with longer half-lifes are also not very dangerous because they release so little radiation that it doesnt cause any real damage. In fact, before discovering the potential for bombs and power, uranium was often mixed into glassware due to its luminescent properties. The biggest risks are isotopes with half-lifes of a few decades to a few hundred years, like cesium. All animals also have a certain amount of C¹⁴ in them, a radioactive isotope of carbon with a half-life of ~5,700 years. We are surrounded by radiation at all times, with the average exposure in the U.S. sitting around .6 rads per year. Fourthly, your statement on leathal radiation dose is outright wrong. The actual dosage is 400 rads will kill approximately 50% of humans exposed to it, and its not an instant death. Where we expect 99% of people to die, with some of them dying instantly, is around 1000 rads. The issue with measuring radiation exposure just in rads is that its not a useful metric without full context. If you recieve that dose to your entire body it will likely kill you, meanwhile Anatoli Bugorski recieved a dose of around 300,000 rads after sticking his head in a particle collider, and he still lives today mostly unscathed. Theres also the medical device therac-25 which regularly exposed patients to doses of up to 20,000 rads with a few of them surviving. Fifthly, the vast majority of the chernobyl exclusion zone is at backgroumd radiation levels, with a few small pockets of incrwased radiation. Most of the deadly radiation remains around the plant, but we should be clear that the other reactors continued to provide power for decades. Further, nuclear reactors and nuclear bombs work very differently, and leave different isotopes in different percentages. The vast majority of radiation that escaped chernobyl were things like cesium, which are just radioactive enough to be deadly, but long lasting enough to be a problem. The speed at which a nuclear bomb detonates results in less overall fission, and its byproducts are in the right environment to break down in ways that doesnt happen in a nuclear reactor through a process of nuetron absorbtion followed by faster decay. Radiation will remain a problem for decades to centuries, but not on the scale of the chernobyl exclusion zone. sixthly and finally, fallout is a videogame, whose lore was started during a time with increased fearmongering of the potential damage of nuclear war. Further, the fallout world is vastly different, with many of our nuclear treaties and bans non-existent, as such at the time of the 3rd world war, there were more nuclear weapons detonated then what existed on our timeline, on top of everything being powered by nuclear power. While that still wouldnt cause the world we see in fallout, we never were in any threat of a fallout type world. The biggest issues post nuclear war would be food insecurity, increased cancer rates, and a temporary collapse of majorly effected society. Millions more will die from the first and last issues then any of the effects from nuclear war.

I think you or your writer got a bit confused right at the beginning of this video. No one claimed he spoke the "I am become death" line at the moment the bomb went off. He spoke it later when he was reflecting back on that time. He spoke it on camera. It's on KZread.

Pacifists making weapons of war is also something I see all the time in pollution. The textbook I studied in my environmental protection class ended almost every chapter with some version of 'however, the efficiency gains of [product] by x amount made the use of fossil fuels more economical, increasing the use 10x.' Make something twice as efficient and it will get used 10 times as much.

@JohnnyWednesday

10 ай бұрын

Your mighty textbook forgot to mention the passage of time and growing populations.

@gregh7457

10 ай бұрын

@@JohnnyWednesday The efficiency gains with AI is going to double that

@woodenspoon6222

10 ай бұрын

@@JohnnyWednesday You really hurt that textbook's feelings

@rimbusjift7575

10 ай бұрын

​@@JohnnyWednesday Yeah, those sudden 10-fold increases in population are annoying.

@darksu6947

10 ай бұрын

​@@rimbusjift7575Eugenics are fun! 😂

This question's answer changes drastically depending on whether or not you're detonating all bombs in a single location or spreading out their locations evenly across the globe, or even worse, normalized with population density. It also depends on how many of these bombs are salted bombs, and how dirty they are. Castle Bravo was super dirty, leaving tons of Cobalt-60 fallout all over the Pacific, whereas Tsar Bomba was surprisingly one of the cleanest nuclear explosions ever detonated, as Severny is completely safe to visit or even inhabit (at least radiologically, that place is still insanely cold). This is very important because on top of vaporizing all life in its radius, it also denies any new life from springing up within an even larger radius. Megatonnage is only a small fraction of the equation compared to these other factors.

@grn1

8 ай бұрын

There's also the EMP effect which is what a lot of experts are most worried about. Fusion bombs tend to absorb most of the radioactive materials they put out leaving far less radioactive material behind in exchange for far more damage up front (which is good since we don't want to destroy too much habitable land). EMPs can destroy critical infrastructure far away from the actual detonation point (especially if detonated high up).

@tw8464

6 ай бұрын

Exactly. Shouldn't underestimate the radiation issue. Or nuclear winter.

Each Minuteman could have up to three warheads, with each warhead having about a 300kt yield. MIRVs increase the destructive area of a single missile a lot.

Just for scale: The comet that exploded in the air over Russia in 2013 was calculated to yield 440kt. If the Carolina bays really are meteor or similar impact; just a single of the big one was calculated to 5Mt. I think there was approx 500 counted impact of various sizes. No where to hide.

@einarcgulbrandsen7177

10 ай бұрын

You missed the point. Was talking about meteor (possibly the younger dryas case) impact Look a lidar map of Carolina bays and tell me where you could have survived.

