Comments on: Would you stand under a nuclear blast?

By: Chew

Chew — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 00:15:26 +0000

The dose the men on the ground received was equal to living in Denver for 6 hours.

By: LOVE – A TRUE WEAPON « The Largest Democracy

LOVE – A TRUE WEAPON « The Largest Democracy — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 03:20:48 +0000

[...] Would you stand under a nuclear blast? (blogs.discovermagazine.com) [...]

By: Miles Archer

Miles Archer — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 01:32:08 +0000

I stand under a thermonuclear reaction every day. It’s called the sun. And I probably will get cancer from it someday.

And at night, I stand under thousands of thermonuclear reactions going off.

Having said that, I sure hope humans don’t use thermonuclear devices as a weapon of war again.

By: MaDeR

MaDeR — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 17:45:54 +0000

@Nigel Depledge
I do not care about your excuses and no true scotman fallacies. This is simple: every and each time someone announced they introduce communism to some unlucky country, a greater or smaller mountain of dead bodies follows.

Why next one, asserting that it is THIS time “real communism” with puppies, rainbows and ponies, would be any different?

By: Joseph G

Joseph G — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 04:40:48 +0000

I’d totally do it, if only so that I could say that I did. I doubt there’s a better attention-getting dinner party/pickup line then “Did I ever tell you about the time I stood right under a nuclear explosion?”

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 00:07:42 +0000

9. David – see, this clip just makes me wanna watch Trinity and Beyond all over again.

However, this clip should be watched afterwards. Just to send a real shiver through your bones.

http://youtu.be/I9lquok4Pdk

And people wonder why everyone gets cancer these days…

By: Gary Ansorge

Gary Ansorge — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 15:52:46 +0000

I love the discussion of debris. At 20 million Kelvins or so, anything within the immediate blast radius, say 30 feet or so, would be vaporized, ionized and accelerated away from the blast zone at a small percentage of light speed,( in other words, far beyond earths escape velocity), except for the part more or less under the blast and we’ve already discussed that.

Communism is just another word for communalism, ie, common ownership of societies means of production. It’s the people running the system that are the problem. It’s ALWAYS the bosses that are the problem. Which is why capitalism works at all, because impersonal greed means everyone keeps an eye on the greediest among us…

GAry 7

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 15:40:59 +0000

Vince RN (60) said:

Also – to the discussion about Marx and Soviet Communism: Stalin followed all 10 of Marx’s points exactly. Not only would Marx have recognized Soviet Communism, he would have been quite proud of it. Perhaps Marx would not have approved of the murder of so many millions, but he most certainly place the value of the state above that of human life, and would likely have had a problem only with the extraordinary scale of the murders.

I’m not so sure.

Marx did not espouse that the people should be ruled by an elite minority (the Politburo), nor that members of this elite should be accorded special treatment and privileges. In fact, IIUC, Marx’s ideal was to get rid of the ruling elite, whereas the Soviet form of communism replaced one ruling elite with another ruling elite.

Although you may indeed have a point about the supremacy of the state, that was not really the thrust of my argument that Stalin’s communism – even if it did follow the Pocket Guide version of Marxism – was not really what Marx was on about.

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 15:35:23 +0000

Qguy (59) said:

My point was not that communism was/is bad.

I recognise this. However, when you say things like:
Qguy (44) said:

And as we know all too well today, communism’s evils are manifold.

This sure sounds like you are assuming that communism is intrinsically bad. My point was that your assumption is unfounded.

I doubt not that the other point you were making is valid, and I was not disputing it. But in your peripheral commentary you appeared to be making an assumption that I do dispute.

By: Tom Terrific

Tom Terrific — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 23:39:24 +0000

There is a decent Wiki article on the Genie air to air missile. It says the gamma and neutron radiation doses to these men were measured and considered insignificant. I believe one of the men is still alive. This happened 55y ago. The rank insignia I see are field grade so their ages were probably 35-45. Do the math for their ages now.