If you saw a mushroom cloud, what would you say?
I asked this of a friend while hiking the other day in jest, but who knows? I joked that I probably wouldn't have a lot of time, and given I would probably be in shock... the best I could get out might be, "Well, fuck."
How about you?
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If there's one thing I know from every dicey situation I've ever been in, including in the military, it's that you never know what your brain will pull out of its darkest reaches when you least expect it.
Statistically most common last words are "Oh shit.", but you never know.
nice thing i always remember in the fd: if it’s going to kill you, you’d be dead. (hazmat, fire, etc) So don’t worry and do what you’re there to do.
in the case of OP, relaxing and dying is probably all i’d do. i have people “up there” waiting for me anyway. 🤷♀️
I remember when I was in the Navy, I wasn't paying attention once and stood up into a bundle of cables running along the overhead. Part of it sliced my scalp open and blood was pouring down my face. I stood there completely flabbergasted with my mind an utter and complete blank, and the only thing that came out of my mouth, completely unprompted, was "Shit in God's beard!"
No idea why. I had never said it before or ever since. Brains are weird.
That's a great one! Mine was "fuck a duck! Fuck ten ducks, actually." My friends never let me live that one down.
damn! also ouch.
PSA: when you cut the excess off a zip tie, the remaining nub can be razor sharp.
for. real.
...are there statistics on that?
Oh thank God.
I came here to post this! Nicely done.
Respect
I love that movie.
Which movie is that?
Waterworld!
But you need to watch the Ulysses cut. Not the theatrical, not the Director's. The Ulysses.
How far away? If I'm in the vaporisation zone, I would lie down and relax, if I'm in the radiation poisoning zone, I'd get as fast as I could towards the vaporisation zone :p
Uh the vaporization is over by the time you see the cloud.
😎
You’re right, I hadn’t considered that.
If you can see the cloud, you're outside the vaporization zone. And the only thing you'll accomplish is walking deeper into the radioactive zone. Kind of sounds like you're taking what appears to be 70 plus percent survival chances and turning them into 0% survival chances.
Wait, you guys want to survive it?
I down to see the mutants, the zombies, the hot rod racing war bands, the increasingly intelligent apes. But if it just ends up being cancer and eating rats… meh, I’ll bail.
‘Barefoot Gen’ makes it look quite ugly. And it was apparently written by a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing.
I think that was literally the idea
You wouldn't know if you were in the radiation poisoning zone though.
Like you've almost certainly been irradiated but, enough that you'll die a horrible death in 5 days? Or merely enough to increase your risk of cancer in 40 years?
If you go close enough to ground zero, that should speed up the process a bit.
Yes but my point is, most people are somewhere in between those extremes, and you won't really know which end you're nearest to.
Find your iodine tablets
And Prussian blue!
Huh til
Good question. I think it is if you are in the blast zone
Mushroom cloud does not imply nuclear explosion.
Yes, it does imply it. It's the most common association for mushroom clouds in our media since the bombs were dropped. Doesn't guarantee it of course, but to act as though "they're unrelated and anyone making the association is ignorant" would be an indefensible position.
Real Occam's Razor sort of situation though
I was walking along a scenic trail in my city a few years ago. This particular spot had a spectacular eastern view, so I stopped to take in the last of what seemed to be a spectacular sunset.
It took my moronic ass about 15 seconds to remember that the sun usually sets in the west. So what was that red orange glow on the horizon?
A wildfire? No, I'd have heard about that.
Must be a... Nuke? What else would make that much light that fast. It had blown and I was seeing the burning destruction in its wake.
I spent the next minute or so basically shitting myself. Trying to figure out which way the fallout would blow. Thinking about all the emergency drinking water and food I never stocked. Thinking how horrific a death radiation sickness would be.
I was straight up having a panic attack!
Well then the most glorious blood moon I ever seen came up over the horizon. Huge and glowing orange.
I learned a bit about myself that day. Mostly that I am unlikely to thrive in any sort of apocalypse type situation. And that I'm a moron. Moon was cool though!
I'm sorry but this is really hilarious! Just picturing this play out the way you described has made my day
Duck! ... And Cover!
https://youtube.com/watch?v=IKqXu-5jw60
If your brain has enough time to process actually seeing a mushroom cloud, well, that means you were far enough away from the blast that you were not evaporated or otherwise fucked up by the initial explosion.
