Caught on video, watch what the shock wave does to this door and office.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1kvHl5Qcnzc
“Duck and Cover works”
Ya mean duck and cower...There was no time...These two only had time to soil their undies.
I finally got an e-mail from my teaching colleague in Chelyabinsk. She’s OK, thankfully. No problems, but she said when she heard the explosion, she damned near soiled herself.
The sound of the explosion and breaking glass everywhere was quite an experience, she wrote. Scary as hell. She said for a quick second, she honestly thought it was a nuclear attack - she was waiting for the fireball to consume her and everyone else.
I notice that they instinctively went to duck and cover, it seems that the majority of injuries were the type that would have been avoided, by D&C.
People need to be trained to not go look through the windows at whatever explosive noise, or bright flash, just occured.
The two big immediate threats from a nuke are 1) the heat wave (flash) 2) the blast wave. Just getting in a shadow will protect you from the heat wave, so by all means do not turn into the light. If you do you will probably go blind. Once the flash has ended get away from glass windows as fast as you can. Flying glass is a big killer. It is possible to survive a nuke if you are far enough away that the over pressure will not collapse the structure you are in. So yes duck and cover can work. If you are alive after the blast move upwind to avoid the fallout.