if we were to detonate a nuke underwater...

[Kyanzes]

Originally posted by: inspire
Are you trying to say that seismic activity has increased in magnitude over time? Do you have more than those numbers?

Hehe, no, absolutely not 😀 but I see how you came to this conclusion. Well, it was a quote from here which was posted in this thread by Gibsons. I copied that part I've quoted so one could compare the power of a gigaton nuclear device with real events in history. Sorry for the obfuscation.

 

[DrPizza]

Oh, I see what he meant - in relation to what nature can do.

For what it's worth, there's some archive site out there that has videos from the cold war of "training for the nuclear battlefield." - They actually had soldiers a relatively short distance from ground zero of a nuclear blast, in trenches, staying crouched down as the blast went over the top of the trench. Afterward, they brushed them off with little whisk brooms "to keep them safe from nuclear radiation." The video is quite :Q to watch. If I have time at school tomorrow, I'll hunt for those videos. Wherever it is, they've got an incredible collection (i.e the reel films from the 40's on)

edit: wrong emoticon

 

[Gibsons]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
Oh, I see what he meant - in relation to what nature can do.

For what it's worth, there's some archive site out there that has videos from the cold war of "training for the nuclear battlefield." - They actually had soldiers a relatively short distance from ground zero of a nuclear blast, in trenches, staying crouched down as the blast went over the top of the trench. Afterward, they brushed them off with little whisk brooms "to keep them safe from nuclear radiation." The video is quite 😱 to watch. If I have time at school tomorrow, I'll hunt for those videos. Wherever it is, they've got an incredible collection (i.e the reel films from the 40's on)

For nuclear videos, this is worth a look.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: videogames101
A nuke the size of a building isn't feasible to build and lift into the ocean, or even feasible to build, the proccess would be astronomicly expensive and transportation would be a nightmare. But say multiple smaller nukes, and your in buisness. Just another way we can kill ourselves. FTW

For that effort and expense, it'd be easier to find a near-Earth object and give it a couple of engines to change its orbit so it'd strike Earth. More destruction for less effort.

Originally posted by: gsellis

Originally posted by: jagec

Huh? No comments on the video.

Scroll down, there's like 74😕

Ah... your definition of "on the video" and mine are different. On the video, I heard a count down. You meant the comments about the video. Both right 😉

That had me confused too. I didn't hear any audio at all in the video.

 

[gbuskirk]

I believe the energy from a nuclear explosion in water dissipates according to inverse square of the distance, as the circular wave expands. However a straight wave, as generated by slippage on a fault line, dissipates energy linearly, therefore it travels farther and is more destructive at a distance.

 

[BrownTown]

Originally posted by: Kyanzes
Today's technology allows us to build nuclear warheads in the gigaton range that could be carried by bombers / missiles. So these seem to achievable:

8.0 1 gigaton San Francisco, CA Quake, 1906
8.5 5.6 gigatons Anchorage, AK Quake, 1964

That one, however, seems a bit far today:

9.0 32 gigatons 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake

Somehow I have the feeling that we won't have to wait too long for that one to be surpassed, unfortunately.

Where do you get the idea that a gigaton device can be constructed at that size, I find it very highly unlikely that is true, in fact I question whether it is even physically possible.

 

[Gibsons]

Originally posted by: BrownTown

Originally posted by: Kyanzes
Today's technology allows us to build nuclear warheads in the gigaton range that could be carried by bombers / missiles. So these seem to achievable:

8.0 1 gigaton San Francisco, CA Quake, 1906
8.5 5.6 gigatons Anchorage, AK Quake, 1964

That one, however, seems a bit far today:

9.0 32 gigatons 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake

Somehow I have the feeling that we won't have to wait too long for that one to be surpassed, unfortunately.

Where do you get the idea that a gigaton device can be constructed at that size, I find it very highly unlikely that is true, in fact I question whether it is even physically possible.

Nuclear weapons scale up very well. As long as you've got the money, know-how, uranium, lithium deuteride, etc. you can make them about as big as you like.

The energy produced by the fusion second stage can be used to ignite an even larger fusion third stage. Multiple staging allows in principle the creation of bombs of virtually unlimited size.

From here

 

[BrownTown]

Well yes of course, but that makes it physically bigger. He said that such a bomb would be plane deliverable which i find very unlikely given the amount of material needed. I'm not sure exactly how effecient these explosions are, but that Tsar bomb is about as big as you can physically make one to fit a plane, and you would have to be 18 times as efficient as that, so if the exxiciency is like 5% then its not even physically possible.

 

[Maverick1]

I hate to be a nitpick but 1,000,000 tons of TNT = those of which that were dropped on hiroshima and Nagasaki. I did a report in Highschool about this and that was in 1998 when the report in the above post was made. there is nothing stated specificly that I see about gigaton. which is equal to 1 billion tons of TNT. the largest bomb ever tested officialy was 57 megatons by russia in 1961. 😀

 

[Gibsons]

Originally posted by: Maverick1
I hate to be a nitpick but 1,000,000 tons of TNT = those of which that were dropped on hiroshima and Nagasaki. I did a report in Highschool about this and that was in 1998 when the report in the above post was made. there is nothing stated specificly that I see about gigaton. which is equal to 1 billion tons of TNT. the largest bomb ever tested officialy was 57 megatons by russia in 1961. 😀

For the reasoning on how gigaton bombs are (at least theoretically) attainable, click the link I provided above.

As for Tsar Bomba, it was already mentioned on page one of this thread. For some good info about it look here Really interesting stuff imo, with some insight into Cold War politics and the Soviet leadership during that time.

Just a side note: nuclearweaponsarchive.org is easily the best website I've seen for info on nuclear bombs, with both history and some great primers on nuclear physics. Highly recommended! :thumbsup: