If you saw a mushroom cloud, what would you say?

If there's one thing I know from every dicey situation I've ever been in, including in the military, it's that you never know what your brain will pull out of its darkest reaches when you least expect it.

Statistically most common last words are "Oh shit.", but you never know.

Oh thank God.

How far away? If I'm in the vaporisation zone, I would lie down and relax, if I'm in the radiation poisoning zone, I'd get as fast as I could towards the vaporisation zone :p

I was walking along a scenic trail in my city a few years ago. This particular spot had a spectacular eastern view, so I stopped to take in the last of what seemed to be a spectacular sunset.

It took my moronic ass about 15 seconds to remember that the sun usually sets in the west. So what was that red orange glow on the horizon?

A wildfire? No, I'd have heard about that.

Must be a... Nuke? What else would make that much light that fast. It had blown and I was seeing the burning destruction in its wake.

I spent the next minute or so basically shitting myself. Trying to figure out which way the fallout would blow. Thinking about all the emergency drinking water and food I never stocked. Thinking how horrific a death radiation sickness would be.

I was straight up having a panic attack!

Well then the most glorious blood moon I ever seen came up over the horizon. Huge and glowing orange.

I learned a bit about myself that day. Mostly that I am unlikely to thrive in any sort of apocalypse type situation. And that I'm a moron. Moon was cool though!

Duck! ... And Cover!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=IKqXu-5jw60

If your brain has enough time to process actually seeing a mushroom cloud, well, that means you were far enough away from the blast that you were not evaporated or otherwise fucked up by the initial explosion.

Otherwise, you would have felt or been destroyed by that first, before the mushroom cloud have even formed, before you could have possibly seen it.

So, if you are able to see a mushroom cloud, before you hear or feel a nuclear explosion, that means that you may actually have moments to scramble to find cover, and that may actually protect you from the blast/pressure/heat wave that has not hit you yet, as well as the immense, sucking/updraft winds that will be created by... essentially the hole that a nuclear explosion punches in the atmosphere.

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Also, "fun fact", you wanna know something reported by soldiers at nuclear tests and the Japanese at Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

When the bomb goes off, ... even if you close your eyes, look away from the blast... you can still see your own bones, if you're holding your hands/arms to shield your eyes.

There is so much radiation flying around that you get momentary xray vision.

https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/nuclear-bomb-bright-bones-fingers-atomic-veterans-2-1930293

“We were told to put on long trousers and a long-sleeved shirt,” he says, “and we had these dark goggles which meant you couldn’t see your hand in front of you. Then we had to go and sit on the football pitch with our backs to the detonation, because if we’d faced it, the fireball would have burned our eyes.

“When the bomb went off, it was so bright that I could see the spine and ribs of the guy sitting a metre in front of me, like an X-ray. I put my hands over my eyes and could see the bones in my fingers, and could see the blood pumping around my hands. It was 4am but the sky turned blue, like it was daytime. The blast was like the sound of a pistol, except 1,000 times louder. After the fireball, a couple of minutes later, you feel the blast and a strong gust of very hot wind – if you had no shirt on it feels like it would burn through your back – then once the fireball starts to dissipate you get the mushroom cloud.”

That's just one recollection I can find via quick websearch, but there are numerous accounts of this 'momentary xray vision' effect happening, UK, US soldiers, Japanese, etc.

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EDIT

The ... HL2 Mod -> 10+ years of development -> Indie Game G STRING arguably does a fairly decent portrayal of experiencing the effects of a nuclear detonation, in sequence.

It just does a screen flash bang instead of the whole x ray vision thing, but the order of events is roughly correct.

Flash, white out, people screaming from both being irradiated and the shock, gigantic visible second sun ...

... lull of time where power transformers are heard exploding due to the EMP ...

... massive pressure/blast/heat front hits, random shit is thrown away from the blast, more people screaming as they are now being incinerated ...

... then the wind direction changes and random shit is now sucked toward the explosion, which by now has more or less assumed the form of a proper mushroom cloud.

Uh, I guess potential [Content Warning], this may or may not qualify as nightmare fuel.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=X8suBOMnGFQ

I think the scene has been tweaked a bit in the current game since this 4 year old video, but uh yeah.

I would just be thankful that we don't have Kamala Harris as a president I mean can you imagine

"Oh, that's a big one!"

If that was here in Finland, I would of course be scared because you need a lot of explosives to produce a mushroom cloud, and that would probably mean that:

1. our military has been storing a sizable part of its munitions in one place AND
2. one our eastern neighbours has apparently developed a will to rid our army of its munitions.

...which would mean that some country would be planning to attack us soon.

So, I would probably start preparing for a war. Maybe go buy a lot of food, at least?

In some country further from the Russia I would probably assume it's something non-military. Maybe some form of a very large fertilizer storage? It would be kind of less scary, but of course that would mean a decreased farming output for the next season, and that would be shitty.

It's a giant mushroom! Maybe it's friendly!

All jokes aside, I am in an area where I'd most likely die from it, so wouldn't be saying many bad things and more along the lines of how fortunate I'd be to not have to live after the clock strikes midnight.

If they end up dropping nukes I hope one falls on my head. I don't want to survive nuclear war.

Cloud? So it's Death As A Service?

There goes the neighborhood

We Will All Go Together When We Go

Silence. Shadows don't speak.

"Maybe it's friendly"

I live relatively close to a major Air Force base so I’d probably only get so far as to say “oh shi-“ before I get vaporized like that scene in T2

Oh Shitake!

"This rounds on me guys"

Rad!

