Living in Astoria, NY and this happened a mile away from me.
At first my TV blips, my spotify shuts down and outside you could see this very bright turquoise light all over the place. It was bright like it was a daytime just in the green blue color. At first I thought it must had been some fireworks nearby, New Year is coming, right? But there was no fireworks noise, no party noise, nothing, just this bright green lit city. I open the window and some lady in the building across me does the same and shouts 'wtf is that?!'.
I realize this was not a party and my brain starts spinning..
1. EMP attack, since the TV got affected
2. Asteroid or comet entering the atmosphere and messing up the magnetosphere
3. Strong solar outburst, causing some local aurora
I recently watched Robert Schoch's interview where he discussed huge solar outbursts at the end of last ice age and how the sightings of resulting auroras might have made it into ancient cultures.
In the end I rushed to the rooftop, scared as f, and noticed this was just a transformer on fire at nearby power plant. Took a video, waited it out and went back.
I'm glad that you were ok. I would probably have over-reacted by diving under the bed. The lesson that I took from the footage of the Chelyabinsk meteor (1) is this:
When people see a sudden bright light in the sky, the usual reaction is for them to go to the window to see what it is. So then the blast wave arrives in time to give them a face full of flying glass shards. (2)
Don't do this! Doesn't matter if you're being nuked or if it's only a meteor, get down and stay away from the windows! Nothing good will come of having a look-see.
Your comment also reminded me of the Halifax harbor explosion [1]. A ship in the harbor collided with a cargo ship carrying explosives. A fire started and everyone came to their windows to look. Then the cargo ship exploded sending the shockwave through the city. In addition to the people who died in the initial blast another 5900 had eye injuries, mostly from shattered windows. [2]
Knowing what's going on kind of dictates your response. If it's a forest fire, for example, swift action is much preferable to hiding under the bed. Hence looking out the window.
How swift? It can't be more than 15 seconds between flash of light and shockwave. Staying down for that long in case there's a shockwave seems reasonable.
Also, forest fires are not typically sudden flashes of light or found in urban areas. Context matters.
I don't see why IQ would necessarily correlate with knowledge about meteor strike safety best practices.
On the other hand, if innate curiosity about environmental phenomena is at all correlated with IQ, it could result in a lowering of the average IQ instead.
Which are similar (for the first minute anyway) for nuclear strike best practices.
You would hope that there is still some knowledge of these.
The probability of nuclear strike is low at any given time, but at the moment that you experience a unexpected extremely bright light in the sky it's higher.
A 500 kt warhead will kill most people within 3 miles of it, and will continue killing people up to ~6 miles.
These days, a single missile carries 5-10 warheads. They split and spread out over the strike area a few seconds before detonation. One missile can, thanks to this, kill most of the people in a multi-million-person metro area.
Between the two of them, the United States, and Russia are currently pointing 4,000 nuclear weapons at each other, on hair-trigger alert. With another 8,000 in reserve.
It is not clear to me how a scenario where a single nuclear warhead exploding in <wherever you live> is not either a part of, or an immediate trigger for all-out nuclear war.
Superpowers aren't going to use nukes on each other, due to the threat of MAD. Terrorists may be able to steal a nuke and deploy one for their nefarious reasons. Lets say a terrorist group gets a briefcase nuke from somebody, then blows it up in a major city.
500+kt is strategic level, if superpowers used it we're all screwed. But the typical nuke is tactical-level, or ~10kt or so. And tactical-level nukes could be theoretically stolen by groups (there are way more tactical nukes than strategic ones).
We're looking at ~half a mile radius that's blown up, but otherwise a survivable blast. There are rumors that as the USSR collapsed, it lost track of a number of their small tactical-nukes (even if they kept good tabs on their strategic nukes).
It seems far more likely that the next nuke to be used will be a smaller tactical nuke, probably in the hands of terrorists.
