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If you want to kill everyone in a city without damaging the buildings you use nerve gas. The point of the neutron bomb - which actually would do quite a lot o

If you want to kill everyone in a city without damaging the buildings you use nerve gas. The point of the neutron bomb - which actually would do quite a lot of damage to a city (it's still a Hiroshima size nuke) - is to kill tanks. Tanks are inherently rather bang poof,so to destroy an army of 10,000s Russian tanks spread across France and Germany you have to drop rather a lot of large thermonuclear weapons - which makes rather a mess - because anybody in a tank a couple of miles from the blast of a small nuke isn't going to care. The problem with reducing your allies' country to a radioactive sheet of glass is that it's rather hard to sell politically, which means they are likely to either surrender or nuke you in retaliation or - in the case of France - both. The idea of the neutron bomb was that you could use a relatively small nuke and kill tank crews 10miles away while making considerably less mess, thus persuading the Russians you might do it, thus suggesting to them that a quick Blitzkreig attack wouldn't go succeed.

varjag 16y ago
The whole idea, of course, was based on assumption that Soviets would use only conventional weapons in retaliation to neutron bomb usage. After all neutron bomb is moral, right? But somehow it didn't ring with Russians, who made it clear they'll follow up with nuclear response. That kind of renders all advantages of the weapon useless.
- ertyjhgvfdc 16y ago
  Not necessarily, assuming the Russians actually wanted to conquer western europe - rather than end the world. The plan was that they sweep into Germany in overwelming tank force, your only option is to drop serious megatonnage on them to try and melt all the tanks. They assume you don't want to totally destroy western europe and kill 100million people. The neutron bomb allows you to (in theory) destroy large numbers of their tanks without totally devastating your allies. So you are more likely to use it - and it still keeps things tactical rather than strategic. They are not going to nuke New York because you used a tactical device on their army. The Russian response was to wrap hydrogen rich armour (aka diesel fuel) around their tank crew spaces which would provide enough sheilding that you are back to having to use silly amounts of megatonnage to achieve anything.

varjag 16y ago

The whole idea, of course, was based on assumption that Soviets would use only conventional weapons in retaliation to neutron bomb usage. After all neutron bomb is moral, right? But somehow it didn't ring with Russians, who made it clear they'll follow up with nuclear response. That kind of renders all advantages of the weapon useless.

ertyjhgvfdc 16y ago
Not necessarily, assuming the Russians actually wanted to conquer western europe - rather than end the world. The plan was that they sweep into Germany in overwelming tank force, your only option is to drop serious megatonnage on them to try and melt all the tanks. They assume you don't want to totally destroy western europe and kill 100million people. The neutron bomb allows you to (in theory) destroy large numbers of their tanks without totally devastating your allies. So you are more likely to use it - and it still keeps things tactical rather than strategic. They are not going to nuke New York because you used a tactical device on their army. The Russian response was to wrap hydrogen rich armour (aka diesel fuel) around their tank crew spaces which would provide enough sheilding that you are back to having to use silly amounts of megatonnage to achieve anything.