MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
If you just want the meat, FFWD to 21:30.
Apparently this could have been tuned to 100 megaton with a uranium tamper.
They decided against it as the crew would have been vapourised. How thoughtful the Russians are.
These days I'm a full on pinko pacifist but I still find this stuff fascinating.
IIRC the power of Thermonuclear weapons doesn't scale linearly. You always get more destruction from a bigger bomb but the increase diminishes once you are into multiple megatons. There is only so much atmosphere to propagate the shockwave. Its one of the reasons neither the Russians or the Americans pursued ever bigger bombs, instead they focused on missiles with ever more warheads to spread the destruction as widely as possible.
Nukes don't actually create any blast, they produce radiation that ignites the atmosphere and its the ignited atmosphere that causes the explosion, set one off in space and very little happens.
set one off in space and very little happens.
Dang! * Cancels nuclear satellite bomb order *
Worst CGI ever, and massively over exposed.
instead they focused on missiles with ever more warheads to spread the destruction as widely as possible.
Are the forces more interested on accuracy of the delivery?
On the basis that small things with good guidance are more useful than a sledgehammer thrown from a long distance.
Dang! * Cancels nuclear satellite bomb order *
If you set one off in low Earth orbit then the photo electric effect from all the X-rays would screw up the electronics in any nearby satelites, but none of them would fall out of the sky.
The American Castle Bravo test makes for "interesting" reading. Some loitering lithium 7 increased the yield by 150% startling most. Especially the poor buggers on inhabited atolls in the region.
They decided against it as the crew would have been vapourised.
Now that is what I call a picolax fart.
More warheads also reduced the chance of interception on re-entry or near the target. Dummies were also included to further confound defenders.
One of the reasons USSR was so upset about Reagan's SDI is that if it had worked, the Americans could have destroyed Soviet missiles before re-entry and so would have a first strike capability that the USSR lacked.
IIRC the power of Thermonuclear weapons doesn’t scale linearly. You always get more destruction from a bigger bomb but the increase diminishes once you are into multiple megatons.
I suspect it's to do with cubic versus linear increases. The bigger bomb will be dissipating its energy in three dimensions, so you need eight times the explosive power to have the same effect at twice the distance. This will still destroy four times the area, but multiple smaller bombs will be more efficient and also have redundancy against failure/shoot downs, etc.
Apparently, the crew of the Tu-95V that dropped the bomb were given a 50% chance of survival.
WHy would you take that on?
On the basis that small things with good guidance are more useful than a sledgehammer thrown from a long distance.
You tell him that...
The Great Patriotic War was fresh in everyone's minds and everyone expected WW3 to kick off anytime soon. Add to that the consequences of disobeying an order in the Soviet military and I can well see that the crew would have carried on. Whether they were told or not is a different question.
Apparently, the crew of the Tu-95V that dropped the bomb were given a 50% chance of survival.
WHy would you take that on?
Well, give the the alternative would probably be a 100% chance of being shot for disobeying an order, I can see the incentive.
instead they focused on missiles with ever more warheads to spread the destruction as widely as possible.
Are the forces more interested on accuracy of the delivery?
On the basis that small things with good guidance are more useful than a sledgehammer thrown from a long distance.
If I remember right from School, the massive bombs were about mutually assured destruction, accuracy was never a massive thing, as long as you could hit a city it was enough of a deterrent that neither side should start either a conventional or nuclear war on the other.
There were other weapons designed to more accurately target military and government sites, but once you know the only outcome is a full scale nuclear war.
WHy would you take that on?
You’re not usually in a position to refuse the invitation.
Especially in the glorious USSR.
You tell him that…
Didn’t work out too well for him there did it?
Apparently, the crew of the Tu-95V that dropped the bomb were given a 50% chance of survival.
WHy would you take that on?
Assuming things reached the point where you were dropping that size of bomb on Washington or Moscow would you take the 50/50 on a plane of 0 chance on the ground? The whole point of the plane was it was in the air when the runway was turned into dust.
I like this story from the realm of nuclear destruction
https://www.theregister.com/2015/07/16/america_soviets_space_race/
"A four-inch-thick concrete and metal cap weighing at least half a ton was placed over a 400ft-deep borehole after the bomb was installed below. The lid was then welded shut to seal in the equipment.
Before the experiment, Dr Brownlee had calculated the force that would be exerted on the cap, and knew that it would pop off from the pressure of the detonation. As a result, the team installed a high-speed camera to see exactly what happened to the plug.
The camera was set up to record one frame every millisecond. When the nuke blew, the lid was caught in the first frame and then disappeared from view. Judging from the yield and the pressure, Dr Brownlee estimated that it left the ground at more than 60 kilometres per second, or more than five times the escape velocity of our planet."
From the biggest to the smallest.
The utterly demented Davy Crockett man portable battlefield nuke.
Designed to engage targets as close as a mile away, firing troops were encouraged to keep their heads down and hope for a favourable wind
The American Castle Bravo test makes for “interesting” reading. Some loitering lithium 7 increased the yield by 150% startling most. Especially the poor buggers on inhabited atolls in the region.
A shift in upper atmosphere winds meant that the fallout went toward the inhabited atolls rather than into the 'safe zone'. There are accounts of kids on Rongelap playing in the 'snow'. Even then, the effects of fallout and soil contamination were poorly understood so they took an age to evacuate the atolls, then sent the locals back to live there far too soon and they all started getting sick because of food grown in contaminated soil. Still, at least they got to go back (unlike the Bikinians) and don't have a massive (cracking) concrete dome covering the contaminated topsoil that was bulldozed off the island, like Enewetak.
Brings back memories of a book I read as a teenager where the Ruskies developed and anti-capitalist bomb that destroyed property but not people. The Americans did the opposite and killed people but not property. When it all kicked off what was left was a bunch of homeless Americans walking over to an unpopulated Russia.
I possibly simplified that a bit but it was a good read.
The Americans did the opposite and killed people but not property
The neutron bomb?
richmtb
Full Member
From the biggest to the smallest.The utterly demented Davy Crockett man portable battlefield nuke.
Designed to engage targets as close as a mile away, firing troops were encouraged to keep their heads down and hope for a favourable wind
[IMG] 
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The utterly demented
Speaking of demented I liked the proposal for nuclear landmines kept warm by chickens.
**** me!
Check out the videos...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munition
Apparently, the crew of the Tu-95V that dropped the bomb were given a 50% chance of survival.
WHy would you take that on
It was communist Russia. It was a dictatorship not a democracy. Choice was a luxury not afforded to the comrades. Besides the pilots were probably not even told about the odds or what it was they were dropping.
Seems bonkers now they were dropping these things at all.
On a mildly bike related topic sram missiles are pretty terrifying.
They were designed to solve the problem of how to get the nuclear bombs past the air defences which the soviets had unsportingly put in the way.
Options were:
Stealthy: not really available at the time but being actively developed.
Low and very fast: The British favourite.
Equip the bombers with nuclear tipped missiles which would just leave a radioactive path all the way through to the target.
The safety measures on them were appalling and almost led to a US Chernobyl equivalent when a bomber caught fire.
Apparently, the crew of the Tu-95V that dropped the bomb were given a 50% chance of survival.
Probably similar odds to a 10-year stint flying the F104.
The neutron bomb?
Olivia?
😁👍🏼
Not just the Russians:
The report stated that he and other soldiers training for the program knew this was a suicide mission because either it would be unrealistic to outrun the timer on the bomb, or that soldiers would be obligated to secure the site before the timer went off. However, in theory the timer could be set long enough to give the team a chance to escape. Specifically, he stated, "We all knew it was a one-way mission, a suicide mission."[
From eddiebaby's link.
set one off in space and very little happens
[url= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) ]Au contraire[/url]
For a chilling account of an incident with a nuclear tipped missile in the US of A, I thoroughly recommend Command and Control:
An account of an incident at a Titan II missile complex in Damascus, Ark., in 1980 that almost caused the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying a nuclear warhead 600 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The near-calamity was kicked off when a socket fell from the wrench of an airman performing maintenance in a Titan II silo and punctured the missile, releasing a stream of highly explosive rocket fuel. Included: first-person accounts of USAF personnel on the scene.
Linky to the programme on YouTube.
The RAF Vulcan crews knew they were on one way missions as well.
Their airfields would have been the first target so they'd have no home/families to return to.
They'd also use an eyepatch and metal sunvisors and fly with only one eye so they'd have "four eyes" to lose one at a time to nuke detonations they might fly past.
"Drop your bombs and then keep going and start a new life in Mongolia" was the plan...
High altitude detonations- lots happens. Look at the accounts of the Starfish Prime test
For a chilling account of an incident with a nuclear tipped missile in the US of A, I thoroughly recommend Command and Control:
A fire in a nuclear missile bunker might spread plutonium around, but it won't actually cause a nuclear explosion, which is what many people assume. Triggering a nuclear bomb requires an extremely precise detonation of explosive charges. A fire will set those explosives off, but not precisely enough to trigger the nuclear charge so it'll just blow plutonium everywhere.
A fire will set those explosives off, but not precisely enough to trigger the nuclear charge so it’ll just blow plutonium everywhere
It would be spread around extensively I suspect if a Titan went off under it.
For a nuke which came very close to going boom look up the Goldsboro crash.
Until my death I will never forget hearing my sergeant say, "Lieutenant, we found the arm/safe switch." And I said, "Great." He said, "Not great. It's on arm."
Lucky they went for four switches.
For a nuke which came very close to going boom look up the Goldsboro crash.
That is a bit different, although still frightening. In that case, the bombs came close to being armed and detonating in the way they were designed to, through a precisely controlled explosion to compress the plutonium core. In the case of fire, the conventional explosives will detonate, but it won't be precisely controlled so it'll just scatter the plutonium core. Messy, but orders of magnitude less bad than the bomb going off properly.
Triggering a nuclear bomb requires an extremely precise detonation of explosive charges.
I'm fascinated by the concept of these variable yield devices, where at mission start time (or even mid mission??) essentially a dial could be turned to change the power of the bomb by a factor of lots.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_yield
So not are they only very precise to 'detonate' but there's a load of variability as to how the components combine through the introduction or removal of 'stuff' within the package.
I’m fascinated by the concept of these variable yield devices
Yeah, it's almost like they recruited really brainy geniuses to sit around thinking of cleverer and cleverer ways to blow shit up.
Choice was a luxury not afforded to the comrades
To paint only the Russians as only doing this for fear of retribution is wrong, having been friends with a US Naval pilot who's role in his sqd. was to teach everyone how to deliver the B-43 (an air deliverable nuclear bomb designed to go under strike aircraft) he was also issued with a set of instructions that enabled him and the Capt of the carrier to have power of life and death over pilots that refused the mission.
and the Unthinking Commie Robot trope can't explain Stanislav Petrov
The variable yield stuff is a mini journey through nuclear weapons development:
- lowest yield - just the primary (essentially just a posh version of the Nagasaki fat man bomb.
- boosted primary - primary but a few seconds before detention they squirt tritium into the core, this then provides some extra neutrons at the start of the process - this has a very large effect due to the exponential nature of atomic explosions
- secondary stage as well - x-rays heat a inter-stage (likely a foam) which then ablates (burns off causing a inwards pressure) the surface of the secondary which compresses some Lithium-6 deuteride until it undergoes fusion. This then generates a bunch more neutrons which fission the secondary tamper (if it's made of something fissionable). Big boom.
Once you've cracked how to make a staged nuke there is essentially no reason not to make it variable - all the components are there, it's just a matter of deciding which bits you want to set off. Same reason why all modern UK, US, etc bombs are H bombs - once you've cracked the approach, it's much cheaper as you need less of the expensive bit (the fissionable fuel).
Nuclear weapons are terrible, but properly clever.
For a nuke which came very close to going boom look up the Goldsboro crash.
Interesting read on Wikipedia.