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from the depends-which-side-you-are-on dept.
Erik Wemple writes at the Washington Post that Fox News recently took the controversial step of posting a horrific 22-minute video online that shows Jordanian pilot Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh being burned to death warning internet users that the presentation features "extremely graphic video." "After careful consideration, we decided that giving readers of FoxNews.com the option to see for themselves the barbarity of ISIS outweighed legitimate concerns about the graphic nature of the video," said Fox executive John Moody. "Online users can choose to view or not view this disturbing content."
But Fox's decision drew condemnation from some terrorism experts. "[Fox News] are literally — literally — working for al-Qaida and ISIS's media arm," said Malcolm Nance. "They might as well start sending them royalty checks." YouTube removed a link to the video a few hours after it was posted, and a spokesperson for Facebook told the Guardian that if anyone posted the video to the social networking site it would be taken down. CNN explained that it wouldn't surface any of the disturbing images because they were gruesome and constituted propaganda that the network didn't want to distribute. "Does posting this video advance the aims of this terror group or hinder its progress by laying bare its depravity?" writes Wemple. "Islamic State leaders may indeed delight in the distribution of the video — which could be helpful in converting extremists to its cause — but they may be mis-calibrating its impact. If the terrorists expected to intimidate the world with their display of barbarity, they may be disappointed with the reaction of Jordan, which is vowing "strong, earth-shaking and decisive" retaliation."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Saturday February 07 2015, @02:36AM
Not a nuke. Using the flash-to-bang method i estimate that explosion was roughly just over 2.5 km away. Far too close for a nuclear weapon. I was in a city once when an extremely powerful carbomb went off. It looked like a whole layer of the city just peeled off and flew away. It was EVERY bird within several kilometers taking flight as the shockwave hit them.
The Natural Gas storage tank explosion in Newark, NJ in December, 1983 was incredibly loud and the shock wave actually shook my (16 story) apartment building (in NYC) some 19km away. For a few minutes, I thought it was Washington, DC getting nuked and I bent way over to kiss my ass goodbye, as I was perhaps 5km from the projected ground zero for a Soviet nuclear attack on NYC.
the point is that tibman is quite correct that "conventional" explosions can produce huge fireballs and powerful shock waves. I suggest that you hope and (if it means anything to you) pray that you never see a nuclear detonation, as it's likely to be the last thing you ever see. On the bright side, if you're close enough you'll be dead so fast you might not even notice.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr