Comments by "Stephen Villano" (@spvillano) on "Dark Science" channel.

  1. I guess we'll just have to stick with our youtube home brain surgery course.
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  2.  @southwestxnorthwest  nope. No double flash, no radiation spike that's always present on nuclear detonations, no barometric disturbance that accompanied every other nuclear detonation. Hydrogen explosion plus water hammer of the coolant instantly vaporizing blew the reactor top off, the hydrogen ignited on contact with air, blew the flammable roof apart and ignited it and air rushing into a superheated, melting core ignited components and graphite in the core. That spread reactor contents all over the city and well, much, much farther. Unlike Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the bombs detonated and what was irradiated was irradiated and stayed in place since they were air bursted nuclear warheads. They actually recovered sizable chunks of both bombs cores from ground zero in both cities. The black rain, soot from incomplete combustion of the city remnants at ground zero. The fires, largely from gas mains and overturned stoves igniting wood and paper buildings. Around two weeks post-detonation, most of the harmful radioisotopes had decayed to safe levels at ground zero (unlike Castle Bravo, which dispersed ridiculous amounts of irradiated reef components over thousands of square miles, but also had spared the shot cab the worst, with standard fallout lasting around 12 hours for the worst, 12 days for the harmful, then cleanup crews were able to come in with minimal protection). Started my military career in nukes.
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  3. Heavy metals, CO, CN, but the worst is the hypertension that damages the blood vessel walls. Now, excuse me while I get a cup of coffee, then have a smoke for a double whammy on my BP. Oh, the single greatest cause of failed back surgery? Smoking. It's a vasoconstrictor. Slows healing. My biggest health issue is BP related, but not to smoking. Hyperthyroidism and a few thyroid storms, which have done far more damage than my coffee and smokes ever could. I know the risks, I understand the pathophysiology, it's my choice. But, if it's any consolation, as much as I loathe my own secondhand smoke, I loathe exposing others to it even more.
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  4. Actually, the initial flash is the case shock from the ionized warhead case, the nuclear fireball light actually blocked by the ionized atmosphere and stalled until a shockwave can form and disrupt the opaque layer surrounding the fireball proper. Some of the high speed films actually show the shockwave expanding within the dimming initial case shock fireball, then a brief, but longer brightening. A double flash only possible in the atmosphere, in space it's a single flash which swiftly smears out along earth's magnetic field lines.
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  5. Depends on when exposure occurred. Many isotopes were short lived, largely those neutron activated within the core, but radioiodine was an early concern - especially among children and precisely why they were evacuated first. Then, cesium-137 and strontium-90 were of concern, both loving bones to settle down in. Long story short though, if you're still around and don't have cancer already, your chances are damned good to well, you'll never make it out of life alive, but likely have a normal lifespan. If you're really concerned though, there are plenty of radiation health physicists online that can consult with you. Had a few conversations socially with some, since I was born a week after Tsar Bomba and do emit gamma at a higher rate than my children and grandchildren, made for quite a good conversation that was lighthearted. Even money, I got greater exposure from Nevada test site tests during their testing era and being from Pennsylvania, that's an extremely low dosage due to the path of the jet stream.
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  6. Yeah, the ricin prevents animals from eating the beans.
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  7. Nerve disruption kills an electocution victim? Good thing, that means we can toss the defibrillators into the trashcan! Given that the heart's conduction system is not based at all on nerves. By the standards stated here, that 100KV shock you get in winter from walking across the carpet is 100% lethal, every time! And yes, it is the current that kills. The current overwhelms signalling in both muscles and myocytes in the heart, leaving both contracted for the duration of the current flow. Disrupt the cardiac conduction enough, fibrillation occurs and the person does that dead thing. I've gotten hit by 45 KV, still around, as the current was low, so it was only painful. A taser delivers 50 KV, only a couple of hundred deaths are accounted for by taser. An electric chair delivered 2KV - 2.5KV at 7 - 12 amperes of current, both cooking the prisoner and fibrillating the heart, resulting in death. A short duration jolt may or may not cause fibrillation, as then it becomes a matter of timing, with around a 50 ms window within the QRS complex to trigger ventricular fibrillation. I drew around 3 amperes, as verified by the circuit designer, when insulation failed and I drew a 1.5 KV AC arc that had 130 V DC riding under it, the 130 V being the high current carrier. Blew the regulator, I survived after an escape beat restored normal heartbeat. Couldn't use my hands for much for a day, was sore for a week, still here. A longer, worse timed jolt, we'd not be communicating without a seance and since I don't believe in those, I'd not bother showing up. Draw around a half ampere of current and your muscles contract strong enough that you cannot release any grasped conductor. But, what would this old Army medic and certified electronics technician know about electrocution? Shall we discuss sodium vs calcium channels? The sodium-potassium pump?
