Blast
The rapid release of energy in an explosion creates a shock wave of overpressure. Very close to the centre of a nuclear explosion, overpressure is equivalent to several thousand pounds per square inch. This is hundreds of times greater than the pressure in a pressure cooker.
The overpressure crushes objects. Human lungs are crushed at about 30 psi overpressure. Brick houses are destroyed at about 10-15 psi overpressure. The blast also generates high velocity winds which can turn humans or objects into missiles. At 15 - 20 psi the winds can fling a person at several hundred kilometres per hour.
Thermal Radiation
Thermal radiation includes light and heat. Nuclear weapons release a huge amount of energy as light (utlraviolet, visible and infrared). The light is so intense that sand explodes, shadows burn into concrete, skin burns and clothing ignites miles away.
Approximately 35 percent of the energy from a nuclear explosion is an intense burst of thermal radiation - heat. The effects are like a 2-second flash from an enormous sunlamp. Since thermal radiation travels at the speed of light, slowed partially by atmospheric particles, the flash of light and heat precedes the blast wave by several seconds. The visible light from a one megaton blast will blind up to 13 miles, and cause skin-destroying third degree burns up to 5 miles away on any exposed skin within the line-of-sight. When your brain interprets the flash of light and signals the eyelids to close, your skin is burned. Within a few seconds, the crushing blast wave hits.
The heat at the centre of the explosion is so intense as to vaporise most materials. The thermal radiation creates a fireball which expands rapidly outwards consuming oxygen and, combined with the blast effect, creating near total destruction for some distance from the epicenter.
I'd like to meet myself from 40 years in the future just to see if I'd take my own advice because it's not working right now.
I'd also like to meet the ones who first concluded which mushrooms and other plantlife were fatal to consume. Did some caveman walk up to 25 of his dead buddies all with mushroms on their face and conclude that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to stuff everything down his throat? I guess I wouldn't really like to "meet" them personally, maybe just watch them on some kind of cosmic video cam that recorded their thinking.
Audio Input:
What? I'm supposed to remember all those names? I know what I like when I hear it such as music that just hits you in the chest with meaning, instrumental movie soundtracks...
Don't expect me to say "oh yeah, that's (insert band name here)" and don't expect me to spell them all right either or know their history. For me, music adds to the overall experience of where I am and what I'm doing. If it's a match it makes me feel like I'm in more of a movie. I use music as a tool.
A/V Input:
The Day After, the Terminator movies, Matrix, CoolWorld, Pulp Fiction, Usual Suspects, Wolf, Ladyhawk, American Beauty, Blade, Underworld, Fight Club, 5th Element, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Blade Runner, Mad Max
and plenty more. The Road Warrior, ah yes, I remember him.
I have a big imagination so I don't pick apart the little inconsistencies in a movie. I like to suspend my beliefs and dive into a good film. I've never seen Wayne's World or similar type movies and never will. There's plenty of people I've run across that if I really want to see something that useless, I can just watch them for a while and for free instead.
Maybe life is a movie. Maybe you write the script. Maybe it's already written. Maybe you don't. Maybe it isn't. Maybe it doesn't matter either way.
Television:
Yes I have one. It fills a void in the corner of my place and makes it look like someone lives here. Maybe I'll use it as a shelf. I could get cable to have something decent to watch but I'd rather save the money... for another television.
Books:
Random studies on the effects of a nuclear blast versus buildings, infrastructure and human bodies. One of my favorite reads. Never gets boring.