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Ah, the infamous Goodyear Balloon Simulation mistake: http://www.gkstill.com/CV/PhD/Chapter4.html http://www.gkstill.com/CV/PhD/Chapter4.html I go two ways on

by neffy 11y ago

Ah, the infamous Goodyear Balloon Simulation mistake: http://www.gkstill.com/CV/PhD/Chapter4.html http://www.gkstill.com/CV/PhD/Chapter4.html I go two ways on that one. As you point out, on the one hand it is hard to beat Mother Earth when it comes to massive climate impacts, up to and including two eras where the world was a complete snowball, and multiple wipe out of anything bigger than a rodent by asteroids. On the other, the Russians got up to 50Megatons before the test ban treaty kicked in - and while you may wish to argue that a few of those flying around wouldn't be the end of the world - I on the other hand would wonder what would happen if some evil bastard targeted the north pole/greenland with them, thereby changing the albedo of the entire planet. (Yes, I know you couldn't melt the entire glacier, but dump enough soot on it, and I wouldn't want to predict the short term consequences.) I agree the Gulf War thing was entertaining for anybody paying attention. It is more than a little irritating that in so many areas of science, there's no follow-up on prophecies like that. Some kind of this day last year, X predicted Y, which didn't happen would make a fun end of the news item.

hga 11y ago
If they didn't care about fallout, the Tsar Bomba would have had probably twice the yield, by substituting depleted uranium for the lead or whatever that was used for the fusion tampers. What I've read is that, aside from bragging rights, and the occasional extremely hard target like Cheyenne Mountain Complex, somewhere slightly above 1 Mt you reach diminishing returns, because more and more of the energy released radiates out into space (note how "small" the normal size of nuclear warheads is nowadays, several hundred Kt times many and more accurately targeted warheads is generally the way to go). But there's fortunately a lot we don't know about would be planet-busters, so let's not find out any time soon.... As for melting lots of water, you'd probably be better off with the Antarctic ice pack, per Wikipedia it's a order of magnitude larger, or 58 meters of ocean rising vs. a much more manageable 7.2. Dumping soot on any of these would take a trick or three, since nuclear warheads are, if anything, I'm pretty sure way too energetic to directly do the chemistry, but I haven't really thought about it yet. You'd need to create soot upwind, which might be possible for Greenland, but wouldn't it be a trick for either pole? As for directly, if http://www.onlineconversion.com http://www.onlineconversion.com and my use of it is correct, 50 or even 100 Mt, perfectly applied to a cubic mile of ice, wouldn't even come close to melting it, you'd need more than 334 Mt. Mt -> joules and cubic mile -> cubic centimeters are astonishing close to equal, like within 0.4%, and 334 joules are required to convert a cubic centimeter at 0C to water at the same temperature, you got to love hydrogen bonding. Yeah, the Earth is big, and we're pretty puny. If only the bi-coastals who fly over fly-over country were inclined to do math when they looked down....
slv77 11y ago
Salted bombs have always been the weapon of choice for evil bastards who wanted extinction level events. Salted bombs are designed to maximize radioactive fallout and render an area uninhabitable for 20+ years by "salting the earth" so to speak. Salted bombs were considered for use as a deterrent and were speculate to be the doomsday weapons that was central to the plot in Dr. Strangelove due to the potential to wipe out all terrestrial life on the planet bigger than a rabbit. Smaller devices were also considers as a method to permanently close an choke point to invading troops such as the Fulda gap. Russia "leaked" plans last year for a drone controlled submarine that carried a large salted (cobalt) bomb which would surface at a port and depopulate anything down wind. I had a friend in college who's Dad worked who helped test or design nuclear weapons. I guess the minimum number of weapons required for an extinction level event had been calculated at some point. The weapons would need to be positioned correctly but eight salted weapons were the minimum needed for an extinction level event. My friend said her Dad was always proud that he knew the exact number. We've had the capability to wipe humanity off the planet since the late 50's. Kind of warms your heart that we haven't done so.

by neffy 11y ago

hga 11y ago

If they didn't care about fallout, the Tsar Bomba would have had probably twice the yield, by substituting depleted uranium for the lead or whatever that was used for the fusion tampers. What I've read is that, aside from bragging rights, and the occasional extremely hard target like Cheyenne Mountain Complex, somewhere slightly above 1 Mt you reach diminishing returns, because more and more of the energy released radiates out into space (note how "small" the normal size of nuclear warheads is nowadays, several hundred Kt times many and more accurately targeted warheads is generally the way to go). But there's fortunately a lot we don't know about would be planet-busters, so let's not find out any time soon.... As for melting lots of water, you'd probably be better off with the Antarctic ice pack, per Wikipedia it's a order of magnitude larger, or 58 meters of ocean rising vs. a much more manageable 7.2. Dumping soot on any of these would take a trick or three, since nuclear warheads are, if anything, I'm pretty sure way too energetic to directly do the chemistry, but I haven't really thought about it yet. You'd need to create soot upwind, which might be possible for Greenland, but wouldn't it be a trick for either pole? As for directly, if http://www.onlineconversion.com http://www.onlineconversion.com and my use of it is correct, 50 or even 100 Mt, perfectly applied to a cubic mile of ice, wouldn't even come close to melting it, you'd need more than 334 Mt. Mt -> joules and cubic mile -> cubic centimeters are astonishing close to equal, like within 0.4%, and 334 joules are required to convert a cubic centimeter at 0C to water at the same temperature, you got to love hydrogen bonding. Yeah, the Earth is big, and we're pretty puny. If only the bi-coastals who fly over fly-over country were inclined to do math when they looked down....

slv77 11y ago

Salted bombs have always been the weapon of choice for evil bastards who wanted extinction level events. Salted bombs are designed to maximize radioactive fallout and render an area uninhabitable for 20+ years by "salting the earth" so to speak. Salted bombs were considered for use as a deterrent and were speculate to be the doomsday weapons that was central to the plot in Dr. Strangelove due to the potential to wipe out all terrestrial life on the planet bigger than a rabbit. Smaller devices were also considers as a method to permanently close an choke point to invading troops such as the Fulda gap. Russia "leaked" plans last year for a drone controlled submarine that carried a large salted (cobalt) bomb which would surface at a port and depopulate anything down wind. I had a friend in college who's Dad worked who helped test or design nuclear weapons. I guess the minimum number of weapons required for an extinction level event had been calculated at some point. The weapons would need to be positioned correctly but eight salted weapons were the minimum needed for an extinction level event. My friend said her Dad was always proud that he knew the exact number. We've had the capability to wipe humanity off the planet since the late 50's. Kind of warms your heart that we haven't done so.