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Horrible mental exercise... As localized as a 700 megaton nuke (compared to the 13-18 kiloton nuke that his Hiroshima). Reliable sources say that virtually eve

by SEJeff 7y ago

Horrible mental exercise... As localized as a 700 megaton nuke (compared to the 13-18 kiloton nuke that his Hiroshima). Reliable sources say that virtually everything within a 3 mile radius from the impact was heavily damaged in Hiroshima and everything within 1.6km / ~1 mile radius was obliterated so you should be able to extrapolate from that. For comparison, the entire USA is ~3.797 million sq miles, so the equiv area of 184.35 entire United States would be utterly obliterated. 700000000 - 18000 = 699,982,000 sq miles of totally obliterated things For comparison, the entirety of planet earth is 196.9 million sq miles, so the equiv area of 10 planet earths would be heavily damaged. (700000000 - 18000) * 3 = 2,099,946,000 sq miles of heavily damaged things Update: My math is totally wrong and people smarter than me explained it. Yay for internet people!

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rootusrootus 7y ago
I'm a bit skeptical of your math. 700 megatons would be a bit over 10x the size of the biggest nuke ever detonated, which was still a city-killer, not a country-killer.
TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
Yield isn't linear. It's a cube root relationship. The difference between 100MT, 10MT and 1MT is hardly insignificant, but it's smaller than many people realise. FWIW a ballpark estimate says 700MT would have a 1 psi overpressure radius - which would break windows but not buildings - of less than 100km. It would be a huge bang and the noise would circle the world a few times. But if it landed on land, the total obliteration region would be smaller than a state. And the explosion itself wouldn't be extinction-level - although the winter that followed it would cause some severe problems. Tambora, which is the biggest explosion in modern records, was estimated around 33GT, and the blast effects from that were very, very, very bad, but still relatively localised. Chicxulub has been estimated as at least 20 billion Hiroshimas - and perhaps as much as four times that. That set fire to most of a hemisphere. And it still wasn't a complete obliteration/sterilisation event.
- SEJeff 7y ago
  > Chicxulub has been estimated as at least 20 billion Hiroshimas - and perhaps as much as four times that. That set fire to most of a hemisphere. And it still wasn't a complete obliteration/sterilisation event. Unless you were a dinosaur living at the time :) Thanks for the cluebat, I've put an update on my post to note the math is all bollocks.

by SEJeff 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

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rootusrootus 7y ago

I'm a bit skeptical of your math. 700 megatons would be a bit over 10x the size of the biggest nuke ever detonated, which was still a city-killer, not a country-killer.

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago

Yield isn't linear. It's a cube root relationship. The difference between 100MT, 10MT and 1MT is hardly insignificant, but it's smaller than many people realise. FWIW a ballpark estimate says 700MT would have a 1 psi overpressure radius - which would break windows but not buildings - of less than 100km. It would be a huge bang and the noise would circle the world a few times. But if it landed on land, the total obliteration region would be smaller than a state. And the explosion itself wouldn't be extinction-level - although the winter that followed it would cause some severe problems. Tambora, which is the biggest explosion in modern records, was estimated around 33GT, and the blast effects from that were very, very, very bad, but still relatively localised. Chicxulub has been estimated as at least 20 billion Hiroshimas - and perhaps as much as four times that. That set fire to most of a hemisphere. And it still wasn't a complete obliteration/sterilisation event.

SEJeff 7y ago
> Chicxulub has been estimated as at least 20 billion Hiroshimas - and perhaps as much as four times that. That set fire to most of a hemisphere. And it still wasn't a complete obliteration/sterilisation event. Unless you were a dinosaur living at the time :) Thanks for the cluebat, I've put an update on my post to note the math is all bollocks.