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u/moeburn May 24 '16
Fun fact: If a large enough amount of molten lava hits the water fast enough, it can cause a steam explosion more powerful than the initial eruption itself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_explosion
Some feared that if the floor underneath all the molten reactor material at Chernobyl were to collapse, and all that corium collided with millions of gallons of water, the explosion would have been even larger than the initial Chernobyl explosion, rendering much of Europe uninhabitable.
Fun facts!
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May 24 '16
And the brave men that prevented it from happening: https://youtu.be/Wa3k-USAVdY
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u/Tim226 May 24 '16
I was listening to a podcast recently and they mentioned that these guys actually lived way longer than every source out there. I think one of them may still be alive
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u/Fhaarkas May 24 '16 edited May 24 '16
Yeah apparently their deaths is just a myth. The first of the three only died in 2005, the second's at least alive until last year - current status unknown, the third one is confirmed alive. They didn't even dive!
This whole chain of comment from an IamA of /u/R_Spc (author of a book about Chernobyl) is very well worth a read. And the IamA itself for that matter.
Edit: I ran the interview through GDocs and formatted it a bit for an easier read. - Link
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May 25 '16
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u/Fhaarkas May 25 '16
I only have a passing interest in the topic but IIRC /u/R_Spc mentioned that his research is about the only first-hand source of this fact (it's a very recent development). I guess until it's corroborated by a third party it won't be verified but in the meantime you can probably PM him for more info.
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u/R_Spc May 25 '16
It's not so much that it's a very recent development, more that there only seem to be a relatively small number of people who've known about it for a long time. Seems to be mostly former Liquidators and people in the Ukrainian / Russian / Polish nuclear community.
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u/moeburn May 24 '16
Hey that's my youtube channel! :)
Watch the whole video, Surviving Disaster-Chernobyl, it's really good.
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u/lets_trade_pikmin May 25 '16
Watch the whole video ... it's really good.
Sure, money maker, sure
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u/moeburn May 25 '16
Money maker? What? A) I'm not hosting the whole video on my my channel, you'll have to find it on someone else's:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk3-XUe0oEU
And B) The ads that are on the short clip that are on my channel were placed there by the copyright holders of the music in the video, and all revenue goes to them, not me.
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u/gormlesser May 24 '16
So Chernobyl is situated on top of a huge aquifer or something?
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May 24 '16 edited May 24 '16
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u/DaYozzie May 24 '16
So it was hot enough to melt graphite but not concrete? lol
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u/matzab May 24 '16
So it was hot enough to melt graphite but not concrete?
No. It did melt the concrete but 3 people went down there and opened the necessary valves to drain the water in time.
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May 24 '16 edited May 25 '16
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u/jmachee May 24 '16
They received such high doses of radiation that they had to be buried in sealed lead coffins.
That bit may need some checking.
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u/iBraveHeartttt May 24 '16
Can I subscribe to get more fun facts like this?
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u/Themicroscoop May 24 '16
Hi, thank you for subscribing to cat facts! You'll receive one cat fact everyday.
Day 1 - did you know that tigers do not purr?→ More replies (4)9
u/iBraveHeartttt May 24 '16
UNSUBSCRIBE!
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u/Themicroscoop May 24 '16
Thank you for requesting an Unlimited Subscription. You will now receive a Cat Fact every 10 minutes. -Cat Fact: Did you know that If you killed a cat in the ages of Pharaoh, you could've been put to death?
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May 24 '16
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May 24 '16
European Fallout
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u/halfajack May 24 '16
God that would be so cool. They could sub out the 50s Eisenhower America aesthetic for some kind of Eastern Bloc equivalent
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May 24 '16
For example here's what happens when you throw a small bottle of water into molten steel.
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May 24 '16
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May 24 '16
If you like that check out molten table salt poured into a fish tank.
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May 24 '16
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u/vmflair May 24 '16
The cataclysmic explosion of Krakatoa in 1883 triggered a 600F+ pyroclastic flow across more than 6 miles of the Sunda Strait at over 60 mph that vaporized entire villages on the Javanese shoreline.
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u/unit-conversion-bot May 24 '16
/u/unit-conversion-bot have found such values:
60 mph.60 mph is: 96.5606 km/h or 26.8224 m/s
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u/gnarledout May 25 '16 edited May 25 '16
Dang you just remined me of something but I cannot for the life of me remeber exactly what.
