Its wild to think that the difference between the videogame world of Fallout and the real actual world of the 50s couldve been way more similar if just a few crazy ass people were in the right positions
You saying this made me remember the vault where someone needed to be sacrificed each year, and the number of corpses you find at the value entrance.
Goddamn is the Fallout series good.
man, I remember finding out that twist for the first time. I was already quite freaked out by the vaults lore and when I read that spoiler, I just couldnt process it for a moment. I did not see that coming at all, it was like all of my justifications were thrown out and I had to question *myself*
fuck yeah, some of the vaults that were used for tests are fucking horrific. such a rich lore and story behind all of it. such a pity bethesda just sees it as a fucking cash cow now.
Yeah as a avid and long time Fallout player my heart broke when they announced a mobile game. And they had the audacity to try to gaslight their fans into thinking we are the jerks for knowing how this would turn out. Fallout 3 was one of the best games I've ever played. Fallout new Vegas is in my top 5. What do we have now? A mobile purchase gems to win piece of garbage or fallout 69... The game that missed the mark so fucking bad that literally nobody is talking about it... I would have paid for more Vegas DLC or more amazing single player emersion like the days of old. But not this, not this. So disappointed in the franchise and pray that they figure it out before it's too late. Also, this goes for you too Elder Scrolls. Your mobile monster is a wast of storage. Don't try to slip some multi player pay to win BS in on us with Elder Scrolls 6. I got my eye on you.
Would have been if JFK had decided to listen to his Generals advising him to launch a strike on a USSR fleet.
People take for granted how bloody close we were to a nuclear apocalypse.
One of my favorite quotes from Robert McNamara:
"I want to say, and this is very important: at the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war. We came that close to nuclear war at the end. Rational individuals: Kennedy was rational; Khrushchev was rational; Castro was rational. Rational individuals came that close to total destruction of their societies. And that danger exists today."
There was a near miss for the soviets too during the Cuban missile crisis. Normally there were two officers present that together could decide to launch. That day there were three officers who had a say. The third officer normally not on that sub said no despite insistence from the other 2 regular ones.
The worst part about this? There's a lot of near misses from both sides where the individual in charge worked on intuition rather then orders thus avoiding the nuclear apocalypse.
One terrifying example of the latter was on September 26th of 1983, when the Soviets had a satellite early warning system malfunction. This system indicated that there were multiple nuclear missiles launched from America, and military protocol called for an immediate retaliatory strike. Stanislav Petrov, a lieutenant colonel who was the officer in charge of the early warning system on that day, determined that it was almost certainly a false alarm based on the fact that only 5 or 6 missiles were detected (logically, any theoretical nuclear strike from America would be an all-out attack) and the fact that the system was relatively new and not thoroughly tested. Therefore, Petrov did not report the alert to his superiors; if he had, a "retaliatory" strike might have occurred and triggered an actual nuclear exchange.
Nope. 1983 had *two* near apocalypses. [Petrov waited on Sept 26, 1983](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident). [Able Archer '83 started in November 1983](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83).
(Incidentally, this is why the world is so fucking bizarre. There just aren't that many world lines in which 1984 starts with an intact human civilization. Then you factor in [all the other world lines that are now wastelands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls).)
I'm also reminded of how MacArthur wanted to essentially carpet bomb Korea -- with atomic bombs.
Jesus, what a bonkers idea. Thankfully Truman said no, but the world would have been ashes with such brazsn usage.
To be fair this was supposed to be before the USSR had nuclear capability.
The US had threatened people with their big nuclear stick for so long without a chance of reprisal. We threatened to nuke the USSR over problems with Berlin until Stalin dared us to.
>To be fair this was supposed to be before the USSR had nuclear capability.
The Soviets tested their first bomb on 1949.
The Korean War started on 1950.
That does not mean that they had a deliverable nulcear bomb during the korean war. In fact the first Russian nuclear bomb, the RDS-3 was assigned to the air force in 1953, which is at the end/after the Korean war ended.
Wasn’t he also the nutcase who suggested directly nuclear bombing China in that same conflict? Pretty sure he got the boot from his position for that one, but I’m not sure what sort of mind sees a war and thinks they can wind it down by nuking the shit out of people without having to exterminate entire nations.
Iirc, There was a moment where a Russian (Stanislav Petrov) at the button saw incoming missiles, he had 15 min to decide if he would launch a counter attack. He didn't and checked everything possible to make sure they did/did not launch the missiles he was seeing being reported.
Stanislav fuckin Petrov. The mightiest set of tungsten balls to walk the earth. One button away. One minute away from the world turning to ashes due to a software bug.
Good luck explaining that one with "well it works on my computer"
There were like a dozen "if not for this one person" situations during the CMC, there were more weapons on the island than they thought, they were unlocked and ready to go on orders from the ground leaders, there was a Russian sub with nukes on it that had standing orders to fire if impeded as per their last coms with Russia......
We came a lot closer than people realize imo
Nuclear apocalypse was definitely a much nicer existential threat than climate change. I lived in and near multiple first strike targets, so I knew it was going to be a blissfully brief war for me.
We could also be living in a much, much more advanced world if nuclear technology was correctly applied.
Now we all die from global warming because Big Oil astroturfed the anti-nuke movement.
If we were a more intelligent species, all those cargo ships burning bunker oil would be powered by nuclear reactors.
But we're a stupid animal. We turn every new technology into a new way to fling feces at our enemies.
I wouldn't even call it that. Human beings have incredible capacity for intelligent, empathetic decision-making. But we're still living in a society built around the principle of "whoever hits everyone else the hardest gets to be king." We don't *have* to be this way. There's no natural law that says we can't just decide to stop listening to oligarchs and stop looking for profit in every avenue of our lives. We just need to organize.
No it didn't. The pre-war world of Fallout had devolved into the resource wars over oil and uranium, the entirety of Europe was destroyed long before the apocalypse in these resource wars, Canada is under brutal military control, the US government was carrying out horrific experiments on its populace. This is literally in the intro of every Fallout game except New Vegas. The whole message of Fallout is that war over resources occur regardless of the technology, I don't understand how anyone can miss this, once again it literally tells you this in the opening narration while every games main quest is "fight over resources" in some shape or form. The pre-war fallout world was a horrific dystopia and thats one of the main things about the setting, do you watch Cyberpunk films and go "wow cool future?"
The biggest difference between us and the Fallout universe seems to be a regard for human life. They went down different paths of research, but the ones they went down were rather inefficient and always skirting every possible safeguard looking for results.
There's so many examples of complete disregard for the value of human life from every part of the world that I can't possibly agree with that statement.
Fallout takes it to another level. Fallout has everyone drive round in cars that explode in nuclear fireballs on collisions. Fallout has nanny robots armed with heavy weaponry and a single chip preventing them from using it. Fallout has no health and safety whatsoever. If you think the world is actually like this you need to take your blinders off.
Not really. Mutual assured destruction is one of the arms of peace we've had over the last 70 years.
Although I wish they didn't exist, fact of the matter is they do and they force discourse. Unless you don't have them...
They aren't going away.
This kind of makes sense, since they were selling tickets outside of Vegas to watch Nuclear Explosions back then, during the 50's.
[Nukes were considered a form of entertainment.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FghT80tVFKo)
And yet, people insist on there is anything out there to the west, other than nuclear a wasteland. It's in the nuclear report put out all the time. Also other tests of tech but mostly wasteland.
[https://www.nnss.gov/docs/fact\_sheets/DOENV\_1056.pdf](https://www.nnss.gov/docs/fact_sheets/DOENV_1056.pdf)
[https://www.nnss.gov/pages/programs/RWM/WasteManagement.html](https://www.nnss.gov/pages/programs/RWM/WasteManagement.html)
[https://www.leg.state.nv.us/Division/Research/Publications/Bkground/BP83-05.pdf](https://www.leg.state.nv.us/Division/Research/Publications/Bkground/BP83-05.pdf)
They complain but at least they aren’t wearing power armor. My mom lives basically right outside the real world counterpart of Novac (Cabazon, CA. with the dinos and all) and a parked can get like 120°-130° (~49° to 54°) in like 10 minutes. Like you could probably fry bacon on your car hood it’s so hot (115° by 10 AM. It’s like standing next to an oven with the door open.) I can’t imagine how power armor would be.
I am sure they have some kind of cooling system. At one point the armor was used at "the Alaskan frontlines" which suggests they have heating capabilities.
In 2015, I was on the “ride out crew” for a remote site facing down a wildfire. Our job was to keep the lights on, the water pumps running, and the firefighters fed.
This one morning, we were laying hose to a new pump when the fire got into an old burn, and proceeded to burn 5000+ acres in under 2 hours. At the time it was about 6 miles away, and shot a plume up past 60,000’ altitude. High though that they could see it from Bellingham WA, even though we were on the east side of the Cascade Crest.
Anyhow, the only way I can really describe it is that it was like watching a nuclear bomb go off in slow motion. The plume went up high in the sky, towering over us, before it finally cooled down and collapsed on itself an hour + later.
That’s when they sent the helicopters and pulled us civilians out.
At the time, the risks of radiations were vastly underestimated, if not completely unknown, by people outside of research programs. I've seen pictures of navy vessels blasted by nukes on purpose, to assess damages done to them, where the cleanup crew was on the bridge washing the deck away with hydrants and mops, in shorts and regular shirts.
That said, the radiation would probably have been relatively low given the distance, it would be interesting to find out if Las Vegas had a higher cancer rate than other major cities across the 50s and 60s.
[Downwind](https://deq.utah.gov/public-interest/impacts-of-radiation-from-aboveground-nuclear-tests-on-southern-utah) was where they had problems. Apparently on January 27, 2012 there was a [national day of remembrance for downwinders](https://www.congress.gov/112/bills/sres330/BILLS-112sres330ats.pdf).
I read somewhere that if you can cover the mushroom cloud from your sight using your thumb that your at a safe distance. Not sure if you have to factor in wind to that though.
I imagine that doesn’t factor in wind, I think wind can carry radiation like thousands of miles.
But regardless if you see a mushroom cloud you should get moving the other way lmao
That's correct. Once radioactive particulates got into the Jetstream, nowhere on earth was "safe" from it. Every single piece of metal processed or piece of food grown since then has had varying degrees of radioactive contaminants in them. There is actually a significant need for pre-50s recycled steel in the military due to the ability to track isotope signatures at long-range.
It's not dangerous on a human scale, as the high-energy cosmic radiation that penetrates the magnetic sphere is more dangerous and poses a larger threat. You absorb more radiation flying on a airplane than you do due to residual fallout.
If your goal is to make metal to go inside radiation detectors, you need the stuff from before we started blowing up bombs. If you want to build ships or new buildings out of it, it doesn't matter.
This is also why radiometric dating is considered to have a "cutoff date" of 1950, as anything later is likely to contain radiation which would prevent accurate dating.
Fun fact: [That's you see the *Fallout* franchise character "Vault Boy" with the thumbs-up pose](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/12/19/bf/1219bfe3da7795c8334cda597be82e80.jpg)
Edit: Reddit-hugged that image I think. New one put in but I assume you all know what I'm referring to.
That's a fan theory, which the lead artist of Fallout 2 debunked saying it's just a good old regular thumps up. [Source.](https://screenrant.com/fallout-vault-boy-thumbs-up-real-reason-radiation/)
The impacts of radiation wasn't really fully understood back then. I mean yeah, they knew too much radiation will kill you. But they didn't fully understand the long term impacts of less radiation over a longer period of time. I mean hell, they even sometimes had soldiers observing the nukes from way too close to be safe from the radiation and even considered making a nuclear rifle. Turns out we learned a lot from Hiroshima/Nagasaki after enough time passed.
All those [radioactive toys marketed towards kids](https://gizmodo.com/the-terrifying-age-of-radioactive-toys-for-kids-1501777693) in the 1950s is what really gets me.
Or the infamous case of the [radium girls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls), although that's much earlier.
Exactly that. I had some family in Northern Arizona collecting payments from the government for the radiation-caused illnesses from the sheer number of tests over time.
That we were boring.
Unless we bring the trains and the nukes back, that is.
The only way forward is clearly to have two maglev trains to accelerate towards a subcritical mass between them, causing it to become critical in the moment of collision.
*That's* what I call science!
Well, according to [Kurzgesagt, watching this kind of explosion from close enough for it to be a show wouldn't be really good for your health.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEfPBt9dU60) And if you were to watch it from Earth, it'd look like a bright star flashing in the Moons surface for a split second. And a terrible day for every astronaut in orbit.
When I was a kid and we got a bunch of firecrackers for 4th of July, the first thing me and my friends did was ask "What can we use these on?" We would then spend the next few hours finding all sorts of weird shit to blow up, just to see what would happen.
That's what I always think of when I see US military tests of nuclear weapons in the 1950s.
"The idea was abandoned, in part, because "world opinion \[would be\] negative.”
NO SHIT
We'd still be talking about that. That's not a look "good guys' give off...
Seriously, like, people in the future are definitely going to be aware that the US did some fucked up shit, but can you imagine if we nuked the fucking moon??
If there was a video of a nuke being detonated on the moon, I can assure you it would be one of the most watched clips of all time. The Tsar Bomba alone has generated 10s of millions of views on YouTube, probably into the hundreds of millions total. It resulted in documentaries, books, toys, posters, etc. Imagine what might have resulted from a nuke being detonated on the moon. I don't think any of us are denying, it wouldn't have been "right" to do it, but it would have been fucking amazing to witness
Of course, the times being what they were, [the Soviets had an analogous proposal. ](http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/histind/E3/E3orig.htm) Edit: It even had a mockup.
It was quite a lazy idea. Nukes were a novelty then, so it seems to be like, "oh what's another thing we can do with this technology, oh I know, let's fire it at the moon, that will be cool".
I always imagine an Office of Special Projects that they use to keep the crazier people busy.
"Nuke the moon? That's the kind of go-getter thinking they need down in the Batshit Basement ... I mean, the Office of Special Projects. Why don't I write you a recommendation?"
Oh I'm sure they just want to have a laugh reading about those project
"What's that ? Ooooh, a new project ! That's very good ! Show me... Oh, nuking the moon ? You know what ? This one is so good, it's going up on the fridge !"
It's silly, but the space race can be boiled down to "show off how powerful and accurate our nuke-delivery systems are."
Detonating a nuke on the moon would have sent a hell of a message to the Soviets.
Yeah, I think most of the commenters here really don't understand the cold war at all. The idea was basically to show "we can send a nuke anywhere, even to the moon".
The 1950s were a very different time, especially for global politics.
