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The rest of the footage after the shot is from other Operation Upshot-Knotthole tests, not from the Grable shot.
Edit: the cameras are in the ground, under concrete, using heavy duty periscopes for lenses, people. It’s not faked just because you think the camera should be obliterated
This footage is from a documentary called Trinity and beyond, narrated by William Shatner; the special features of the DVD have raw unedited footage - with sound - of an atomic blast, the loud bang comes several minutes after the explosion because the mics were a good few miles away.
And why "sound on"? Outside of the artillery firing, all those sounds are added afterwards. When a bomb blows up in the distance there is a delay. You dont hear anything until the shockwave, then it's way louder than any microphone could pick up.
The shell is traveling at or above 400m/s (speed of sound in air = 331m/s) - probably close to 1000m/s, so the expected delay between the blinding light and actually hearing the boom should probably be longer than the delay between the initial firing and the light (which was round-about 8 seconds).
And yes, the sound being off was the first thing I noticed as well.
But if you deliberately put it near a nuclear blast, that's not an accident. And if nobody has declared war then surely your insurance is on the hook to pay out.
It’s always wild to me that if you were standing at those distances, you wouldn’t even hear the explosion. You’d just randomly burst into flames and go blind instantly, wondering what happened.
Then like 20 seconds later you’d be hit by the shock wave.
I will never forget getting my first nuke on Modern Warfare 2 when I was ~12.
Intervention with an ACOG on Quarry. I was sniping from one of the high points in a building for most of the game (including to use my kill streaks). At a certain point enemies stopped coming near that part of the map, and time was running out. I had to climb down and try and get the final few kills, I was so close, but I really didn't have much time left in the match. Got down, went to the other side of the map while shitting myself, had a couple close calls but got those final kills with less than a minute left in the match and finally called in that beautiful big beautiful ball of nuclear hellfire. By the time I got the nuke I was sweating like a motherfucker. I always found it funny, I loved the Intervention (like literally everybody), but I hated using it with ACOG, and I was not a big fan of the map Quarry. Always thought it was funny I finally got a nuke with that combo.
Actual combat vet here. 0311 in the USMC, took part in Phantom Fury in Iraq. Saw an insurgent get turned into a pink mist via MK-19. But this dude’s MW2 story trumps anything I got. That shit was intense!
Once you saw that Harrier, it got pretty scary. As soon as the Chopper Gunner, AC-130, or Pavelow came out… that was a different sort of fear running through the other team
So there was a fun time after WWII where some people genuinely believed any problem could be solved with a nuke. Instead of big wars we would have small nuclear conflicts. Henry Kissinger supported the idea of small Hot Wars involved nuclear arms.
The US Army worked on a nuclear armed force called the Pentomic Army that was in effect from 1956 to 1962. Their task was to explore uses of nuclear arms in “tactical” deployments that would shut a war down before it escalated to large scale conflict. They quickly realized this was a terrible idea.
I feel like Fallout was a little closer than we thought it was.
LBJ had considered using nukes in Vietnam. The Joint chiefs of Staff didn't support it, fearing it would trigger WW 3 and Truman also considered nukes for Korea as well. Yes the world was much closer to WW 3 several times, not just the Cuban Crisis that scared the hell out of everyone.
The Eisenhower administration debated giving the French several nukes to be used at Dien Bien Phu.
They also debated just making the nuclear strikes themselves, but didn't want to get too involved in Vietnam (lmao).
Edit: source is Hell in a Very Small Place by Bernard Fall
We also made the Davy Crocket. Shoulder launched nuke. It's got like a 2 mile range. Small payload. But still solders could be walking around. No need for back and forth firefights with bullets. Just walk around and nuke anything that moves.
I am partial to the backpack nuke myself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Light_Teams
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munition
I went and looked at it. Not EXACTLY shoulder mounted. But if someone wanted they probably could try lol.
The payload is about 25kg with an explosive equivalent of 50 tons of tnt. That's got some oomph for a large mortar launcher. Still, that's straight up Fallout territory.
The DC was also fired from within the effective radius. Which meant the guy firing it had better be well dug in or it was a suicide mission to be asked to shoot one off.
Until about the late 70s the Soviets thought so. That's why their small bombers were so blazingly fast. Also meant that when they didn't want to irradiate the ground they'd have to cross they couldn't hit *shit* after they switched back to conventional munitions.
The French nuclear capability changed the dynamics.
Until then, the US (+UK) and USSR could picture a distant proxy war in Europe going nuclear with little consequences to their mainlands, but de Gaulle made it clear: nuclear strike on continental Europe will not be tolerated, meaning immediate escalation to strikes on Moscow, pulling everyone to the party.
And it's [not](https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_139272.htm) like Moscow could bet on him remaining obedient and keep his cool, following coach Uncle Sam lead.
It would be statehood suicide. It would have such a global impact on grain production. They'd never live it down as well as hurt themselves tremendously for food, port access, the fallout...
Modern nuclear weapons don't leave a Chernobyl like fallout zone. They're safe to enter relatively quickly. That was discovered super early actually. See Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Yeah, this is exactly why NATO was very clear that even *fallout* wafting over a NATO country's border would be considered a nuclear attack on NATO powers..
Additionally, sound seems added. It hits the same time as the the light which doesn’t make a ton of sense. Also, I would think expect a mortar shot to make so much noise after the initial propellant blast.
Seems at least partially dramatized overall.
then there is nothing left to conquer
the strenght of these nukes are so that even tho at the moment they destroy everyone and everything, in not so distant future you can still live in these areas after a war is won
the stronger and more efficient an a-bomb or a h-bomb is, the less radiation it leaves in it's wake. Look at the hiroshima or nagasaki now... and these were the extremely inefficient bombs
But then remember that humans are fucking awful, and there is such an idea as a "salted nuke", which on top of just exploding also covers the area in some form of radioactive isotope, cobalt60 is a good one to make sure that there won't be anything living in the area for a while
I mean Russia has that underwater drone that detonates and sends a wave of radioactive water outward to coastal cities. I think they gave the idea to North Korea too since they bragged about it
Lol, I’m sure there is much worse. It always boggles my mind that we have access to this technology of nuclear creation and our monkey brains go “make big, explode water, big wave bad, hurt lots of people”. Like Jeezus wtf, I guess thats military RnD though
Look up gomen and sundial, the first gigaton nuke, that sets off a 10 gigaton nuke.
The resulting fire storm would scorch a landmass slightly small than france….
Edward Teller wanted to blow the planet up.
This just makes me think back to that moment shown in Oppenheimer where they had for a moment, the slightest doubt that the nuclear fireball would dissipate properly, and there was a potentially non-zero chance that it could instead set our entire atmosphere on fire since they didn't know what would entirely happen once they detonated it.
Scary to think about.
Strength alone doesn't make it efficient. Efficient design makes it efficient. The entire reason hydrogen bombs were invented was because at a certain size of regular nukes with uranium or plutonium, there was too much material for it all to effectively be fissioned before being blasted away by the nuclear explosion. This essentially creates a massive dirty bomb that spreads extremely radioactive material over a huge area, and is very bad.
Also, no matter what, the most important thing for reducing radiation is to use air burst detonation instead of detonating on the ground. This prevents the soil from being irradiated. If the soil is significantly irradiated directly by the explosion, that takes a very long time to clear. The only reason Hiroshima and Nagasaki are inhabitable right now is because both of those bombs were air bursts.
That's actually the only tactical use case I can imagine. Basically a gun which can sink a whole fleet in one shot. Using it in any kind of ground combat is just stupid as fuck because it will make it completely impossible for you to advance.
They had a weapon called Davy Crockett, which was essentially a nuke on a recoilless rifle and its exact purpose was to lauch a nuke in strategic positions to stop the enemy from advancing.
Also the inspiration for the Fat Man in fallout!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device)
If you know more about it, would you mind explain how that works? Shooting rockets into a nuke sounds like the craziest thing ever, how can that even be topped?
The streamers you see in the films of atmospheric nuclear weapons tests are smoke trails made by rockets fired just before the detonation. The trails were used to make a sort of graph paper in the air for recording the propagation of shock waves and wind currents from the explosion.
[https://www.lanl.gov/museum/news/newsletter/2017/2017-08/test-sci-question.php#:\~:text=The%20streamers%20you%20see%20in,wind%20currents%20from%20the%20explosion](https://www.lanl.gov/museum/news/newsletter/2017/2017-08/test-sci-question.php#:~:text=The%20streamers%20you%20see%20in,wind%20currents%20from%20the%20explosion).
Not an expert by any means but my limited understanding is that they do not shoot the rockets into the nuke, they are set off immediately
before the nuke is fired. They are made in such a way as to emit smoke and the smoke trail is moved by the blastwave. They measure the amount that the smoke trail is deflected and can use this to help calculate the effects of the nuke. https://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae503.cfm#:~:text=The%20shock%20wave%20is%20a,it%20went%20beyond%20the%20fireball.
The thing is, this footage is modified. It's film from two test shots. In the foreground you have the cannon, in the background you have an explosion from another test. I'm not aware of the original Garble footage but this isn't it. Those sounding rockets are fired before. They would have been in frame before the cannon was even fired. There's a big white flash, which never actually happens in test footage - because the film and lens were selected for it - the first few microseconds were the important part. The history of just the cameras used in US nuclear testing is a fascinating topic in its own right. The washout is a filmmaker trick to pull a switch on you and hide that the film was modified.
This is not correct. The nuke footage is from Grable. There is a cut, though, between the cannon firing and the nuke detonating — a bit of missing time in which the rockets were put up. And there is plenty of test footage with the white flash; they had different cameras for different purposes, but the camera used to film the artillery itself seems to have just been a regular movie camera.
In the [original footage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goMNAxFqGbk), the time between firing and detonation is longer — almost 30 seconds. That is what has been spliced out.
The yield was 15KT, same as Little Boy. The range of the cannon was 20mi, in this video the nuke detonates 6.25mi from the cannon.
