The Myth That Nuclear Weapons Can Kill Everyone On Earth-many times over

Valid points. The bottom line here is that a strike of 2000 missiles would annihilate the US.

 

The SLBM's are definitely scary ... They would not be able to stop themselves from being annihilated. Even if they were able to get half - and this is unlikely - there is still enough to destroy Russia many times over.

Then you have our SLBM's

 

Assuming they worked.

 

Another stunner ! keep up the good work.

 

You do know there was a point in the 1960s when the U.S. had deployed literally hundreds of Polaris SLBMs. It was later discovered that if they were ever launched that fully 75% of their warheads would not have detonated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W47

 

We no longer live in the 1960's .. .. technology has improved over the last 68 years... we now have things like transistors and silicone chips.

 

And I guess you didn't know that transistors and silicone chips are roughly 1,000 times more vulnerable to EMP damage than vacuum tubes?

 

No I didn't but, interesting info. This is an interesting point you have brought up. My guess is that a nuclear bomb is more protected from an EMP than a computer but ... is this protection sufficient ?

Can you imagine sending 10 nukes in fairly close proximity - and 9 do not go off because the EMP from the first blast disables the other 9 !

 

That has been a common fear by military planners for decades. And persists to this day.

 

Anywhere between a quarter and a third of those missiles is going to suffer some kind of malfunction either on launch or in flight. An unknown percentage of warheads will likely have some kind of failure too.

Nuclear strategists have to have redundant targeting of 2 to 4 missiles per target.

So those 2,000 missiles become 500 missiles in practical effect very quickly.

 

That means they didn't have rights, rights cannot be overridden by mere laws...

 

Totally wrong.

In the first place, no one uses uranium as the primary fissile material in a thermonuclear device.

Secondly, a neutron cannot fission multiple nuclei. If it could, then it wouldn't take 4.5 kg to get a 1 kt detonation.

Thirdly, at the time the fusion process begins, 95+% of the Plutonium-239 has already undergone fission, and what little remains is now and expanding ball of plasma, which is what creates the extreme pressure necessary for fusion. Since that giant ball of plasma is no longer at critical mass, it's like a neutron flying through our Solar System in the hopes of hitting one of the Planets.

Fourth, if we accept your nonsense, then variable yield weapons wouldn't work. A variable yield 100 kt warhead uses an 8 kt trigger, which yields 8 kt by fission and 92 kt by the fusion of deuterium. If you code the warhead for a yield of 40 kt, the warhead bleeds off deuterium through a valve, leaving only enough to produce 32 kt through fusion and 8 kt through fission. And if you code in 0.3 kt, and you can do that, all of deuterium is bled off, and the laminated plastic explosives are manipulated so there's only a partial collapse of the Plutonium-239 core, that yields exactly 0.3 kt.

Maybe if you were actually trained in fallout prediction, you would have some understanding, instead of making stuff up.

No, it doesn't. Maybe you should go back and watch ABC's Nightline where Carl Sagan predicts nuclear winter because of the burning oil wells, and then failed miserably when it never happened.

Strategic nuclear warheads are air-burst in order to maximize damage. The fireball never touches the ground, and no material is ejected into the upper-atmosphere, so there's no nuclear winter.

There wouldn't be an absence of a growing season, and there would be no holes in the ozone layer.

You need to quit watching stupid movies like The Book of Eli.

Those were tactical nuclear weapons, not strategic nuclear weapons.

If you don't understand the difference, you should quit talking while you're ahead.

That's not what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission states.

 

Everybody does, however, encase the fusion fuel in the secondary with uranium, and half of the yield of the weapon comes from the fission of this uranium.

The split nucleus gives off several more neutrons, which go on to split more nuclei.

That leaves the layer of uranium that is surrounding the fusion fuel (incidentally highly compressed along with the fusion fuel).

Good grief. It is not me who is spouting nonsense.

The main fusion fuel in a thermonuclear warhead is in solid form, not a gas, and can't be bled off. The only gas that is bled off is the gas that is injected into the primary to boost the yield. (This as well boosts the yield primarily by creating neutrons that cause additional fission.)

All the deuterium-tritium gas is bled off (I notice you keep forgetting to mention the tritium). However there is still a complete collapse of the core.

