If the Pentagon Plane Had Been a Nuclear Weapon

WHILE THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL FOOLS PARTY PREPARES FOR ITS QUADRENNIAL FORNICATION FESTIVAL, it might be good to take a moment and visualize what is at stake.

Today, our visual aid is Effects of 300 Kiloton Nuclear Detonation Centered at Pentagon

Bad news: Armageddon for all.
Good news: Georgetown Real Estate becomes affordable.

To get a "feel" for what the graphic represents:

Within tens of minutes after the cataclysmic events associated with the detonation, a mass of buoyantly rising, fire-heated air would signal the start of a second and distinctly different event -- a mass fire of gigantic scale and ferocity. The firestorm would quickly increase in intensity, generating ground winds of hurricane force with average air temperatures well above the boiling point of water. This would produce a lethal environment over a vast area.

The Pentagon is located near the relatively wide Potomac River, but fires would start simultaneously in large areas on both sides. The direction of fire winds in regions near the river would be modified by the water, but the overall wind pattern from these two huge and nearly contiguous fire zones would be similar to that of a single mass fire and will be treated as one.

The first indicator of a mass fire would be strangely shifting ground winds of growing intensity near ground zero. (Such winds are entirely different from and unrelated to the earlier blast-wave winds that exert "drag pressure" on structures.) These fire-winds are a physical consequence of the rise of heated air over large areas of ground surface, much like a gigantic bonfire.

The inrushing winds would drive the flames from combusting buildings horizontally toward the ground, filling city streets with hot flames and firebrands, breaking in doors and windows, and causing the fire to jump hundreds of feet to swallow anything that was not yet violently combusting. These extraordinary winds would transform the targeted area into a huge hurricane of fire.

Within tens of minutes, everything within approximately 3.5 to 4.6 miles of the Pentagon would be engulfed in a mass fire. The fire would extinguish all life and destroy almost everything else.
-- City on fire | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Just another reminder that in this election we are, quite literally, playing with fire.

Posted by Vanderleun at July 22, 2004 10:40 AM