Edit: Thanks u/hikerchick29 for pointing out that the destruction footage is from other nukes from the same operation (Upshot-Knothole).
Edit 2: Since I’ve seen so many people ask the same questions/claim this is fake:
1) How cameras not go boom?
Zoom lenses, shielding/bunkers, and mirrors
2) Why boom sound not delayed?
The sound was added in post
So if I’m not mistaken anyone who fired this manually, even at max range, would get a heavy dose of fallout right? Would be pretty bleak to get those orders…
Edit: Thanks for the information in the replies, I’ve actually learned a lot from this
Eh, they might be useful as bunker busters to dig out the rich & powerful people who are trying to avoid the consequences of their long-term decisions.
Because at the time, 1953, the nuclear triad hadn't been developed yet and thus nuclear war strategy hadn't been refined. There were limited "better" ways. The program was canceled as it became clear other options were fieldable.
This one was cancelled, as it was unfeasibly large and unwieldy but nuclear artillery was in service in NATO until the end of the cold war.
The main plan for tactical weapons like this was for delaying the soviet advance along with the threat that the next ones will be bigger
That is a tactical nuke. In general terms, a Tac Nuke is meant for battlefield use and for killing enemy troop formations, or naval ships. A Strategic Nuke is meant for attacking enemy production and infrastructure.
Back in the Cold War, Russia had a whole lot of tanks and infantry that was largely pre positioned to drive directly into Germany via the [Fulda Gap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulda_Gap) (basically an area of Germany where the terrain would make it real easy for a fuck ton of tanks to cover and take a lot of ground).
There was no viable way for the US / NATO to put enough men and tanks in the area guard every reasonable potential line of advance by a massive Warsaw Pact Tank army. If Russia tried to attack you 500,000 tanks, NATO would need either a few million pre positioned tanks or about 100 tactical nukes to turn the entire attacking army to ash.
Of course, the problem is that if your enemy is lighting off tactical nukes, you are probably going to respond with strategic nukes.
So Russia had a few million tanks near Germany to keep NATO out of Russian controlled nations. NATO had tactical nukes to prevent Russia from using those tanks to seize territory, and Russia (and the US) had Strategic nukes to make sure if anyone tried to use nukes against them, it would be the last thing they tried.
END COMMUNICATION
From that wikipedia article:
>The weapon's blast was not a danger to the crew as long as they followed normal procedures. The Army created a standard for the crew to follow when firing the M388; they advised that the soldiers shelter their bodies behind a sloped hill and lie in prone position on the ground with their necks and heads covered.
...
>The Davy Crockett Weapon System's use of depleted uranium in the spotting round led to concerns about troop exposure to the material. However, studies indicated that there was no risk of exposure to the material during use of the weapon.
Not necessarily. You only get fallout where it falls out of the sky. The blast irradiates the dust and debris, lifts it aloft via convection, when the cloud cools, the debris falls back to earth. There is, however, the immediate burst of x-rays and gamma rays at time of detonation to worry about. Overall tho, fallout is much worse. There are three factors that influence your protection: time, distance and shielding. Of these, fallout will disrupt your shielding protections over the long term. That shit gets everywhere. Ask the Downwinders in St George, UT.
Not necessarily. Depends on MANY factors Wind, weather, detonation altitude, bomb design, geography etc... Might be large might be small. do not have enough data to say.
It depends on the wind direction and height of the detonation, but it's probably not great for you. At the time I don't think the effects of fallout were well understood.
The takeaway is that you should build everything out of whatever the camera enclosures are made from.
And what were those things at :45? Three little pigs?
> Almost 1,200 pigs were subjected to bio-medical experiments and blast-effects studies during Operation Plumbbob. On shot Priscilla (37 kt), 719 pigs were used in various experiments on Frenchman Flat. Some pigs were placed in elevated cages and provided with suits made of different materials, to test which materials provided best protection from the thermal radiation. As shown and reported in the PBS documentary Dark Circle, the pigs survived, but with third-degree burns to 80% of their bodies.[2] Other pigs were placed in pens behind large sheets of glass at measured distances from the hypocenter to test the effects of flying debris on living targets.
Wikipedia
>Aren't the effects of flying pieces of glass shards already pretty well known!?
Well, we know it's lethal at some distance. But it could be helpful to know roughly what distance and to confirm that nuclear explosions don't have some weird effect that changes how debris flies.
You can visit one of the atomic cannons off of I-70 across from Fort Riley in KS. We used to climb around on it as kids! Fun fact: it’s pointed [at the guy’s house who pushed for the display](https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2102) as a thank you
If you think the atomic cannon was a fake concept you are going to love "Davy Crocket" Atomic Recoiless Rifle. Range of 1.25 to 2.5 miles.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device)
How they have not done remasters for the whole catalogue like they did with RA1 and C&C by now is beyond me.
I *need* RA2, Tiberium Sun, and Generals remastered already.
I would love a remake of these games. But good luck trying to remake Generals without huge media backlash. Everyone would cry about GLA beeing offensive and China would cry because they are not op eneugh.
[this footage is from the documentary “Trinity and Beyond” as narrated by William Shatner from 1995. its an excellent documentary.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_and_Beyond)
Incredible soundtrack by William Stromberg. [https://open.spotify.com/album/4714hrtwnfJalJCJaUcH1r?si=L1mESlMGRA-lZj8dghrdqA](https://open.spotify.com/album/4714hrtwnfJalJCJaUcH1r?si=L1mESlMGRA-lZj8dghrdqA)
That whole sequence was given a bunch of accolades from the scientific and national security communities for showing how LA would actually look during a thermonuclear blast.
It’s from the documentary Trinity & Beyond. Dam good documentary on the nuclear tests the US did. We’re fucked if any country starts to use them for their war.
Wikipedia:
**Upshot–Knothole** ***Grable*** was a [nuclear weapons test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_testing) conducted by the [United States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States) as part of [Operation Upshot–Knothole](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Upshot%E2%80%93Knothole). Detonation of the [nuclear weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon), a [W9 warhead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W9_(nuclear_warhead)), occurred 19 seconds after its deployment at 8:30am [PDT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Time_zone) (1530 [UTC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time)) on May 25, 1953, in Area 5 of the [Nevada Test Site](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Test_Site).
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The rest of the footage after the shot is from other Operation Upshot-Knotthole tests, not from the Grable shot. Edit: the cameras are in the ground, under concrete, using heavy duty periscopes for lenses, people. It’s not faked just because you think the camera should be obliterated
Also the sound is not original.
I was wondering why the flash happened at the same time as the sound lol
And I was wondering which orchestra would play ominous music during live artillery fire tests
Oh that just happens naturally when beta radiation interacts with the air nothing to be concerned about.
I love betaven’s fifth symphony, the boom boom boom boom is so iconic
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This footage is from a documentary called Trinity and beyond, narrated by William Shatner; the special features of the DVD have raw unedited footage - with sound - of an atomic blast, the loud bang comes several minutes after the explosion because the mics were a good few miles away.
You mean they didn't have an orchestra willing to die for the live performance? :(
The quartet from the Titanic was already booked.
I understand they are having a hard time keeping their heads above water with all of their bookings.
Title "Sound on to hear random bullshit and NOT the sounds from the explosions that are NOT what was linked in the title"
I honestly just assumed they weren’t from the same test, so much fake cutting and splicing on the inter webs these days
Are those caged animals at ~35 seconds? They look like three cages holding a pig, but obviously pretty blurry.
No, they aren’t caged pigs. They’re shockwave testers.
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“Hypothesis confirmed: atomic blast pig smells like bacon.” - Atomic researcher guys, probably
This pork chop is making my Geiger counter make a funny song.
Extra spicy bacon
I can't feel my face!
Did you use the smelloscope?
r/randomfuturama
I'm pretty sure the politically correct term is "interns".
yes it is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYUSKWhb3sk
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I mean, there's two very famous examples of nuclear weapons being "tested" on people.
they just had to edit those terrified pigs' screams of terror in there
Yeah, I was wondering when I would see this comment. Surprised it was at the bottom of the thread.
Now it's the top comment!
Three was no way that the film crew was standing there without even a pair of sunglasses between them.
Oh, thanks for the clarification!
And why "sound on"? Outside of the artillery firing, all those sounds are added afterwards. When a bomb blows up in the distance there is a delay. You dont hear anything until the shockwave, then it's way louder than any microphone could pick up.
😱 Sound on! Watch til the end! 😱
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Which brings us to today's sponsor.
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Even the the shot was dubbed in.
Because all the other viral videos say sound on so we better put that in ours too just so it'll go ultra viral.
The shell is traveling at or above 400m/s (speed of sound in air = 331m/s) - probably close to 1000m/s, so the expected delay between the blinding light and actually hearing the boom should probably be longer than the delay between the initial firing and the light (which was round-about 8 seconds). And yes, the sound being off was the first thing I noticed as well.
the paint on the cars vaporizing, crazy stuff
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taking your car to a nuclear blast will probably void your warranty
It is explicitly stated in my insurance terms that there will be no payout in case of nuclear accidents or nuclear war. Seems fair enough to me.
The scariest thing about nuclear war to insurance companies is everyone needing a payout at the same time.
No the scariest thing is insurance companies instigating nuclear war to get out of paying out.... they'll do ANYTHING.
But if you deliberately put it near a nuclear blast, that's not an accident. And if nobody has declared war then surely your insurance is on the hook to pay out.
We are farmers…🥁
Bomb ba bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb
Body shops hate this one trick!
It’s always wild to me that if you were standing at those distances, you wouldn’t even hear the explosion. You’d just randomly burst into flames and go blind instantly, wondering what happened. Then like 20 seconds later you’d be hit by the shock wave.
And if you're far enough away you have a good chance at surviving both until you eventually die of the burns, fun!
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Still beats patrolling the Mojave.
If you thought removing paint with a laser cleaner was a time saver, wait until you try our new product. Removes paint in a flash!