Hey Joe thanks for including other frames of reference, then a bunch of States, made it much more interesting

When hearing this, I always think about the Book and Movie "On the Beach".

Oppenheimer never claimed to have said the line from the Bhagavad Gita at the time, but that seeing the destruction called that verse to mind. So he said the line in that context - in recounting the story. There are recordings of this.

Great episode, I really like your delivery. Nice shirt, where might I find one like it?

Kudos to @joescott for being a true gem among the KZread crowd! Your content keeps reaching new heights in quality, from top-notch production to that authentic KZread essence that made us fall in love with the platform. While others may have lost their way, you've remained dedicated to delivering excellence without compromising your unique style. It's refreshing to see a channel that's not just chasing trends or selling out. Keep up the fantastic work, Joe! Your devoted fan forever from kashmir. 😊👍

While Strategic Nuclear weapons are ludicous in every sense, Tactical Nulcear weapons are perhaps even more ridiculous since they too will poision tghe ground you are fighting to take. That is just like cutting off the tree branch on which you sit such that your enemy AND yourself both fall to injury and possibly destruction. That being said, in my view ALL war is pointless, needless, wasteful, and overflowing with hubris, arrogance, and most of all ignorance. I agree with Einstein when he said "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war".

@joescott

10 ай бұрын

Great point, I didn't even think of that.

@CarFreeSegnitz

10 ай бұрын

Do they poison the ground? There are people currently living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

@Buriaku

10 ай бұрын

@@CarFreeSegnitz Nuclear fallout is a thing. It can be cleaned up, though, and is mainly a problem for growing food, as ingesting fallout is way worse than just living next to it.

@tma2001

10 ай бұрын

talking of the overview effect where you can't see borders from space, the nation state and 'sovereignty' is one of the worst things to emerge out of human culture. This planet of squabbling tribes is so depressing ...

@autohmae

10 ай бұрын

@@CarFreeSegnitz See the video by Kyle Hill: Why isn’t Hiroshima a Nuclear Wasteland?

Should be noted that if the nukes are all set off as air burst, they will do extensive damage to the surrounding area, but there will be almost no fallout (Not saying none, but far less then you would expect, . Its only when the nuke is on or below the ground that you will see extensive long terms levels of fallout.

@brianfox771

9 ай бұрын

Yes, this is correct. And the fallout half-lives to background in a matter of a few weeks. Also, modern fusion bombs generate less fallout as well because you only need a tiny bit of fission to set it off, and it is the fission that generates fallout.

In the mid 1950's my parents moved us to the Hurst, between Dallas and FtWorth. My Dad worked for Bell Helicopter and we lived 7 blocks from the main gate. Years later I learned that he was not convinced that US/USSR would not use nukes. So living near a defense plant, with a SAC base in Ft Worth, and several large defense contractors (LTV, Texas Instruments, etc), so living that close to 'large targets' would make sure we were 'taken out druing a first strike' so we wouldn't have to worry about living through the aftermath. ...

There was also the theory leading up to the Castle Bravo test (first thermo nuclear detonation) that the entire atmosphere could catch fire in a chain reaction to end all chain reactions. The problem with nuclear physics is that it's all theoretical until it's tested and measured.

@pakde8002

10 ай бұрын

The insane thing is even though it was a possibility they went ahead with the test.

@JoeLancaster

10 ай бұрын

This was a genuine concern leading up to the first nuclear test (Trinity) much earlier also

@MrWhangdoodles

10 ай бұрын

​@pakde8002 The chance was basically nil, they knew that.

@DaneOrschlovsky

10 ай бұрын

@@JoeLancaster you're right, the fear was more realized before Trinity because it was the very first nuclear detonation, but there were still some in the science community that had cataclysmic fears over Castle Bravo. What a crazy time to be alive.

@timgerk3262

10 ай бұрын

Rather than sensationalize "entire atmosphere catching fire", let's air some facts. The primary stuff in air is nitrogen, which would have to sustain a chemical reaction with oxygen. A bomb is big, but not nearly big enough to spark a flame the full depth of the atmosphere (60km) and the circumference of Earth (40,000km) (Nitrogen-oxygen is just not dense enough. Where it is dense enough, in an IC engine, NOx compounds are produced when the fuel flame is quenched; extra monatomic oxygen and hydroxide are kinetically (collision-limited) gobbled by molecular nitrogen. Further, nitrogen-oxygen nuclei do not fission. They'll fuse, but only in density & temperature conditions and time scales of a star cores like Betelgeuse. Fear is a strong motivator & easily weaponized against us.

to the early point of if he said those words... i've seen several interviews where the man himself recounts what he was thinking during the first successful test and he tells a story about vishnu and then quotes that line specifically... for whatever that's worth. if he said it right in the moment, only he and whomever was in ear shot knows. but did he reference and say it later? sure as shooting...

@wolfiemuse

10 ай бұрын

So that proves he didn’t say it. He was thinking it. Imo it doesn’t matter either way, but it’s important to clarify he didn’t say it in the moment, he was thinking it.

The most common warhead in the active US stockpile is the W76-1, with a yield of 90 kilotons. The US no longer has any active warheads with yields in the megatons.

@floo1465

10 ай бұрын

nope, the b83 has a yield of 1.2 megatons and is still in service.

