Although cer­tain gen­er­a­tions might have grown up educated to take cov­er below their class­room desks within the case of a nuclear present­down between the Unit­ed States and the Sovi­et Union, few of us in the present day can imagine that we’d stand a lot likelihood if we discovered our­selves any­the place close to a det­o­nat­ed mis­sile. Nonetheless, the prob­a­ble results of a nuclear blast do bear repeat­ing, which the New York Times video above doesn’t simply con­vey ver­bal­ly but in addition visu­al­ly, deriv­ing its infor­ma­tion “from inter­views of mil­i­tary offi­cials and com­put­er sci­en­tists who say we’re pace­ing towards the subsequent nuclear arms race.”

The final nuclear arms race might have been dangerous sufficient, however the rel­e­vant tech­nolo­gies have nice­ly superior for the reason that Chilly Warfare — which, with the final main arms treaty between the U.S. and Rus­sia set to run out with­in a yr, seems set to re-open. Don’t each­er wor­ry­ing about an entire arse­nal: only one mis­sile is sufficient to do rather more dam­age than you’re prob­a­bly imag­in­ing. That’s the sce­nario envi­sioned within the video: “trav­el­ing at blis­ter­ing speeds,” the nuke det­o­nates over its tar­get metropolis, and “each­one in vary is briefly blind­ed. Then comes the roar of 9,000 tons of TNT,” professional­duc­ing a fireplace­ball “scorching­ter than the sur­face of the solar.” And that’s simply the start­ning of the trou­ble.

A destruc­tive “blast wave” emanates from the positioning of the explo­sion, “after which… darkish­ness.” The air is stuffed with “mud and glass frag­ments,” mak­ing it dif­fi­cult, even lifeless­ly, to breathe. What’s worse, “no assistance is on the best way: med­ical work­ers within the imme­di­ate space are lifeless or injured.” For sur­vivors, there begins the “radi­a­tion sick­ness, nau­sea, vom­it­ing, and diar­rhea”; a number of the lifeless­liest results don’t even man­i­fest for weeks. “The imme­di­ate toll of this one conflict­head: thou­sands lifeless, expo­nen­tial­ly extra wound­ed. Dam­age to the ecosys­tem will linger for years.” Certainly, the extent of the dam­age is just too nice to pon­der with­out resort to gal­lows humor, as evi­denced by the video’s cur­lease prime com­ment: “My boss would nonetheless power me to return into the workplace the subsequent day.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

What Would Hap­pen If a Nuclear Bomb Hit a Major City Today: A Visu­al­iza­tion of the Destruc­tion

See Every Nuclear Explo­sion in His­to­ry: 2153 Blasts from 1945–2015

Pro­tect and Sur­vive: 1970s British Instruc­tion­al Films on How to Live Through a Nuclear Attack

53 Years of Nuclear Test­ing in 14 Min­utes: A Time Lapse Film by Japan­ese Artist Isao Hashimo­to

Every Nuclear Bomb Explo­sion in His­to­ry, Ani­mat­ed

When the Wind Blows: An Ani­mat­ed Tale of Nuclear Apoc­a­lypse With Music by Roger Waters & David Bowie (1986)

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks embody the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the guide The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by way of Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social internet­work for­mer­ly referred to as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.