The Steps a President Would Take to Destroy His Nation, According to Elon Musk’s AI Chatbot, Grok

in Artificial Intelligence, Politics | April 3rd, 2025

Just out of curiosity, and apropos of nothing, we asked Grok (the AI chatbot created by Elon Musk) the following question: If a president of a superpower wanted to destroy his own country, what steps would he take? Here’s what Grok had to say:

If a president of a superpower aimed to deliberately undermine their own nation, they could theoretically take steps to weaken its economic, social, military, and political foundations. Here’s a hypothetical breakdown of such actions, assuming they have enough influence and control to push them through:

Economic Sabotage: They could tank the economy by imposing reckless fiscal policies—massive, unsustainable debt through unchecked spending or tax cuts without funding, devaluing the currency by pressuring the central bank to print money excessively, or dismantling key industries through deregulation or punitive tariffs that disrupt trade. Encouraging corruption and cronyism could further drain resources.
Undermining National Security: Militarily, they might weaken defenses by slashing budgets, pulling out of strategic alliances, or leaking sensitive intelligence to adversaries. Ordering troops into unwinnable, morale-crushing conflicts—or abandoning critical outposts—could erode military strength and global standing.
Social Division: They could stoke internal conflict by amplifying divisive rhetoric, targeting specific groups with policies that breed resentment, or letting infrastructure and public services crumble to fuel discontent. Misinformation campaigns, either directly or through proxies, could deepen mistrust in institutions.
Political Erosion: To cripple governance, they might attack the rule of law—pardoning loyalists who break it, stacking courts with unqualified ideologues, or pushing legislation that centralizes power in their hands. Undermining elections through voter suppression or outright fraud could destabilize democracy further.
International Isolation: They could alienate allies by breaking treaties, insulting partners, or cozying up to hostile regimes, leaving the country diplomatically vulnerable. Withdrawing from global organizations or climate agreements might also diminish soft power and economic leverage.
Neglecting Crises: In the face of natural disasters, pandemics, or cyberattacks, they could deliberately botch responses—ignoring experts, withholding aid, or spreading confusion—letting chaos compound.

Grok continues: “In practice, any president trying this would face massive resistance: checks and balances, public backlash, legal barriers, and pushback from their own administration or military. It’d take more than intent—sophisticated manipulation and loyal enablers would be key. Historically, no leader has pulled this off fully, but you can see echoes in cases like Venezuela under Maduro, where mismanagement and authoritarianism led to collapse—though even there, self-destruction wasn’t the explicit goal. Intentional ruin would be a slow burn, not a switch flipped overnight.”

As you read this, you might hear a lot of boxes being checked in your mind, and you might wonder if Grok is calling the shots. But, dear reader, this is all purely theoretical. As they say in the movies, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Umberto Eco Makes a List of the 14 Common Features of Fascism

The Story of Fascism: Rick Steves’ Documentary Helps Us Learn from the Hard Lessons of the 20th Century

Yale Professor Jason Stanley Identifies 10 Tactics of Fascism: The “Cult of the Leader,” Law & Order, Victimhood and More

by OC | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Why the Romans Stopped Reading Books

in Books, History | April 3rd, 2025

Nobody reads books anymore. Whether or not that notion strikes you as true, you’ve probably heard it expressed fairly often in recent decades — just as you might have had you lived in the Roman Empire of late antiquity. During that time, as ancient-history YouTuber Garrett Ryan explains in the new Told in Stone video above, the “book trade declined with the educated elite that had supported it. The copying of secular texts slowed, and finally ceased. The books in Roman libraries, public and private, crumbled on their shelves. Only a small contingent of survivors found their way into monasteries.” As went the reading culture of the empire, so went the empire itself.

Some may be tempted to draw parallels with certain countries in existence today. But what may be more surprising is the extent of Roman reading at its height. Though only about one in ten Romans could read, Ryan explains, “the Roman elite defined themselves by a sophisticated literary education, and filled their cities with texts.”

