+Doxie Lain Just wait until you read about Project A119. Granted, it was never actually carried out, but the idea of nuking the Moon as a show of force just because it was easier than sending people there remains a bit conceptually troubling.
Just because you've purchased and used literal tonnes of TNT throughout your life doesn't mean it's a measurement or comparison you'd ever really be able to grasp.
It's kind of nice that the result of the experiment wasn't, "Oh look! If you blow up a nuke in space you upset the Van Allen belts and wipe out all life on earth"!
+S7one_47 &:47 AM, went sleep about 2- AM, im tring to settle my wake time for school, for me right now, not even the energy of a space H-bomb in enough...
Scientist 1: "So we're gonna set off some nukes in space. What do you think we should name our project?" Scientist 2: "Starfish" S1: "How about something cooler, like 'Energy One' or something?" S2: "Fine, 'Starfish PRIME.'" S1: "But..." S2: "STARFISH PRIME"
MrMe1620 Move over, Optimus Prime, Starfish Prime has landed. 😎 A lot of classified projects like this need to be so obscure that they don't allude to any possible characteristics that could be attributed to their actions. At least, when discussed in unclassified areas. Makes for some wicked analogies when we still try to associate the reality with the project's given name though. 😂
To think about all those times nuclear warfare almost started back then... Scary really... And the aliens probably figure that we'd shoot at them anyways even if they came in peace just to see what color their blood was haha.
+URKillingme100 I'm not saying that this guy would consider this, but ISIS lacks the power to do something like that, nor do they have much strength at all.
Why is "tons of TNT" the base unit of measurement for large explosions? I don't often encounter TNT in my daily routine so the analogy doesn't quite hit home. EDIT: sorry to have offended so many of you with this casual observation. I wasn't trying to be pretentious or snarky. This was just intended to start a dialogue. I never claimed to have any answers or alternative solutions. Since I've had time to think about it though I think maybe blast radius would be the most effective visual reference for the average person to get a sense of the force of explosions like this. For example, how many miles away from the point of detonation would you need to be to survive (or remain unharmed from) the initial blast? You could then talk about common reference points like "the explosion from a bomb detonated in City A would reach all the way to City B".
It's a throwback to when it was a common tool for agriculture, construction and mining. Before the 60's you could go to the store, buy a box of TNT and blasting caps and blow up a stump or carve out a hillside for a private road. Furthermore you can gauge energy released by using a known chemical compound such as trinitrotoluene(TNT) by weight. saying something is worth a megaton of TNT is saying it can release as much energy as a million tons of TNT.
This was a fascinating episode - "Starfish Prime" - I'd never heard of it before, but holy hell isn't it perfectly named for something as extreme as a massive nuke detonation in space?
+theQiwiMan Alternatively you could open your mind and do some research, HAARP does exist and was merely the first of its kind. It's not a conspiracy theory you moron, it's the next generation of weaponry and warfare, nukes are already outdated and obsolete. But hey, the Manhattan Project was considered a crazy conspiracy theory in the 1940s too, until the first atomic bomb went off, and then the second.. Grow up.
+Slif_One he's warning you that other people have made theory's revolving around the van Allen belt and he needs to grow up? He never stated his stance or opinion yet on the subject yet.
Belleren "unless you bring your tinfoil hat." < That seems to be his stance, in which case he does need to grow up, most "theories" revolving (HAHA) around the Van Allen Belts involve HAARP and other ELF emitters, of which there are several and they are all very real.
+Slif_One lol,, you don't say it but I'm going to assume you're one of the people who think HAARP can cause storms, and has somehow caused all the major storms lately... Learn to do real research and deductive reasoning instead of reading conspiracy sites. HAARP output approximately 34-39 MEGAwatts of concentrated power.... compare that to a lightning bolt that can be up to 1 TERA watt of power (orders of magnitude higher). Lightning is CAUSED by and is a side effect of storms, and can strike several hundred times during a single storm.... and you somehow think that 34 megawatts can cause storms? It's insignificant compared with the power of the force.. i mean... storm. Some simple reasoning easily puts that particular conspiracy theory down.
beayn I said nothing about HAARP causing storms, but sure just continue to rant anyway.. I'm talking about HAARP itself and the many facilities that came after it, like EISCAT - Which has a MUCH higher output than HAARP since you're making a point of it. The moment HAARP is mentioned there are those ultra originals who use the "tinfoil hat" insult as though it is actually insulting, then they laugh at how intelligent and hilarious they are. The point I am making here is that HAARP is real, as is EISCAT, and JORN, and so on and so forth..
in the 1960's we probably would have been ok. Lots of things would have broken down and we would have been set back 5 or 10 years in electronics but it's nothing like if it had happened in the 80's or 90's
I have met someone on the Internet that reads books \o/ ITS A MIRACLE! Anyway, I'm gonna go somewhere further inland or somewhere high in preparation for wave 2.
I wonder about this. So much red tape regarding nuclear weapons and their testing. But the USA is far more advanced in space exploration than any other nation and it's easily within their capabilities to send a nuke up on say, the x37, and launch it out into some empty region of space and blow it up. they could position it near the sun, or far away, so no one would be able to see it from earth. If I were running things, that's the first place i would think of to keep something hidden.
+SunFlightx I don't think it'll go undetected with the huge constellations of Iridium, GPS, Glonass and other satellited that cover every spot on the world. Also the "NASA is far more advanced in space explorstion than any other country" is a bit extreme, I don't think the difference is so high, they just happen to have a super high budget (about 8 times more than Russia for example).
I watched Starfish Prime from Honolulu at the age of 8. It looked very weird. The EMP effects were so minimal that they got little attention, at least for the average person, and weren't publicized much till the 1980s.
Y'know what I'd love to see: a scientific explanation of how EMPs actually work. By what mechanisms do they disrupt electronics and machinery? Are there any types of mechanisms that are immune? What kind of damage is produced? What sort of effects do EMPs have on living biology?
