From: utzoo!decvax!yale-com!leichter
Newsgroups: net.politics
Title: Re: MX Dense Packing
Article-I.D.: yale-com.417
Posted: Wed Dec  1 11:09:47 1982
Received: Sat Dec  4 05:02:07 1982
References: hplabsb.1151

RE:  Destroying the whole dense-pack site with one VERY large bomb.
This would be very difficult, probably impossible.  The "destructiveness"
of a bomb against hardened targets goes up relatively slowly.  I gather
that the problem is that destructive effects fall of as the square of the
distance from the detonation point - since they are evenly spread over a
circle of doubled radius.  This argument comes up in deciding whether to
build larger or more accurate weapons.  If you double your accuracy, you
double the chance of killing a given target; doubling explosive yield only
(only!) multiplies by the square root of 2.

I believe the Russians have built 100 megaton bombs; since we are more accurate,
we have built only 60 megatons max.  In fact, the bombs in the MX are quite
small - hundreds of kilotons, at most.  At 200 ft or so, which is something
like the accuracy of the things, that's a hell of a lot of power.

There is no theoretical limit to the size of a hydrogen bomb (there is for
a straight fission bomb), but you don't gain much by getting larger.  At
some point, you are talking about a single bomb that will destroy the sender
as well as the "receiver" - and you probably don't need too many doublings
beyond 100 megatons to get to that level.
							-- Jerry
						decvax!yale-comix!leichter
							leichter@yale