Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!mcnc!rti-sel!dg_rtp!throopw From: throopw@dg_rtp.UUCP (Wayne Throop) Newsgroups: net.politics,net.sci Subject: Re: Plutonium, Water, Tactical vs. Strategic Message-ID: <346@dg_rtp.UUCP> Date: Thu, 8-May-86 16:38:32 EDT Article-I.D.: dg_rtp.346 Posted: Thu May 8 16:38:32 1986 Date-Received: Sun, 11-May-86 00:33:12 EDT References: <358@drutx.UUCP> <1063@whuxl.UUCP> <2384@jhunix.UUCP> <708@whuts.UUCP> <796@ccird2.UUCP> <13439@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> Lines: 243 Xref: linus net.politics:14981 net.sci:508 > From: rb@ccird1.UUCP (Rex Ballard) > This article actually contains three parts. I don't mean to be offensive here, but it also contains more conceptual errors than you can shake a stick at. I will nevertheless shake my stick most vigorously. Rex had asked for correction/comment on scientific points, so take my comments in a sort of spirit of good-natured co-operation. Don't regard my comments as definitive, but I've tried to point out where things are said that make no sense at all. The quick summary version of my comments is "This is a very unrealistic conception of the use of nuclear devices for war. You are worrying about the *WRONG* *THINGS*" > Water vapor can be super-heated back into it's componant parts, > hydrogen and oxygen, which can be re-cumbusted. True enough. But the breakdown will *consume* energy, and the burning will *release* (at most) the same ammount of energy. Not much of a net effect. Water vapor in the air might have effect on just how the blast effects propogate, and so on, but this will have nothing much to do with "burning" per se. > The superheating > can be generated by a fusion reaction. Under normal circumstances > and tests, there is a limited chain reaction. Describe these "normal circumstances". Which possible "chain reaction" are you talking about here... nuclear, chemical, dominoes toppling, what? > This is why a nuclear > airburst of a 20 Kiloton bomb can wipe out a larger area than a ground > zero explosion. The term "ground zero" is applied equally to airburst, groundburst, and underground explosions. It refers to the spot on the ground closest to the explosion. (The term is a little ambiguous in hilly terrain, but this is usually minor and not worth worrying about). > When we begin to talk about 3000 20 Megaton bombs in nuclear airburst > configurations with targets spaced within a 200 mile radius of each > other, preferably on a cloudy day, we could see a "blanket effect" of > burning hydrogen/oxygen between the individual targets. Nope. As mentioned above, the water vapor would first absorb energy, then release it. If anything, the effect would be more *mild* than the effect on a clear day. I also doubt that much of the cloud cover would be close enough to undergo this type of "burning", even for the largest warheads. > Some small > amount of hydrogen would be fused into helium, Some small ammount indeed. Effectively zero. Except the deuterium and tritium in the warhead itself, of course. > [...] > In addition, the pressure of the heated gas, the ionized gases, and > changes in electromagnetic charges could expose much of the outer > atmosphere to solar winds, which would blow away the outer layer of the > atmosphere. If enough ozone were lost, most surface creatures would > be exposed to excessive ultra-violet radiation, and at the same time > possibly extreme cold do to the loss of the heat retaining ionisphere. > This is great for plants, but not so good for mammals, I don't know > about reptiles and insects. I'm not sure what "changes in electromagnetic charges" these are. Explosions intended to produce EMP effects might indeed affect the ionisphere. Unlikely to "blow" significant ammounts of it into space, however. And any that it did would have little or nothing to do with the solar wind. It might indeed also disrupt the "ozonosphere" also. This wouldn't be good for anyone, including plants. Also, the ionisphere doesn't retain the earth's heat. That's done much much lower. The temperature dropping effect popularly known as "nuclear winter" has nothing to do with heat loss however, but with lack of incoming heat (reflected from clouds caused by firestorms and other atmospheric dust). > There is a possibility that if you were living in a nuclear submarine, > capable of producing oxygen from the ocean, and lived off the deep > sea for a few hundred years, you might be able to surface and return > to a somewhat normal life. Of course, subs from the "other side" > would be hunting for you, and you would be hunting for them. You > would also have to have both men and women aboard the subs to > perpetuate the species. Wait a minute. You go from "some disturbances in ionosphere" to "no oxygen left"? How is this possibly justifyed? Also, I doubt that even the most luxurious submarines in the fleet are provisioned for "a few hundred years", so most of those points are moot. And I doubt very much that the crew of a nuclear sub could maintain it for very long without shore-based people and equipment. The crew knows how to *use* the sub, not how to *build* it or *maintain* it (at least not in the most global sense or major repair and refitting). > Civilization would tend to digress into > an almost ritualistic "religion" since few of the crew would > know why the technology aboard the sub worked, but instead only > knew how to keep it working. Glad *someone* knows what "civilization" would do after a nuclear war. Is the new religion "Ubizmatizm"? Maybe I need to get a copy of the Book of Ubizmo before it doesn't exist anymore? > Just as a mathmatical excercise, the 20 Kiloton bomb dropped > on Hirosima leveled a 3 mile radius. The field strength force > of a bomb is 1/distance**2 right? Let's say n=f/(d*d). > [...etc...] > Is this math right? Right I suppose. But I think blast effects are proportional to energy/volume, so would decline as cube of distance, not square (sort of like tides, right?). But I'm not sure I'm remembering that correctly, but I vaguely remember something