It's revealing to me that the US is far ahead of the Soviets in nuclear explosions. Somehow, given all the "evil Ruskies" outcry, I thought it to be the opposite.
Time lapse of all nuclear exlosions from 1945 - 1998
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Re: Time lapse of all nuclear exlosions from 1945 - 1998
#22Estimated world nuclear stockpile: 5000 megatons total yield [1] Estimated total yield of tests up to 1980: 510 megatons (418 atmospheric) [2] It's hard to find good numbers on the total yield of all nuclear tests to date, but the ballpark figure is 10% of current stockpiles. This is actually somewhat comforting. We've all heard scary stories saying that we have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world dozens of t…
serious question: does nuclear radiation scale linearly with explosive yield? That question aside, the destructive power of a explosive does not scale linearly with yield [1] > This relation arises from the fact that the destructive power of a bomb does not vary linearly with the yield. The volume the weapon's energy spreads into varies as the cube of the distance, but the destroyed area varies at the square of the d…
The design of particular bombs also plays a part - in most H-bomb designs the bulk of the energy produced comes from the fission of the tamper round the secondary by neutrons produced by the fusion reaction in the secondary.
If a non-fissioning tamper is used then a relatively clean explosion happens (e.g. the Tsar-bomb) - if depleted or enriched uranium is used as a tamper then weapons will be much messier. Indeed some weapon designs explicitly came in "clean" and "messy" versions (the latter often with greater yield) e.g. the US B53:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B53_nuclear_bomb
Also there is an option of deliberately including a material in a bomb design that will be activated by the neutron flux from the secondary (e.g. cobalt or gold)- so called "salted bombs":
Re: Time lapse of all nuclear exlosions from 1945 - 1998
#23Estimated world nuclear stockpile: 5000 megatons total yield [1] Estimated total yield of tests up to 1980: 510 megatons (418 atmospheric) [2] It's hard to find good numbers on the total yield of all nuclear tests to date, but the ballpark figure is 10% of current stockpiles. This is actually somewhat comforting. We've all heard scary stories saying that we have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world dozens of t…
I take comfort in the fact that we can only destroy ourselves, not the planet.
I wouldn't be so sure about that.
Re: Time lapse of all nuclear exlosions from 1945 - 1998
#24Could this be related to all those cancers popping up?
Re: Time lapse of all nuclear exlosions from 1945 - 1998
#25What did the US learn from the 1032nd nuke, that the previous 1031 didn't teach us?
Re: Time lapse of all nuclear exlosions from 1945 - 1998
#26They should overlay UFO sightings during this timeframe.
Re: Time lapse of all nuclear exlosions from 1945 - 1998
#27Could this be related to all those cancers popping up?
Citation needed.
Improved diagnostics and improvements in fighting other diseases will lead to higher (diagnosed) cancer rates.
If you live long enough, you will get cancer. Every time a cell copies its DNA, you roll the dice to see if it becomes cancerous. You can do things to bias the dice toward or away from cancer, but it's still always a roll of the dice. As the number of dice rolls approaches infinity, the probability of them coming up snake eyes at least once approaches certainty.
Re: Time lapse of all nuclear exlosions from 1945 - 1998
#28What did the US learn from the 1032nd nuke, that the previous 1031 didn't teach us?
Refined models of the dynamics of a nuclear explosion, and better analysis of the reliability of warheads as they age in stockpiles
Re: Time lapse of all nuclear exlosions from 1945 - 1998
#29Could this be related to all those cancers popping up?
Citation needed. Improved diagnostics and improvements in fighting other diseases will lead to higher (diagnosed) cancer rates. If you live long enough, you will get cancer. Every time a cell copies its DNA, you roll the dice to see if it becomes cancerous. You can do things to bias the dice toward or away from cancer, but it's still always a roll of the dice. As the number of dice rolls approaches infinity, the prob…
I understand your point, and I understand that cancer can and will pop up in safe environments.
However, that much radioactivity cannot be good. I understand that those were mostly detonated in safe environnements and in safe ways, but that is a lot of detonations right there. I'm not sure I can trust that all of those denotations released nothing bad in the atmosphere.
I would be curious to overlay a map of cancer rates over a map of detonations, taking wind into account.