Nasa supposed to nuke the moon tomorrow, does anyone have a moon chart, that sure would be interresting to look at. See how much is going to get vaporized.

Originally posted by resist2012
Interesting, yet disturbing... Good post though. Although, it is nice to know that the 50mt will annihilate dc...

There aren't any 50 MT bombs. The Tsara Bomba was a one-off deal, and was so powerful that the 50 MT is an estimate. Others place it at 60 MT, or some say even bigger.

As near as I recall, 3 MT just about tops the list in current inventory. Might be a few (very few) in the 9-10 MT range.

I remember in the nuke scare of the 80's, folks were coming around trying to propagandize college students with "what if.." scenarios involving huge bombs that didn't even exist. They conveniently failed to provide THAT bit of information, and then proceeded to exaggerate the effects on top of that, attempting to scare the students into seeing things their way. I gotta admit, it scared me too, until I actually got into the literature, and found out the facts. It was still a spooky proposition, but not nearly as fatal as they told folks. Eminently survivable, if one had the foresight not to be at ground zero of a bursting bomb.

My absolute favorite was the gal who started yelping about what would happen if a "100 Megaton bomb" (referring to the above-mentioned Tsara Bomba) were dropped on the local Raytheon factory. She never mentioned that such a bomb did not exist, nor did she provide any sort of rationalization as to why a huge bomb like that would be targeted to take out one measly little factory. Then she exaggerated the damage radii. She had to leave the campus in disgrace when I called her on it, and proceeded to provide the relevant data, including the formulae to arrive at it.

Blast damage radii varies as the cube root of the yield ( W^[1/3], for those that care) and is affected by above ground burst height. To attempt to simplify, a ground burst is required for appreciable fallout (the fallout material has to come from somewhere), but that in turn minimizes the damage radius from blast effects. An optimized burst height for blast effects is too high above ground for fallout. It's a trade off, and depends on the havoc one wants to wreak.

The "cube root" part is just a fancy way of saying that a 27 MT bomb would do only 3 times the damage of a 1 MT bomb, not 27 times (27^[1/3}=3), except there are no 27 MT bombs. That's why. With increasing yield, you get less "bang for the buck", and so smaller bombs are more cost-effective. that's why the vast bulk of the intercontinental arsenals was in the 300 KT to 1 MT range, with very few of the larger 3-10 MT bombs, and those for special application against "harder" targets.

Guess it wont matter where you live when an asteroid hits

Back in the late '80s before peace broke out, I had a government fallout map on my cube wall.

Fallout will make you wish you were with the blast.

I'm thinking terrorists will only be able to carry kiloton-sized weapons. Not as much physical damage as a missile delivered nuke, but the damage to civil liberties and the increased centralization of a massive government means the terrorists would have taken the last of our liberty, the thing they (and this administration) hate.

[edit on 22-6-2009 by Dbriefed]

Originally posted by TheAgentNineteen
Although this is a VERY interesting and humbling site, I must ask, does the creator of such ever take into consideration the knowledge that this sort of tool provides to Terrorists?

Not sure how much help it would be to terrorists, knowing how much they could destroy "if only" they could just get their hands on a nuke. Even most governments have a hard time making the first few work right. A "dirty bomb" is a far more likely candidate for terrorist operations, and blast radius in those is severely limited, because the actual explosion is produced by conventional means, and most likely wouldn't get the radioactive particles high enough for any sort of wide-spread fallout.

As for the saving of ones life, yes, this might aide that somewhat, but you must also consider Wind Patterns to a tremendous degree (In terms of Radioactive fallout), and Pressure Systems (High Pressure allows for less build-up and Upper-atmospheric dispersal). Terrain is also a HUGE factor as well.

Absolutely correct. Burst height, wind patterns, wind speed, pressure systems, local rainfall, and intervening terrain AT THE TIME OF THE EXPLOSION, all factor into the fallout intensity and deposit pattern. Most models, such as these, use an "idealized" wind , accounting mostly for the general prevailing winds, not specific local daily winds and weather (which would be impossible to factor in at any other time than the actual explosion).

Faster winds tend to produce a larger pattern, but with less radiation per square inch, because the total amount is spread out over more area, and kept aloft longer, where the half-life factor reduces the radioactivity of the particles steadily.

The further one is from ground zero, the longer it takes the fallout to get there, hence the more time radioactive decay has to work it's magic.

Slow winds deposit higher intensity radiation, but MUCH closer to ground zero.

Cells of rain that the fallout is blown through tends to create localized hot spots of more intense radiation, at the expense of washing radioactive particles out of the sky, so they can't be deposited downwind.

The pretty lozenge-shaped fallout patterns of all the examples have never been observed in any actual tests. The fallout patterns in actual tests looked more like Rorshach tests.

Originally posted by Darkblade71
Well I just tried to nuke my little town....and it was gone.
Every bomb wiped it off the map!
Kind of funny. I wonder what effect mountains would have on a nuclear blast?

The meteor one...took out all of southeast alaska!

Mountains tend to intensify the blast pressure (reflection) on the explosion side of the mountain, and weaken it (dispersion) on the away-from-the-blast side.

Originally posted by JipStix
also: the Tsar Bomba is one nasty son of a bitch.... wow... how many of those do the Russians still have?

In round figures, "0". Doesn't get much rounder than that. They built and tested ONE, and it was so expensive and unpredictable, and just plain scary, that they never built another. They couldn't even pin down just exactly how powerful it was, had to estimate the explosive force, and so determined it was useless on top of everything else.

You ought to see the video of the explosion, though!

I think the asteroid impact info on the simulator is going off the asteroid that created the Chicxulub Crater in Mexico 65 million years ago. And not to mean being a smart ass but has any heard of the American Hiroshima plan as far as terrorists getting nukes go?

Of course, the first city I entered was Tehran.

Creepy stuff, I've always been curious about events like that. Kinda creepy all at the same time.

Very interesting; I think it's safe to say that an asteroid impact will wipe out just about everyone in the US and Canada x3. Guess we should all hide on Island or something just in case.

Originally posted by SharkBait
I live on the outskirts of Houston and i'm safe except for the 50MT blast- All the others i'll do just fine. Phew !

[edit on 22-6-2009 by SharkBait]

except about 30 minutes after the dust settles, you'll wish you were inside the blast zone for a quick death. fallout covers a MASSIVE area.