tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3889388775673754833.post3758775677136686438..comments2024-02-24T03:34:18.060-05:00Comments on Stealing Commas: Skewed Slightly to the Left - The Bomb Dropschris the cynichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06872875475212333027noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3889388775673754833.post-92037747737966834852012-10-02T11:48:52.272-04:002012-10-02T11:48:52.272-04:00The last segment of this gave me chills.
Nicely ...The last segment of this gave me chills. <br /><br />Nicely written. redsixwinghttp://redsixwing.dreamwidth.orgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3889388775673754833.post-32159185960514827782012-09-30T10:13:35.843-04:002012-09-30T10:13:35.843-04:00Well, since there's no longer anywhere else to...Well, since there's no longer anywhere else to talk about LB that isn't Disqus... hope you don't mind, if you do I'll shut up about it.<br /><br />I know a little bit about this stuff. We're told that the cities will be destroyed "without use of radioactive fallout". Some people might simply consider this arrant nonsense written by someone who didn't know much about big weapons. I'm sure we can do better than that.<br /><br />So option 1: nuclear airburst. Ground-burst fallout, to a first approximation, is radiation-contaminated rubble vaporised or broken apart by the explosion. If you go with an airburst, you're mostly dealing with the much smaller load of the material of the bomb itself. That's not a local problem; the particles spread out over the atmosphere. What do you care about a higher rate of cancer ten years later? There isn't going to <i>be</i> a ten years later.<br /><br />100MT blast wave will destroy within about a 15-20 mile radius. Third degree burns out to fifty miles. I think that can fairly be called a destroyed city.<br /><br />Option 2: non-nuclear strike. Really we need to be playing with a big fuel-air explosive or other thermobaric weapon here. The biggest FAE ever set off was claimed to be about 40kt equivalent yield, and weighed about 20 tons, so to get the equivalent destruction that'll be a fscking HUGE bomb - fifty thousand tons of fuel, tens of millions of gallons! I don't think this is really practical.Firedrakenoreply@blogger.com