5 ms·
US tests terrifying nuclear weapon powerful enough to kill hundreds of thousands
- sevensor 8y agoThis is a terrible article. > If the bomb was detonated above London’s St Paul’s Cathedral, it would wipe out a huge chunk of the capital and burn people as far away as Vauxhall. First of all, we're not going to use it on London. Second, they're playing fast and loose with the word "test." No detonations have been involved. I couldn't tell from the article, but it seems pretty unlikely that actual warheads had anything at all to do with the reported exercises.
- dingaling 8y agoIndeed. Since it's an awful UK newspaper I think we can call this article 'a load of bollocks' in the local vernacular. The point of the B-61 Mod 12 is deep-penetration of buried bunkers, not mass countervalue strikes against populations. And at its maximum yield of 50kT it is an order of magnitude less powerful than, say, a Trident warhead which is turn is a magnitude less than what was common in the 1960s. Sometimes I think that living through the Cold War gave people a sense of proportion. My home town of Belfast was to be hit by multiple > 1MT warheads and that was just a secondary city with docks.
- dogma1138 8y agoMetro.co.uk isn’t the newspaper that would be https://www.metro.news https://www.metro.news. They were separated because the quality of the online content targeted by the parent company was below the standard of even a British tabloid and the editorial team was not having it.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- throwaway84742 8y agoJust to help Rocket Man along with his decision making.
- PuffinBlue 8y agoThis article is poor. A better one (just) is linked below: https://www.military.com/dodbuzz/2018/05/01/air-force-advances-testing-new-nuclear-gravity-bomb-general.html https://www.military.com/dodbuzz/2018/05/01/air-force-advanc...
- DrScump 8y agoIt's not much better. The tests were of a mockup of a bomb... a dummy bomb with no nuclear material at all. We don't even do underground testing of nuclear warheads anymore, just simulations using mathematical modeling. The only thing here that's "terrifying" is the "journalism".
- DrScump 8y agoThe tests were of a mockup of a bomb... a dummy bomb with no nuclear material at all, testing only the aerodynamics and guidance of the vehicle itself. We don't even do underground testing of nuclear warheads anymore, just simulations using mathematical modeling. The only thing here that's "terrifying" is the "journalism".