Hayabusa Rider
Admin Emeritus & Elite Member
- Jan 26, 2000
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silverpig
Lifer
- Jul 29, 2001
- 27,703
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To directly answer this:
Biggest nuke available today would be in the 20 megaton range (a guess). The largest ever was designed to be over 100 megatons, but the largest explosion was 52 megatons.
An average nuke would probably be in the 500 kiloton range.
Korea probably has 100 kiloton bombs.
When that 50 megaton Soviet bomb went off, both the US and Soviets realized it was pointless to have bombs that large. They would completely obliterate any city and would also fry the suburbs as well. They have absolutely no tactical purpose at all. I'm pretty sure that a lot of the disarmament treaties have limited the size of nukes, but couldn't tell you what those sizes were.
If the EPA and the AQMD could have it their way there the only bombs that would be allowed are neutron bombs which could kill everyone but leave all the buildings intact.
I'd rather make a bomb that destroyed all the weapons and left all the people intact.
: ) Hopper
GagHalfrunt
Lifer
- Apr 19, 2001
- 25,284
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Of course once you reach a certain size it starts to become meaningless. 20 megatons, 50 megatons, 100 megatons, so what? Deciding whether to drop a 20 megaton or a 50 megaton would be akin to deciding between killing a mosquito with a 5lb sledgehammer or a 10 pound sledgehammer. The thing would be just as dead either way. Once the US and USSR got away from the Freudian nuke envy (my warhead is bigger than your warhead. Nyah!!) it was decided that superhuge warheads were not the way to go. It would be better to drop 10 5 megaton warheads in various places around a city than one 50 megatonner right on city hall. That way you still vaporize the target even if a few got intercepted or were duds. Besides, nobody at ground zero is going to notice the difference.
Exactly, most of the blast ends up in the air, and in the case of the 50MT and bigger weapons, into space.
LOL!
I can just picture a guy running through his apartment, trying to kill a mosquito with a sledgehammer, smashing everything!
Maybe so, but wouldn't a flyswatter be a more useful tool?
Again, the cartoon where Bugs Bunny pulled out a gun, then Elmer Fudd pulled out a bigger gun, Bugs pulls out a rocket launcher, Fudd pulls out a tank, Bugs pulls out a missile, etc. until they are pulling out aircraft carriers and battleships!
: ) Hopper
GagHalfrunt
Lifer
- Apr 19, 2001
- 25,284
- 1,998
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Originally posted by: Grasshopper27
Again, the cartoon where Bugs Bunny pulled out a gun, then Elmer Fudd pulled out a bigger gun, Bugs pulls out a rocket launcher, Fudd pulls out a tank, Bugs pulls out a missile, etc. until they are pulling out aircraft carriers and battleships!
: ) Hopper
If you try hard enough, almost all aspects of life can be related to a Warner Brothers cartoon. That's the beauty of watching Bugs and Elmer or Wile E. Coyote vs the Roadrunner. It wasn't just mindless violence, they were parables of the human condition. Plus, the Bible and Aesop never hit anyone on the head with an anvil.
Any info on where the Russians detonated their 50ish megaton bomb? That's pretty damn huge, basically 1 per major city...
Yep, I remain convinced to this day that I would have paid more attention to religion had there been more anvils in it.
BTW, I was 13 years old when I finally learned that an anvil was a real thing. I always figured it was made up for the cartoon, I didn't know they actually existed!!!
: ) Hopper
Ivy Mike was 10.4 megatons. The first experimental thermonuclear device was Greenhouse George (1950), which led the way to the first successful thermonuclear test, which was Ivy Mike (1952). Castle Bravo was the largest US atmospheric test at 15 megatons.
GagHalfrunt
Lifer
- Apr 19, 2001
- 25,284
- 1,998
- 126
Originally posted by: Grasshopper27
Yep, I remain convinced to this day that I would have paid more attention to religion had there been more anvils in it.
BTW, I was 13 years old when I finally learned that an anvil was a real thing. I always figured it was made up for the cartoon, I didn't know they actually existed!!!
: ) Hopper
That's because you were not paying attention to the right parts of religion. Sure, if you focus on that "do unto others" and "turn the other cheek" garbage it's like watching one of those ABC Afterschool Specials. But when you dig deeper, God was like Tony Soprano with better special effects. He smote all those who opposed him and devised some pretty ingenious ways of making them suffer. Factor in the fires, floods and other natural disasters that God tossed about when he was cranky and the entire Old Testament was like living through an Irwin Allen movie. It's really quite stirring stuff. And the sex, don't forget the sex. Back in the OT days there were hookers all over the place, loose women seducing men to suit their own evil purposes, incest, infidelity, diseases, S&M clubs and orgies (okay, I made a couple of those up, but the rest were true)
Things went to Hell (so to speak) when Jesus showed up. He took all that great wrath of God action and canned it. We went from plagues of locusts and pillars of salt to Good Samaritans and healing lepers. Yeesh, it's like they just wanted to kill the ratings. You gotta face it, the birth of Jesus was the "Jump the Shark" moment. After that things just were not the same.
Does detonating nukes that reach into space risk damaging anythingabout our orbit?
wouldnt that be hilarious, we all freeze to death or burn up, over a small country testing too big of a nuke?
My question is this.... why do they detonate nukes 5000 feet above the ground, why not at or on impact?
wouldnt that be hilarious, we all freeze to death or burn up, over a small country testing too big of a nuke?
My question is this.... why do they detonate nukes 5000 feet above the ground, why not at or on impact?
GagHalfrunt
Lifer
- Apr 19, 2001
- 25,284
- 1,998
- 126
Nah, on a planetary scale a single nuke is like trying to stop a speeding freight train with a feather. It has the power to vaporize a city, but not to deflect our orbit.
Nukes are detonated well above ground level to maximize the damage. The power of the explosion is spherical, so a lot of energy is lost since it travels downward and dissipates into the earth. Detonating above the ground lets more of the energy hit the target and makes the blast radius much larger.
I wasnt sure that having it blast down into the ground and crater might cause more seismic activities/risk?
Not all detonation are 5000ft up, depends what you want to do. At a higher altitude you get more EMP effect. A blast at ground level is okay, but if you detonate just above ground, you get precursor winds which cause more damage.
Buy/rent/download Trinity and Beyond, it's an excellent movie about nuclear weapons and their development
Trinity and Beyond: the atomic bomb movie
If the light of a thousand suns
were to rise in the sky at once,
it would be like the light
of that great spirit.
...
Vishnu, seeing you brush
the clouds with flames
of countless colors,
your mouths agape,
your huge eyes blazing,
my inner self quakes,
and I find no resolve
or tranquility.
were to rise in the sky at once,
it would be like the light
of that great spirit.
...
Vishnu, seeing you brush
the clouds with flames
of countless colors,
your mouths agape,
your huge eyes blazing,
my inner self quakes,
and I find no resolve
or tranquility.
You mean Earth's orbit around the sun, or stuff in orbit around Earth?
It won't hurt Earth's orbit around the sun.
It could well damage/destroy sats in orbit around Earth. That is one of the reasons Russia never tested their 100 megaton design, the 53 megaton device's blast reached space and further explosive yields are pointless really.
: ) Hopper
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