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>At his Livermore laboratory, he reported, they were working on two new weapon designs, dubbed Gnomon and Sundial. Gnomon would be 1,000 megatons and would be u

>At his Livermore laboratory, he reported, they were working on two new weapon designs, dubbed Gnomon and Sundial. Gnomon would be 1,000 megatons and would be used like a “primary” to set off Sundial, which would be 10,000 megatons. Project Sundial was the ultimate expression of power, a bomb so big it would detonated here in the US, to kill everyone on the planet. I think that the "dead hand" system[1] built by the Soviets, and still operational today, might have incorporated a copy of this idea. This would nicely explain the hesitancy/restraint of the US in the Ukrainian conflict. Nobody wants a 10+ Gigaton bomb going off.

simne 2y ago
[flagged]
russdill 2y ago
A real life swordholder.
jjk166 2y ago
It's worth noting that the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 was about 30 Gigatons TNT equivalent. Certainly a catastrophic event that affected climate around the globe, but a far cry from "killing everyone on the planet."
- mikewarot 2y ago
  Of course it didn't blanket the world in fallout, which matters.
  - jjk166 2y ago
    Not substantially. The fallout produced would obviously be substantially larger than any one nuclear explosion, but it's still a small amount on a planetary scale. If you naively scaled up the contamination area of the castle bravo test from 15 Mt to 15 Gt, it would be 3% of earth's surface area. Further, the range that fallout can travel is limited by the half lives of the particles, not the size of the explosions, so it does not scale like this. We also have experience with large amounts of fallout released into the atmosphere. For comparison, in a 12 month period from 1961 to 1962 there were 340 Megatons worth of nukes detonated in atmosphere. While I would recommend against detonating a few times that much all at once, it's a few percent increase in global cancer rates scenario, not a nuclear hellscape scenario.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > it didn't blanket the world in fallout, which matters Fires, not fallout. Volcanoes don't spark continent-wide fires. Sundial would. That sooty matter lofted into the stratosphere is what makes it unique from a volcano. Not the radioactivity.
dmurray 2y ago
Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret.
snthpy 2y ago
Looking for the dead hand [1] reference. Did you forget to add it?
- mikewarot 2y ago
  Yep... Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand

simne 2y ago

[flagged]

russdill 2y ago

A real life swordholder.

jjk166 2y ago

It's worth noting that the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 was about 30 Gigatons TNT equivalent. Certainly a catastrophic event that affected climate around the globe, but a far cry from "killing everyone on the planet."

mikewarot 2y ago
Of course it didn't blanket the world in fallout, which matters.
- jjk166 2y ago
  Not substantially. The fallout produced would obviously be substantially larger than any one nuclear explosion, but it's still a small amount on a planetary scale. If you naively scaled up the contamination area of the castle bravo test from 15 Mt to 15 Gt, it would be 3% of earth's surface area. Further, the range that fallout can travel is limited by the half lives of the particles, not the size of the explosions, so it does not scale like this. We also have experience with large amounts of fallout released into the atmosphere. For comparison, in a 12 month period from 1961 to 1962 there were 340 Megatons worth of nukes detonated in atmosphere. While I would recommend against detonating a few times that much all at once, it's a few percent increase in global cancer rates scenario, not a nuclear hellscape scenario.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > it didn't blanket the world in fallout, which matters Fires, not fallout. Volcanoes don't spark continent-wide fires. Sundial would. That sooty matter lofted into the stratosphere is what makes it unique from a volcano. Not the radioactivity.

dmurray 2y ago

Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret.

snthpy 2y ago

Looking for the dead hand [1] reference. Did you forget to add it?

mikewarot 2y ago
Yep... Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand