Would a nuke in real life actually make the sky red? (Beginning spoilers)

[qiunn]

You know how in the beginning, the sky turns red after the pre-war nuke?

Would that actually happen if there was one nearby?

[Sleepy]

Idk go watch some documentaries

[Jollyfingers]

yep. all those beautiful red sunsets you see are because of dirt and dust in the air.
after the bomb there is plenty of that ;)

[SakuraKoi]

Originally posted by Jollyfingers:

yep. all those beautiful red sunsets you see are because of dirt and dust in the air.
after the bomb there is plenty of that ;)

No, this can't be true! Red dusk means that a lot of blood has been spilled that day!

[Jollyfingers]

Originally posted by SakuraKoi:

Originally posted by Jollyfingers:

yep. all those beautiful red sunsets you see are because of dirt and dust in the air.
after the bomb there is plenty of that ;)

No, this can't be true! Red dusk means that a lot of blood has been spilled that day!

maybe it got splattered high up in the sky ;)

[Thunderclapsasquatch]

Originally posted by SakuraKoi:

Originally posted by Jollyfingers:

yep. all those beautiful red sunsets you see are because of dirt and dust in the air.
after the bomb there is plenty of that ;)

No, this can't be true! Red dusk means that a lot of blood has been spilled that day!

That's smoke, when you kill people you used to burn their ♥♥♥♥

[SIlverblade-T-E]

reading up on stuff other day, of all places "thedailybeast", some nitwit was saying the idea of "Nuclear winter was just Soviet counter psychology"
what a jackass!

when a nuke goes off it heats up a vast hemisphere
then compression shockwave, which is also white hot when it starts, travels though the area
fire start straight away from heat flash
the blast puts them out
and then after shockwave passes every damn thing that can burn catches fire, with houses blown open etc so you get an instant firestorm, biggest mother of a fire, more like a hurricane made of flame

the fireball from a thermonuke is immense and HOT, so it would shed red light like a Godzilla sized glowing coal

note that fine smoke/dust particles tend to scatter and absorb blue light, so you see red light coming through.

moisture condesing from the severe heating/shock then reflects the light from the fires, and absorbs blue light same as volcanic eruptions or a lunar eclipse, so sky would appear red.

Shock and heat form a nuclear epxlosion is so immensice it disrupts local clouds, so the sky itself clears of clouds, then maybe 20 minutes or so after, storm clouds gather form the dust and enormous lighting goes off due to that and the heat driven friction

[Qnomei]

Originally posted by SIlverblade-T-E:

reading up on stuff other day, of all places "thedailybeas"t, some nitwit was saying the idea of "Nuclear winter was just Soviet counter psychology"
what a jackass!

when a nuke goe soff it heats up a vast hemisphere
then compression shockwave, which is also white hot when it starts, travels though the area
fire sstart sptraight away form ehat flash
the blast puts them out
and then after shockwave passes every damn thing that can burn catches fire, with houses blown open etc so you get an instant firestorm, biggest mother of a fire, more like a hurricane made of flame

the fireball from a thermonuke is immense and HOT, so it would shed red light like a Goszilla sized glowing coal
note that fine smoke/dust particles tend to scatter and absorb blue light, so you see red light coming through.

moisture condesing from the severe heating/shock then reflects the light from the fires, and absorbs blue light same as volcanic eruptions or a lunar eclipse, so sky would appear red.

Shock and heat form a nuclear epxlosion is so immensice it disrupts local clouds, so the sky itself clears of clouds, then maybe 20 minutes or so after, storm clouds gather form the dust and enomrous lighting goes off due to that and the heat driven friction

Of course, if you were close enough to watch that happen, you would go blind before the shockwave ever hit you.

[DaetherX]

Originally posted by SIlverblade-T-E:

reading up on stuff other day, of all places "thedailybeast", some nitwit was saying the idea of "Nuclear winter was just Soviet counter psychology"
what a jackass!

when a nuke goes off it heats up a vast hemisphere
then compression shockwave, which is also white hot when it starts, travels though the area
fire start straight away from heat flash
the blast puts them out
and then after shockwave passes every damn thing that can burn catches fire, with houses blown open etc so you get an instant firestorm, biggest mother of a fire, more like a hurricane made of flame

the fireball from a thermonuke is immense and HOT, so it would shed red light like a Godzilla sized glowing coal

note that fine smoke/dust particles tend to scatter and absorb blue light, so you see red light coming through.

moisture condesing from the severe heating/shock then reflects the light from the fires, and absorbs blue light same as volcanic eruptions or a lunar eclipse, so sky would appear red.

Shock and heat form a nuclear epxlosion is so immensice it disrupts local clouds, so the sky itself clears of clouds, then maybe 20 minutes or so after, storm clouds gather form the dust and enormous lighting goes off due to that and the heat driven friction

Fun fact: When an explosive force is great enough it pushes all the air away from it effectively creating a vacuum. So after the blast pushes stuff away, it's sucked back toward the center of the blast. You can see this in photos of metorite strike aftermath where trees all around are actually slanted toward the center of the blast instead of away.