Overall very well done video, but feel like a few more things could've been taken into consideration; for example if the nuke was air burst or ground level would drastically change the numbers. It appears most the numbers that you had were considering air burst nuclear weapons (most likely to be used) which don't actually leave behind much radiation, over 95% of the radiation dissipates seconds after the explosion, things like Hydrogen bombs are even more efficient leaving behind even less radiation than in Hiroshima or Nagasaki (where people comfortably live today with radiation levels the same as background level), so radioactive fall out would not be as big of a deal as many people like to say it is with nukes used in this way. Ground level nuclear explosions would leave behind considerably more radiation, that lasts longer, but have a much smaller blast radius.

@johnj8639

10 ай бұрын

Also wanted to add - Examining China and Russia's nuclear weapons doctrine gives a little more insight into how they see survivability of nuclear weapons (they assume the US will use airburst explosions, and more efficient Hydrogen bombs limiting radioactive fall out) which seems to strongly suggest they see nuclear war as tenable possibly even winnable which sets a dangerous precedent that could lead them to creating more nuclear weapons if they think the US could survive all of their nukes and still win. Also worth noting further that both Russia and China have nukes as their key strategy in their military doctrine - as both clearly acknowledge US military supremacy, with China noting it won't reach parody with the US military until at least 2050, and Russia... Struggling in a war in Ukraine. Both Russia and China see nuclear weapons as their only real deterrent.

@tw8464

6 ай бұрын

No one in the public knows all the top secret weapns. It's unlikely all of the nuclear weapons are going to be high altitude or "minimal radiation." There will be a significant amount of fallout radiation

I read somewhere that a lot of our nuclear weapons, are actually very old and are decaying. We stopped making them over 30 years ago. They are not exactly sure how long these weapons are actually good for. But it's quite possible that some of these older nukes, are duds. It would probably be more scary for these superpowers to realize half of their nuclear arsenals are getting long in the tooth and might not work, or worse. They fall apart and cause some sort of reaction because they are dying.

@placeholdername0000

9 ай бұрын

The US is working to refurbish theirs. Old designs, just repeating the production. Yay....... Cold War 2.0

@metpach

9 ай бұрын

@@placeholdername0000 Under previous administrations, they actually retired making more nukes. But, recently Joe Biden signed an Executive Order, re-establishing the program. Great....

@mcpr5971

8 ай бұрын

We probably have some secret program to detonate them in outer space or something.

@tw8464

6 ай бұрын

China has build newer nukes znd silos. US has maintained operationally and is refurbishing. Russia it's not clear the state of their arsenal but with so many, have to assume a significant number are operational or can be made operational. Countries like Israel don't say how many nukes they have. Proliferation has made more wild cards like nuclear war could break out between India and Pakistan or China and India. North Korea continues to build and develop its arsenal. The tactical nukes proliferation is a serious risk as video says, they're more likely to be used in a regional war but their use could quickly set off a global nuclear war.

Does anyone remember what video Joe is dancing around in his house to a DMX song? He plays it in reverse right after as well.

@joescott

10 ай бұрын

Even I don't know what video that was...

@PinoTEAMphx

10 ай бұрын

@@joescottyou’re not helping 😂

@PinoTEAMphx

10 ай бұрын

@@joescottit was a very short bit… I believe you called it “acting completely normal” when the cameras off. Then you reversed it for some reason. Ugh. It’s a brainworm.

@UpperDarbyDetailing

10 ай бұрын

​@@PinoTEAMphxI recall it something like that, he was pointing out that how he acts on camera isn't how he normally acts because no one acts the same way when you point a camera at them.

@arnabbhattacharjee3618

10 ай бұрын

Think it was something regarding fake news

The actual explosions, as bad as they would be, would probably be the least of our problems. After that, there'd be hunger, disease, lawlessness which would lead to looting, crime, and so on. In any movie or TV show set in a post-apocalyptic setting, the gravest danger is always other people; worse than killer zombies or whatever. I believe that's pretty accurate as to what would happen.

Great video/ topic! Also I checked out Real Time History, and it did not disappoint! Thank you for introducing me to another interesting and educational show! 🤘

Fallout is a real concern. I lived in SW Washington when Mt Saint Helens blew in the 80’s. For half a year, Weather patterns distributed Ash from that eruption around the globe.

@BeckRed

10 ай бұрын

We got a thin coating of ash on our cars in eastern OK. I was a little kid, but I remember running my finger over the hood and it being covered in gray ash. Crazy.

@JohnnyWednesday

10 ай бұрын

Exactly - falling on the soil, the crops, the fresh water - seeping into the ground, our bodies, our bones. Nobody born afterwards - for two hundred years - would reach the age of 30.

@TheMechanator

10 ай бұрын

The ash from Mt St Helens(I witnessed it from SW washington) landed in Moscow, Russia three days later. Scientists estimated that the largest landslide on North America was equivalent to one 10 Megaton bomb. 5.5 billion cubic yards of material laterally blast. It looked like a dirty, gray, mushroom cloud that created it's own weather and lightning strikes from friction. Different volcanoes emit different kinds of ash and gases. The sulphates from Tambora were worse for the atmosphere for climate change than say the plain ash and CO2 from Krakatoa. Something to consider for models and simulations.

@tw8464

6 ай бұрын

Exactly

Kyle Hill recently posted a video about Hiroshima and why it’s habitable so soon after the explosion. Really informative video!