Those included the Acta Diurna, a kind of proto-newspaper carved into stone or metal and displayed in public places. But from the reign of Augustus onward, “the city of Rome boasted an impressive array of public libraries,” filled with texts written on papyrus scrolls, and later — especially in the third and fourth centuries — on codices, whose format closely resembles books as we know them today.

Rome even had tabernae librariae, which we’d recognize as bookstores, whose techniques included painting the titles of bestsellers on their exterior columns. Some of them also published the books they sold, setting an early example of what we’d call “vertical integration.” Roman readers of the first century would all have had at least some familiarity with Martial’s Epigrams, but even such a big contemporary hit would have been outsold by a classic like the Aeneid, “the one book that any family with a library owned.” With 99 percent of its literature lost to us, we’re unlikely ever to determine if, like modern-day America, ancient Rome was really saturated with less-respectable works, its own equivalents of self help, business memoir, and genre fiction. Who knows? Perhaps Rome, too, had romantasy.

How Ancient Scrolls, Charred by the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, Are Now Being Read by Particle Accelerators, 3D Modeling & Artificial Intelligence

Explore the Roman Cookbook, De Re Coquinaria, the Oldest Known Cookbook in Existence

Is America Declining Like Ancient Rome?

The First Work of Science Fiction: Read Lucian’s 2nd-Century Space Travelogue A True Story

How 99% of Ancient Literature Was Lost

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Watch Jazz ‘Hot’, the Rare 1938 Short Film With Jazz Legend Django Reinhardt

in Music | April 2nd, 2025

Here’s a remarkable short film of the great jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, violinist Stéphane Grappelli and their band the Quintette du Hot Club de France performing on a movie set in 1938. The film was hastily organized by the band’s British agent Lew Grade as a way to introduce the band’s unique style of guitar- and violin-based jazz to the British public before their first UK tour. As Michael Dregni writes in Gypsy Jazz: In Search of Django Reinhardt and the Soul of Gypsy Swing:

The Quintette was unknown to the British public, and there was no telling how their new music would resonate. So, Grade sought to educate his audience. He hired a movie crew to film a six-minute-plus promotional short entitled Jazz “Hot” to be shown in British theaters providing a lesson in jazz appreciation to warm up the crowds.

That would explain the didactic tone of the first two and a half minutes of the film, which plods along as a remedial lesson on the nature of jazz. It opens with an orchestra giving a note-for-note performance of Handel’s “Largo,” from the opera Xerxes, which the narrator then contrasts to the freedom of jazz improvisation.

But the film really comes alive when Django arrives on the screen and launches into a jazz arrangement of the popular French song “J’attendrai.” (The name means “I will wait,” and it’s a reworking of a 1933 Italian song, “Tornerai” or “You Will Return,” by Dino Olivieri and Nino Rastelli.) Although the sequences of Reinhardt and the band performing were obviously synchronized to a previously recorded track, Jazz “Hot” is the best surviving visual document of the legendary guitarist’s two-fingered fretting technique, which he developed after losing the use of most of his left hand in a fire. To learn more about Reinhardt, visit the links in the Relateds below.

Note: An earlier version of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

Hear Lost Recording of Pink Floyd Playing with Jazz Violinist Stéphane Grappelli on “Wish You Were Here”

How Django Reinhardt, After Losing Two Fingers, Developed An Innovative Style & Inspired Black Sabbath Guitarist Toni Iommi to Do the Same

Django Reinhardt Demonstrates His Guitar Genius in Rare Footage From the 1930s, 40s & 50s

by OC | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The 1927 Film Metropolis Created a Dystopian Vision of What the World Would Look Like in 2026–and It Hits Close to Home

in Film, History | April 2nd, 2025

Ultra-tall high-rises against dark skies. A huge distance between the rich and the poor. Robber barons at the helm of large-scale industrial operations that turn man into machine. Machines that have become intelligent enough to displace man. These have all been standard elements of dystopian visions so long that few of us could manage to imagine a grim future without including at least a couple of them. We’ve all seen these elements used before, and they owe much of their staying power to the impact they first made in Fritz Lang’s cinematic spectacle Metropolis, which premiered 98 years ago. Many imitations have since passed through popular culture, most of which haven’t mastered the techniques that gave the original its power.

