Ever since I was a kid, I’ve heard the same stock sound effect repeatedly used for nuclear explosions in movies and TV—heard here, for one example, and quite distinctive. Kind of a reverberating “BOOOooOooooOoooOooomcrrrssshh…” iTunes also has a few results under SFX, from various sources.
My question: where does that sound clip come from? Is it even from a real nuclear test, or just a stock sound effect that got associated with them because it sounded good? The one definitely authentic audio recording of an atomic test I found—footage of tests often being dubbed, either because there was no audio to begin with; or just to sync up the explosion with the sound, which would take several seconds to reach a (surviving) observer—actually didn’t sound like that.
And, ironically, if I’m fortunate enough, I’ll be unfortunate enough to never get the chance to hear or record an atmospheric nuclear detonation personally.
So…can anyone help me get to the bottom of this one?
I was really hoping someone would have an answer for this. I thought it was from Castle Bravo but apparently not. It makes sense that the real sound of a nuclear blast would be a sharp report as it is an instantaneous event. If this is from a real nuclear test it would have to be from after effects as blast front rolls out.
But it probably wouldn’t be that long reverberating continuing explosion unless there were structures and sources of combustion to also go off. A bomb is a single point explosion [go watch mythbusters when they cook off a few pounds of C4] so there isn’t any source for any more explosions. If you look at the footage of the bomb tests there is a single shock wave that goes out and flattens everything causing the explosion sound. If you look at the footage on the youtube from the movie of the and listen, you get the original boom, then you get assorted smaller explosions, crashes of buildings being flattened, glass breaking and the sounds of the rubble being dropped. It is a compilation put together by the foley editors to match the scene.
First, most movie sound effects are made from stuff that might surprise you. Of course you’ve seen spoofs of cocoanuts for horses’ hooves. I imagine a sound effect like that is made up of a whole host of different things.
Second, while the first shockwave of an atom bomb would be quite sharp, it wouldn’t just be “boom” and it’s all over. Yes, the sound can reverberate, bouncing off hills etc.
Third, air attenuates high frequencies faster than low frequencies.
For a good example of the above two factors, compare the thunder from a nearby lightning strike with one far off.
Finally, sound effects in movies are geared for what we expect to hear, not what we’d really hear.
That was a 2 KT payload. You do hear a sharp report and then a significant reverberation.
I have no cite, but I’ve read various Hiroshima survivors reporting that they heard nothing at all. The shockwave was faster than the speed of sound, and they were just silently flattened, recalling no sound after that.
I would imagine that at the safe distance from a large bomb, say 100KT, the sharp report of the inital shockwave would have diffused, leaving you only with these endless reverberations from a large wavefront being reflected off a huge number of small bumps and whatnot in the landscape.
What was so idiotic about it? They seem to be unharmed.
This is an interesting question actually, would the drawn out ‘rumble’ maybe be caused by the formation of the mushroom cloud as air and other material is drawn in after detonation?
Has anyone checked in on them lately?
If the missile had been off course just a little bit they would off been toast. They mention feeling the thermal pulse from it as it was.
Well do we know if it had any long-term effects on them or not? And if those men had been involved WW2 or Korea I imagine the risks associated with the test wouldn’t have seemed unacceptable. I just think calling them idiots is unfair.
Its the cameraman I feel sorry for, he wasn’t a volunteer!
A completely reasonable response given that we live in an age where nuclear atomics are more fearful than cyclones, tsunamis, guns, and car accidents.
Nuclear radiation is worth avoiding. However we are bombarded every second from space and from radioactivity in the Earth. Somehow we survive and thrive.
Its just not that harmful. I’d have stood with those men. I’d have worn dark glasses and full clothing and insisted we were upwind but otherwise, the risks were really low.
Actually, with to the given figures for the weapon yield, and the distance from the explosion (about 14,800 ft), according to a couple of nuclear effects calculators, those observers received…something less than 1 rem, or 10 millisieverts.
I say “something” because neither calculator could give figures any lower, and that dose was at about 7,720 feet from the explosion. And is slightly more than one chest CT scan, about a fifth of the yearly permitted dose for US radiation workers, or eating 100,000 bananas.
I just saw an anime cutscene in a video game I’m playing where a rocket was lifting off, and they used the SAME exact sound effect as the one linked in the OP. Thought that might be an interesting data point to add to the discussion.
The radiation (thermal & ionizing) would go much faster than sound, but the shockwave (blast) is a pressure wave, which would go at the speed of sound.
That doesn’t contradict the survivors’ reports. They could have been hit with the radiation and knocked out, they could have been rendered unconscious by the blast, or they could have been rendered unconscious shortly after the blast and not remembered it (as is typical for head trauma or losing consciousness: long term memories haven’t had time to get established).
Ahem! As the executive producer of several NPR radio drama shows* during the 80s and 90s, I can tell you that sound effects (SFX) rarely have anything to do with Real Life. One way to get a great explosion sound, for instance, is to have one of your more uncouth engineers drink a highly carbonated drink, then stand in front of a microphone and Buuuurrrrrrpppp! In the Good Ol’ Days, we’d tape this at 15 ips and play it back at 3 and 3/4. Nowadays, you do the same thing digitally, but without shifting pitch to accommodate the slower clock-out speed. I made a very convincing volcano explosion using exactly this technique many years ago.
Among my favorite sound effects: Stuffing an elephant into a suitcase; the Martian transmollifigrator; a cup of coffee being poured continuously during a minute & 45 second exposition (without any “looping”). And for people walking through tall grass, or deep jungle, we had a couple of cheerleader pompoms that we’d swish against each other.
I will say that you need a lot of “door open” and “door close” effects in audio production. After spending hours trying to get what we wanted from commercial SFX records, I borrowed a snazzy tape recorder and spent most of a Saturday taping 15 varieties of doors (wood, screen, steel, car, vault, garage) being opened and closed with varying states of emotional agitation on the part of the door operators. We were going to release it as an album called “The Doors”–but there was copyright trouble.
Them, not so much, given the detonation (Operation Plumbbob, Shot John) occurred 14,500 feet over their heads. (The detonation occurred at 18,500 MSL; Yucca Flats is ~4,000 ft. MSL). The flight crews detailed to get samples from the cloud, on the other hand…
From the second link, and it’s a bit confusing, the fliers came within 3000 - 7000 feet of the explosion, depending on which aircraft they were in.
I am not an MD, and especially not an MD or PhD with a background in nuclear medicine, but my lay understanding assisted bycalculators like this, and radiation threshold studies such as that, (scroll to page 196 for the relevant table) is that a whole body one-time dose equivalent of 130-220 mSv raises your risk of cancer by about 1%. There is language in the linked study that suggests the linear radiation threshold cancer risk model may not apply for doses below 100 mGy. While the flight crews were at that dose range or higher, the ground personnel were at a minimum of twice the distance away, and closer probably to 3-4 times as far. The inverse square law would lead you think that their prompt radiation dose therefore was 4-16 times less intense than the flight crews’, albeit the crew was partially shielded by their airplane and the personnel were standing in open air.
Again, not a doctor or other expert, but it doesn’t look like the prompt radiation from the burst ‘meaningfully’ increased the cancer risk for the guys on the ground. No idea if any fallout from the bomb/rocket case later settled on the area, or was blown some distance down wind.
The calculator links and work by Ranchoth, and the Foley stuff contributed by AuntPam was a delight to read, thank you.