@Human_01

9 ай бұрын

Noice

What scares me more are how many are "lost" or not accounted for.

Thank you. Good video about a very difficult topic. You're a class act Joe 😘

Amazing video as always... Thanks Joe. Your humor and humanity is like a breeze of fresh air...

This was kind of comforting...in a way.

Just an EXCELLENT video! I did that "what % of the earth would be destroyed" calculation when I was a kid, and learned pretty quick not to tell people about it 'cause they don't want to think about it. I'm different; thinking about what might go wrong doesn't bother me, because then I can think about how to keep it from happening. Maybe with YOU saying it, it will be less likely.

@asmrtpop2676

10 ай бұрын

eh it’s uncomfortable for people to think about given how shitty our leaders are ❤

The reason we have so many is not so that we can glass half a continent if needed... It's so they can be spread out enough to guarantee mutually assured destruction. Especially during the cold war, if either side had ever gotten a leg up on the other and been able to sabotage or track or mitigate enough of the opponents response, they may have chosen to take the risk to wipe the other out before they had a chance to do the same. So it was/is very important to make sure it was impossible to hit them all. It's also worth noting that many bombs are part of multiple warhead delivery systems for redundancy (so thay even if some are shot down the target is destroyed), which inflates the number a bit.

I love that shirt! It reminded me of a line in The Day After spoken by John Lithgow where he referenced a quote from Einstein: "I'm not sure how they will fight World War III, but I know how they'll fight World War IV....with sticks and stones."

Like you say, the really killer is the cooling effects of throwing all that smoke and dust into the air. As I understood, it's specifically because cities burn black smoke, which tends to stick in the air for longer.

@SorbusAucubaria

10 ай бұрын

Yep. If it is two or three years of bad crops, humanity might survive, but if its a decade ...

@ChucksSEADnDEAD

9 ай бұрын

That was Cold War era reasoning by scientists to dissuade nuclear escalation. Japanese cities in the 1940s were built with a lot of wood. Modern fire codes and building materials ensure that such firestorms wouldn't happen. Anyway, the Iraqi army set something like 800 oil fires when retreating from Kuwait, creating huge pillars of black smoke. Cooling effects were negligible.

@tw8464

6 ай бұрын

If nuclear war between US Russia or US China there will be a nuclear winter. No one knows how bad it will be or how long it will last. Additionally numerous large areas will be contaminated. Everything as we know it will fall apart. There will be no one farming at any scale, no tractors, no gasoline, etc. even if could find some area without contaminated soil, there's still not enough sunlight. Most if not all of the farm animals would die because no way to feed them.

The book “Swan Song” is a fascinating, fictional read based on the aftermath of a global nuclear war. It’s scary.

Meteor impacts and volcano eruptions are very different from nuclear bomb explosions. One of the most worrying effects is the nuclear winter. It could be much much worse than what is expected from a meteor impact or a volcano eruption by just comparing the explosive power directly.

@tw8464

6 ай бұрын

Exactly

@tw8464

6 ай бұрын

There will be a nuclear winter and no one knows exactly how bad it will be or how long it will last

Every nuke going off would scare me a lot less than one cobalt salted Tsar Bomba.

I'd assume that some people living in the very south of the southern hemisphere will be just fine

@TheStephaneAdam

10 ай бұрын

Well, the shifting climate would make things awful for a while. But yeah, if a nuclear war was to happen I'd much, MUCH rather live in Chile or Mozambique than Canada.

@JohnnyWednesday

10 ай бұрын

Until they starve to death.

@rimbusjift7575

10 ай бұрын

Antarctica?

Nicely done. Thanks!

Back in the 80s - there was a movie called "The Day After" and another called "War Games" and a song called "Two Tribes" by 'Frankie goes to Hollywood' (among many more movies and songs). If you lived in that period - you got an idea of the fear we had of global nuclear annihilation.

@mcpr5971

8 ай бұрын

Don't forget 99 red balloons. I love the mockery in the lyrics. Oh and safety dance.

If every nuclear weapon was deployed at the same time it might change the weather for a few years.

@JohnnyWednesday

10 ай бұрын

And what is effected by the weather? what do humans eat? how often do they have to eat?

@darksu6947

10 ай бұрын

​@@JohnnyWednesdayYour mother's mood is affected by the weather. Humans eat cookies. I eat cookies as often as I can talk your mother into making them for me. How'd I do on the test? 😂

@JohnnyWednesday

10 ай бұрын

@@darksu6947 - You failed the test because it's for adults - not children.

@darksu6947

10 ай бұрын

@@JohnnyWednesday That's too bad Mr. Wednesday. If you had a sense of humor I'd come over on Friday or Saturday and have a sundae with you.

@AORD72

10 ай бұрын

Doubt it. As the video said, nuclear war will destroy about 1% of land in the USA. There will be hardly any weather effects. The majority of the world will be fine. The whole of Alaska will be fine. There have been 1000 nuclear tests, how much damage has that done? Nearly nothing. Nuclear war damage has greatly been over exaggerated. Russia only has 1600 ready to launch, the USA can probably intercept some and some will fail to launch as Russia is pretty incompetent with maintaining equipment.

The "Tsar Bomba" detonated with an explosive yield of 58 megatons.

