VFX Artist Reveals the TRUE Scale of NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS
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Wren uses VFX to show you the true size of nuclear explosions as well as their destructive potential.
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Thanks to Jason Key and Daniël van der Kaaden from JangaFX for their help with the vfx shots.
Check out Atomcentral.com for archival nuke footage.
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Chapters ►
00:00 What Actually Happens in a Nuclear Explosion?
01:17 Science Behind the Explosion
02:55 How do Nukes "Hit Different"?
04:24 Measuring a Nuclear Explosion
05:21 Sequence of a Nuclear Explosion
07:59 Bigger and Bigger Bombs
10:12 Mutually Assured Destruction
I like how "that would be too expensive" is the only reason seemingly preventing Wren from detonating a nuclear bomb in LS
😂 lol our man didn’t blink at the thought of instantly incinerating millions of people… just had a problem with cost haha
i was about to say that! 😂
In Los Santos huh
Trevor wouldn’t hesitate
Putin just activated the most expensive and most dangerous nuke in the world. Must not be too costly.
VFX artist reveals is honestly my favorite series on this channel
Agreed! Love the way Wren explains stuff
it’s literally the reason im subbed to this channel
hell its my fav channel on youtube
on youtube!
It’s like education done right.
"The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, and the other with five." - Carl Sagan
"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." -War Games.
@@DonVigaDeFierro Which is the point; so stop acting all dramatic
@@IDNeon357lmao we’ve had these weapons for only 75 year hahahaha we are absolutely in the near future getting immolated in nuclear fire. What a dumb time to be alive lol
@@Lucky-sh1dm It wouldn't be the end of humanity, though. The end of civilization? Absolutely. But pockets of humans will survive in places that were too unimportant to waste a nuke on. Maybe some remote islands in the South Pacicific, or Indian Ocean. Large parts of Africa. And so on. The problem is with hundreds of nukes, you're going to have massive amounts of fallout on the entire planet. They wouldn't even be safe thousands of miles from a nuke. Winds would still blanket them with fallout eventually. Not to mention the risk of said fallout blocking out the sun and causing a nuclear winter.
@@IDNeon357 We'll stop acting all dramatic when our lives won't be a single bad decision away from being over. And trust me, we got VERY close WAY too many times. Like over a thousand times since the start of the Cold War where WWIII almost happened for a stupid reason. A few examples: - A single relay station running out of power disabled a whole region's communication when it was thought to be redundant; - A bear tried to climb into a US military base triggered the base's sabotage alarm but the general alarm the next base over; - A US ship dropped an exercise mine onto a Soviet submarine to scare them, 1 of the 3 officers required to launch a nuke refused (during the Missile Crisis of Cuba); - A system designed to detect incoming missiles thought the sunlight reflecting off of clouds was an army of missiles. I could keep going and easily excede the KZhead Characters cap (5000 iirc).
Former Ammo troop for the USAF. Loaded Nukes on Bombers in the Late 80s,early 90s. Excellent VLog. Well done, and succinct. Thank you for making this.
Court House 🏡🏡🏡🏡🤬👾🙊🙊🙊🙊🙊😀😃😃😃😃😃😀😀
Not the threat isn't still real, but the Millennials and Gen-Z have no clue how we were on the brink of it happening first in 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis and again in 1983.
@@fp5495 and all while having to cross a mountain with 5 feet of snow just to get to school!!
@@Ragnaroz6000 Uphill, headwind, while simultaneously fighting wolves and bears!
@@fp5495 Able-Archer 1983 was a fun time to be alive. And living in West Germany, as it was.
I met a survivor of the atomic blast in Hiroshima. She was working underground at an ammo factory, less than 1000m from the epicenter. She spent two years in a hospital recovering and still has the radiation burns on her arms (called keloids). Every couple of years, her white blood cells would spike up to really high levels and she would get quite ill. Strangely, her daughter had a similar white blood cell spike every couple of years. Later, when I visited Hiroshima and looked at the shadows of people burned into stone and concrete, it really altered my world view.
Nuclear burns aren't the only way you get keloids.
What really shook me as a history student was learning that the Japanese were already trying to negotiate a surrender prior to the bombings. One of the only conditions they had was the emperor remain alive and in power. The US refused, saying unconditional surrender only. Yet in the end we let the emperor remain in power anyway.. However it's actually worse than that.. Even if no nuclear weapons were invented at all Japan was never going to be the massive bloodbath for the American military the way it was played up to be. The Soviet Union was already preparing a invasion of the main islands from the north and just prior to the bombs had steamrolled through Manchuria with some elite Soviet divisions. So it's pretty widely debated today that the real reason for the bombings were to demonstrate to the Soviets and the world that we were the pre emanate global power while also forcing the issue with Japan, preventing a north south split of Japan like just happened in east/west Germany. With those facts considered the bombing of civilian cities was one of the greatest crimes in history, and wasn't just a means to a end played off as saving lives and forcing the "fanatical" Japanese to surrender. People of my parents generation completely bought in to the taught narrative, that while it was terrible potentially many more people would have died in a grueling terrible ground war in Japan. Of course this is what was taught in grade school, and it's the narrative every TV news station broadcast (what few TV and radio stations there were back then) and coming from a atmosphere of celebration at defeating Germany it's a hard pill to swallow that we would do something fundamentally wrong, immoral, a massive war crime. We were the good guys after all right? Any debate of the issue was taboo, it was for decades a settled matter, but unfortunately history isn't so simple, and often has a very dark underbelly that is ignored. “History is Written by Victors.” after all.
The irony is that it is much better to be defeated by the USA than by the Soviets. Japan would be very different today if the Soviets had occupied it. My country was "liberated" by the Soviet Union and it fucked us for generations.
@@-Zevin- This is the absolute best/worst example of history being written by the victors and I can well believe it. After all, that is exactly what we have learned Vietnam was about as well. I don't mind admitting that my parents, who lived through WW2 in the UK (one as a child who lived in London through the Blitz and my father who was a navigator on Lancaster Bombers in the Air Force), brought me up with the understanding that "The Japanese were horrific to people during WW2", and being a young child, I accepted this as a fact until I got old enough to question things and motivations. Had I not rejected this stuff at face value and built my own opinions on what I have researched and learned about, I would probably have grown up in ignorance and developed the exact same institutionalized racist ideology that they and a vast portion of our society have today. Thats the scary bit right there....
@@JeffBarberDigideus do you know nanjing massacre?
The Tsar Bomba was designed to be a 100 MT device, but even the developers were afraid of what would happen if it were fully fueled so they only half fueled it.
I bet when they saw what appeared, the developers probably felt like they still added too much
That is absolutely insane I never knew that about tsar
I wonder what would Have happened if they have. I mean the tsar bomb blew windows out in another country so imagine that times 2
Unsurprisingly, they already had a 100 MT device ready to go but cancelled it after seeing what the 50 MT device did.
That's true because the developers were afraid that if they were to set this off that could actually throw off the ecosystem and the entire world there were afraid that it would end the world.
I just discovered this channel and I'm only two videos in, but I love it already. Something about it reminds me of the really fun educational stuff from the nineties that stood out over everything else.
yeah but the "real" footage he showed isn't real... good video but misinformed. how could the camera survive the explosion but not a whole house
@@Buzz_Onna_Bike What on earth are you even talking about? Do you actually believe the cameras were out in the open just waiting to get evaporated? And nobody (from the group with some of the smartest people ever) would think about it and say "hey guys how could we film it without getting the cameras destroyed" or never even thought about it at all? Jesus Christ, the cameras were safe in bunkers, often much further away with a long focal length lens (aka "zoom" but that's a common mistake) and they used periscopes. This is not rocket science, ffs.
He kind of reminds me of one of my teachers.
Way more informative than I expected, No idea how you got that AI Upscaled test footage to look so good as well.
I'm older and grew up in a time when nuclear war was a very real possibility. Glad you took this topic seriously. Younger generations need to understand the impact, horror and outright futility of this madness.
Duck! and Cover! [[abd kiss your butt Goodby]] Even in the Diesr Grade I knew crawling under my desk wasn't gonna work.
It has become very real again since the war in Europe started
Ok boomer
@@mindofmadness5593 if you are far enough to not get most your skin instantly burned off and your eyes aren't blind and have enough time to duck and cover, it will probably help
That's the difference between the younger and older generations many of the younger generation see nukes and know we have not even reached a fraction of how powerful they can get simply because we stopped testing. Where you feel fear and existential dread we feel happiness and jubilation. Look at the power humanity wields and we haven't even started colonizing other worlds yet. Makes me feel like humanity can fight god and win. Makes me feel bored of human vs human wars we need to find something new and challenging to kill.
This video series should be used in classes because they make learning stuff like this fun all the while keeping the seriousness of it.
Reminds of watching Bill Nye the science guy in elementary school!
Except that detonating a ground burst nuclear weapon like he did in a city would do way less than his did as loads of the energy is eaten by the ground as well as a good amount of the energy is straight up absorbed by the concrete and steel buildings.
@@masterhacker7065although ground bursts create much worse nuclear fallout, that’s why Japan was able to rebuild so fast after they were nuked because it was an air burst, meanwhile Chernobyl will be uninhabitable for an estimated 20,000 years or something like that
@@Ramen_66yeah but chernobyl wasnt a nuke it was a nuclear meltdown which releases more radiation then a nuke would
@@isaiah._.r yah your right, but still, a ground explosion is still at least worse nuclear fallout wise
I don't ever say this but I like ur enthusiasm in ur videos kid!!!! U try really hard to give us a show!!!!!
Ur a kid
First time seeing your channel, and I most say… this video was so good man, it got deep for a second, but it was a good video ❤
Wren, thanks so much for the NUKEMAP shout out. Trying to give that sense of scale was why I created it and why I continue to work on and improve it. I’m glad you found it useful and I was fascinated to see how the CC would approach modeling a nuclear detonation. I've learned a lot from this channel over the years and I'm glad I could "give back," in a way. (I put off watching this for two weeks because I couldn't bear the idea of getting annoyed with you if you did anything I really didn't think was correct, but all of my critiques ended up being in the category of "fairly minor nitpicks" in the end.)
Wow i recognize that name anywhere, your site really made me realize how powerful nukes are many years ago
Great work! Me and my son have used it to try to visualize the consequences of nuclear war, and it really put it into context for us. It's certainly a great tool that I hope more people take a look at.
Nope, I was the one who created NukeMap...stop trying to steal my credit.
It’s a great piece of software! I live in NYC and have used to determine how survivable my home’s location is if the city was hit.
@@kidzbop38isstraightfire92 and who are you lol
It's so hard to comprehend how violent of a reaction it is, this was such a good visualization of what it's really like. Well done as usual Wren!
Simply the thought of complete annihilation to California itself sent chills through my spine
@@hun1on138 CA is a huge piece of land, it's unfathomable what the destruction of just the publicly known US arsenal is capable of. If nuclear winter is no longer the consensus of a believed scientific concept, then what we face may be far worse in terms of living organic matter in the region. Entire ecosystems glassed, creating a chain-reaction of falling ecosystems int he surrounding areas.
It's even worse when you realize that those 650 nukes most likely won't all be used on 1 place. Rather you could choose up to 650 different targets (for example, 650 different cities around the world) to hit, and an opposing nation would do something similar in response. And that's before radiation comes into play. @@hun1on138
Thank you for being so respectful in this Video
Thank you for making this. I'm a young Gen-X'er: raised in the tail end of cold war nuclear paranoia, drank in the anti-Red propaganda, and witnessed the post-Soviet "end of history." With the rise of armed conflict with nuclear-armed opponents, the general public needs to be aware of the stakes possible with these conflicts.
Wren, this is actually really important to show these simulations and the destruction. If you can simulate the gut-wrench feeling, then you can, on a mass scale, change the human consciousness for the better.
Been following the war happening in Ukraine, the amount of times I’ve seen Russia threaten to nuke everyone is just baffling. I really hate how they can just threaten millions of people and there’s nothing we can do.
Sadly our human history only got immensely better when we were able to individually empathy and visual all the horrors in the world. For better or worth of modern society if we didn't share all these realities we will continue to get people denying them. Hopefully we continue to keep the ability to cause pain out of reach out others (I know this is a stupidly wrong statement but one can aspire)
yes
The catastrophic Beirut explosion is enough to increase human awareness of nuclear dangers. Even though it's tiny compared to little boy
Nope, it doesn't work, but yes it helps to deter from capture. Iran would be like Iraq, Syria or Libia if haven't nuces.
I don’t mean to downplay any of corridors hard work, but this is BY FAR their best video. I’m glad wren wasn’t afraid to stop being light hearted. Because this most definitely isn’t a light hearted topic. Thank you for making this Wren
and they didnt even talk about Gnomon and Sundial, Gnomon which would be there just to set off Sundial, would be 1000 MEGATONS, in this video, look at what 1 megaton bomb did... oh, Sundial? 10 000 MEGATONS. For people who saw Oppenheimer, you remember the Teller guy that was obsessed with fusion bombs? Yea, credible scientists said that the world would be a better place without him. He was an absolute maniac, proposing even gigaton weapons, he left people absolutely speechless.
POV: your Ukraine and Russia SFSR threatens you with nukes Russia: HAHA NUKES GOOO BVRROOM BOOOOOOOM
I heartily second this.
Unfortunately the data about countries reducing nuclear arsenals is wrong. All the major powers are increasing their nuclear arsenals at a record pace. We are a hair's breath away from nuclear WW3 with Russia, China and North Korea... All countries are now making Nukes as fast as possible because of how close we are to war. All the nuclear treaties have been thrown in the garbage... all bets are off. Before all countries agreed to not test nukes. Testing is back on. Even if they were allowed nuclear doctrines required all countries to notify other countries if and when they were doing test detonations or missle flight tests to avoid confusion/fears. That's off too. Nuclear planes and subs are already out on patrols from all major powers. Go to the search bar above. Type in "Canadian prepper" and watch the latest videos. Finland and many european countries are firing up their bomb shelters again. Do you even know where the nearest bomb shelter is near you in the U.S.? Has anyone talked about it? no... because the people pulling the strings of our government want us ignorant and fighting with each other over dumb Sh!t... they don't care if we die.
If you declare with your mouth, 'Jesus Is Lord' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. -Romans 10:9
Extremely thoughtful, Intelligent and evocative video. Visually enticing and accurate. The young man’s humanity shining through sets this video apart for its mature representation of what even a small nuclear war would entail. Chilling. Bravo and Well done.
Thank you for showing this. It's both striking and enlightening at the same time.
“I don’t see a species trying to destroy themselves. I see a species with a reason to save themselves, and that gives me hope.” Damn. I love that. That gave ME hope.
heh... go to your search bar above. type in "Canadian Prepper" and tell me if you still think that after watching a few of his videos. Don't let the name fool you. He goes out of his way to get information directly from people in the military to back up his info. We're so close to Nuclear WW3 that it's laughable how ignorant the masses are on this... but I'm pretty sure that's intentional.
With whats currently happening in Europe, this just sounds like wishful thinking to me. 🙁
Eh. We live on a planet on which literally 100 or so people have the ability to incinerate and destroy you at will. This is pure psychopathy. If you think that arms reduction treaties serve humankind, go back to bed.
If you declare with your mouth, 'Jesus Is Lord' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. -Romans 10:9
I wish I could agree with feeling like that. Sadly I don't 😢
The Halifax explosion in 1917 was the largest man made explosion at the time. It took out one town and the tsunami caused by the explosion took out another. I think this is a piece of history worth looking into and seeing the scale of this through VFX.
It was the largest man-made explosion *at the time* at an estimated 2.9 kilo-tons. Which is massively devestating, but only a bit over a 10th the strength of the manhatten project bomb.
@@artstruth3889 It is real. They have cameras poking out of bunkers miles away and use mirrors to get the footage from zoomed lenses miles away. It was actually a insane set up to be able to capture that footage.
^^^
@@artstruth3889 If you assume the cameras were just out in the open in tripods. Yeah, I understand why you would assume it's a miniature. But the camera were in specially constructed bunkers and using telephoto lenses.
The explosion at RAF Fauld in 1944 is probably the largest and latest pre-nuclear explosion. 4 kilotons of bombs, stored in tunnels under a hill. When they went off accidentally it turned that hill into a 40 meter deep crater. The scientists on the Manhattan Project even asked for details of the explosion.
Teachers tell me "you cant learn from youtube" when I can literally search for this dude who explained E=mc2 better than any highschool teacher using a drop of water and a nuke.
"People used to use TNT to dye their clothes yellow" All fun and games until you walk by a candle 💀
Wren sure knows how to take something really exciting and then flip the script in matter of seconds. I really appreciate that.
100th like
o crap u got blue hair 🥴
You should give a try to Vsauce then
I think he missed the fact that at the moment blowing up California's major population centers would be a humanitarian act.
@AnkitSingh-wq2rk I actually have watched a couple of videos. It's been a minute, though, so I'll dive into it again. Thanks for the suggestion!
Wren is the teacher we have always wanted and few of us actually had in the classroom. Fun, full of knowledge and able to make you think of the most serious topics as well.
Haha can you imagine him as a high school science teacher? He'd be the most badass teacher in school. At least right up until one of his students went home and answered their parent's "what did you do at school today?" with "we detonated a nuke in downtown LA!" 😆🤣
Few of you had teachers like Wren because your government is spending all your money on nukes instead of education :D
@@aalever and now they're sending it all to Ukraine.
I had a lot of great science teachers. Though that may be becasue I was in a very wealthy public school district. Our public education sector in general, sucks. Thanks, republicans.
@@artstruth3889 The camera are under a bunker, what you are seeing is a concrete and metal pole holding up mirrors. Just like how they got pics of the elephants foot near the bottom of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Please get off the cospiravy theory sites and stop listening to Joe Rogan, those people are incredibly dumb and are lying to you.
Wow the visuals are amazing and really put nukes in to perspective. Thanks
You sir are amazing! I have never been so captivated by a KZhead video in my life!
Wren, you're quickly becoming one of my favorite science content creators! PLEASE keep it up! Maybe do some awesome collaborations!
Maybe with vsauce, that'd be cool
They keep looking because while this has some research to make a good video (which is nice!), this is by no means a science channel.
