Back
pain, serious back pain, and a touch of toothache as well. These
things have sapped my inspiration the last few days, and I was at a
complete loss as how not to waste the afternoon.
Luckily,
I was watching “Goldfinger”, and as the luridly waiscoated Gert
Frobe detailed the true nature of his “Operation Grand Slam” to
007, it reminded me of a mental wondering I've often had in the past.
What
would happen, if one were sat next to a detonating nuclear bomb?
It is
of course, a fate many people have experienced in movies; Stanley
Tucci as Conrad Zimsky in the finale of ludicrous geo-disaster movie
“The Core” springs most immediately to mind. But no-one really
shows what happens, no-one wonders about what you would see, feel, or
experience. Most of the time, our incineratable hero normally makes a
laconic joke with a sideways grin, before the shot cuts away to a
safely distant exterior shot of the flash, fireball then mushroom
cloud.
But
what can it be like, to be a metre away from a hydrogen bomb, a yard
away from a “Fat Man” blast? Would you have time to register
anything at all before your body was reduced to its component atoms,
or would you just step into everlasting blackness the same moment the
detonation was making a CERN experiment out of your very organs?
Well, I
think you would notice something, simply because it would be a
travesty to be so close to such a major event and be catapulted into
death without knowing it. So, I'd like to think - without any
evidence or theory to back me up at all - that the detonation on a
megaton sized device would create a huge well in the curve of space
time, and thus time would slow down.
So,
rather in the fashion in the activation of the solar bomb in
“Sunshine”, time and space would be “smeared out” and you'd
be able to see the expanding mass of energy heading out towards you –
unless you had your eyes shut, this may be tricky not to do – so
you could almost run your fingers through it like million degree
treacle.
And
then of course, you would be immolated beyond all measurable trace.
But I'd so hate to be so close to an event like that, and not be able
to study it a little.
Copyright Bloody Mulberry 02.02.14
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