Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!usc!ucsd!pacbell.com!att!cbnews!cbnews!military From: cr2r+@andrew.cmu.edu (Christian M. Restifo) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Question about Nuclear Weapons Message-ID: <1990Oct26.021043.27122@cbnews.att.com> Date: 26 Oct 90 02:10:43 GMT References: <1990Oct23.190943.7623@cbnews.att.com> Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker) Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 21 Approved: military@att.att.com From: "Christian M. Restifo" First, let's just say that although "The Abyss" was a good movie (in my opinion), the parts dealing with nuclear weapons were a little hard to believe. Warheads are not exposed like that. Secondly, no ballistic submarine goes chasing after unknown targets. It'll track and record them, but it really wants to remain undetected. Anyway, I'm sure if some rocket scientist sat down, he could calculate the theoretical depth at which the material would go critical. Most nuclear weapons, nowadays, are actually two nuclear weapons in one. A fission explosion causes the radioactive material to go critical and start a fusion reaction. I don't think any known depth could implode the material enough (at the same level of a fission explosion) to initiate a fusion reaction. Then again, I'm not a rocket scientist. Chris Restifo cr2r@andrew.cmu.edu