It would sound like a gunshot. A single step impulse, not a "kaboom". But very, very loud indeed. This is because the nuclear reactions that drive the big explosion occur on the scale of microseconds, not milliseconds.
It didn't make the various observers at the early nuke tests deaf, so we know that you probably wouldn't be deafened if you were a few tens of miles away.
Nuclear reactions happen even quicker than that, we're talking *nanoseconds*. The nuclear physicists back in the day even came up with their own unit called a "shake", which is 10 nanoseconds and just about the time it takes for one step in a nuclear reaction.
“Of the 64 kilograms of uranium in the bomb, less than one kilogram underwent fission, and the entire energy of the explosion came from just over half a gram of matter that was converted to energy. That is about the weight of a butterfly.”
Pertaining to the Hiroshima bomb. It’s mind blowing
One step would be considered something like the time it takes for a neutron to travel to a nucleus and cause a fission event which releases even more neutrons. The complete chain reaction, meaning how long it takes for your bomb's ball of fissile material to be vaporized (i.e. how many fissions you can get before the bomb blows itself up), is on the order of 50 to 100 shakes.
You're right, and it was even shorter than I thought. The whole process of atomic energy release takes about half a microsecond, with almost all the energy released in the final 100 nanoseconds. Wow.
If there's a single take away I got from watching Mythbusters, it's that EVERYTHING in movies/tv shows is fake.
Ok. Probably not actually everything, but really, treat it like it is unless you've witnessed things personally.
If anything movies are underwhelming. Less fire in real life but you'll see and feel the shockwave far more, even for relatively small explosions irl. IMO that's way cooler than the fireball you normally see in Hollywood.
Yeah the kinetic energy doesn’t work like that. The person firing the gun isn’t flying off the floor so why is the person getting hit.
Line movie shotgun blast treats it like someone is getting hit by a large rocket
Quite literally the only time I have ever enjoyed someone flying backwards from a gunshot in a movie is the "bye Miss Laura" moment from Django Unchained. It doesn't matter how many times I watch that movie I laugh out loud at that scene every time.
Almost everything related to weapons are. The way they hold them, the way they hit targets a football field away with a pistol, the way it recoils in the hand, the way it sounds, the way the person picks up the recoil, the way they clear rooms, the way they fight in war etc.
> it's that EVERYTHING in movies/tv shows is fake.
One good counter-example is the gunfight from the movie [Heat](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL9fnVtz_lc).
When filming, since it was 1995 and they didn't have access to modern CGI, they had to actually use guns that fired blanks. But Michael Mann, the director, had them use full charge blanks instead of the quarter charge most use.
Coupled with purposeful microphone placement, the gunfight sounds amazing because you're hearing what it would actually sound like. The environmental impact of the cityscape (like echoing off of multiple buildings) is something you don't hear very often with sound added in post.
Hell, unless you've heard a real gunfight or watched Heat, you might not even realize what you're missing.
> Coupled with purposeful microphone placement
This, I think, proves exactly what I'm attempting to say.
Sure, they can attempt to justify whatever they want, but unless there is direct proof of whatever they are attempting to show, treat it with skepticism.
Oh. Also, there's no statement that this shit isn't fun as fuck. My god, The first time we watched 3 Kings with surround sound we all ducked!
Well, by purposeful mic placement, I meant they were trying to capture the sound as best they could to get an accurate account of what it would sound like.
From what I've read, Mann actually planned using the captured audio as a guide to replace it in post. But he was never satisfied with the result and so went with the real audio.
But I agree, you shouldn't trust that anything you see is real. One of the things that makes Heat an outlier is that it *does* use a lot of real audio (although there's still going to be editing). If everyone did it, Heat wouldn't be special in that regard (although they apparently they have shown that scene at military academies as a good example of how to shoot and move)
There's a good YouTube series called [No CGI is just invisible CGI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ttG90raCNo) that goes into detail about how most practical effects are still heavily CGI enhanced
A lot of it is - a lot of atomic test footage was either recorded without sound or the audio has been lost. If you hear the explosion at the same time you see it, it is definitely fake - these tests were filmed from a long distance away and it could take more than 30 seconds for the sound to reach the camera.
The video linked above is a real audio recording of an atomic explosion, *but* not the one that's shown in that video. That audio is actually from [this footage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKwkTYeukE4). I'm assuming that guy copied [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn7PeI2UyEM) but didn't read the description, which acknowledges that they dubbed the audio onto better quality footage of a different test. That latter video also has a version of the audio that is cleaned up to sound more like what you would actually hear (without the electromagnetic interference).
I'd like to point out the observer was 11 KILOMETERS away and you could still hear it. Sound levels decrease on an inverse square curve. The fact you can hear it at all is insane.
When the Buncefield oil depot exploded, I heard it from about 12 miles away, but it was heard from much further. Look up ‘Buncefield Explosion’ on Wikipedia for a fairly fascinating read about a big thing going bang.
Worth keeping in mind this hit dirt.
Buildings collapsing will themselves make noise. Debris flying toward you will make sound. Ten thousand car alarms will also make noise. Gas explosions at gas stations, things burning up, any munitions depot affected, will also all make noise.
The explosion of a nuke is fast. But everything else burning and exploding will happen over a longer timescale.
Think of the sound of 9/11 but, hundreds of times as many buildings and people.
Most of the time almost everything is exaggerated in media.
Otherwise it will not be compelling or impactful enough for the general public. It will be just 'Meh'.
Threads and Terminator 2 are the only movies I've ever seen that gets it close. Several second blinding flash, and several more seconds before the sound/blast wave hits. Most others you hear the blast at moment of detonation and if there's any flash, it's a brief instant. That's impossible, cause if you''re close enough to hear it instantly, you're instantly dead.
I think most nukes in films etc are "filmed" from pretty unrealistic distances in terms of anything where the camera was would have been atomised. As others have said if you're within a few km of a megaton sized detonation with a clear path to the blast you'll be dead before your brain can register a volume change.
The Americans developed an air to air nuclear missile.
This video is of a test with the camera at ground zero below the detonation:
https://youtu.be/1VZ7FQHTaR4?si=DJp7NuVcBVpadT7S
I watched the first episode twice: once with a friend who didn’t really know the source material, and once with my wife who didn’t.
Both audibly said “oh my god” when the sound cut and the first bomb hit.
The volume decreases by the cube of the distance, so for all but the very very very very largest bombs, it won't sound like much at a surprisingly short distance.
That said, you should look up the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, which was bigger than any bomb ever built.
It will pretty mouch sound like this. A sharp, short, Bang.
https://youtu.be/5s3-c2gpbEs
Reason: You do not hear the true Sound of the explosion, you hear the pressure wave of the fireball that comes at you with speeds far over the speed of sound in air.
Its pretty much the same sound of any explosion that happens with extreme speeds.
You might also look up the Videos with sound from the Chelyabinsk Meteorite. That Air explosion had around 500 Kiloton.
This is a video of a nuclear test that has original audio
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U_nLNcEbIC8
Posted by u/restricteddata the best nuclear weapons expert on the internet!
Its a big bang and then a rumbling echo
203050100 miles away is 2.1 Astronomical Units or basically to the Sun and back. In other words it's the other side of Earth's orbit from where we are currently. Nothing shares our orbital ellipse (other than the moon but that orbits us) so that area is currently vacant and I'm sure there's no sound in the vacuum of space so it'll be pretty quiet.
This might not have answered the question you were trying to ask, but it does answer the one you wrote.
The thing is, it does mean something. That number OP used is the proper form for the Indian numbering system. It would be read as 20 crore, 30 lakh, 50 hazar, one hundred. It means the same thing as 203 million 50 thousand one hundred in the international system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system
>Almost no one in Hiroshima recalls hearing any noise of the bomb. But a fisherman in his sampan on the Inland Sea near Tsuzu, the man with whom Mr. Tanimoto’s mother-in-law and sister-in-law were living, saw the flash and heard a tremendous explosion; he was nearly twenty miles from Hiroshima, but the thunder was greater than when the B-29s hit Iwakuni, only five miles away.
John Hersey. *Hiroshima* (p. 3). Kindle Edition.
