7 ms·

There's something oddly perverse about the concept of a neutron bomb. You drop a bomb on a city, to kill large amounts of people, but leave all the structures

by DevX101 16y ago

There's something oddly perverse about the concept of a neutron bomb. You drop a bomb on a city, to kill large amounts of people, but leave all the structures intact for conquering. If I had a magic wand, I'd have all countries have military technology no more advanced than the Romans. I understand that there are situations that call for war. But when that time comes, the people should KNOW they are at war, and have to make the sacrifices in lives to engage in that war. The neutron bomb makes it a bit too attractive to engage in and win a war from afar.

jordan0day 16y ago
I think this is a misconception. AFAIK, the neutron bombs that were built (by the USA, at least), still had yields similar to that of the Hiroshima bomb, or 10-20 kilotons. As the article points out, Cohen's idea was to have a smaller explosive yield, but we never accomplished that. So in reality, the infrastructure still would have been significantly damaged. I think Cohen may have had the right idea in mind, though. Lots of people seem to think the idea of the neutron bomb is "we can kill all of them and then move into their houses!", but what was the last war the USA fought with the serious goal of attaining land? The Spanish-American war? I think Cohen honestly believed that in a war it would be better to just quickly kill all the people who would inevitably die anyway, hopefully quickly ending the war. Then the survivors could get on with rebuilding, and if their infrastructure required less rebuilding, well, even better. Obviously not waging a nuclear war at all was the best option, but who in the 1960's really thought we'd make it to 2010 without a nuclear exchange? One thing Cohen probably didn't consider in his "moral weapon" argument, although in hindsight it's another bonus, is that a nuclear war waged through low-yield weapons would cause less dust to be kicked up and smaller fires, ultimately preventing the "nuclear winter" that others predict from a full-scale nuclear war. So if the USA and USSR blew themselves up, nations elsewhere (esp. southern hemisphere nations) would experience significantly less environmental damage.
- mcritz 16y ago
  Neutron weapons are deployed at higher altitudes and explode nearly vertically to the ground. This helps minimize the physical shockwave damage to the ground and maximize exposure to the Gamma-ray radiation. Contrasting this, some weapons are intended to be detonated at an angle & closer to ground level. These combine to increase the physical effects of the explosive shockwave: overturning armored vehicles, weakening defensive structures, destroying rail & roadways, and knocking down cover.
  - icegreentea 16y ago
    ...I don't understand this concept of 'angle'. We don't really have an effective way of shaping a nuclear explosion do we? I mean, my understanding is that the blast effect of a nuke is a result of the xrays/gamma rays slamming into the air, and that nukes produce a nearly burst of rays in all directions. If you mean that the resulting shockwave will be closer to vertical when it reaches given distance from ground zero, then that's just a function of geometry/height, not of any 'angle' during the detonation.
    - jasonkester 16y ago
      Actually, it seems like you do understand what he was talking about. You just haven't seen references to Nuclear Shaped Charges before. Back in the day, lots of smart guys were working on ways to make nuclear explosions do interesting things. One of these things was to shape the explosion into something useful. Check out how they were doing it for project Orion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsi... So yeah, that's what he meant.
    - mcritz 16y ago
      The angle of attack as related to the surface of the Earth. E.g. a perpendicular angle of attack means the weapon approaches detonation range from directly above. Sorry for the confusion.
  - jordan0day 16y ago
    According to the wikipedia entry: "Although neutron bombs are commonly believed to "leave the infrastructure intact", current designs have explosive yields in the kiloton range,[13] the detonation of which would cause heavy destruction through blast and heat effects." I agree the intention of the weapon is to leave infrastructure intact... I just don't think that was ever really achieved.
- commieneko 16y ago
  Let's see, the last war the US fought in order to gain land (or at least resources and infrastructure) was ... Iraq! If it weren't for the political and international consequences, then Neutron Bombs would have been very useful in that conflict. The fact that the US won (!) but still doesn't have the spoils says more about the competency of my country's leaders than it does their intentions.
  - jordan0day 16y ago
    Well, people can (and certainly will) debate about the purposes of the Iraq war until they're blue in the face, but I don't think anyone would argue that the USA invaded Iraq because Americans want to move there. Perhaps I didn't state my point appropriately, but my argument was more directed at statements like the one by Kruschev that kwantam quoted.
    - commieneko 16y ago
      I understand your main point, I was just addressing the notion that a infrastructure preserving bomb would be of no tacticle use to the US. Strategically it IS of no use tovthe US, but that is another discussion... That aside, the point of the bomb was not simply to keep land livable for the victors to homestead, but to preserve the infrastructure during a conflict, including large numbers of the civil population not located directly on top of an unfortunately tactical spot. Gotta have someone left to work those still standing oil rigs...
  - jerf 16y ago