“Set in a futuristic urban dystopia, the film portrays a divided society where the wealthy elite live in luxurious skyscrapers while the oppressed working class toil underground,” writes Pruethicheth Lert-udompruksa at the IAAC blog. “The film explores themes of class struggle, social inequality, and the dehumanizing effects of industrialization.”

One of those theme’s strongest icons is the Tower of Babel, a looming skyscraper that “symbolizes the stark division between the privileged and the oppressed.” As Paul Batters writes at the Silver Screen Classics blog, “like the ziggurats of Ur, the pyramids and temples of Egypt,” that building and other elements realized by the film’s groundbreaking visual design add up to a titular “city that dominates humanity.”

The loss of humanity is the prime concern of the Junkies video essay at the top of the post, which explains several ways Lang and his collaborators convey that phenomenon through light, shadow, and perspective — light, shadow, and perspective being the main tools available to a black-and-white silent film. The One Hundred Years of Cinema video essay just above covers more such aspects of the picture’s construction, as well as its historical context: “In nineteen-twenties Europe, a radical form of nationalism called fascism was coming to prominence, and six years after the film’s release, Lang found himself exiled to America for his refusal to join the Nazi party.”

For quite some time, the versions of Metropolis that people could see were censored or otherwise incomplete cuts; only in 2008 did it undergo a complete restoration. But now, it’s easier than ever to see that its “winning combination of camera shots and angles, lighting contrasts, and shot composition really do well to depict humanity as becoming subservient to technology. And so, perhaps today, more so than in 1927, it is easier to read the message that Lang is trying to portray through the cinematic devices he employs.” Watching the impoverished workers of Metropolis become part of the machine they work for, while its idle rich “become part of the machine by submission [to] pleasure,” we might reflect upon the astuteness of the choice to set the film’s story in the year 2026.

Watch Metropolis’ Cinematically Innovative Dance Scene, Restored as Fritz Lang Intended It to Be Seen (1927)

Behold Beautiful Original Movie Posters for Metropolis from France, Sweden, Germany, Japan & Beyond

Fritz Lang Invents the Video Phone in Metropolis (1927)

Read the Original 32-Page Program for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927)

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch Bob Dylan Make His Debut at the Newport Folk Festival in Colorized 1963 Footage

in Music | April 2nd, 2025

?si=l7KWVf9NZBUkPyM6

In July 1963, Bob Dylan made his first appearance at the Newport Folk Festival. On opening night, he captivated a crowd of 13,000 with a performance of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” accompanied by Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, and Peter, Paul, and Mary. Then, the following day, Dylan delivered a rendition of “With God On Our Side” (a duet with Joan Baez) and performed “North Country Blues” solo, a song that would later appear on The Times They Are a‑Changin’ in 1964. You can watch these historic performances in original black-and-white footage. (Simply click the links in the text.) Or, thanks to the YouTube channel Toca o Disco, you can experience the moment in color. As a 22-year-old Bob Dylan sings, the audience listens in rapt attention, taking in his powerful folk song about the harsh realities of mining and industrialization. Take note above.

Compare the “It Ain’t Me Babe” Scene from A Complete Unknown to the Real Bob Dylan & Joan Baez Performance at the Newport Folk Festival

Watch Bob Dylan Perform “Only A Pawn In Their Game,” His Damning Song About the Murder of Medgar Evers, at the 1963 March on Washington

How Bob Dylan Created a Musical & Literary World All His Own: Four Video Essays

by OC | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 11 ) |

The Only Illustrated Manuscript of Homer’s Iliad from Antiquity

in Books, History, Poetry | April 1st, 2025

Despite its status as one of the most widely known and studied epic poems of all time, Homer’s Iliad has proven surprisingly resistant to adaptation. However much inspiration it has provided to modern-day novelists working in a variety of different traditions, it’s translated somewhat less powerfully to visual media. Perhaps people still watch Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy, the very loose, Brad Pitt-starring cinematic Iliad adaptation from 2004. But chances are, a century or two from now, humanity on the whole will still be more impressed by the 52 illustrations of the Ambrosian Iliad, which was made in Constantinople or Alexandria around the turn of the sixth century.