Plastic explosive is by definition soft and pliable. That is not what they use in nuclear warheads.

Except you are the only person here who is making things up.

Wrong. The scientific community very much accepts nuclear winter as sound science.

Not if they are ground-bursts.

No one has ever claimed that nuclear winter is caused by groundbursts lofting soil into the air.

Nuclear winter is caused by the widespread burning of cities filling the air with thick dark smoke.

The scientists say differently.

And "hole in the ozone layer" is a huge understatement. More like no ozone layer at all for a good hundred years.

I've never heard of this movie, so you are more familiar with it than I am.

That is incorrect. Fat Man and Little Boy were strategic.

Luckily I do understand the difference, so I guess I get to keep talking.

Feel free to produce a cite from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission saying that there is no need to continue cooling a reactor after a SCRAM.

 

An aircraft flying from some South American nation to Montreal could detonate a small nuke over New York causing an EMP which would smoke all computers, car chips and anything else with an IC would decimate the US and global economy literally in a flash. No need for a massive strike to kill human beings; just kill the economy.

 

Actually a nuclear weapon detonating over New York would not cause remotely that much EMP damage.

Most projections for a debilitating EMP attack involve detonating fairly good sized nuclear devices well over 100 miles altitude over the U.S. And probably several.

 

I look forward to your data....but let's say your are correct, so the bad guys will just detonate the nuke in New York harbor just as the customs guys are trying to board a rust bucket freighter.

 

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq5.html#nfaq5.5

"The occurrence of EMP is strongly dependent on the altitude of burst. It can be significant for surface or low altitude bursts (below 4,000m); it is very significant for high altitude bursts (above 30,000m); but it is not significant for altitudes between these extremes. This is because EMP is generated by the asymmetric absorption of instantaneous gamma rays produced by the explosion. At intermediate altitudes the air absorbs these rays fairly uniformly and does not generate long range electromagnetic disturbances."

"High altitude explosions produce EMPs that are dramatically more destructive. About 3x10^-5 of the bomb's total energy goes into EMP in this case, 10^11 joules for a 1Mt bomb. EMP is formed in high altitude explosions when the downwardly directed gamma rays encounter denser layers of air below. A pancake shaped ionization region is formed below the bomb. The zone can extend all the way to the horizon, to 2500km for an explosion at an altitude of 500km. The ionization zone is up to 80km thick at the center. The Earth's magnetic field causes the electrons in this layer to spiral as they travel, creating a powerful downward directed electromagnetic pulse lasting a few microseconds. A strong vertical electrical field (20-50 KV/m) is also generated between the Earth's surface and the ionized layer, this field lasts for several minutes until the electrons are recaptured by the air. Although the peak EMP field strengths from high altitude bursts are only 1-10% as intense as the peak ground burst fields, they are nearly constant over the entire Earth's surface under the ionized region."

Not if we destroy the aggressor nation before they are able to strike us.

 

Thanks for the data. So a 1 megaton bomb detonated under 12,000 would have significant effect.

Which aggressor nation? All of them? Do we blow up every nation we don't like just because they might put a nuke on a rowboat? What about non-national groups like ISIS? How do you plan on destroying them before they set off a loose nuke? How many loose nukes are there?


https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/loose-nukes

 

Actually there are probably no "loose nukes" that are usable anymore.

 

Willing to bet the lives of millions of Americans on that?

 

Yes.

 

Good thing you ain't in charge of national security, eh?

 

Only in areas that would be destroyed or heavily damaged by the blast anyway. Low altitude EMP is very short range.

"All of them" works for me.

Airstrikes and ground invasion works pretty well.

Just pull out as soon as we're done destroying and killing. No more of that silly nation-building nonsense. Those countries are just fine as an uninhabitable wasteland.

Zero.

 

All they have to do is knock out Wall Street.

Obviously you don't have to fight all of those wars nor do any of your children.

How did our little adventure in Iraq work out for "We, the People"?

Do you know why the Taliban rose in Afghanistan?

Nice guess. I hope you are correct.

 

No one is going to notice the localized EMP after all the electronics are smashed and burned by the blast itself.

Up to the point where we decided to stick around and do nation building, pretty good.

If upon capturing Saddam we had immediately killed him and pulled out of Iraq right then, everything would have turned out pretty good.

Yes.

I am.