Otherwise, you would have felt or been destroyed by that first, before the mushroom cloud have even formed, before you could have possibly seen it.
So, if you are able to see a mushroom cloud, before you hear or feel a nuclear explosion, that means that you may actually have moments to scramble to find cover, and that may actually protect you from the blast/pressure/heat wave that has not hit you yet, as well as the immense, sucking/updraft winds that will be created by... essentially the hole that a nuclear explosion punches in the atmosphere.
Also, "fun fact", you wanna know something reported by soldiers at nuclear tests and the Japanese at Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
When the bomb goes off, ... even if you close your eyes, look away from the blast... you can still see your own bones, if you're holding your hands/arms to shield your eyes.
There is so much radiation flying around that you get momentary xray vision.
https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/nuclear-bomb-bright-bones-fingers-atomic-veterans-2-1930293
That's just one recollection I can find via quick websearch, but there are numerous accounts of this 'momentary xray vision' effect happening, UK, US soldiers, Japanese, etc.
EDIT
The ... HL2 Mod -> 10+ years of development -> Indie Game G STRING arguably does a fairly decent portrayal of experiencing the effects of a nuclear detonation, in sequence.
It just does a screen flash bang instead of the whole x ray vision thing, but the order of events is roughly correct.
Flash, white out, people screaming from both being irradiated and the shock, gigantic visible second sun ...
... lull of time where power transformers are heard exploding due to the EMP ...
... massive pressure/blast/heat front hits, random shit is thrown away from the blast, more people screaming as they are now being incinerated ...
... then the wind direction changes and random shit is now sucked toward the explosion, which by now has more or less assumed the form of a proper mushroom cloud.
Uh, I guess potential [Content Warning], this may or may not qualify as nightmare fuel.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=X8suBOMnGFQ
I think the scene has been tweaked a bit in the current game since this 4 year old video, but uh yeah.
I would just be thankful that we don't have Kamala Harris as a president I mean can you imagine
"At least the dems were taught a lesson"
those liberal sheep think they're so smart. they think they're better than me
At least there wasn't an anti-genocide candidate.
It would have been horrible for the egg prices!
I can imagine her as president, yes
what's it like
It's full of idiots constantly whining about the Democratic party and wishing Trump had won
"Even though everyone wants this bill passed, we could somehow, magically, unexpectedly only convince 49 Democrats to vote for it in the Senate"
classic
"Oh, that's a big one!"
If that was here in Finland, I would of course be scared because you need a lot of explosives to produce a mushroom cloud, and that would probably mean that:
...which would mean that some country would be planning to attack us soon.
So, I would probably start preparing for a war. Maybe go buy a lot of food, at least?
In some country further from the Russia I would probably assume it's something non-military. Maybe some form of a very large fertilizer storage? It would be kind of less scary, but of course that would mean a decreased farming output for the next season, and that would be shitty.
Yeah. The thing is: For a moment you forget that. I saw one for real. Planned big ass explosion. I knew beforehand and was specifically there for it and invited by the goverment agency doing it.
But for a very short moment you forget that and your brain goes full on monkey mode.
Respect that your brain didn’t go straight to nuclear
It's a giant mushroom! Maybe it's friendly!
All jokes aside, I am in an area where I'd most likely die from it, so wouldn't be saying many bad things and more along the lines of how fortunate I'd be to not have to live after the clock strikes midnight.
Might as well drink up on the cactus juice while you still can. It is the quenchiest after all.
What sort of area would mean you wouldn't die from it?
I'm sure there are gonna be very sparse pockets of area that somehow don't get hit and be far enough to be safe from the blast, however unlikely that is. I'd bet money on some areas surviving with at least minimal damage, but I'm probably gonna be dead by the time anyone could figure out whether I'm correct or not.
If they end up dropping nukes I hope one falls on my head. I don't want to survive nuclear war.
You and me both
Stay in the light Carol-Ann! Well, walk into it anyways.
So the fun part about nuclear proliferation is it’s no longer a world ending full out exchange.
So for example if Iran had one and decided to use it, it would be like one bomb on Israel or mar-a-lago or something. Most of us would survive it and be dealing with the effects for a generation or more
Then the question would be what would us do? End it? Respond in kind? END THEM? How evil will we have to see ourselves? Or if Israel did, would we finally start asking questions instead of blind support?
Are nukes really that precise at this point? I honestly had no idea.
But I don't trust the US or Israel to show any kind of restraint once one gets let off the chain.
