Pass the word to all decent Americans! Don’t leave newspapers and magazines lying about on coffee tables and in magazine racks! Real Americans don’t read! (All patriotic Americans get their news from the noncombustible television.) Don’t hang laundry out to dry in the sunshine. (All patriotic Americans purchase electric dryers and consume godfearing electricity.)
Remember: Atomic bombs don’t kill people. Clutter kills people.
Neat white people will survive. Dirty dark people from “slum areas” will die. It’s God’s way.
(h/t reader bronxbee)
Just… jaw-dropping propaganda. What they aren’t telling you is that most people would be dead before the house caught on fire.
Paper ignites itself at about 420-475ºF, so I think we can assume the heat for those couple of seconds between the Flash and the Bang is above that temperature.
Current thinking on Pompeii was that a heatwave of 250-500ºF from the eruption was the force that killed the population so quickly, likely within seconds. Being inside apparently was no shelter from that level of heat. Regardless of how dirty your house is, if the heat inside is enough to cause paper to ignite, it’s hot enough to cook your lungs the instant you breathe in that superheated air. Anyone as close to the bomb as those houses would be dead by the time the shockwave reached them.
Yeah, I taped that off TCM last week and watched it with jaws agape. So, um, after my neat, painted white, house survives the initial flash with just slight burns, then I have the slow death of radiation poisoning along with all those dead bodies rotting away next door.
Good thing I kept my living room table clear of clutter…
Thanks Left_Wing_Fox, those were my first thoughts–how hot must it be for paper to ignite spontaneously.
Well, you know that old saying – Die horribly and leave a pretty house… or something like that.