The whole point of MAD is that they are perfectly willing to use nukes on eachother. For MAD to work, the threat must be credible. You can't both say that there's nothing to worry about, and claim that MAD works. [1]
A launch in response to a false alarm, a poor decision, or a miscommunication of launch codes are all possible outcomes of the current way that nukes are handled by Russia and the United States. [2]
Of all the things I am concerned about, 'Terrorists stealing a nuclear weapon and blowing it up ten city blocks from me' ranks so far below 'Some idiot in Washington/Moscow/A radar station in Greenland/A submarine off the coast of Kamchatka makes the wrong decision, and ends the world', or 'A bug in the Russian Dead Hand system[3] results in a full nuclear attack against the United States', it's not even worth worrying about.
> There are rumors that as the USSR collapsed, it lost track of a number of their small tactical-nukes (even if they kept good tabs on their strategic nukes).
Nuclear weapons have a shelf-life, and require constant maintenance. Anything that may have been lost 3 decades ago is more likely then not to be junk.
[1] For MAD to actually work, both sides must have perfect information, believe that their opponent has perfect information, be rational, believe that their opponent is rational, to never make a mistake, and assume that their opponent never makes a mistake. [4] There are fairy tales that are more plausible then this. Every year that the current situation continues, we are taking another spin at Russian Roulette.
> In the end I rushed to the rooftop, scared as f, and noticed this was just a transformer on fire at nearby power plant. Took a video, waited it out and went back.
If you detonate a nuclear weapon above a city, no matter how far above, you will call upon you a nuclear response. There’s no difference between an EMP attempt and a nuclear strike. So why would you attempt an EMP attack when that means giving up most of the destructive force to maybe burn out powerlines, and guaranteed surface nuclear response on your territory?
My high school physics says that’s BS, but EMP scare tactics does make for a great info-war weapon. It’s quite the boogeyman if you don’t have much science background.
Stuxnet like attacks are way way more plausible and likely.
It comes across as somewhat condescending and naive to refer to a HS class as having a notable amount of science background. And a reason to dismiss other sources of information.
Sources that invalidate foundational theory? It’s like claims that cell radios cause molecular damage in humans; that probably requires proving Enstien’s Nobel prize winning work on the photoelectric effect is wrong.
You shouldn't be down voted. Non-nuclear EMP devices exist but due to the inverse square law (which we learned in high school physics) we know that they have short effective range. And they require a large conventional explosive to generate the pulse. So they work but are not a major threat worth worrying about.
What does actually work and have been operationally used are graphite bombs designed to short out electrical equipment. Those are much cheaper and more effective than EMP weapons.
Buddy you’re gonna have to learn that sometimes your teachers are just wrong. Just because they’re in some position of authority doesn’t automatically qualify their credentials
What are you talking about? Google 'explosively pumped flux compression generator'. LANL wrote a paper on how to do this in the '70s and did real world tests. You output to the antenna or right into the grid.
The film Threads (which strived for accuracy) had a full scale nuclear attack on the U.K. preceded by a high altitude nuclear detonation over the North Sea, in order to knock out as many systems as possible with an EMP. And from the Starfish Prime test, we know that such events also create an unusual coloured light display.
I don't think you can say EMP weapons don't exist. I know what you're trying to say, but attacking a city with an EMP strike will be seen international ly as far more favorable than an actual strike.
Also, an EMP strike can be detonated really high in the atmosphere where we would have zero chance to intercept and is more economical for non first world countries.
At first my TV blips, my spotify shuts down and outside you could see this very bright turquoise light all over the place. It was bright like it was a daytime just in the green blue color. At first I thought it must had been some fireworks nearby, New Year is coming, right? But there was no fireworks noise, no party noise, nothing, just this bright green lit city. I open the window and some lady in the building across me does the same and shouts 'wtf is that?!'.
I realize this was not a party and my brain starts spinning..
1. EMP attack, since the TV got affected 2. Asteroid or comet entering the atmosphere and messing up the magnetosphere 3. Strong solar outburst, causing some local aurora
I recently watched Robert Schoch's interview where he discussed huge solar outbursts at the end of last ice age and how the sightings of resulting auroras might have made it into ancient cultures.
[https://youtu.be/Vka2ZgzZTvo roughly at 21:00]
In the end I rushed to the rooftop, scared as f, and noticed this was just a transformer on fire at nearby power plant. Took a video, waited it out and went back.