4 ms·
I thought you wanted to detonate a bit above the surface to spread out the shock waves, explosion, and not "waste" energy going into the ground?
by lin_lin 9y ago
I thought you wanted to detonate a bit above the surface to spread out the shock waves, explosion, and not "waste" energy going into the ground?
- MertsA 9y agoAFAIK, detonating at altitude is done for fallout reasons. Detonating at the ground would make the fallout much worse.
- lin_lin 9y agoNoted. Could come in handy at some point!
- daxfohl 9y agoInteresting use of the word "worse".
- arethuza 9y agoAirbursts are generally used to maximise the area damaged at the cost of peak damage - so for soft targets like cities. Ground bursts would be used for hard targets (deep bunkers, missile silos) that are relatively small but hard to kill. I suspect in wartime fall-out wouldn't be a major factor in planning all out attacks whereas it was a big factor in atmospheric testing.
- jacobush 9y agoI also wonder how dangerous fallout was considered to be, in the long run. I have the impression that up into the late 60s fallout was considered dangerous in the short term but not after say a year.
- arethuza 9y agoThere are rules of thumb like the 7:10 rule: https://emilms.fema.gov/IS3/FEMA_IS/is03/REM0504050.htm https://emilms.fema.gov/IS3/FEMA_IS/is03/REM0504050.htm Long term effects are tricky because of biological processes concentrating some elements (I think mainly calcium, iodine). Of course, if you want to get really nasty you can salt your bombs with appropriate elements (notably cobalt) that have long lived nasty isotopes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]