What if We Nuke a City? — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00Playing around with nuclear weapons in videos is fun.
2. 0:04There's a visceral joy in blowing things up,
3. 0:06and a horrifying fascination with things like fireballs, shockwaves, and radiation.
4. 0:11And while it does help put our destructive power in perspective,
5. 0:14it's not the best way of understanding the real impact of a nuclear explosion.
6. 0:19This isn't about silly stacks of TNT, or about how bright an explosion is. Nuclear weapons are about you.
7. 0:27So we've partnered with the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement
8. 0:30to explore what would really happen if a nuclear weapon were detonated in a major city today.
9. 0:36Not nuclear war, just one explosion.
10. 0:40*Kurzgesagt Intro Music*
11. 0:49We begin our story in the middle of downtown in a major city.
12. 0:53People are going to work, studying for exams, are lost in their thoughts and daily lives.
13. 0:58Right here a nuclear weapon is detonated and time freezes.
14. 1:03The first phase of the explosion happens within less than a second.
15. 1:07In a millisecond, a ball of plasma hotter than the Sun appears and grows in a fireball to more than 2 kilometres across.
16. 1:14Within this ball, everyone is just gone.
17. 1:17Think of water dripped on to a very hot pan.
18. 1:21A sizzle, and then there's nothing.
19. 1:24Most buildings, cars, trees, tacky sculptures and people...
20. 1:29... all evaporated.
21. 1:31First, the flash: an intense tsunami of light washes over the city in an instant.
22. 1:37If you happen to have your head pointed in the direction of the explosion,
23. 1:41it renders you blind for a few hours.
24. 1:44The heat of this light produces a thermal pulse,
25. 1:47so energetic and hot that it just burns everything as far as 13 kilometres from the detonation site.
26. 1:53What this means is that everything in an area of 500 square kilometres that is able to burn, starts burning.
27. 2:01Plastic, wood, fabric, hair, and skin.
28. 2:05If you happen to be in reach of the thermal pulse, one moment, you're on your way to work,
29. 2:10the next moment, you're on fire.
30. 2:13Now the second phase begins.
31. 2:15It happens in a few seconds.
32. 2:18Most people will now first notice that something is wrong,
33. 2:21but it's already too late for hundreds of thousands.
34. 2:24The flash is followed by the shockwave.
35. 2:26The heat and radiation of the fireball create a bubble of superheated and super-compressed air around it
36. 2:32that's now expanding explosively.
37. 2:35Faster than the speed of sound,
38. 2:37creating winds stronger than hurricanes and tornadoes.
39. 2:41Human infrastructure is no match for its power.
40. 2:44Most major buildings within a kilometre of the fireball are just ground up down to their base.
41. 2:49Only steel reinforced concrete is able to partially resist the pressure.
42. 2:53In the surrounding parks where retirees feed the ducks,
43. 2:56trees blackened and smoldering from the heat a second before snap like toothpicks.
44. 3:01If you're outside, you get tossed away like a grain of dust in a tornado.
45. 3:05The shockwave weakens as it travels outwards
46. 3:08but still, about 175 square kilometres of houses collapse like they're made of cards,
47. 3:14trapping tens of thousands of people who didn't have any time to react.
48. 3:18Gas stations explode and fire spread throughout the rubble.
49. 3:22A mushroom cloud made from the remains of the fireball, dust and ash
50. 3:26rises kilometres into the sky in the next few minutes and casts a dark shadow over the ruined city.
51. 3:32This violently pulls in fresh air surrounding the city,
52. 3:36destroying more buildings and providing an abundance of oxygen.
53. 3:40It depends on the city what happens next.
54. 3:42If there's enough fuel, fires may turn into a firestorm that burns the rubble, everybody trapped in it
55. 3:48and people trying to flee the devastation.
56. 3:51Up to 21 kilometres from the explosion, people just like you rush to their windows to take pictures of the mushroom cloud,
57. 3:57unaware that the shockwave is still coming at them,
58. 4:00about to shatter their windows and create a blizzard of sharp glass.
59. 4:05The third phase begins in the coming hours and days.
60. 4:08We're used to the idea that help will come, no matter the disaster.
61. 4:12This time is different: a nuclear explosion is like every natural disaster at once.
62. 4:18There are hundreds of thousands or millions of people with serious injuries:
63. 4:22lacerations, broken bones, serious burns.
64. 4:25In the next few minutes and hours, thousands more will die because of these injuries.
65. 4:32Countless people are trapped in collapsed buildings like in earthquakes or blinded by the flash,
66. 4:36deaf from the blast wave and unable to flee through streets impassable with rubble and debris.
67. 4:42They're terrified, confused, and don't know what's happened to them or why.
68. 4:47Most likely, many hospitals have been leveled along with all the other buildings
69. 4:51and most medical professionals are either dead or injured,
70. 4:54along with everyone else.
71. 4:56The survivors lucky enough to have been in metro tunnels or standing in the right place to be unburned and unhurt
72. 5:02won't have truly escaped harm yet.
73. 5:04Depending on the type of weapon, where it explodes and even the weather,
74. 5:08an awful black rain can begin,
75. 5:10with radioactive ash and dust descending on the city, covering everything and everyone.
76. 5:16The invisible, malicious, silent horror of radiation takes its turn.
77. 5:21Every breath carries poison to the lungs of the survivors.
78. 5:24Over the coming days, the people who receive the highest doses of radiation exposure will die.
79. 5:30There will be no help, not for hours or maybe even days.
80. 5:35Civilisation doesn't operate when there is a total breakdown of infrastructure.
81. 5:38Roads are blocked, train tracks warped, runways cluttered with rubble.
82. 5:43No water, no electricity,
83. 5:45no communication, no stores to replenish supplies from.
84. 5:49Help from surrounding cities will have a hard time entering the disaster zone
85. 5:53and even if they can, the radioactive contamination will make it risky to get too close.
86. 5:59After a nuclear attack, you're on your own.
87. 6:03So, bit by bit, people emerge from the rubble on foot,
88. 6:07contaminated with radioactive fallout, carrying what little they may have left.
89. 6:11They are slow, in pain, traumatized, and they all need food, water and medical treatment fast.
90. 6:18And the damage done by a nuclear weapon doesn't end when the fires burn out and the smoke clears.
91. 6:24The hospitals in the neighboring cities are under-equipped for a disaster of this scale
92. 6:28and overwhelmed with tens or hundreds of thousands of patients with serious injuries.
93. 6:34In the weeks, months and years to come,
94. 6:36many of those who survived will succumb to cancers like leukemia.
95. 6:40The reason no government wants you to think about all this is because there is no serious humanitarian response possible to a nuclear explosion.
96. 6:48There's no way to really help the immediate victims of a nuclear attack.
97. 6:52This is not a hurricane, wildfire or earthquake or nuclear accident.
98. 6:57It is all of these things at once, but worse.
99. 7:01No nation on earth is prepared to deal with it.
100. 7:04The world has changed in the past few years, with world leaders again
101. 7:08explicitly and publicly threatening each other with nuclear weapons.
102. 7:13Many experts think the danger of a nuclear strike is higher than it has been in decades.
103. 7:18Governments tell their citizens that it's good that we have nuclear weapons,
104. 7:22but it's bad when anyone else gets them.
105. 7:25That it's somehow necessary to threaten others with mass destruction to keep us safe.
106. 7:31But does this make you feel safe?
107. 7:33It only takes a small group of people with power to go crazy or rogue, a small misstep or a simple misunderstanding
108. 7:39to unleash a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.
109. 7:44Exploding stuff in videos is fun.
110. 7:46Exploding things in real life, not so much.
111. 7:50There is a solution though!
112. 7:52Eliminating all nuclear weapons and vowing never to build them again.
113. 7:57In 2017, almost 2/3 of all the world's countries,
114. 8:01supported by hundreds of civil society organizations and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent movement
115. 8:06agreed to prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons.
116. 8:10It's not about who has nuclear weapons and who doesn't. The weapons themselves are the problem.
117. 8:16They are deeply immoral and an existential threat to all of us.
118. 8:21No matter what country you come from, no matter what political side you find yourself on,
119. 8:26we need to demand that they disappear forever.
120. 8:29This will not happen without pressure.
121. 8:31If you want to be part of this pressure, there are things you personally can do too:
122. 8:36Visit notonukes.org to learn more about nuclear weapons and what you can do about them.
123. 8:45*Kurzgesagt Outro Music* [In space, nobody can hear you-
124. 8:45*QUACK*]
125. 8:46*Kurzgesagt Outro Music*
126. 8:55S