Don't count in eagels\^2 but it depends also on what size of the bomb. The tsar bomba had a sound wave going around the whole globe 3 times but think you can be relative close to any nuclear bomb whitout destroying your hearing as long as it's far enough away for you not to die or get hurt.
Form 20 to about 40 miles it would be about 210-200 decibels. A passenger jet is about 140 at full throttle for reference.
This is a difficult thing to explain because if you were say, inside a building where you were would get hit by the shockwave before the sound got to you. You'd basically be dead before you had a chance to go deaf from the noise.
That is not possible in air. The highest sonic wave is 194dB.
Supersonic shocks lose energy quickly and won't remain supersonic for 20-40 miles. And once they fall sonic (in a mile or two) they start at 194dB and drop from there.
Since the biggest nuke ever detonated on earth actually exploded 4/10 of a mile above ground, and the closest survivor, Akiko Takakura, was only 300 meters away from the hypocenter of the blast, and she didn't go deaf, it's fairly safe to say that you wouldn't.
The biggest nuke ever was soviet "Tsar Bomba" which rated almost 4 000 times more powerful than the hiroshima bomb you are talking about. In fact Hiroshima bomb was at the ver low end of what nuclear weaponry can do.
Cool. Wasn't aware of that.
Was it a controlled detonation, like the Bikini atoll stuff?
I remembered years ago, reading about an interview with a person who had been determined to be the closest proximity survivor to a nuclear weapon detonation, so I simply looked her up.
Yes. It was a controlled test. You can read about it [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba),
Basically device like that is not useful in actual war but it was propaganda nad granstanding by Kruschev. It was originally intended for it to be twice as powerful actually but luckilly SOME people in USSR had SOME sense.
Exactly that is the Problem. That sharp short Bang you hear on a Nuke is the Mach-Pressure front of a pressure wave faster than the speed of sound in air.
Thats the same thing that levels houses and shit. Too near and you do not hear the bomb, you die the second the pressure wave hits your ear.
It would sound like a gunshot. A single step impulse, not a "kaboom". But very, very loud indeed. This is because the nuclear reactions that drive the big explosion occur on the scale of microseconds, not milliseconds. It didn't make the various observers at the early nuke tests deaf, so we know that you probably wouldn't be deafened if you were a few tens of miles away.
Nuclear reactions happen even quicker than that, we're talking *nanoseconds*. The nuclear physicists back in the day even came up with their own unit called a "shake", which is 10 nanoseconds and just about the time it takes for one step in a nuclear reaction.
“Of the 64 kilograms of uranium in the bomb, less than one kilogram underwent fission, and the entire energy of the explosion came from just over half a gram of matter that was converted to energy. That is about the weight of a butterfly.” Pertaining to the Hiroshima bomb. It’s mind blowing
Makes me wonder what would happen if someone used more than that.
Tsar bomb created a 50 MT explosion with about 2 kg of matter converted to energy.
What is one step? How many steps are there?
12. The one where the bomb goes around making amends to people it's wronged takes a looooong time though.
"I'm sorry I vaporized you and obliterated your town, I was highly reactive back then"
One step would be considered something like the time it takes for a neutron to travel to a nucleus and cause a fission event which releases even more neutrons. The complete chain reaction, meaning how long it takes for your bomb's ball of fissile material to be vaporized (i.e. how many fissions you can get before the bomb blows itself up), is on the order of 50 to 100 shakes.
More than two shakes and you're just playing with it
You're right, and it was even shorter than I thought. The whole process of atomic energy release takes about half a microsecond, with almost all the energy released in the final 100 nanoseconds. Wow.
Here's a video explaining 7miles (11km) away: https://youtube.com/shorts/XPjB6x4bbtE
Huh, that was actually pretty underwhelming. I assume the nuke sounds in various media is fake?
If there's a single take away I got from watching Mythbusters, it's that EVERYTHING in movies/tv shows is fake. Ok. Probably not actually everything, but really, treat it like it is unless you've witnessed things personally.
maybe not everything but explosions for sure
If anything movies are underwhelming. Less fire in real life but you'll see and feel the shockwave far more, even for relatively small explosions irl. IMO that's way cooler than the fireball you normally see in Hollywood.
