Research: the smell of ...

[CharleyH]

I am sure to have heard all the fart jokes before, but I am writing a story where I need to know what the world smells like as a nuke expodes. Death and burning flesh - I do not need - I can guess from my experience.

What does a nuke smell like when it explodes? I have been having trouble coming up with research and want to lean towards the smell of sulfer? Anyone know of anything that might describe it more accurately?

 

[rgraham666]

Nobody that's been close enough to smell one has reported back to tell the rest of us.

You could hold a seance, I suppose.

 

[CharleyH]

Nobody that's been close enough to smell one has reported back to tell the rest of us.

You could hold a seance, I suppose.

There were and have been test sites, my love.

 

[Grushenka]

There were and have been test sites, my love.

In the middle of deserts and oceans. I would think the concerned observors were nowhere near enough to smell anything.

You might try researching Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there are plenty of survivor stories.

 

[CharleyH]

In the middle of deserts and oceans. I would think the concerned observors were nowhere near enough to smell anything.

You might try researching Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there are plenty of survivor stories.

thank you. I am a great researcher, but have yet to find ... the smell of it, the bomb iteself. And there were many in Nevada who probably experienced it, certainly I can think of Agnes Moorehead and John Wayne. There must have been others much younger who told a tale.

 

[oggbashan]

In the Australian tests, the most common experience was DUST.

The land surface at ground zero was vitrified - turned to glass. No smell at all because all particles that might have had a scent were vapourised or carbonised.

If a human being were to be close enough to a nuclear explosion to use their nose, they would be volatilised before the scent reached the nasal receptors. You can't smell when you are not only dead but reduced to gases.

Og

 

[rgraham666]

I'm thinking it wouldn't smell that much different from a fire bombing like Dresden or Tokyo.

The BBQ pork smell of humans burning. The odour of wood burning. The tar smell of asphalt melting. The mixed smell of people melting into the asphalt.

I should shut up now, shouldn't I?

 

[Lauren Hynde]

You can't smell when you are not only dead but reduced to ashes.

Og

If a pine tree falls in a forest at ground zero of a thermonuclear explosion and there is no one there to smell it, does it smell like new car interior?

 

[Liar]

Charley, I'm guessing you're not looking for the smell at the time of a nuke explosion, but how it smells at the site afterwards?

Then Og's quite right. Close to ground zero, it would smell of nothing. Because everything close to the blast would have been vaporized, reduced to cinder, and fused into the glass surface of the ground.

Any smells, would be from air driftnig in from the outer perimeters of the blast, where stuff merely burned instead. Think forest fire unless we're talking about a city, then think burning suburbians.

 

[CharleyH]

In the Australian tests, the most common experience was DUST.

The land surface at ground zero was vitrified - turned to glass. No smell at all because all particles that might have had a scent were vapourised or carbonised.

If a human being were to be close enough to a nuclear explosion to use their nose, they would be volatilised before the scent reached the nasal receptors. You can't smell when you are not only dead but reduced to gases.

Og

Hm. intriguing. I got a Pm from someone in the know, yet think this thought fascinating. Thanks, Og.

 

[R. Richard]

I am sure to have heard all the fart jokes before, but I am writing a story where I need to know what the world smells like as a nuke expodes. Death and burning flesh - I do not need - I can guess from my experience.

What does a nuke smell like when it explodes? I have been having trouble coming up with research and want to lean towards the smell of sulfer? Anyone know of anything that might describe it more accurately?

Chemical explosives leave a gas cloud after they explode. The gas cloud has a smell. A nuclear explosion [fission or fusion] is not chemical and leaves no gas cloud.

The only smell you would get from a nuclear explosion would be the vaporization/burning of substances some distance from ground zero. The specific smell would depend on the substances, not the explosion.

 

[CharleyH]

If a pine tree falls in a forest at ground zero of a thermonuclear explosion and there is no one there to smell it, does it smell like new car interior?

LOL- Smart ass!

 

[CharleyH]

Charley, I'm guessing you're not looking for the smell at the time of a nuke explosion, but how it smells at the site afterwards?

Then Og's quite right. Close to ground zero, it would smell of nothing. Because everything close to the blast would have been vaporized, reduced to cinder, and fused into the glass surface of the ground.

Any smells, would be from air driftnig in from the outer perimeters of the blast, where stuff merely burned instead. Think forest fire unless we're talking about a city, then think burning suburbians.

Actually, I am looking for "at the time," which is why the query. I know it's impossible, but ... we can all use our knowledge to ventue guesses. I thought sulfer. I love your answers thus far - thank you.

 

[drksideofthemoon]

I am sure to have heard all the fart jokes before, but I am writing a story where I need to know what the world smells like as a nuke expodes. Death and burning flesh - I do not need - I can guess from my experience.

