Hundreds injured by meteor shower in the Ural

[K. A. Pital]

Come on Zhirinovsky is a clown, a court jester.

[phongn]

Nature is reporting yield in the "hundreds of kilotonnes" range.

[Broomstick]

What is believed to be one of the impact locations:


Not impact sites, "just" damage from the shockwave:

[Zaune]

Sobering comment from Charlie Stross: If this had happened 30 years ago today, we would all have died.

[Flagg]

Sobering comment from Charlie Stross: If this had happened 30 years ago today, we would all have died.

That's the first thing that went through my head, too.

[Irbis]

I'd expect USSR to be more professional that that, seeing real missile "detections" didn't caused war, it's unlikely something very peculiar for an ICBM would instantly trigger response.

[TimothyC]

Sobering comment from Charlie Stross: If this had happened 30 years ago today, we would all have died.

For making that comment, Stross comes off as an idiot. The Soviets would have known what this was and wouldn't have launched at the US.

[Sky Captain]

A small airburst like this one that cause no major damage may not have triggered retaliation strike during cold war. However a Tunguska like multi megaton explosion over one of the most important Russian military industrial complexes and major nuclear weapons production center during tensions between USSR and NATO could have been a different story.

[Sea Skimmer]

Both the US and Russia had and still extensive systems to detect nuclear detonations. An event like this might have been some level of problem in the 1950s, but in the 1950s nobody had massive piles of ICBMs ready to vaporize each other on a short notice either. By the early 1960s nuclear burst detection systems were in place on both sides. The modern US system actually covers almost the entire planet as it is hosted on GPS satellites, an earlier system called Vela had its own satellites with more limited coverage. Russian satellite capabilities are unknown to me, but they had an extensive ground based system, as the US once did, and which even included mobile systems for use by field armies.

The signature of a nuclear weapon is very specific even just in terms of the thermal and visual light components, before you factor in the X-ray, gamma ray and neutron radiation sensors these systems also use. A random big explosion is not going to be automatically interpreted as a nuclear weapon. All the more so in a place like Russian known for its huge ammunition depot explosions even while the USSR was alive and well.

Detecting missile launches is a far more difficult thing, because the signature of a missile is less specific, but then that is also why redundant detection systems exist for that purpose, and as we see in the very incident this idiot talks about, detecting five possible launches still did not lead to war. Charles Stross has no idea what he is talking about. Thankfully the real people in charge of this kind of stuff are much smarter then he is.

[Broomstick]

On one of the news broadcasts today I actually saw a thermal track for the meteor from a satellite that is allegedly one of those used to spot potential missile launches (among other things, I'm sure). I would be really surprised if the Russians didn't have comparable abilities, they do after all have a very fine space program.

[Sea Skimmer]

Whoever said it is wrong, the satellite was a Russian weather bird called Meteosat-9.

Data from early warning satellites, which Russia does have, is highly classified material.

[Broomstick]

Fair enough - it's not like the media hasn't been wrong before. Still proves the point that the Russians have excellent satellite coverage.

Our defense department does sometimes release satellite/photographic information to the public even from top secret sources... after some vetting to make sure not too much is revealed.

[FSTargetDrone]

This is a good one, because you see the light appear in the sky from nothing.



Also, whatever the people in the car are saying, they seem remarkably calm.

[Sea Skimmer]

Fair enough - it's not like the media hasn't been wrong before. Still proves the point that the Russians have excellent satellite coverage.

Our defense department does sometimes release satellite/photographic information to the public even from top secret sources... after some vetting to make sure not too much is revealed.

Most if not all, I'm not sure, of the DoD satellite photos that get released are actually stuff the military bought from commercial firms. This is done on a very large scale. In any event this is only ever done with visual wavelength photos, military infrared and radar data is never released like that. The very existence of the latest US spy satellites is not even acknowledged.

Automatically classifying the infrared signature of a nuclear blast is highly unlikely to be a capability present on a weather satellite, though if you had the spare computer power you could probably back fit it on a modern one.

[Broomstick]

[folti78]

Also, whatever the people in the car are saying, they seem remarkably calm.

Watch some russian dashcam compilations on youtube. An interesting atmospheric effect far away is less dangerous then the next dumbass doing something really stupid on the road.

[cosmicalstorm]

Wow it really was in the multi hundred Kt range. I'm surprised it didn't cause permanent blindness with the flash.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

It may have to some people, cosmicalstorm, we don't know yet the classification of all the injuries. For that matter, there's bound to be deaths because of all the shattered windows in a Russian city in the middle of winter... Maybe everyone will cover them up with plywood in time, but I worry some elderly and disabled people are going to freeze in the wake of this.

[Broomstick]

Some may have been blinded by flying glass as well, since so many rushed to windows to see what caused the flash. Some of the pictures of wounded do show people with facial and eye injuries.

[EdgarjPublius]

I imagine a a meteor exploding doesn't generate as much energy in photons as a similarly powerful nuclear explosion, and in completely different spectra.

[Broomstick]

It doesn't generate ionizing radiation, either.

It may rank in the kiloton, tens of kilotons, hundreds of kilotons, or more putting the energy release in the same league as a nuke, but it's not a nuke. I'm not conversant in all the ways the two would differ, but yeah, anything electromagnetic generated will be of a much shorter wavelength, and the "detonation" occurs very high in the atmosphere, which goes a long way to mitigating the energy that actually reaches structures and people.

It does demonstrate, however, that merely shockwave, that is, the sonic and kinetic energy transmitted through the atmosphere, will cause damage a considerable distance from the primary source of the energy.

[cosmicalstorm]

Pity they don't show the duck and cover movies these days. And I'll keep this in mind to rub in the face of those who mock that info in the future

[Broomstick]

:::scribbles notes furiously::: In the event of a massively bright flash in the sky, stay away from the windows!!!

(Really, it is a good rule of thumb. Also, stay away from windows when in the vicinity of a bomb threat or if you hear gunfire outside.)

[Sea Skimmer]

I imagine a a meteor exploding doesn't generate as much energy in photons as a similarly powerful nuclear explosion, and in completely different spectra.

Most importantly it doesn't make an instant flash, one can see in the videos how the brightness rises very rapidly but not instantly, so the eye should have some time to adapt and employ the blink reflex. You don't get that with a nuke which is why they are so dangerous to eyesight.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

At School No. 37 in Chelyabinsk, a quick-thinking substitute teacher, Yulia Karbysheva, got all 44 of her fourth graders out of harm’s way as the meteor lit up the sky, the Interfax news agency reported. After the intense bright flash of its explosion, the children rushed to the windows, but before the shock wave could hit, she commanded them to get under their desks.

Karbysheva herself was then showered with glass and debris, but the children were unharmed. With a cut to a tendon in her left hand and a gash on her left thigh, she led her class to safety outdoors. The doctor treating her Saturday at Hospital No. 9 told Interfax she would recover.

Someone remembered her Soviet-era Civil Defence instruction...