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Ginny

wrote:
> On Apr 12, 1:20 am, Ginny > wrote:
>> Stan Horwitz wrote:
>>> In article >, hal wrote:
>>>> On Sat, 11 Apr 2009 17:26:41 -0700, pyotr filipivich
>>>> > wrote:
>>>>> Cie l'vie. What you have demonstrated is that you seem tonot
>>>>> consider your way of life as worth transmitting to the next
>>>>> generation, or advocating after a major disaster. I wish folks like
>>>>> you would wear a "donotresituate" sign, to spare scarce resources
>>>>> for those who aren't living useless lives.
>>>> It's always fascinating to me when reading or hearing of stories of
>>>> people surviving under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. It
>>>> seems that some people have this enormous will to live to matter what,
>>>> and no matter how bad things get. And then some people simply give up
>>>> and lay down an die. It's always fascinated me that this dichotomy of
>>>> human behavior existed and why.
>>> It depends on the situation. In a post nuclear holocaust, I wouldnot
>>> want to live if I was near the blast because the cancer and other
>>> effects of the radiation would take me down regardless of my will to
>>> live.
>>> A hurricane or other natural disaster is an entirely different matter.
>>> With a hurricane, I can get out of the way and simply return home and
>>> rebuild later if necessary. That's much the case with forest fires,
>>> tornadoes, etc. but with a nuclear blast, I honestly don't think I would
>>> want to live in the aftermath of one of those, considering that the
>>> nuclear weapons we have today make the ones dropped on Japan look like
>>> dime store firecrackers.
>> So the nuclear holocaust you're anticipating would be something like On
>> The Beach? I would have to concur then but if it was more like Jericho
>> then I think we would fight to live. It would depend on the degree of
>> total damage and area affected in relation to us.
>> --
>> Ginny - In West Australia
>
> The novel by Neville Shute was utterly unrealistic in its portrayal of
> a cloud of radioactivity slowly spreading around the world.
>
> The physics just doesn't work this way. First off, anything that is so
> super-hot as to kill in a short time tends not to last very long
> (decay rate is inversely proportional to lifetime, naturally). So the
> cloud that drifted around the world in "On the Beach" would be quite
> cool by the time it drifted around the world.
>
> (In fact, it would be lower in activity than the clouds of radioactive
> dust from large volcanic eruptions, such as Krakatoa, which ejected
> thousands of cubic meters of uranium and thorium into the upper
> atmosphere.....a dose in terms of megacuries which far exceeds the
> total megacuries in all of the bombs in the world's arsenals. Do the
> math on curies per person per year.)
>
> Secondly, even given such a fictional fallout, there are many
> solutions. Digging deep beneath the ground is one of the dumbest. Much
> easier to just set up rain roofs which divert fallout into trenches
> around buildings. Again, do the math.
>
> A dozen other solutions to this fictional scenario are easy to
> research.
>
> --Tim May

Well it was called fiction for more than one reason I'm sure

--
Ginny - In West Australia