I think, in most cases, the sound is omitted, since it's often the least interesting aspect of the event, and being a little underwhelming, almost detracts from the visuals.

They aren't like loud, irregular rolling thunderclaps, with interesting sweet spots and curious deviations or oddities. They don't rumble and crackle or anything. One bang, a trail off of distant reverberation, and not much else. You have to figure audio equipment doesn't do the explosions much justice during playback either, in terms of volume and possibly seismic effects.

It's just a single report, detached and delayed by the speed of sound, and the mandatory distance from the blast itself. The accuracy of this depiction is valuable, because it informs the viewer of what it would be like to witness a test first-hand, but as entertaining media that demonstrates the noises that relate to the visuals, the timing delay leaves an impatient gap between cause and effect.

To provide improved legibility, the videos would probably want to synchronize the auditory report of the bang with the imagery of the explosion, and push the sound backwards by a number of seconds to remove the delay between sight and sound, due to distance.

The truth is that the only way to really appreciate the sound of a nuclear detonation is to be blown away by it. Literally. When you see tanks being flipped over, and bridges being collapsed, that’s the “sound” in the form of a mach stem trashing it. If you’re close enough to really appreciate it, you’re already dead.

I don't think this is actually true. As long as you don't get vaporized in the immediate detonation radius or killed by shrapnel, the acute survival rate is actually very good (that's why cold war PSAs always show people getting under blankets and desks; if you're alive after the blast, you have to worry about flying glass).

Lots of people survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including this poor fucker that survived both: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Yamaguchi?wprov=sfla...

I always wondered if that odd vibration at the beginning was due to some electromagnetic effect of the detonation.

I experienced something similar ~15 years ago, some friends and I got between Phoenix and Vegas (via darksky.org's map) to watch the Leonids. As we were setting up in the late afternoon, two big fireballs crossed right over us - horizon to horizon - one slightly trailing the other, they had blue ion tails right behind them which were visible in the daylight, and everything around us made a buzzing sound, it's desert, so it's dry leaves etc. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2003/oct/23/research.h...

Yes! I had the same thing happen probably about the same time. Was sitting in a hot tub watching whichever ones happen in August and started to notice that the aluminum flashing on the deck would make a hissing/sizzling sound when the bigger ones hit.

It was also the first time I noticed a greenish trail glowing after the meteor.