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a question about nuclear bombs and radioactivity?
hey everyone,
this might seem like a rather elementary question for those well acquainted with science, but i'll ask it nonetheless. i am analyzing a poem called "the horses" by Edwin Muir for an essay i'm writing for class, and a few lines in the first stanza have got me wondering, were a nuclear bomb to be detonated within the vicinity of cities or towns obviously not obliterated in the blast, would the resulting radioactivity cause the radios in people's homes to cease functioning? i ask this because muir specifically mentions that the radios stop working, in his descriptive events in the first stanza. what i am wondering is why that would be the case, the actual scientific explanation for why this would cause a disturbance, or whether he simply means that the radios have gone silent because no one is left alive to transmit signals through them. i feel as though, if there were an actual disturbance from the presence of radioactivity, this would be a strong piece of evidence to use to validate my analysis of the poem, but i've looked on wikipedia and elsewhere and can't seem to find a direct link to radioactivity and radios failing as a result (i've also been up all night and am exhausted so i'm not as sharp as i could be at the moment), and so i'm not even certain that this is even a valid point to raise in my essay. can anybody help me out, please? thanks.
spambot ahoy *reported*
hmm, thanks blain, that makes sense. unfortunately muir begins the poem with "barely a twelvemonth after the seven days' war that put the world to sleep", so it would seem that perhaps too much time has passed for the radioactivity to still have any affect upon radio waves. but then i guess the question is, how long does radioactivity linger in the wake of a nuclear blast? this is on the right track though, thanks for your input.
yess, thank you jc and bhaskar. my problem was that i was looking at the wrong wikis; nuclear explosion, result of nuclear explosion, general electromagnetism, radiation...basically everything except electromagnetic pulse. told you i was tired. xD thanks guys, this helps a lot.
i was misinterpreting the mention of the passing of a year. after mentioning the "seven days war", he says "on the second day, the radios failed; we turned the knobs, no answer". he's describing the events of each successive day after the blast; so if it's the second day, the EMP could have reached his location and disabled the radios. awesome, this is starting to make sense. thanks guys.
3 Answers
- Anonymous1 decade agoFavorite Answer
Well you might have read about the Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) which radiates from the blast. This causes all electronic devices to completely burn out. Look up EMP in wiki and you will get your answer ready. Since Radios have transistors and other such electronic stuff they are likely to burn out.
- Blain RinehartLv 41 decade ago
I'm pretty sure that there would be a large electromagnetic pulse that would radiate spherically from the detonation point that would 'drown out' any radio signals from other places. I don't think it'd last too long.
Edit:
Ahh, good point Bhaskar