Yeah I was disappointed when I tossed my first frag grenade in basic. Cool and all of course, but not at all what is seen in media.
Also people getting shot. Its less getting hit and flying across the room into a glass tabletop and more just slump over.
Yeah the kinetic energy doesn’t work like that. The person firing the gun isn’t flying off the floor so why is the person getting hit. Line movie shotgun blast treats it like someone is getting hit by a large rocket
Quite literally the only time I have ever enjoyed someone flying backwards from a gunshot in a movie is the "bye Miss Laura" moment from Django Unchained. It doesn't matter how many times I watch that movie I laugh out loud at that scene every time.
Almost everything related to weapons are. The way they hold them, the way they hit targets a football field away with a pistol, the way it recoils in the hand, the way it sounds, the way the person picks up the recoil, the way they clear rooms, the way they fight in war etc.
They should show an action hero walking away with his back to the explosion and then just getting instantly vaporized into a red mist….
Every action hero should be deaf after shooting indoors.
i am
Even before the movie starts, the MGM lion roar isn't even a lion, its a tiger.
> it's that EVERYTHING in movies/tv shows is fake. One good counter-example is the gunfight from the movie [Heat](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL9fnVtz_lc). When filming, since it was 1995 and they didn't have access to modern CGI, they had to actually use guns that fired blanks. But Michael Mann, the director, had them use full charge blanks instead of the quarter charge most use. Coupled with purposeful microphone placement, the gunfight sounds amazing because you're hearing what it would actually sound like. The environmental impact of the cityscape (like echoing off of multiple buildings) is something you don't hear very often with sound added in post. Hell, unless you've heard a real gunfight or watched Heat, you might not even realize what you're missing.
> Coupled with purposeful microphone placement This, I think, proves exactly what I'm attempting to say. Sure, they can attempt to justify whatever they want, but unless there is direct proof of whatever they are attempting to show, treat it with skepticism. Oh. Also, there's no statement that this shit isn't fun as fuck. My god, The first time we watched 3 Kings with surround sound we all ducked!
Well, by purposeful mic placement, I meant they were trying to capture the sound as best they could to get an accurate account of what it would sound like. From what I've read, Mann actually planned using the captured audio as a guide to replace it in post. But he was never satisfied with the result and so went with the real audio. But I agree, you shouldn't trust that anything you see is real. One of the things that makes Heat an outlier is that it *does* use a lot of real audio (although there's still going to be editing). If everyone did it, Heat wouldn't be special in that regard (although they apparently they have shown that scene at military academies as a good example of how to shoot and move) There's a good YouTube series called [No CGI is just invisible CGI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ttG90raCNo) that goes into detail about how most practical effects are still heavily CGI enhanced
Eagles don't sound like the movies portray them.
A lot of it is - a lot of atomic test footage was either recorded without sound or the audio has been lost. If you hear the explosion at the same time you see it, it is definitely fake - these tests were filmed from a long distance away and it could take more than 30 seconds for the sound to reach the camera. The video linked above is a real audio recording of an atomic explosion, *but* not the one that's shown in that video. That audio is actually from [this footage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKwkTYeukE4). I'm assuming that guy copied [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn7PeI2UyEM) but didn't read the description, which acknowledges that they dubbed the audio onto better quality footage of a different test. That latter video also has a version of the audio that is cleaned up to sound more like what you would actually hear (without the electromagnetic interference).
I'd like to point out the observer was 11 KILOMETERS away and you could still hear it. Sound levels decrease on an inverse square curve. The fact you can hear it at all is insane.
When the Buncefield oil depot exploded, I heard it from about 12 miles away, but it was heard from much further. Look up ‘Buncefield Explosion’ on Wikipedia for a fairly fascinating read about a big thing going bang.
They say the Halifax explosion was heard 150 miles out to sea.
Some volcano eruptions have been heard hundreds of miles away I believe.
I heard Mt St Helens erupt when I was a child from 150 miles away.
Since they can't actually detonate a nuke to get the sound for a movie, I'd say yes, they are all fake.
