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The article claims that a nine-megaton blast would wipe out "most of the state of Arkansas". Wikipedia claims the lethal radius on a bomb of that size is about

The article claims that a nine-megaton blast would wipe out "most of the state of Arkansas". Wikipedia claims the lethal radius on a bomb of that size is about 20 miles for thermal effects (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B53_nuclear_bomb#Effects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B53_nuclear_bomb#Effects ), which is around 2% of the area of Arkansas; other effects are described as having an even smaller radius. I suspect, but cannot prove, the wikipedia number is more likely to be correct.

NamTaf 12y ago
Castle Bravo [1], [2] was a 15Mt yield set off on Bikini Atoll, notable because it was predicted to be 6Mt but was almost 2.5x that. Considering how much of the Bikini Atoll is left ([3], with pin on the location of detonation) and that the command centre for Castle was on the Atoll, I'd say that Arkansas is ok. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Castle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Castle [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo [3] https://goo.gl/maps/thGe6 https://goo.gl/maps/thGe6
- pantalaimon 12y ago
  I think the problem is that people can't live there anymore.
  - Crito 12y ago
    You could live there, it just isn't a very good place to live anymore. You would need to fly in your own food and water, and you'll still be getting irradiated, but we're talking "probably get cancer one day" irradiated, not "die of radiation sickness" irradiated. Bikini Atoll was also worse than this hypothetical Arkansas scenario in two ways: 1) The soil there is potassium poor, causing local plants to more readily take in radioactive cesium. 2) It was also hit by 22 additional bombs.
  - pault 12y ago
    That's not really fair. Little Rock isn't the nicest place but I know someone with a very nice summer home in the Ozarks.
Spearchucker 12y ago
It's sad that semantics appear to be more worthy of discussion than the mere existence of such raw destructive power.
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  It's a sign that the journalist just didn't give a crap. What else did they not give a crap about?
  - acqq 12y ago
    See my other answer here, it's not so simple as you believe, as soon as you consider the fallout.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
arethuza 12y ago
Fall-out effects from such a large & dirty H-bomb detonated at ground level would have been pretty bad - you wouldn't want to be downwind of such an event. [Edit 1] Actually, if you consider the indirect effects of the use of such a weapon - particularly the large number of refugees fleeing contaminated areas, huge numbers of injured etc. while such a detonation wouldn't destroy an entire state it would probably reduce it to complete chaos. e.g. The UK government estimated in the 1950s that three H-bombs would be all it would take to destroy the UK as a functioning society - the UK ambassador in Moscow even had a drunken debate with Kruschev on this point - suggesting that the hundreds of weapons the Soviets had pointing at the UK were complete overkill... [Edit 2] The UK government was always pretty gloomy/realistic about the likely impact of a nuclear war on the UK - basically even in fairly optimistic scenarios such as the Square Leg exercise used as the basis for Threads were absolutely awful. A real attack would have been far worse that the one shown in Threads, if anyone can conceive of that.
- gambiting 12y ago
  >> suggesting that the hundreds of weapons the Soviets had pointing at the UK were complete overkill... As Schlosser says in his book - because of the lack of coordination between the Air Force, Army, US Navy and Missile Forces, at one point there was something like 400(sorry if I remembered the number wrong,but it was in hundreds) nuclear rockets aimed at Moscow, many of them with multi-megaton payload. If they were launched, Moscow wouldn't be just destroyed - the entire area would be turned into the biggest crater on earth.
  - arethuza 12y ago
    I remember the figure of 400 as well - don't know if that included UK weapons as well (e.g. the Chevaline upgrade to Polaris was mainly about defeating the ABM defenses around Moscow). NB An interesting article by Charlie Stross on the relationship between the US and the UK's "independent" deterrent: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/04/on-the-uk-and-nuclear-disarmam.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/04/on-the-u...
  - cstross 12y ago
wamatt 12y ago
Thanks for catching that. It struck me as odd too. Disappointing to read needless hyperbole in the New Yorker.
justin66 12y ago
