Does nuclear annihilation hurt?

November 11, 2004 9:01 PM

Does nuclear annihilation hurt?

I don't fear death, really, just pain.

And living in New York, now, the only thing that really scares me about terrorist attacks is the idea that they might hurt. Will they hurt? How much? Just so I know what I may be in for.

posted by adrober to grab bag (16 comments total)

My first guess would be... a lot. According to 11 Steps to Surviving Nuclear Attack!, if you survive the initial explosion you're in for massive burning or blistering, depening on how far you are from ground zero. There were survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who had long-term ill effects. These people survived Hiroshima, so they might give you some ideas about what to expect.

Gregg Easterbrook's The Smart Way to Be Scared [New York Times] has some tips for surviving terrorist attacks, including a nuclear explosion.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:21 PM on November 11, 2004

If you don't fear death, then annihilation is nothing. It's over in the blink of an eye. You should worry more about ending up just far enough from ground zero to be horribly, horribly burned (not for weak stomachs).

Not that you should worry. Just, you know, take proper precautions.
posted by Galvatron at 9:29 PM on November 11, 2004

the best thing about death is once its over, its over BAYBEE
posted by Satapher at 10:03 PM on November 11, 2004

I don't fear death, really, just pain.

And living in New York, now, the only thing that really scares me about terrorist attacks is the idea that they might hurt. Will they hurt? How much? Just so I know what I may be in for.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I found that incredibly funny (in a good way).
posted by SpaceCadet at 3:29 AM on November 12, 2004

The wikipedia gives a guide to what happens to you if you get particular doses of radiation poisoning. Frankly, you'd be a lot better off dead quick than you would getting a highish dose wherein your intestines go to pieces along with your circulation (eventually) and your end up shitting out your decomposing innards. There is no treatment at this stage beyond pain reduction or putting you out of your misery. If someone sets off a nuke in New York it is very likely that the triage priorities would change from what is normal in an emergency due to the large number of casualties, and that people still alive but with no chance of recovery would be deprioritised in favour of those with a chance of recovery.

Cheer up fella, it might never happen.
posted by biffa at 4:12 AM on November 12, 2004

I always assumed that if you are in the immediate blast zone that you wouldn't know what hit you, with the atomic flash travelling (and disintegrating you) faster than your brain could process the pain data. I may be wrong.
posted by adampsyche at 5:00 AM on November 12, 2004

What Adam said. If you're close (and close covers plenty of area) to ground-zero, you're dust. You won't even know what hit you. Same thing if a comet ever strikes: you'll have a couple seconds of something like "What's that noise and that big shadow?" and then you're atoms.
posted by Shane at 6:37 AM on November 12, 2004

The pain is nothing compared to the post-disaster telethons.
posted by bondcliff at 6:50 AM on November 12, 2004

Depends on the yield of the weapon, and your distance from it. During the cold war, we nuclear-obsessed urban junior survivalists assumed that the Soviets would be targeting each major American city with dozens of multi-megaton warheads, so this wasn't really a consideration, but now that we're expecting just one sub-megaton device to be FedExed to the financial district I guess survivability becomes an issue again.

When I was twelve or so I ordered from the Energy Department a copy of "The Effects Of Nuclear Weapons" which came with a plastic wheel calculator in a little pocket on the inside back cover into which you could dial the yield and distance of the blast and read out the overpressure and temperature you'd experience. Hours of fun. (Jeez, looks like I should have saved that book - it's worth a pretty penny now.)

The bad news is that unless you're quite close to the blast, you're not really disintegrated instantaneously, you're burned to death. And if you're not that close, you die of radiation poisoning, which is less painful but much longer. If you're further than that, and you stay inside till the fallout decays, you might just get cancer later.

Anyway, the blast I'd worried about these days isn't an optimal-effect air-burst (no-one's launching ICBMs at us) or even a ground-level detonation at Wall Street (there's no data on this but I think the urban-canyon effect would drastically limit the radius of effect) but a weapon hidden on a boat in the inner harbor which would blast the city with superheated steam before drenching it with radioactive rain. That'd suck.
posted by nicwolff at 6:51 AM on November 12, 2004

I decided a long time ago, during the reagan years anyway when I was living outside of DC, that if we started lobbing missiles at each other I was going to drive straight for the center of town. I imagine that if you're close enough to the blast you won't feel a thing.
posted by trbrts at 8:31 AM on November 12, 2004

It doesn't matter how much it hurts, or for how long. Eventually it'll be over, and when you're dead, you won't remember a thing.

This applies to most situations in life, actually, not just nuclear annihilation.
posted by majcher at 9:58 AM on November 12, 2004

Wow--thanks everyone. I feel better, I think. Except for the whole melting organs and radioactive rain bit. Do they sell radioactive umbrellas?
posted by adrober at 10:17 AM on November 12, 2004

It was the shitting out of decomposing innards that did it for me....
posted by spilon at 10:25 AM on November 12, 2004

Most importantly, don't forget to stockpile every single piece of music known to mankind.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 10:36 AM on November 12, 2004

Do you have any friends at AT&T you could chill with, in the event of an attack?
posted by b1tr0t at 1:44 PM on November 12, 2004

I'm surprised no one mentioned the book Hiroshima, by John Hersey. Scared the crap out of me as a kid. Stories of 6 survivors, and not so pretty.

But yeah, annihilation can't hurt by definition, I'd say. If you're at the center, you're just gone.
posted by mdn at 10:04 AM on November 13, 2004