Nagasaki Japan August 6, 1945 - 21 Kilotons
Mount St. Helens Washington, May 18, 1980 - 24 Megatons
Disclaimer: This post is not intended to defend the design, manufacture, or use of Nuclear Weapons, especially against civilian populations. It is intended to try to offer some humbling perspective on the works of man.
This post is in response to Ms. Shigeko Sasamori's visit to Los Alamos this weekend. Unfortunately, we did not attend her public speaking engagement.
About 6 years ago, former Beat Poet and contemporary Buddhist, Gary Snyder came to Santa Fe to read from his latest book of poetry. While on stage, he told a very interesting pair of anecdotes:
It seems that in August of 1945, Snyder was hiking on Mount St. Helens and upon returning to the Forest camp at the base, read the newspapers announcing the devastating bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He reported thinking how those cities would not see life again for tens of thousands of years.
In May of 1980, Snyder was visiting Nagasaki where he marveled at how little evidence of the destruction of 1945 remained noticeable. He was in Nagasaki when he heard the news of the Mount St. Helens eruption and was immediately taken back to the days he hiked it's slopes while Nagasaki and Hiroshima were bombed. 20 or so years after the eruption, Snyder returned to Mt. St. Helens and saw the marvelous rebirth of an ecosystem yet-more fully destroyed than even that of an atomic blast.
Snyder did not make the comparison but with a little research we discovered that the estimated amount of energy released in the Mt. St. Helens eruption was about 24 Megatons, or about 3 orders of magnitude more energy than in the Nagasaki-21 Kiloton (or Hiroshima-16 Kiloton) bombs. Krakatoa was apparently good for about 200 Megatons.
A good hurricane is apparently worth 8 Gigatons or (yet another) 3 orders of magnitude. The combined nuclear stockpile around the world is estimated at around 13,000 weapons with a combined energy of about 5 Gigatons or one modest hurricane! Killer asteroids such as the one which may have wiped out the dinosaurs clock in at a mere 100 Gigatons.
56 people were known to be killed in the Mt. St. Helen's eruption while an estimated 200,000 were killed in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, also about 3 orders of magnitude difference. WWII included 40-70 Million deaths or 2 more orders of magnitude. The recent tsunami in southeast asia (2005) took a little over 200,000 lives.
Man is clearly pretty good at using his contained and directed energies at killing people while mother Nature wields quite a bit more on a regular basis but is a bit less bent on such directed violence. Until humans escalate to anti-matter weapons (1 lb => 20 Megatons), we will be quite second-rate to mother nature. The amount of solar radiation, for example, impinging on the earth every second is about 10^18 joules or a Gigaton per second. Imagine what the sun is generating!
Enough of the goofy anecdotes and numbers... but let's back down on our human arrogance a couple of notches and think about what we are doing.
6 comments:
What a stupid blog. Don't forget to turn out the lights when you leave Doc!
Ah Toodles (and Good Lord?)... do I recognize your voice here again?
Speak up... say something more coherent than "what a stupid blog".
Make your own statement, defend your own opinions, don't just be a jerk...
Thanks for writing this.
Now you're making numbers up.
The collapse and eruption of mount st. helens moved some 4 cubic kilometers of Earth (2.8 in the landslide, the rest in the form of lateral blast and other effects) or about one cubic mile. That is a fair amount of energy that was involved, on the order of 10 megatons. But think now: The mk41 thermonuclear weapon yields 25 megatons, while the device itself weighs at a mere 4.5 tonnes.
What you don't seem to comprehend is that in an air burst of a nuclear device, the main source of destruction comes from the air concussion and thermals.
An erupting volcano on the other hand destroys through the massive amounts of earth moved, in the form of pyroclastic surges which deposit thick layers of dust on the landscape. Now the concept of an underground nuclear detonation comes to mind, which produces exactly the same effect. Why can't plants grow on this? Very simple, the dust doesn't contain the minerals required for plants to grow, thus it can take 20 years or more to repopulate the land.
Krakatoa was about 150 megatons, and it moved about 20 cubic kilometer of land. The yield seems to be proportional to the mass moved in the eruption. Nothing strange here.
At the height of the cold war, the nuclear stockpile was 50000-100000 weapons, with a combined yield of about 30 gigatons. A hurricane is a very large weather system, and lots of air masses moved, 8 gigatons is not surprising.
Also, the dino-killer meteor was equivalent to 100 teratons of TNT, a 3 order of a magnitude difference to what you suggested.
The amount of solar radiation smashing the Earth every second is about 32 megatons, you've not done your math or you would also think the sun outputs many times more energy than it does.
And, to say the least, I'm extremely tired of people saying "man, we are so weak and nature is so powerful!", or people trying to downplay nuclear weapons. Could you just stop doing that for once?
Ah Nuker!
Yes, the magnitude of the dino-killer is apparently closer to your number than Doc's... I don't think Strangie was making up numbers... I think we was perhaps a little casual about his sourcing of them. He wasn't writing a journal article on the topic, and yes, he apparently made at least one factual error. An error that actually played *against* his argument, not *for* it.
You say you are tired of people saying "man, we are so weak and nature is so powerful". Why are you tired of that? Are you suggesting the contrapositive? "Man is so powerful and nature is so weak?" That sounds like a short-man talking.
I think Doc's point was simply humility and *I* at least read his rant as questioning the anti-nuke bigots much/even more than the pro-nuke bigots. I heard him pointing out that despite the devastation of Nagasaki and Hiroshima (the only two targets, civilian or otherwise, of actual delivered nuclear weapons) *is* limited compared to something as "natural" as one of many many volcanic events that are happening in the world *on human time scales*.
Yes, the radioactive detritus (nominally fallout) is what has the strongest effect on life returning, but *do* go to Japan and discover that both Nagasaki and Hiroshima are not *nearly* as uninhabitable as it was presumed they would be, and that Chernobyl and now a whole region of Japan *are* quite dangerous to be in.
My point (which might have been Strangie's too) is that humans tend toward hyperbole in their bigotry, blowing various things totally out of proportion to support their specific point of view when in fact there are fairly large, blunt numbers providing some perspective near at hand.
The good Doc's set of statistics (factual errors aside) illustrates that at least in terms of raw energy, our nuclear weapons, while totally impressive compared to simple chemical explosives, are not as outrageous as some (pro and anti nuke alike) would suggest.
For example, it seems unlikely that a "planet Krypton" event is even possible with our current technology/stockpile/etc.
You, Nuker, seem to be a strong proponent of Nuclear Weapons, I presume that you actually work on their design and development, maybe even have a small hand in policy on their use? I can't do much more than speculate. I also did my time in the support (technically)of the development of nuclear weapons and (politically) by voting for a few warmongers when I was still an acolyte of MAD.
I sympathize with the point of view that: A) Humans are awesome, we are so smart, and when we put our mind to it, look what we can do! ; B) As long as there are going to be big sticks, I want to make sure *my* people are the ones with the biggest ones.
But not to the point of noticing that for all our "awesomeness" we lack a significant amount of wisdom and/or perspective, at least in the collective. And also not to the point of noticing that we created a world abristle with nuclear weapons. I'm personally quite pleased and even impressed that we've collectively managed not to light any more off on each other.
You might be disappointed that we didn't use our Nukes to "shock and awe" Afghanistan or Iraq or??? on 9/12/2001 or now with Iran or North Korea if they don't quit trying to sneak into the Nuclear Club , or perhaps Somalia or Sudan if they don't curb their pirates...
I'm proud of our scientists for the scientific and technological achievements. What I'm not proud of is our social and political consciousness about the implications of our unquestionable military might.
- Darko
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