Do they need to be precise?
Is that from the graphic novel? David looks different than in the animated series here.
I would guess probably some kind of fan art maybe. There were very few relevant hits for cruddlesticks
Cloud? So it's Death As A Service?
One time payment no subscription
👍
Good luck getting the exposure values on that to come out right.
Pop out that ND-filter.
And maybe add in a thin layer of pure lead.
... do not lick the lead.
Thanks! I was this 🤏 close to licking it just to make it stick to the camera.
There goes the neighborhood
We Will All Go Together When We Go
Silence. Shadows don't speak.
I don't think they saw the cloud
I live relatively close to a major Air Force base so I’d probably only get so far as to say “oh shi-“ before I get vaporized like that scene in T2
I live so close to the French-German regiment I wouldn't even get that far.
"Maybe it's friendly"
"This rounds on me guys"
Rad!
Oh Shitake!
You'll see the bright flash first, at which point you can't waste time and need to take cover from the coming blast. Which probably includes hurling up with your eyes closed. If you somehow survive the blast you can't waste time looking at the cloud and need to find shelter from the fallout within 15 minutes. During this time, if you spot the cloud, you'll probably be speechless and too busy.
"Look everyone! A mushroom cloud!"
“I hope they got him…”
Are you near DC, Moscow, or Tel Aviv?
I would expect that it wasn't a nuke, and I would wonder what blew up.
I'd know. It would be the chemical plant along the Rhine.
Good luck, have fun, don't die.
That movie was a trip. I just saw it yesterday. Favorite line, “So somber the fuck up.”
"Finally."
"That's too much, man!"
Depends how far away it is, since I live in NYC my building has a bomb shelter so I would probably attempt to find it quickly (nobody in this city actually knows where the building shelter is).
I'm gonna parry it
About time.
I saw a pink cloud that should have been an even more imment sign of a worse death than a mushroom cloud...
I said "fuck"
But hit the ~1% lottery that I didn't have all the flesh boiled off my bones by superheated steam.
Super fucking surreal and none of us really believed it till hours later.
If you see a mushroom cloud tho, you still got time to run.
Ok I want to know the whole story now
If a steam boiler blows up, all that super heated steam is exposed to whatever room the boiler is inside of.
Steam always expands, pretty much instantly. Thats how we use steam to power shit.
So if a whole boiler blows up, all that steam will fill the space, and will literally boil flesh off your bones as soon as it hits you, but you still take minutes to die from the shock and lungs scarring over. Like, they recover dead bodies and there's a trail of soup behind them where they were trying to get safety.
It is like the horror story in an engine room, worst case scenario. Even if you managed to survive, 3rd degree burns all over your body.
When I was in the Navy ours blew while I was looking at it, maybe from 20 feet away. Luckily it was the only part of it that was compressed air and not steam that exploded. Probably way less than a 1% chance, a different part should have failed first because they were at higher pressures.
But I still saw/felt/heard the explosion, and since the insulation was pink, it made a giant pink cloud that expanded as fast as steam would have, and me and the guy next to me legit didn't know why or how we were still alive.
Whole engine room got evacuated, like 5k people in the hanger bay thinking it was just a drill because we'd just pulled into port after deployment.
And I started a relatively controlled stampede by screaming that the boiler had really just exploded and we were all standing directly above it.
Was some pretty crazy shit, and I fully expected to die when that shit blew. The pink cloud just broke my brain and I'll never forget it. Completely and totally unexpected.
I was thinking about this while I was on my hike yesterday. Weird. I was picturing a mushroom cloud emerging somewhere over the puget sound and thinking about what I would do.
Kind of topical right now. This was just a mental exercise and not a prophecy.
So it goes.
I'd say nothing
However there will be a goldilocks zone where a pizza is perfectly cooked. I'll use my dying moments to find out and document that radius for future generations
There is no Goldilocks zone for a nuke because the pizza would be irradiated as well as cooked.
Mmmm extra spicy
"Well, shit." If my wife were next to me, tell her I love her. Depending upon how far it is, run for cover. Try to fire off a couple of texts to family, but that's unlikely to work. All the while, hope it's not nuclear in origin (other things make mushroom clouds).
Oh this dream again... jeez its getting old...
(I had a dream where my electronics all went dead [from the EMP I guess] and the lights to the house went dead then I look outside my window and saw a huge mushroom cloud...
then I woke up...