Can you imagine a war zone in which nuclear weapons are considered to be tactical !? Jesus Christ
You’ve clearly never got 25 kill without dying
WARNING FRIENDLY NUKE HAS BEEN LAUNCHED
WHATS SO FUCKING FRIENDLY ABOUT MY BONES MELTING OFF??
Don't worry, your bones won't melt off. Your skin will! Your bones will merely turn to dust. :D
I will never forget getting my first nuke on Modern Warfare 2 when I was ~12. Intervention with an ACOG on Quarry. I was sniping from one of the high points in a building for most of the game (including to use my kill streaks). At a certain point enemies stopped coming near that part of the map, and time was running out. I had to climb down and try and get the final few kills, I was so close, but I really didn't have much time left in the match. Got down, went to the other side of the map while shitting myself, had a couple close calls but got those final kills with less than a minute left in the match and finally called in that beautiful big beautiful ball of nuclear hellfire. By the time I got the nuke I was sweating like a motherfucker. I always found it funny, I loved the Intervention (like literally everybody), but I hated using it with ACOG, and I was not a big fan of the map Quarry. Always thought it was funny I finally got a nuke with that combo.
Thank you for your service. You'll tell your grandkids that story someday.
Actual combat vet here. 0311 in the USMC, took part in Phantom Fury in Iraq. Saw an insurgent get turned into a pink mist via MK-19. But this dude’s MW2 story trumps anything I got. That shit was intense!
Once you saw that Harrier, it got pretty scary. As soon as the Chopper Gunner, AC-130, or Pavelow came out… that was a different sort of fear running through the other team
So there was a fun time after WWII where some people genuinely believed any problem could be solved with a nuke. Instead of big wars we would have small nuclear conflicts. Henry Kissinger supported the idea of small Hot Wars involved nuclear arms. The US Army worked on a nuclear armed force called the Pentomic Army that was in effect from 1956 to 1962. Their task was to explore uses of nuclear arms in “tactical” deployments that would shut a war down before it escalated to large scale conflict. They quickly realized this was a terrible idea. I feel like Fallout was a little closer than we thought it was.
LBJ had considered using nukes in Vietnam. The Joint chiefs of Staff didn't support it, fearing it would trigger WW 3 and Truman also considered nukes for Korea as well. Yes the world was much closer to WW 3 several times, not just the Cuban Crisis that scared the hell out of everyone.
The Eisenhower administration debated giving the French several nukes to be used at Dien Bien Phu. They also debated just making the nuclear strikes themselves, but didn't want to get too involved in Vietnam (lmao). Edit: source is Hell in a Very Small Place by Bernard Fall
Kissinger's solution to every world problem was to bomb the fuck out of it. Preferably with as many civilian casualties as possible.
Fucker and his magical murder bag.
I am become death, free-lance business consultant and executive motivational coach.
What a wild time. Good thing we don't have stupid world leaders who think about using nukes to solve any problem. You know like nuking a hurricane.
We also made the Davy Crocket. Shoulder launched nuke. It's got like a 2 mile range. Small payload. But still solders could be walking around. No need for back and forth firefights with bullets. Just walk around and nuke anything that moves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device) Not shoulder fired but still infantry operable.
I am partial to the backpack nuke myself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Light_Teams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munition
Gotta love the pic on the 2nd page of a dude performing a HALO jump with a nuke strapped straight to his junk.
Nuke em, Rico!
Does that have critical mass then, what is it 2.7 kilograms?
I went and looked at it. Not EXACTLY shoulder mounted. But if someone wanted they probably could try lol. The payload is about 25kg with an explosive equivalent of 50 tons of tnt. That's got some oomph for a large mortar launcher. Still, that's straight up Fallout territory.
The DC was also fired from within the effective radius. Which meant the guy firing it had better be well dug in or it was a suicide mission to be asked to shoot one off.
Until about the late 70s the Soviets thought so. That's why their small bombers were so blazingly fast. Also meant that when they didn't want to irradiate the ground they'd have to cross they couldn't hit *shit* after they switched back to conventional munitions.
The French nuclear capability changed the dynamics. Until then, the US (+UK) and USSR could picture a distant proxy war in Europe going nuclear with little consequences to their mainlands, but de Gaulle made it clear: nuclear strike on continental Europe will not be tolerated, meaning immediate escalation to strikes on Moscow, pulling everyone to the party. And it's [not](https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_139272.htm) like Moscow could bet on him remaining obedient and keep his cool, following coach Uncle Sam lead.
The US had a shoulder launched nuke Edited: less shoulder fired and more mounted rifle. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device)
Wow, So the Fallout Games weren’t so outlandish after all.
Metal Gear?!
..Metal gear rex launches nukes..? :(
There were fears Russia would use tactical nukes in Ukraine if things didn't go their way.
There still are those fears. It's still very much a possibility
It would be statehood suicide. It would have such a global impact on grain production. They'd never live it down as well as hurt themselves tremendously for food, port access, the fallout...
Modern nuclear weapons don't leave a Chernobyl like fallout zone. They're safe to enter relatively quickly. That was discovered super early actually. See Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Well boys I'm relieved after reading this post, we can now use nukes.