“I hope they got him…”

You'll see the bright flash first, at which point you can't waste time and need to take cover from the coming blast. Which probably includes hurling up with your eyes closed. If you somehow survive the blast you can't waste time looking at the cloud and need to find shelter from the fallout within 15 minutes. During this time, if you spot the cloud, you'll probably be speechless and too busy.

"Look everyone! A mushroom cloud!"

Depends how far away it is, since I live in NYC my building has a bomb shelter so I would probably attempt to find it quickly (nobody in this city actually knows where the building shelter is).

I would expect that it wasn't a nuke, and I would wonder what blew up.

"That's too much, man!"

Good luck, have fun, don't die.

"Finally."

I'm gonna parry it

I saw a pink cloud that should have been an even more imment sign of a worse death than a mushroom cloud...

I said "fuck"

But hit the ~1% lottery that I didn't have all the flesh boiled off my bones by superheated steam.

Super fucking surreal and none of us really believed it till hours later.

If you see a mushroom cloud tho, you still got time to run.

About time.

I was thinking about this while I was on my hike yesterday. Weird. I was picturing a mushroom cloud emerging somewhere over the puget sound and thinking about what I would do.

"Well, shit." If my wife were next to me, tell her I love her. Depending upon how far it is, run for cover. Try to fire off a couple of texts to family, but that's unlikely to work. All the while, hope it's not nuclear in origin (other things make mushroom clouds).

So it goes.

I'd say nothing

However there will be a goldilocks zone where a pizza is perfectly cooked. I'll use my dying moments to find out and document that radius for future generations

Oh this dream again... jeez its getting old...

(I had a dream where my electronics all went dead [from the EMP I guess] and the lights to the house went dead then I look outside my window and saw a huge mushroom cloud...

then I woke up...

And I check the direction of where I saw the nuke in my dream, its right in the ditection of the center of the city lmao)

Maybe it's friendly!

"a friendly mushroom cloud!"

https://tenor.com/bUmxC.gif

“Oh, I’ve wasted my life.”

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I live in the same town as a Raytheon subsidiary. I'll never know what happened.

In waterworld, there was an old man in a row boat floating inside an oil tanker. Us is he.

I love you.

"How did so many mushrooms become lighter than air?"

Better to see a mushroom cloud than be in a mushroom cloud.

“That reminds me I still have about 8 grams left. Guess I’ll just eat them all tonight.”

Good fucking job, Trump is what I'd say bitterly.

I've had a near-death experience - at least, I thought it was death.

If you go to here and scroll down to the "2017" section: https://daychilde.com/how-i-got-here/

So I can tell you I'd be hoping it would be quick with another bomb dropped closer to me, or that I'd be far enough away to not suffer from radiation beyond elevated cancer risk. Because acute radiation poisoning is a nasty way to go. There's nothing they can do about the extreme pain you live with for hours to a few days. You just suffer horribly.

I'll say the stupidest swear word I could imagine. Something like "Krankenscheisse"

For context, my apartment is within the blast zone of both the EU and the NATO headquarters... if I see a mushroom cloud I'm assuming for the worst, if it's not directly on top of my head in the first place

'Unh?! Aw, fuck off, I'm trying to slee-"

"Finally"

"nice cloud", I guess ?

"Mm mm! Nothing says 'we're fucked' like... that (points at the cloud)". I grab my Game Boy Advance SP and run to the shelter next doors.

Boom goes the dynamite

"Finally."

They can come from a variety of things though. Meteors or just really big conventional explosions. They don't mean nukes for sure. So don't panic, at first.

Considering there's rarely anyone around for me to say anything to, I'd probably let fly a few choice words and then start trying to work out where the next one was going to land and try to be under it.

That's assuming you mean nuclear mushroom cloud anyway.

Other, sufficiently large ordnance also generates mushroom clouds and we've recovered from a handful of those before.

So any research would be trying to find out whether it was nuclear or not.

I've seen Threads. And a whole heap of post-apocalypse stories. I do not want to live in those worlds.

Lol, those guys are fucked... Guess it's my turn now.

I might ask a neighbor for a smoke.

Yo it's the thing from Oppenheimer!!!

Ooh, that cloud looks like a mushroom 🍄‍🟫

👍

Not sure I would say anything. I think I’d just sit and watch.

Shit...

Assuming my phone is dead from the associated EMP, I'll start singing "I Melt With You"

War. War never changes.

I'd probably be telling those around me to run toward the light, while running toward the light. Close enough to see the flash means close enough to accept mortality, and fast is good in that regard.

Spores!

Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter.

"Yeah, but the Epstein fiiiiiiiles" followed by death.

Kidding. I'm with you, but more "ah, fuck."

About fucking time.

Check the news to see what exploded.

Finally.

"Oh sh-"

Well fuck

depends what causing it, a conventional or a nuclear, either would produce quite noticeable shockwaves.

"Well, that's that, I suppose."

Would.

"So close." sigh

Oh here we fucking go

"Oh, shitsnacks!"

wp:Mushroom cloud

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18th century mushroom cloud

wc:File:Vue du siege de Gibraltar et explosion des batteries flottantes 1782.jpeg

Once translated: "ugh, those fucking idiots".

In my native language: "ah les osti d'épais".

I would accept it, reflect on my life in the last moments of it

Shrug and check my Pip Boy 3000.

Ohhh farts.

I really hope that isn’t a mushroom cloud.

Looks like a fun-g(uy)i

GG

You wouldn't really see the mushroom cloud, because the shock wave would hit you first and likely kill you. If you're in the blast zone itself then you're likely vaporized. And if you're out of range for the shock wave to be fatal, the flash still probably blinded you...

I think it's safe to say, you won't be faced with any situation where you "see a mushroom cloud"