What_if_We_Nuke_a_City_(360p)

sohail2726

Watch What_if_We_Nuke_a_City_(360p) - sohail2726 on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00Playing around with nuclear weapons in videos is fun.

00:04There's a visceral joy in blowing things up

00:06and a horrifying fascination with things like fireballs, shockwaves and radiation.

00:11And while it does help put our destructive power in perspective,

00:15it's not the best way of understanding the real impact of a nuclear explosion.

00:19This isn't about city stacks of TNT or about how bright an explosion is.

00:24Nuclear weapons are about you.

00:27So we've partnered with the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement

00:30to explore what would really happen if a nuclear weapon were detonated in a major city today.

00:36Not nuclear war, just one explosion.

00:49We begin our story in the middle of downtown in a major city.

00:53People are going to work, studying for exams, are lost in their thoughts and daily lives.

00:59Right here, a nuclear weapon is detonated and time freezes.

01:03The first phase of the explosion happens within less than a second.

01:07In a millisecond, a ball of plasma hotter than the sun appears

01:10and grows in a fireball to more than two kilometers across.

01:14Within this ball, everyone is just gone.

01:17Think of water dripped onto a very hot pan.

01:21A sizzle, and then there's nothing.

01:24Most buildings, cars, trees, tacky sculptures, and people, all evaporated.

01:31First, the flash, an intense tsunami of light, washes over the city in an instant.

01:36If you happen to have your head pointed in the direction of the explosion,

01:41it renders you blind for a few hours.

01:44The heat of this light produces a thermal pulse,

01:47so energetic and hot that it just burns everything as far as 13 kilometers from the detonation site.

01:54What this means is that everything in an area of 500 square kilometers

01:58that is able to burn starts burning.

02:01Plastic, wood, fabric, hair, and skin.

02:05If you happen to be in reach of the thermal pulse,

02:08one moment you're on your way to work, the next moment you're on fire.

02:13Now the second phase begins.

02:15It happens in a few seconds.

02:18Most people will now first notice that something is wrong,

02:21but it's already too late for hundreds of thousands.

02:24The flash is followed by the shock wave.

02:27The heat and radiation of the fireball create a bubble of superheated and supercompressed air around it

02:32that's now expanding explosively.

02:35Faster than the speed of sound, creating winds stronger than hurricanes and tornadoes.

02:41Human infrastructure is no match for its power.

02:44Most major buildings within a kilometer of the fireball are just ground up down to their base.

02:49Only steel-reinforced concrete is able to partially resist the pressure.

02:53In the surrounding parks, where retirees feed the ducks,

02:56trees blackened and smoldering from the heat a second before snap like toothpicks.

03:01If you're outside, you get tossed away like a grain of dust in a tornado.

03:06The shock wave weakens as it travels outwards,

03:08but still, about 175 square kilometers of houses collapse like they're made of cards,

03:14trapping tens of thousands of people who didn't have any time to react.

03:18Gas stations explode and fires spread throughout the rubble.

03:23A mushroom cloud made from the remains of the fireball, dust and ash rises kilometers into the sky in the next few minutes

03:29and casts a dark shadow over the ruined city.

03:32This violently pulls in fresh air surrounding the city, destroying more buildings and providing an abundance of oxygen.

03:40It depends on the city what happens next.

03:43If there's enough fuel, fires may turn into a firestorm that burns the rubble,

03:47everybody trapped in it and people trying to flee the devastation.

03:50Up to 21 kilometers from the explosion, people just like you rush to their windows to take pictures of the mushroom cloud,

03:57unaware that the shock wave is still coming at them, about to shatter their windows and create a blizzard of sharp glass.

04:05The third phase begins in the coming hours and days.

04:08We're used to the idea that help will come, no matter the disaster.

04:12This time is different.

04:13A nuclear explosion is like every natural disaster at once.

04:17There are hundreds of thousands or millions of people with serious injuries,

04:22lacerations, broken bones, serious burns.

04:25In the next few minutes and hours, thousands more will die because of these injuries.

04:32Countless people are trapped in collapsed buildings like in earthquakes or blinded by the flash,

04:37deaf from the blast wave and unable to flee through streets impassable with rubble and debris.

04:43They're terrified, confused and don't know what's happened to them or why.

04:48Most likely, many hospitals have been leveled along with all the other buildings

04:51and most medical professionals are either dead or injured along with everyone else.

04:56The survivors lucky enough to have been in metro tunnels or standing in the right place to be unburned and unhurt

05:02won't have truly escaped harm yet.

05:04Depending on the type of weapon, where it explodes and even the weather,

05:08an awful black rain can begin, with radioactive ash and dust descending on the city,

05:13covering everything and everyone.

05:16The invisible, malicious, silent horror of radiation takes its turn.

05:21Every breath carries poison to the lungs of the survivors.

05:25Over the coming days, the people who receive the highest doses of radiation exposure will die.

05:30There will be no help, not for hours or maybe even days.

05:34Civilization doesn't operate when there is a total breakdown of infrastructure.

05:39Roads are blocked, train tracks warped, runways cluttered with rubble.

05:43No water, no electricity, no communication, no stores to replenish supplies from.

05:49Help from surrounding cities will have a hard time entering the disaster zone

05:53and even if they can, the radioactive contamination will make it risky to get too close.

05:59After a nuclear attack, you're on your own.

06:03So, bit by bit, people emerge from the rubble, on foot,

06:07contaminated with radioactive fallout, carrying what little they may have left.

06:11They are slow, in pain, traumatized, and they all need food, water and medical treatment fast.

06:18And the damage done by a nuclear weapon doesn't end when the fires burn out and the smoke clears.

06:24The hospitals in the neighboring cities are under-equipped for a disaster of this scale

06:28and overwhelmed with tens or hundreds of thousands of patients with serious injuries.

06:34In the weeks, months and years to come, many of those who survived will succumb to cancers like leukemia.

06:40The reason no government wants you to think about all this

06:43is because there is no serious humanitarian response possible to a nuclear explosion.

06:49There's no way to really help the immediate victims of a nuclear attack.

06:53This is not a hurricane, wildfire or earthquake or nuclear accident.

06:57It is all of these things at once, but worse.

07:01No nation on Earth is prepared to deal with it.

07:04The world has changed in the past few years,

07:07with world leaders again explicitly and publicly threatening each other with nuclear weapons.

07:13Many experts think the danger of a nuclear strike is higher than it has been in decades.

07:19Governments tell their citizens that it's good that we have nuclear weapons,

07:22but it's bad when anyone else gets them.

07:25That it's somehow necessary to threaten others with mass destruction to keep us safe.

07:31But does this make you feel safe?

07:32It only takes a small group of people with power to go crazy or rogue,

07:37a small misstep or a simple misunderstanding to unleash a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.

07:44Exploding stuff in videos is fun.

07:47Exploding things in real life, not so much.

07:50There is a solution though.

07:53Eliminating all nuclear weapons and vowing never to build them again.

07:57In 2017, almost two-thirds of all the world's countries,

08:01supported by hundreds of civil society organizations and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement,

08:06agreed to prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons.

08:10It's not about who has nuclear weapons and who doesn't.

08:13The weapons themselves are the problem.

08:16They are deeply immoral and an existential threat to all of us.

08:20No matter what country you come from,

08:23no matter what political side you find yourself on,

08:26we need to demand that they disappear forever.

08:29This will not happen without pressure.

08:32If you want to be part of this pressure,

08:34there are things you personally can do too.

08:37Visit notonukes.org to learn more about nuclear weapons

08:40and what you can do about them.

Category

Transcript

Recommended