6 ms·

This Is What a Nuclear Bomb Looks Like

56 points by johnny313 8y ago

Pfhreak 8y ago
What value is there in an article like this? To make me more afraid? To indulge an author who always wanted to write a spy thriller?
- cryptonector 8y ago
  To make you doubt the importance of ending the NK nuclear ICBM threat. Also the Iranian nuclear ICBM threat. See, if the thing to really worry about is nukes on little boats and minivans, then why bother with the ICBMs. For me the effect is the opposite: we must redouble our efforts to stop proliferation, to reduce the number of countries with the ability to make nukes that are not already nuclear powers, to reduce stockpiles of weapons grade fuel, and to reduce stockpiles of weapons to "reasonable" levels (we can't get rid of them entirely, sadly).
  - jonhendry18 8y ago
    Meanwhile Trump is taking money from the Coast Guard (who could presumably patrol in order to catch those little boats) in order to pay for enforcing Federal misdemeanors on the border.
  - autokad 8y ago
    when it started with the obligatory blame trump for something paragraph, i closed it. I dont like much of what trump has done, but I dont got time for their propaganda.
    - LyndsySimon 8y ago
      Yes, the article had a clear and strong bias - but I really think you're making a mistake when you reject someone's perspective merely because they don't agree with you.
- mikeash 8y ago
  I think it's valuable to make you and everyone else more afraid. I'm constantly astounded at how little people care about the very real possibility of nuclear war. It was on everyone's mind when I was growing up in the 80s, but when the USSR collapsed, the concern evaporated even though the arsenals very much did not. Avoiding nuclear war should be one of our top priorities (and was one of the major factors deciding my 2016 vote), yet it's hardly ever discussed. It's a bit crazy.
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    What can you actually do to avoid a nuclear war, though? I mean, aside from not giving the big red button to a guy who brags about the size of his big red button, there's not much. And I doubt your vote did any more good in that regard than my vote did. (There's probably a sizable fraction of America who actively wants nuclear war because we have more nukes than anyone else. The idea that your loss might not actually be my gain doesn't seem to compute for a lot of people.)
    - acjohnson55 8y ago
      > [...] not giving the big red button to a guy who brags about the size of his big red button [...] That's your answer. By no means are Trump voters illiterate rubes. Their median income exceeded Hillary voters. People need to be reminded the stakes.
      - LyndsySimon 8y ago
        MAD is premised upon both actors believing that the other would respond in kind. In that light, Trump's boasting is... well, logical.
    - mikeash 8y ago
      Individually, our votes don’t matter much, but if a lot of voters cared enough for it to become a major issue, politicians would follow suit.
    - monort 8y ago
- Arun2009 8y ago
  In my admittedly amateurish opinion, having a vivid picture of the horrors of nuclear weapons can be very effective in curbing nationalistic and pro-war tendencies among both citizens and leaders of nuclear-armed states. MAD is effective only if all parties are keenly aware of the "Destruction" part of the deal. I have seen this work first hand myself when India and Pakistan mobilized their militaries on a large scale a couple of times after the 1998 nuclear tests by both nations. A few articles that came out during that time about the effects of nuclear weapons decidedly served to cool off the fervor of several uber-patriotic people I knew.
- leoh 8y ago
  To capture attention and make money
themagician 8y ago
What’s scary about this is that it’s probably just a matter of time.
- booleandilemma 8y ago
  The part that saddens me the most is that real security checks, not the security theater which we have now (cops rummaging through backpacks), will only be implemented after something really devastating happens.
njarboe 8y ago
One might wonder if the US, Russia, and China don't already have nuclear weapons under their control on foreign soil. Seems physically easy and only politically difficult. Would the US announce the discovery of such a hidden weapon if they found one in the US? I doubt it.
- jonhendry18 8y ago
  I assume you mean "without permission or knowledge of the host country". The US has bunkers of nuclear weapons in Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Turkey. Apparently the US had nuclear weapons in Japan until 1972.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - jadedhacker 8y ago
    This is called our "Extended Deterrence". We also had nukes in South Korea for some time. Some of our NATO allies of course have their own weapons (UK, France). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea_and_weapons_of_mas... EDIT: An interesting point about the history of extended deterrence is that the US put nukes in Turkey and that precipitated the Cuban Missile crisis as the Soviets felt they needed parity. Turkey is in the same ballpark range from Moscow as Cuba is from Washington D.C. This history is not often told to make it seem as though Washington was responding to some kind of unprovoked aggression. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-real-cuban-missile-crisis/309190/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-rea...
