Gigaton nuclear weapons

There have been several articles out of popular science, popular mechanics, and Discover magazine that have quoted that scientists at Los Alamos and LANL were considering building a "gigaton" nuclear weapon. It would be insane to make a planet killer weapon like that- also how could they possibly build that?

The advent of precision guidance for munitions has made smaller more accurately delivered conventional weapons more practical. The very accuracy upon delivery means you dont need huge heavy warheads on conventional weapons. What used to be done with 1000/500 lb bombs is not being done with 500 or even down to 250 lb bombs. There are still large bombs available but used for more specific targets.
Same applies to nuclear weapons. Precise targeting has made unecessary the huge warheads of yesterdays mega tone yields. Megatons where used because accuracy in those times was in the five to ten mile range in the early days. Today you can get on target withing ten feet...this is a bulls eye..when you launched from hundreds of miles away. The heaviest most powerful warheads are still for hardened targets. Believe me...hardened target penetrators is not a concept being avoided by designers......in conventional and nuclear weapons.

Thanks,
Orangetom

Originally posted by horten229v3
There have been several articles out of popular science, popular mechanics, and Discover magazine that have quoted that scientists at Los Alamos and LANL were considering building a "gigaton" nuclear weapon. It would be insane to make a planet killer weapon like that- also how could they possibly build that?

The size of the weapon is only limited by the ammount of material you have.

this could be a good idea for a meteor trajectory changer.
or if it is this big it would more like completely destroy said meteor.

Ya in the maganzines the issue of a gigaton nuclear weapon was commented on in their probable ability to move asteroids, meteors, and comets that might endanger life on earth. The only thing i was wondering about is that Los Alamos scientists and LANL scientists were even THINKING about building a gigaton nuclear weapon. I know that size is proportionate to the weapon but i dont think that a good fission process would start if there was to much Plutonium.

It wouldn't hurt to have weapons that would be powerful enough to deflect or destroy an Asteroid.

Right, just make another super weapon, then when that falls into the wrong hands, I think we can all make up the story from there.

Should we have another Cold War?

Shattered OUT...

I don't know if it is possible to make a gigaton weapon using conventioal fusion. It would be too hard to contain the materials until they ble themselves apart. Also a weapon if it could be built would be way too big to transport anywhere. It would have to be built and used detenated in place.

They may be referring to antimatter to create a weapon this powerful.

Thats all we need people sitting in the Labss dreaming up ways to blast all life of this rock we call home. The russians wanted to build there doomsday ship (search here for info) coupled with a " If we cant have it no one will" attitude in the advent of losing a war , its a wonder where still here. Now 30 somthing years later we humans are at it again , but dont worry its not a doomsday weapon we need it just incase to destroy an Asteroids yeah right !

[edit on 12-6-2005 by dwh0]

It seems like the Russians made a 300 megaton device that they exploded at a lower yeild, whatever that means. That was the largest nuke ever known to exist.
The gigaton weapons are not for earthly use since even a 300 megaton device would have wreaked insanely widespread destruction, not to mention fallout, nuclear winter and all that.

I'm sure it would be too costly and difficult to build a gigaton weapon so well just have to stick with lasers and regular nukes for asteroids.

you want a gigaton nuclear weapon here is how you make it... take a normal thermo nuke and that put that in a large amount of hydrogen H2 and hydrogen H3 and bang you have a very large H-bomb as long as the H2 and H1 all get smashed into somthing faster then they can move a part it will fussion. so get 55 gallons of H2 and H1 and a nuke and have a little party in my pants....

Maybe this is just my own naivete, but couldn't the whole purpose of creating such a weapon--or even merely claiming to have created it--be more of a deterrant than anything else? As in trying to make sure NK doesn't get any funny ideas? I doubt it would really work very well as such; from past experience, we've seen that all that happens is the next guy will try and make a 2 gigaton weapon, so on and so forth. But then again, when was the last time the government did something logical?

Originally posted by MCory1
Maybe this is just my own naivete, but couldn't the whole purpose of creating such a weapon--or even merely claiming to have created it--be more of a deterrant than anything else? As in trying to make sure NK doesn't get any funny ideas? I doubt it would really work very well as such; from past experience, we've seen that all that happens is the next guy will try and make a 2 gigaton weapon, so on and so forth. But then again, when was the last time the government did something logical?

Thus where another Cold War comes in.

I would rather live a life of peace, than a life of fear.

Shattered OUT...

Hey wouldn't it be something if the USA and Russia jointly created a planet or asteroid killer ext.....

Just think of the effective power this could hold over the world.

[edit on 13-6-2005 by XPhiles]

if u want a gigabomb just dumped tritium all over the hydrogen nuke and it should make it go boom louder. dats how i dink it works u just have to test it .

Originally posted by ShatteredSkies
Thus where another Cold War comes in.

I would rather live a life of peace, than a life of fear.

Right, that's the down side to weapon propaganda. Hopefully whoever released the original information though realizes that and isn't doing it just to let people know (or make them think) we have such a weapon. I can't think of any other reason to broadcast the news though myself.

There is no theoretical limit to the size of a thermo, or super, as it was originally called. Weapons researchers in the 1950s theorized about a weapon that if detonated at the correct altitude would obliterate a hemisphere.

The Russians went big with the Tzar Bomba, a 100MT device that was de-tuned to deliver "only" 50MT. Even so, the blast caused fires and severe structural damage 30 miles from the point of detonation in Siberia.

The reason these weapons haven't been developed is because they have no practical application in any conceivable type of warfare - they are just too big and too heavy.

As for the design, well, the primary would still be a standard fission weapon, no change needed there, you would still follow the same basic Tellar-Ulam design for Thermonukes with foam filled channels down the sides of the weapon and a compressible center core with a nice big fat bottle of deuterium sat at the base of the container. You just provide LOTS of Deuterium and LOTS of Plutonium and watch the resulting detonation from the Moon.

We really will be the cause of our own destruction you know.

Ah well the reason why i asked if it is possible is bc some people say that after a certain size fission or fusion isnt as effective with nuclear weapons. But now it sounds like you just have to make it bigger.

Originally posted by deltaboy
if u want a gigabomb just dumped tritium all over the hydrogen nuke and it should make it go boom louder. dats how i dink it works u just have to test it

.

Tritium isn't used in any part of the detonation. Tritium is for 'enhanced radiation', aka neutron bomb.