[rerevisionist]

AUDIO...I remember years ago -about 1965 - playing with my tape recorder. A friend of mine showed me his little joke: "Hey, Paddy, [Irishman] whatever you do, don't dump this stuff here!" "Don't do what?" "Dump this stuff here!" [Silly voice:] "OK" - followed by recording of breath blowing into the microphone, but slowed down to 1/2 or 1/4. The white noise was converted into low frequency noise, sounding like a long rumble or explosion. A slowed-up noise sounds ponderous and heavy. The film Time Bandits by the Monty Python American, Terry Gilliam (was any American ever called Terence? Really??) has a giant; his feet hit the sand with a slow thump. Generally, slow sound gives the effect of slow, and therefore far off, rumbling explosion.

VIDEO...OK - the designers of atoms bombs couldn't do simple bright flashes - too difficult. And the 'mushroom cloud' was forced on them. So, they filmed explosions and their sooty clouds, whatever would work - maybe far off, but, to save money; more likely closer with a faked background. A middle distance explosion with hydrocarbons would produce a nice bang, and smoke-ring type clouds. When slowed up, these would look like a huge 'mushroom cloud', slowly churning internally.

AUDIO AND VIDEO...ALL THAT'S NEEDED IS TO PLAYBACK IN SLOW MOTION --- TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE A HUGE, REMOTE, EXPLOSION - WHICH COULD BE PASSED OFF AS NUCLEAR. I'd suggest the number of supposed nuke tests, where the sound arrives far too soon, are just slowed-up explosions designed to produce smoke, where the film-makers didn't bother to change the sound-track to simulate the delay caused by the relatively slow sound waves.

I'll try to post a Youtube to show how it's done.

[NB there's a different effect with some supposed underwater 'nukes' - where a whole surrounding ring of explosives must have been used to make the central explosion look larger. And of course other effects where clouds/ condensation/ whatever it's meant to be are projected or added directly to the films.]

[FirstClassSkeptic]

Can you take the video and speed it up? Can you speed up a youtube video?

[rerevisionist]

Flash videos can be played at variable speeds with VLC's free player. FLVPlayer is supposed to allow half and double time play (if you can get it to work).

Flash format is convertible into other formats - such as mpg and mp4; Youtube's downloaders (e.g. the Mozilla one) often allow you to choose the format and quality. These mpg and mp4 files can be played with editing software (e.g. Moviemaker - I use Pinnacle, though I'm not sure I recommend it, as all these video editing things are rather user-unfriendly). Both the frame speed and sound generally can be altered within limits. I haven't got around to Youtubing it, but I replayed, speeded up, some DVD videos made from films of 'nuke tests' and you get a very obvious bang, and the moving smoke cloud, which looks like just what you'd expect, with NO nuclear physics effects such as static electricity, plasma, huge shock waves etc etc.