like "thousand times as powerful a bomb means ten times the total kill radius". That would mean that a 20-megaton bomb would have a total kill radius on the order of 30 miles or so. Seems about right. On the other hand, the above seems correct for radiation effects, so it might be able to ignite firestorms over hundreds or thousands of square miles. If anybody really cares about exact numbers here, go to the library and look them up (I note that such things aren't in my general reference sets, sadly enough). > So in other words, a ground zero explosion of a 20 megaton bomb > would level a 100 mile radius. The same bomb in an airburst > would level an even larger radius (2X I think), without allowing > for the "chain reaction" of a similar large bomb in a close > proximity, say 400 miles away. What "chain reaction is this"? > Don't H-bombs make a big BOOM :-)? Damn right they do. A is for Atom; they are all so small, That we have not really seen any at all. B is for Bomb. They are much bigger. So mister you better keep off of the trigger. > Reguarding plutonium vs. water vapor risks, remember that it > only takes a few ounces of plutonium to trigger the fusion bomb. > When we speak of a 20 Megaton bomb, we are talking about the > explosive force equivalant to 20 Million Tons of TNT, not a bomb > that contains 20 million tons of plutonium. Ounces, schmounces. Even the smallest thermonuclear weapon needs several *pounds* (not ounces) of plutonium to trigger fusion. And most of it will still be plutonium after the explosion. *HOWEVER*, even with the entire 30,000 or so warheads, this amount of plutonium wouldn't, repeat *WOULDN'T* be the most dangerous byproduct of the detonation of all those weapons. Other fission byproducts of even the cleanest bombs are *much* worse than plutonium, (due to the extremely short half-lives). I've said it before, I'll say it again. Plutonium isn't what to worry about in a nuclear war. Nor is "water vapor burning". You needn't invoke new, imaginary bogeymen to make nuclear war horrible. Effects of blast, prompt radiation, secondary firestorms, fallout, and climatic disturbance will swamp most other effects. These are bad enough to worry about. > Some tactical weapons (the very small ones) are very small, only 1 or > 2 Kilotons, enough to level a shopping center or (more likely) > an airport. Their main advantage is that they are about the size > of a ping-pong ball and are therefore easy to deliver but hard > to shoot down. Holy Shit! Excuse my french, but what planet did the bomb designer come from anyhow? "Size of a ping-pong ball?" Just a supercritical mass of plutonium itself is about the size of a softball (or maybe a baseball, if a real genius of a designer is at work, maybe). And that doesn't include the hardware to detonate it, nor space to keep it subcritical until use. Granted, tactical nukes can be the size, say, of a toaster.... but a *ping* *pong* *ball*? Get real. Maybe you haven't played ping-pong lately, but those things are about three times the size of my thumb. Maybe a Galifrayan could pack a functioning fission bomb into that much space, but I doubt a human could in these primitive times. > Theoretically, IF these tactical "micro-bombs" could be used without > escalating into a full scale exchange of Strategic weapons, they would > be about as destructive as napalm or various conventional weapons. Right. I'm glad you agree that that is a mighty big IF. Actually, it is a mighty big IIIIIIIII FFFFFFFFF IIIIIIIII FFFFFFFFF III FF III FF III FFFFFF III FF III FF IIIIIIIII FF IIIIIIIII FF > In fact, much of the research into delivery systems have been the > subject of various jokes. When we had an H-bomb the size of a hand > grenade, they couldn't find any volunteers to throw it :-), the > government researched the possibilities of using "frisbies" as delivery > systems. Estes was actually granted a small (<$1 million) grant to > come up with a remote controllable model rocket. You can buy > simplified versions of several of these delivery systems at your > local hobby shop. If this is a tip-off that the whole posting is a joke, you may consider me suckered in. I don't (after due consideration) think the whole posting is a joke. Have a laugh at my expense, if you wish. (On the other hand, those Estes remarks suggest some NASA jokes... hmmmm, something about "Did ya hear about NASA's new solid rocket supplier? Yeah, they fired Morton Thiokol, and hired Estes..." ) > Would you rather have 20 > jet fighters and an aircraft carrier delivering 5 Ktons worth of > 200 pound missles, or 1 fighter dropping 5 Ktons worth of 5 pound > "model rocket/gliders"? Lesse now. 5 Ktons of TNT in 200 pound missiles. That's (10 missiles per ton) 50,000 missiles, among 20 jet fighters (two into five K) or 2,500 missiles per fighter. Damn small missiles, what? Looking at it another way, we have 20 fighters carrying a half a million pounds of payload each. What planet were these "fighters" designed on, again? (You did imply this was 20 fighters for one flight, right?) Face it folks, it just isn't practical to deliver nuclear scale firepower with conventional weapons, period. Nuclear reactions are hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of times more powerful. Not that I think it is a good idea to deliver nuclear scale firepower with *nuclear* weapons, mind you. If you want large scale non-nuclear weapons, try kinetic, gravity-powered weapons (drop large rocks from the moon, for example). Still not cost-effective, but more practical than "fighter" planes with a half-million-pound payload. > I haven't heard what the radiation levels would be for these > <1 Kton fusion weapons. Would it be worse than other conventional > weapons such as phosphorous bombs? First, <1 Kton fusion weapons don't exist. Tactical weapons are all fission. Second, since when did chemical explosives or incindiaries pose *any* particular radiation hazard? (That is, the direct answer to your question is "yes, it would be much, much worse".) -- Wayne Throop !mcnc!rti-sel!dg_rtp!throopw