As noted at HistoryofInformation.com, “along with the Vergilius Vaticanus [previously featured on Open Culture] and the Vergilius Romanus, [the Ambrosian Iliad] is one of only three illustrated manuscripts of classical literature that survived from antiquity.” It’s also the only ancient manuscript that depicts scenes from the Iliad. Its illustrations, which “show the names of places and characters,” offer “an insight into early manuscript illumination.” They “show a considerable diversity of compositional schemes, from single combat to complex battle scenes,” as Kurt Weitzmann writes in Late Antique and Early Christian Book Illumination. “This indicates that, by that time, Iliad illustration had passed through various stages of development and thus had a long history behind it.”

Above, you can see the Ambrosian Iliad’s illustrations of the capture of Dolon (top), Achilles sacrificing to Zeus for Patroclus’ safe return (middle), and Hector killing Patroclus as Automedon escapes (bottom). You can find more scans at the Warburg Institute Iconographic Database, along with other Iliad-related artifacts. Some of the later artistic renditions of Homer in that collection date from the fifteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and even the nineteenth centuries, each interpreting these age-old poems for their own time. Indeed, the Iliad and Odyssey have proven enduringly resonant for the better part of three millennia, and there’s no reason to believe that they won’t continue to find new artistic forms for just as long to come. But there’s something especially powerful about seeing Homer rendered by artists who, though they may have come centuries and centuries after the blind poet himself, knew full well what it was to live in antiquity.

One of the Best Preserved Ancient Manuscripts of the Iliad Is Now Digitized: See the “Bankes Homer” Manuscript in High Resolution (Circa 150 C.E.)

A Handy, Detailed Map Shows the Hometowns of Characters in the Iliad

Hear Homer’s Iliad Read in the Original Ancient Greek

See the Iliad Performed as a One-Woman Show in a Montreal Bar by McGill University Classics Professor Lynn Kozak

Hear Homer’s Iliad Read in the Original Ancient Greek

Greek Myth Comix Presents Homer’s Iliad & Odyssey Using Stick-Man Drawings

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

The Great Gatsby: A Free Audio Book

in Audio Books, Literature | April 1st, 2025

April 10th will mark the 100th anniversary of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic American novel, The Great Gatsby. As A.O. Scott notes in a recent tribute, when first published, The Great Gatsby got off to a slow start. Initially, “Reviewers shrugged. Sales were sluggish. The novel and its author slid toward obscurity.”

It wasn’t until the 1940s that Gatsby underwent a revival. Critics began to re-evaluate Fitzgerald’s novel, and the U.S. military “distributed more than 150,000 copies of ‘Gatsby’ to American servicemen during World War II,” all to help bored soldiers kill time. From there, Gatsby’s “cultural footprint expanded. Paperback editions proliferated, and the novel was name-checked by younger authors, including J.D. Salinger.” Today, with some 30 million copies sold worldwide and at least five film adaptations to its name, The Great Gatsby has established itself as an enduring American classic.

In January 2021, The Great Gatsby finally entered the public domain, allowing creators to make use of the literary work in different ways. As our writer Colin Marshall noted, “Already you can find The Gay Gatsby, B.A. Baker’s slash fiction reinterpretation of all the suppressed longing in the original novel; The Great Gatsby Undead, a zombie version; and Michael Farris Smith’s Nick, a prequel that follows Nick Carraway through World War I and out the other side.” And then there are more straightforward projects–like Project Gutenberg’s e‑book of the original text, or this free audio book version of The Great Gatsby. This five hour recording comes courtesy of Nolan Hennelly, and you can stream it above.