Fun fact about the Tsar Bomba: it was supposed to be 100, but was damped because a) it would have spread unimaginable fallout all over northern Russia and b) it would have obliterated the plane that dropped it before it could escape the blast radius. Even at 50 it almost knocked the Tu-95 out of the sky. In any event, it was never a practical weapon because the plane was MacGyvered to hell and back just to carry the thing.

People casually use the phrase "end life on earth" without any thought to how much energy it really takes to boil off the oceans and glass the bottom of the sea. "Life finds a way".

@stardolphin2

10 ай бұрын

Or that we can kill everyone 'X' number of times over (it's rarely the same number), without first explaining what it means to kill everyone *once.*

It's uncommon for people to understand the scale of the planet. It's pretty friggin huge. The thing that really gets me is those animations that show all of the space junk in orbit, where it looks like a swarm of bees or something. Realistically, if the earth was a football stadium, the space junk would be more like sand blowing around in the parking lot. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff out there, but they are such tiny specks when compared to the planet itself. If you could fly around up there, it would be very difficult to find anything. Cool video joe!

@ronald3836

10 ай бұрын

These tiny specks at those speeds can hurt, though ;-)

@squirlmy

10 ай бұрын

There's another example, we often have globes with mountains, or really mountain chains raised above the surface as a topographical feature. In reality the earth is smoother than a billiard ball. If mountains were to scale, they'd be microscopic and basically undetectable. Every globe I remember from scholl always had these totally out-of-proportion features.

@jamescarter3196

10 ай бұрын

Sounds like you don't understand the scale of "those animations that show all of the space junk". Hint: not 1:1.

@ronald3836

10 ай бұрын

@@jamescarter3196 his point is that it is not even 1:N for any N. The planet is too small/the specks too big. I have to agree that these animations give exactly zero insight in the likelihood of collision.

All the calculations were done with the bombs exploding while airborne. For maximum destruction and a way bigger and longer fallout period, the bombs should be exploding at ground level so more radioactive dust is created which got a much longer halftime rate

@Redsauce101

10 ай бұрын

The dust alone would destroy crop yields for 3-5 years, causing mass famine.

@jakeaurod

10 ай бұрын

Depends on what you mean by "maximum destruction". Surface bursts maximize destructive force, but do so by limiting the affected area. Airbirsts maximize destructive radius, but do so by limiting the effective force. Of course, even that is an over simplification. The altitude will be determined by the target planners. Hardened targets like bunkers will receive a surface burst so that there is enough blast to break the reinforced concrete and or excavate a crater to destroy naturally hard targets like rail yards, usually with 20-100+ psi overpressure. Soft targets, like cities will receive airbursts because most commercial and residential buildings are rendered unusable at only 2-5 psi overpressure.

@tw8464

6 ай бұрын

​@@Redsauce101exactly

@tw8464

6 ай бұрын

​@@jakeaurodexactly the nukes used for bunker busting or destroying command centers will definitely release a large amount of radiation fallout. Even if only a few of these, the radiation can spread over wide and large areas and regions. It could be the crop growing region of the country. The soil would be poisoned with the radiation.

@tw8464

6 ай бұрын

Exactly there may be some nukes programmed to explode at different altitudes particularly those targeting capital cities or other military or industrial areas.

I love your shirt! Where did you get that?

Nuclear weapons are so deadly that as you said in late Cold War most scenarios were ruling out nuclear weapons. Instead both sides expected a non-nuclear war. Because maybe not the world would have turned toast, but both opposing factions surely would have.

The number of American nuclear weapons is highly classified, but I stayed at a Trump hotel last night. I looked it up when I went down the hall to get ice, all the keycards can open the door, kinda like the weight room.

I saw an interesting post on an Operations Room video about the Japanese Nuking. If they hadnt been used then and there, would nuclear weapons have been used at a later "first time" and would the consequences of that been worse? I had never considered that. Perhaps we (the global "we"...not the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) are lucky they were used when and where they were and not later. There was no possibility for nuclear retaliation or escalation and by not only being tested in the desert but employed on two cities, it illustrated in stark detail the horrors of nuclear weapons. It made an impact then and there. I think it is pretty awesome that humanity has had nuclear weapons since 1945 and only used them one time (twice, but Im considering this one "incident"). We've somehow discovered the most powerful weapons our species has ever had, and somehow restrained ourselves from using them after those first two employments. That is actually impressive when you think about it.

@drbigmdftnu

10 ай бұрын

Interesting point. Hard to believe that they would never have been used. Human nature....somebody would have flexed. Maybe not, if MAD was always the thought. But somewhere along the way.... And now we're dangerously close to somebody using them again.

Kurzsegagt has a great video on this and they go even further and account for all radioactive materials made into one bomb and exploded. Great video with great animation

Hello from Irving, Texas. I enjoy your channel. Keep up the good work!

This video left me strangly optimistic. There's an old video on KZread that had a panel right after the TV movie The Day After. Both the movie and the panel are really great watches. One of the panel members was Carl Sagan and the numbers at the time were like 1-2 billion in the initial strikes along with like (i dont remember these numbers) 4-5 billion in the after effects. There were more warheads at the time and our knowledge of nuclear winter has changed. That is is extinction level event there given the population at the time (1983). But with a Russia-US strike your given figure at 360 million and the hypothetical lose in the after effects of 3.6, lets call it 4 billion. That is way less of a chance for an extinction level event (at least for humans). That's progress people!

@danilov114

10 ай бұрын

And then someone just makes a dirty stockpile, just so he knows it was Him who ended everyone...

@ronald3836

10 ай бұрын

Carl Sagan was in the TTAPS team that came up with the nuclear winter scenario, and nowdays it is accepted that they accounced their "results" with the sole aim of promoting international arms control. Sagan was a great guy, but unwarranted "scientific" end-of-the-world warnings to promote political aims is EXTREMELY DAMAGING to trust in science.

I'm ready to finally get Nebula solely to check whether Joe used clips from Futurama where demented cats use an invention of Amy's to restart the rotation of their home planet and Earth ends up rotating in the opposite direction by the end of the episode and then THEY NEVER MENTION IT AGAIN. 😂

"I guess it worked," imo, is arguably MUCH more profound. The utter indifference/disappointment is somehow more palpable in those four words.

I'm reminded of a cartoon I saw in Playboy. A scientist is showing a new bomb to a general. Caption went something like: "State of the art general, wherever you drop it, it destroys absolutely everything on the planet."

From what I've heard, if every missile went off in its silo/sub/armory, or by hitting its designated targets, it'd mostly only ruin the northern hemisphere. The south would be under some bad weather, and fallout would be something of a problem, but they'd have more sunlight for quite a while and would recover more quickly. It's likely we'd see a new hegemony run by Australia, south american and sub-Saharan African nations. That'd be an interesting alternate future story!

@R0ndras

10 ай бұрын

And how does the south plan to substain itself? The thing about the north falling is that suddenly you lose tons of resources needed to survive. Doesnt mean the south doesnt have them, they do, but we live in a world were we trade resources with each other(food,energy,etc)

@nsrvtqc

10 ай бұрын

Russia hates Australia you think they’re not getting hit?

@wolfiemuse

10 ай бұрын

@@R0ndrasthe southern hemisphere has enough land and a fair bit less people than the northern hemisphere, so I think they’d manage just fine. I’d imagine South America would become its own dictatorship, Indonesia area would be its own dictatorship, Middle East would probably have warring groups, and Australia would possibly return to a monarchy or install their own government

@TheStephaneAdam

10 ай бұрын

@@R0ndras What would REALLY suck is losing Russian fertilizer. Other than that, the South would be *relatively* fine. A lot of those resources are bought by the North from poorer, extraction-based economies to begin with. Including oil. And per-capita consumtion of energy and consumer goods is really low.

@JohnnyWednesday

10 ай бұрын

"Fallout would be something of a problem" - way, way, way, way more than you clearly think.

The other thing to remember about the current nukes is that many of them are MIRV which is a bunch of warheads per missile. So that estimate of the number could be off by 3-12 times if we are counting missiles reather than warheads

@MattH-wg7ou

10 ай бұрын

And many of the RVs are decoys, so there is no practical way to stop ALL of them or know which ones to target.

@JohnnyWednesday

10 ай бұрын

They count warheads because amazingly? - people that estimate the number of nuclear weapons for a living - are aware of MIRVs.

@travishunter8573

10 ай бұрын

@@JohnnyWednesday yes but Joe makes no mention of them so it's not clarified

@jakeaurod

10 ай бұрын

Treaties count both missiles and warheads. that's why the 450 operational LGM-30 Minuteman ICBMs are now only allowed to carry 1 warhead instead of 3, and the D5 Trident SLBM carries less than its maximum. Whether countries abide by treaties, and whether those treaties will be in force at the time is a different question.

@tw8464

6 ай бұрын

There are almost certainly more nukes than known publicly.

3:52 "Things can get really HOT really quick." FIFY

So, the real driver behind the seemingly ludicrous overkill in nuclear arsenals during the cold war was of course MAD, and while you might think an arsenal of say, 500 warheads would be plenty for this, the great fear of either side was an enemy first strike wiping out or sufficiently diminishing one side's ability to retaliate to the point where a nuclear exchange can appear winnable by the attacking side. If your arsenal of 500 warheads is reduced by 95 percent by the enemy's first strike, you have only 25 left, in which case your enemy is in for a really bad day, but one where they can survive as a nation. But, if you're arsenal is scaled up to say, 15000 warheads, that remaining 5 percent is now 750 warheads, enough to utterly obliterate your attacker with your counter strike. Cold War deterrence policy is all kinds of fucked up.

First comment. Great breakdown and explanation... unfortunately timely too. Einstein's supposedly said: "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones"

@joescott

10 ай бұрын

Yeah, that's one of my favorites.

@NoisyRooster

10 ай бұрын

I'm fairly confident that by the time another global conflict escalates following a hypothetical World War 3 we will have figured out new ways to throw boulders across oceans and drop telephone pole sized rods from really high up in the air. Sticks and stones, indeed. Never underestimate humanity's ability to destroy itself.

@kunjukunjunil1481

10 ай бұрын

@@NoisyRooster This 'rods from the Sky' concept is kind of misleading .You needs as much as energy to launch them into space. what's the point of rods ?

@WinstonSmithGPT

10 ай бұрын

@@joescottI figured that out from the T shirt.