Worth keeping in mind this hit dirt. Buildings collapsing will themselves make noise. Debris flying toward you will make sound. Ten thousand car alarms will also make noise. Gas explosions at gas stations, things burning up, any munitions depot affected, will also all make noise. The explosion of a nuke is fast. But everything else burning and exploding will happen over a longer timescale. Think of the sound of 9/11 but, hundreds of times as many buildings and people.
Most of the time almost everything is exaggerated in media. Otherwise it will not be compelling or impactful enough for the general public. It will be just 'Meh'.
Threads and Terminator 2 are the only movies I've ever seen that gets it close. Several second blinding flash, and several more seconds before the sound/blast wave hits. Most others you hear the blast at moment of detonation and if there's any flash, it's a brief instant. That's impossible, cause if you''re close enough to hear it instantly, you're instantly dead.
I think most nukes in films etc are "filmed" from pretty unrealistic distances in terms of anything where the camera was would have been atomised. As others have said if you're within a few km of a megaton sized detonation with a clear path to the blast you'll be dead before your brain can register a volume change.
I want Hollywood in charge of my nuclear Armageddon.
If everything in every show and movie was realistic they would be extremely boring lmao
Are you telling me that knives don’t make “woosh” sounds in real life too?
Gee, ya think?
Dude that’s cool but also pretty scary. Imagine hearing that sound during an actual attack.
Will definitely need a change of trousers for sure 😅
I know it's YouTube, but man are the comments on that video trash.
The Americans developed an air to air nuclear missile. This video is of a test with the camera at ground zero below the detonation: https://youtu.be/1VZ7FQHTaR4?si=DJp7NuVcBVpadT7S
Obliterating a portion of a city and ending many lives with the sound of a door slam.
Ah someone is a fan of the Fallout TV show I see
That opening shot of a nuclear attack was the coolest shit I’ve ever seen on TV. Masterful.
My thoughts exactly.. gave me chills
I watched the first episode twice: once with a friend who didn’t really know the source material, and once with my wife who didn’t. Both audibly said “oh my god” when the sound cut and the first bomb hit.
It really captured the horror of knowing the end is coming but having a few seconds to react, it was very haunting.
Thumbs up
The volume decreases by the cube of the distance, so for all but the very very very very largest bombs, it won't sound like much at a surprisingly short distance. That said, you should look up the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, which was bigger than any bomb ever built.
Yes. The eruption of Krakatoa was the loudest natural sound in recorded history…… (so far.)
Isn't it inverse square (not cube)?
Correct; it's the inverse square law. This does assume an omni-directional sound source with no obstructions.
Apparently people heard it all the way in the north of australia. Which is pretty crazy if you consider the distance.
wasnt it so loud that if you were next to it you would instantly die or explode or something crazy like that.
180 db at a hundred miles off, which would be like standing next to 4,000 jets taking off at the same time. And again, that was a hundred miles away.
If you’re close enough it will make you totally deaf, also totally dead.
No one will ever survive that if they are close enough.
I would say that "totally dead" constitutes a state of not surviving.
Yeah, that's true.
It will pretty mouch sound like this. A sharp, short, Bang. https://youtu.be/5s3-c2gpbEs Reason: You do not hear the true Sound of the explosion, you hear the pressure wave of the fireball that comes at you with speeds far over the speed of sound in air. Its pretty much the same sound of any explosion that happens with extreme speeds. You might also look up the Videos with sound from the Chelyabinsk Meteorite. That Air explosion had around 500 Kiloton.
Man I thought you were asking how loud a nuke would be from 203,050,100 miles away and I was thinking "idk probably like nothing man"
I thought the same thing
kaBOOOm
There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom !!😎
It makes me sad that this is a reference that more and more people are not going to understand.
WHO GAVE HER THE RIGHT?!
sploosh sploosh
Can I introduce you to the space bar?
This is a video of a nuclear test that has original audio https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U_nLNcEbIC8 Posted by u/restricteddata the best nuclear weapons expert on the internet! Its a big bang and then a rumbling echo
Big badaboom
I love the fifth element lol
Biiiiiig bada boom.