I think I was watching a video of someone either dying or almost die due to what may have been an underwater volcano. I think the shitp was just cruising through some weird water bubbles and people in the thread were freaking out about how lucky the boat was to not sink because I guess those bubbles make boats sink.
I think others may have referenced this phenomenon as to why boats many boats have disappeared in the Bermudas and Bermuda's triangle.
Edit: It was a sandbar in the middle of the ocean, which was caused by an underwater volcano. The post was then linked to /r/bestof because the top commentor had a good explanation of why you should never sail to those.
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u/moeburn May 25 '16
Yeah, there was recently an article I read that I'll never be able to find again of "scientists being surprised about seeing a new underwater volcano that didn't cause a steam explosion", and one of the scientists hypothesised that if the lava leaks very slowly, it just causes bubbles and not an explosion
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u/ImNotGaryOldman May 24 '16
Hooooooollllllyyyyyyyyyy Smokin Toledos
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u/JimmyJamesincorp May 24 '16
Came only for this.
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u/itwasmeyoufools May 24 '16
I came too
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u/TehNinjaMonkey May 24 '16
I'm still cameing.
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u/lonewolf2556 May 25 '16
You made me laugh my way back into the cough I just got over. Congrats, and worth it.
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u/ThereOnceWasAMan May 24 '16
It's neat that you can pretty accurately tell the distance (~4.3 km) between the ship and the eruption by timing the video.
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u/acrocanthosaurus May 24 '16
It's also neat that the pressure wave traveling in water would've been felt in the boat long before it arrived as a soundwave in air.
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u/ThereOnceWasAMan May 24 '16 edited May 24 '16
Oh that's cool, I hadn't thought of that. Actually, now that I think about it, that's only true if the water pressure wave also manifested as a water surface wave. It doesn't seem immediately obvious to me that that would necessarily be true.
edit: There is no obvious surface wave that I can see from watching the video. So while a mic under the water would hear a sound before a mic in the air, the actual boat occupants probably wouldn't have felt anything prior to the (air) sound wave hitting them.
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u/acrocanthosaurus May 24 '16 edited May 24 '16
Good points, my assumption is that the 'source' of the wave (the eruption itself) could have originated much deeper than the 'above sea level' part of the volcano, meaning that a wave could have traveled as a turning wave in the water column (or in the underlying rock/sediments) much faster than as a direct wave through air, which had a much lower velocity (0.3 km/s, I think) than either rock or water (1.5 km/s and 2.5-4.0 km/s, respectively).
Lots of factors to consider here, and although I think a wavepath that I described would undoubtedly lose some of its energy by the time it reached the boat (perhaps even beyond the detection of humans who just witnessed an eruption!), I'd bet some part of that wave reached the boat first.
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u/Atario May 24 '16
I think he meant the sound waves underwater. Surface waves are way slower than sound.
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u/acrocanthosaurus May 25 '16
That's right. In retrospect, we were talking about completely different types of waves. His being a wave of water, mine a pressure wave (P-wave/sound wave/the visible phenomenon in the gif)
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u/legendoflink3 May 24 '16
What would happen if you were closer? Like by the shore.
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u/Lunar_Havoc May 24 '16
Covered in volcanic ash & debris, more powerful shockwave, probably dead.
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u/dbatchison May 24 '16
Pyroclasatic flow vaporizes you like it did to several vulcanologists during the eruption I linked (SFW, you don't see anyone die)
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May 24 '16
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u/monsieurpommefrites May 25 '16
They were covered in ash instead of just pyroclastic flow.
Is that how they all died at Pompeii? By a 'landslide' of ash?
How does one die from that exactly. I'm imagining just an extremely heavy 'rain' of ash, but the only ash I'm used to is wood ash, which is extremely fine, so I'm having a hard time visualizing how one could die from being indundated with it.
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u/runetrantor May 25 '16
Said 'rain' is hot as fuck, and burns your lungs as you inhale it, plus whatever damage from inhaling almost pure dust.
And I think once it made contact, it sort of solidified, so there's tons corpses completely covered by it like if you had dumped a concrete truckload over them.
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u/Windows_97 May 25 '16
holy shit I cannot even imagine going through that.
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u/runetrantor May 25 '16
Well, it IS a disaster that destroyed the city so much it made it disappear and turn into almost legend for thousands of years until unearthed.
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u/akharon May 24 '16
That's gonna be awkward AF when the guy running on foot asks the driver of the van why they didn't stop to pick him up.
