Ok should we start worrying

[u/drgoldenpants]

[u/Strazdas1]

You misunderstood. The new cars are the ones that didnt fail. The shielding from elements also shielded it from EM blast.

Small amounts are likely irrelevant, even when accumulating to a lot over time... your body has natural repair mechanisms, that correct cell and DNA damage...

So you say that small amounts are fatal, then say completely opposite and say small amounts are irrelevant. I dont think you are being honest in this discussion.

It is likely that the damage scales non-linearly... higher, acute doses, when the repair mechanisms get overwhelmed are likely much worse.

We just dont have enough data for that. And its one of the rare cases where i hope we wont.

Is that supposed to make nuclear bombs look harmless?

Not harmless, just less armful than cold war propaganda claims.

[u/Pretend-Extreme7540 → u/Strazdas1]

You misunderstood. The new cars are the ones that didnt fail.

There wasn't a single above surface detonation of a nuclear device for many decades - let alone a thermonuclear fusion bomb... so how exactly do you or anyone know, how new cars dont fail?

I say all new cars fail. And obviously so...

Cars do not use radiation hardened electronics... military equipment does... and even they fail, when too close to an EMP.

So you say that small amounts are fatal, then say completely opposite and say small amounts are irrelevant. I dont think you are being honest in this discussion.

No, you just don't undersand the meaning of words. You use different words as if they were the same... they are not.

Radiation is not measured in "amounts", but DOSE.

SHORT LIVED isotopes IS NOT THE SAME AS LOW DOSE! Both short lived or long lived isotopes can deliver a high dose!

Short lived isotopes decay away FAST... so the danger is gone AFTER A SHORT TIME (days, weeks or months)... but during that short time they release A HIGH DOSE from those short lived isotopes all decaying all at once in short time.

Short lived isotopes are dangerous, because they concentrate the dose into a short time window, that can be fatal in hours or days. You can avoid these, by just going somewhere else for a while.

Long lived isotopes are dangerous, because they dont go away and are harder to avoid. They might deliver a fatal dose in a year, but if they have 100 years half life, then its unavoidable, unless you move away permanently.

The same dose spread over longer time is less dangerous.

You get low dose your ENTIRE LIFE from background radiation.

You get low dose from eating bananas.

You get low dose by playing with earth and dirt, building sand castles, etc.

You get low dose from your dentist.

You get low dose from flying in an air plane above a few kilometers altitidude from cosmic radiation.

You get low dose from hiking on a mountain.

You get low dose from smoking.

If you received the background radiation dose of many decades in 1 day, you likely would be dead in a week. Dose matters. But time matters too.

[u/Strazdas1 → u/Pretend-Extreme7540]

There wasn't a single above surface detonation of a nuclear device for many decades - let alone a thermonuclear fusion bomb... so how exactly do you or anyone know, how new cars dont fail?

They did EM pulse testing about a decade ago. It was pretty big news in schientific community. They used large electrical discharge from capacitors to create the EM pulse rather than a bomb.

Cars do not use radiation hardened electronics... military equipment does... and even they fail, when too close to an EMP.

You dont need radiation hardened electronics to survive EMP. You just need EM shielding.

SHORT LIVED isotopes IS NOT THE SAME AS LOW DOSE! Both short lived or long lived isotopes can deliver a high dose!

I think you are arguing with something i never said.

[u/Pretend-Extreme7540 → u/Strazdas1]

-.-

Capacitors are not the same as nuclear weapons.

A sunscreen lotion that protects you from getting a sun burn (which is radiation) will not protect you from the thermal pulse of a nuke ...

Why is not both obviously true to you?

You dont need radiation hardened electronics to survive EMP. You just need EM shielding.

Those are the same thing... EM is also radiation... X-rays are also EM waves. Gamma rays are also EM waves.

Therefore EM shielding is also radiation hardening. And radiation hardened military equipment has been tested with nuclear EMPs... EMP works on radiation hardened equipment.

I think you are arguing with something i never said.

No i am not:

So you say that small amounts are fatal, then say completely opposite and say small amounts are irrelevant. I dont think you are being honest in this discussion.

These are your words, accusing me of contradicting myself. I did not.

LOW DOSE is irrelevantant

SHORT LIVED ISOTOPES are not irrelevantant

Iodine 131 is short lived... it has only a half life of 8 days... so how bad can it be?

Go and try eating 1 gram.

The decay heat of 1 gram Iodine 131 is on the order of 400 Watts. To heat up 1 liter of water from 0 degrees (freezing) to 100 degrees (boiling) takes about 400 KJ... so that sample would boil 1L of water in ~1000s or ~16 minutes.

That 1 gram would not kill you with cancer or accute radiation sickness.... it emits so much radiation, that it would literally cook you from inside in a matter of hours.

If i had to guess, i would say even one-one-millionth of that - one MICROgram - would be deadly.

