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I don't know if something was lost in translation or if this ridiculous claim is straight from the Russian government. There is no way that a missile carrying a

I don't know if something was lost in translation or if this ridiculous claim is straight from the Russian government. There is no way that a missile carrying a 100 tonne payload can "wipe out" 700,000 km^2. It wouldn't even be able to break every window in Texas. Not even with very high yield-to-mass ratio warheads and MIRVing. (OTOH, just hitting the top population centers of Texas or France would be devastating enough, so nuclear war is terrifying even after discarding the hyperbole.) EDIT: and the warhead mass is 10 tons, not 100. 100 tons is the mass of the whole vehicle. That makes a lot more sense, given that this is not a Saturn V-sized launch vehicle. It can carry up to 24 MIRVed warheads: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-28_Sarmat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-28_Sarmat

tyingq 9y ago
The MIRV part is the reason they are saying "Texas". It's plausible a single rocket could launch warheads at multiple Texas cities all at once. So most of the population vs most of the landmass. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targetable_reentry_vehicle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targe... Image: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targetable_reentry_vehicle#/media/File%3AMinuteman_III_MIRV_path.svg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targe...
vkou 9y ago
Half of the population of Texas lives in just 10 cities. A single MIRV can kill most of the people in them. So no, one rocket won't reduce Texas to a smoking crater, but will have a 50/50 chance of killing you in the explosions and subsequent firestorms.