Did he actually die? In the interval of microseconds he went from a living human to being part of an expanding ball of energy. Not even all the nuclei of his body would have survived.
I would expect he would have been turned into organic vapor, actually. And some boiling liquids that wold condense and rain down upon the Russian terrain a few days later…
Death is the irreversible cessation of physiological and psychological activity. Given the highly entropic nature of a nuclear detonation, the irreversibility of the process seems practically certain. And since an expanding cloud of monatomic vapor does not carry out any sort of physiological or psychological activity, I believe it would be entirely apropos to describe the fate of Major Kong as having constituted a “death.”
The shell you say….
I was left wondering about Major T. J. Kong (Slim Pickens) fate when the bomb goes off.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove#/media/File:Dr._Strangelove_-_Riding_the_Bomb.png
Did he actually die? In the interval of microseconds he went from a living human to being part of an expanding ball of energy. Not even all the nuclei of his body would have survived.
I would expect he would have been turned into organic vapor, actually. And some boiling liquids that wold condense and rain down upon the Russian terrain a few days later…
That close to an atomic explosion, his body would be turned into plasma, not organic vapor. None of the chemical bonds would survive.
Death is the irreversible cessation of physiological and psychological activity. Given the highly entropic nature of a nuclear detonation, the irreversibility of the process seems practically certain. And since an expanding cloud of monatomic vapor does not carry out any sort of physiological or psychological activity, I believe it would be entirely apropos to describe the fate of Major Kong as having constituted a “death.”
Okay, if no one else will say it, I suppose it falls on me.
*Ahem*
NEEEERDS!!!!
I love y’all.