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Nukes of Hazard (2013)

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Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#31

Post by PythonicAlpha »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #15
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #4

From reading the article, I get the sense that the best thing working in our[1] favor was having a series of relatively steady, not crazy hands on the nuclear football, on both sides. It's still incredibly frightening that the annihilation of the human race was literally placed in the hands of two people at any given time, but a testament to the capability of the Soviet Politburo and the American political system to…

Realistically, human civilization would still have survived a full scaled thermonuclear exchange during the height of the Cold War. Things would not have been great, but humanity would still have survived.

"Humans" as such would have still survived, but I don't know, if that what would have been left of it would be realistically to be called "civilization".

I am also not to sure, if they (the remnants) would survive for long with global climate change and radioactive fallout everywhere.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#32

Post by CamperBob2 »

Spearchucker wrote: post #28
lotharbot wrote: post #3

The article claims that a nine-megaton blast would wipe out "most of the state of Arkansas". Wikipedia claims the lethal radius on a bomb of that size is about 20 miles for thermal effects ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B53_nuclear_bomb#Effects ), which is around 2% of the area of Arkansas; other effects are described as having an even smaller radius. I suspect, but cannot prove, the wikipedia number is more likely t…

It's sad that semantics appear to be more worthy of discussion than the mere existence of such raw destructive power.

It's a sign that the journalist just didn't give a crap. What else did they not give a crap about?

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#33

Post by wamatt »

lotharbot wrote: post #3

The article claims that a nine-megaton blast would wipe out "most of the state of Arkansas". Wikipedia claims the lethal radius on a bomb of that size is about 20 miles for thermal effects ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B53_nuclear_bomb#Effects ), which is around 2% of the area of Arkansas; other effects are described as having an even smaller radius. I suspect, but cannot prove, the wikipedia number is more likely t…

Thanks for catching that. It struck me as odd too.

Disappointing to read needless hyperbole in the New Yorker.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#34

Post by PythonicAlpha »

winestock wrote: post #6
rtpg wrote: post #5

>And the missile was armed. Schlosser says that the explosive force of the warhead on a Titan II is nine megatons, which is three times the force of all the bombs dropped in the Second World War, including the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If it had detonated, most of the state of Arkansas would have been wiped out. That is the scariest thing I have read in a while. I always had the impression t…

The largest nuclear detonation set off by the United States was Castle Bravo. It was fifteen megatons. It had serious fallout issues, but it did not cause the kind of damage that is claimed for this weapon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo

>but it did not cause the kind of damage that is claimed for this weapon

I don't know, what you are referring to here, but to my opinion, given the distances of a relatively wide area with very limited population, the results where grave enough. Generations of the inhabitants where contaminated and had babies with many defects or deaths born. I guess the descendants of these poor people still struggle with the effects of this bomb.

Given such an event in or near a city of the US, I guess not only one city might get wiped out but the effects would be very real and destructive in a very big part of the US.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#35

Post by arethuza »

Spearchucker wrote: post #26

This is my problem with the American and Russian government - actually any government - they play games. Stupid, myopic and arrogant idiots who see life other than their own on this planet as a thing to be toyed with. Intellectually they're little better than teenagers. Machiavelli's blueprint smothers the benevolence of the Ghandis, the Tutus and the Mandelas. A populace too absorbed in day-to-day survival is in no…

Both "Better red than dead" and "better dead than red" were slogans thrown around in my youth here in the UK in the 70s and 80s.

Utter craziness - all of it.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#37

Post by chriswarbo »

> In 1960, the computer at... NORAD... warned, with 99.9-per-cent certainty, that the Soviets had just launched a full-scale missile attack against North America... They later discovered that the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System at Thule Airbase, in Greenland, had interpreted the moon rising over Norway as a missile attack from Siberia.

This is why numbers shouldn't be reported with too many significant figures. I doubt the engineers thought the reports could be %99.9 certain, given that they're extrapolated from noisy sensors, networked across huge distances and that the opponent is adversarial (actively trying to avoid detection).

Percentages can cause a false sense of certainty too; as Leonard Mlodinow points out in The Drunkard's Walk about changing wine ratings from out-of-10 to percentages. We might be quite sure that an 8/10 compares favourably to a 7/10 but not to a 9/10; we can't say the same about an %82 with an %83 and an %81.

If you're forced to report percentages, or tenths of a percent, write the estimated error alongside. Raw numbers like "%99.9" have an implied "+/- %0.05" afterwards.

And that, ladies and gentlement, is why Die Hard 4.0 contains too many many significant figures.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#38

Post by justin66 »

lotharbot wrote: post #3

The article claims that a nine-megaton blast would wipe out "most of the state of Arkansas". Wikipedia claims the lethal radius on a bomb of that size is about 20 miles for thermal effects ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B53_nuclear_bomb#Effects ), which is around 2% of the area of Arkansas; other effects are described as having an even smaller radius. I suspect, but cannot prove, the wikipedia number is more likely t…

If by "wipe out" the author meant create a lot of casualties and do immense property damage and by "most of the state" the author was talking about population and infrastructure value and not surface area, it's a very defensible statement. The central part of the state is pretty densely populated and that bomb is large.

edit: for starters consider that in a state of three million people, 725k are in Little Rock, which is only 116 square miles. Then read the specs on that bomb you linked to again.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#39

Post by mootothemax »

lotsofmangos wrote: post #11
runarb wrote: post #9

Nuclear bomb security may have be less advanced than we were lead on to believe. For example British nuclear bombs were armed by turning a bicycle lock key: "British nukes were protected by bike locks" - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7097101.stm . If one puted that in a movie plot I think few would believe it.

Is much the same now, the UK doesn't have launch codes and operates the whole thing as a sort of dead-man's switch, apparently partly based on if the Today program has been broadcast on Radio 4. edit - we also used to rely on the AA's radio network - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/in-the-eve...

Is much the same now, the UK doesn't have launch codes and operates the whole thing as a sort of dead-man's switch, apparently partly based on if the Today program has been broadcast on Radio 4.

Are you sure you're not confusing that with nuclear submarine commanders checking that BBC Radio 4's still broadcasting as part of their "is the country still there" checks?

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort :

According to Peter Hennessy's book The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War, 1945 to 1970, the process by which a Trident submarine commander would determine if the British government continues to function includes... establishing whether BBC Radio 4 continues broadcasting

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#40

Post by tonyblundell »

mootothemax wrote: post #13
runarb wrote: post #9

Nuclear bomb security may have be less advanced than we were lead on to believe. For example British nuclear bombs were armed by turning a bicycle lock key: "British nukes were protected by bike locks" - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7097101.stm . If one puted that in a movie plot I think few would believe it.

Nuclear bomb security may have be less advanced than we were lead on to believe The launch code for US nukes was 00000000 for 20 years: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/launch-code-for-u...

It's been changed twice since then.

First it was changed to include one capital letter, one numerical digit and an asterisk.

Now it's correcthorsebatterystaple.

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