    "fact that the US won (!) but still doesn't have the spoils says more..." Or, in other words, you have a mental model of the purposes of the war which predicts certain actions, and then, when that model is falsified by virtue of your predictions failing, it's not that your model is wrong, it's that the leaders who were successful up to that point (despite, quite likely, your model not permitting that either) suddenly becoming stupid. You've gone unfalsifiable. (I'm calling this out because it's a pretty popular position. I'm not claiming the stated ends are necessarily exactly the true ends, either, but, actions speak louder than words. Putative motivations need to explain what actually happened, not what could have happened in a parallel universe.)
kenver 16y ago
Whenever I read about neutron bombs they always talk about how they're designed to kill tank crews/armored soldiers etc, but as you say the potential is there to kill everyone in a city with little infrastructure damage. From the sounds of it they must be expensive and difficult to maintain though due to the half life of tritium (12 years) so hopefully there aren't many around. I don't see how they can ever be called a moral weapon, if for this reason alone (wikipedia): One significant drawback of the weapon is that not all targeted troops will die or be incapacitated immediately. After a brief bout of nausea, many of those hit with about 5–50 Sv of radiation will experience a temporary recovery (the latent or "walking ghost phase") lasting days to weeks.
- pmjordan 16y ago
  I wonder how they know this? Do they just assume that neutron radiation will cause the same radiation sickness as other types of radiation? Extrapolate from animal testing? Or have there been tests with humans? My understanding was that the high-energy neutrons interacted with the hydrogen nuclei (singular protons) in the body, due to the extremely similar mass; conversely, ionising radiation, well, ionises molecules, that is to say, interacts with the electrons.
  - DougWebb 16y ago
    Explosive weapons aren't the only sources of neutrons. I imagine animals have been exposed in labs, and probably humans have been accidentally exposed too.
    - varjag 16y ago
      Also, there were plenty of actual nuclear bombing victims to draw many kinds of statistics.
  - Symmetry 16y ago
    From accidents in the early days of nuclear research and extrapolation. An example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core
CapitalistCartr 16y ago
Having the military technology of the Romans didn't stop people from having as many wars as they could. Seeing suffering hasn't stopped people from having wars. Enthusiastically. The only technology that has put the brakes on men's passion for warring is nuclear weapons. This has been the most peaceful period in history.
- DannoHung 16y ago
  You don't think that has anything to do with armament imbalance? Put all the guns or all the swords or all the nuclear bombs in the hands of one set of people and sure you'll have peace from the de-armed populace... but you'd better do what the guy with the gun says to do.
- hasenj 16y ago
  > This has been the most peaceful period in history. Not really. Not for the middle east anyway. Although I see your point about having nuclear weapons resulting in less wars. The USA and USSR never actually got in a direct war. OTOH, if just one reckless leader decides to use nukes, just for once, it will probably start an endless nuclear war. It's a double edged sword. Wonder what would happen if every country in the middle east had them, or say, major countries (Turkey, and some Arab country).
  - salemh 16y ago
    No major powers have gone to war however. Stalemates of nuclear war and the lack of conventional warfare between capitalistic countries equates to this weird period in history that does not involve actual military expansion. Economic expansion is enough :D http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hharchive/Show-33---(BLITZ)-Old-School-Toughness/%20history-lifecycles-empire http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hharchive/Show-33---(BLITZ... An interesting look at "Belgium should not be a country" meaning, pre-1950's, Belgium would be snapped up by an expanding imperialistic country. http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/demowar.htm http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/demowar.htm Lists of Democracies going to war..though I would differentiate this between "capitalistic" countries and war. Points and counter-points: http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/205/01/20060806nb_cheap_wars_tikkun_web.htm http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/205/01/20060806nb_cheap_wars_tikk...
lukeschlather 16y ago
Why, then, has no one ever used a neutron bomb in war? From an evidence-based standpoint, guns, bows and the like make it far more attractive. I'd also point out that civilization with Roman-era technology is impossible without slavery on a massive scale, slavery that must be fueled by war.
- ertyjhgvfdc 16y ago
  Because nobody with the technology has fought a large tank force in a region where they didn't want to destroy the surrounding country.
tomjen3 16y ago
That won't do you much good. The asyrians didn't need nuclear weapons to destroy Babylon. And they could hardly have done a better job with them.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
You've got it backwards. Industrialization buts incredible power in the hands of the individual, see the damage that individual terrorists and crazies are capable of. And there's no way to take away that dangerous capability and keep an industrialized, mechanized economy and society intact. Anyone with the necessary knowledge and intent and access to home depot can build modern weapons (guns, bombs, and worse things). But the plus side is significant. An agrarian population is a population that can be cowed by force. History is clear on this. When the bulk of the population are tied to farms they can be easily dominated by any militant group with weapons and a will to subjugate. Keep in mind, the horrific practices of, say, the Nazis or the Fascists or the Stalinists or the Maoists were de rigueur in ancient times. This is not something I want to return to, no matter how imperfect modern times are.