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  8. The universe doesn't guard anything, it has no conscious will to do so. So, anyone technologically advanced enough to figure out fission and fusion reactions is free to discover these products from the insanity factory.
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  9. Well, there is one snake oil that was confirmed to work, it's a species of Chinese snake, every other snake in the world seems to be absent that effect. One of those weird, but confirmed true. In the US, well, snake oil was pretty much anything, due to no regulation, disproving Libertarian nonsense, as in some cases, "snake oil" was booze and motor oil... I've found plain hemp oil seems to exhibit mild anti-inflammatory effects and mild pain relief, that and ibuprofen tend to take the edge off, although I dislike having additional pills to take - especially a hemp oil horse caplet. One confounder is, unregulated equals Christ knows what's really in it and he ain't talking.
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  10. How do you vaporize a gas?
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  11. I disagree. If, as the only example I ever could think of, an asteroid was inbound for impact, a near-miss of a detonating nuclear weapon could ablate enough volatile surface to deflect it from impact. That couldn't be absorbed by a rubble pile, nor would it disrupt it into multiple impactors.
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  12. Heh, detonated a week before I was born. I still emit slightly elevated gamma from the atomic testing era, confirmed by a radiologist as an incidental finding during a thyroid scan.
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  13. We can tell that Chernobyl is uninhabitable from all of the Russian soldiers who died and remain unburied there after occupying the site for months. Oh, wait... Hiroshima and Nagasaki, believe it or not, actually had fissile core components recovered from the area around ground zero, were air bursts and hence, had nothing drawn into the still reacting fireball for neutron activation and well, had a lot less fissile and fissionable components involved than Chernobyl, whose core was largely ejected by a massive water hammer effect, followed by a fire and meltdown of the remaining core. So yeah, I agree, poor analogy, comparing apples to bowling balls. Oh well, there's worse. There are the Artificial Idiocy created confabulation videos, then the factless and clueless ones from Natural Idiocy. Case in point, in my suggested viewing, Neil deGrasse Tyson reporting Betelgeuse went supernova - for the 300th time in the past few years... And how cobalt salted bombs have more blast damage and fires than unsalted bombs... Would that I could reach through the monitor and slap some of these dweebs with a large hammer.
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  14.  @christopherleubner6633  in a way, it is. Ricin remains active as it cookie cutters down the ER, punching out the template for one amino acid.
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  15. The vertical spikes are from sounding rockets, used to measure distance and shockwave characteristics. The angled flaming spikes leading into the fireball are guywires used to stabilize the tower vaporizing from the heat absorbed from the heat of the fireball. The double pulse, spot on. Cooling and shockwave formation, the shockwave disrupting the case shock initial fireball and opaque core fireball. Oxygen and nitrogen really intensely dislike such energetic abuse and all and simply want to refuse to participate... ;(
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  16. I get the same from plain hemp oil. Mild anti-inflammatory effect and mild pain relief, just taking the edge off. That and some ibuprofen helps a fair bit, as I loathe opioids, which literally are the next line item in treatment for the nerve damage.
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  17.  @Psychx_  is the oil absorbed? Many aren't, due to their molecular weight.
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  18. I've an Am-241 source right next to my computer. Waiting for parts to make a small cloud chamber for it. It was formerly part of a now defunct smoke detector and when I replaced it, I stripped it for parts. Half-life being 432 years, mostly an alpha emitter, with a modest amount of beta and weak gamma as minority emissions. The only threat that tiny button has is if I ate it and well, I've got food to eat, no need to eat radioactive metals. Otherwise, I'd gorge on the waste metals at Three Mile Island, which remains defueled and happily storing the fuel and waste a few miles away. Since my name isn't Godzilla, I think I'll stick with chicken for dinner.
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  19. Just a couple. Look up the word toxin. I can think of two cousins of ricin, both just as bad and well, venom is lousy with toxic proteins.
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