  - chriselles 8y ago
    I believe all nuclear weapons may have been removed from Turkey following the fallout of the 2016 Coup attempt in Turkey.
- cascom 8y ago
  Terrifying thought - given their small size and the porosity of U.S. borders one would have to imagine it would be pretty easy to accomplish - on the other hand if the weapon were attributable to the host country it and discovered one would imagine that the u.s. would likely go to war over it. Especially considering the response to the positions of nuclear mussels in Cuba...
petermcneeley 8y ago
Why hasnt this happened? Meritocratic societies are immune. Anyone capable of participating is not disenfranchised in society as they would need to have high IQ and education to initiate such attack.
- smacktoward 8y ago
  > The mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Mohamed Atta, was an architectural engineer. Khalid Sheikh Mohamed got his degree in mechanical engineering. Two of the three founders of Lashkar-e-Taibi, the group believed to be behind the Mumbai attacks, were professors at the University of Engineering and Technology in Lahore... > A paper (PDF) released this summer by two sociologists, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog, adds empirical evidence to this observation. The pair looked at more than 400 radical Islamic terrorists from more than 30 nations in the Middle East and Africa born mostly between the 1950s and 1970s. Earlier studies had shown that terrorists tend to be wealthier and better-educated than their countrymen, but Gambetta and Hertog found that engineers, in particular, were three to four times more likely to become violent terrorists than their peers in finance, medicine or the sciences. The next most radicalizing graduate degree, in a distant second, was Islamic Studies. (Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2009/12/buildabomber.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/200...)
  - chopin 8y ago
    This may be related to the countries where these people come from. This was on HN a while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16411227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16411227. On a broader scale less privileged people may pursue a career in STEM in these countries.
jonhendry18 8y ago
"Winds of 40 mph would shatter windows facing the blast and send construction cranes careening into the streets below." Construction cranes falling in NYC, otherwise known as "Tuesday"
toomanybeersies 8y ago
From my observation, most of the USA is woefully unprepared for major disasters, natural or man made. Apart from a certain segment of the population with large gun caches and a year's worth of food stockpiled, most people don't have any contingency plan or emergency supplies. Every time there is a hurricane, it seems that it catches everyone unaware. Same for snowstorms. When California gets hit by a big earthquake (Magnitude 8 level), I can guarantee it's going to be complete chaos, despite the fact that we know it's going to happen. Everybody should have at minimum 3 days of sealed food and water at home. That's how long it will take emergency services to reach you in case of a major disaster. Back on to the topic of nuclear explosions. Most people have the misconception that they sound like a low rumbling that goes on for some time. In reality, they are a sharp crack, not unlike a conventional explosion, just a lot louder, as this video demonstrates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKwkTYeukE4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKwkTYeukE4
- twblalock 8y ago
  I remember the 1989 Loma Prieta quake in California. It was not chaotic. The TV news was still on, emergency services were doing their jobs, the tap water never stopped working, the power was back on the next morning, and there was not much if any of looting or similar crimes. Fewer than 100 people died, in an area with a population of more than 6 million people at the time. It's also worth noting that a magnitude 8 earthquake in one part of California will have little effect in other parts. It's a pretty big place. LA could be totally destroyed and we would barely feel it here in San Jose. I don't take your prediction of "complete chaos" very seriously.
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    To be fair, Loma Prieta was only a 6.9 on the Richter scale. A magnitude 8.0 quake would be > 10x stronger, slightly bigger than the 1906 SF earthquake. I think you're right that the effect on California would be pretty ho-hum, though. California prepares for earthquakes; most of the building codes are designed for > magnitude 8 quakes, major companies headquartered here have earthquake drills to maintain continuity of business, schools teach kids what to do in an earthquake, and I'd bet that first responders and hospitals all drill for what to do. The electricity & Internet would likely go down, because PG&E and Comcast seemingly can't keep them running even in the absence of natural disasters. And transportation would be a problem - even the mudslides last winter managed to take out all the roads over the mountain and large sections of highway 1. But I don't think you'd see large-scale chaos or civil disorder, at least in Northern California. No idea whether you'd see the same in SoCal; aside from them expecting a larger quake, sooner, than the Bay Area, they haven't had one since before urbanization. I suspect their building codes are the same, though, so unless it's Santa Ana wind season they'll probably do okay.
