3 ms·

Thanks for the correction, and the explanation. I recalled reading the following in the Wikipedia article, but forgot about it as I was writing the comment, whi

Thanks for the correction, and the explanation. I recalled reading the following in the Wikipedia article, but forgot about it as I was writing the comment, while trying to juggle several other things. "The initial three-stage design was capable of yielding the power of approximately 100 Mt, but would have caused too much radioactive fallout. To limit fallout, the third stage and possibly the second stage had a lead tamper instead of a uranium-238 fusion tamper (which greatly amplifies the reaction by fissioning uranium atoms with fast neutrons from the fusion reaction). This eliminated fast fission by the fusion-stage neutrons, so that approximately 97% of the total energy resulted from fusion alone (as such, it was one of the "cleanest" nuclear bombs ever created, generating a very low amount of fallout relative to its yield). There was a strong incentive for this modification since most of the fallout from a test of the bomb would have ended up on populated Soviet territory." Also, if you have the time, I'd like your opinion on what I said about atmospheric focusing. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3626601 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3626601

InclinedPlane 15y ago
Atmospheric focusing is a pretty inefficient process, on top of the existing inefficiencies of massive nuclear weapons it's probably not worthwhile to use as a weapon. It's a lot easier to send conventional bombs or bullets to Finland if you want to break windows there than to use multi-megaton bombs thousands of miles away. The main reason you build big bombs is (aside from the arms race / show boating aspect) to destroy important targets with inaccurate delivery systems. The other reason to build big bombs is to intentionally create fallout, which could be used in a "doomsday" weapon, possibly as a MAD deterrent. If you exploded a 1,000 MT nuke on a containership in international waters off the coast of Europe or North America and you took advantage of the prevailing winds you could do devastating damage to the population, agriculture, etc.

InclinedPlane 15y ago

Atmospheric focusing is a pretty inefficient process, on top of the existing inefficiencies of massive nuclear weapons it's probably not worthwhile to use as a weapon. It's a lot easier to send conventional bombs or bullets to Finland if you want to break windows there than to use multi-megaton bombs thousands of miles away. The main reason you build big bombs is (aside from the arms race / show boating aspect) to destroy important targets with inaccurate delivery systems. The other reason to build big bombs is to intentionally create fallout, which could be used in a "doomsday" weapon, possibly as a MAD deterrent. If you exploded a 1,000 MT nuke on a containership in international waters off the coast of Europe or North America and you took advantage of the prevailing winds you could do devastating damage to the population, agriculture, etc.