Newsgroups: sci.military Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!att!cbnewsc!cbnews!cbnews!military From: "Christian M. Restifo" Subject: Re: Bomb Question Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Date: Sun, 4 Nov 90 21:08:16 GMT Approved: military@att.att.com Message-ID: <1990Nov4.210816.4716@cbnews.att.com> References: <1990Nov2.201207.27374@cbnews.att.com> Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker) Lines: 27 From: "Christian M. Restifo" The "A-bomb", as many people used to call it, is (was, actually) a fission-based bomb. Some type of fissionable material (such as U-238) is imploded and made to go supercritical. The result is your typical fission explosion. The hydrogen bomb, on the other hand, is a fusion bomb. A fission reaction starts the actual fusion reaction. H-bombs are much, much more powerful than "A-bombs". As for the Neutron bomb, all I know is that it's used to radiate the hell out of your target. While the blast effects (destruction of buildings, etc.) is considerably less than that of an H-bomb, the weapon actually spews out a tremendous amount of radiation, killing every living thing. (I've heard that the Neutron bomb was originally designed to be used in the Middle East on the oil fields....) Of course, you've also got your nasty nukes where they take the "left-overs" from production and put them together. These can do a good job of contaminating a city, etc. for several thousand years.... -Chris Restifo cr2r@andrew.cmu.edu