Nuclear Engineer reacts to Kurzgesagt "What if We Detonated All Nuclear Bombs at Once?"

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Original Video ‪@kurzgesagt‬ • What If We Detonated A...

[@Zelurpio]

I like how he doesn't pause after every statement, and instead pauses when an actually important statement is made, or when there is more to be said that Kurzgesagt left out.

[@paulosantana9607]

"1:08"

[@PikaPetey]

The "green stuff" is for better visual communication. Im sure youve noticed that big ben tower isnt purple.

[@MrLeroyvanriet]

Amazing videos man, i'm a big kurzgesagt fan but your in depth details make it even better. Keep up the good work!

[@tfolsenuclear]

Thanks so much!

[@Artutinkaplay]

@@nathanielskywalker1643 thats not makes you cool that makes you opposite to cool when you saying it

[@samuels1123]

The uranium stuff is covered in one of the end scenes of one of the videos, it also explains why some stars and black holes are decorated. The target audience likely wouldn't believe a faint blue glow representing radioactive material, and it would require another 10% of runtime to convince them exactly why it glows blue.

[@iKvetch558]

Coming to this a bit late, but I enjoyed your reaction to this video. You were a bit low on the numbers of warheads in the stockpiles at the height of the Cold War...the global peak was in the mid 1980s when the number topped 70k total warheads stockpiled among all nuclear armed nations. The number of deployed warheads was somewhat smaller, but still topped the 25k level between the US and Soviets,,,if that is what you were referring to. ✌

[@tfolsenuclear]

Thanks for the clarification! Glad you liked the video!

[@petersmythe6462]

Uranium does tend to glow a nice neon green under UV light though. It has nothing to do with radioactivity or fission. It just turns out it's a fluorescent material. They used to sometimes use it for glow in the dark stuff but it turns out it's a toxic heavy metal several times more dangerous than lead (again, this has nothing to do with its radioactivity). They also used to make Radium phosphorescent glow paint, but that was not glow in the dark. Rather, it used horrifyingly radioactive material to make paint that glows for millennia without an extermal power source. This has since been replaced by Tritium, which is also horrifyingly radioactive but the radiation isn't penetrating.

[@smayds]

Yeah if you ever want to have proper nightmares, just look up the Radium Girls, SHUDDER

[@mattnsac]

This is 1000% why its always depicted like that. If you get it to glow under natural light without going supercritical, you are definitely tickling the dragons tail and its gonna be red hot like steel glows at temp.

[@jwenting]

big factor not taken into account is that the effects don't scale linearly like this. Many of the warheads would simply be demolished by the blast rather than add to the explosive yield. The would add a bit to the fallout, but not to the actual destructive effect or the radiation and thermal pulses. This is why when a target is to be hit by multiple warheads in close proximity they're staggered in time (and usually space) so each warhead arrives after the main blast of the previous one has dissipated. This isn't just the case with nuclear weapons, obviously, but with conventional explosives as well.

[@orenjineko646]

8:57 That's a cartoon version of the helmet - part of a Power Armor in the Fallout (game) universe.

[@fabriziobiancucci7702]

Technically the power of all nuclear weapons would be much larger. The video only consider all bombs as uranium bombs. But hidrogen bombs are much more powerful. For example, the Tsar bomb alone is enough to rebuild 1/3 of Manhatthan. If we detonate the real nuclear bombs that we have, the damage will be far heavier

[@ericgolightly8450]

Why do we even have that thing?

[@zhadoomzx]

No it would not... yes we have thermonuclear weapons that are more powerful than fission bombs... but that does not mean our nuclear weapons worldwide are more powerful than 10 000 000 000 fission bombs combined. The Tsar bomb was thousands of times more powerful than hiroshima... but 10 billion warheads is a million times more than our 15 000 weapons.

[@fabriziobiancucci7702]

@@zhadoomzx I don't have said that a thermonuclear bomb is more powerful than that. I said that if we use the real nuclear bombs we have in the same way of the video we would do much more damage

[@zhadoomzx]

@@fabriziobiancucci7702 You said this: "If we detonate the real nuclear bombs that we have, the damage will be far heavier". What you meant to say and what you did say is not the same.

[@fabriziobiancucci7702]

@@zhadoomzx In reality is exactly the same. If we detonate in the same way the real nuclear bombs that we have the effects would be much more destructive. I don't know in what world you live, but in mine people are able to understand what I mean even if I don't add "in the same way" since it was obvious

[@zhadoomzx]

Next question to tackle: what if we used up all of the deuterium in earth's oceans to build as many thermonuclear warheads as possible? My best guess: many many many orders of magnitude more power... probably even enough to gravitationally unbind earths entire mass, blowing the planet into a hot, expanding cloud of plasma, surpassing even the power of the death star from Star Wars.

[@tfolsenuclear]

Great suggestion! I actually just did a video on if it is possible to destroy the earth with nuclear weapons: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qKjFqqmDn56Ih7s Short answer: No - the limiting factor for thermonuclear weapons is uranium or plutonium (can’t make a pure fusion-based nuclear warhead using deuterium or tritium). Even if we could, the Death Star’s weapon is many millions of times more powerful than the sun. Nuclear fusion simply isn’t powerful enough.

[@krisspkriss]

@@tfolsenuclear Good call. I came to say the same. Though we might be able to in the near future. There is some interesting progress made with firing plasma from two separate magnetic containments into a central one and creating a positive feedback loop in the central magnetic confinement to create high Q value fission yield.

[@justgame5508]

More than anything this video shows the immense power of a large object moving very quickly. Using all the uranium of an entire planet for thermo-nuclear reactions is only just equivalent to getting a big rock and throwing it at the planet. It’s incredible life has survived all the extinction level events it has, especially considering the dinosaurs extinction event wasn’t even the worse, not even close in terms of percentage of the planets biomass killed

[@darkwolfythi]

You are so under rated you need more subs

[@Anime_logics]

Yellow uranium would probably would be one of the most cursed things i have ever seen

[@akashkrishnat481]

I think it was around 70000 bombs at height of cold war,but i maybe wrong

[@davi_craft8435]

really enjoy your content keep it up

[@tfolsenuclear]

Thanks! Glad you like it!

[@carlo697y]

If you liked that video you might also like "The Day the Dinosaurs Died - Minute by Minute" by Kurzgesagt. I liked your reaction!

[@_AcatHat]

I really like your videos,thank you....A little thing about the original that gets to me , he said "decimate" the city's that means get rid of 1 out of 10... What he meant was 💯% of the citys gone

[@stickfigureanims6698]

2 Smart people Reacting and Talking, I love it.

[@wuguxiandi9413]

The comments talking about how the maths is off, should remember that there is almost no eay to successfully detonate 15,000 warheads without some of them being destroyed before they activate.

[@madmunky8989]

Great vid

[@tfolsenuclear]

Thanks!

[@bilguunb6265]

I wonder what simulation program was used to determine the results. I would definitely try simulating these events wirh MCNP and HYSPLIT

[@000BlackSoul000AMVs]

could the sustained ignition of the athmosphere come in to conversation at some point? I remember this being a concern for early nuclear tests and it being refuted but can it still happen at that volume?

[@izabellafulop476]

Oh boy I sure do hope that nothing bad happens to Brazil

[@TBomb15]

I think we're down to about 13000 now. great move

[@Nepomniachtchi_Austin]

I think uranium is erroneously depicted as green just because that's what a huge majority of people associate with radioactive materials. Makes it easier to communicate ideas concerning the topic

[@black.sasuke.uchiha]

1:45 huh. Interesting, I was under the impression that nukes were always on a steady increase.

[@VelociraptorsOfSkyrim]

Yeah. We did make a few laws to behin disassembling a lot of them.

[@sankang9425]

And disassembling nukes is a very difficult job... Not that it's physically demanding but the politics involved in it is Insane.

[@JesuscoolkidsXDbecauseyes]

I will officially call kurzgesagt kurzgeasasot now

[@afkbender3686]

The weatherman is top dude......

[@lordpuff]

This would be HORRIBLY inconvenient...

[@Obi61248]

Quite an inconvenience indeed.

[@wearefromserbia9714]

Truly one of the inconveniences, ever

[@TehMuuli]

Just imagine the impact on the local trout population.

[@jjbarajas5341]

"It still wouldn't be green" HAH I mean that's true, but it's funny 😁

[@jolts2779]

6:48 I mean green is better than a piss rock though

[@afkbender3686]

Weather's, winds, that MF is gonna be top boss after....

[@judahlagrange8286]

Beep boop I am the nuclear engineer robot

[@ponkievorster5039]

nice vids

[@tfolsenuclear]

Thanks!

[@whatthefuckallhandlesaretaken]

That's what happens when we see artifacts from history that cannot be explained

[@marieparker3822]

'. . . And now the unpleasant part begins . . .'

[@jackdaniels5071]

How would this affect the stock market

[@EHHHHHMAZING777]

Each bird is one of their Patreons

[@LuigiCotocea]

Speaking of Nuclear, they made a good job covering the subject. Well there is a lot more to know!

[@brendsetter6972]

I’m 10 and I’ve always been interested in nuclear energy and I want to be a nuclear physicist when I’m older love your vid’s keep up the good work👍

[@tfolsenuclear]

Thanks so much! Glad you are interested in nuclear!

[@nonec384]

the first part doesnt take the amazon ecosistem into acount as its a major part of the world climate

[@aaexo6468]

Correction: In the hight of the cold war it peaked at around 60k warheads total, not 20k to 25k! In 1987 soviet union had close to 40k nukes.

[@micagracemesajon5322]

Imagine kurzgesast says lets add more nukes like a gigazillion more😂😂😂😂😎

[@reith6073]

I think the green glow from nuclear material was originally propagated by the use of radon on clock faces makeup and and any number of products.

[@SevenDayGaming]

I recommend the deep sea nuke video. Its conclusion so perfectly confirmed my priors I'd like to throw an expert at it to be sure. Edit: Nevermind, you already responded to it. The dumbass thing is, I *DID* search for it before I asked, but KZbin deliberately destroyed its own search engine to the point of it being less effective at finding what you put in the box than the related videos.

[@lilysantiago679]

Teacher: Why is the Cold War not as deadly as you think? Me: The Space Race!

[@SP4CEBAR]

is the the glowing green stuff inspired by the element Radon?

[@tfolsenuclear]

It's probably associated with the green glow of radium that was once in watches. That and the Hulk. Not sure why it is so popular though 😅

[@SP4CEBAR]

@@tfolsenuclear that seems rather likely

[@2dark4noir]

​@@tfolsenuclearpopularity: probably Simpsons, eh?

[@seraphina985]

​@@tfolsenuclear There may be some association from the historically popular Uranium glass which is often green in colour and also exhibits fluorescence under UV light, so thus is a green glowy thing people have heard of that contains Uranium and happens to be mildly radioactive. Add to that the fact that Radium paint was also popular around the same time and conflating the two to form a general association of the green glow of these products with the radioactivity in general despite the fact this isn't accurate in the former case. It seems like it would be an easy thing to conflate especially if you didn't already have a pretty robust understanding how these processes actually work.

[@cazador7131]

Will this affect the trout population?

[@TBomb15]

true pure uranium (wheter 235 or 238 [ive never actually seen U-232]} just looks like a genrally gray metal. there are certain compound of uranium that flouresce green under UV light but uranium itself, no matter what isotope, is a gray metal.

[@MisterExtortion]

Have you ever seen Look Around You? The first season is especially good. It’s an English parody of classroom science videos where everything is absurdly wrong and it might be fun for you to make videos about.

[@tylerslagel5485]

There was a total of around 72,000 bombs actually.

[@jonathanhadden8199]

During the peak of the Cold War, the total number of nuclear bombs was closer to 50-60 thousand if not more.

[@petersmythe6462]

I question whether you could actually get every nuclear weapon into a pile and successful detonate them. They are fairly sensitive devices and I really wonder if the Neutron flux from 1 bomb is gonna cause fizzles in the neighboring bombs. Surely this should be the case for gun type weapons but I think even implosion type weapons might not be immune.

[@afkbender3686]

MATH!!!!

[@conboi124]

2:53 the fire bombings of Tokyo did more damage than hiroshima

[@petersmythe6462]

Maximum destruction is achieved when bombs are dispersed between targets but targets are concentrated. This is probably one of the least effective uses of nuclear arsenals imaginable.

[@RongDMemer]

If one is like a disaster Why do we have like 15k of them and flex them like legos? Does exploding one in the wrong place would detenate the other one?