This reading will be added to our collection, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free.

The Great Gatsby Is Now in the Public Domain and There’s a New Graphic Novel

T. S. Eliot, Edith Wharton & Gertrude Stein Tell F. Scott Fitzgerald That Gatsby is Great, While Critics Called It a Dud (1925)

83 Years of Great Gatsby Book Cover Designs: A Photo Gallery

Haruki Murakami Translates The Great Gatsby, the Novel That Influenced Him Most

Andy Kaufman Reads Earnestly from The Great Gatsby and Enrages His Audience

The Wire Breaks Down The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Classic Criticism of America (NSFW)

by OC | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Did the Tower of Babel Actually Exist?: A Look at the Archaeological Evidence

in Architecture, History | March 31st, 2025

For all the means of communication and exchange we’ve established between the cultures of the world, no matter how distant they may be from one another, we still have no truly universal single human language. The reason could date back to antiquity, when we first attempted a grand collective project: that of building a tower that would reach the heavens. Determined to punish our effrontery, God not only destroyed the work in progress, but rendered our languages mutually unintelligible in order to hinder any further attempts to do it again. Or at least that’s how one story goes.

You may not subscribe to a literal reading of the account of the Tower of Babel as it appears in the Bible’s Book of Genesis, but according to the Hochelaga video above, the structure does have a fairly plausible basis in history.

It could be a legendary version of Etemenanki, a Mesopotamian ziggurat built to honor the god Marduk at such a scale that it inspired tall tales, as it were, spread far and wide in the ancient world, such as the rumor that its construction required mobilizing the manpower of all humanity. But it really did exist, as evidenced by its ruins discovered at the site of the ancient city of Babylon — which, in Hebrew, was called Babel.

A cuneiform-covered tablet conveniently found at the same location describes a construction project of Etemenanki’s size as using materials like bitumen and baked brick, which aligns with biblical details of the Tower of Babel, as do the Greek historian Herodotus’s references to its layout and structure. Also relevant is the Babylonians’ 587 BC invasion of Jerusalem, which brought captives to the capital. It’s hardly impossible that some of those displaced Jews would have the looming Etemenanki in mind when they went on to write the histories that would ultimately find their way into the Hebrew Bible. They may have had no hope of returning to their homeland, but they must, at least, have felt reasonably certain that Marduk’s days were numbered.

Literary Critic Northrop Frye Teaches “The Bible and English Literature”: All 25 Lectures Free Online

A Survival Guide to the Biblical Apocalypse

Isaac Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: A Witty, Erudite Atheist’s Guide to the World’s Most Famous Book

Did Psychedelic Mushrooms Appear in Medieval Christian Art?: A Video Essay

Visit the Online Library of Babel: New Web Site Turns Borges’ “Library of Babel” Into a Virtual Reality

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 35 ) |

A Rare Smile Captured in a 19th Century Photograph

in Photography | March 30th, 2025

Just look at this photo. Just look at this young girl’s smile. We know her name: O‑o-be’, according to the Smithsonian. And we know that she was a member of the Kiowa tribe in the Oklahoma Territory. And we know that the photo was taken in 1894. But that smile is like a time machine. O‑o-be’ might just as well have donned some traditional/historical garb, posed for her friends, and had them put on the ol’ sepia filter on her camera app.

But why? What is it about the smile?

For one thing, we are not used to seeing them in old photographs, especially ones from the 19th century. When photography was first invented, exposures could take 45 minutes. Having a portrait taken meant sitting stock still for a very long time, so smiling was right out. It was only near the end of the 19th century that shutter speeds improved, as did emulsions, meaning that spontaneous moments could be captured. Still, smiling was not part of many cultures. It could be seen as unseemly or undignified, and many people rarely sat for photos anyway. Photographs were seen by many people as a “passage to immortality” and seriousness was seen as less ephemeral.

Presidents didn’t officially smile until Franklin D. Roosevelt, which came at a time of great sorrow and uncertainty for a nation in the grips of the Great Depression. The president did it because Americans couldn’t.

Smiling seems so natural to us, it’s hard to think it hasn’t always been a part of art. One of the first things babies learn is the power of a smile, and how it can melt hearts all around. So why hasn’t the smile been commonplace in art?

Historian Colin Jones wrote a whole book about this, called The Smile Revolution in Eighteenth Century Paris, starting with a 1787 self-portrait by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun that depicted her and her infant. Unlike the coy half-smiles as seen in the Mona Lisa, Madame Le Brun’s painting showed the first white, toothy smile. Jones says it caused a scandal–smiles like this one were undignified. The only broad smiles seen in Renaissance painting were from children (who didn’t know better), the “filthy” plebeians, or the insane. What had happened? Jones credits the change to two things: the emergence of dentistry over the previous hundred years (including the invention of the toothbrush), and the emergence of a “cult of sensibility and politeness.” Jones explains this by looking at the heroines of the 18th century novel, where a smile meant an open heart, not a sarcastic smirk:

Now, O‑o-be’ and Jane Austen’s Emma might have been worlds apart, but so are we–creatures of technology, smiling at our iPhones as we take another selfie–from that Kiowan girl in the Fort Sill, Oklahoma studio of George W. Bretz.

Note: An earlier version of this post appeared on our site in 2020.

Eerie 19th Century Photographs of Ghosts: See Images from the Long, Strange Tradition of “Spirit Photography”

Visit a New Digital Archive of 2.2 Million Images from the First Hundred Years of Photography

Arab Photography Archive Puts 22,000 Historic Images Online: Get a Rare Glimpse into Life and Art in the Arab World

Take a Visual Journey Through 181 Years of Street Photography (1838–2019)

Ted Mills is a freelance writer on the arts who currently hosts the Notes from the Shed podcast and is the producer of KCRW’s Curious Coast. You can also follow him on Twitter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

by OC | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 29 ) |

Superman vs. the KKK: Hear the 1946 Superman Radio Show That Weakened the Klan

in Comics/Cartoons, History | March 28th, 2025

Years ago, back in 2016, we featured a 1950 Superman poster that urged students to defend the American way and fight discrimination everywhere. Today, we present another chapter from Superman’s little-known history as a Civil Rights defender.

The year is 1946. World War II has come to an end. And now membership in the Ku Klux Klan starts to rise again. Enter Stetson Kennedy, a human rights activist, who manages to infiltrate the KKK and then figures out an ingenious way to take them down. He contacts the producers of the popular Adventures of Superman radio show, and pitches them on a new storyline: Superman meets and defeats the KKK. Needing a new enemy to vanquish, the producers greenlight the idea.

The 16-episode series, “The Clan of the Fiery Cross,” aired in June 1946 and effectively chipped away at the Klan’s mystique, gradually revealing their secret codewords and rituals. Listen to the episodes above. And take heart in knowing this: According to Stephen J. Dubner and Steven Levitt, the authors of Freakonomics, The Clan of the Fiery Cross was “the greatest single contributor to the weakening of the Ku Klux Klan.” Mocked and trivialized, the Klan’s numbers went back into decline.

For more information on this chapter in superhero history, read the well-reviewed YA book, Superman Versus the Ku Klux Klan: The True Story of How the Iconic Superhero Battled the Men of Hate. Also find more information on these episodes at the Superman Homepage.

To hear more original Superman radio shows, head over to Archive.org.

Note: There is a little bit of a controversy about the exact role Stetson Kennedy played in infiltrating the Klan. You can read up on that here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newsletter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bundled in one email, each day.

If you would like to support the mission of Open Culture, consider making a donation to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your contributions will help us continue providing the best free cultural and educational materials to learners everywhere. You can contribute through PayPal, Patreon, and Venmo (@openculture). Thanks!