@@AlvaroALorite VFX is art AND science!
@@evolicious no, it's not, if anything it is a technology (applied science), more akin to engineering.
To Corridor, I would like to let you guys know that this is the best and most educational and entertaining series that you have created. Ofcourse the biggest applause goes to Wren who makes these awesome videos one after one with such beautiful VFX and overall presentation with the sounds and a genuinely great script that it clearly shows how amazing he is as an artist as well as a member of this channel. I know just like me many of the audience are excited all the time for this series and click on these videos without wasting a single second after getting a notification. I congratulate you guys for this feat and wish you carry on this series as long as u can. Love from one of your long time subscribers.
@@artstruth3889I’m not sure but I’m guessing the camera was far enough away from the explosion with a huge zoom lens and fixed on a tripod or something, at least for the bus shot that could be an option. The following shot of the buildings could be vfx based on the other shots.
The footage shows the effect of the light hitting paint. The cameras would obviously be shielded from behind and are recording away from the direction of the light. They would not be directly affected. They were most likely inside some sort of fortified container to withstand the shockwave after.
@@artstruth3889he literally explained that the effect u see happens when the light from the blast directly touches something. By setting up a camera behind a shield of some kind, it would not be directly affected by this heat.
They’re buried underground in containers and use mirrors to capture the footage. The camera is a rapatronic camera that is pretty amazing.
@@artstruth3889 look up "Fact Check - Surviving cameras do not prove nuclear tests are fake" , and don't believe everything you hear on Joe Rogan. 🙄
Damn. Value addition to the basic premise of your title makes this a vanishingly rare watch on YT. Well done.
First time viewer here, really impressed by the quality and presentation of this video, great work 😎 Liked and subscribed
This video seriously hit different. It went from fun exploding things to the reality of war so quick and so expertly handled. Stuff like this really makes you think about the state of humanity sometimes
When his face went dull from calculating the casualties from the bomb simulator, 3mil dead at the push of one button, n there r 650 of them in the US alone. Has Science gone too far?
I dunno, it felt like a bit of an afterthought given that the video then ends on "hey, you found those explosions _cool?_ Wanna explode your own cities?"
@@unvergebeneidplenty of Americans do seem to enjoy exploding other people’s cities though. Just helping out with the Ukrainian war, something that could easily bring Russian nukes into our own cities, seems to be an inevitability. I just don’t think America understands what it actually means to be a victim. Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were followed by strong aggression towards those responsible - what about when you get hit so hard that you literally can’t fight back and/or you surrender? That’s what fighting Russia and China would be. My advise is to seek out politicians who have plans to negotiate and end to current wars - not politicians who promise to keep funding it.
Yep. Obligatory sad face.@@unvergebeneid
@@unvergebeneid Agreed. There's no real benefit to 'pretending' that nukes are fun imo
Hi Wren, Pliny the Younger, a Roman writer in 79AD, describes the shape of the cloud created by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius by likening it to an Italian pine tree. Which has the shape of a mushroom with a very long stem. Just wanted to let you know :) Great video, keep it up!
which is why the largest FAE bombs are not normally fielded; they are big enough to look like nukes when they go boom.
Pliny is my G. The father of cartography right there.
The way he told us how big destruction these bomba can do and how bad they are and then just asked us if we thinked it was cool is so random that I love it
It matters who we put in the White House.
it matters to us all , i`m in the UK and it terrifies me that the man with the button right now cannot string a coherent sentence together
@@waynus2021 I just heard him making completely coherent sentences responding to the Arizona supreme court. Maybe you were smoking something when you thought he didn't make any sense?
MAGA
@@TheMonist_ stop dude, other people can read your nonsense.
@waynus2021 yeah ok try trump more crazy and senial.
It is crazy that the Tsar Bomb wasn't even tested at its full potential and was capable of going to 100MT
They had to neuter it to move it. It was too heavy for transport, so they halved it, and disintegrated an island.
Check out the Poseidon…..different bomb….but 200MT
I mean, some may argue it'd be crazier to do so. Take myself for instance. We need less of all of this...
Tsar Bomba was scaled down to half to make it possible for the crew in the airplane that dropped the bomb to survice. Even with the scaled down version, the airplane had special paint on it to reflect as much direct radiation away as possible to not heat too much because of radiation.
@@MikkoRantalainen That paint melted
It would blow your mind to know a Japanese man was at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki when the nukes were dropped. And he survived both detonations.
who?
Who?
@@bmk48Andrew tate
Yup he survived the first but still decided to go to his work place day laterwhere the next dropped.
@@bmk48 Tsutomu Yamaguchi
They don't want us to think about casualties, but it was pretty much in our faces during the cold war. I cried when the Berlin Wall fell because I had hope (albeit for an instance) that maybe, just maybe, humanity had come to its senses.
Who's here watching on the cusp of WWIII? 😏👌🏼😔
Naa WW3 before GTA6 is crazy
Thank you for being so honest, informative, respectful and engaging. Not an easy thing to imagine, let alone explain so eloquently. May the worst parts of history never be repeated.
LA being ended would be a good thing
another horrific thing about the bombs. for the people close enough to the fireball... it was instant, at the temp and speed of the nuclear blast, their entire body was reduced to atoms, leaving nothing but a shadow behind, because with the sheer power of this type of explosion you aren't even dead, you just become physics and carbon
@@vanillaicecream2385 The words "you just become physics and carbon" hit me way harder than it should
@@faegriffin1268 its just disturbing, the knowledge that you can just be alive one second and a fraction of a moment just not exist anymore as a human, your very atomic makeup stripped apart leaving you as nothing but soot
This was not the worst part of history. Not even close, compared to what japan did all around Asia
I love the fact that you guys just didn't make this a fun-to-watch segment. It took a serious turn , but ended on an optimistic note. Well done. Hope to see more ...
great balance!
There really isnt any optimism. Russia just ended its signed treaty to lower its nuclear bomb stock. Basically, they are going to rebuild their arsenal.
@@linksmusic2060yeah and since US and Russian relations are becoming worse ( specially after Ukraine ) things have a real possibility to escalate.
Scary @@razorback8300
China, North Korea, Sudan and I bet even Iraq and Iran would ally with them. Even though they would be wiped out they would probably launch missiles at us before they got killed. Its all kind of a huge mess yanno.@@Gino_567
I love these videos. Keep up dude
Ran into Wren on the streets of LA last month while on holiday and he told me he was working on this video - really excited to see it turned out great! Thanks again for taking a few minutes to chat to me :) - Tom from London
Meeting anyone else saying, "I'm working on nuking the city, where you're on vacation". Absolutely terrifying. Good thing you know the channel. Hope you had a great vacation.
That's so wholesome! Live interactions like this
Tom Scott?
Honestly, these videos should be used as teaching tools in school. I mean you can tell how impactful a nuke would be by the mushroom cloud alone, but actually seeing it wipe out an ENTIRE CITY just puts it into perspective you could never get from words or measurements alone! Brillaint job Wren and the Corridor team!
all these US officials openly suggesting ww3 should watch this, not jist kids
@@priapulida if anyone knows the power of atomic bombs, it's the US government. They don't care, as long as they "win". But hey, that's all governments I guess, do anything to "win" no matter who you step on to do it.
"The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?"
Congratulations on the tone of the video. Very difficult but you nailed it
I adore that you didn't skimp out on the gritty reality of nukes and their real life toll. I have tremendous respect for you Wren.
Thank you for not "separating the science from the deaths". As an American who has lived in Japan and has been to Hiroshima, the Peace Memorial Museum and was afforded the incredible opportunity to speak with a survivor of the atomic bomb, I cannot make that separation. I only lived in Japan for a short time, but my visit to Hiroshima will stay with me for the rest of my life. The survivor we spoke with carried her experience with her every day as she battled just about every variation of cancer known to humankind. If I remember correctly, at that time, she claimed to have undergone something like 80 surgical procedures. The real world consequences of our actions were captured on film. The fallout, the human cost, the suffering was well-documented. And once you've seen it, it just cannot be unseen.
perhaps you should google what the japanese did to the korean comfort girls, what they did at nanjing and unit 731. It might make you reconsider about those nukes. And when you are done with that realize that the japanese have not once apologized (let alone pay reparations) and the extend of ww2 in their schools is something like "and then the americans attacked us"
@johndoe-jg7he in fairness, you're both right. The Japanese committed some terrible atrocities and arguably deserved to be punished and humbled for what they did. It also really helped end WW2. However many innocent people lost their lives. People that would have been perfectly ordinary people just going about their lives.
@@johndoe-jg7he pointing out that one horrific act was indeed horrific does not excuse others from also being horrific. A war crime or crime against humanity is exactly that. Japan has a long and violent history, much of which they still have yet to truly address in meaningful ways. And the same is very true of the United States, both domestically and internationally. By the time the US dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan's navy and air power had already been decimated. In Operation Meetinghouse six months prior, the US firebombed Tokyo in what remains today to be the most destructive bombing raid in human history (yes, more than Dresden) killing estimates that range from 100-200 thousand mostly civilians and displacing over a million (although, some historians claim the death toll was severely underreported as the numbers didn't reflect the real world population density at the time). My point is that we should NEVER separate the science, the strategy, the politics, etc. from the death tolls, no matter the actors involved. Japan must come to terms with its history. I'm an American, and I think it's important that we stop perpetuating our own myths to justify our actions. It's debatable whether or not dropping the bombs was actually necessary. The excuse we use to justify it was a hypothetical about the costs of conducting a land invasion of the main Island. An objective truth is that the act was absolutely a geopolitical show of force establishing the first world superpower in the face of potential Soviet expansionism, who we knew was also developing the same technology at the time. In geopolitics, it's never just as simple as "It'll save Americans lives". That's just the propaganda campaign delivered to the public to justify mass killings.
@@JesseArt It's hard to ponder the consequences of my ancestors actions while the victims deny theirs
@@johndoe-jg7he you're speaking as though you were on the committee of generals who decided that the bombing would go ahead. You're speaking as though you had to pick up a rifle and go to war. You weren't. You didn't. You're an ordinary person, just like the tens of thousands of ordinary people who were in Hiroshima. If you cannot separate ordinary people from armed forces and war criminals, I'm worried for you. If you are unable to do that, it must also mean that you hold every single person in the United States personally responsible for every single one of its own war crimes, its own human rights violations.
Sir , you have great work so i am taking your video for education purpose in my project
I think this video is going to appeal to more than the VFX crowd given its educational content
Every-time Wren makes one of these videos I’m truly blown away. The attention to detail, the information, the true emotion and scale of everything he explains. Every time I see these videos on my feed I instantly click because I know it’s going to be amazing. Well done again Wren!
Haha, blown away
The term your looking for is over produced
Really dig Wren's more serious science vids. Facts + hope is a nice thing. This was another good one.
Excellent vid, and well delivered Wren.
this movie was insane, great work thank you!
Wren does such a phenomenal job on these videos! It’s like vsauce meets VFX.
Oh man Vsauce/Veritasium with VFX 🤤
this type of informative and visual "documentary" is honestly my favorite. the numbers as well as the cgi is really interesting, and i wish there were more. keep up the good work Wren
Wow the tsar bomba is absolutely insane. Do they still have something similar in their arsenal?
the most fascinating thing is that on the real footage the cameras filming the vehicles and house do not even move despite the shockwave
I was standing at the wisdom tree in Griffith Park and realized I’d get 3rd degree burns (through every layer of skin) if a 5 megaton nuke hit downtown LA six miles away. China still has a few 5 megaton warheads on its old DF5 ICBMs, though those are being replaced by the newer DF-41 which likely has a few 150 kiloton MIRVs with many decoys.
Unless 1 single building stands between you and the bomb.
Dude how are you this cool?
@@BrownCookieBoy The Wisdom Tree has a clear view of downtown LA and a warhead comes in at 17,000mph, then air-bursts around 2,000 feet. The kinetic blast of the shockwave *might* make me go deaf or blow my flesh off my skeleton six miles away, even if I’m not instantly burned.
@@tayzondaywhat if you were in a building??
@@anrealnub2686you would become a pancake a very messy one
"that would be too expensive" didn't even mention the moral problems
I was about to say that…
Still got him on the t**t watch list though.
Which moral problems?
dont ever give them unlimited money 💀
@@neliskrelis6453I think because like 20 good people live amongst the sludge of humanity so I don’t think they wanna harm those 20 people
It still blows my mind that we've set off so many nuclear bombs on the only planet we've got to live on. Old footage of them being detonated is fascinating to watch and I find it incredible, but again, we literally set these things off on the only habitable world we know of.
Rats wont build a mouse trap but the humans have built an atomic bomb -Albert einstein
I always love Wren's science based videos. But this one was really top notch. Never stop doing these.
I chuckled when you said "are you scared yet?" My man, I was raised in the 80's. I've been scared of this stuff my whole life.
How old are you
50?
Trump is going to collapse the economy and start ww3. They proceed to collapse the economy and start ww3. Fyi how do those nuclear bombs help your climate change?
@@vijay32570 Does it really matter? His point remains
@@vijay32570 im 52 and we had drills in school on what to do if Russia launched a nuke.....and it was just hide under our desk
Hi i was in Lebanon Beirut when the explosion happened... So many people died😢 i got lucky and i was too far away for it to reach me but some of the shockwaves still did reach me and it was so powerful i almost got knocked out... Imagine how the people that were close were feeling:(
Also the B83 uses a "dial a Yield" system that allows a precise adjustment to the yield from like 10KT to 1.2 MT
I was a kid in the eighties... we thought a LOT about nuclear war and nuclear annihilation back then. I saw so many nuclear holocaust movies my worst nightmares are still featuring nuclear explosions.
I live in Germany and there was a US military base just about 2 kilometers from my home. Back then they opened the 4 missile bunkers every 3 months for a brief test (no launch though). It was always a frightening view to see the silhouettes of four Nike Hercules missiles against the sky background. Fortunately they abolished that base with the end of the cold war.
Don’t worry friend it will be instant but it will probably not hit you unless you live in Damascus. You have time to repent
Oh yes…The Day After Tomorrow…man that terrified me as a kid.
Perhaps it was due to where you lived at the time.
I was a kid in the eighties too. I did not think about it a lot. When I learned 'duck and cover', it was about tornadoes.
Something you didn't mention that adds to awesome horror of nuclear weaponry is that the explosion will leave silhouettes of people and objects that get incinerated by the blast. There's a pretty terrifying picture from Japan where a silhouette is all that remains of a person who was sitting on a concrete staircase when one of the bombs went off.
i visited the hiroshima atomic bomb museum and they have the front portion of the bank across from the river when the bomb detonated, i think that's what you might be talking about. the shadow was still visible, though it wasn't particularly human shaped. i believe the man was waiting early for the bank to open and was the first person who died from the bomb, likely vaporized instantly before he'd be able to know there was an explosion.
I don't know if it was ever photographed but it was reported at the time that people far enough away from the explosions but close enough to be affected would have the patterns in their clothing "flashed" into their flesh.
@@MrTVintro There was a documentary (BBC I think) that had images of the cloth imprints on the skin and the shadows of the people burned into the bank, pretty savage stuff...
It's called a nuclear shadow and if you google that, you can see some images that take your breath away, and not in a good way.
@@artstruth3889there’s whole documentary’s about how they got the cameras to get those shots. To be fair I’m not sure about the ones in this video, but regardless of checking there’s many like it that really are real. I recommend you do like 20 minutes of reading if you really want to start spreading information about it.
Great video, great production, excellent narration
I've experienced two massive "BOOMS" in my life. One was the last space shuttle flight ever, reentering the atmosphere and the resulting sonic boom. The second was a Civil War memorial dedication at the town cemetery last summer and they blew off a small howitzer-type cannon that some local had built to spec. I wasn't even next to the second one, maybe a half a mile away, also inside the house, and it was absolutely huge, rattled the windows and dishes. I cannot fathom what it would like to witness a nuclear explosion up close but safe enough away to not be killed.
This is such a difficult topic that you easily could have covered in such a way that it caused an uproar. However, you handled it with class, curiosity, and humility. Well done, fellas.
@@calgar42knukes of love you mean
@@geno7462 nono good modern thermonuclear warheads ,the kind that vaporize your carbon content on the wall behind you before it blows up !
@@calgar42k nooo no.. no more plz no more. No lemon fresh
@@geno7462 flagged em for promoting terrorism
Its kind of bizarre how 99% of discussions and depictions are always just about the power of the bomb..I'm glad he addressed that. the horrific, nightmarish skin sloughing of the victims, bulging features, thousands of people walking in the river to cool off as their skin peeled away, clothing patterns fused to their skin itself Let alone how nagasaki was just dropped on a whim without even getting an order from the president The japanese empire was as bad as the Nazis, definitely, they were brutal, horrific, and butchered millions in asia. Definitely needed to be stopped..but there was no excuse to involve civilians, unlike Dresden this wasnt a justified military target. the nuke was 100% just a political weapon, we'd firebombed all their cities already, had them completely beaten and the soviets were about to mount their own invasion from Manchuria. It wasn't this war winning life saving thing its depicted as in the modern day. Sorry, just a PSA from a history major
Wren is my favorite creator at Corridor because of his videos like this. As a military brat during the Cold War and my old man being in the Navy, I was around the prime targets in the US and overseas. I came to terms that if there was WWIII my family wouldn't survive it. This actually brought me peace. We wouldn't be around to suffer through the aftermath.
My grandfather was a Pearl Harbor survivor. He was a B-52 bomber pilot and he would never watch the footage of Hiroshima. It broke his heart. He hated that it had to come to that to bring the clarity that was needed to talk peace.
I loved the approach, well done guys, congrats! My kindest regards from the Basque Country 😘
Seeing the kiddo in the rubble of Hiroshima... It's tough to put into words how terrible the power of a nuke is until you really get close to the individuals affected by it, so I'm really grateful Wren was willing to let this be more than just educational. Great video as always Corridor Crew.
I was silenced after reading "Hiroshima Diary." Good, sobering book.
The photographer: “Okay… that’s good, wait no, a little to the left please. Never mind, here let me just…. ah. That’s perfect, this will show them.”
it doesn't matter what people personally think of Japan regarding their warcrimes in Nanjing. The fact that civilians had to deal with the most of the conflict is really sad. Entire cities got destroyed, even if its only a 100 thousand deaths, that's still millions more in grief and pain of their loved ones passing.