The Fishbowl series of nuclear tests were all tests carried to very high altitudes by rockets launched from Johnston Atoll 200 miles southwest of Hawaii. The first Starfish was aborted 59 seconds after launch when it veered off the preplanned track (mainly straight up) over the atoll. The second attempt at the same plan was Starfish Prime,. Another of the series, Bluegill went through Bluegill, which was lost to tracking five minutes after launch and destroyed from the ground, Bluegill Prime, which exploded on the launch pad, Bluegill Double Prime, destroyed from the ground after booster failure 65 seconds after liftoff, and finally Bluegill Triple Prime which exploded as planned at 48,300 meters (30 miles) up with a yield of 1.5 megatons. Other tests in the Fishbowl series were Checkmate, Tightrope, Kingfish, and Urraca, this last cancelled for fear of destroying more satellites than the others had; it was planned for a 400 mile altitude.
play mw2, even that game understated an emps ability. The whole world really needs to start funding the use of stronger emp insulation (such prevention technology exists).
The source for the 90% number is rather underwhelming, a WSJ article. As per my own asking of subject matter expert, I was given this article to read over: foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/24/the-empire-strikes-back/ Basically, the numbers are VERY speculative. Many of the doom and gloom mentioned wasn't able to be replicated, and overstated from the events that have occurred in the past. While the impacts could be very large, 90% mortality is likely not a good number. Additional source: fas.org/irp/threat/mctl98-2/p2sec06.pdf
The more I think about it, the more I start to believe that 90% over 12 months could be realistic. On one hand, I have enough faith in humanity to believe that international aid from Europe and Asia would start coming in, and keep coming in until necessary infrastructure was repaired. But on the other, if the world was crippled by something like a solar flare, then I could see things snowballing into madness. If food can't be shipped around the country, famine becomes a huge risk. So if oil can't be refined, pumped, shipped, and sold, then gas supply plummets driving gas prices incredibly high, farmers can't afford to power their tractors, distributors can't afford to ship, thus driving the price of food incredibly high. Add in the stock market crashing, banks losing account details, and computer heavy businesses losing producticty leading to layoffs, causing unemployment to sky rocket. Now people are poor and starving, it's only a matter of time before riots and looting become a means of survival. Also factor in the water pumps failing, and I could see 90% of the population dieing.
TheJaredtheJaredlong The problem with "thinking about it" and science based on evidence is one is based self-reaffirming biases and the other on evidence. There is little justification for a 90% rigorously, be careful not to fool yourself with anecdotes.
Christopher Willis I agree with that. I looked at the articles you shared I didn't see any hard data for how an EMP would affect peoples livelihoods. They point out that EMP's have the power to ruin electronic devices over large areas, but no data or model on how the loss of those devices will have interconnected consequences. I'm not even sure where that data would even come from. I'll admit I didn't check all the in-text links, so if I missed something please point me in the right direct, I'm really curious about all this.
TheJaredtheJaredlong Yup, you nailed the uncertainty aspect of it. The data isn't very robust. Now, that isn't to say this isn't something bad, but the scale of it hasn't been modeled well. The overall impacts are basically speculative. I agree with the main jist of the video, but that 90% number is just to dubious to be defended with any rigor. And I really did try to quantify that 90% number in the report the WSJ article covered, and I just couldn't find anything remotely that large. But all that to say it is still something we should avoid, hardening infrastructure isn't an idea worth tossing out either.
That last line about making the aftermath is really incredibly dark the more you think about it. Because instead of it being chemical/physics-based in the way it kills, and the affected area could be avoided, this aftermath would just expose everyone to the horrors of mankind when you limit resources, everyone in the affected area would kill everyone else just to stay alive.
If anybody would like to read an interesting take on the effects of an EMP on a country-wide scale I'd recommend reading "One Second After: by William. R. Forstchen. It covers what life would be like following an attack on the continental United States, but the realities could be applied to any country. Not overly scientific or exact in the reality of a situation like that, but it tackles some tough issues and lends to a relatable character.
+Hayden Wilson an emp on my country would be far less devastating than on the USA, we have a smart grid that avoids overloads (works against anything from lightning to emp's to solar flares) america should seriously stop wasting all it's cash on silly stuff like their ridiculously overfinanced army and build some actual modern infrastructure. my teacher used to compare america's power grid to that of africa (i'm an electrician)
Bart De Bock I've heard of methods of shielding or "hardening" electronics against EMP, but I hadn't done much research into where they are actually being used. That being said I know my country (Canada) also has limited protection. The smart grids sound interesting, I wonder what their limits are.
+Bart De Bock agreed on the part that USA needs a smart grid system. Not on the expences that it makes on their forces. Europe's army's are all underfunded. USA needs to compensate for that fact. It's a shame really....
I dont understand why are they so irresponsible. They had no idea what would happen to the van allen belt. Fortunately the van allen belt made auroas. But imagine what would happen if they destroyed the van allen belt...
Actually that would have rocked. We'd be able to launch satellites in a much larger set of orbits, we could have high-altitude space stations instead of them being confined to the LEO 90-minute orbit like the ISS. The Van Allen belts are a pain the in the arse.
Collin Gentry I think you're right. Properly, the Van Allen belts are just the radiation trapped by the magnetic fields, not the magnetic fields themselves. But it's easy to combine them in one's mind, so that when you hear "destroying the belts" you think of destroying the fields. Which would probably require more energy than we've got available, even if we knew how to do it.
I remember as a kid going to bed at my grandmother's house after dark around 8 PM in the late summer. I woke up a couple of hours later and the sky was light like sunset and had an orange glow too. All of the neighbors were outside looking up in the sky saying "WTF !" That was in the early '60s and I found out much later that the event was probably because of a test similar to what was mentioned in the video. Edit: BTW, I was near Chicago at the time, so the test's effects ranged a lot farther away than what is stated in the video. My guess is that it was a test above Nevada, New Mexico or Utah that is still classified.
+Andrew LaMore 1 ton of tnt, which is actually metric ton, in cases like this is defined as exactly 4.184 billion joules. an actual ton of tnt varries pretty widely in actual joule output so they defined it as roughly the median output. Coincidentally 1 ton of tnt is also the equivalent of 1 million kilocalorie, which is labeled as just 1 calorie in the US on food, so you can actually measure the energy release in food.
+illudian And with that logic, I can charge my Galaxy S6 about 77 times with a whopper. (1 burger king whopper = 649kC = 2717kJ = 1000*2717/3600 WH = 754WH / 9.82WH battery = 77 times.) However when I plug my phone into the burger, nothing happens :( Would be like the best power bank if it worked.
+Eccentric “Vixie” Vixen brah ikr +Connor O'Brien personally i felt AW was worse than Ghosts; At least Ghosts brought us something original to cod at least - cryptids/ extinction. I really hated AW's Zombies copy and paste.
@2:01 Not gonna lie, I kinda admire the sheer caveman simplicity of the 1960s space approach. "What would happen if there was a monkey in space?" "I dunno, chuck one up and see." "What about dogs?" "How would I know? Chuck one up too" "What would happen if nukes exploded in space?" "I dunno, blow bunch up in space and see."
We are at more risk of a Solar EMP then a Nuclear weapon EMP. The US and the Russians are likely the only ones that have true EMP Weapons and they are design to do small areas and our National Grid is now safer then ever because of the Black out in 2003. The system will Isolate the areas into Islands due to Over Current and Undervoltage protective Relays. Also EMPs are experience quite frequently, Lighting puts off Huge Local EMPs everyday.
I was hoping she would talk about its blast effects. Can we actually blow-up a asteroid? There isnt much atoms in space so can we even have an explosion? How can a chain reaction continue without much atoms around?
If there is any other intelligent life within our solar system, or our neighboring solar systems I think that the nuke we detonated in space got their attention, if they haven't already been aware of us. Something else on my mind is the question: Does anybody wonder if nuclear explosions affect other dimensions as well?
1: there is no possible form of intelligent life within our own solar system, and the blast from a 1.4 megaton bomb is so insignificant that its highly unlikely for it to travel to another solar system, and 2: no, since if you would believe in the possibility of overlapping dimensions, they would need a non physical barrier that prevents effects from one dimension to cross over to another.
@NextTimeTech The organisms we've found on any other planet within our solar system (so far) are extremely basic - if intelligent life were to eventually, _somehow,_ evolve from these creatures organically (before said planets get the chance to collapse, etc.) - it'll be billions of years after the human species has already died out, moved to another universe or to a completely different section of this one, etc. Best case scenario some distant civilization could have caught the information from far away, but due to distance the information would have to travel, they'd basically be looking at that day so far in the future that it wouldn't even matter. As for the second question: Not by our current understanding, but maybe. We're capable of naturally observing only four of the dimensions that govern our universe, and theoretically that's less than half of those that exist. LHC experiments are constantly ongoing, but we haven't really made too much progress so far to figuring out if that's even true. There are theories of sub-dimensions as well (Like Stephen Hawking's theory regarding the sub-dimension of time, which I personally firmly believe). So yeah, maybe. Even if it does, it didn't seem to matter, at least to us, so far. We're not really even sure what the rest of the dimensions actually are and what they do, and what affects them, if at all, and if they even actually exist. It's just a question that brings up a lot of even more complex questions that we are not even close to answering, and probably won't be for generations, if ever. Solemn, but that's the truth, yo. Dimensions be crazy. ...Also, a dimension and a universe are not at all the same thing. I just wanted to throw in my input in case you actually meant *_dimensions_* and not _multi-verse_ theory.
полая корона yes and no. Black holes tend to warp sight of reality around its horizon. We honestly don’t know if our solar system is currently being sucked into a black hole or if we have a asteroid heading right towards us but the reality is that even our star which produces explosions as many as 100,000,000,000 times the power of the atomic bomb in contless explosions of hydrogen now compared to that our star isn’t even big enough to even go supernova to form a black hole... when our star runs out of hydrogen to fuel it it will start to expand and consume the 4 closes planets and we will see the star won’t even explode because it will consume all the hydrogen of the earth which who knows will happen at that point because scientists haven’t studied how much hydrogen on the earth will effect the sun after hitting critical mass... than it will shrink and create a tense gravitational force that will only be a fraction of its force moments after forming a brown dwarf star...
NextTimeTech 1. There is no intelligent life in the Solar System, at least not one that could notice anything from us. If they could notice us, we'd see some evidence of their existence. 2. There is only one Solar System, that's the name of our star system.
lets be honest, the average person likely wouldn't even be able to start a fire without matches or a lighter. and hunting? at best they might catch something small, but what are the odd most would know how to skin and clean what they caught? most would probably end up with food poisoning after their first squirrel. to say the least of starting a farm from scratch, or making clothes and such. and this isn't even counting the fact that there would mass chaos and people murdering each other over food, shelter, or, at least at first, over fucking tvs and shit.
The tests where made at relatively low altitude within Earth's magnetosphere. I suspect that one detonated near, or farther than, the Moon would behave differently. Far enough from any planet, the EMP could well be much smaller, or even non-existent.
Oh lovely. I was finally starting to think that perhaps nukes weren't mind crushingly deadly enough. now I know about EMPs. Thanks SciShow for robbing me of my peace of mind!
If you've found this video interesting I would recommend reading the novel "One Second After" by William Forstchen. Really great story about an American town dealing with life after the country is attacked with high altitude nuclear weapons.
NO, like real space. Put the bomb on a rocket and send it between the orbit of Mars and Jupiter for example and then detonate it. That would be a real explosion in space.
Breathe, breathe, breathe... I could not make it to the end of the video, it was like listening to some excited kid telling you what they did down at the beach, or at a party, or what they wanted for Christmas.
At 2:48 that was "Checkmate", a 60 kiloton test at 91 miles altitude from 19Oct1962. The next one that looks like a red aurora or smudge is "Starfish Prime", 1.4 MEGAton test at 248 miles altitude, 09Jul1962. Scary stuff! Cool video.
There is a great book on this called "one second after". It's a great story detailing how people in the USA would survive a high-altitude EMP attack. Basically, 70% of people in the US died. It was a scary read.
I like to imagine a large amount of authorities in the 50s were like Cave Johnson. " What's this? A new discovery? Let's try something ridiculously dangerous, like finding a way to test nukes with it!"
Saw that PDF file I somehow stumbled on years ago. Didn't read the whole thing, but skimming through it told me enough. (NSA, it was a site found through google, in case you were wondering)
Leviathan Dude by the look of her she has the Chromosomes of a Guinea Pig along with a VIP card for pets at home, that's where she is groomed on a monthly basis... Because of the lack of hits on her Video she couldn't afford it this month so its running a bit overdue.
Radiation so high that the Geiger counter seemed broken! And never a straight answer NASA put a man on the moon..... The Apollo missions flew right through the Van Allen belts! Think about that one!
