Elon Musk draws fire for playing down impact of America’s atomic bombing of Japan: ‘Not as scary as people think’

Flying Squid@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 506 points –
Elon Musk draws fire for playing down impact of America’s atomic bombing of Japan
independent.co.uk

Elon and Trump make the worst possible argument for nuclear power I have ever heard:

"Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed but now they are full cities again," the multibillionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX and X said.

"That's great, that's great," Mr Trump responded.

"It is not as scary as people think, basically," Mr Musk added.

They joked about nuclear power facing a “branding problem”.

“We will have to rebrand it,” the former president told Mr Musk. “We will name it after you or something.”

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How fast would the disintegration in zone 5 (fireball) happen? Would the nervous system even register it?

Wouldn't feel a thing. At minimum the blast would travel at the speed of sound ~343m/s. Nerve conduction velocity is on the range of 120m/s. Your nerves would be vapor before the signal reached its destination.

Okay then. I call shotgun for zone 5

Sounds good. I'll choose zone 0. Or whatever is outside the blast radius. Good luck.

The absurd amount of radiation (thermal included) would get there even faster!

I figured. I was just sure the minimum would be speed of sound. Other than speed of light, I've no idea what the maximum would be.

I want to say the shock wave moves faster than the speed of sound, but yeah it’s hard to beat the speed of light.

The chain reaction happens super fast, so all that energy is dumped in a practical instant.