As I did with tanks, here’s another “expert analyses the realism of Hollywood movies,” this time with nuclear weapons physicist Greg Spriggs on the realism of movie nuke scenes.
And yes, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is included.
One thing, though: He dings Oppenheimer for Edward Teller slathering on sunscreen, saying it wouldn’t help. Thing is, that’s straight out of the historical record.
Tags: Greg Spriggs, Military, movies, nuclear weapons, video
One thing I’ve seen that’s aggravating is complete incompetence on Hollywood’s part when it comes to rad-haz and radiation dosing. I attribute this to the population in general having almost no basic knowledge even from grade school on median dosing, distance, types of radiation, or even the scale to use (we use Gy now, not rads or roentgens, etc.).
I find this particularly glaring from a script writing perspective because it’s something so simple that would give a large proportion of the movie going public better real-world grasp of radiation in general, not just from an NBC perspective but simple things like their doctor or dentist visit, lifetime exposure limits, and comparison of radiation related news they here to an understanding of what the background cosmic limits are, giving them perspective.
It’s a super important topic and hollyweird gets it wrong almost every single time.
I’d have liked to hear his opinion on the blast in The Bedford Incident.
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You’ll get your answer after they release the unredacted Alfred P Murrah Federal building forensic report.
I don’t think he dinged Oppenheimer as much as addressed, probably a question from the producers of the video, as to whether sunscreen would help. In fact, he noted that many did put on sunscreen, but that he didn’t think it would help.
His notion about an explosion in space is interesting. I understand the cooling would be rapid, because nearly all the matter to heat up is what the bomb carries. And that matter is rapidly moving and separating into a much much cooler vacuum environment. But his millisecond time frame seems a bit short for all of that.
We should be using rads or roentgens, because all the 1960s/70s science fiction does, and no science fiction written since addresses the topic in any meaningful sense, and how the hell can we talk easily about this if we can’t learn the lingo as kids?
Also, what is a “gy”? Guy? Giga-why? It is obvious at a glance it is an unwieldy and impractical and unclear term. Rads and roentgens are intuitive. The purpose of language is to communicate. Use the term that communicates, not the one somebody came up with to be self-important.
Also, Pluto is a planet.
Also, get off my lawn.
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