What does a nuke smell like when it explodes? I have been having trouble coming up with research and want to lean towards the smell of sulfer? Anyone know of anything that might describe it more accurately?

There would be no smell...the explosion would vaporize the molecules that form odors...

 

[Selena_Kitt]

This is totally fascinating!

 

[CharleyH]

There would be no smell...the explosion would vaporize the molecules that form odors...

Thank you - others have said it before you and this thread is officially ... NUKED!

 

[colddiesel]

Oblivion

The fact that from the centre looking out it would smell, taste, sound, look, feel a nothingness in every respect is an interesting idea but tricky to describe

 

[CharleyH]

The fact that from the centre looking out it would smell, taste, sound, look, feel a nothingness in every respect is an interesting idea but tricky to describe

Indeed A challenge for me, then? I think I can pull it in context.

 

[Weird Harold]

Actually, I am looking for "at the time," which is why the query. I know it's impossible, but ... we can all use our knowledge to ventue guesses. I thought sulfer. I love your answers thus far - thank you.

Just a guess, but I'd say that the smell of a nuclear explosion would be more a lack of odors of any kind.

However, the human sensory system doesn't deal with an absence of input very well and will "hallucinate" a sensation when it doesn't have any actual input -- like the random sparkles people "see" in complete darkeness.

I think if I had to describe the smell, I'd describe it as similar to the "smell" of a hot oven -- that hot, dry, "hot metal" smell that isn't really an odor at all.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Actually, I am looking for "at the time," which is why the query. I know it's impossible, but ... we can all use our knowledge to ventue guesses. I thought sulfer. I love your answers thus far - thank you.

Sulfur is used in some explosives, which is probably why you are thinking of it. At the center of a nuclear blast, there might be an extremely brief smell of burning flesh, wood or other plant material and of extremely hot metal. Hopefully, we will never find out.

Of course, if a bomb happened to land on a pile of sulfur, there would be a brief smell of burning sulfur. Even if somebody could survive an explosion, the smell of burning might be too brief to even register.

 

[Stup Dity]

I am sure to have heard all the fart jokes before, but I am writing a story where I need to know what the world smells like as a nuke expodes. Death and burning flesh - I do not need - I can guess from my experience.

What does a nuke smell like when it explodes? I have been having trouble coming up with research and want to lean towards the smell of sulfer? Anyone know of anything that might describe it more accurately?

Pussy. It smells exactly like pussy.

A pine tree falling also smells like pussy and so does glass.

 

[impressive]

Pussy. It smells exactly like pussy.

A pine tree falling also smells like pussy and so does glass.

BWAH! *giggle snort*

 

[Guest]

Pussy. It smells exactly like pussy.

A pine tree falling also smells like pussy and so does glass.

You've been sleeping with your head in the oven again, haven't you?

 

[dr_mabeuse]

The explosion would have no odor itself whatsoever because it's a nuclear reaction and not a chemical one like gunpowder or TNT or plastique. The temperature at the epicenter of a thermonuclear explosion is comparable to the temperature at the surface of the sun.

In the first milliseconds after a nuclear explosion the air is filled with a lethal melange of high-energy neutrons, subatomic particles and gamma rays, none of which have any odor. That's followed by the thermal shock wave of - I don't know - several million degrees, traveling at the speed of light and hot enough to vaporize brick and stone and human bodies. Not burn them, but vaporize them, turn them into a sizzling plasma of ions. Farther out the heat's low enough to simply melt brick and turn sand into glass and set anything left aflame.

After the heat blast comes the tremendous overpressure wave, which only travels at the speed of sound but which blows everything to pieces. This is followed by a collapse as the air rushes back in, fanning the flames and lifting everything into the air in the familiar mushroom cloud. Probably at this point you'd have what's known as a firestorm, as Rob suggested when he mentioned Dresden. A firestorm is a vioent fire which causes tornadic winds to sweep everything into the fire.

If you were alive at this point, what you'd probably smell is hot dust and the sharp scent of ozone, the stink of burning asphalt and hot metal and steam.

The ground you'd be standing on and the air you'd be sniffing would be lethally radioactive, but you wouldn't know it. Depending on how close you were to the epicenter, you'd either be dead already, or dying with your skin sloughing off, or irradiated enough to be dead in days or hours, or maybe weeks. Far enough from the blast you could live for months before succumbing to radiation poisoning, bleeding from the gums and soft tissues.

That's a thermonuclear explosion. There are other atomic bombs that don't work like that though. The neutron bomb or "clean" bomb just showers everything with a deadly hail of neutrons. There wouldn't be the heat blast and structural damage, but all living tissue would die of radiation poisoning in hours or days.

 

[Edward Teach]

You've been sleeping with your head in the oven again, haven't you?

I think maybe Stup has trouble getting you lovely Ladies of Lit off his mind.

I suffer from that a bit also. Wonder why?

Eddie the Puzzled

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