by DevX101 16y ago

jordan0day 16y ago

I think this is a misconception. AFAIK, the neutron bombs that were built (by the USA, at least), still had yields similar to that of the Hiroshima bomb, or 10-20 kilotons. As the article points out, Cohen's idea was to have a smaller explosive yield, but we never accomplished that. So in reality, the infrastructure still would have been significantly damaged. I think Cohen may have had the right idea in mind, though. Lots of people seem to think the idea of the neutron bomb is "we can kill all of them and then move into their houses!", but what was the last war the USA fought with the serious goal of attaining land? The Spanish-American war? I think Cohen honestly believed that in a war it would be better to just quickly kill all the people who would inevitably die anyway, hopefully quickly ending the war. Then the survivors could get on with rebuilding, and if their infrastructure required less rebuilding, well, even better. Obviously not waging a nuclear war at all was the best option, but who in the 1960's really thought we'd make it to 2010 without a nuclear exchange? One thing Cohen probably didn't consider in his "moral weapon" argument, although in hindsight it's another bonus, is that a nuclear war waged through low-yield weapons would cause less dust to be kicked up and smaller fires, ultimately preventing the "nuclear winter" that others predict from a full-scale nuclear war. So if the USA and USSR blew themselves up, nations elsewhere (esp. southern hemisphere nations) would experience significantly less environmental damage.

mcritz 16y ago
Neutron weapons are deployed at higher altitudes and explode nearly vertically to the ground. This helps minimize the physical shockwave damage to the ground and maximize exposure to the Gamma-ray radiation. Contrasting this, some weapons are intended to be detonated at an angle & closer to ground level. These combine to increase the physical effects of the explosive shockwave: overturning armored vehicles, weakening defensive structures, destroying rail & roadways, and knocking down cover.
- icegreentea 16y ago
  ...I don't understand this concept of 'angle'. We don't really have an effective way of shaping a nuclear explosion do we? I mean, my understanding is that the blast effect of a nuke is a result of the xrays/gamma rays slamming into the air, and that nukes produce a nearly burst of rays in all directions. If you mean that the resulting shockwave will be closer to vertical when it reaches given distance from ground zero, then that's just a function of geometry/height, not of any 'angle' during the detonation.
  - jasonkester 16y ago
    Actually, it seems like you do understand what he was talking about. You just haven't seen references to Nuclear Shaped Charges before. Back in the day, lots of smart guys were working on ways to make nuclear explosions do interesting things. One of these things was to shape the explosion into something useful. Check out how they were doing it for project Orion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsi... So yeah, that's what he meant.
  - mcritz 16y ago
    The angle of attack as related to the surface of the Earth. E.g. a perpendicular angle of attack means the weapon approaches detonation range from directly above. Sorry for the confusion.
- jordan0day 16y ago
  According to the wikipedia entry: "Although neutron bombs are commonly believed to "leave the infrastructure intact", current designs have explosive yields in the kiloton range,[13] the detonation of which would cause heavy destruction through blast and heat effects." I agree the intention of the weapon is to leave infrastructure intact... I just don't think that was ever really achieved.
commieneko 16y ago
Let's see, the last war the US fought in order to gain land (or at least resources and infrastructure) was ... Iraq! If it weren't for the political and international consequences, then Neutron Bombs would have been very useful in that conflict. The fact that the US won (!) but still doesn't have the spoils says more about the competency of my country's leaders than it does their intentions.
- jordan0day 16y ago
  Well, people can (and certainly will) debate about the purposes of the Iraq war until they're blue in the face, but I don't think anyone would argue that the USA invaded Iraq because Americans want to move there. Perhaps I didn't state my point appropriately, but my argument was more directed at statements like the one by Kruschev that kwantam quoted.
  - commieneko 16y ago
    I understand your main point, I was just addressing the notion that a infrastructure preserving bomb would be of no tacticle use to the US. Strategically it IS of no use tovthe US, but that is another discussion... That aside, the point of the bomb was not simply to keep land livable for the victors to homestead, but to preserve the infrastructure during a conflict, including large numbers of the civil population not located directly on top of an unfortunately tactical spot. Gotta have someone left to work those still standing oil rigs...
- jerf 16y ago
  "fact that the US won (!) but still doesn't have the spoils says more..." Or, in other words, you have a mental model of the purposes of the war which predicts certain actions, and then, when that model is falsified by virtue of your predictions failing, it's not that your model is wrong, it's that the leaders who were successful up to that point (despite, quite likely, your model not permitting that either) suddenly becoming stupid. You've gone unfalsifiable. (I'm calling this out because it's a pretty popular position. I'm not claiming the stated ends are necessarily exactly the true ends, either, but, actions speak louder than words. Putative motivations need to explain what actually happened, not what could have happened in a parallel universe.)