I know its not exactly the Hiroshima explosion, but that photo just reminds me of Grave of the Fireflies, which for your emotional sake, you shouldn't watch without a bunch of tissues and a bottle of water. For an actual rendition of a nuclear explosion, I suggest Barefoot Gen :)
They should of bombed unit 731 instead.
Honestly Wren, I already adored CC content, but I wholeheartedly love and appreciate that your message was more about humanity than technology… PLEASE do this regularly! Future generations are counting on you. 😊
From my knowledge the Tsar Bomb was a bombed that was created to be a 100 Mega ton bomb, but got half’d due to terrifying theories. People say that if the bomb would’ve went off at 100 MT’s, it would’ve knocked the earth off its axis.
I don't know a single person who has said that, but it was supposed to be 100MT and scaled down, you are correct. They reduced the yield for concerns of the amount of fallout and possibly the lives of the crew that dropped it.
in test footage with a force this strong how are the camera's clear, sitting still, and still functioning?
This is by far the best of the countless awesome videos you’ve made. My dad spent the last few years of his military career and all of his post-military career in this field. I remember discussing things like this with him growing up and as a young adult. I don’t know that he ever truly made peace with that part of his life before he died.
Wren needs his own solo channel. This was a great video, capped by the unadulterated display of humanity; it's important to re-sensitize people to what it really means to drop a bomb on a population. Great job, Wren!
He does however he doesn't post on it much. It's sirwrender
Yk your pitch in this video was very wholesome... ill leave it at that 👏 nice
"This theres a good reason why people don't normally think about this." I live between NYC and a military base. This is why people like me think about this
Kyle Hill also did a video essay on nuclear bombs a while back, and I learned that even if a nuke was detonated in a random city, the knock-on effects on the global economy would be so catastrophic that the world would just break. It's an appalling defense strategy when, if by some miracle, you destroy your enemy before they launch one back, but it still spells the end of the very nation you're trying to protect.
Watch this nuclear bomb
I remember making arguments like that in College Debate. Realistically, everyone would adapt and it'd just be a blip.
@@jakeaurod *The global economy would collapse.* That's not something you just get over. That's the extinction of the human race type stuff. Try feeding the global population when there's no economy. How does anyone buy food if all money in the world suddenly has zero value? The global recession in 2008 was bad enough, imagine that times a million.
Most contries have them as a deterent, the actual use of these weapons would spell the end of human civilization. The few that survive will live in hell
We already did nuke not one, but two cities. And yet, the world economy did not break.
Hey Wren, I'm glad you explained about the firestorm which, I feel, many videos on nuclear weapons tend to gloss over. I have spoken with and listen to the testimonies of several A-bomb survivors and they also stress this point - the fires that burnt people's skin away and turned the city into a blazing hell. People, some with their entire skin hanging off from their fingertips, were instantly dehydrated and desperate for water. It's a reason why many headed to the rivers, but once they drank water, it killed them.
There have been plenty of studies done on the effects of modern nuclear warheads on modern nuilding materials. The cities inthe west are far sturdier than the wooden cities of Japan during the 2nd WW.. The Energy required per square inch of modern building material to sufficiently scorch it is not met by the standard 750 kiloton warheads hat the russians use. Thus firestorms have been deemed as highly unlikely. There is so much misinformation floating around due to physicists speculating what would happen without actually having the tools necessary to simulate it. Nowadays we know for example, that there is no such thing as a nuclear winter. The energy of nuclear weapons is not enough to reach the upper layers of the atmosphere, and there is not enough dirt being kicked up because nukes are generally detonated as airbursts to maximize damage. A nuclear winter would require every nuclear bomb to be detonated at ground level with every one being stronger than the Tsar bomba. Not gonna happen. Whats going to kill the most people is the decimation of our infrastructure. The EMP´s generated by nuclear explosions in the atmoshpere, will completely shut down the Grid. It is estimated that around 250 million people would die from the direct impact and radation sickness of nuclear weapons. But around 1 billion would die from starvation within that same year. That is gonna be the real killer.
@@snakeace0 "..."? Nuclear winter IS a thing, but it would require the majority of the worlds nuclear arsenal to be detonated all at once, which isn't that unlikely considering mutually assured destruction and the timeframe that a nuclear war occurs on.
@@snakeace0 Just to quell the EMP scenario, there are protective redundant systems in place to replace power in that event. It's not even remotely an issue for at least the past few decades. Nuclear detonation will only effect the first few minutes of a blackout grid, and then be rerouted. Even cell towers use these redundant technologies. The biggest issue would be broken power stations and power lines for local grids. Places like hospitals that use underground power systems would pretty much not be effected at all. There are tons of servers and comms equipment underground and far under the ocean that will also be protected. You would be surprised by the redundant system we have today. No one that is an engineer working with these technologies are forgetting about the nuclear scenario. In fact, it's what has pushed so many redundancy technologies. Hell, we even have companies that can beamform cell data from sats in LEO now! Check out AST SpaceMobile, they just made a (2G/3GPP) cellphone call to the other side of the planet, only using one satellite! Next iteration will be using 4g and 5g suites of radio. So there is no need to be afraid of comms networks and electricity going down if you are not in the destructive blast wave. Grids are redundant and separated physically for that good reason (unlike Texas).
@@Nameless_Individual Nope, Nuclear winter was a hypothesized event in the 80s, that has long been disproven. There is no such possible thing as "nuclear winter". Fallout simply (and luckily) does not work like that). The initial study done by Carl Sagan and 26 other scientists from the Soviet Union and the US is based on wrong assumptions. The scientists involved had no experience with nuclear weapons or their effects. They made three wrong assumptions: -The mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion sucks up soot and debris and propels this into the stratosphere where it remains for years. In reality most nuclear weapons have a yield that is too low to produce a mushroom cloud that can reach the stratosphere. -All the soot produced by the fires of a nuclear explosion is sucked up by the mushroom cloud. In reality most soot remains in the destroyed buildings, it is pretty sticky stuff. -All the debris particles sucked up stay in the atmosphere for years. In reality the mass of most of these particles is too high, they fall back to earth within a week. In conclusion, nuclear winter is a myth. The really astonishing thing is that when Carl Sagan and his team made their study, they didn’t consult any of the official government studies which were already in the public domain. Had they simply read ‘The Effects of Nuclear Weapons’ by Samuel Glasstone, they would have realized their basic assumptions were wrong.
