Explanation for non-native speakers (like me) who didn't know the rule:

The words "how" and "like" clash because "How" already implies manner or appearance, making the addition of "like" (which serves a similar function with "what") superfluous.

"How ___ like" is probably the single most common mistake I see among non-native speakers. Also, unlike other mistakes which can just sound informal, this one "sounds dumb", to use a mean phrase, but it's good to know for people trying to sound proper.

Also, the atoms do not need tests, they have functioned reliably for billions of years.

This is also a pet peeve of mine. However, I suspect this bothers us because we’ve grown up with standard “western” English (US/UK/Canada/Australia/etc). “How does X Y like” is common in other forms of English, some of which might even be native (but non-western)! For example, I bet this construction is standard in Indian English. Based on population alone, I think this is a losing battle; English is probably going to adopt the structure we dislike. That’s unfortunate for me and you. But I think fighting it is a fool’s errand.

Thanks for pointing that out. As a non-native speaker, I have learned something new.

This is a pretty common construction among some non-native English speakers.

As a non-native speaker, TIL.

Then again, my brain tries to complete the sentence as "Atomic Test-and-Set".

I suspect this was an editing error versus a conscious choice. That is to say I'm betting that "How" came from a prior revision and they published it before realizing the error. I've done this myself too often. ;D

Hey, don't go off of the topic. No need to loose your mind! I could probably get you some counselling for cheap!

If you’re in to this period Atomic Cafe is a great watch

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atomic_Cafe

I'm convinced this kind of thing is 90% of the inspiration for the Fallout franchise.

Makes me wonder how many living people on earth have seen a nuclear explosion with their own eyes. It can't be very high, maybe 1-10 thousand? Not a number you would want to see increase, to be sure.

Those bombs are still pointing at the same cities…you may still get to take part!!

The Sedan test [1], part of Project Plowshare, was an underground test in Nevada that sent fallout across a large swath of the U.S. Midwaste, sorry, Midwest.

The wife's family lived in Omaha, Nebraska at the time. A lot of cancer in her family. But then a lot of smokers as well. So who knows.

Regardless, that one was a major fuck-up that seems to have kind of put the kibosh on "underground" testing of that sort.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedan_(nuclear_test)

Like recent Northern Lights occurrences where phone cameras capture them much more vibrantly than they appear to the naked eye. But that might be more of the phone sensor being more sensitive to colors in low light than the human eye is.

It wasn’t just from that [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory] had 4 of their 10 experimental nuclear reactors melt down (including a big one in ‘59), and was notorious for not disposing of nuclear and chemical waste correctly. Including burn pits.

They had fires in their plutonium ‘hot lab’ at least once we know about.

They regularly burned radioactive waste in open pits.

It’s right next door to Hollywood and many common film shooting locations. John Wayne regularly worked in Simi valley which is right next door.

Also, smoking like a chimney. Also, the whole nuclear bomb test/downwinder stuff too of course.

It’s not just direct exposure either - thyroid issues are common in the generation that grew up when this was happening, and many of them drank milk, ate cheese, etc. from cows grazing on grass that got this contamination on it. Including from Simi valley, where it was a big industry.

Nobody likes to talk about it because good luck quantifying it at this point - and the gov’t does a lot to avoid blowback succeeding. National Security and all.

It doesn’t help that the governments own radiation death models put the population wide cost at several hundred thousand lives lost population wide. But LNT doesn’t really work. But also, clearly there are issues.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downwinders]

Like the 9/11 first responder funds, it’s a nightmare trying to get a pay out, and unlike 9/11 this isn’t from one single event.

Reminiscent of the shooting of Tarkovsky’s Stalker, where there was a toxic-waste-producing facility right nearby (and you can supposedly see toxic waste on camera) and some of the cast and crew got ill or died from horrible cancers.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film)#Filming

>>Between 1951 and 1992, the United States conducted 928 atomic tests at the Nevada Test Site about 65 miles (105 km) northwest of the city of Las Vegas.

Just how nuclear waste polluted is Nevada?

Surely ~1000 tests in one place can't be good. Wouldn't be surprised if people around there do get cancers.

> By the early 1980s around 40% of the cast and crew had developed cancer, also including Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorehead, and director Dick Powell.

What is the source for that?

This is a very well known story, particularly to people living in the Intermountain west. Rogan is just repeating Wikipedia.

Is that one of the girls at the nearby dancing camp that played in the ash fallout and died?

Did some research on the yields of the nuclear weapons placed in Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis which apparently are now well-known, largely due to information released by Soviet officials and military historians in the decades following the Cold War (specifically in the early 1990s).

While the United States was unaware of the sheer number of warheads at the time (estimating far fewer or none operational), it is now confirmed that approximately 158 nuclear warheads were on the island.

The yields for these specific weapon systems were as follows:

1. Strategic Ballistic Missiles These were the weapons that triggered the crisis—long-range missiles capable of striking deep into the continental United States.

a) SS-4 Sandal (R-12) Missiles

Yield: ~1 Megaton (1,000 kT)

Status: There were roughly 36 to 40 of these missiles in Cuba. The warheads were present and could have been mated to the missiles within hours. A 1 MT explosion is roughly 60–70 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

b) SS-5 Skean (R-14) Missiles

Yield: ~1 to 2.3 Megatons (1,000–2,300 kT)

Status: The nuclear warheads for these missiles did arrive in Cuba, but the missiles themselves were blocked by the quarantine (blockade) and never reached the island.