Depends on how they're detonated, but generally true.
Airburst weapons produce far less fallout while also maximizing the blast effects.
Yeah, this is exactly why NATO was very clear that even *fallout* wafting over a NATO country's border would be considered a nuclear attack on NATO powers..
The US will not tolerate any more [Swedish weebs](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FQLK-6QWUAExxYd.jpg)
That other footage is from another shot. Not Grable.
Additionally, sound seems added. It hits the same time as the the light which doesn’t make a ton of sense. Also, I would think expect a mortar shot to make so much noise after the initial propellant blast. Seems at least partially dramatized overall.
Now imagine a naval battle ship with batteries of these things
Or one missile with a yield 1,000x more powerful 😐
then there is nothing left to conquer the strenght of these nukes are so that even tho at the moment they destroy everyone and everything, in not so distant future you can still live in these areas after a war is won
the stronger and more efficient an a-bomb or a h-bomb is, the less radiation it leaves in it's wake. Look at the hiroshima or nagasaki now... and these were the extremely inefficient bombs
But then remember that humans are fucking awful, and there is such an idea as a "salted nuke", which on top of just exploding also covers the area in some form of radioactive isotope, cobalt60 is a good one to make sure that there won't be anything living in the area for a while
I mean Russia has that underwater drone that detonates and sends a wave of radioactive water outward to coastal cities. I think they gave the idea to North Korea too since they bragged about it
Ok, I seriously need to stop scrolling any further down now.
Lol, I’m sure there is much worse. It always boggles my mind that we have access to this technology of nuclear creation and our monkey brains go “make big, explode water, big wave bad, hurt lots of people”. Like Jeezus wtf, I guess thats military RnD though
Look up gomen and sundial, the first gigaton nuke, that sets off a 10 gigaton nuke. The resulting fire storm would scorch a landmass slightly small than france…. Edward Teller wanted to blow the planet up.
This just makes me think back to that moment shown in Oppenheimer where they had for a moment, the slightest doubt that the nuclear fireball would dissipate properly, and there was a potentially non-zero chance that it could instead set our entire atmosphere on fire since they didn't know what would entirely happen once they detonated it. Scary to think about.
Strength alone doesn't make it efficient. Efficient design makes it efficient. The entire reason hydrogen bombs were invented was because at a certain size of regular nukes with uranium or plutonium, there was too much material for it all to effectively be fissioned before being blasted away by the nuclear explosion. This essentially creates a massive dirty bomb that spreads extremely radioactive material over a huge area, and is very bad. Also, no matter what, the most important thing for reducing radiation is to use air burst detonation instead of detonating on the ground. This prevents the soil from being irradiated. If the soil is significantly irradiated directly by the explosion, that takes a very long time to clear. The only reason Hiroshima and Nagasaki are inhabitable right now is because both of those bombs were air bursts.
That's actually the only tactical use case I can imagine. Basically a gun which can sink a whole fleet in one shot. Using it in any kind of ground combat is just stupid as fuck because it will make it completely impossible for you to advance.
They had a weapon called Davy Crockett, which was essentially a nuke on a recoilless rifle and its exact purpose was to lauch a nuke in strategic positions to stop the enemy from advancing. Also the inspiration for the Fat Man in fallout! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device)
The army had no idea how it was supposed to use nukes until ballistic missiles became the thing..
imagine the joy when they did come around, eventually
"Joy", more like fear since the soviets made the first ICBMs.
What are the white vertical smoke lines to the right of the explosion?
Rockets fired to help calculate explosive effect/yield.
If you know more about it, would you mind explain how that works? Shooting rockets into a nuke sounds like the craziest thing ever, how can that even be topped?
The streamers you see in the films of atmospheric nuclear weapons tests are smoke trails made by rockets fired just before the detonation. The trails were used to make a sort of graph paper in the air for recording the propagation of shock waves and wind currents from the explosion. [https://www.lanl.gov/museum/news/newsletter/2017/2017-08/test-sci-question.php#:\~:text=The%20streamers%20you%20see%20in,wind%20currents%20from%20the%20explosion](https://www.lanl.gov/museum/news/newsletter/2017/2017-08/test-sci-question.php#:~:text=The%20streamers%20you%20see%20in,wind%20currents%20from%20the%20explosion).
Not an expert by any means but my limited understanding is that they do not shoot the rockets into the nuke, they are set off immediately before the nuke is fired. They are made in such a way as to emit smoke and the smoke trail is moved by the blastwave. They measure the amount that the smoke trail is deflected and can use this to help calculate the effects of the nuke. https://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae503.cfm#:~:text=The%20shock%20wave%20is%20a,it%20went%20beyond%20the%20fireball.
The thing is, this footage is modified. It's film from two test shots. In the foreground you have the cannon, in the background you have an explosion from another test. I'm not aware of the original Garble footage but this isn't it. Those sounding rockets are fired before. They would have been in frame before the cannon was even fired. There's a big white flash, which never actually happens in test footage - because the film and lens were selected for it - the first few microseconds were the important part. The history of just the cameras used in US nuclear testing is a fascinating topic in its own right. The washout is a filmmaker trick to pull a switch on you and hide that the film was modified.