If by "wipe out" the author meant create a lot of casualties and do immense property damage and by "most of the state" the author was talking about population and infrastructure value and not surface area, it's a very defensible statement. The central part of the state is pretty densely populated and that bomb is large. edit: for starters consider that in a state of three million people, 725k are in Little Rock, which is only 116 square miles. Then read the specs on that bomb you linked to again.
zorbo 12y ago
There's a nuclear detonation simulator here: http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ Here's a link with the numbers plugged in: http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=9000&lat=34.7464809&lng=-92.2895948&airburst=0&hob_ft=0&ff=50&zm=7 http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=9000&lat=34.7464809&l... Arkansas would not be "wiped out".
- aeturnum 12y ago
  If you enable the fallout option, you will see a much more encompassing effect that would have rendered a lot of land unlivable.
TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
>I suspect, but cannot prove, the wikipedia number is more likely to be correct. The Wikipedia number is not correct, because even a single blast has long term consequences, and in a full scale war, the consequences are more significant than the initial damage. Even if the blast was just one a of a handful, survivors would have to contend with fallout from other detonations, followed by nuclear winter, followed by years of famine, mutation, cancer, and other diseases. In a full scale war, nukes are targeted at nuke power plants, so there would be even more fallout - enough to sterilise many parts of the US. Initial casualties would be a small percentage of the eventual total. Even a limited exchange in a distant part of the world would have global consequences. See e.g. http://phys.org/news/2013-12-nuclear-war-civilization-famine.html http://phys.org/news/2013-12-nuclear-war-civilization-famine...
- lotharbot 12y ago
  > "in a full scale war, the consequences are more significant" The specific point being discussed was a local disaster -- a 9 megaton bomb which was damaged by somebody dropping a tool on it -- not an all-out war scenario. Which is why I responded the way I did. In that scenario, I don't see any realistic case in which the entire state of Arkansas would be "wiped out". Possibly fallout would have rendered a fraction of the state uninhabitable for several weeks, and possibly some long-term effects would render a smaller fraction of the state uninhabitable for much longer, but the whole state "wiped out" is just sloppy journalism.
  - acqq 12y ago
    No, see the answer from aeturnum: use the online calculator, enable falout. You'll have to zoom out the map: the area of the effects is approximately as big as the state. http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=9000&lat=34.7464809&lng=-92.2895948&airburst=0&hob_ft=0&ff=50&zm=7 http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=9000&lat=34.7464809&l...
    - lotharbot 12y ago
      I did in fact already run this scenario. The fallout area is large if you set the threshold low enough. But from what I understand, the largest rings do not render the area uninhabitable by any means. Perhaps the smallest inner ring does. Fallout is also generally a short-term effect -- weeks, not decades. Also be aware that fallout from an underground blast (as in a silo) is going to spread much differently from fallout from an airburst.
hollerith 12y ago
Another technical mistake in the New Yorker article: it implies that since the missle was armed, the fire could have produced a megaton-sized blast. Not true: the component that undergoes fission in all US nukes designed after 1945 is spherical, and for the component to release significant amounts of energy, the sphere has to be compressed by a very precisely-timed combination of about 20 explosions of conventional explosives (TNT or such). In fact, a new kind of electronic device needed to be invented by the Manhattan Project to meet the precise timing demands. So, although it is possible for the fire to ignite the conventional explosives, it would almost certainly have not done so in precisely the way needed to activate the atomic components of the bomb -- at least that is what I have read somewhere. (Sorry, I do not remember where -- maybe Carey Sublette's Nuclear Weapons FAQ.) The worst thing that could realistically have happened is that the fire and a conventional explosion would have spread the radioactive components of the bomb (particularly, plutonium) into the environment, in the manner of a dirty bomb.
- jimmyswimmy 12y ago
  Your comment assumes that the weapon was one-point safe, which was not true for all US devices. I cannot remember the source but apparently for many years (through at least the 80's, I believe) many US weapons could have produced a yield if subjected to a fire. Suppose the trigger device providing the precise timing could misbehave at high temperatures. Or, in the same source I mentioned earlier, it was disclosed that there were wiring paths which could have melted together in a fire and cause the weapon to fire.

