• Question: do you think it is more the shock wave of a nucular bomb that kills people

    Asked by mspeirs96 to Anne, Carolyn, Joe, Mariana, Nick on 24 Mar 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Nick Bradshaw

      Nick Bradshaw answered on 24 Mar 2010:

      Lots of happy questions today I see!

      As far as I understand (not reaelly my field) nuclear bombs kill people in at least three ways:

      Firstly, where the bomb lands the area around it is super-heated, so anyone immediately close to it will simply be vapourised.

      Further away, and outside the blast itself, you get the shockwave which will knock-down buildings and anything else in its way. Depending where the bomb lands, this could easily kill more people than the centre of the explosion itself.

      Finally, nicelar fallout would spread over a wide area, which would kill more people some in the short term and ohters years later from cancer.

    • Photo: Carolyn McGettigan

      Carolyn McGettigan answered on 24 Mar 2010:

      Erm, I don’t feel qualified to answer this one but I think it would depend on lots and lots of factors, like where the bomb is placed, and where the people who are affected are located in relation to the bomb. The centre of a nuclear explosion generates terrifyingly high temperatures (300 million degrees celsius, apparently), so the surrounding material is just vaporized. I’m not sure how the pressure of the shockwave and the temperatures would weigh up against each other but it’s a sure thing that everyone near the centre would be killed. Beyond the centre, the damage would be caused by high temperatures causing burns, falling debris from buildings affected by the shock wave, radiation and radioactive fallout. So, it would depend how many people were at the centre versus further away, and what time scale you’re measuring over, as many people suffer from cancers after high exposure to radiation.

      It’s a very depressing topic to read about. Let’s hope we don’t have to deal with the prospect/effects of nuclear war ever again.

    • Photo: Joseph Devlin

      Joseph Devlin answered on 24 Mar 2010:

      Hi mspiers,

      There are a bunch of different aspects of a nuclear explosion that all kill people. The initial blast produces incredible searing heat which wipes anyone in the near vicinity out instantly. Beyond that, the shock wave expands and probably does the most damage in terms of the initial kill total, in part by knocking over buildings and things. Then there is the fallout which spreads over a much larger area (Chernobyl dropped radioactive fallout over all of Europe, for instance) and that will have indirect effects and cause deaths much more slowly. So yes, I think the shock wave is the biggest killer at the time of the explosion. With enough bad luck, the radiation exposure may end up affecting more people over time, but it takes much longer.

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