@ToTheGAMES

10 ай бұрын

@@kunjukunjunil1481 Virtually undetectable, and when they are dropped, there is no way of stopping them. Its called Rods from God. Tungston rods.

My wife and I are going to see the movie in full IMAX later tonight I will become death….. destroyer of popcorn 🍿 bowls!

Joe, there's a story (I cannot attest to the veracity of the story, but I saw a few documentaries use it, so... eh?) that during the START 1 negotiations, the Russian and US representatives were talking about what constituted a nuclear bomb when one of the Russians made a startling announcement. They stated they didn't see limited yield nuclear devices (a.k.a Tactical Nukes) as being "a nuclear weapon" and would have used one during a war should the need arise. This caused the US side to go pale with the realization that we narrowly dodged a nuclear war. The west's standpoint was any weapon using fusion and/or fission as the destructive payload was a nuke, and had Russia used a tactical nuke in a war, it would have triggered a nuclear response from the west. Another story surrounding the history of nuclear weapons and Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) is that it was the TV miniseries The Day After (EDIT: And not Threads as I originally posted) that brought Ronald Regan (and by extension the US) to the negotiations table with the Soviet Union for the START treaties. Up to this point, the US Government's policy was rather bullish on betting that MAD was the correct strategy to make sure the USSR never used their nuclear weapons. After watching the show, Regan asked his military advisors how accurate the show was. To his shock, they told him the show was very accurate, but their own projections showed a full out nuclear war to be worse. That scared Regan enough to declare that they cannot ever let a nuclear war happen.

@WinstonSmithGPT

10 ай бұрын

I don’t think you understand MAD.

@jackielinde7568

10 ай бұрын

@@WinstonSmithGPT Mutually Assured Destruction: The concept of stockpiling weapons of mass destruction as a deterrent for other nations not to use their stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, while those other nations are doing the same as we are? I think I got a pretty good handle on the concept, but feel free to correct me on the topic. The problem was it was used as an excuse for the proliferation of nuclear arms with no other benefits. But, it's like taking hostages. It only works if you can convince the others you mean business and are not bluffing. Sooner or later, someone's going to come by and call your bluff. We've nearly had it with the Cuban Missile Crisis, and (to a lesser extent) with threats from Moscow about our involvement in their little war with Ukraine. And if you think that some nut job isn't going to come along and test what happens when they launch a nuke, might I introduce you to the DPRK (who do have nukes and are developing ICBMs) and the Shahs of Iran (who have no problem starting a holy war by nuking Israel.)

At 5:58 the house that blows apart was on a movie set. You'll notice a car at the back corner but isn't there in the beginning.

I'm surprised you didn't mention how the man who created gun powder was searching for elixir of life

quick correction: the nuke was not invented to end ww2. it was invented to invent it before anybody else. japan was already negotiating terms of surrender prior to the bombs being dropped. the reason they were dropped was as a play against the soviet union, hence the rush to try and drop little boy and fat man prior to the conclusion of the potsdam conference

@JohnnyWednesday

10 ай бұрын

Exactly - killing all of those innocent Japanese civilians was a show of force - not a requirement.

@MattH-wg7ou

10 ай бұрын

I hear this a lot and I think it is a bit of an oversimplification. Why didnt the surrender after the first one?

@SM-cq1mm

10 ай бұрын

They dropped it because they wanted Japan to surrender to the US, not to the Soviet Union. Otherwise Japan could have been under Stalin's rule instead.

@mouthpiece806

10 ай бұрын

@@MattH-wg7ou they were planning to surrender even before the first one; the difficulty was the terms of the surrender. the americans and soviets wanted unconditional surrender (with the soviets wanting land concessions regarding areas captured by the japanese during the russo-japanese war); the japanese wanted to agree certain conditions prior to their surrender, one of which was immunity for the emperor. the americans even knew that the japanese were ready to surrender-they even got the soviets to agree to invade so as to force unconditional surrender (this was prior to the american leadership knowing that the bombs were ready and worked).

@ronald3836

10 ай бұрын

They were also planning to fight until the last woman, hoping to do enough damage to the allied forces that they would give up first. That the Japanese would have surrendered quickly is just speculation, even today, let alone with the knowledge the US government had then.

People often talk about that Oppenheimer's quote, but I personally like Kenneth Bainbridge's remark to Oppenheimer right after the Trinity test: "Now we are all sons of bitches."

Thank you for yet another video that scratches an itch I didn't know I had!

The nice thing about MAD is that the great powers were free to wage proxy wars over spheres of influence which kept the taxpayers of these weapons safe, except for a couple of skyscrapers but that was a minor inconvenience.

@autohmae

10 ай бұрын

That's the spirit

@JohnnyWednesday

10 ай бұрын

Don't you mean 3 skyscrapers, a pentagon and 500,000 Iraqi children?

@tma2001

10 ай бұрын

@@JohnnyWednesday nah the Pentagon was but a scratch and the Iraqi children weren't Western taxpayers. of course the original post was dripping in sarcasm which I hoped was obvious!

I’m scared about Nukes, seeing Oppenheimer is like a warning to Humanity hubris and could open Pandoras Box.

