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I think you don't have an appreciation of the devastation that modern thermonuclear warheads are capable of, as well as the sophisticated delivery systems that
by arthurcolle 7y ago
I think you don't have an appreciation of the devastation that modern thermonuclear warheads are capable of, as well as the sophisticated delivery systems that the United States has concocted and refined over many, many years.
- perl4ever 7y agoModern warheads are smaller, not larger - everybody knows that. And what "sophisticated" means is better targeting, which is why smaller weapons can be used. Those things seem to point away from blowing up the entire world. I don't know if it's true, but there was a rumor that if one wanted to, it would be technically feasible to make a hydrogen bomb of unlimited size - e.g. crack the planet in half. However, that path was not taken.
- ethbro 7y agoI think the B83 (1.2 megatons) is the highest yield weapon currently in the US arsenal. Which, while terrible (9 megatons ~= pressure wave that levels most structures in a largish city), pales in comparison to something like the B41 (25 megatons) or the B53 (9 megatons). Generally speaking, the US and Russia both realized (~70s) that building excessively large bombs was inflexible and a waste of resources. The actual first-order effects are generally smaller than what you'd expect: https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
- cma 7y agoMIRVs have multiple smaller bombs, that can do much more damage than a single of equivalent tonnage to their cumulative (due to volume being more concentrated over ground plane, like cluster bombs).