1950 Superman Poster Urged Kids to Defend All Americans, Regardless of Their Race, Religion or National Origin

Read Martin Luther King and The Montgomery Story: The Influential 1957 Civil Rights Comic Book

75 Years of Superman in 2 Minutes

Nine Classic Superman Cartoons Restored and Now on YouTube

by OC | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

This Is What a Nuclear Strike Would Feel Like: A Precise Simulation

in Current Affairs, Science, Technology | March 28th, 2025

Though certain generations may have grown up trained to take cover under their classroom desks in the case of a nuclear showdown between the United States and the Soviet Union, few of us today can believe that we’d stand much chance if we found ourselves anywhere near a detonated missile. Still, the probable effects of a nuclear blast do bear repeating, which the New York Times video above does not just convey verbally but also visually, deriving its information “from interviews of military officials and computer scientists who say we’re speeding toward the next nuclear arms race.”

The last nuclear arms race may have been bad enough, but the relevant technologies have greatly advanced since the Cold War — which, with the last major arms treaty between the U.S. and Russia set to expire within a year, looks set to re-open. Don’t bother worrying about a whole arsenal: just one missile is enough to do much more damage than you’re probably imagining. That’s the scenario envisioned in the video: “traveling at blistering speeds,” the nuke detonates over its target city, and “everyone in range is briefly blinded. Then comes the roar of 9,000 tons of TNT,” producing a fireball “hotter than the surface of the sun.” And that’s just the beginning of the trouble.

A destructive “blast wave” emanates from the site of the explosion, “and then… darkness.” The air is full of “dust and glass fragments,” making it difficult, even deadly, to breathe. What’s worse, “no help is on the way: medical workers in the immediate area are dead or injured.” For survivors, there begins the “radiation sickness, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea”; some of the deadliest effects don’t even manifest for weeks. “The immediate toll of this one warhead: thousands dead, exponentially more wounded. Damage to the ecosystem will linger for years.” Indeed, the extent of the damage is too great to ponder without resort to gallows humor, as evidenced by the video’s current top comment: “My boss would still force me to come into the office the next day.”

See Every Nuclear Explosion in History: 2153 Blasts from 1945–2015

Protect and Survive: 1970s British Instructional Films on How to Live Through a Nuclear Attack

53 Years of Nuclear Testing in 14 Minutes: A Time Lapse Film by Japanese Artist Isao Hashimoto

Every Nuclear Bomb Explosion in History, Animated

When the Wind Blows: An Animated Tale of Nuclear Apocalypse With Music by Roger Waters & David Bowie (1986)

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Steps a President Would Take to Destroy His Nation, According to Elon Musk’s AI Chatbot, Grok

Why the Romans Stopped Reading Books

Watch Jazz ‘Hot’, the Rare 1938 Short Film With Jazz Legend Django Reinhardt

The 1927 Film Metropolis Created a Dystopian Vision of What the World Would Look Like in 2026–and It Hits Close to Home

Watch Bob Dylan Make His Debut at the Newport Folk Festival in Colorized 1963 Footage

The Only Illustrated Manuscript of Homer’s Iliad from Antiquity

The Great Gatsby: A Free Audio Book

Did the Tower of Babel Actually Exist?: A Look at the Archaeological Evidence

A Rare Smile Captured in a 19th Century Photograph

Superman vs. the KKK: Hear the 1946 Superman Radio Show That Weakened the Klan

This Is What a Nuclear Strike Would Feel Like: A Precise Simulation

Essentials

Support Us

Free Courses

Receive our Daily Email

FREE UPDATES!

GET OUR DAILY EMAIL

Free Movies

Free Language Lessons

Free eBooks

Free Audio Books

Free Textbooks

K-12 Resources

Free Art & Images

Free Music

Writing Tips

Archive

Personal Finance

Categories

Great Lectures

Sign up for Newsletter

About Us

Great Recordings

Book Lists By

Syllabi

Favorite Movies

Archives

Search