Gigaton nuclear weapons

From what I know of the actual physics of the process, a gigaton nuclear weapon is going to be almost impossible to build. Pure fission is limited to about 500kt (this is a rough figure, if anyone has any actual data, I would appreciate a link....), and as has been previously stated the Tsar Bomba was the largest fusion bomb ever detonated at around 57 mt. Of course, it was massive, took up the entire bomb bay of a heavy bomber and was deployed via drogue parachute much like one of the "daisy cutter" bombs. Chelomei actually designed the UR-500 (aka Proton) as a massive ICBM to loft it state-wards... never deployed, obviously.

But I digress.

You can build bigger by building fission-fusion-fission bombs, where the casing of the shell and the x-ray mirrors out of U238, which will undergo fission due to the huge neutron flux in D-T fusion. The problem, however, is that past a certain point you but up against the fundamental limits of the materials. For fusion to undergo sucessfully, the secondary has to be confined for a certain amount of time... past a certain point, the bomb casing will just rupture and not all of the hydrogen will fuse, thus limiting the yield.

Thats what i have been kind of hinting at- at a certain level, nuclear weapons become defunct or more easily said-- not workable. They will produce an explosion, but due to the type of the material and the type of reaction it produces, size does necessarily mean a bigger explosion.

[edit on 20-6-2005 by horten229v3]

I wonder if you could be able to amplify strenght however by setting off multiple nuclear reactions

think of throwing a stone in the water, then throwing 8 more stones quickly around that stone

That already has a thread of its own, in which I remarked that detonating nukes close to eachother is not that simple as neutrons lingering around from previous detonations could give a problem with predetonation, resulting in a much smaller yield than planned.

Originally posted by ShatteredSkies
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 think the stealing of a Gigaton weapon would be that much of an issue.

First, its weight would make stealing it undetected imposible. And considering the radiation being able to be detected by current satelites, a big nuke like that would light up like a christmas tree.

Then, the russians exploded a prototype of the Tsar Bomba, wich was a 100 Megaton weapon. Detonating it at low yield means they blasted it at 50 Megaton instead of its full potential. This weapon was detected by the US because it had the same effect on seismographs worldwide as the 9.3 Richter earthquake that triggered the Boxing Day Tsunami.

300 Megaton has never been prototyped for as far as I know. Not officialy at least.

And well, Gigaton would mean 1000 Megaton, if a 50 Megaton has the earth ringning like a bell for years, what the heck would a Gigaton weapon do to us? Not only would all life on earth be gone, but theres a good chance a good part of the earth itself is blasted into space.

Yea i project that abuot 1/8th of the earths mass would have been basically destroyed, that would in turn destroy the atmosphere and our seasons= not to mention the immediate effects such as the blast (heat) wave, the shock wave (might circle the earth at least 7 times) and the radiation fallout would most certainly cause nuclear winter and massive raditaion posioning. Oh yea on more thing- a gigaton nuclear explosion might change the earth's tilt, speed, and position- ultimately resulting in the earth smashing into another plant, the sun, or having us all burn or freeze to death.

I wonder what the blast radius of a gigaton bomb would be?
As previously stated a gigaton is a thousand megatons.
The fifty megaton Tsar bomb was potent enough to cause third degree burns at a 100km distance. Blast damage was recorded 1000km away from the detonation.

The mind boggles at the concept of such destruction.

Originally posted by boogyman
I wonder what the blast radius of a gigaton bomb would be?
As previously stated a gigaton is a thousand megatons.
The fifty megaton Tsar bomb was potent enough to cause third degree burns at a 100km distance. Blast damage was recorded 1000km away from the detonation.

The mind boggles at the concept of such destruction.

You do have to consider though that in nuclear weapons, the higher you go in the yield, the lower the extra effect gets.

As an example:

You have a 10MT weapon, gives you a 50 KM blast radius.
You have a 20MT weapon, gives you a 70 KM blast radius.
You have a 40MT weapon, gives you a 90 KM blast radius.
You have a 80MT weapon, gives you a 110KM blast radius.
You have a 160MT weapon, gives you a 130KM blast radius.
You have a 320MT weapon, gives you a 150KM Blast radius.

These numbers are in no way correct, they just resemble the effect I'm pointing at. The higher the yield, the less extra effect it'll have compared to lower yield weapon.
Doubling the yield will only give you 10 to 20% extra blast radius, not double the radius.

So a Gigaton weapon won't have a blast radius 20 times wider then the 50MT Tsar Bomba.

But the effects, not only from the blast wave, would change the earth considerably- like the effeects i said before.

The Tsar bomb though did have some interesting atmospheric side effects. It caused a forest fire a 1000 km away from the heat and winds generated.

Yea the effects would have enourmous empact on both the enviornment, and the position of Earth, and on survival.

Can you get more back for the buck ? What would you call a 1000+ gt yeild device. I guess if there is a problem big enought appropriate solution will always be forthcoming

During the cold war, Russia had considered a plan of making a large seagoing vessel, and filling its entire cargo hold with the largest nuclear bomb they could conceivably build.


This design was a last-ditch effort to save humanity: for if communism failed and capitalism took over, they believed it would be better if we all died rather than have any of us survive to live in a world that didn't conform to their political ideology.


Kinda scary, isn't it?


It was never built.



On a side note: I just love it when a very small number of secretive men in positions of "power" make decisions for the rest of us, and leave us out of the decision-making process entirely.

/sarcasm off



"A government big enough to give us everything we want is a government big enough to take from us everything we have." - United States President Gerald Ford

[edit on 17-5-2008 by ianr5741]

So Ares and Orion are made for the same mission Saturn and Apollo were: DOOMSDAY INTERDICTION.

Incoming !

Originally posted by bios
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.

Tsar Bomba was the largest nuclear device ever constructed, and it was designed for (approximately) a 100mt yield. The Russians replaced the uranium in the bomb's third stage with lead, which lowered the yield to 57mt. Where did you find a source for a 300mt device?

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?

103 megatons will extinguish human life. What would be the point of a weapon that could never be tested?

tards.

Originally posted by bios not to mention fallout, nuclear winter and all that.

Sorry mate, but there is no such thing as a 'Nuclear Winter'! It's Cold War spin designed to bolster the utter hopelessness of MAD.

In those far off days in our dim and distrant past, it was even believed that if your country struck first, you could 'win' the nuclear war.

'Nuclear Winter', where radioactive dust particles blot out the sun, is old-fashioned scaremongering. Pure and simple.

Why?

Because, as I've said time and time again, a volcano emits more dust
[some of it radioactive] than ALL the nuclear weapons on earth.

Here in the UK, I admit is is getting a little colder, but that is just the onset of the Great British Summer and nothing to do with dust in the atmosphere!

Originally posted by rogue1 The Tsar bomb though did have some interesting atmospheric side effects. It caused a forest fire a 1000 km away from the heat and winds generated.

WOW! REALLY?

Guess my CBRN training at Winterborne Gunner was wrong then! We were told the Tzar Bomb was a so-called 'Doomsday' device capable of delivering not less than a yield 500 Mt.

Several were built but an 'original' device of 100 Mt was detonated above the Arctic Circle when dropped by parachute from a Tu-95 on October 23, 1961. [www.vce.com...]

There was a bigger weapon detonated over Europe, but this was an
Exo-Atmospheric detonation which caused severe electrical blackouts across the continent.

I don't know 'where' you got your info from rogue1, especially in reference to the fire 1000 kms from Ground Zero!

reply to post by fritz


well your training is wrong

the tsar bomb was a 3 stage fission-fusion-fission device with a yield of 100MT in the full power form

when tested the 3rd stage *fission* was in fact replaced with a lead tamper instead of the cover of uranium - this gave quite likely the `cleanest` thermonuclear detonation ever - clean as in amount of of material used ; even so the test was around 50MT without the 3rd stage

they built 3 - 1 was detonated , 1 is on display in a museum and the last was dismantled ; the entire concept was impracticle as the aircraft dropping it had to be modified and was also darn slow.

It's rediculous to have extremely large weapons, it's FAR more efficiant to just put a large amount of, lower yeild nukes, within the same place. That way you can take out way more targets.

reply to post by Illahee


I think the main intent of a Nuclear bomb is to ' extinguish human life.'. If you mean kill all humans, then no, total yeild of Nuclear detonations far exceeds 100 megatons, I beleive the top 3 bombs could.

__

As Harlequin said, it was 50 to 57 megatons depending on who you're talking to, not 300.

[edit on 19/5/2008 by C0bzz]