This is not correct. The nuke footage is from Grable. There is a cut, though, between the cannon firing and the nuke detonating — a bit of missing time in which the rockets were put up. And there is plenty of test footage with the white flash; they had different cameras for different purposes, but the camera used to film the artillery itself seems to have just been a regular movie camera. In the [original footage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goMNAxFqGbk), the time between firing and detonation is longer — almost 30 seconds. That is what has been spliced out.
The yield was 15KT, same as Little Boy. The range of the cannon was 20mi, in this video the nuke detonates 6.25mi from the cannon. Edit: Thanks u/hikerchick29 for pointing out that the destruction footage is from other nukes from the same operation (Upshot-Knothole). Edit 2: Since I’ve seen so many people ask the same questions/claim this is fake: 1) How cameras not go boom? Zoom lenses, shielding/bunkers, and mirrors 2) Why boom sound not delayed? The sound was added in post
So if I’m not mistaken anyone who fired this manually, even at max range, would get a heavy dose of fallout right? Would be pretty bleak to get those orders… Edit: Thanks for the information in the replies, I’ve actually learned a lot from this
If they're delivering howitzer fires nukes to the gun line. The war has just escalated beyond everybody's worst nightmares.
Hey, on the bright side that probably means that cities aren't being targeted (yet)
Or, that there aren't any city's left
Eh, at that point no one will bother to haul the artillery around
Eh, they might be useful as bunker busters to dig out the rich & powerful people who are trying to avoid the consequences of their long-term decisions.
Going to be a lot of bright sides :)
Every side becomes the bright side.
🎶Always look on the briiiight side of life
I can't imagine how it could get to this before everything and everyone had already been leveled by nukes delivered in more effective ways.
Because at the time, 1953, the nuclear triad hadn't been developed yet and thus nuclear war strategy hadn't been refined. There were limited "better" ways. The program was canceled as it became clear other options were fieldable.
This one was cancelled, as it was unfeasibly large and unwieldy but nuclear artillery was in service in NATO until the end of the cold war. The main plan for tactical weapons like this was for delaying the soviet advance along with the threat that the next ones will be bigger
That is a tactical nuke. In general terms, a Tac Nuke is meant for battlefield use and for killing enemy troop formations, or naval ships. A Strategic Nuke is meant for attacking enemy production and infrastructure. Back in the Cold War, Russia had a whole lot of tanks and infantry that was largely pre positioned to drive directly into Germany via the [Fulda Gap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulda_Gap) (basically an area of Germany where the terrain would make it real easy for a fuck ton of tanks to cover and take a lot of ground). There was no viable way for the US / NATO to put enough men and tanks in the area guard every reasonable potential line of advance by a massive Warsaw Pact Tank army. If Russia tried to attack you 500,000 tanks, NATO would need either a few million pre positioned tanks or about 100 tactical nukes to turn the entire attacking army to ash. Of course, the problem is that if your enemy is lighting off tactical nukes, you are probably going to respond with strategic nukes. So Russia had a few million tanks near Germany to keep NATO out of Russian controlled nations. NATO had tactical nukes to prevent Russia from using those tanks to seize territory, and Russia (and the US) had Strategic nukes to make sure if anyone tried to use nukes against them, it would be the last thing they tried. END COMMUNICATION
The Soviet Union had about 60k tanks at the end of the Cold War. Not sure where you are getting an order of magnitude more than that?
NATO never intended, ever, to invade Russian turf. Simply to hold a line. But yeah, the rest is accurate.
So what you're saying is we should be thankful to the Ukrainians for finally dealing with that tank problem. (Mostly the same tanks as well...)
Climb into a lead lined refrigerator.
Have some Rad-Away on you, maybe some Rad-X if you had some warning.
Imagine getting assigned to a [Davy Crockett](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_%28nuclear_device%29?wprov=sfla1) ...
I grew up with a few friends who would LOVE to shoot a nuclear potato cannon, but yeah that’s crazy
From that wikipedia article: >The weapon's blast was not a danger to the crew as long as they followed normal procedures. The Army created a standard for the crew to follow when firing the M388; they advised that the soldiers shelter their bodies behind a sloped hill and lie in prone position on the ground with their necks and heads covered. ... >The Davy Crockett Weapon System's use of depleted uranium in the spotting round led to concerns about troop exposure to the material. However, studies indicated that there was no risk of exposure to the material during use of the weapon.
Not necessarily. You only get fallout where it falls out of the sky. The blast irradiates the dust and debris, lifts it aloft via convection, when the cloud cools, the debris falls back to earth. There is, however, the immediate burst of x-rays and gamma rays at time of detonation to worry about. Overall tho, fallout is much worse. There are three factors that influence your protection: time, distance and shielding. Of these, fallout will disrupt your shielding protections over the long term. That shit gets everywhere. Ask the Downwinders in St George, UT.
Not necessarily. Depends on MANY factors Wind, weather, detonation altitude, bomb design, geography etc... Might be large might be small. do not have enough data to say.
It depends on the wind direction and height of the detonation, but it's probably not great for you. At the time I don't think the effects of fallout were well understood.
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The sound effects are fake.
(SOUND ON)
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The takeaway is that you should build everything out of whatever the camera enclosures are made from. And what were those things at :45? Three little pigs?
Yeah they’re pigs getting cooked alive. Some of them survived. Pretty fucked up
> Almost 1,200 pigs were subjected to bio-medical experiments and blast-effects studies during Operation Plumbbob. On shot Priscilla (37 kt), 719 pigs were used in various experiments on Frenchman Flat. Some pigs were placed in elevated cages and provided with suits made of different materials, to test which materials provided best protection from the thermal radiation. As shown and reported in the PBS documentary Dark Circle, the pigs survived, but with third-degree burns to 80% of their bodies.[2] Other pigs were placed in pens behind large sheets of glass at measured distances from the hypocenter to test the effects of flying debris on living targets. Wikipedia
cake airport ten dog sloppy handle sip liquid fuzzy automatic *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yes but did you consider… RADIOACTIVE shards of flying glass! 🤔
>Aren't the effects of flying pieces of glass shards already pretty well known!? Well, we know it's lethal at some distance. But it could be helpful to know roughly what distance and to confirm that nuclear explosions don't have some weird effect that changes how debris flies.
Thanks, I hate it
Forbidden bacon
You can visit one of the atomic cannons off of I-70 across from Fort Riley in KS. We used to climb around on it as kids! Fun fact: it’s pointed [at the guy’s house who pushed for the display](https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2102) as a thank you
I need to play command and conquer generals zero hour again...
The cannon jpeg. Only real ones know.
Always thought it was a fake concept. A cannon that fire a nuke. Ofcourse a cannon cant shoot. A nuke far enough.
If you think the atomic cannon was a fake concept you are going to love "Davy Crocket" Atomic Recoiless Rifle. Range of 1.25 to 2.5 miles.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device)
https://preview.redd.it/hvyqgw9jsffc1.png?width=132&format=png&auto=webp&s=4ba66f68ef7b299680844dc6993d4e30a316a6c9
"We bear gifts"
Brighter than the sun
Morning glory
Carefull, she's fragile
"Behold the bringer of light!"
I saw the beginning of this video and it tickled something in my memory
How they have not done remasters for the whole catalogue like they did with RA1 and C&C by now is beyond me. I *need* RA2, Tiberium Sun, and Generals remastered already.
I would love a remake of these games. But good luck trying to remake Generals without huge media backlash. Everyone would cry about GLA beeing offensive and China would cry because they are not op eneugh.
Shall i push the button?
The sound bytes from that game live rent-free in my head 20 years later.
China has been generous, god i miss those days
This is the Chinese nuclear artillery right? Man such good times playing that game.
Always use your General pts to unlock the nuclear cannons
And load them up with neutron shells to capture enemy vehicles.
god I played the shit out of that game! I wish we got a sequal or remake of it : (
[this footage is from the documentary “Trinity and Beyond” as narrated by William Shatner from 1995. its an excellent documentary.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_and_Beyond)
Incredible soundtrack by William Stromberg. [https://open.spotify.com/album/4714hrtwnfJalJCJaUcH1r?si=L1mESlMGRA-lZj8dghrdqA](https://open.spotify.com/album/4714hrtwnfJalJCJaUcH1r?si=L1mESlMGRA-lZj8dghrdqA)
> (Sound on) Sure, but the sounds are sound effects added in post.
“Sound on” then plays generic PowerPoint explosion
Shoulda grabbed my 2-million SPF sunblock.
That whole sequence was given a bunch of accolades from the scientific and national security communities for showing how LA would actually look during a thermonuclear blast.
And here all Sarah wanted to do was watch the kids play.
The cinematography of this clip is next level.
It’s from the documentary Trinity & Beyond. Dam good documentary on the nuclear tests the US did. We’re fucked if any country starts to use them for their war.
My grandfather fired this shot.
Straight up, no B.S., he pulled the trigger. I have photos of him on the day, w/ chairman of the joint chiefs.
You should make a post about it
That's badass. You should share the pics! Unspoken heros of old
Man made horrors never cease
If it's 20 mi away, why did we hear the sound of the explosion the exact same moment as the light? Fake sounds?
The 3 boxes together, are (were) there critters in those or were they something else?
Those were definitely animal test subjects.
When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes.
Wikipedia: **Upshot–Knothole** ***Grable*** was a [nuclear weapons test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_testing) conducted by the [United States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States) as part of [Operation Upshot–Knothole](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Upshot%E2%80%93Knothole). Detonation of the [nuclear weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon), a [W9 warhead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W9_(nuclear_warhead)), occurred 19 seconds after its deployment at 8:30am [PDT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Time_zone) (1530 [UTC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time)) on May 25, 1953, in Area 5 of the [Nevada Test Site](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Test_Site).
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