An Earthquake that Destroys Earth? - Nuclear Engineer Reacts to XKCD What If

Original Video ‪@xkcd_whatif‬ • What would a magnitude...

[@tfolsenuclear]

Thanks so much for watching! If you want to see what it would be like to avoid earthquakes by taking a nuclear submarine into space, please check out: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nWibmmd6nq55bKMsi=u4ZUx2ig3JkfK3Gh

[@rog2224]

Ever looked at the Windscale fire? 1957. Minor British gov cover up, some pissed off Belgians, and an the declassification of a heavy neutron source.

[@bsadewitz]

I was wondering if you'd do a video about aircraft nuclear propulsion. There are other videos about it, but they don't really get into any detail. For instance, how toxic would the overflight of a direct cycle engine be for life on the ground? And really this is the question that I can't find an answer to: How does the size/weight of the reactor and supporting infrastructure/shielding of a (hypothetical) modern implementation scale relative to power output? Could such a beast be made so gargantuan that the integrity of the reactor containment be maintained during a crash, or would it not be economical (assume zero cost of building the thing in the first place lol) or even able to get off the ground?

[@CosmicAggressor]

"Some times it is nice not to destroy the world for a change" is still a pretty cool ending.

[@element54_]

This question was also the final chapter to Monroe's book, so it was a cool ending for the book too, given that the prior chapters end with destroying the world in one way or another.

[@Myzelfa]

Converting atomic bomb yields to earthquake readings, now you're getting the XKCD spirit.

[@fipse]

I think the video "You're Technically HOTTER Than The Sun" might be interesting. It does play with some Plutonium and Neptunium silliness.

[@unvergebeneid]

6:28 love how he muses about the precise timing required to explode a Jupiter's worth of hydrogen bombs, completely disregarding that this kind of mass concentration would just collapse all those bombs into a very dense, very radioactive new planet.

[@MrCharles7994]

Actually, given that making a Jupiter's worth of hydrogen bombs in close proximity would almost instantly crush them into a super compact state and initiate a fusion-fission chain reaction you'd actually make a very dense fission star right before it underwent a Nova. I'm not sure if the hydrogen or lithium would react properly, but the uranium or plutonium tampers would and density sorting would concentrate them in the core rapidly. If you dropped them all in from a distance you'd likely get some weird Fission star as they achieved a weird balance of gravity pulling the material together and fission pushing it apart. This is generally the result of taking anything with a suns gravity amount of energy and forcing it into a smaller than sun size. Or you get a black hole or some sort of truly cursed naked singularity or something. It's bad regardless.

[@unvergebeneid]

@@MrCharles7994 I thought about this but actually I didn't feel like I could accurately predict what would happen in such a scenario, as parts of the contracting mass could reach criticality early and the whole process could be very messy and chaotic in the mathematical sense. I think it's a whole What If in and of itself :D

[@smob0]

I've heard that neurton stars can have huge tensions build up, and theoretically sometimes it basically cracks in half and very quickly and powerfully snaps itself into place, releasing an "earthquake" on the order of some of the big silly ones.

[@logicplague]

Yep, a few years ago Earth was hit by the energy discharge from one on the other side of the galaxy. If I remember correctly, it damaged some of our satellites and affected our magnetic field to quite a measurable degree. Not bad for an object the size of Manhattan, on the other side of the galaxy 50,000 years ago.

[@Death_is_inevitable.]

It's called a starquake.

[@ryanhampson673]

Fukushima’s design was kinda crazy. “Hey, let’s build a reactor in a know earthquake zone”…Okay, doable. “Oh and on the coast in a known tsunami area.”….Um…Alright…”Oh yea and the back up diesel generators needed to keep the coolant flowing in the core…Yea, put those in the basement below sea level.”……Uh ok, sounds good to me.

[@wsollers1]

99% of the time the backup generators work 100% of the time.

[@logicplague]

Chernobyl: .......

[@llamallama1509]

Japan is an earthquake zone

[@tiberius047]

And a tsunami zone.

[@alienmorality]

Add in the walls to stop the water were built much to low

[@dennischiu272]

11:54 For those wondering: the tenfold increase is correct if you're talking specifically about wave amplitude. Energy scales as 10^1.5. I feel we as a society have dropped the ball a bit on reporting earthquakes. Big pet peeve is that the Richter scale saturates at high magnitudes yet you hear phrases like "Richter 9" parroted by the press all the time.

[@logicplague]

The average journalist wouldn't know the difference between Richter and Sphincter.

[@9308323]

Pausing it at 15:10 made me think of a totally different thing, considering where the right hand is. Not sure if that's intentional.

[@Rusty-METAL-J]

I've never thought about the heat release due to friction. I can see that but all I've ever looked at was the seismic mechanical energy of crust shaking as it moves.

[@robertlamantin5088]

Living in Japan countryside since years, I can confirm : my garden nowadays is just a messy cement trucks graveyard.

[@FewVidsJustComments]

This may be a stupid question, but if a magnitude 24-25 quake would destroy a neutron star, would something like a magnitude 28+ be able to destroy a black hole, thus leaving a nekad singularity? Like, I know if you spin one fast enough, that would theoretically happen, so maybe this would work similarly?

[@davidsmith7752]

Due to the nature of a black hole, any energy introduced to it to induce a quake would just be consumed by the black hole. The way that spin (hypothetically) could remove the event horizon is by overwhelming the gravity of the singularity with angular momentum, making it possible for things to pass through its gravity well without becoming trapped.

[@FewVidsJustComments]

@@davidsmith7752 Ah, I see. I didn’t think of that. Thank you for pointing that out.

[@Sior-person]

Furthermore, a black hole has no internal structure (or hair because funny science names), as a result, a “black hole quake” in its sense isn’t really well defined, there’s nothing to “quake”. You could define it as just the quake’s energy equivalence, which as David here mentioned would just make the black hole grow. I mean I have no qualifications here so take what I’m saying with a grain of salt but I think this makes sense

[@wwoods66]

It's believed that small black holes can lose mass by Hawking radiation, at a rate that increases as the mass decreases. In its last second of life, it would convert its remaining 1.4 e5 kg into energy -- about as much as a Mag 11.5 earthquake.

[@FewVidsJustComments]

@@Sior-person Ya, that sounds about right. I guess this was a sillier question than I thought. Still, thanks for answering it anyway

[@michaelbobic7135]

How would you estimate the quake that destroyed Krypton? It orbited a red star and, at least according to some canon stories, had greater gravity than earth.

[@MattStMarie-bm5sq]

we get quakes between 0 and 1 all the time under mount hood

[@roberteltze4850]

I had an intro to Nuclear Engineering class in college and the professor talked about startup rate in terms of e. That was an academic setting but the professor was a German scientist that came from ww2 Germany and worked in the DoD weapons program before settling down to teach.

[@TheHappyhorus]

What the nerd are you talking about Scotty 😂 I love how you’re sure it’s 22 mag and not 18 mag for the Death Star 😂 love it.

[@natespurgat6245]

Question: does “hot-sticking” the breaker in the electrical building to manually trip shutdown procedures just entail welding the breaker open? If so, that’s an actually cool movie nuclear reactor accident scenario

[@sjcwoor]

many thousands of -15 earthquakes occoured here today in my shed.

[@cw6043]

I saw you watched some stuff on neutron stars. "But Why" is a youtube channel (ButWhySci) that has a video that goes deep into the physics of the formation and stuff. I recommend their "stellar corpses", then "a detailed breakdown of core collapse supernova" (minute by minute "why do small supernovae do X while large ones do Y") and then "astro alchemy: where rare elements come from". Their explainers on the balances of processes that we just found out in the last 50 years are pretty amazing (they're good with graphics). A simpler one would be Crash Course Astronomy's two videos on neutron stars / supernovas which go into that stellar process. All of them are like 14 minutes each.

[@jenniferstewarts4851]

mag 25 earth quake. oh, the gravitational sheer force applied to earths plates as it passed between 2 black holes orbiting each other.

[@Soemguywhoask]

Reaction Suggestion: Starv Harv’s ‘Ruining WWII with bad translations’ (Just to laugh at)

[@MattStMarie-bm5sq]

we had a 9.8 in Alaska before

[@grhinson]

We had hydraulic silicone fluid at 10,000 centistokes for our slam retarders on petroleum pipeline check valves. I remember people would call for earthquake valves. But our design was robust and integral

[@Lorentz_Factor]

Concerning the detonation timing of the Jupiter bomb. If we consider the equatorial diameter in lightseconds , 142,984 km / 299,792 kms. So around 0.477s delay between One side of the Jupiter size hydrogen bomb to the other. Relativistic distances even so shorts. Would require some extraordinary method of timing to get everything to go off just right. And aside from that, even causality propagates that 0.477 seconds from one side of the planet to the other. I think things get weird at that size.

[@balijosu]

I'm unclear. Safe shutdown for a nuclear plant is only possible at values less than 0.1-0.3, but we can't feel a 2.5?

[@benhur2806]

3:40 - There actually might just be, the Valdivia Earthquake in Chile is reported to have been a Magnitude 9.4-9.6. So 10.0 might juuust about be in the range of possibilities if we were to get unlucky enough...

[@emmata98]

6:34 you already do that internally for the implosion bomb.

[@Rusty-METAL-J]

I asked 1 time which Georgia you studied at, but I just noticed the city named on your diploma & just answered my question. The language of the East European nation is based on the Slavic, Sooooooooooooo they wouldn't have a city with that name.

[@Argiopocalypse92]

Having the breakers in an extra electrical utility building. Who'da thunk. It makes a lot of sense tbh lol

[@TheGhostGuitars]

7:00 A neutron star that is about 2 solar mass will be about 14 miles in diameter, so yeah, serious gravitational binding energies, not to mention a teaspoon of the matter at the surface weighs more than Mount Everest. So ye need serious huevos to heave that much mass to escape velocity. PS: To get a 2 solar mass neutron star ye'd need start with a 10-25 solar mass supergiant star.

[@mauno91]

Playing around with the numbers is great for putting things into perspective for us normies.

[@BelgorathTheSorcerer]

I got hit by a magnitude 7 assquake. I survived, but it left a huge crack in its wake.

[@MattStMarie-bm5sq]

did you have a gasmask ready or were you butt squished

[@Leyrann]

10 solar mass objects that don't have nuclear fusion going on in their cores (to provide additional outward pressure) are black holes. The mass limit for a neutron star is roughly 3.4 solar masses, if I remember correctly.

[@paulfey6760]

I can't blame him for getting it wrong. 10 M☉ is about the minimum mass for a main sequence star to leave a neutron star remnant. He just mixed up the two bits of info.

[@MarsJenkar]

And the limit depends on how fast the neutron star is spinning, I wanna say. The Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff (TOV) limit isn't known with the same precision the Chandrasekhar limit is, but the faster the object is spinning, the higher the limit is. Beyond the TOV limit, the star will collapse further; we're still not sure whether quark degeneracy pressure will resist the gravitational crush after that, nor for how long if it does. But at some point the object does collapse to the point where a black hole forms.

[@jimk2099]

I think this was covered adequately in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

[@SUHERD]

Sooo basic concern is How To Shot It Down on time 🤣 Naaaah, cant be a humAn error. It is there at the core of it. Sorry for the pun

[@victoralander1398]

Do you have a reference for the reactor startup sequence? I want to write a realistic reactor startup in a fic.

[@gregs3597]

I heard someone set off a tannerite explosion in a dump truck and it shut down a reactor( not sure if it's true) but would like to hear your opinion on it.

[@euphoricbread]

25 magnitude would become an earthbreak not an earthquake

[@monad_tcp]

9:12 unless its Soviet Union and your boss told you to do that or else.

[@crestdazoltral7705]

@tfolsenuclear: Regarding controlling a reactor start sequence. Is there a way to built a control system that could, should anyone be insane enough to try, control a prompt critical assembly as reactor without it either shutting down or exploding in the first micro to milliseconds? The closest I've read about would be a nuclear salt water rocket which doesn't directly control the reactivity, but "just" the fuel availability.

[@kirkbolas4985]

How about a giga buttload of Unobtanium.

[@caerdwyn7467]

The Richter Scale is a logarithmic scale. No earthquake fault on Earth is large enough to hit 10, and there are only a handful capable of storing enough energy even for a 9 (all of which are Ring of Fire). Sorry, doomscrollers!

[@darthkarl99]

15:25 i reassemble that comment!

[@blackflix6151]

Keep up the good content!

[@BryWolf128]

You should react to The scale of mushroom clouds by rojofern

[@PiedPiperProjects]

1:42 I think you mispronounced 'logarithmic' my guy.

[@eveillanderson]

oh no dere goes Pokyo go go gojira weeooeeoo 🐲

[@darkwinter7395]

Hmm... speaking of Jupiter... I wonder if it's physically possible to detonate it? It's mostly hydrogen, so... 🤔

[@MarsJenkar]

You'd need a lot of oxidizer to do that. And an ignition source.

[@darkwinter7395]

@@MarsJenkar I meant a nuclear fusion detonation, not combustion.

[@MarsJenkar]

@@darkwinter7395 In which case you would need to heat up and/or compress the hydrogen inside the planet to a massive degree. The Sun undergoes fusion because gravity was enough to compact and heat the hydrogen in the core to the point of igniting spontaneous fusion. Jupiter is about 1/80th the mass required for that.

[@darkwinter7395]

@@MarsJenkar The core is supposed to be so dense that the hydrogen is in it's metallic phase... to trigger the detonation, I was thinking of some sort of nuclear bomb (constructed such that it would survive the trip down???). The notion is that it would be similar to the way a terrestrial hydrogen bomb works, with the fission bomb component acting as the initiator for the hydrogen fusion detonation. The resultant hydrogen fusion reaction would then be self-sustaining as it propagated thru the core of the planet. Obviously, there's a bunch of "insert miracle here" steps, but it is "What if?", so..... 😉

[@purpleboy5524]

small question for any smart people. what magnitude would be the average human stomp?

[@WombatMan64]

Considering it'll be more powerful than a cat falling of a dresser, and less than a football player running into a tree. Somewhere between -1 and -2. Probably about 1.2ish

[@GeorgeDCowley]

3:20 Conservative, or aggressive?

[@marcello3231]

Video idea play Charnobyl Legacy Continue

[@MalanWerner]

Allen Michael Miller Larry Lee Betty

[@DanaDurnford1]

You should go to Fukushima reactor 3 MOX Fuel nuclear meltdown and show us the fuel pool then we would not have to listen to your lies anymore

[@cyprusglare333]

taling way toooooo much this video

[@TheTransporter007]

Have you considered doing original content?

[@daniellemurnett2534]

Maybe my standards are just so low because the average reaction youtuber has less than nothing to say but like... He *does* add a lot of informative and valuable commentary to everything he imaginably can. Yeah it's almost always nuclear in nature but that's literally what he does.

[@TheTransporter007]

@@daniellemurnett2534 I think my point is that most reaction KZbinrs aren't interesting enough for me to ask them to do original content. I would say that it is a compliment that I would like to see what he can come up with on his own.

[@daniellemurnett2534]

@@TheTransporter007 Fair enough. That's not how it came off to me, but tone is notoriously difficult through text.

[@ghyslainabel]

I loved your previous reactions on XKCD videos. On this one, however, your commentary diverged completely from the video, especially in the second half. I expected a reaction to the XKCD video, not random facts unrelated to the video. Random facts about nuclear reactors are cool, but on their own video.

[@paramemetics1162]

I love how they were on the same exact wavelength the whole time

[@ItsGameTox]

ofc they are, cuz he watches the vids first, makes notest, and reads them off. So not even a genuine „reaction“

[@Lorentz_Factor]

​@@ItsGameTox look we got a 12-year-old who understands KZbin so well. 😂😂 I really don't know if he does watch them before or not. And frankly I don't really care. And you're not really that special for pointing that out. Because I've seen him go down a very different path than the video being watched. But keeping you. So fun at parties. I'm sure you have lots of friends.

[@ItsGameTox]

@@Lorentz_Factor Look its entertainment, same thing as fake pranks, if you can watch it without giving a damn about the fact that they are „faked“ then you could go watch a movie instead, completely missing the point. The Reaction „genre“ is already on of the most petty and desperate types of content one can make nowadays. So him „abusing“ it while not even being able to atleast memorize the stuff he plans on saying i find kind of stupid, thats me. I can agree that its better than the reaction youtubers that just scream and add nothing to the content thats being reacted to. Not trying to spread negativity, just awareness c:

[@Lorentz_Factor]

@@ItsGameTox I'm not sure what you're talking about. Sure. Maybe he watches some of them beforehand. But to be honest, I don't even consider what he does a reaction video. He's calling it that in his titles which I guess makes sense because a lot of people like to watch just reaction videos. But what I see when I watch him is not something I care at all. Whether he has or has not seen it already. What he is actually doing is critiquing, analyzing, evaluating, and offering the perspective from a nuclear engineering standpoint about the content being discussed. It's educational, it adds to the original content, much of which I've already seen, but yet I learn a lot of new things watching it a second time with him discussing it. This is not a reaction video, this is a proper Fair use case with extraordinary transformative affect. I mean at least he's not just uploading video game and anime theme songs right?

[@ItsGameTox]

@@Lorentz_Factor You did a really good job reciting what I basically said, and yet managed to end it with a touch that toxic negativity you ukrainian people are known for! (Atleast lthe unthankful ones I took in and let live in my house just to get spit on 🙃)

[@Merennulli]

I always love the ad breaks on these discussions about disasters. "To destroy the sun would require-" "Google Pixel..."

[@North_wood]

I knew it! Google pixel is the key to end the world all this time

[@Merennulli]

@@North_wood And if you've ever been tricked into buying a Pixel like I was, they're not subtle about it either.

[@Ice_Karma]

15:34 I think he means the force required to make the key activate, not the typical amount of force a typist might _exert_ on the keyboard. 🤣

[@zetsubouda]

I just want to say, Fukushima is way more than a deserted city and a nuclear power plant. Fukushima is a entire prefecture with a lot beautiful nature and fascinating places to visit. And even aside from the beautiful places I think it's worth visiting the places that have been rebuilt and changed to see what humans are able to triumph over.

[@六工業のカービィ]

当たり前です

[@sarahs472]

Can you do a video on small modular reactors or microreactors? I've been seeing these reactors touted as means of bringing fast energy to disaster zones, but want to know what a professional's opinion is! Is it hype still at this point? Do they harvest the energy directly or use a steam turbine setup? I have so many questions I want to ask!

[@wumi2419]

There is literally one example of these implemented in metal, Rosatom's RITM. So I don't know how much there is to talk about, given that all others only exist on paper. Right now it operates as barge-based power plant, so if there is a shore and infrastructure to connect to, it's possible to provide power and heat to normally very remote places. But I am very interested in a video/short series about what Rosatom is doing in English. One of their other achievements I don't see mentioned is finally closing the loop. And they simultaneously solved the americium problem while doing so.

[@mikapeltokorpi7671]

2:17 That 18 000 died in 2004 boxing day tsunami, not in Fukushima. (Now) former president of Finland Niinistö and his sons survived by climbing to a palm tree and a telephone pole.

[@roevhaal578]

Uhm no, over 200,000 died in that one. You're technically correct that 18,000 didn't die in Fukushima as the event is refeered as Tohoku (north region) or Miyagi (the prefecture north of Fukushima and closest to the epicenter) but more than 19,000 people died across Japan. If you're curious Fukushima had the 3rd most casualties after Miyagi and Iwate.

[@rhueoflandorin]

for the bombs...they'd require synchronized atomic clocks. or else, indeed, the first bombs that went off would simply destroy the other ones.

[@stibiumowl]

Thanks for pointing out at 3:09 that the people killed by tsunami was more bad than the Fukushima GAU. And thanks for adding a fission event to the negative scale examples. Would be fun to add the gravitational waves detected by LIGO to this example list, both at point of origin and of earth impact.

[@DerGully]

That gravitational-wave thing sounds like a cool exercise for a GR class. Will recommend that to a professor soon.

[@MatterBaby68]

13:05 thank you for trying. that wouldve been awesome to see some stuff from where you work

[@lucaskook9440]

more of a streamer setup with your face in one of the corners would be better i think... love the videos keep it up

[@destructive.kiwi_]

hi

[@Promatheos]

I don’t understand how a negative magnitude can just mean really small without a defined bottom of the scale. So is a -28 the slight motion of a single atom?

[@SteveRowe]

Tyler, what can we average citizens do to encourage the government (or SOMEBODY) to build more nuclear reactors? I've been trying to educate people for years, but one China Syndrome in the 70s seems to be louder than any amount of truth. Are there laws that need to be overturned? Are there monied organizations that are blocking nuclear? I don't consider the Green lobby "monied", but I might be wrong. Do we have no nuclear because of Big Oil? Or because people are ignorant and scared? Maybe we need a pie chart.

[@junak777]

How you compare all that magnitude 15 with GLASS ?! LiQUID transition to amorphous... Same.structure, BUT ViSCoSity goes on magnitude up for same 15 rep log units.(AMPlitude height)

[@TheGhostGuitars]

Earthquake 15 isnt possible. Earthquake 9.9 is the practicsl limit on Earth for a reason: the Earth's crust will rupture before the energy reaches Magnitude 10.

[@mortenrl1946]

Ive loved XKCD since I was a lil one, that's the good stuff :D

[@OliviaSNava]

Man, the fact that a single nuclear reaction is a -11.5 is wild to me. I was thinking like... if a dust mote is a -15, then any neutron doing anything would have to be like a -20 or something similar. A single molecule of O2 landing on a table is like -20, and the fact that a neutron can get a few thousand times more than that is incredible.

[@kerrycater2795]

Could Russia be directing nukes to start earthquakes along American fault lines? Do we need to worry about nuclear power plants on the West Coast given Fukushima?

[@liam3284]

I live in an area without much of a histroy of earthquakes, but a few years ago a magnitude 5.9 hit, from a previously unknown fault.

[@jordanferrazza8700]

Are you much of a meteorogist or geologist in terms of knowing about things like gravitational fields and polymer structures?

[@jonathanhughes380]

we would only be so lucky if we had a Richter magnitude 15 earthquake 😁

[@reneko]

Can you react to Killua vs Misaka death battle

[@themaneman2938]

video suggestion: kzbin.info/www/bejne/gnqlXpedr9V9nsU

[@christopherlenahan3906]

As a side-bar are there any Xe injection safety systems for reactors?

[@ijchua]

A bit too much commentary on this one!

[@NonsensicalSpudz]

wait does below zero mean the earthquake fixes stuff?

[@HmmHmm-ve7ou]

No. It just releases so little energy it can't really destroy anything

[@RandomDude-ur3nk]

Is it safe to eat uranium fuel rods?

[@jamcdonald120]

10:45 weird question, you always say "boron is liquid control rods." Is part of the emergency shutdown protocall dumping all the boron you have into the core?

[@gloriarose6714]

I felt a 2.1 due to my chair being extra wobbly and my ability to sit very still I thought I was having a heart episode, then it was gone--my next thought was earthquake, sure enough, it was.

[@2019inuyasha]

I think thorium reactors could be made safe using newer technology and setup. Like to know possible additional safety and better setups now compared to past... thanks...

[@JonathanHarvell]

Always cool to hear these topics from a different perspective. One question, unrelated to the topic. Why is your video so jumpy? Are you doing silence truncation, or are those cuts for different takes? Edit: What about that nuclear reactor video game for the "Decades per Minute" counter?

[@KaiHenningsen]

Cats need some time to turn so the feets are down, so they need some minimum height to do it. A bit like ejecting from a jet with a parachute, you also need a certain height or the chute won't open fast enough to do you any good. (And did you know that the Gemini space capsules used ejection seats?)

[@IIIAnchani]

A 10 stellar mass neutron star would immediately collapse into a black hole.

[@m4753jfthfthv]

Working for a snubber manufacturer... nice mentioning them

[@anthonyshiels9273]

In the early 1980's there was a student in my University and when he started to type on a computer keyboard the whole desk used to shake. The desks were very sturdy.

[@dennischiu272]

No wonder he got accepted. Universities usually pay good money for a earthquake-simulating shake table.

[@EliasMheart]

6:08 I _think_ this would collapse into a black hole... I just took the density of Uranium and filled Jupiter with it, which is certainly an overestimation, but I got 13.7 Suns worth of mass. That mass gets you a Schwarzschild Radius of 40.5 km. But I am not a hundred percent on whether or not this will actually collapse, first time calculating this myself^^)

[@erikremkus7718]

No that will not collapse. In order for a mass to collapse, the Schwarzschild radius for that mass has to be larger than the radius of the mass.

[@MarsJenkar]

@@erikremkus7718 Yep, every massive object has a Schwarzschild radius; most are just larger than it. You only get a black hole when the size of an object (or a section of that object) is _smaller_ than that object's (or section's) Schwarzschild radius. This depends on its mass.