Always wondered how the camera during those nuke and atom bomb footage test from the 50s were able to survive and not burn up or be destroyed in those test.
This is a great follow up to Oppenheimer and really well made.
0:06 it's horrific that only money stops Wren from nuking LA
have you considered donating?
Would you all create a similar recreation for what could happen if Yellowstone decides to "pop?" That would be huge.
West coast would be gone
Well, if worst comes to worst, it has been predicted that it can cause damage similar to The Rock™ that perma banned the dinosaurs.
@@sigma_wolf2026 minus the Yellowstone region and every state directly around it, the East Coast would arguably fare worse
We could just use a bunch of helicopters to pour water, dry ice, and stuff inside fire extinguishers all over the volcano. The volcano wouldn’t last more than 2 hours.
@@blackirontarkus3156I don't think that you know what Yellowstone really is...
RIP all the crackheads in Skidrow. lol
I Can't believe you still have a Video Copilot shirt. I was their sound designer for 10 years lol
This is the first video of yours I've seen, man. You did an awesome job presenting such disturbing subject matter so respectfully. Not an easy line to walk. People like to remember certain tragedies. Others seem to be just too hard to handle. Nuclear weapons are the most diabolical shit ever invented. But I have faith we'll outdo ourselves.
Watch this nuclear
Biological and Chemical Weapons have entered the chat
Ah, yes, we have an optimistic pessimist here, folks😂.
We have ALREADY outdone ourselves via Quantum Dynamic Weapons which harness the virtual particle annihilation of vacuum-point/zero-point phenomena. The estimated size of an explosion from 1000 KG worth of full-scale Quantum Dynamic-based annihilation forces is about the size of the Black Hole in the centre of our galaxy so a few THOUSAND solar masses blowing up all at once! There are smaller versions of this weapon-type hidden 2000 feet (600+ metres) underground at China Lake Naval Airstation in California. It is a MAJIC-level top-secret where ONLY the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the weapon developers themselves (actually, they are merely the reverse engineers of the technology!), the DefSec, the Vice President and President know about it! The devices held down under severe lock-and-key at CL-NAS are "only" around 500 Megatons and go up into the low-Gigaton range so about the explosive energy of a Big Volcano such as Krakatoa! and NO! Don't even Ask! Just Don't! V
@@StarGateSG7 Man, how sweet of the president and vice president to lend you this little top classified national super secret. ☺️☺️
I really appreciate that you talked about the human impact of nuclear weapons, and still had a message of hope. I got chills when you showed the blast radius of the test bombs.
Not to rain on everyone's parade about that ending, but Russia is backing out of the deal and pursuing to expand their nuclear arsenal once again since their failed invasion of Ukraine... And their threats of using nuclear weapons on Europe ever since February 2022 even has its own page on Wikipedia...
@@Gabriel87100 My friend, relax. As someone who was born and lived under Putin all his life, I can tell you with certainty that this is just their crazy propaganda. Putin's propaganda is on TV every day about how they can destroy America if they want to, but it's all done for the people who watch this brainwashing TV. Putin will not use nuclear weapons against America and you know why? Because all his children and immediate family and friends live there! And also a lot of looted property from Russian citizens that Putin keeps in the same America.
Meanwhile: Communist China expanding their Nuclear arsenal x6 fold, building a new 1,000 warheads. As they prepare for war over their bloodlust to take Taiwan and all the islands in the Sout, East, Japanese, North Natuna and West Philippines Seas
Also, one overlloked aspect of MAD is that if too many bombs are used in short window, the climate impact will kill almost everyone, including in countries far away from any impact point.
@@Gabriel87100 Its the failed expansion of Nato that caused this, moving Nato closer to Russia means less time to react, more chance a mistake will happen. To rain on your parade, your narrative is the most irresponsible.
Bro really started a nuclear war at the start of a video 😭😭😭
So how did they get the test footage showing the bus and car having the paint vaporized off of it ??
Brilliantly made. I stopped at 7:55 and sat in silence for one minute.
3:02 “and thanks to this dude who had special relatives” 💀💀💀💀
Lmao😂😂
Very cleverly sneaked in indeed
Explain jok please😊
@@neogivxapwntcpaaEinstein was the one who proposed the Special Theory of Relativity. So including the words "Einstein" and "special relatives" in the same sentence was on purpose.
@@matin563 why does it feel like "special relatives" has some incest tint to it ngl.i
"I think there's a good reason people don't like to think about this" Is very true. But also thankfully people did think about this and developed strategies to deter their use.
I think the saddest part of this is the quote "One death is a tragedy, one million deaths is a statistic." These bombs are so destructive that I don't think the human mind can comprehend the loss inflicted by them. There's too many people to understand that each and every one of them was a person. A person who had a life. And hundreds of thousands of those lives were cut short instantaneously. Today there are enough nukes to kill nearly every person on earth. That is a death toll in the billions. And to add to that fear, Russia just suspended one of its treaties regarding nukes. We need to learn to coexist or cease to exist.
I studied physics back in the early 90s. Turned out there was a good reason there were counselors available 24 hours a day. You also appear to be appropriately awed, horrified and terrified. Excellent job. Very, very good point at the end. I hadn't actually looked at it that way, and I think I needed to. Thank you.
Unfortunately, a certain political party has defunded and dismantled education systems in this country and we no longer have those types of counselors in the public sector (and even in the private sector). Our public education system has been destroyed, teachers are in poverty and uneducated parents are in charge of what kids learn in those red states. GenZ at least has (mostly) learned how to use the internet appropriately and are voting out this party come 2024, but it's going to be decades of cleaning up, and bringing back the golden era of education in this country. STEM students today are more depressed than ever, and are not getting the help they need.
@@evolicious Let's be real, both parties in the US defunded the infrastructure over the years in favour of privatized profits. having a false binary because of your election system doesn't mean you're voting for good or bad, any political system structured like that will fall apart.