And I check the direction of where I saw the nuke in my dream, its right in the ditection of the center of the city lmao)
I have that one too...
"a friendly mushroom cloud!"
https://tenor.com/bUmxC.gif
“Oh, I’ve wasted my life.”
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Maybe it's friendly!
I live in the same town as a Raytheon subsidiary. I'll never know what happened.
Good fucking job, Trump is what I'd say bitterly.
If my last thoughts before I die are of Trump I'll be extremely disappointed.
Better to see a mushroom cloud than be in a mushroom cloud.
I love you.
I've had a near-death experience - at least, I thought it was death.
If you go to here and scroll down to the "2017" section: https://daychilde.com/how-i-got-here/
So I can tell you I'd be hoping it would be quick with another bomb dropped closer to me, or that I'd be far enough away to not suffer from radiation beyond elevated cancer risk. Because acute radiation poisoning is a nasty way to go. There's nothing they can do about the extreme pain you live with for hours to a few days. You just suffer horribly.
They may not be able to save you, but there is something they can do about the extreme pain if they are willing.
In waterworld, there was an old man in a row boat floating inside an oil tanker. Us is he.
"How did so many mushrooms become lighter than air?"
“That reminds me I still have about 8 grams left. Guess I’ll just eat them all tonight.”
I'll say the stupidest swear word I could imagine. Something like "Krankenscheisse"
For context, my apartment is within the blast zone of both the EU and the NATO headquarters... if I see a mushroom cloud I'm assuming for the worst, if it's not directly on top of my head in the first place
Unfortunately that doesn't mean anything. It would translate to "sickness poo".
You probably want to yell "Kranker Scheiss" which would roughly translate to "sick/(crazy) shit!"
They did say "stupidest"
Ooh, that cloud looks like a mushroom 🍄🟫
'Unh?! Aw, fuck off, I'm trying to slee-"
I might ask a neighbor for a smoke.
They can come from a variety of things though. Meteors or just really big conventional explosions. They don't mean nukes for sure. So don't panic, at first.
Not sure I would say anything. I think I’d just sit and watch.
Get a good look. You might never see another.
Considering there's rarely anyone around for me to say anything to, I'd probably let fly a few choice words and then start trying to work out where the next one was going to land and try to be under it.
That's assuming you mean nuclear mushroom cloud anyway.
Other, sufficiently large ordnance also generates mushroom clouds and we've recovered from a handful of those before.
So any research would be trying to find out whether it was nuclear or not.
I've seen Threads. And a whole heap of post-apocalypse stories. I do not want to live in those worlds.
"Finally"
Boom goes the dynamite
"nice cloud", I guess ?
Yo it's the thing from Oppenheimer!!!
"Mm mm! Nothing says 'we're fucked' like... that (points at the cloud)". I grab my Game Boy Advance SP and run to the shelter next doors.
Shit...
Lol, those guys are fucked... Guess it's my turn now.
"Finally."
👍
"Is it your thumb or mine?"
"Oh sh-"
Well fuck
Assuming my phone is dead from the associated EMP, I'll start singing "I Melt With You"
Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter.
Finally.
War. War never changes.
I'd probably be telling those around me to run toward the light, while running toward the light. Close enough to see the flash means close enough to accept mortality, and fast is good in that regard.
"Yeah, but the Epstein fiiiiiiiles" followed by death.
Kidding. I'm with you, but more "ah, fuck."
About fucking time.
Spores!
Check the news to see what exploded.
I really hope that isn’t a mushroom cloud.
Shrug and check my Pip Boy 3000.
"Well, that's that, I suppose."
GG
Jeez Louise
Once translated: "ugh, those fucking idiots".
In my native language: "ah les osti d'épais".
Ohhh farts.
"Oh, shitsnacks!"
Oh here we fucking go
Would.
depends what causing it, a conventional or a nuclear, either would produce quite noticeable shockwaves.
wp:Mushroom cloud
18th century mushroom cloud
wc:File:Vue du siege de Gibraltar et explosion des batteries flottantes 1782.jpeg
I would accept it, reflect on my life in the last moments of it
Looks like a fun-g(uy)i
"So close." sigh
You wouldn't really see the mushroom cloud, because the shock wave would hit you first and likely kill you. If you're in the blast zone itself then you're likely vaporized. And if you're out of range for the shock wave to be fatal, the flash still probably blinded you...
I think it's safe to say, you won't be faced with any situation where you "see a mushroom cloud"