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I can't speak to the delivery aspect, but I don't think you'd even need a Teller Ulam thermonuclear warhead to make a credible threat to a neighboring power. Bu

I can't speak to the delivery aspect, but I don't think you'd even need a Teller Ulam thermonuclear warhead to make a credible threat to a neighboring power. But the delivery aspect matters a lot, obviously.

xxpor 5y ago
> Teller Ulam thermonuclear warhead to make a credible threat to a neighboring power. Granted, I haven't read a ton of analysis on this, but my guess would be that you do if you're going up against someone with their own thermonuclear bombs. If China drops some of their own thermonuclear weapons on Tokyo, what's Japan's response? Dropping a fission weapon? If they got to that level, I'm sure that would be considered an acceptable risk for China. The converse is also true. If Japan dropped the fission weapon first, they'd instantly have a bunch of thermonuclear warheads headed their way.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > If China drops some of their own thermonuclear weapons on Tokyo, what's Japan's response? Dropping a fission weapon? I don't think it works that way. Fission bombs are perfectly capable of leveling a city. If a city gets leveled, no one's going to shrug it off because it was done with the "wrong" kind of weapon. IIRC, modern thermonuclear warheads have yields along the lines of a couple hundred kilotons. Even through theoretically they can be made much more powerful, in practice they aren't.