[@tfolsenuclear]

Great question! No, detonating one nuclear bomb next to a pile of other nuclear bombs would actually just destroy them! Nuclear bombs require a fission (or fission/fusion in the case of thermonuclear bombs) chain reaction to develop their destructive force. This is usually caused by a conventional explosive internal to the bomb to set up that critical mass in just the right way. Think of the conventional explosive ‘pushing’ nuclear fuel together to get it to work. In other words, Kurzgesagt’s experiment would take a lot of careful timing and would be almost impossible to pull off!

[@RongDMemer]

@@tfolsenuclear Thank you for the explanation. Now I'm free from my fear of nuclear bomb exploding and causing the other bombs to explode

[@petersmythe6462]

Note with the 10 billion bombs, the entire atmosphere doesn't heat up to oven-like temperatures. Instead, the sky is entirely glowing hot reentry plasma, which radiates down through the atmosphere cooking anything with a clear view of the sky. Your indoor air in your house would not be an oven, nor would the air at 5000 feet or whatever. Instead, opaque surfaces would be cooked.

[@girlsdrinkfeck]

i think by having all nukes in a singular area wont be as devasting as one would think, since less oxygen can be sucked up for fuel due to starvation, a fighting fire with fire scenario

[@Para6371]

I think you are making the incorrect presumption that nuclear bombs require oxygen. No, if they required oxygen the Sun (which runs on nuclear reactions) would have burnt out long before now.

[@damonvesely3643]

you look so tiered

[@CoderBoi_YT]

I wonder what the weakest element on the periodic table is, that could survive a nuclear explosion from any distance from the first blast point and stay the same element?

[@chasehackney4536]

anyone see the TARDIS?

[@petersmythe6462]

I very seriously doubt that billions of Little Boy bombs in pile would go off. Right, let's say they are perfectly synchronized (lol) and the explosive timing is perfect and the velocity of the same in every device (again lol) something like 5% of them are just gonna fizzle from spontaneous fission getting out of control and ruining the whole thing. Problem is, this will occur before ANY have properly l detonated, spraying neutrons everywhere at relatively considerable speeds. The remaining projectiles have just inches to go before the neutron source in the bomb activates them. However, they are immediately showered with neutrons causing sympathetic fizzling. You will not get 10 billion detonations. You'll get 10 billion fizzles.

[@stevenadams3303]

I have heard the nuclear winter extinction event about a million times and I still have issues believing humans can not survive extreme cold. Especially, with the technology we have today. At the simplest level all you have to do is burn stuff to produce both electricity and heat. To grow food all you need is heat and electricity. I believe this type of event would throw us back to level 1 but I think "some" would survive. An ok, analogy would be the international space station. Space is COLD, but the people survive up there just fine and they do grow things. Granted they do not produce enough to keep them alive but at the same time that isn't their goal as they can easily be resupplied from Earth.

[@dragmire3D]

While accurately depicting uranium would a good teaching point, the picture would likely read as just a rock or mountain in a cartoon. Unfortunately, the green glowy imaginary rock is the universally(*) understood as being radioactive material. (*) probably not universal. I wonder what color non english speaking cultures depict radioactive material as...

[@MostlyPennyCat]

Twenty to twenty five thousand? Nuh uh! Try a peak world stockpile of over _sixty thousand bombs_ If we choose an estimated average of say, 333kt per bomb we get... 20.3 Gigatons of TNT. Chicxulub was 100,000 Gigatones of TNT. 5,000 times the entire stockpile. Or three hundred and five million 333kt bombs. I wonder what the Theia impact was? Because that made The Moon.

[@marieparker3822]

But don't we actually need the Amazon forest? Just saying . . .

[@f.m.f962]

Speaking of the cartoon bribs... you an actually get your own birb and be in one of their videos

[@erviplayer]

It = bad

[@MoreIrrelevantTwaddle]

You're overly focused, almost insulted personally, by the usage of green to depict uranium or nuclear waste. This is a common thing going as far back as the 80's with Toxic Avenger and many other "nuclear" based media, probably made even more popular by The Simpsons and the green glowing rod in the intro. Its not a Kurzgesagt specific thing.

[@nedimmrsic4650]

Why does everyone have to know your sexual orientation just by hearing your voice..?

[@godofwisdom3141]

What does that even mean??