clircle 8y ago
I am reading _Command and Control_ right now, a book partly about a nuclear accident on American soil, but mostly about nuclear strategy and history up to 2000s. The writing style is not exactly beautiful, but I highly recommend to anyone interested in the theory and history of nuclear warfare. I am certainly learning a lot about the Cold War.
jadedhacker 8y ago
I suddenly feel like I'm back in the Bush administration. Can we get our permanent code orange alerts back? The biggest threats to nuclear peace at the moment are India/Pakistan, Israel, the United States, and Russia. I'd like to emphasize that the US is the biggest threat to world peace of all of the above, though a general nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India isn't implausible. Don't let the media distract you from the real story. It is the ambitions of nation states and their imperial capitalist backers that are the threat to civilized life on Earth. You can watch Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsburg discuss the prospect of Nuclear War here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imXAiv53_o8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imXAiv53_o8
ruytlm 8y ago
If you want to play around with locations and yields to see the levels of damage somewhere else, try NUKEMAP: http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ Scary stuff.
duxup 8y ago
>About half of potential radiation exposure occurs within the first hour, and 80 percent occurs within the first day. I was not aware of that, interesting.
ggm 8y ago
"gadget" by Nicholas Freeling. (1977) https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Gadget.html?id=DrMOAAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y&hl=en https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Gadget.html?id=DrMOA...
mgarfias 8y ago
How does a 10kt weapon in nyc make a deeper crater (50’ according to the article) than a 22kt weapon in New Mexico (5’).
- dmckeon 8y ago
  The Trinity device was on a tower, so perhaps more like an air-burst than a ground-level event. edit: 100-foot (30 m) tower
- zaarn 8y ago
  Airburst vs Ground Device. Airburst detonation, even 30 m above ground as in New Mexico, will distribute the explosion energy much more evenly and the epicenter will have much less impact. Ground devices deliver a shitload of energy into the ground below.
- StanislavPetrov 8y ago
  NYC is riddled with subway tunnels, utility tunnels, massive water-carrying tunnels, and tunnels of all kinds. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2013/10/new-york-city-underground-subway-danger https://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2013/10/new-york-ci...
Latteland 8y ago
Good refresher on how horrible and pointless these are. We have so much nuclear capabilities in the US, with submarines especially, but also airbases around the world and missiles too that we can easily withstand an attack. For that reason, we should make it our policy that we will never launch a first strike. The reason is that there have been many many near misses. We know that China and Russia also have lots of capabilities for return strikes - yet even with this knowledge of mutual assured destruction we have had near accidents and they must have also. By saying we won't make a first strike we really lose nothing, but this should reduce that chance that a mistake could lead to launches. Russia and China should do the same.
RantyDave 8y ago
What a load of bollocks. You don't just go to the shop and pick up a few kilos of Uranium. Why do you think everyone made such a big deal about Iran refining their own? Second, atomic weapons fired at ground level are missing the point. It shines energy so if you want it to affect things it needs to shine on them - like the sun does, in the sky.
- detaro 8y ago
  > Second, atomic weapons fired at ground level are missing the point. True, a ground burst isn't the most efficient for direct damage. In exchange, it means lots of fallout, since it throws radioactive material in the air, spreading effect around a larger area, and making sure the area is contaminated for a long time. Since we aren't exactly prepared to keep large areas of citizens in shelters for days, that's bad.
dingaling 8y ago
What a misleading title. I was expecting something like: http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2016/04/22/bomb-silhouettes/ http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2016/04/22/bomb-silhouettes/ As in, how the physics packages of the weapons actually look. We actually know very little about that.
- LyndsySimon 8y ago
  There was quite a bit of discussion about this photo[0] when it was released by North Korea. If I recall, the general consensus was that it wasn't possible to determine if the device was real (or a mockup of a real device), but it was apparent that the design was reasonable and that it wasn't an obvious fake. 0: https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2016-03/8/22/enhanced/webdr01/enhanced-17456-1457494753-2.jpg?downsize=715:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2016-03/8/22...
valenciarose 8y ago
Yeah, we were also told it’s what rape would look like. Instead, rape looks a lot more like our teachers, bosses, or husbands. When a terrorist detonates a nuclear weapon in the U.S., the bomb is likely to have been made on American soil by Americans.

56 points by johnny313 8y ago

What value is there in an article like this? To make me more afraid? To indulge an author who always wanted to write a spy thriller?

cryptonector 8y ago
To make you doubt the importance of ending the NK nuclear ICBM threat. Also the Iranian nuclear ICBM threat. See, if the thing to really worry about is nukes on little boats and minivans, then why bother with the ICBMs. For me the effect is the opposite: we must redouble our efforts to stop proliferation, to reduce the number of countries with the ability to make nukes that are not already nuclear powers, to reduce stockpiles of weapons grade fuel, and to reduce stockpiles of weapons to "reasonable" levels (we can't get rid of them entirely, sadly).
- jonhendry18 8y ago
  Meanwhile Trump is taking money from the Coast Guard (who could presumably patrol in order to catch those little boats) in order to pay for enforcing Federal misdemeanors on the border.
- autokad 8y ago
  when it started with the obligatory blame trump for something paragraph, i closed it. I dont like much of what trump has done, but I dont got time for their propaganda.
  - LyndsySimon 8y ago
    Yes, the article had a clear and strong bias - but I really think you're making a mistake when you reject someone's perspective merely because they don't agree with you.
mikeash 8y ago
I think it's valuable to make you and everyone else more afraid. I'm constantly astounded at how little people care about the very real possibility of nuclear war. It was on everyone's mind when I was growing up in the 80s, but when the USSR collapsed, the concern evaporated even though the arsenals very much did not. Avoiding nuclear war should be one of our top priorities (and was one of the major factors deciding my 2016 vote), yet it's hardly ever discussed. It's a bit crazy.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  What can you actually do to avoid a nuclear war, though? I mean, aside from not giving the big red button to a guy who brags about the size of his big red button, there's not much. And I doubt your vote did any more good in that regard than my vote did. (There's probably a sizable fraction of America who actively wants nuclear war because we have more nukes than anyone else. The idea that your loss might not actually be my gain doesn't seem to compute for a lot of people.)
  - acjohnson55 8y ago
    > [...] not giving the big red button to a guy who brags about the size of his big red button [...] That's your answer. By no means are Trump voters illiterate rubes. Their median income exceeded Hillary voters. People need to be reminded the stakes.
    - LyndsySimon 8y ago
      MAD is premised upon both actors believing that the other would respond in kind. In that light, Trump's boasting is... well, logical.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    Individually, our votes don’t matter much, but if a lot of voters cared enough for it to become a major issue, politicians would follow suit.
  - monort 8y ago
Arun2009 8y ago
In my admittedly amateurish opinion, having a vivid picture of the horrors of nuclear weapons can be very effective in curbing nationalistic and pro-war tendencies among both citizens and leaders of nuclear-armed states. MAD is effective only if all parties are keenly aware of the "Destruction" part of the deal. I have seen this work first hand myself when India and Pakistan mobilized their militaries on a large scale a couple of times after the 1998 nuclear tests by both nations. A few articles that came out during that time about the effects of nuclear weapons decidedly served to cool off the fervor of several uber-patriotic people I knew.
leoh 8y ago
To capture attention and make money

themagician 8y ago

What’s scary about this is that it’s probably just a matter of time.

booleandilemma 8y ago
The part that saddens me the most is that real security checks, not the security theater which we have now (cops rummaging through backpacks), will only be implemented after something really devastating happens.

njarboe 8y ago

One might wonder if the US, Russia, and China don't already have nuclear weapons under their control on foreign soil. Seems physically easy and only politically difficult. Would the US announce the discovery of such a hidden weapon if they found one in the US? I doubt it.

jonhendry18 8y ago
I assume you mean "without permission or knowledge of the host country". The US has bunkers of nuclear weapons in Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Turkey. Apparently the US had nuclear weapons in Japan until 1972.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jadedhacker 8y ago
  This is called our "Extended Deterrence". We also had nukes in South Korea for some time. Some of our NATO allies of course have their own weapons (UK, France). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea_and_weapons_of_mas... EDIT: An interesting point about the history of extended deterrence is that the US put nukes in Turkey and that precipitated the Cuban Missile crisis as the Soviets felt they needed parity. Turkey is in the same ballpark range from Moscow as Cuba is from Washington D.C. This history is not often told to make it seem as though Washington was responding to some kind of unprovoked aggression. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-real-cuban-missile-crisis/309190/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-rea...
- chriselles 8y ago
  I believe all nuclear weapons may have been removed from Turkey following the fallout of the 2016 Coup attempt in Turkey.
cascom 8y ago
Terrifying thought - given their small size and the porosity of U.S. borders one would have to imagine it would be pretty easy to accomplish - on the other hand if the weapon were attributable to the host country it and discovered one would imagine that the u.s. would likely go to war over it. Especially considering the response to the positions of nuclear mussels in Cuba...

