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I was actually surprised how "small" a lot of the bombs we've used are. Combining SF w/ the largest Nuke designed in the USSR is maddening though - the entire b

• saboot 6y ago
  The only upper limit on the destructive power of a nuclear weapons is the carrying capacity of the delivery mechanism. The explosive yield of the Tsar Bomba was purposefully reduced considerably, the fallout from a full yield test was too much even for the Soviets. There's always the option of putting the energy released into a radiation pulse as opposed to explosion. A bomb which takes out a few blocks, but whose radiation kills for miles and miles.
  • sillysaurusx 6y ago
    There's always the option of putting the energy released into a radiation pulse as opposed to explosion. A bomb which takes out a few blocks, but whose radiation kills for miles and miles. Really? I've never heard of that. Fascinating. Can you go into more detail? Kind of strange. I've done a lot of digging into nukes (as an amateur) and no one mentioned the radiation pulse tradeoff.
    • alexeldeib 6y ago
      Probably something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb
      • amphibian87 6y ago
        This is a terrifying weapon to me, because it's specifically designed to destroy only the people and organic life so the infrastructure can be reused.
        • namibj 6y ago
          So arguably much closer to dropping infantry, except that you'd have to warn them if you don't want to kill civilians.
        • sllabres 6y ago
          Yes, it is. But it seems to had another use. The W66 warhead has been used in the Sprint anti ballistic missile, to intercept and destroy ICBM.
        • YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
          I've always wondered: reused- by whom? Assuming these things would be droppped during a nuclear war (otherwise, dropping one would start the nuclear war) there wouldn't be many people left to reuse the buildings. Or any other living things for that matter.
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          • a3n 6y ago
            > I've always wondered: reused- by whom? Future archeologists.
        • dTal 6y ago
          >Neutron activation from the explosions could make many building materials in the city radioactive, such as zinc coated steel/galvanized steel (see area denial use below). After you!
        • Symmetry 6y ago
          That's not really the intent. Mostly the idea was that the armor on a tank will do a good job protecting from the blast and heat but a poor job protecting against neutrons. So if you want a weapon to attack an column of armor you're better off having your warhead put as much of its energy into neutrons as possible. Really, bombarding things with neutrons is not what you want to do if you want to re-use something. Some elements become radioactive when they absorb a neutron and if if you want to re-use that infrastructure you'd probably be better off letting it take some blast and then repairing it.
  • caf 6y ago
    The explosive yield of the Tsar Bomba was purposefully reduced considerably, the fallout from a full yield test was too much even for the Soviets. Yes. This is because in the full yield version, you double the yield by adding a jacket of Uranium that is fissioned by neutrons from the fusion reaction. That makes it a very dirty extra 50MT, distributing those hot Uranium fission products far and wide.
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• 0_____0 6y ago
  the small ones are more efficient..past a certain size the energy of the blast is wasted upward. so we have icbms that split into a bunch of independently targetable warheads, so you dont need a tsar bomba to level the bay. just one more typically sized MIRV capable missile
  • TeMPOraL 6y ago
    More importantly, MIRVs make ICBMs unstoppable in practice. To defend against a single ICBM past the separation stage, you'd have to waste one interceptor per reentry vehicle. An ICBM can easily take 6 or 10 warheads. The attacker could further frustrate your defenses by making 2/3 of the RVs fake and sending two more ICBMs, at little extra cost to them - and now you have to use 3x as much interceptors to stop such attack.
    • willis936 6y ago
      Which is an important to aspect to MAD. While nuclear countries are adversarial, detterent-deters like laser AA and hypersonic cruise missiles are destabilizing.
      • TeMPOraL 6y ago
        Yeah. MAD requires for all participants to believe none of them can launch an attack on another that would kill the enemy's capability to retaliate before said retaliation. Too fast weapons destabilize MAD, and so do too good defensive technologies (or even credible rumors about them).
        • 082349872349872 6y ago
          good defensive technologies are not destabilising when one credibly has no first strike capability. (this is, of course, only an option for third world countries)
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• 082349872349872 6y ago
  for reference as to "small": current Covid deaths in the US are probably over Fat Man (長崎) but under Little Boy (広島市).
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• fit2rule 6y ago
  >I was actually surprised how "small" a lot of the bombs we've used are. I think a lot of people overlook the fact that a majority of nuclear devices were created to act as triggers in an even bigger explosion - and those triggers, themselves, can be effectively deployed as a weapon as well as integrated into a higher yield system. The man-portable nuclear arms that are fielded out there right now - can be carried onto the battlefield by a single soldier - started life as trigger components for bigger bombs. A lot of the fuss over strategic nuclear weapons usage in the last 2 decades is as a consequence of nuclear weapons getting smaller, not bigger.
• chiph 6y ago
  One of the things the map doesn't take into effect is terrain. If the explosion is on the other side of a large hill, it will shield you from the initial radiation burst and thermal flash, and any pressure damage will be reduced & delayed by having to go around or over.
  • raldi 6y ago
    Don't the bombs go off while they're still way up in the air for that reason?
    • chiph 6y ago
      You can set them for detonating at a certain altitude which might clear some terrain, true. You could also set it for a ground detonation where terrain will have more of a protective effect from the initial blast, but then there will be additional fallout. The prevailing winds will determine how affected you will be by that.
• Balgair 6y ago
  For reference here, Mount St. Helens' 1980 blast was ~25 MT over the whole of the eruption, about half of Tsar Bomba. The initial blast was ~7 MT, a bit less than a W-53 Titan. That initial blast put a cubic mile of rock into the air, up to 15 miles high for some of it, and all over the continent. If you put these numbers into the map, be sure to use the 'surface blast' option, not the 'air blast'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_eruption_of_Mount_St._Helens#Aftermath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_eruption_of_Mount_St._Hel...