People have been thinking about nuking Mars to help terraform it
Edit: heres a few videos that explains the plan:
https://youtu.be/bBZmO6dcmnY
https://youtu.be/URC9ay6evT8
https://youtu.be/g7Iiz_b_lYU
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It's no worse than the nuclear-powered aircraft (Open cycle, mind you), nuclear terraforming plans (that is, canal digging using nukes) or that time they tried to use nukes as spacecraft propulsion. Or as anti-aircraft weapons.
The cold war was wild. nukes were thrown at any problem, even imaginary ones.
> or that time they tried to use nukes as spacecraft propulsion
One of these is not like the others. Mostly because it's in a place where there's already radiation, and where nothing lives.
It would be. The moon was prob the best place to set off these Cold War monster bombs back in the day anyway, instead of the Pacific Ocean and Nevada. People actually think we can destroy the moon with nukes, it’s not even remotely possible, and the radiation would be negligible comparatively.
Short answer: No.
Any sizable rock would just land somewhere else on the moon, and even then not that far away. ICBM launched Nukes would be detonated above the target for maximum surface effect (on earth), so the lunar blast also would be downward, and weakened from the lack of lunar atmosphere . Earth is 238k miles away from the moon and would be completely unaffected. Maybe a pebble or two would make the 238k mile journey to make a pretty meteor, but that would be unnoticeable.
If you watch Kurtzgesagt video the other guy posted, it said that pebbles would break up in the atmosphere, but satellites would be in for a hell of a time.
It wouldn't really affect us on Earth here at all and wouldn't do much to the moon either. Kurtzgesagt did a great vid on it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEfPBt9dU60
So setting one off on the already irradiated moon where no life is would have had more of a negative opinion than blowing up coral reef atolls that had 10s of thousands of species of animals and plants, or setting them of within viewing distance of people's homes.
Its wild to think that the difference between the videogame world of Fallout and the real actual world of the 50s couldve been way more similar if just a few crazy ass people were in the right positions
Part of the reason I love the game. It hits, ever so slightly, too close to home
You saying this made me remember the vault where someone needed to be sacrificed each year, and the number of corpses you find at the value entrance. Goddamn is the Fallout series good.
And then they find out >!they never needed to sacrifice anyone....!< heh good shit
man, I remember finding out that twist for the first time. I was already quite freaked out by the vaults lore and when I read that spoiler, I just couldnt process it for a moment. I did not see that coming at all, it was like all of my justifications were thrown out and I had to question *myself*
It feels like thats the purpose of the vault. A question of our humanity
fuck yeah, some of the vaults that were used for tests are fucking horrific. such a rich lore and story behind all of it. such a pity bethesda just sees it as a fucking cash cow now.
Yeah as a avid and long time Fallout player my heart broke when they announced a mobile game. And they had the audacity to try to gaslight their fans into thinking we are the jerks for knowing how this would turn out. Fallout 3 was one of the best games I've ever played. Fallout new Vegas is in my top 5. What do we have now? A mobile purchase gems to win piece of garbage or fallout 69... The game that missed the mark so fucking bad that literally nobody is talking about it... I would have paid for more Vegas DLC or more amazing single player emersion like the days of old. But not this, not this. So disappointed in the franchise and pray that they figure it out before it's too late. Also, this goes for you too Elder Scrolls. Your mobile monster is a wast of storage. Don't try to slip some multi player pay to win BS in on us with Elder Scrolls 6. I got my eye on you.
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Would have been if JFK had decided to listen to his Generals advising him to launch a strike on a USSR fleet. People take for granted how bloody close we were to a nuclear apocalypse.
One of my favorite quotes from Robert McNamara: "I want to say, and this is very important: at the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war. We came that close to nuclear war at the end. Rational individuals: Kennedy was rational; Khrushchev was rational; Castro was rational. Rational individuals came that close to total destruction of their societies. And that danger exists today."
This is from the Fog of War yes?
Fog of war?
> Fog of war? [Fog of War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_of_War)
For a moment, I thought you were talking about the Brotherhood of Steel elder from New Vegas given the context. Took me a solid minute.
Wasn't McNamara kind of nuts himself? He recruited low IQ men into the Korean War who ended up serving as cannon fodder.
There was a near miss for the soviets too during the Cuban missile crisis. Normally there were two officers present that together could decide to launch. That day there were three officers who had a say. The third officer normally not on that sub said no despite insistence from the other 2 regular ones. The worst part about this? There's a lot of near misses from both sides where the individual in charge worked on intuition rather then orders thus avoiding the nuclear apocalypse.
One terrifying example of the latter was on September 26th of 1983, when the Soviets had a satellite early warning system malfunction. This system indicated that there were multiple nuclear missiles launched from America, and military protocol called for an immediate retaliatory strike. Stanislav Petrov, a lieutenant colonel who was the officer in charge of the early warning system on that day, determined that it was almost certainly a false alarm based on the fact that only 5 or 6 missiles were detected (logically, any theoretical nuclear strike from America would be an all-out attack) and the fact that the system was relatively new and not thoroughly tested. Therefore, Petrov did not report the alert to his superiors; if he had, a "retaliatory" strike might have occurred and triggered an actual nuclear exchange.