petermcneeley 8y ago

Why hasnt this happened? Meritocratic societies are immune. Anyone capable of participating is not disenfranchised in society as they would need to have high IQ and education to initiate such attack.

smacktoward 8y ago
> The mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Mohamed Atta, was an architectural engineer. Khalid Sheikh Mohamed got his degree in mechanical engineering. Two of the three founders of Lashkar-e-Taibi, the group believed to be behind the Mumbai attacks, were professors at the University of Engineering and Technology in Lahore... > A paper (PDF) released this summer by two sociologists, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog, adds empirical evidence to this observation. The pair looked at more than 400 radical Islamic terrorists from more than 30 nations in the Middle East and Africa born mostly between the 1950s and 1970s. Earlier studies had shown that terrorists tend to be wealthier and better-educated than their countrymen, but Gambetta and Hertog found that engineers, in particular, were three to four times more likely to become violent terrorists than their peers in finance, medicine or the sciences. The next most radicalizing graduate degree, in a distant second, was Islamic Studies. (Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2009/12/buildabomber.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/200...)
- chopin 8y ago
  This may be related to the countries where these people come from. This was on HN a while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16411227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16411227. On a broader scale less privileged people may pursue a career in STEM in these countries.

jonhendry18 8y ago

"Winds of 40 mph would shatter windows facing the blast and send construction cranes careening into the streets below." Construction cranes falling in NYC, otherwise known as "Tuesday"

toomanybeersies 8y ago

From my observation, most of the USA is woefully unprepared for major disasters, natural or man made. Apart from a certain segment of the population with large gun caches and a year's worth of food stockpiled, most people don't have any contingency plan or emergency supplies. Every time there is a hurricane, it seems that it catches everyone unaware. Same for snowstorms. When California gets hit by a big earthquake (Magnitude 8 level), I can guarantee it's going to be complete chaos, despite the fact that we know it's going to happen. Everybody should have at minimum 3 days of sealed food and water at home. That's how long it will take emergency services to reach you in case of a major disaster. Back on to the topic of nuclear explosions. Most people have the misconception that they sound like a low rumbling that goes on for some time. In reality, they are a sharp crack, not unlike a conventional explosion, just a lot louder, as this video demonstrates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKwkTYeukE4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKwkTYeukE4

twblalock 8y ago
I remember the 1989 Loma Prieta quake in California. It was not chaotic. The TV news was still on, emergency services were doing their jobs, the tap water never stopped working, the power was back on the next morning, and there was not much if any of looting or similar crimes. Fewer than 100 people died, in an area with a population of more than 6 million people at the time. It's also worth noting that a magnitude 8 earthquake in one part of California will have little effect in other parts. It's a pretty big place. LA could be totally destroyed and we would barely feel it here in San Jose. I don't take your prediction of "complete chaos" very seriously.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  To be fair, Loma Prieta was only a 6.9 on the Richter scale. A magnitude 8.0 quake would be > 10x stronger, slightly bigger than the 1906 SF earthquake. I think you're right that the effect on California would be pretty ho-hum, though. California prepares for earthquakes; most of the building codes are designed for > magnitude 8 quakes, major companies headquartered here have earthquake drills to maintain continuity of business, schools teach kids what to do in an earthquake, and I'd bet that first responders and hospitals all drill for what to do. The electricity & Internet would likely go down, because PG&E and Comcast seemingly can't keep them running even in the absence of natural disasters. And transportation would be a problem - even the mudslides last winter managed to take out all the roads over the mountain and large sections of highway 1. But I don't think you'd see large-scale chaos or civil disorder, at least in Northern California. No idea whether you'd see the same in SoCal; aside from them expecting a larger quake, sooner, than the Bay Area, they haven't had one since before urbanization. I suspect their building codes are the same, though, so unless it's Santa Ana wind season they'll probably do okay.