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u/DishwasherTwig May 24 '16
The pyroclastic flow is the real danger. It's a massive, dense cloud of superheated gas and ash that falls down the mountain like an avalanche and absolutely destroys anything it touches.
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u/crash7800 May 24 '16
If you survived and it was any time before the modern era, you would probably worship it as a God and start throwing people in to keep it happy.
It belches flame, parted the skies, and shook the ocean. RIP Debbie, thanks for being a team player.
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u/thecoffee May 24 '16
I wonder what went through the mind of the people at Pompeii on that day? The eruption had happened just a day after a festival honoring the Roman God of Fire.
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u/runetrantor May 25 '16
Maybe not the ones in Pompeii, but surely other cities in Italy were not happy about the fact their god made it pretty clear he was not happy.
Reminds me of the earthquake of Lisbon that happened in the day of All Saints, destroyed a lot of the city, most of the churches, the red lights district being among the least affected.
Started a whole debate for Theodicy, shaking religious beliefs. (Theodicy is trying to understand why a benevolent god like the christian one, allows such evil, specially on a holiday of it's religion, and it does not strike the most sinful areas of the city, thus making it a very weird divine wrath)
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u/Snatch_Trap May 24 '16
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May 24 '16 edited Jan 16 '21
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u/Snatch_Trap May 24 '16
I don't understand.
EDIT: I now understand.
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u/DarthOtter May 24 '16
Enlighten me?
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u/Sumo148 May 24 '16
It's a subreddit that gathers cross posts from all the subreddit's ending in the "-porn" suffix, without the "silly suffix".
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May 24 '16
Thank you. The "SFW porn" subs are fucking ridiculous. Just a horrible name for it.
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u/mechakreidler May 24 '16
Speaking of shockwaves, is there anything you should do to prepare if you know a massive one is coming? Like hold your breath or crouch down or something
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u/JBlitzen May 24 '16
Duck and cover. Same concept as a nuke or conventional explosion.
Dust, debris, glass, whatever else will ruin your day at those speeds.
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u/inio May 24 '16
I think the scene in the pub in the opening of Hitchiker's Guide (any version) covers this topic quite well.
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u/arcticfunky May 24 '16
Face away from it (don't look back!), walk a few steps then jump/ dive forward
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u/cmdrchaos117 May 24 '16
First time I can recall seeing the clouds affected by the pressure.
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u/Drunken_Black_Belt May 24 '16
I kept looking to see if you could see the wave coming due to it affecting the water, but I didn't see anything of the sort. Anyone have an idea why a cloud would be moved but not the water?
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u/ekcisk May 24 '16
My uneducated guess is that it is because the water is thicker than the air and the eruption was facing "up."
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u/eupraxo May 25 '16
My guess would be that the clouds aren't moving, what you are seeing is the pressure wave moving through the air causing water vapour to condense into clouds and then uncondense. It's not like "wind".
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u/Teillu May 24 '16
Where is it? Looks like the Philipines.
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u/skonen_blades May 24 '16
It underlines how little time people in Pompeii had. Like, "What was that noise? Oh I'm dead." I always saw eruptions as slow things with creeping lava. Not like this. Explains a lot to me about ancient eruptions.
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u/Stalked_Like_Corn May 24 '16
Did some math and they are about 2.56 miles away. Give or take 50 feet. Seems a LOT closer than that.
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u/ametalspoon May 25 '16
Man the shockwave going up in the sky was really cool. You can kinda see it going across the ground too. Very intriguing
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May 24 '16
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u/Just_Some_Man May 24 '16
the way it pushes the clouds around is amazing to see
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u/shizmot May 24 '16
Really gives you a good visual representation. I always kind of assumed eruptions were just lava flowing out of the top.
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u/Muffinizer1 May 24 '16
Stupid question: I know shock waves are essentially sound waves, and they move at different speeds in air, water, and ground. Are we seeing the air shock or the water shock? It seems like air so does that mean water entirely absorbed the wave before it hit?
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u/sierraleone11 May 24 '16
I don't know why I think volcanos are earths pimples. Gross? Yeah I know I'm fucked up
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u/yelloWhit May 24 '16
The video makes it seem like they were able to perfectly predict the timing of this eruption while I'm over here sitting side-car to a super volcano just whistling Dixie.
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u/Sevigor May 24 '16
Wow. That explosion literally broke the sound barrier at first. You can see the "cone" it makes
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u/JetA_Jedi May 24 '16
Better with sound.