We all know a nuclear war would be bad, but it's kind of abstract. Personally, I always just assumed I'd be vaporized if a nuclear bomb fell near me. Apparently not, according to this video, which provides a terrifying, in-depth look at just what would happen if you were close to a nuclear ground zero. The real problem, we discover, is that "close" is a relative term.
For instance, if the bomb dropped on a clear night, people up to 53 miles away would experience flash blindness. People 7 miles away would get first-degree burns. Within 5 miles, it's third-degree burns—which, if they cover 24 percent or more of your body, are very likely to kill you. But we're just getting started:
Within a 4 mile radius, according to our video friend, the blast force would be 180 tons. This would not be good for you or the structure you live in. Within a bit more than a half mile, windspeeds would be over 700 kilometers per hour. You can survive that, but a building would probably fall on you. All this, by the way, is from a one-megaton bomb. The Russians have tested a 50-megaton bomb.
Oh, and none of this includes the radiation element—which is kind of a big deal. That could land you with genetic mutations or an increased risk of cancer. And if it doesn't kill you—and the bomb was part of even a small-scale nuclear war—the nuclear fallout could dominate the atmosphere, causing a significant loss of annual rainfall. That would devastate crop harvests and, by one estimate, could starve as many as 2 billion people to death.
Now remember who has complete, unregulated control of our nuclear weapons. Happy Friday!
