Large Nukes

I'd just like to know what is the most powerful nuclear weapon on the planet and whats its blast radius?

Oh, and who possesses this weapon, how many of them are there?

Little or lots of detail appriciated.

Would this weapon be used if (when?) World War 3 occurs??

Thanks for reading/replying!

peace

i know the soviets tried to detonate a 90 megaton warhead, but it was unsuccesfull. the largest ever i believe was around 80 megatons. the largest is service i think is the United States' B-86 thermal nuclear bomb and the largest soviet (russian) is the nato codename "satan" (i forgot its number). as to the blast radius i have no idea but a google search should give you the answers. and the "satan" would be used in WWIII but it is unlikley the B-86 would be used. the US would most likly use its icbms (minuetman IIIs to be exact) B-86s are still in service but in small numbers. the "satan" is kind of new so there cant be very many. the US has 3000 nuclear warheads of variuos sizes, the russians have a little less than that. the chinese are the third strongest with around 600 warheads, france 400, UK around 200, india and pakistan under 100 and isreal and N. Kroea under 50. sorry i cant be more specific.

[edit on 28-11-2004 by rowsdower]

^^^^Umm sorry to be a bother but about the no. of nukes..
India has approx 80 to 100 warheads...Pakistan has 15 to 20..N. Korea has maybe 5..not more than that...
Also actually the russians have more warheads than the americans right??

"Also actually the russians have more warheads than the americans right??"

They have more than anyone. How many of them WORK is debatable though, but we don't know.

The Russians armory only has approximatlely 10,000 nuclear warheads. The American armory has about 10,100 warheads.

All together, there are over 26,000 nuclear warheads in the world today.

Enough to blow Earth to hell 26 times.

The sun however, have enough to blow the Earth over a million times a second.

Just a random fact.

Shattered OUT...

I like random facts. Currently the most powerful ICBM is the SS-18 Satan. I forget the stats on it but its extremely powerful. It owes much of it's power to the fact that it has multiple warheads and reentry vehicles. I know it's Russian and that some SALT treaty says that Russia has to dismantle all of them. Russia has been pretty slow to do this supposedly for lack of money.

I've heard... only from word of mouth... that there are nukes which could destory half of the planet... is this true?

It only takes 1000 nukes to cover the whole entire planet? I thought it would take like 20000 to do that? In the cold war, the Soviets were planning to hit America with 10000 nukes but according to the 1000 nukes per earth, that would be enough to cover 10 earths.

Yeh. Learnt some good stuff opf this thread today! Russia and USA are about the same. But if it came down to an all out nuclear war, the UK would do pretty good, sending warheads to big locations. All you need to do is hit the cities and you've practiclly won. And I'd say the UKs 2000 (about) could do well against the USA or Russia...

Originally posted by Nexus
Yeh. Learnt some good stuff opf this thread today! Russia and USA are about the same. But if it came down to an all out nuclear war, the UK would do pretty good, sending warheads to big locations. All you need to do is hit the cities and you've practiclly won. And I'd say the UKs 2000 (about) could do well against the USA or Russia...

LMAO, nobody does "pretty good" in a Nuke war mate, and nobody "Wins" either. Any strike of any nation against another leads to M.A.D Mutually assured destruction. If not directly then by fallout etc carried round the globe on the trade winds. There is no statedgy to ensure a "win" possible,
especially certain nations having a vested intrest in protecting others.
Real Nuclear war would be nothing like a computer simulation. Fear and paranoia would ensure nobody would try to "save" their stockpile, especially china and America Imo.

[edit on 28-11-2004 by instar]

Russia detonated the largest nuclear weapon ever The Tsar Bomba ("King of Bombs") a 100 MT nuke at half yield so it was about a 50 MT blast.

I think the Russians found that more than 10 megatons is a waste because you're not increasing the blast radius by much as you increase the yield once you get over 10 MT.

Nukes have really changed more into a bunch of smaller ones such as we see in MIRVs compared to just one big one. That seems to be the better way to go as that makes up most of the modern ICBMs we see in Russia and the US.



nuclearweaponarchive.org...

The largest bomb now in the US arsenal is the 9MT B-53

1000 nukes for earth? Depends on size, blast radius, concentrated attack or spread attack. Depends on alot.

Yes, no one wins Nuclear war becasue of MAD. It is a stupid thing, but we need them now becasue we invented it in the first place. We all know who to thank for that one.

Becasue also, now rouge nations like N.Korea has them, I would rather we had enough to deter them from attack thank you.

And if one nation launched one, I think that the others even within the local area of the strike would retaliate as it would spread to them.

Wasn't the most powerful nuclear incident Chernobyl? I know it had no blast, but it was something like 40x the Radiation of a Nuclear Weapon. Scary.

The fact is, it's to late to stop Nuclear Weapons being used at soem ponit in the future. I just hope I die before it. Let's stop attack Terrorists we cannot defeat and fix N.Korea.

Originally posted by Nexus
Yeh. Learnt some good stuff opf this thread today! Russia and USA are about the same. But if it came down to an all out nuclear war, the UK would do pretty good, sending warheads to big locations. All you need to do is hit the cities and you've practiclly won. And I'd say the UKs 2000 (about) could do well against the USA or Russia...

UK has 2000 nukes??!!!
Then they have more than china!!
Can somebody please get a legid link to how many nukes each country is fabled to have?? I'm getting confused...

The UK has more like 200

"Britain is estimated to have produced approximately 1,200 warheads since 1953. Its current stockpile is thought to consist of some 200 strategic and "sub-strategic" warheads on Vanguard-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). The government declared in July 1998 that there would "be fewer than 200 operationally available warheads," of which 48 warheads would be on patrol at any given time on a single SSBN. The British arsenal peaked in the 1970s at 350 warheads."

You have to assume some "offical numbers" are not correct. I would take all numbers with a grain of salt, but its not going to be 2000 compared to 200.

www.thebulletin.org...



[edit on 29-11-2004 by ShadowXIX]

[edit on 29-11-2004 by ShadowXIX]

warfare.ru...
There's a link to the current amount/types of Missiles in the Russian Arsenal.

www.cnn.com...
Theres a link to the numbers of 1995, I doubt they could have changed dramatically, they estimate Russian nuclear warhead stockpiles to contain 27,000 warheads, compared to the Americans 14,766 warheads.

so whats the blast radius of:
a) the largest nuke
b) the largest nuke.. likley to be used in the event of a nuclear strike.

As someone mentioned(with the half yield of 50), the Russians tested claimed to be able to make a 100 megaton bomb.

It said something like a 100 megaton bomb would leave a crater 300 feet deep and with a diameter of about a mile, and that would be of solid rock.

Biggest thing around now, maybe 20 megatons, if that. Detonation in the air would have a diameter of about 60 miles, but with only serious damage, death, and injury within the 30-40 diameter.

The theory is that if 1000 nuclear war heads were to be detonated almost at the same time, that the Earth's crust would crumble, the mantle would become highly unstable, and the Earth no longer inhabitable. Soon the reaction would reach the inner core and the core would then become unstable, and then explode.

This happens in within minutes-hours. But the chances of 1000 nukes to blow up almost at the same time? Placed strategicely at the right places?

So yea, I guess the theory technically does not apply, but 1000 nukes if placed properly, can destroy the Earth. And the largest powerful nuke ever detonate I believe was a 56 MT.

The 100MT was never detonated due to one reason, it could not fit in the aircraft, and was to heavy to move to location on ground, or through water.

Aircraft was the best bet, but the bomb would not fit through the bay doors, and was half the size of the hanger the device was stored in.

So the 100MT never was detonated, the 56MT Tsar Bomb was however, marking the largest bomb to ever be detonated. In 1909 or something, there was an unknown 86 MT explosion in Siberia.

Not caused by a nuclear device, but believed to be caused by a meteor that had been destroyed abovet he ground. Skeptics believe a crashing UFO was at cause, for all but 1 tree in the middle of the explosion was destroyed.

For some reason, that one tree still stood tall, stood out from the other dead, knocked over trees that were nearly turned to dust.

Shattered OUT...

And the tree was probably sicne cut down and used as firewood.

Thats a pretty amazing story, one tree survived all that?

Perhpas it was as when the meteor exploded it went in a cone shape down, so avoiding that singular tree. Or maybe it exploded because it hit a bird which was aobve the tree, and went around it.

My first theory is more plausible I feel.

And the tree was probably sicne cut down and used as firewood.

Thats a pretty amazing story, one tree survived all that?

Perhpas it was as when the meteor exploded it went in a cone shape down, so avoiding that singular tree. Or maybe it exploded because it hit a bird which was aobve the tree, and went around it.

My first theory is more plausible I feel.