[SIlverblade-T-E]

Originally posted by DaetherX:

Fun fact: When an explosive force is great enough it pushes all the air away from it effectively creating a vacuum. So after the blast pushes stuff away, it's sucked back toward the center of the blast. You can see this in photos of metorite strike aftermath where trees all around are actually slanted toward the center of the blast instead of away.

yeah you can see it in some of the slow motion film footage of nculear blasts
it occurs several times as each shockwave in and out creates lower pressure behind it

shockwave form conventional explosives is quite "thin" a few feet a most, you can see it ins low motion film
but nuclear shocwaves are many yards in "thickness", so their blast wave doesn't just hit a building like a solid thin wall from the front
it totally envelopes almost any building in all directions and blows it to hell. that and the fires are why even the few reinforced concrete buildings in Hiroshima and nagasaki that survived close in, were gutted inside. just scoured them out.

[SIlverblade-T-E]

Originally posted by Qnomei:

Of course, if you were close enough to watch that happen, you would go blind before the shockwave ever hit you.

the Lone Survivor would probably have been blinded by that event, I agree

range big thermonukes can blind is enormous as thermonukes' radition (in proper sense of term not just ionizing radiation) output is proportionally much greater than with just a fission nuke

say it was 10 megaton bomb, iirc the range that cna blind can be up to 60 miles in certain conditions, but more likely 30 or even 40 miles.
hazy, rainy days though dramatically cut the heat flash and blinding range way down
so coastal areas would suffer less fires/blinding than say, the Mojave desert
another reason why smaller nukes are used now, much more efficient.

[MageThis]

My simulator mostly shows "green skies" but then the simulated nukes are buried in a massive Saskatchewan peat bog. Buried deep, for effect.

[Incunabulum]

Originally posted by Doom 4 = Console Peasantry:

You know how in the beginning, the sky turns red after the pre-war nuke?

Would that actually happen if there was one nearby?

No.

[SIlverblade-T-E]

Originally posted by MageThis:

My simulator mostly shows "green skies" but then the simulated nukes are buried in a massive Saskatchewan peat bog. Buried deep, for effect.

hm?

the Aurora are often green because of oxygen isotopes in the high atmosphere :)

[Incunabulum]

Originally posted by SIlverblade-T-E:

Originally posted by Qnomei:

Of course, if you were close enough to watch that happen, you would go blind before the shockwave ever hit you.

the Lone Survivor would probably have been blinded by that event, I agree

range big thermonukes can blind is enormous as thermonukes' radition (in proper sense of term not just ionizing radiation) output is proportionally much greater than with just a fission nuke

say it was 10 megaton bomb, iirc the range that cna blind can be up to 60 miles in certain conditions, but more likely 30 or even 40 miles.
hazy, rainy days though dramatically cut the heat flash and blinding range way down
so coastal areas would suffer less fires/blinding than say, the Mojave desert
another reason why smaller nukes are used now, much more efficient.

*Temporarily*, not permanently. A 1-megaton explosion can cause flash blindness at distances as great as 13 miles on a clear day, or 53 miles on a clear night. If you happen to be looking directly at the flash - unlikely given that you never really know exactly where the thing will go off relative to you (or when) - you could receive a permanent retinal burn. But that's basically a blind *spot* in the center of your vision where the eye focuses light onto the retina.

Flash blindness rarely persists for more than 2 minutes during the day

[SIlverblade-T-E]

Originally posted by Incunabulum:

Originally posted by SIlverblade-T-E:

the Lone Survivor would probably have been blinded by that event, I agree

range big thermonukes can blind is enormous as thermonukes' radition (in proper sense of term not just ionizing radiation) output is proportionally much greater than with just a fission nuke

say it was 10 megaton bomb, iirc the range that cna blind can be up to 60 miles in certain conditions, but more likely 30 or even 40 miles.
hazy, rainy days though dramatically cut the heat flash and blinding range way down
so coastal areas would suffer less fires/blinding than say, the Mojave desert
another reason why smaller nukes are used now, much more efficient.

*Temporarily*, not permanently. A 1-megaton explosion can cause flash blindness at distances as great as 13 miles on a clear day, or 53 miles on a clear night. If you happen to be looking directly at the flash - unlikely given that you never really know exactly where the thing will go off relative to you (or when) - you could receive a permanent retinal burn. But that's basically a blind *spot* in the center of your vision where the eye focuses light onto the retina.

Flash blindness rarely persists for more than 2 minutes during the day

after suffering from flash from arc welding several times (which has left me sensitive to UV light), and one scummy moronic SOB who hit me in eye with a laser pointer, grrr!!!
i have to say such are extremely unplesant, laser especially is increidbly disabling :(
felt like i'd been punched full force in the eye, had to sleep most of day for several days afterwards, migraine etc.