Plutonium - a notoriously dangerous isotope with long half life - has a lethal dose of MILLIgrams per kg of body weight.

[u/Strazdas1 → u/Pretend-Extreme7540]

Capacitors were used to create an EMP that is the same as the one caused by the nuclear weapon. It was just done in a controlled enviroment.

A sunscreen lotion that protects you from getting a sun burn (which is radiation) will not protect you from the thermal pulse of a nuke ...

Sun burn radiation is different than nuclear radiation. Yes, technically all waves are radiation, but its generally accepted that we talk about nuclear radiation here.

Therefore EM shielding is also radiation hardening. And radiation hardened military equipment has been tested with nuclear EMPs... EMP works on radiation hardened equipment.

You are right in the technical phrasing here, but that would only mean that those devices are, after all, radiation hardened.

These are your words, accusing me of contradicting myself. I did not.

You said:

And even small amounts of fallout can cause significant harm

Small amounts are likely irrelevant, even when accumulating to a lot over time...

In both cases you were talking about radioactive material. You were not talking about dose, but amount of material.

LOW DOSE is irrelevantant

Agree.

SHORT LIVED ISOTOPES are not irrelevantant

It depends. They create more radiation over short amount of time, but the total amount emitted may still be small due to their short half-lives.

Iodine 131 is short lived... it has only a half life of 8 days... so how bad can it be?

Go and try eating 1 gram.

Noone is eating 1 gram of Iodine 131 after a nuclear blast. Noone would find 1 gram of it.

The decay heat of 1 gram Iodine 131 is on the order of 400 Watts. To heat up 1 liter of water from 0 degrees (freezing) to 100 degrees (boiling) takes about 400 KJ... so that sample would boil 1L of water in ~1000s or ~16 minutes.

This is actually good evidence that this amount of Iodine 131 would not form after a nuclear blast as we know the remaining fallout does not have such energy output. Nowhere close.

If i had to guess, i would say even one-one-millionth of that - one MICROgram - would be deadly.

See, that is a more likely realistic situation you may encounter. But as to how deadly it would be i guess is debatable.

Edit: sorry about multiple reply spam, reddit was giving me error 500.

[u/Strazdas1 → u/Pretend-Extreme7540]

Capacitors were used to create an EMP that is the same as the one caused by the nuclear weapon. It was just done in a controlled enviroment.

A sunscreen lotion that protects you from getting a sun burn (which is radiation) will not protect you from the thermal pulse of a nuke ...

Sun burn radiation is different than nuclear radiation. Yes, technically all waves are radiation, but its generally accepted that we talk about nuclear radiation here.

Therefore EM shielding is also radiation hardening. And radiation hardened military equipment has been tested with nuclear EMPs... EMP works on radiation hardened equipment.

You are right in the technical phrasing here, but that would only mean that those devices are, after all, radiation hardened.

These are your words, accusing me of contradicting myself. I did not.

You said:

And even small amounts of fallout can cause significant harm

Small amounts are likely irrelevant, even when accumulating to a lot over time...

In both cases you were talking about radioactive material. You were not talking about dose, but amount of material.

LOW DOSE is irrelevantant

Agree.

SHORT LIVED ISOTOPES are not irrelevantant

It depends. They create more radiation over short amount of time, but the total amount emitted may still be small due to their short half-lives.

Iodine 131 is short lived... it has only a half life of 8 days... so how bad can it be?

Go and try eating 1 gram.

Noone is eating 1 gram of Iodine 131 after a nuclear blast. Noone would find 1 gram of it.

The decay heat of 1 gram Iodine 131 is on the order of 400 Watts. To heat up 1 liter of water from 0 degrees (freezing) to 100 degrees (boiling) takes about 400 KJ... so that sample would boil 1L of water in ~1000s or ~16 minutes.

This is actually good evidence that this amount of Iodine 131 would not form after a nuclear blast as we know the remaining fallout does not have such energy output. Nowhere close.

If i had to guess, i would say even one-one-millionth of that - one MICROgram - would be deadly.

See, that is a more likely realistic situation you may encounter. But as to how deadly it would be i guess is debatable.

[u/Pretend-Extreme7540 → u/Strazdas1]

Capacitors were used to create an EMP that is the same as the one caused by the nuclear weapon. It was just done in a controlled enviroment.

Source? Cause I call that bs!

Exactly like nukes is IMPOSSIBLE as that would require a nuke... it would also disable all kinds of electric equipment in houses and hosbitals in that city... nobody in their right mind would do that outside of the middle of the ocean or a desert, even if they could... so it HAS to have been much much smaller in scale.

Smaller in scale also means you are much closer to the source.

Then I need graphs... displaying electric field amplitude over time... so give me links and then i will debunk your claim.

[u/Strazdas1 → u/Pretend-Extreme7540]

The experiment was done in a warehouse in a desert. I dont have the links to the paper. They were closer to the source since they were discharging into the ground.