Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
THE TEST RANGE — Nuclear blasts are something you clearly don't want to experience first hand, we all know that. But do we really know how powerful these explosions really are?
Sure I've seen movies and according to Indiana Jones you can survive one of these blasts in a fridge, but I trust this video a bit more.
Here we have Atomic Bomb FCDA Footage from 1953. The weapon, Grable, was an atomic artillery shell, shot out of a cannon and detonated on Frenchman Flat at a test site in Nevada. The video shows the effects of Grable on some vehicles and what looks like a tent.
It's truly incredible on how you can see things like up from the initial detonation and then the punch from the first wave setting things ablaze and then a second wave hitting so hard that it extinguishes the flames and throws these vehicles around like they're tin cans.
The actual visuals of the destructive power of Grable are disturbing enough, but adding in the back and white tone as well as the old vehicles just adds an eeriness to it.
A question I had and then some of the team members at KSL.com had was, "How was the camera protected?"
Turns out the cameras were built into concrete bunkers, usually miles away with a high-power lens. So not only is the blast impressive, but so is the ingenuity that went into the cameras over 60 years ago.
Yesterday's Have You Seen This?
Have You Seen This? Champagne tower comes crashing down at fancy party
At this fancy party, bartenders have the champagne flowing and musicians are playing classical music in the background, sort of like in “Titanic.” And like in that movie, the following video will end in something collapsing.