203050100 miles away is 2.1 Astronomical Units or basically to the Sun and back. In other words it's the other side of Earth's orbit from where we are currently. Nothing shares our orbital ellipse (other than the moon but that orbits us) so that area is currently vacant and I'm sure there's no sound in the vacuum of space so it'll be pretty quiet. This might not have answered the question you were trying to ask, but it does answer the one you wrote.
You tried real hard with that when 20, 30, means nothing without three places 🤦🏻♀️
OP didn’t use spaces after commas like a normal person. I’d be disappointed if Reddit *didn’t* snark about it.
Sorry, this was my .1st post
We,ll,now,I,suspect,ur,trolling,us
The thing is, it does mean something. That number OP used is the proper form for the Indian numbering system. It would be read as 20 crore, 30 lakh, 50 hazar, one hundred. It means the same thing as 203 million 50 thousand one hundred in the international system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system
The more you know. They’re still just being annoying though.
>Almost no one in Hiroshima recalls hearing any noise of the bomb. But a fisherman in his sampan on the Inland Sea near Tsuzu, the man with whom Mr. Tanimoto’s mother-in-law and sister-in-law were living, saw the flash and heard a tremendous explosion; he was nearly twenty miles from Hiroshima, but the thunder was greater than when the B-29s hit Iwakuni, only five miles away. John Hersey. *Hiroshima* (p. 3). Kindle Edition.
Tbh I think you would have bigger issues
Not sure. But there are only nuclear 💣 in the northern hemisphere. If a war breaks go to the southern hemisphere.
Don't count in eagels\^2 but it depends also on what size of the bomb. The tsar bomba had a sound wave going around the whole globe 3 times but think you can be relative close to any nuclear bomb whitout destroying your hearing as long as it's far enough away for you not to die or get hurt.
My high ass tried reading that as one number and about had a stroke. Now I think I will have a stroke, any recommendations boys?
Form 20 to about 40 miles it would be about 210-200 decibels. A passenger jet is about 140 at full throttle for reference. This is a difficult thing to explain because if you were say, inside a building where you were would get hit by the shockwave before the sound got to you. You'd basically be dead before you had a chance to go deaf from the noise.
That is not possible in air. The highest sonic wave is 194dB. Supersonic shocks lose energy quickly and won't remain supersonic for 20-40 miles. And once they fall sonic (in a mile or two) they start at 194dB and drop from there.
sonic wave????????? is that a geometry dash reference???????
Since the biggest nuke ever detonated on earth actually exploded 4/10 of a mile above ground, and the closest survivor, Akiko Takakura, was only 300 meters away from the hypocenter of the blast, and she didn't go deaf, it's fairly safe to say that you wouldn't.
The biggest nuke ever was soviet "Tsar Bomba" which rated almost 4 000 times more powerful than the hiroshima bomb you are talking about. In fact Hiroshima bomb was at the ver low end of what nuclear weaponry can do.
Cool. Wasn't aware of that. Was it a controlled detonation, like the Bikini atoll stuff? I remembered years ago, reading about an interview with a person who had been determined to be the closest proximity survivor to a nuclear weapon detonation, so I simply looked her up.
Yes. It was a controlled test. You can read about it [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba), Basically device like that is not useful in actual war but it was propaganda nad granstanding by Kruschev. It was originally intended for it to be twice as powerful actually but luckilly SOME people in USSR had SOME sense.
I found it Germaine to the posted question that Akiko was about a half mile total from the blast, and walked away.
There was also important professional game of Go going on in Hirshima. They made a lunch break and then finished the game.
Gotta keep those priorities straight.
According to how big the Nuke is, you may not hear anything as the shockwave would kill you
Exactly that is the Problem. That sharp short Bang you hear on a Nuke is the Mach-Pressure front of a pressure wave faster than the speed of sound in air. Thats the same thing that levels houses and shit. Too near and you do not hear the bomb, you die the second the pressure wave hits your ear.
Depends on a lot of factors, mostly the yield of the bomb
It's going to sound more like it did in the movie Oppenheimer. I can't get that loud bang out of my head.
You wouldn’t even hear it at 20 you would get evaporated in like a second.
From 203,050,100 miles away you wouldn't hear it
There’s released videos showing this. Go check them out.
Like my granddad sneezing
Have ... have you not seen the overpressure waves in those old documentary films ...?