"So nukes are not good anywhere?" Considering that the Sun and stars in general ARE huge nuclear reactors this would not be true as without it we die. The nuclear power haters are Ostriches with their heads in the sand.
Van Allen: Hey, we discovered something new and unexpected!
Military: Let's send a nuke into it and see what happens!
The 50's in a nutshell.
+Doxie Lain
what a time to be alive
Correct
+Doxie Lain Just wait until you read about Project A119. Granted, it was never actually carried out, but the idea of nuking the Moon as a show of force just because it was easier than sending people there remains a bit conceptually troubling.
Not until Captain Price detonated a nuke above Washington DC. XD
+Samrux Ahem, *Groovy*.
USSR: We should ban high altitude nuke testing!
USA: I agree!
USSR: I'm gonna keep doing it though.
USA: Same.
Prisoners Dilemma in a nutshell 😐
There is no solution from this deadlock without sustained public pressure in both countries. Or a defense system that makes nukes redundant
But then if one country disables the others defense system then M.A.D no longer applies and one can nuke the other
Lol right
The solution is to make the earth be one country
they always convert to "the amount of zillion tonnes of TNT"
as if we all detonate tnt everyday or if we are all familiar with it
yeah they should convert it to how many match strikes it is.
Just because you never purchased and used TNT as a kid doesn't mean everyone was raised in a bubble.
"..and that converts to about 4 billion blackcat firecrackers!.."
Just because you've purchased and used literal tonnes of TNT throughout your life doesn't mean it's a measurement or comparison you'd ever really be able to grasp.
Nokty
yes it does.
It's kind of nice that the result of the experiment wasn't, "Oh look! If you blow up a nuke in space you upset the Van Allen belts and wipe out all life on earth"!
Brilliant comment.
Yeah!Because we were very stupid trying that.😉
I'm just glad a v.small number of non-altruistic individuals got to decide it for all of us.. aren't you?
The way she explains that an EMP could wipe out 90% of the U.S. population is just so cheery! She almost makes it sound appealing.
russians: write that down!
Because it Is?
"This could make nuclear missiles more dangerous, let's test and find out"
*Makes nuclear explosions way more dangerous than they thought*
"Whelp"
The 60s was a scary time to live
UMMMMM LOOK AT THE HERE AND NOW?!?!? GUESS TF NOT XD
Not if you were white
Good thing we ducked under our desks
Seems like they had a ton of fun though
60's... people too busy getting high and getting stds.
Van Allen: I have made an amazing scientific discovery!
America: but can we nuke it tho.
This girls energy is great, you can really tell she loves what she's doing and what she's talking about.
+Billy Mays Shut up, Billy.
+S7one_47 &:47 AM, went sleep about 2- AM, im tring to settle my wake time for school, for me right now, not even the energy of a space H-bomb in enough...
+James Odom this comment made me laugh way more than it should've, thanks
+GreenShot thanks for your opinion no one gives a fuck about
+Belleren I want more hank :( BUT NO ONE RLLY CARES Btw u just gave a fuck
Scientist 1: "So we're gonna set off some nukes in space. What do you think we should name our project?"
Scientist 2: "Starfish"
S1: "How about something cooler, like 'Energy One' or something?"
S2: "Fine, 'Starfish PRIME.'"
S1: "But..."
S2: "STARFISH PRIME"
MrMe1620 Move over, Optimus Prime, Starfish Prime has landed. 😎
A lot of classified projects like this need to be so obscure that they don't allude to any possible characteristics that could be attributed to their actions. At least, when discussed in unclassified areas. Makes for some wicked analogies when we still try to associate the reality with the project's given name though. 😂
XD
LOL
Operation fishbowl
We ship sea creatures with next day shipping
Jesus. I'm surprised we as a whole made it out of the 60s. Also, no wonder why aliens won't visit us...
To think about all those times nuclear warfare almost started back then... Scary really... And the aliens probably figure that we'd shoot at them anyways even if they came in peace just to see what color their blood was haha.
No, that’s WHY they DO visit us and that’s the era(60s) when they started being seen by so many people. Photos and video and what not
I was about to say, "boy, we used to be really dumb" but then I realized... not much has changed on that front.
"Activating emp"
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me!"
great now aliens knows our one weakness
+boy638 ONE weakness???!??!?
+boy638 Why aliens? Why not Isis or the Taliban or any of those death mongers?
Cause they would be tnuke if they do tha
+URKillingme100 I'm not saying that this guy would consider this, but ISIS lacks the power to do something like that, nor do they have much strength at all.
just reminds me of " The 5th wave"
Why is "tons of TNT" the base unit of measurement for large explosions? I don't often encounter TNT in my daily routine so the analogy doesn't quite hit home.
EDIT: sorry to have offended so many of you with this casual observation. I wasn't trying to be pretentious or snarky. This was just intended to start a dialogue. I never claimed to have any answers or alternative solutions. Since I've had time to think about it though I think maybe blast radius would be the most effective visual reference for the average person to get a sense of the force of explosions like this. For example, how many miles away from the point of detonation would you need to be to survive (or remain unharmed from) the initial blast? You could then talk about common reference points like "the explosion from a bomb detonated in City A would reach all the way to City B".
What type of high explosive do you often encounter that would be a better unit?
It's a throwback to when it was a common tool for agriculture, construction and mining. Before the 60's you could go to the store, buy a box of TNT and blasting caps and blow up a stump or carve out a hillside for a private road.
Furthermore you can gauge energy released by using a known chemical compound such as trinitrotoluene(TNT) by weight. saying something is worth a megaton of TNT is saying it can release as much energy as a million tons of TNT.
+James01100011 the little pop it's from the dollar store would be a nice unit. :P obvious sarcasm
Skywrith Ahnhana
I understand what it means. I'm saying the analogy is dated.
+lumburgapalooza Like the horse power.
This was a fascinating episode - "Starfish Prime" - I'd never heard of it before, but holy hell isn't it perfectly named for something as extreme as a massive nuke detonation in space?
0:04 She said Risky Business, now I want to take my old records off the shelf.
You must be a dad.
+drink15 feel good about that? feel good about what you said? are you proud?
+drink15 And just listen to them by myself.