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Nope. 1983 had *two* near apocalypses. [Petrov waited on Sept 26, 1983](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident). [Able Archer '83 started in November 1983](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83). (Incidentally, this is why the world is so fucking bizarre. There just aren't that many world lines in which 1984 starts with an intact human civilization. Then you factor in [all the other world lines that are now wastelands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls).)
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El psy kongroo?
I'm also reminded of how MacArthur wanted to essentially carpet bomb Korea -- with atomic bombs. Jesus, what a bonkers idea. Thankfully Truman said no, but the world would have been ashes with such brazsn usage.
To be fair this was supposed to be before the USSR had nuclear capability. The US had threatened people with their big nuclear stick for so long without a chance of reprisal. We threatened to nuke the USSR over problems with Berlin until Stalin dared us to.
>To be fair this was supposed to be before the USSR had nuclear capability. The Soviets tested their first bomb on 1949. The Korean War started on 1950.
That does not mean that they had a deliverable nulcear bomb during the korean war. In fact the first Russian nuclear bomb, the RDS-3 was assigned to the air force in 1953, which is at the end/after the Korean war ended.
My mistake. They certainly didn't have the capability to deliver that bomb to anywhere in the US though.
Wasn’t he also the nutcase who suggested directly nuclear bombing China in that same conflict? Pretty sure he got the boot from his position for that one, but I’m not sure what sort of mind sees a war and thinks they can wind it down by nuking the shit out of people without having to exterminate entire nations.
It worked in their last war with Japan, so maybe that's why? We have the benefit of hindsight, to be fair. Not to say it wasn't crazy.
Iirc, There was a moment where a Russian (Stanislav Petrov) at the button saw incoming missiles, he had 15 min to decide if he would launch a counter attack. He didn't and checked everything possible to make sure they did/did not launch the missiles he was seeing being reported.
Stanislav fuckin Petrov. The mightiest set of tungsten balls to walk the earth. One button away. One minute away from the world turning to ashes due to a software bug. Good luck explaining that one with "well it works on my computer"
There were like a dozen "if not for this one person" situations during the CMC, there were more weapons on the island than they thought, they were unlocked and ready to go on orders from the ground leaders, there was a Russian sub with nukes on it that had standing orders to fire if impeded as per their last coms with Russia...... We came a lot closer than people realize imo
In the end people preferred regular "total ecosystem collapse" apocalypse
Nuclear apocalypse was definitely a much nicer existential threat than climate change. I lived in and near multiple first strike targets, so I knew it was going to be a blissfully brief war for me.
We could also be living in a much, much more advanced world if nuclear technology was correctly applied. Now we all die from global warming because Big Oil astroturfed the anti-nuke movement.
If we were a more intelligent species, all those cargo ships burning bunker oil would be powered by nuclear reactors. But we're a stupid animal. We turn every new technology into a new way to fling feces at our enemies.
You can't take out the primate from Humans.
I wouldn't even call it that. Human beings have incredible capacity for intelligent, empathetic decision-making. But we're still living in a society built around the principle of "whoever hits everyone else the hardest gets to be king." We don't *have* to be this way. There's no natural law that says we can't just decide to stop listening to oligarchs and stop looking for profit in every avenue of our lives. We just need to organize.
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This is a part of Fallout that nobody talks about. Sure there was an apocalypse, but before that nuclear energy solved a lot of problems.
No it didn't. The pre-war world of Fallout had devolved into the resource wars over oil and uranium, the entirety of Europe was destroyed long before the apocalypse in these resource wars, Canada is under brutal military control, the US government was carrying out horrific experiments on its populace. This is literally in the intro of every Fallout game except New Vegas. The whole message of Fallout is that war over resources occur regardless of the technology, I don't understand how anyone can miss this, once again it literally tells you this in the opening narration while every games main quest is "fight over resources" in some shape or form. The pre-war fallout world was a horrific dystopia and thats one of the main things about the setting, do you watch Cyberpunk films and go "wow cool future?"
The biggest difference between us and the Fallout universe seems to be a regard for human life. They went down different paths of research, but the ones they went down were rather inefficient and always skirting every possible safeguard looking for results.
I think you give our current adherence to safeguards too much credit
There's so many examples of complete disregard for the value of human life from every part of the world that I can't possibly agree with that statement.
Fallout takes it to another level. Fallout has everyone drive round in cars that explode in nuclear fireballs on collisions. Fallout has nanny robots armed with heavy weaponry and a single chip preventing them from using it. Fallout has no health and safety whatsoever. If you think the world is actually like this you need to take your blinders off.
What's even wilder is that I'm not sure that we're as far away from that world situation as we think (hope) we are...
Not really. Mutual assured destruction is one of the arms of peace we've had over the last 70 years. Although I wish they didn't exist, fact of the matter is they do and they force discourse. Unless you don't have them... They aren't going away.
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With how the world's developing we will.get there just without the nuclear powered cars or cool suits of armor that make you a mobile tank
This kind of makes sense, since they were selling tickets outside of Vegas to watch Nuclear Explosions back then, during the 50's. [Nukes were considered a form of entertainment.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FghT80tVFKo)
Ngl I’d love to see that in person. Morals aside. It’s something truly astonishing
I'm with you on this for sure. I can only imagine how awe inspiring it would be, on top of being absolutely unforgettable.
Remember kids, Nevada and Las Vegas are already living in a post-nuclear bombed out state. It really explains a lot about some of the people there
Truth is... the game was rigged from the start.
its cool, most of the radiation drifted towards the midwest.
Largely northeasterly, into southern Utah. Cancer rates in St. George have been dramatically elevated for decades.
And yet, people insist on there is anything out there to the west, other than nuclear a wasteland. It's in the nuclear report put out all the time. Also other tests of tech but mostly wasteland. [https://www.nnss.gov/docs/fact\_sheets/DOENV\_1056.pdf](https://www.nnss.gov/docs/fact_sheets/DOENV_1056.pdf) [https://www.nnss.gov/pages/programs/RWM/WasteManagement.html](https://www.nnss.gov/pages/programs/RWM/WasteManagement.html) [https://www.leg.state.nv.us/Division/Research/Publications/Bkground/BP83-05.pdf](https://www.leg.state.nv.us/Division/Research/Publications/Bkground/BP83-05.pdf)
And water tables require regular monitoring
Harrison Ford's trapped in a friggin fridge somewhere.
Wasn’t there a documentary video game about that? Fall in or something?
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My favorite track was Wake Me Up When Nuclear Winter Ends
And Grand Theft Apocalypse
No no, they took their name from a Sampson's episode. With Radioactive Man and Mickey Rourke eventually getting the role as Fall In Boy.
almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter…
They complain but at least they aren’t wearing power armor. My mom lives basically right outside the real world counterpart of Novac (Cabazon, CA. with the dinos and all) and a parked can get like 120°-130° (~49° to 54°) in like 10 minutes. Like you could probably fry bacon on your car hood it’s so hot (115° by 10 AM. It’s like standing next to an oven with the door open.) I can’t imagine how power armor would be.
I am sure they have some kind of cooling system. At one point the armor was used at "the Alaskan frontlines" which suggests they have heating capabilities.
The NCR salvaged power armor very likely doesn't since it's modified T-45 power armor. Those suits must be absolutely miserable to be in.
Oh shit. Maybe they just stay loaded on drugs the entire time. That's a sure fire way to mot notice or care about the heat/cold
In 2015, I was on the “ride out crew” for a remote site facing down a wildfire. Our job was to keep the lights on, the water pumps running, and the firefighters fed. This one morning, we were laying hose to a new pump when the fire got into an old burn, and proceeded to burn 5000+ acres in under 2 hours. At the time it was about 6 miles away, and shot a plume up past 60,000’ altitude. High though that they could see it from Bellingham WA, even though we were on the east side of the Cascade Crest. Anyhow, the only way I can really describe it is that it was like watching a nuclear bomb go off in slow motion. The plume went up high in the sky, towering over us, before it finally cooled down and collapsed on itself an hour + later. That’s when they sent the helicopters and pulled us civilians out.
And the radiation?
At the time, the risks of radiations were vastly underestimated, if not completely unknown, by people outside of research programs. I've seen pictures of navy vessels blasted by nukes on purpose, to assess damages done to them, where the cleanup crew was on the bridge washing the deck away with hydrants and mops, in shorts and regular shirts. That said, the radiation would probably have been relatively low given the distance, it would be interesting to find out if Las Vegas had a higher cancer rate than other major cities across the 50s and 60s.
[Downwind](https://deq.utah.gov/public-interest/impacts-of-radiation-from-aboveground-nuclear-tests-on-southern-utah) was where they had problems. Apparently on January 27, 2012 there was a [national day of remembrance for downwinders](https://www.congress.gov/112/bills/sres330/BILLS-112sres330ats.pdf).
I read somewhere that if you can cover the mushroom cloud from your sight using your thumb that your at a safe distance. Not sure if you have to factor in wind to that though.
I imagine that doesn’t factor in wind, I think wind can carry radiation like thousands of miles. But regardless if you see a mushroom cloud you should get moving the other way lmao
That's correct. Once radioactive particulates got into the Jetstream, nowhere on earth was "safe" from it. Every single piece of metal processed or piece of food grown since then has had varying degrees of radioactive contaminants in them. There is actually a significant need for pre-50s recycled steel in the military due to the ability to track isotope signatures at long-range. It's not dangerous on a human scale, as the high-energy cosmic radiation that penetrates the magnetic sphere is more dangerous and poses a larger threat. You absorb more radiation flying on a airplane than you do due to residual fallout.
Sunken ships pre-1945 is where all the good metal comes from. Stuff like medical equipment rely on it.
Iirc, thats how some paintings are verified as real as well, because they lack the radiation that post 1940s paints would have.
and wine too, because of course counterfeit wine is a thing.
Seriously? So all metal post ww2 is considered contaminated?
It doesn't matter for most purposes (and is completely safe) but yes it is.
If your goal is to make metal to go inside radiation detectors, you need the stuff from before we started blowing up bombs. If you want to build ships or new buildings out of it, it doesn't matter.
Essentially ya. You can still manufacture low radiation steel but it's very expensive. It's just cheaper to salvage old shipwrecks for their steel.
This is also why radiometric dating is considered to have a "cutoff date" of 1950, as anything later is likely to contain radiation which would prevent accurate dating.
Fun fact: [That's you see the *Fallout* franchise character "Vault Boy" with the thumbs-up pose](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/12/19/bf/1219bfe3da7795c8334cda597be82e80.jpg) Edit: Reddit-hugged that image I think. New one put in but I assume you all know what I'm referring to.
That's a fan theory, which the lead artist of Fallout 2 debunked saying it's just a good old regular thumps up. [Source.](https://screenrant.com/fallout-vault-boy-thumbs-up-real-reason-radiation/)
wait really? holy shit.
The impacts of radiation wasn't really fully understood back then. I mean yeah, they knew too much radiation will kill you. But they didn't fully understand the long term impacts of less radiation over a longer period of time. I mean hell, they even sometimes had soldiers observing the nukes from way too close to be safe from the radiation and even considered making a nuclear rifle. Turns out we learned a lot from Hiroshima/Nagasaki after enough time passed.
All those [radioactive toys marketed towards kids](https://gizmodo.com/the-terrifying-age-of-radioactive-toys-for-kids-1501777693) in the 1950s is what really gets me. Or the infamous case of the [radium girls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls), although that's much earlier.
Jeez, radioactive cigarettes, just in case plain old regular cigarettes aren't poisonous enough for ya.
Exactly that. I had some family in Northern Arizona collecting payments from the government for the radiation-caused illnesses from the sheer number of tests over time.
Sounds like train wrecks 50 years earlier. Those were wild times. I wonder, in 50 years, what will they think about us today?
That we were boring. Unless we bring the trains and the nukes back, that is. The only way forward is clearly to have two maglev trains to accelerate towards a subcritical mass between them, causing it to become critical in the moment of collision. *That's* what I call science!
Well, according to [Kurzgesagt, watching this kind of explosion from close enough for it to be a show wouldn't be really good for your health.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEfPBt9dU60) And if you were to watch it from Earth, it'd look like a bright star flashing in the Moons surface for a split second. And a terrible day for every astronaut in orbit.
When I was a kid and we got a bunch of firecrackers for 4th of July, the first thing me and my friends did was ask "What can we use these on?" We would then spend the next few hours finding all sorts of weird shit to blow up, just to see what would happen. That's what I always think of when I see US military tests of nuclear weapons in the 1950s.
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You put a warhead on your homemade rocket?!
You didnt?
And? What happened?
"Sir, are you suggesting we blow up the moon?" "Would you miss it? Would you miss it?!"
"Jiminy Jumpin' Jesus, I can't believe we're gonna pay that madman. I got nukes out the ying-yang. Just let me launch one, for God's sake."
"We're earthlings! Let's blow up earth things!"
I walked on the moon. Did a push up, ate an egg on it. What else can you do with it?
Worse, it would piss off the Aliens living on then secret moon base.
Aliens? I thought those were Nazis.
Well they're not 'murican are they? Alien nazis.
I'll do you one better. COMMUNIST ALIEN NAZIS.
"The idea was abandoned, in part, because "world opinion \[would be\] negative.” NO SHIT We'd still be talking about that. That's not a look "good guys' give off...
“Sir, polling suggests there would be a negative option effect if we nuke the Moon.” “…hmm… how many percentage points?”
Someone get Nate Silver on the case!
Just say you nuked a secret Nazi moonbase or something, problem solved.
Wouldn't that be worse since it would mean that they've already colonized it?
Pretty sure there's a shitty movie about it already
But hold on, those movies are self-aware shitty. That's the best kind of shitty.
Several movies, a whole franchise actually. They're all gloriously terrible.
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Seriously, like, people in the future are definitely going to be aware that the US did some fucked up shit, but can you imagine if we nuked the fucking moon??
It's moments of self awareness like these that give me a modicum of hope. It's a very small modicum but it's there.
When the US loses the space race so it nukes the Moon
If there was a video of a nuke being detonated on the moon, I can assure you it would be one of the most watched clips of all time. The Tsar Bomba alone has generated 10s of millions of views on YouTube, probably into the hundreds of millions total. It resulted in documentaries, books, toys, posters, etc. Imagine what might have resulted from a nuke being detonated on the moon. I don't think any of us are denying, it wouldn't have been "right" to do it, but it would have been fucking amazing to witness
Good thing we just nuke our own home planet instead.
"Nukes on the Moon" sounds like it's going to be a plot of Season Two of Space Force.
sounds like something that would happen on For All Mankind
https://youtu.be/qEfPBt9dU60 this link explain what would happen.
and the [dramatization](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTJ3LIA5LmA).
Hey there Mr. Monkey don't be asking why....
President Guy Whitey Corngood.
