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Nukes of Hazard (2013)

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Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#121

Post by aeturnum »

zorbo wrote: post #67
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…

There's a nuclear detonation simulator here: http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ Here's a link with the numbers plugged in: http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=9000&lat=34.7464809&l... Arkansas would not be "wiped out".

If you enable the fallout option, you will see a much more encompassing effect that would have rendered a lot of land unlivable.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#122

Post by mcguire »

cstross wrote: post #62
gambiting wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> suggesting that the hundreds of weapons the Soviets had pointing at the UK were complete overkill... As Schlosser says in his book - because of the lack of coordination between the Air Force, Army, US Navy and Missile Forces, at one point there was something like 400(sorry if I remembered the number wrong,but it was in hundreds) nuclear rockets aimed at Moscow, many of them with multi-megaton payload. If they were…

A point that bears repeating is that this level of overkill was actually counterproductive . One way of disabling a high efficiency nuclear device is to blast the thing with neutrons (causing a premature and incomplete fission reaction in the core of the weapon). This was actually how the Sprint ABM system was intended to destroy its targets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_%28missile%29 Now picture the skies ove…

Hey, there's a simulation I'd like to see.

"It appears that two weapons targeted on a silo must arrive at least 10 s apart to avoid fratricidal fireball effects, and less than 1 min or more than 1 h apart to avoid fratricidal nuclear dust cloud effects."

Anyone for Missile Defense with a 50-100Mt Tsar bomba?

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#123

Post by pantalaimon »

NamTaf wrote: post #12
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…

Castle Bravo [1], [2] was a 15Mt yield set off on Bikini Atoll, notable because it was predicted to be 6Mt but was almost 2.5x that. Considering how much of the Bikini Atoll is left ([3], with pin on the location of detonation) and that the command centre for Castle was on the Atoll, I'd say that Arkansas is ok. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Castle [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo [3] http…

I think the problem is that people can't live there anymore.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#124

Post by rayiner »

dllthomas wrote: post #118
rayiner wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Emotional arguments quickly become ridiculous if you leave out the greater effects to society and the relative danger of the threat. No, but numerical arguments quickly become ridiculous when you ignore the fact that the emotional reaction of the nation to 3,000 Americans killed in a terrorist act is itself a physically cognizable phenomenon that must be given due weight in the analysis.

It should be factored in. But at the same time, screaming about the badness makes that worse . Refuse to be terrorized.

Telling people how they should feel about other peoples' deaths is generally not going to get you anywhere. People feel what they feel.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#125

Post by aragot »

DennisP wrote: post #57
chriswarbo wrote: post #37

> 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…

Put it that way and it sounds like 99.9999% is just an excessively precise version of 99%. Really it's the difference between .01 and .000001. It's just an expression of the order of magnitude: one in a hundred, a thousand, a million.

...and we did hit that one chance in a million that it was wrong.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#126

Post by Kiro »

ceejayoz wrote: post #95
simonh wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The threat of attack at any time. Constant fear. All so people could build their little empires inside the military and intelligence communities. I'm pretty sure the Soviet Union did exist, and actually did have WMDs. Similarly, I'd like to ask how you would explain the statistical ridiculousness of terrorism to the families of the thousands of people that died in the twin towers. I'm sure they'd be fascinated to h…

> Similarly, I'd like to ask how you would explain the statistical ridiculousness of terrorism to the families of the thousands of people that died in the twin towers. I'm sure they'd be fascinated to hear it. We've lost more people in the Iraq/Afghan wars than were lost in 9/11, for little progress - Iraq's splitting into pieces and much occupied by folks hardcore enough that Al Qaeda goes "hang on, you're making us…

It's easy to be wise but I'm pretty sure no-one could have predicted the rise of ISIS. Saddam Hussein was a tyrannous dictator that ruled for too long.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#127

Post by mnw21cam »

sp332 wrote: post #96
mnw21cam wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most high explosives will not detonate when burnt. They need to have a shock wave running through them for the detonation to occur. The initial shock wave is usually created using a detonator, which uses a very small amount of a much more risky explosive. You can get a lump of C-4, and use it as fuel for a fire to cook over without any danger, and in fact soldiers certainly used to do this. You can also hit it with a…

It's still very dangerous if the high explosives go if in an uncoordinated way. And then you have kilograms of enriched radioactive material spread all over. Not as bad as a supercritical reaction, but enough to worry about.

Uranium isn't really that radioactive. U-235 has a half life on the order of 10^9 years. It is only when uranium is brought together into supercritical lumps that it becomes a problem from a radiation point of view. However, it is also a toxic heavy metal, like lead, and that is a problem. That hasn't stopped militaries firing lumps of it around warzones the world over.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#128

Post by AnimalMuppet »

tl;dr: Modern nuclear warheads should not go off by accident, even in (almost) any conceivable accident.

Modern warhead design has the idea of the "strong link" and "weak link". The strong link is a critical part of the detonation path, and is not ordinarily in place. It can only be put in place by arming the warhead, or by a severe accident. But any accident severe enough to put the strong link in place should be more than enough to destroy the weak link, which is also a critical part of the detonation path.

A warhead accident could still leave an awful lot of radioactive contamination, of course...

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#129

Post by dllthomas »

rayiner wrote: post #124
dllthomas wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be factored in. But at the same time, screaming about the badness makes that worse . Refuse to be terrorized.

Telling people how they should feel about other peoples' deaths is generally not going to get you anywhere. People feel what they feel.

People feel radically different things depending on framing and perspective. I agree that there is limited benefit to yelling "you should feel X," but I also think that everyone yelling "you should feel scared" has contributed to the problem.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#130

Post by AnimalMuppet »

I seem to recall hearing that, back in the 1960s, the US at least offered to the USSR that we would teach them how to improve their nuclear command and control. The thinking was that, yes, in event of war this would improve their ability to fight, but it was more important to reduce the possibility of accidentally starting such a war.
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