PRO-TIP: Don't search for more "Van Allen Belt" RUclips videos, unless you bring your tinfoil hat.
+theQiwiMan Alternatively you could open your mind and do some research, HAARP does exist and was merely the first of its kind. It's not a conspiracy theory you moron, it's the next generation of weaponry and warfare, nukes are already outdated and obsolete. But hey, the Manhattan Project was considered a crazy conspiracy theory in the 1940s too, until the first atomic bomb went off, and then the second.. Grow up.
+Slif_One he's warning you that other people have made theory's revolving around the van Allen belt and he needs to grow up? He never stated his stance or opinion yet on the subject yet.
Belleren "unless you bring your tinfoil hat." < That seems to be his stance, in which case he does need to grow up, most "theories" revolving (HAHA) around the Van Allen Belts involve HAARP and other ELF emitters, of which there are several and they are all very real.
+Slif_One lol,, you don't say it but I'm going to assume you're one of the people who think HAARP can cause storms, and has somehow caused all the major storms lately... Learn to do real research and deductive reasoning instead of reading conspiracy sites. HAARP output approximately 34-39 MEGAwatts of concentrated power.... compare that to a lightning bolt that can be up to 1 TERA watt of power (orders of magnitude higher). Lightning is CAUSED by and is a side effect of storms, and can strike several hundred times during a single storm.... and you somehow think that 34 megawatts can cause storms? It's insignificant compared with the power of the force.. i mean... storm. Some simple reasoning easily puts that particular conspiracy theory down.
beayn I said nothing about HAARP causing storms, but sure just continue to rant anyway.. I'm talking about HAARP itself and the many facilities that came after it, like EISCAT - Which has a MUCH higher output than HAARP since you're making a point of it.
The moment HAARP is mentioned there are those ultra originals who use the "tinfoil hat" insult as though it is actually insulting, then they laugh at how intelligent and hilarious they are. The point I am making here is that HAARP is real, as is EISCAT, and JORN, and so on and so forth..
Starfish Prime, the long-lost brother of Optimus Prime, who can transform into a sub.
Good thing they tested that above the ocean. Imagine a test going horribly wrong and half the US or some other country would go dark.
pretty dumb to test it at all. if something went wrong the full ocean would've been radiated = no more sushi = no more life
Solar Aqier
That wouldn't have been a plausible outcome.
in the 1960's we probably would have been ok. Lots of things would have broken down and we would have been set back 5 or 10 years in electronics but it's nothing like if it had happened in the 80's or 90's
It has started... The first wave...
Lol I read that
+GamePowerHour same
I have met someone on the Internet that reads books \o/ ITS A MIRACLE! Anyway, I'm gonna go somewhere further inland or somewhere high in preparation for wave 2.
***** Really? I have only read the book and hopefully I'll go watch the movie this weekend. Is it THAT bad? the book is pretty good.
I never knew we blew up bombs in space
I wonder about this. So much red tape regarding nuclear weapons and their testing. But the USA is far more advanced in space exploration than any other nation and it's easily within their capabilities to send a nuke up on say, the x37, and launch it out into some empty region of space and blow it up. they could position it near the sun, or far away, so no one would be able to see it from earth. If I were running things, that's the first place i would think of to keep something hidden.
+Joshua Chow : We tried to blow up bomb on the ground, under the ground, on the sea, under the sea, in space...
+SunFlightx I don't think it'll go undetected with the huge constellations of Iridium, GPS, Glonass and other satellited that cover every spot on the world. Also the "NASA is far more advanced in space explorstion than any other country" is a bit extreme, I don't think the difference is so high, they just happen to have a super high budget (about 8 times more than Russia for example).
+SunFlightx We are so far advanced we gp to space on Russian rockets. Durp.
+Joshua Chow I never knew humans did crazy fucking shit
What a cheerful way to talk about this kind of topic.
I watched Starfish Prime from Honolulu at the age of 8. It looked very weird. The EMP effects were so minimal that they got little attention, at least for the average person, and weren't publicized much till the 1980s.
thats cool
Y'know what I'd love to see: a scientific explanation of how EMPs actually work. By what mechanisms do they disrupt electronics and machinery? Are there any types of mechanisms that are immune? What kind of damage is produced? What sort of effects do EMPs have on living biology?
Biologically nothing but if you have a pace maker your dead it’s like unplugging the battery of your car for a second and plugging it back in
Solluminati??
NoLimitDaniel23 you already know
You know da vibes
J2Saucy yuh spiritual so
U alrdy know it man
The Fishbowl series of nuclear tests were all tests carried to very high altitudes by rockets launched from Johnston Atoll 200 miles southwest of Hawaii. The first Starfish was aborted 59 seconds after launch when it veered off the preplanned track (mainly straight up) over the atoll. The second attempt at the same plan was Starfish Prime,. Another of the series, Bluegill went through Bluegill, which was lost to tracking five minutes after launch and destroyed from the ground, Bluegill Prime, which exploded on the launch pad, Bluegill Double Prime, destroyed from the ground after booster failure 65 seconds after liftoff, and finally Bluegill Triple Prime which exploded as planned at 48,300 meters (30 miles) up with a yield of 1.5 megatons. Other tests in the Fishbowl series were Checkmate, Tightrope, Kingfish, and Urraca, this last cancelled for fear of destroying more satellites than the others had; it was planned for a 400 mile altitude.
ET intervened
@@anniekirts6621 how do you know?
@@VPNAnonymous sounds like wiki writing, as that sounds like their format but I am too lazy to look it up
Love the enthusiasm and clarity of this presenter!
I never realised how powerful an EMP can be.
play mw2, even that game understated an emps ability.
The whole world really needs to start funding the use of stronger emp insulation (such prevention technology exists).
+The Earls Renegade There were no EMP's in MechWarrior 2.
+poisonhemlock who the eff plays MechWarrior 2 XD?!?!? He's referring to the more widely known Modern Warfare 2.
+Not So Pro Gamer xD
+poisonhemlock wtf??
+Demigodish4o3
You know how to put out an oil fire?
The source for the 90% number is rather underwhelming, a WSJ article. As per my own asking of subject matter expert, I was given this article to read over: foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/24/the-empire-strikes-back/
Basically, the numbers are VERY speculative. Many of the doom and gloom mentioned wasn't able to be replicated, and overstated from the events that have occurred in the past. While the impacts could be very large, 90% mortality is likely not a good number.
Additional source: fas.org/irp/threat/mctl98-2/p2sec06.pdf
+Christopher Willis Further reading, nuking a satellite!! medium.com/war-is-boring/testing-satellites-by-nuking-them-3c3c42e3c040#.paaaqj6dl
The more I think about it, the more I start to believe that 90% over 12 months could be realistic. On one hand, I have enough faith in humanity to believe that international aid from Europe and Asia would start coming in, and keep coming in until necessary infrastructure was repaired. But on the other, if the world was crippled by something like a solar flare, then I could see things snowballing into madness. If food can't be shipped around the country, famine becomes a huge risk. So if oil can't be refined, pumped, shipped, and sold, then gas supply plummets driving gas prices incredibly high, farmers can't afford to power their tractors, distributors can't afford to ship, thus driving the price of food incredibly high. Add in the stock market crashing, banks losing account details,
and computer heavy businesses losing producticty leading to layoffs, causing unemployment to sky rocket. Now people are poor and starving, it's only a matter of time before riots and looting become a means of survival. Also factor in the water pumps failing, and I could see 90%
of the population dieing.
TheJaredtheJaredlong The problem with "thinking about it" and science based on evidence is one is based self-reaffirming biases and the other on evidence. There is little justification for a 90% rigorously, be careful not to fool yourself with anecdotes.
Christopher Willis I agree with that. I looked at the articles you shared I didn't see any hard data for how an EMP would affect peoples livelihoods. They point out that EMP's have the power to ruin electronic devices over large areas, but no data or model on how the loss of those devices will have interconnected consequences. I'm not even sure where that data would even come from. I'll admit I didn't check all the in-text links, so if I missed something please point me in the right direct, I'm really curious about all this.
TheJaredtheJaredlong Yup, you nailed the uncertainty aspect of it. The data isn't very robust. Now, that isn't to say this isn't something bad, but the scale of it hasn't been modeled well. The overall impacts are basically speculative. I agree with the main jist of the video, but that 90% number is just to dubious to be defended with any rigor.
And I really did try to quantify that 90% number in the report the WSJ article covered, and I just couldn't find anything remotely that large. But all that to say it is still something we should avoid, hardening infrastructure isn't an idea worth tossing out either.
This is how the world is going to end.
That last line about making the aftermath is really incredibly dark the more you think about it. Because instead of it being chemical/physics-based in the way it kills, and the affected area could be avoided, this aftermath would just expose everyone to the horrors of mankind when you limit resources, everyone in the affected area would kill everyone else just to stay alive.
That is Exactly It.
And it will be Wonderful, and Terrible
If anybody would like to read an interesting take on the effects of an EMP on a country-wide scale I'd recommend reading "One Second After: by William. R. Forstchen. It covers what life would be like following an attack on the continental United States, but the realities could be applied to any country. Not overly scientific or exact in the reality of a situation like that, but it tackles some tough issues and lends to a relatable character.
+Hayden Wilson an emp on my country would be far less devastating than on the USA, we have a smart grid that avoids overloads (works against anything from lightning to emp's to solar flares)
america should seriously stop wasting all it's cash on silly stuff like their ridiculously overfinanced army and build some actual modern infrastructure.
my teacher used to compare america's power grid to that of africa (i'm an electrician)
+Bart De Bock An rmp would still break the circuitry controlling said grids, rendering then useless.
Bart De Bock I've heard of methods of shielding or "hardening" electronics against EMP, but I hadn't done much research into where they are actually being used. That being said I know my country (Canada) also has limited protection. The smart grids sound interesting, I wonder what their limits are.
+Bart De Bock agreed on the part that USA needs a smart grid system. Not on the expences that it makes on their forces. Europe's army's are all underfunded. USA needs to compensate for that fact. It's a shame really....
+thijsi27 We spend more on the military than the next twelve countries combined I think they have PLENTY of funding.
Been away for a while... forgot just how bad Caitlin flails her arms around senselessly when she talks.
I really enjoy the videos presented by this woman, she has like a lot of enthusiasm for what's she's talking about.
Great job, guys at scishow!
Most people would die within a week without an iPhone.
What kind of karate is she practicing? Those hand movements look dangerous.
I dont understand why are they so irresponsible. They had no idea what would happen to the van allen belt. Fortunately the van allen belt made auroas. But imagine what would happen if they destroyed the van allen belt...
Actually that would have rocked. We'd be able to launch satellites in a much larger set of orbits, we could have high-altitude space stations instead of them being confined to the LEO 90-minute orbit like the ISS. The Van Allen belts are a pain the in the arse.
The Van Allen belts keep a lot of solar and cosmic radiation off Earth. Things would get unhealthy down here on the ground without the belts.
Do they? I always figured they were a consequence of our magnetic field, and if the belts were destroyed, would start to reform
Collin Gentry I think you're right. Properly, the Van Allen belts are just the radiation trapped by the magnetic fields, not the magnetic fields themselves. But it's easy to combine them in one's mind, so that when you hear "destroying the belts" you think of destroying the fields. Which would probably require more energy than we've got available, even if we knew how to do it.
Had those tests damaged or weakened the Van Allen Belts right before a Coronal Mass Ejection, we might not be here to ask questions at all...
The presenter did an awesome job. Truly an eye-opening video
"It was also the biggest bomb ever set off in space"
Bold of you to assume we're the only planet with explosives
Spiritual so in the building stargazing so in the building
Thanks guys. I didn't know it before but I'm still trying to figure out how the military for the idea for detonating nuke.
She speaks at a pace that's easy for me to understand. GOOD JOB.
I remember as a kid going to bed at my grandmother's house after dark around 8 PM in the late summer. I woke up a couple of hours later and the sky was light like sunset and had an orange glow too. All of the neighbors were outside looking up in the sky saying "WTF !" That was in the early '60s and I found out much later that the event was probably because of a test similar to what was mentioned in the video.
Edit: BTW, I was near Chicago at the time, so the test's effects ranged a lot farther away than what is stated in the video. My guess is that it was a test above Nevada, New Mexico or Utah that is still classified.
Why do we still use TNT to measure nuclear blasts? I don't even know how large a 1 ton explosion of TNT would be.