NamTaf 12y ago

Castle Bravo [1], [2] was a 15Mt yield set off on Bikini Atoll, notable because it was predicted to be 6Mt but was almost 2.5x that. Considering how much of the Bikini Atoll is left ([3], with pin on the location of detonation) and that the command centre for Castle was on the Atoll, I'd say that Arkansas is ok. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Castle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Castle [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo [3] https://goo.gl/maps/thGe6 https://goo.gl/maps/thGe6

pantalaimon 12y ago
I think the problem is that people can't live there anymore.
- Crito 12y ago
  You could live there, it just isn't a very good place to live anymore. You would need to fly in your own food and water, and you'll still be getting irradiated, but we're talking "probably get cancer one day" irradiated, not "die of radiation sickness" irradiated. Bikini Atoll was also worse than this hypothetical Arkansas scenario in two ways: 1) The soil there is potassium poor, causing local plants to more readily take in radioactive cesium. 2) It was also hit by 22 additional bombs.
- pault 12y ago
  That's not really fair. Little Rock isn't the nicest place but I know someone with a very nice summer home in the Ozarks.

Spearchucker 12y ago

It's sad that semantics appear to be more worthy of discussion than the mere existence of such raw destructive power.

CamperBob2 12y ago
It's a sign that the journalist just didn't give a crap. What else did they not give a crap about?
- acqq 12y ago
  See my other answer here, it's not so simple as you believe, as soon as you consider the fallout.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

arethuza 12y ago

Fall-out effects from such a large & dirty H-bomb detonated at ground level would have been pretty bad - you wouldn't want to be downwind of such an event. [Edit 1] Actually, if you consider the indirect effects of the use of such a weapon - particularly the large number of refugees fleeing contaminated areas, huge numbers of injured etc. while such a detonation wouldn't destroy an entire state it would probably reduce it to complete chaos. e.g. The UK government estimated in the 1950s that three H-bombs would be all it would take to destroy the UK as a functioning society - the UK ambassador in Moscow even had a drunken debate with Kruschev on this point - suggesting that the hundreds of weapons the Soviets had pointing at the UK were complete overkill... [Edit 2] The UK government was always pretty gloomy/realistic about the likely impact of a nuclear war on the UK - basically even in fairly optimistic scenarios such as the Square Leg exercise used as the basis for Threads were absolutely awful. A real attack would have been far worse that the one shown in Threads, if anyone can conceive of that.

gambiting 12y ago
>> suggesting that the hundreds of weapons the Soviets had pointing at the UK were complete overkill... As Schlosser says in his book - because of the lack of coordination between the Air Force, Army, US Navy and Missile Forces, at one point there was something like 400(sorry if I remembered the number wrong,but it was in hundreds) nuclear rockets aimed at Moscow, many of them with multi-megaton payload. If they were launched, Moscow wouldn't be just destroyed - the entire area would be turned into the biggest crater on earth.
- arethuza 12y ago
  I remember the figure of 400 as well - don't know if that included UK weapons as well (e.g. the Chevaline upgrade to Polaris was mainly about defeating the ABM defenses around Moscow). NB An interesting article by Charlie Stross on the relationship between the US and the UK's "independent" deterrent: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/04/on-the-uk-and-nuclear-disarmam.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/04/on-the-u...
- cstross 12y ago

wamatt 12y ago

Thanks for catching that. It struck me as odd too. Disappointing to read needless hyperbole in the New Yorker.

justin66 12y ago

If by "wipe out" the author meant create a lot of casualties and do immense property damage and by "most of the state" the author was talking about population and infrastructure value and not surface area, it's a very defensible statement. The central part of the state is pretty densely populated and that bomb is large. edit: for starters consider that in a state of three million people, 725k are in Little Rock, which is only 116 square miles. Then read the specs on that bomb you linked to again.

zorbo 12y ago

There's a nuclear detonation simulator here: http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ Here's a link with the numbers plugged in: http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=9000&lat=34.7464809&lng=-92.2895948&airburst=0&hob_ft=0&ff=50&zm=7 http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=9000&lat=34.7464809&l... Arkansas would not be "wiped out".

aeturnum 12y ago
If you enable the fallout option, you will see a much more encompassing effect that would have rendered a lot of land unlivable.

TheOtherHobbes 12y ago

>I suspect, but cannot prove, the wikipedia number is more likely to be correct. The Wikipedia number is not correct, because even a single blast has long term consequences, and in a full scale war, the consequences are more significant than the initial damage. Even if the blast was just one a of a handful, survivors would have to contend with fallout from other detonations, followed by nuclear winter, followed by years of famine, mutation, cancer, and other diseases. In a full scale war, nukes are targeted at nuke power plants, so there would be even more fallout - enough to sterilise many parts of the US. Initial casualties would be a small percentage of the eventual total. Even a limited exchange in a distant part of the world would have global consequences. See e.g. http://phys.org/news/2013-12-nuclear-war-civilization-famine.html http://phys.org/news/2013-12-nuclear-war-civilization-famine...

lotharbot 12y ago
> "in a full scale war, the consequences are more significant" The specific point being discussed was a local disaster -- a 9 megaton bomb which was damaged by somebody dropping a tool on it -- not an all-out war scenario. Which is why I responded the way I did. In that scenario, I don't see any realistic case in which the entire state of Arkansas would be "wiped out". Possibly fallout would have rendered a fraction of the state uninhabitable for several weeks, and possibly some long-term effects would render a smaller fraction of the state uninhabitable for much longer, but the whole state "wiped out" is just sloppy journalism.
- acqq 12y ago
  No, see the answer from aeturnum: use the online calculator, enable falout. You'll have to zoom out the map: the area of the effects is approximately as big as the state. http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=9000&lat=34.7464809&lng=-92.2895948&airburst=0&hob_ft=0&ff=50&zm=7 http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=9000&lat=34.7464809&l...
  - lotharbot 12y ago
    I did in fact already run this scenario. The fallout area is large if you set the threshold low enough. But from what I understand, the largest rings do not render the area uninhabitable by any means. Perhaps the smallest inner ring does. Fallout is also generally a short-term effect -- weeks, not decades. Also be aware that fallout from an underground blast (as in a silo) is going to spread much differently from fallout from an airburst.

hollerith 12y ago

Another technical mistake in the New Yorker article: it implies that since the missle was armed, the fire could have produced a megaton-sized blast. Not true: the component that undergoes fission in all US nukes designed after 1945 is spherical, and for the component to release significant amounts of energy, the sphere has to be compressed by a very precisely-timed combination of about 20 explosions of conventional explosives (TNT or such). In fact, a new kind of electronic device needed to be invented by the Manhattan Project to meet the precise timing demands. So, although it is possible for the fire to ignite the conventional explosives, it would almost certainly have not done so in precisely the way needed to activate the atomic components of the bomb -- at least that is what I have read somewhere. (Sorry, I do not remember where -- maybe Carey Sublette's Nuclear Weapons FAQ.) The worst thing that could realistically have happened is that the fire and a conventional explosion would have spread the radioactive components of the bomb (particularly, plutonium) into the environment, in the manner of a dirty bomb.

jimmyswimmy 12y ago
Your comment assumes that the weapon was one-point safe, which was not true for all US devices. I cannot remember the source but apparently for many years (through at least the 80's, I believe) many US weapons could have produced a yield if subjected to a fire. Suppose the trigger device providing the precise timing could misbehave at high temperatures. Or, in the same source I mentioned earlier, it was disclosed that there were wiring paths which could have melted together in a fire and cause the weapon to fire.