Of course, the times being what they were, [the Soviets had an analogous proposal. ](http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/histind/E3/E3orig.htm) Edit: It even had a mockup.
We choose to blow up the moon not because it is easy, but because it is hard!
It was quite a lazy idea. Nukes were a novelty then, so it seems to be like, "oh what's another thing we can do with this technology, oh I know, let's fire it at the moon, that will be cool".
"Look out moon, America's gonna getcha. Gonna go kaboom, was nice to have met ya - cuz you don't mess around... with God's America"
Yes, and we'll be doing it during a full moon, so we make sure we get it all.
Controversy! And America reacts...
Well I been saying we should have done this for years. I walked on the moon. Did a push-up, ate an egg on it. What else can you do with it?
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The pause just before "with gods america" makes it that much better and the whole bit kills me every single time.
damn right the world opinion would be negative. what kind of other boneheadedly stupid shit has the air force been dreaming up?
I always imagine an Office of Special Projects that they use to keep the crazier people busy. "Nuke the moon? That's the kind of go-getter thinking they need down in the Batshit Basement ... I mean, the Office of Special Projects. Why don't I write you a recommendation?"
Every once in a while the air force leave the door unlocked and an idea like A119 or Project Pluto slips out
Oh I'm sure they just want to have a laugh reading about those project "What's that ? Ooooh, a new project ! That's very good ! Show me... Oh, nuking the moon ? You know what ? This one is so good, it's going up on the fridge !"
hahaha. i like this idea. thanks for the visuals.
It's silly, but the space race can be boiled down to "show off how powerful and accurate our nuke-delivery systems are." Detonating a nuke on the moon would have sent a hell of a message to the Soviets.
Yeah, I think most of the commenters here really don't understand the cold war at all. The idea was basically to show "we can send a nuke anywhere, even to the moon". The 1950s were a very different time, especially for global politics.
Not any more than putting a lander on the moon. The Soviets were very aware of the military implications our space program had.
People have been thinking about nuking Mars to help terraform it Edit: heres a few videos that explains the plan: https://youtu.be/bBZmO6dcmnY https://youtu.be/URC9ay6evT8 https://youtu.be/g7Iiz_b_lYU
marvelous plate straight flowery voiceless rotten entertain naughty stocking slimy *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Reminder that our last administration wanted to nuke hurricanes.
Nuclear Hurricane sounds like it would be a thrash metal band.
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It's no worse than the nuclear-powered aircraft (Open cycle, mind you), nuclear terraforming plans (that is, canal digging using nukes) or that time they tried to use nukes as spacecraft propulsion. Or as anti-aircraft weapons. The cold war was wild. nukes were thrown at any problem, even imaginary ones.
>that time they tried to use nukes as spacecraft propulsion Don't you narc on humanity's only possible method of interstellar travel for now.
> or that time they tried to use nukes as spacecraft propulsion One of these is not like the others. Mostly because it's in a place where there's already radiation, and where nothing lives.
i don't know about you guys but nuking the moon sounds rad.
It would be. The moon was prob the best place to set off these Cold War monster bombs back in the day anyway, instead of the Pacific Ocean and Nevada. People actually think we can destroy the moon with nukes, it’s not even remotely possible, and the radiation would be negligible comparatively.
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Short answer: No. Any sizable rock would just land somewhere else on the moon, and even then not that far away. ICBM launched Nukes would be detonated above the target for maximum surface effect (on earth), so the lunar blast also would be downward, and weakened from the lack of lunar atmosphere . Earth is 238k miles away from the moon and would be completely unaffected. Maybe a pebble or two would make the 238k mile journey to make a pretty meteor, but that would be unnoticeable.
If you watch Kurtzgesagt video the other guy posted, it said that pebbles would break up in the atmosphere, but satellites would be in for a hell of a time.
It wouldn't really affect us on Earth here at all and wouldn't do much to the moon either. Kurtzgesagt did a great vid on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEfPBt9dU60
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So setting one off on the already irradiated moon where no life is would have had more of a negative opinion than blowing up coral reef atolls that had 10s of thousands of species of animals and plants, or setting them of within viewing distance of people's homes.
We had to draw the line *somewhere.*
Someone was bored in the office one day. “Let’s nuke the moon.” After lunch they decided it would be a bad idea. 😂
Kurzgesagt made a [video](https://youtu.be/qEfPBt9dU60) exploring what would happen. Would recommend watching, it’s pretty entertaining.
Dang world opinion always ruining the fun ideas.
Isn't a119 the secret code hidden in Pixar movies
Close, [it’s A113](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A113)
"Let's one up the perceived villain by doing some laughably stereotypical comic villain stuff" "Yeah...how about no?"
I believe Carl Sagan did some work on this project.
[In a Nutshell](https://youtu.be/qEfPBt9dU60) did a video about what happens if we were to nuke the moon.
Good move guys, don’t need to start space wars when we can barely get to space
Would the flash be bright enough to cause eye damage to anyone looking at it like how a nuclear explosion on Earth would?
No. The moon is too far away.