+Andrew LaMore What else would one use? Nothing explosive immediately comes to my mind
+Nontheistism 1 hiroshima.
+Andrew LaMore 1 ton of tnt, which is actually metric ton, in cases like this is defined as exactly 4.184 billion joules. an actual ton of tnt varries pretty widely in actual joule output so they defined it as roughly the median output. Coincidentally 1 ton of tnt is also the equivalent of 1 million kilocalorie, which is labeled as just 1 calorie in the US on food, so you can actually measure the energy release in food.
+illudian And with that logic, I can charge my Galaxy S6 about 77 times with a whopper. (1 burger king whopper = 649kC = 2717kJ = 1000*2717/3600 WH = 754WH / 9.82WH battery = 77 times.) However when I plug my phone into the burger, nothing happens :( Would be like the best power bank if it worked.
Power Max yea but you would have to figure out how to get the energy out of a burger at a rate many thousands of times faster.
The internet is a dream from which we will all one day be rudely awakened
You KNOW when ussr makes a law limiting the use of nuclear bombs that there is a good reason for it.
Thankyou for not beating around the bush. Just straight to the point excellent
Wasn't this part of the plot for Metal Gear Solid 2?
and cod MW2
+The Earls Renegade probable quite a few
+The Earls Renegade that was like, the last good cod. black ops 1, and the modern warfare series, and advanced warfare are the only good cod
Call of Duty has plot?
+Eccentric “Vixie” Vixen
brah ikr
+Connor O'Brien personally i felt AW was worse than Ghosts; At least Ghosts brought us something original to cod at least - cryptids/ extinction. I really hated AW's Zombies copy and paste.
Who’s here from solluminatti’s vid
Rocket Jackson me
Me
Wassup with y’all young.......boi’s
More like jre with Alex Jones
That feeling when you, for once, already know something science related even before watching the video! FeelsGoodMan.
@2:01 Not gonna lie, I kinda admire the sheer caveman simplicity of the 1960s space approach. "What would happen if there was a monkey in space?" "I dunno, chuck one up and see." "What about dogs?" "How would I know? Chuck one up too" "What would happen if nukes exploded in space?" "I dunno, blow bunch up in space and see."
We are at more risk of a Solar EMP then a Nuclear weapon EMP. The US and the Russians are likely the only ones that have true EMP Weapons and they are design to do small areas and our National Grid is now safer then ever because of the Black out in 2003. The system will Isolate the areas into Islands due to Over Current and Undervoltage protective Relays. Also EMPs are experience quite frequently, Lighting puts off Huge Local EMPs everyday.
is it only me that just goes: "fuck sake its not hank"
Has he ever hosted SciShow Space? He's on the regular SciShow channel a lot, but I'm not sure I've ever seen him on this one...
yeahh i began to realise that when i noticed there were two channels ahah
bwhahaha I thought I was alone
Im exactly the same
david bell same
I've got to say, Caitlin Hofmeister your last name is one of the most badass last names ive ever seen.
She looks so adorable with the excited hand gestures and expressions. Awesome video btw
I was hoping she would talk about its blast effects. Can we actually blow-up a asteroid? There isnt much atoms in space so can we even have an explosion? How can a chain reaction continue without much atoms around?
Spiritual so?
This is so interesting! I also love your hair
This video is intense. I was not expecting a mind melting video.
love sishowww
If there is any other intelligent life within our solar system, or our neighboring solar systems I think that the nuke we detonated in space got their attention, if they haven't already been aware of us.
Something else on my mind is the question: Does anybody wonder if nuclear explosions affect other dimensions as well?
1: there is no possible form of intelligent life within our own solar system, and the blast from a 1.4 megaton bomb is so insignificant that its highly unlikely for it to travel to another solar system, and 2: no, since if you would believe in the possibility of overlapping dimensions, they would need a non physical barrier that prevents effects from one dimension to cross over to another.
@NextTimeTech
The organisms we've found on any other planet within our solar system (so far) are extremely basic - if intelligent life were to eventually, _somehow,_ evolve from these creatures organically (before said planets get the chance to collapse, etc.) - it'll be billions of years after the human species has already died out, moved to another universe or to a completely different section of this one, etc.
Best case scenario some distant civilization could have caught the information from far away, but due to distance the information would have to travel, they'd basically be looking at that day so far in the future that it wouldn't even matter.
As for the second question: Not by our current understanding, but maybe. We're capable of naturally observing only four of the dimensions that govern our universe, and theoretically that's less than half of those that exist. LHC experiments are constantly ongoing, but we haven't really made too much progress so far to figuring out if that's even true. There are theories of sub-dimensions as well (Like Stephen Hawking's theory regarding the sub-dimension of time, which I personally firmly believe).
So yeah, maybe. Even if it does, it didn't seem to matter, at least to us, so far. We're not really even sure what the rest of the dimensions actually are and what they do, and what affects them, if at all, and if they even actually exist.
It's just a question that brings up a lot of even more complex questions that we are not even close to answering, and probably won't be for generations, if ever. Solemn, but that's the truth, yo. Dimensions be crazy.
...Also, a dimension and a universe are not at all the same thing. I just wanted to throw in my input in case you actually meant *_dimensions_* and not _multi-verse_ theory.
полая корона yes and no. Black holes tend to warp sight of reality around its horizon. We honestly don’t know if our solar system is currently being sucked into a black hole or if we have a asteroid heading right towards us but the reality is that even our star which produces explosions as many as 100,000,000,000 times the power of the atomic bomb in contless explosions of hydrogen now compared to that our star isn’t even big enough to even go supernova to form a black hole... when our star runs out of hydrogen to fuel it it will start to expand and consume the 4 closes planets and we will see the star won’t even explode because it will consume all the hydrogen of the earth which who knows will happen at that point because scientists haven’t studied how much hydrogen on the earth will effect the sun after hitting critical mass... than it will shrink and create a tense gravitational force that will only be a fraction of its force moments after forming a brown dwarf star...
Other dimension?
NextTimeTech
1. There is no intelligent life in the Solar System, at least not one that could notice anything from us. If they could notice us, we'd see some evidence of their existence.
2. There is only one Solar System, that's the name of our star system.
Its amazing how many times we "stumble" upon something.
Does Caitlin have a podcast? I could listen to her talk excitedly about space all day.