clircle 8y ago

I am reading _Command and Control_ right now, a book partly about a nuclear accident on American soil, but mostly about nuclear strategy and history up to 2000s. The writing style is not exactly beautiful, but I highly recommend to anyone interested in the theory and history of nuclear warfare. I am certainly learning a lot about the Cold War.

jadedhacker 8y ago

I suddenly feel like I'm back in the Bush administration. Can we get our permanent code orange alerts back? The biggest threats to nuclear peace at the moment are India/Pakistan, Israel, the United States, and Russia. I'd like to emphasize that the US is the biggest threat to world peace of all of the above, though a general nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India isn't implausible. Don't let the media distract you from the real story. It is the ambitions of nation states and their imperial capitalist backers that are the threat to civilized life on Earth. You can watch Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsburg discuss the prospect of Nuclear War here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imXAiv53_o8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imXAiv53_o8

ruytlm 8y ago

If you want to play around with locations and yields to see the levels of damage somewhere else, try NUKEMAP: http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ Scary stuff.

duxup 8y ago

>About half of potential radiation exposure occurs within the first hour, and 80 percent occurs within the first day. I was not aware of that, interesting.

ggm 8y ago

"gadget" by Nicholas Freeling. (1977) https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Gadget.html?id=DrMOAAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y&hl=en https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Gadget.html?id=DrMOA...

mgarfias 8y ago

How does a 10kt weapon in nyc make a deeper crater (50’ according to the article) than a 22kt weapon in New Mexico (5’).

dmckeon 8y ago
The Trinity device was on a tower, so perhaps more like an air-burst than a ground-level event. edit: 100-foot (30 m) tower
zaarn 8y ago
Airburst vs Ground Device. Airburst detonation, even 30 m above ground as in New Mexico, will distribute the explosion energy much more evenly and the epicenter will have much less impact. Ground devices deliver a shitload of energy into the ground below.
StanislavPetrov 8y ago
NYC is riddled with subway tunnels, utility tunnels, massive water-carrying tunnels, and tunnels of all kinds. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2013/10/new-york-city-underground-subway-danger https://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2013/10/new-york-ci...

Latteland 8y ago

Good refresher on how horrible and pointless these are. We have so much nuclear capabilities in the US, with submarines especially, but also airbases around the world and missiles too that we can easily withstand an attack. For that reason, we should make it our policy that we will never launch a first strike. The reason is that there have been many many near misses. We know that China and Russia also have lots of capabilities for return strikes - yet even with this knowledge of mutual assured destruction we have had near accidents and they must have also. By saying we won't make a first strike we really lose nothing, but this should reduce that chance that a mistake could lead to launches. Russia and China should do the same.

RantyDave 8y ago

What a load of bollocks. You don't just go to the shop and pick up a few kilos of Uranium. Why do you think everyone made such a big deal about Iran refining their own? Second, atomic weapons fired at ground level are missing the point. It shines energy so if you want it to affect things it needs to shine on them - like the sun does, in the sky.

detaro 8y ago
> Second, atomic weapons fired at ground level are missing the point. True, a ground burst isn't the most efficient for direct damage. In exchange, it means lots of fallout, since it throws radioactive material in the air, spreading effect around a larger area, and making sure the area is contaminated for a long time. Since we aren't exactly prepared to keep large areas of citizens in shelters for days, that's bad.

dingaling 8y ago

What a misleading title. I was expecting something like: http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2016/04/22/bomb-silhouettes/ http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2016/04/22/bomb-silhouettes/ As in, how the physics packages of the weapons actually look. We actually know very little about that.

LyndsySimon 8y ago
There was quite a bit of discussion about this photo[0] when it was released by North Korea. If I recall, the general consensus was that it wasn't possible to determine if the device was real (or a mockup of a real device), but it was apparent that the design was reasonable and that it wasn't an obvious fake. 0: https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2016-03/8/22/enhanced/webdr01/enhanced-17456-1457494753-2.jpg?downsize=715:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2016-03/8/22...

valenciarose 8y ago

Yeah, we were also told it’s what rape would look like. Instead, rape looks a lot more like our teachers, bosses, or husbands. When a terrorist detonates a nuclear weapon in the U.S., the bomb is likely to have been made on American soil by Americans.