Nuclear Engineer Reacts to Neil Halloran's Simulation of a Nuclear Blast in a Major City

Original Video ‪@NeilHalloran‬ • Simulation of a Nuclea...
Nuke Map is owned by Alex Wellerstein nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

[@zackiz]

Watched a few of your videos, they are great! Tip, run you audio through a de-noiseifyer. Audacity has a decent one. This video has quiet a lot of white noise and it makes the video hard to listen to.

[@tfolsenuclear]

Thanks for the tip!

[@superpnutbutter8608]

Nuclear weapon sure make interesting conflict in fiction. Like, it's not just boom and gone. It's has consequences. Whether from its large destructive capability, and radiation fallout.
But in real life. I think it's kind of just there. I think it has too much destructive capability, and will cause too much trouble to worth using. I think reputation in this day of age is important. So the large nations might prefer doing something quietly.

[@jeremygair4007]

A channel called Habitual Line Crosser can highlight hypersonic threats and countering them.

[@FalcoGer]

14:30 it might be true that weapons exist that can intercept hypersonic missiles. But you forget a few key factors. Firstly, you expect the human operators of those system to be alert all the time. When israel attacked a nuclear reactor in iran with low flying F-16, the reactor had air defenses, both AAA and SAM launchers to defend it against just such an attack. But the crew was not alert to react fast enough before they got their bombs off and destroyed the facility. Look at the russian flagship that was sunk by a couple of ukrainian subsonic missiles. The crew was probably tired and not paying attention after weeks and months of nothing happening, smoking, playing cards and talking to each other instead of intensely staring at their radar scopes for hours. They simply got surprised. And when the radar warning receivers went off, they had perhaps 15 or 30 seconds to react. It's called an OODA cycle. Observe, orient, decide, act. Each of those steps takes time, and that time gets increasingly small as the threat becomes faster.
Secondly you assume that there is air defense in place in the first place. You can not put air defense around every major city and military installation and have them on full alert 24/7. It just doesn't work that way. There simply aren't enough resources do so something so ridiculous.
Thirdly, US air defense sucks. You need a system capable of acquiring the missile, then track the missile, and then be in place to be in a position to intercept the missile with your own, because if it's not head on, you won't catch up to it. Then the intercepting missile must keep up with any defensive technique the incoming missile might employ, like an S turn maneuver, dropping chaff or jamming. At these speeds even a slight course change by the attacking missile, results in a massive intercept course change by the intercepting missile that is very likely to be impossible to do. Even then, the intercepting missile must detonate at exactly the right time to do damage the that warhead. And even if all that works, if the missile is too close to you, it's debris alone will cause sufficient damage to make a ship inoperable, or the missile will detonate it's payload. The only good air defense missiles the US employs are placed on warships, not ground installations. The US relies instead on aircraft and air superiority. And that also won't work because there aren't fighter aircraft just patrolling around everywhere constantly, it's just not how that works.
But even with all that in mind, it doesn't change a thing. Hypersonic nuclear missiles are a propaganda piece. Existing ICBM technology is already impossible to defend against. You might shoot down 10% or something of incoming warheads, even if you had enough missiles. But what does it matter if your country gets nuked by 4000 nukes or 3600? What it changes is the reaction time for a possible counter strike. If you get enough of those weapons on target at the same time, you might cripple the target's infrastructure enough to prevent a retaliatory strike with silos. But that still leaves mobile ICBM launchers and submarine launched weapons to do a retaliatory strike.

[@MatterBaby68]

great video but for some reason the audio quality of the video you're reacting too is not great. it's sounds super quite and there's a lot of background noise

[@libraryofgurkistan]

Nice Video!
Did you already react to "History of the entire World, i guess" by Bill Wurtz (there also is a Version without >bad< Words by somenody else (dont know what that means))?
Would be very cool to see that!
Thanks for making these Videos, they're always interesting and entertaining to watch!

[@tfolsenuclear]

Thanks! I’ll check it out!

[@Canthus13]

Hypersonic cruise missiles are being shot down in Ukraine by Patriot batteries. Sure, they're fast. But once they get below about 30k feet, they're much, much slower and short-to-medium range batteries are eating them like candy. THey also can't maneuver very well in thicker air, so they're back to a pretty linear flight profile. On the other hand, ballistic missiles are still hitting 15+ mach in the lower atmosphere. They're a lot harder to hit in the terminal phase of their flight, but long range missile systems are doing a decent job of intercepting them before they enter into the mach 20+ descent.

[@CoffeeFor__]

I feel like nuclear weapons make the chances of war happening have a lower percentage because of the fear of nuclear use but someone (one day) might be crazy enough to use them

[@soundsoflife9549]

What if one was blown up in the Mariana trench?

[@Takyodor2]

In my opinion, a few nukes make the world safer due to the threat of their possible use (I believe there would be more smaller scale conflicts and tension without them). But I don't think hundreds of warheads does any good. They increase the risk of false alarms causing escalation, or accidents/lost weapons, cost a lot to build and maintain etc. I believe treaties where all nations agree to keep

[@RaidLoalMulticraft_YT]

7:17 bruh i live in New York are you gonna nuke me?

[@tfolsenuclear]

Of course not! The program defaults to NYC, I think that's where Alex Wellerstein, the person who designed it lives. You can change the blast site if you want, though.

[@RaidLoalMulticraft_YT]

@@tfolsenuclear if that blows up specifically in that spot I might be dead

[@docbrosstudio7680]

Just use a nuke

[@noob74235]

Hello