A Video Rendering of Every Nuclear Bomb Explosion Until 1998

[JuniperWoolf]

You should watch:

http://dvice.com/archives/2010/07/jaw-dropping-vi.php

Freaky, eh? How are we not all dead or mutants?

P.S. This adds to my "America needs to chill" theory. They made more than half of the total number of explosions. Also, I find it funny that during the Cold War America and the U.S.S.R. only managed to blow the crap out of their own countries. And what's with France? Why have they tested so many nuclear weapons? Who would care enough to attack France?

[Lulim]

(...) And what's with France? Why have they tested so many nuclear weapons? Who would care enough to attack France?
What's the probability of an attack got to do with bomb testing? It's all about commerce and industry.

I'm afraid this topic might be touching current politics too closely though.

[Lokasenna]

I note with interest that UNESCO has just declared Bikini Atoll as a World Heritage Site, and thus a place of great cultural/historical importance.

I'm no nuclear physicist, but my understanding is that nuclear bombs actually release a relatively small amount of radiation - still lethal of course, but it doesn't spread too far, and doesn't last too long. Don't make the mistake of thing of every one of those flashes as comparable to something like Chernobyl.

And finally... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRLON3ddZIw)

[OrphanPip]

There are some military analyst who think that a large nuclear arsenal justifies substantially downsizing your military forces. If you think logically about it, until some way to effectively stop nuclear attacks is developed, the only actual danger a modern military needs to defend against is paramilitary groups, like terrorist, and the citizenry.

Russia still has a nuclear arsenal significantly larger than the US. The Chinese have an interesting strategy called minimum deterrence, they only have an arsenal of about 500 nuclear warheads. The idea behind that is that you have just enough bombs needed to take out all your potential enemies. The other strategy, employed by Russia and the US, is the maximum deterrence, which is you make as many bombs as you can so that your enemies would have to be crazy to attack you.

On another note, the reason France has so many bomb tests is probably because they had to develop the bomb on their own after the war, the US didn't share the technology with France. The Manhattan Project was a joint military project between Canada, the US, and the UK, so those were the only three countries with access to the technology at first. Canada used the technology primarily for development of reactors instead of weapons, the UK took what they learned from the Manhattan Project and developed their own weapons.

A stranger fact is that there are an estimated 20-40 warheads missing in the ocean from airplane and submarine crashes.

[dafydd manton]

Mutually Assured Destruction, they called it. MAD, for short.

[TheFifthElement]

Who would care enough to attack France?
:lol: yes, it's completely inexplicable why the French would have been nervous after WWII!

[JuniperWoolf]

I'm afraid this topic might be touching current politics too closely though.


1998 isn't "current."

[Niamh]

Discussion of politics is not allowed on this Forum.

This thread now will be closed as it is skirting too close to current political issues