Re: Energy in WTC Tower Collapes

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sun Oct 13 2002 - 16:41:28 MDT


On Sun, Oct 13, 2002 at 11:50:00AM -0700, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
>
> On Sun, 13 Oct 2002, Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> > On Sun, Oct 13, 2002 at 01:19:41PM +0200, Alfio Puglisi wrote:
> > >
> > > One would wonder what a megaton-sized bomb would do to a modern city.
> >
> > See http://www.wws.princeton.edu/~ota/disk3/1979/7906_n.html for
> > classic, if depressing reading.
>
> Hmmmm, I wonder how dated this is given that the release date
> was May 1979?

Some parts haven't aged well - the discussion of Soviet infrastructure
most obviously, but I also think the EMP disruption side has become far
worse. But for a general impression of that nuclear war is very bad for
one's health and some rough figures it likely works. There has not been
that much of tech development in the field.

> So Anders -- since you just *happen* to have *that* URL so handy
> what should we assume about you?

That I have a morbid taste in bedside reading? :-) (other books in my
current bedside shelf: Eckert & James, _The Interpretation of Criminal
Bloodstains_, Wojcik's _The End of the World as We Know It: Faith,
Fatalism and Apocalypse in America_ and Kuznetsov's _Elements of Applied
Bifurcation Theory_)

Actually, I dug it up for an alternate history / time travel roleplaying
scenario this spring where I needed a world 20 years after a nuclear war
(the relevant page is at http://akira.nada.kth.se/~asa/bigd.html for a
while; not that detailed really, but enough for my purposes). Compared
to what happened to the Republica Aquincorum in the timeline next door
the US got off lightly ;-)

> Also, do you happen to have a DVD player yet?

No, but I will likely have soon. I will get myself a new computer
soonish, and I don't think I will be able to avoid a DVD.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y


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