kenver 16y ago

Whenever I read about neutron bombs they always talk about how they're designed to kill tank crews/armored soldiers etc, but as you say the potential is there to kill everyone in a city with little infrastructure damage. From the sounds of it they must be expensive and difficult to maintain though due to the half life of tritium (12 years) so hopefully there aren't many around. I don't see how they can ever be called a moral weapon, if for this reason alone (wikipedia): One significant drawback of the weapon is that not all targeted troops will die or be incapacitated immediately. After a brief bout of nausea, many of those hit with about 5–50 Sv of radiation will experience a temporary recovery (the latent or "walking ghost phase") lasting days to weeks.

pmjordan 16y ago
I wonder how they know this? Do they just assume that neutron radiation will cause the same radiation sickness as other types of radiation? Extrapolate from animal testing? Or have there been tests with humans? My understanding was that the high-energy neutrons interacted with the hydrogen nuclei (singular protons) in the body, due to the extremely similar mass; conversely, ionising radiation, well, ionises molecules, that is to say, interacts with the electrons.
- DougWebb 16y ago
  Explosive weapons aren't the only sources of neutrons. I imagine animals have been exposed in labs, and probably humans have been accidentally exposed too.
  - varjag 16y ago
    Also, there were plenty of actual nuclear bombing victims to draw many kinds of statistics.
- Symmetry 16y ago
  From accidents in the early days of nuclear research and extrapolation. An example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core

CapitalistCartr 16y ago

Having the military technology of the Romans didn't stop people from having as many wars as they could. Seeing suffering hasn't stopped people from having wars. Enthusiastically. The only technology that has put the brakes on men's passion for warring is nuclear weapons. This has been the most peaceful period in history.

DannoHung 16y ago
You don't think that has anything to do with armament imbalance? Put all the guns or all the swords or all the nuclear bombs in the hands of one set of people and sure you'll have peace from the de-armed populace... but you'd better do what the guy with the gun says to do.
hasenj 16y ago
> This has been the most peaceful period in history. Not really. Not for the middle east anyway. Although I see your point about having nuclear weapons resulting in less wars. The USA and USSR never actually got in a direct war. OTOH, if just one reckless leader decides to use nukes, just for once, it will probably start an endless nuclear war. It's a double edged sword. Wonder what would happen if every country in the middle east had them, or say, major countries (Turkey, and some Arab country).
- salemh 16y ago
  No major powers have gone to war however. Stalemates of nuclear war and the lack of conventional warfare between capitalistic countries equates to this weird period in history that does not involve actual military expansion. Economic expansion is enough :D http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hharchive/Show-33---(BLITZ)-Old-School-Toughness/%20history-lifecycles-empire http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hharchive/Show-33---(BLITZ... An interesting look at "Belgium should not be a country" meaning, pre-1950's, Belgium would be snapped up by an expanding imperialistic country. http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/demowar.htm http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/demowar.htm Lists of Democracies going to war..though I would differentiate this between "capitalistic" countries and war. Points and counter-points: http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/205/01/20060806nb_cheap_wars_tikkun_web.htm http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/205/01/20060806nb_cheap_wars_tikk...

lukeschlather 16y ago

Why, then, has no one ever used a neutron bomb in war? From an evidence-based standpoint, guns, bows and the like make it far more attractive. I'd also point out that civilization with Roman-era technology is impossible without slavery on a massive scale, slavery that must be fueled by war.

ertyjhgvfdc 16y ago
Because nobody with the technology has fought a large tank force in a region where they didn't want to destroy the surrounding country.

tomjen3 16y ago

That won't do you much good. The asyrians didn't need nuclear weapons to destroy Babylon. And they could hardly have done a better job with them.

InclinedPlane 16y ago

You've got it backwards. Industrialization buts incredible power in the hands of the individual, see the damage that individual terrorists and crazies are capable of. And there's no way to take away that dangerous capability and keep an industrialized, mechanized economy and society intact. Anyone with the necessary knowledge and intent and access to home depot can build modern weapons (guns, bombs, and worse things). But the plus side is significant. An agrarian population is a population that can be cowed by force. History is clear on this. When the bulk of the population are tied to farms they can be easily dominated by any militant group with weapons and a will to subjugate. Keep in mind, the horrific practices of, say, the Nazis or the Fascists or the Stalinists or the Maoists were de rigueur in ancient times. This is not something I want to return to, no matter how imperfect modern times are.