Don't forget that the blast destroyed our [british] satellite.
#neverforget
Just from intuition. 90% dead in just a year? That sounds like nonsense to me. Even with the loss of heating for winter and lack of food.
lets be honest, the average person likely wouldn't even be able to start a fire without matches or a lighter. and hunting? at best they might catch something small, but what are the odd most would know how to skin and clean what they caught? most would probably end up with food poisoning after their first squirrel. to say the least of starting a farm from scratch, or making clothes and such.
and this isn't even counting the fact that there would mass chaos and people murdering each other over food, shelter, or, at least at first, over fucking tvs and shit.
RaptorNX01
ahhhh humanity. Its arrogance makes it think it is different from any other animal. We are still 99% ape.
+seth chizmar
What's the other 1%? O.o
Human =p
Boglenight
Think.
That Nuke EMP, reminds me of that moment in Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2
Oh sure, go ahead spend millions and billions of dollars on nukes in space but god forbid we ever make peace and send some guys to Mars
I'm certain someone has long beat me to an Optimus Prime joke so I won't bother.... :(
Welp.... Let's make sure N Korea doesn't watch this video lol...
Candi Soda north korea bans youtube and doesnt have internet or computers
so no way they will know this xd
except Kim Jong Un
The tests where made at relatively low altitude within Earth's magnetosphere. I suspect that one detonated near, or farther than, the Moon would behave differently. Far enough from any planet, the EMP could well be much smaller, or even non-existent.
She is so happy when speaking about exploding nuke in space - she must be really enjoying the idea
I've had more devastating farts
Adrian Allen me too
yeah, but we're talking nukes, not chemical warfare.
Chemical nukes are also very affective even if they only come from fartd
Adrian Allen laughed so hard I farted, almost shit myself
I think that the Tunguska event was caused by someone having a titanic and devestating fart.
I really like her presentation style, kudos.
Oh lovely. I was finally starting to think that perhaps nukes weren't mind crushingly deadly enough. now I know about EMPs. Thanks SciShow for robbing me of my peace of mind!
this creature flailing its are around is freaking me out, keep to the pictures of the topic
I vote they stop using TNT as a comparitive, and instead use the caloric content of 1 cubic meter of potatoes.
(Approximately 2 Megajoules)
Seriously girl, how do you get those curls...
esnevip curling iron
love the enthusiasm but slowing down a little and having a pause here and there would help!
If you've found this video interesting I would recommend reading the novel "One Second After" by William Forstchen. Really great story about an American town dealing with life after the country is attacked with high altitude nuclear weapons.
Additionally there are 2 movies based on the book, for those who dislike reading
since when the upper atmosphere is called " The Space "?
+TaekwonCrawfish ehm you mean ionosphere ! I think ?
+TaekwonCrawfish why ?
400km is the altitude at which the ISS is orbiting. Pretty much space.
NO, like real space. Put the bomb on a rocket and send it between the orbit of Mars and Jupiter for example and then detonate it. That would be a real explosion in space.
well now we can get our kids off their phones
Lol
Breathe, breathe, breathe... I could not make it to the end of the video, it was like listening to some excited kid telling you what they did down at the beach, or at a party, or what they wanted for Christmas.
At 2:48 that was "Checkmate", a 60 kiloton test at 91 miles altitude from 19Oct1962. The next one that looks like a red aurora or smudge is "Starfish Prime", 1.4 MEGAton test at 248 miles altitude, 09Jul1962.
Scary stuff! Cool video.
3:41 where is the study for this ? I claim bullshit
What for starfish prime in general or a specific part of it?
Hiroshima was about 20 kilotons, so 100•15kilotons is 1500kilotons, which which isnt same as 1,4 million tons but close.
Sorry i meant 3:41 the part with an emp could kill 90% within 12 months
Christian M she does talk about EMPs as if she just learned about them on Wikipedia...
+Christian M
How is building a bunker gay? I honestly want to know now.
Any Zankyo no terror fans here?
ayyyooo :D
There is a great book on this called "one second after". It's a great story detailing how people in the USA would survive a high-altitude EMP attack. Basically, 70% of people in the US died. It was a scary read.
I like to imagine a large amount of authorities in the 50s were like Cave Johnson. " What's this? A new discovery? Let's try something ridiculously dangerous, like finding a way to test nukes with it!"
i can hear the telefone ringing again.
Hidden message? :p
+TheRolemodel1337 I swear, I can hear it in almost all videos now.
+PµzzlΣΓ for me its just on scishow vid's
When?
André Korhonen it's already like 10 times in the first 30 secs
girl's face irradiates so much happiness...
Saw that PDF file I somehow stumbled on years ago. Didn't read the whole thing, but skimming through it told me enough. (NSA, it was a site found through google, in case you were wondering)
My dad was in the Air Force from the 60s to the 80s and part of his job was monitoring the 1963 nuclear test ban treaty
Shes actually kind of nerdy cute! :-D
But the real question is, what sort of phenomenon has to occur in our galaxy for someone to have hair that looks like they cut it themself lol
+Carl Goring That burn tho
She actually looks like she has a chromosome or 2 too many.
Uhhh. No she's not.
Leviathan Dude by the look of her she has the Chromosomes of a Guinea Pig along with a VIP card for pets at home, that's where she is groomed on a monthly basis...
Because of the lack of hits on her Video she couldn't afford it this month so its running a bit overdue.
emps don't have to be man made, in fact the most likely emp to affecy us would be from the sun
Radiation so high that the Geiger counter seemed broken!
And never a straight answer NASA put a man on the moon..... The Apollo missions flew right through the Van Allen belts!
Think about that one!
nuke in space + van allen belt = new mutant powers!!
(but to be realistic, that won't happen...)
So nukes are not good anywhere?
Yes
"So nukes are not good anywhere?" Considering that the Sun and stars in general ARE huge nuclear reactors this would not be true as without it we die. The nuclear power haters are Ostriches with their heads in the sand.
This chicks eyebrow action...
Is it Tim Kaine Boss Level?
How about that magicarp hand action
I think shes autistic
J.R. Caldoon it’s Ethan Klein boss level
Pickle Rick ironic coming from a guy with the username "Pickle Rick"
Damnit. So many interesting things to watch that I can't pick which one to watch.
omg is hank the only person that doesn't make science boring.