2. Tactical (Battlefield) Nuclear Weapons This is the category that most alarmed historians and officials when it was revealed in the 1990s. The U.S. did not know these were present or operational. If the U.S. had invaded (as was being debated), local Soviet commanders had pre-delegated authority (later rescinded) to use these against American landing forces.

a) FKR-1 (Meteor) Cruise Missiles

Yield: 5 to 14 Kilotons (kT)

Status: There were approximately 80 of these warheads. These were ground-launched cruise missiles intended for coastal defense and could have been used to strike the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay or incoming amphibious fleets.

b) Luna (FROG) Artillery Rockets

Yield: 2 Kilotons (kT)

Status: There were 12 of these warheads. These were short-range battlefield rockets intended to destroy troop concentrations on the beachheads.

c) IL-28 "Beagle" Bombers

Yield: ~28–30 Kilotons (kT)

Status: There were 6 nuclear bombs (likely the RDS-4 type) specifically for these light bombers. The aircraft were capable of striking targets in Florida or regionally.

[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1177/009634021246436...

[2] https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10...

[3] https://www.atomicarchive.com/history/cuban-missile-crisis/m...

[4] http://www.cubanmissilecrisis.org/background/frequently-aske...

[5] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book-special-exhibit/cuba...

[6] https://www.cfr.org/blog/twe-remembers-secret-soviet-tactica...

[7] https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB449/

[8] http://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/cuban-missile-...

Apparently the largest atmospheric test done in Nevada was 74kT (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumbbob_Hood)

It's kinda hard to imagine why on earth you'd ever build a warhead larger than 100kT. At that point it's just destruction for the sake of destruction, not to win a war, but to ensure that everyone loses... Well, that is the point of MAD, but it just seems reckless and inhuman.

>>They were thinking about the "clean and limitless" energy that was supposed to have come from this new technology.

There is plenty of articles, books and every other media from that period of time with people expressing horror at the sheer power of these weapons, not to mention the pervasive belief that a nuclear war is just a matter of time, with kids in schools being taught how to hide under their desks and face away from a nuclear blast should one happen. There definitely was a "morbid" fascination in the sense that people wanted to see the blasts that could obliterate their cities without a warning. There was hope and belief that we'll have nuclear powered everything within couple decades at most, but people weren't building and buying nuclear shelters out of hope for the better nuclear future.

>>Stop trying to foist your "modern" ideals on people many years ago.

I think that's an unnecessary remark, especially given that you are also attributing a certain belief to everyone of that era when it very clearly wasn't universal.

No, I'd rather not we test more nuclear weapons.

Lets hope they'll be tests.

The article doesn't generally read like AI to me, though I can't discount the possibility that I have been fooled by a new and more advanced slop machine.

I think HN is probably biased towards a subset of the population that is perennially interested in nuclear explosions. They surely occupied a much greater part of the public consciousness in the 50s than they do today (and certainly much greater than a few years ago, before a nuclear power invaded Europe).

I don’t think “fascination” is what you’d get if you started detonating atomic bombs on the regular near any major city today.

The UK also nuked the US 24 times

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_nuclear_testing_in_the...

Then there was that thing where RAF bombers pretended to bomb US cities... which had to be hushed up as it made it clear that US air defence systems weren't nearly as good as the public had been told.

I have a feeling the point made by these rhetorical questions is not the one you intended. These all have obvious, verifiable, and plain/boring answers.

People even detected the radioactivity before nukes were public, and you can still measure the differences in steel today.

I'll answer because some people are probably genuinely curious to some of these.

> 1. What happened to the deadly radioactivity?

It mostly decayed out. Generally speaking, 8 half-lives mean that it's essentially decayed to "gone". High-level atmospheric tests usually cause it to spread out and depending on wind patterns can dissipate enough to be essentially harmless - though with precision instruments you can measure the differences throughout the whole world. Steel from shipwrecks from before the first explosion can be desirable for some of this equipment.

With explosions closer to or below ground level, there can be longer-lasting elements baked into the ground, like Trinitite (a green glass like material) that can have trace amounts of cesium-137, with a half-life of 30 years, which going by the 8 times rule means that it'll be "dangerous" for ~240 years.

Also the type of bomb matters to what is left behind. A uranium bomb will leave different radioactive byproducts than a plutonium bomb.

To break it down to layman terms, nuclear explosions are also designed to emit energy extremely fast, meaning the radioactive chain reaction "burns" through elements very fast. This is different that the fuel in a nuclear reactor, which is designed to burn hot and slow, meaning there are more longer-lasting byproducts left over and why Chernobyl is a no go zone for thousands of years, but we can live in Hiroshima.

Most of the cancers that happened were from people downwind from the explosion. Most of these elements that caused the cancers and sicknesses decayed away within a couple of years.

> 2. Would exploding the equivalent amount of TNT look exactly the same?

No. It wouldn't produce anywhere near the amount of heat/light. The TNT equivalent is usually used to measure the destructive force equivalent of the explosion.

> 3. Would USA fake having a single bomb that destroys an entire city?

The US may "fake" having a number operating bombs ready, etc. But obviously there's no need to fake it as the US destroyed 2 cities at the end of world war 2 and exploded hundreds of test bombs since.

> 4. What happened to the deadly radioactivity in Japan?

The bombs dropped were exploded high in the atmosphere to spread the explosive force of the bombs. Most of the radioactive material was carried away by the winds and/or had a short half-life. Most radioactive material from the bombs decayed away and there is no longer a statistically significant higher risk of cancer in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

> 5. What is carpet bombing?

It's when you have a fleet of bombers drop massive amounts of traditional bombs on a city, as was done to Germany and Japan during world war 2 (and by the Germans to a few cities like Rotterdam).

> 6. Would USA fake having a single bomb that destroys an entire city?

Same as question 3.

Huh? That’s not what rhetorical means and those silly questions aren’t confusing anyone here. What are you on about, mate?