How to Survive* a Nuclear Blast

today's video is sponsored by 80 000 hours at the height of the cold war with Russia the United States was concerned enough with the possibility of an all-out nuclear exchange that this fear trickled all the way down to what children should do in their classrooms to avoid Annihilation classic videos and images show how millions of students across the country were taught that the best thing you could do in the event of a nearby nuclear blast was to in retrospect of course these drills seem comically ineffective or at least not properly scaled with the severity of the situation but given that we're still on the edge of nuclear war 70 years after these drills it begs the question what should you do in the event of a nuclear blast Duck and Cover run and hide is there anything you can do well actually yeah blast doors engage now entering the facility first some clarifications to survive a nuclear blast you first have to get lucky if you are anywhere inside of the kilometers wide Fireball that modern nuclear weapons produce that's it your skeleton is going to literally turn into a gas so first of all you have to get lucky lucky with a weapon's yield height of burst surrounding geography all elements you can't control and we have to be specific about what aspect of a nuclear blast you can protect yourself from they're all different if you're still around to make a difference one aspect of a nuclear blast can you save yourself from perhaps surprisingly only a small amount of a nuke's energy is converted into ionizing radiation which dissipates relatively quickly and can be avoided by leaving the area the next largest portion of energy is thermal light and heat it can cause instantaneous third degree burns and ignite basically anything but it's also just light so as long as you're not in line of sight of it at the time you can avoid it the majority of a nuclear bomb's energy is converted into a blast wave and this is the most dangerous aspect if you survive the fireball a colossal wave of air that creates an overpressure or pressure over atmospheric that and even just a few PSI can lift and toss Vehicles level forests and collapse buildings and human lungs this is where scientific studies and today's topic comes in if you're facing down an incoming blast wave and you're in a classroom your home or another building you don't want to be outside where should you place yourself for the best shot at survival turns out to not be as complicated as you may think the study that we'll be going through today is a recent one entitled nuclear explosion impact on humans indoors and it aimed to use simulations to determine where the most dangerous place in a simulated building might be if a nuclear blast wave were to enter it so they used a simulated room a simulated 750 kiloton Bomb Blast wave from a nuclear weapon and then considered the blast wave entering this window right here to determine where the safest place might be now before I just tell you what the results of the study were why don't you take a guess in the event of a nuclear blast where should you be in this building think about it carefully and think about it fluid dynamically it's not as complicated as you may think blast wave incoming dang those insectoid Raiders always trying to get in here and get my goodies just one sec think about it I'll be right back I gotta protect my goodies I'm award-winning science educator and six feet tall on Tinder Kyle Hill if you want to make the most of your time on this planet you will only have about 80 000 hours to do so how do you use those hours most effectively well that's where today's sponsor 80 000 hours comes in eighty thousand hours is a non-profit that for the last 10 years has been Gathering actual scientific evidence on how to find yourself a high impact and fulfilling career their data and resources available to anyone for free gives evidence-based answers to questions like will my career make a positive difference in the world and how can I start tackling the world's most pressing problems many of which we talk about on this channel like nuclear weapons artificial intelligence and climate change they have a website with over a decade of research on high impact careers job boards newsletters podcasts with experts all for free all with the goal of making your time in the Sun the most impactful and effective that it can be I personally and ethically aligned with this Mission and maybe you will too to start planning a high impact career that will help the world start addressing its most pressing problems go to this link or into the description below if we target their hive it should cut off their reinforcements okay then are sending a company of uh laser bees that should clean them out oh so sorry I was just dealing with some uh neighbors so you've had exactly 60 seconds to think about this question where should you be during a nuclear blast if you're in a building like this well right here here is the simulated room it's symmetrical so the author is only considered half of it for Simplicity they then simulated a blast wave from a 750 kiloton bomb detonated three kilometers above ground and got these these are maps of the simulated maximum air velocities inside the building for the first 10 seconds after the blast wave enters at overpressures of three and five PSI in both blue indicates slower air velocities and red higher velocities you can see that some rooms have almost no air velocity While others have velocities over 100 meters per second which given a reasonable human Mass could pick you up and throw you over 60 feet through the air you can't travel that far in a small room of course so instead you'd hit a wall with tremendous force and might die the next figures show a map of Air Forces normalized to G's or multiples of the gravitational force you experience on this planet again you can see areas with little to no forces and areas with forces over 140 G's which could easily be fatal so what can we actually learn from results like this well first blast waves are even more dangerous indoors as when they enter a small opening like a window or door and then expand out into a hallway or Corridor air velocity actually increases second it looks like the blast waves follow the path of least resistance into openings like Windows or doors and through corridors and not into walls and into Corners where pressure builds up fluid dynamically it makes perfect sense and so the safest place to be if a blast wave enters your building is in the corners of rooms closest to the opening where the blast wave is actually coming in it may sound counterintuitive but again fluid dynamically it makes perfect sense and so everything taken together these results can give us practical advice for the end of the world warning Raiders are attempting to breach the glasses okay Arya forget the laser bees send in gorilla railgun company seven they they should deal with [Music] sorry I was just um trying to handle some kids on my lawn need to be disintegrated if a nuclear explosion is imminent and you're lucky enough to not be at Ground Zero you will have a precious few seconds to do something in between the thermal pulse which you'll probably see and or feel and the blast wave which you can protect yourself from so get inside the nearest building and heed the latest facility TM warning sign in the event of a nuclear blast get inside the closest corner to the closest opening science says this tactic might just save your life save you from tremendous air velocity and G's that will literally collapse your lungs trust me it'll be better than duck and covering especially when there's desks and children flying at your face at 100 miles per hour so don't tell me I never gave you any practical advice until next time and don't worry about the gorilla company 7 with railguns they only shoot things with way more arms than you have okay until next time unless you are a spider watching this and in that case watch your thorax buddy thank you so much to the very nerdy staff at the facility for the direct and substantial support in the creation of this here video if you want to drape on a silky watt lab coat if you want to see videos early hear my weird accents while I'm ad-libbing things get private members only live streams with me once a month that's patreon.com Kyle Hill and if your support is just enough get your name on Arya here and each and every episode and there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of you how am I possibly going to pass the time one other caveat about surviving a nuclear blast that I must say is that even if you're not vaporizing the fireball uh and you survive a blast wave you're not necessarily in a good spot anymore people like the bulletin of the atomic scientists estimate with studies and economics that even just a single nuclear bomb going off in an extremely economically important place like New York could kind of lead to a domino effect that more or less uh collapses civilization so even if you survive the Fireball and the blast wave that doesn't mean you're gonna survive what's coming which is why nuclear weapons are yeah thanks for watching Doc

Channel: Kyle Hill

Views: 861,841

Keywords: because science, engineering, kyle hill, learning, math, physics, science, stem, the facility, chernobyl, nuclear, nuclear war, atomic bomb, nuclear attack, how to survive, nuclear bomb

Id: e-Ow7ln9zRM

Length: 10min 51sec (651 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 17 2023