@darkwinter6028

10 ай бұрын

And genies have a way of getting out of bottles, and you can’t put them back…

@briansowell6582

10 ай бұрын

We have made it about 80 years. One lifetime. What will the next generation do with what is left to them? Use it because the value of someone else’s life is zero? We’re always going to be only one generation away from finding out.

Even if you took the largest amount in history, and assumed they're all the big boys, piled them all up in the same location and rig them to detonate at the same time, it wouldn't even scratch the amount of energy released from the alleged asteroid impact that may have killed the dinosaurs. Life survived that insane impact, so it's probably safe to assume life would survive all the nukes, even if they were spread out across the planet. Would we survive the ecological impact on our bio-sphere..... that's an entirely different question.

It wasn’t immediately after the bomb went off, but there is video of him in an interview saying the “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds” line after the fact.

_Would_ radioactive fallout significantly increase cancer rates? I think that's another claim that gets thrown around a bit. From what I understand, cancer rates amongst people who were around Chernobyl or Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not actually that much higher than normal. Certainly not more elevated than, say, if you are a smoker. And only a small proportion of the surviving population would be those who lived close enough to the bombs to be effected, but far enough not to be killed from the explosion or radiation sickness.

@TheDarkSide11891

10 ай бұрын

I think it necessarily depends on long term exposure. Those in Chernobyl were evacuated relatively quickly from the hot zone, and like you said those in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were either killed by the immediate effects of the bomb or were too far to be affected by fallout. In the event that a massive amount of fallout was deposited globally, I think the statistics might be different, as we know from testing during the Cold War that long term exposure to large amounts of nuclear fallout (e.g Castle Bravo) definitely causes an increase in cancer rates. That being said, I’m not sure if on a worldwide scale, would the amount of long half-life fallout from a large quantity of nuclear weapons being detonated be enough to have a noticeable global impact. Hopefully something that we never have to find out.

@DoubsGaming

10 ай бұрын

Wasn't there also evidence that it could help? Radiation stimulating cell growth or something.

@colinmacdonald5732

10 ай бұрын

I think if we'd just seen 100million people succumb to blast and burn injuries and our infrastructure wiped out, a slightly elevated cancer risk would be the least of our worries.

@johnniequinn3215

10 ай бұрын

As i understand it, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were air bursts and thus didn't have much fallout. Chernobyl was not a bomb per se, but there is still radioactive material in the exclusion zone that may prove to be problematic to squatters and visitors who do not take appropriate precautions against exposure there.

@colinmacdonald5732

10 ай бұрын

@@johnniequinn3215 unless you've got some weird thing for eating topsoil you should be alright. You might get the equivalent of a catscan if you gorged yourself on the local berries for a year.

The "I am become death" quote was from a later interview, not from first test. I have heard/read the same misplaced timing of the quote as well. Guess the profoundness of saying that as a moment of realization upon the first test of a Atom Bomb is just too profound to not think that's what happened, especially with hindsight.

Fun fact: Little Boy contained 64Kg of 80% enriched Uranium. Of that 64Kg, around 1Kg actually underwent fission, of which just 1gram was actually converted into energy. All that from the equivalent of less than 1/2 a teaspoon of sugar.

Finally subbed to nebula! And O M G, I died laughing at your intro to your last video! KZread is gonna be rolling laughing next week! Can’t wait to read the comments. Thanks Joe! You the real MVCC(most valuable content creater. shut up, I’m allowed to make stuff up! It’s my god given American birthright 😂)

One estimate is that the fires following a full exchange between only India and Pakistan, would cause worldwide fall in temperature by a few degrees, causing global crop failures and resultant famine. Scary to think.

@thedausthed

10 ай бұрын

Also a load of BS.

@mattegan3439

10 ай бұрын

@@thedausthed I hope we never have to find out either way!

The reason to have many times more weapons than needed to destroy your enemy is to deal with the fact the enemy will probably be able to shoot down a large fraction of incoming bombs. You need enough remaining to finish the job.

We're working on it. Destroying ourselves. From multiple directions now.

We created the bomb to win the war decisively--first against Germany (but that ended sooner), then against Japan. The kicker is that if we hadn't done it, *somebody else* would have. (Germany was feared to be well on their way.) When technology crosses certain thresholds, new inventions happen more or less simultaneously, in various places. The airplane is an example, with the Wright Brothers' real contribution being the best 3-axis control. So it's not a question of whether nukes should have been invented, but rather, given that their invention would be *unavoidable,* how do we keep from destroying ourselves? I'm very happy it was our invention instead of Stalin's Russia, for one thing. They had their share of expatriated German scientists.

What are the chances that some of us can all move to the southern hemisphere, split the earth in half and let the northern hemisphere wackos nuke themselves to oblivion?

@ComaDave

10 ай бұрын

You just keep right on drivin' mister......🇦🇺

@paulrockatansky77

10 ай бұрын

The radioactive could would reach you eventually. Not to mention the global nuclear winter and famine.

How is it that even Joe Scott doesn't know about the disturbance to the ozone layer nukes cause (which is by far the worst effect)

@tw8464

6 ай бұрын

There is definitely much more damage a nuclear war would do than we want to believe. The damage to the ozone layer is just one of the many effects of nuclear war that would end us. As you say one of the most horrible among horribles

To be fair, the duration of nuclear winter isn't the only thing about it that's questioned, though the mere idea of it probably absolutely kept us from starting a nuclear war in the 80s.