Neutron bomb, real or concept?

Neutron Bombs were largely the product of KGB active measures, intended to whip up suspicion in the West.


[edit on 18-8-2009 by DeltaNine]

Do you mean they never existed?

I have heard of a research theory of a pure fusion device based on the Rods from God.
www.popsci.com...
www.globalsecurity.org...

It is a tungsten rod up to 20 feet in length and 1 foot in diameter.

It has a hollow core down the middle about 2 inches in diameter about 2 to 10 foot long filled with tritium-deuterium mix and lined with a neutron source.

These are launched into space and guided back into the atmosphere at a target.

These rods, which could be dropped on a target with as little as 15 minutes notice, would enter the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 36,000+ feet per second--about as fast as a meteor.

They would create so much heat and pressure on impact that the tritium-deuterium mix would enter a pure fusion state of a hydrogen bomb without using a nuclear trigger.

Without the fission of a fission-fusion hydrogen bomb you would have very little to no radiation. but there would be a burst of neutrons from the hydrogen fusion reaction that would last for a few seconds to a couple minutes at a depth underground.
But with a megaton power range.

That is the next step beyond conventional nuclear weapons.

One criticism of the Soviets, at the time, was that the neutron bomb was the perfect capitalist weapon ... it had the potential to kill all these pesky communists without much damage being caused to their infrastructure. The neutron bomb became a Soviet stick with which to beat the West in the propaganda stakes & many European peace activists thought it a particularly malevolent weapon.

I doubt the Western European governments thought a great deal of it, to be honest, its introduction was more trouble than it was worth.

NATO during the 1970's & 1980's was massively outnumbered by opposing Warsaw Pact tank divisions in central Europe. If memory serves right the intention was to use the neutron bomb as a battlefield weapon against advancing Soviet tanks. It would kill their tank crews with an immediate burst of lethal radiation & our forces would roll on into the gap with little risk of radioactive contamination.

I think too it sent a signal to the Soviets that we weren't afraid to up the ante and use nuclear weapons, it formed part of the "flexible response" nuclear war planning of the day.

[edit on 18-8-2009 by Ulala]

Holy s**t what an amazing concept.

[edit on 18-8-2009 by VitalOverdose]

Rods of God

reply to post by VitalOverdose

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Lawn darts?

I think it was the B-61 that could become a neutron weapon.They were called dial a yield.

There were knobs and switches that you could set for different scenarios. It could be an air burst,surface or sub-surface.

Also the size of the yield could be determined with radioactive gases inside canisters.

I hauled them around for a couple of years in the early 80's and remember having a conversation with a weapons tech about them.

I believe they were phased out.



[edit on 20-8-2009 by calcoastseeker]

[edit on 20-8-2009 by calcoastseeker]

Don't know about a neutron bomb, but I had a teacher about 5 years ago talk about a proton bomb being the next step up on the list. He said something about a tennis ball sized bomb being powerful enough to blow up fairly large states...

What nuclear in nuclear bomb means is the energy is from the splitting of a nucleus in an atom. A proton bomb therefore would be splitting a much much small proton in the nucleus.

reply to post by BSA2010

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Do we as humans even know what make up protons yet or is it just theory still? I thought they were the basis for all matter.

Neutron bombs are at the bottom of the sea in scuttled German U boats.

To find the bombs and sub engines and other advanced technology the
Howard Hughes production of the Glomar Challenger was ordered by
the CIA.

A bit of intel was publicized when it lifted up a Russian Sub and had
burials of the recovered crew.

I had suggested this operation might take place after the Russian sub
went down and the Glomar Challenger hit the news.

Thank you As you well know you just can't believe everything you see and hear, can you?

Thank you for you valuable contributions. Just wanted to point out that this original design was not implemented and they put in a lead damper (instead of the third stage).

Yes, that's exactly what it was.

Neutrons would get absorbed some hundreds of meters deep into the ground, so that most of the soil wouldn't be contaminated at all.

That is quite a lot of energy from what we would say is drinking water.
Doesn't that seem strange.

Perhaps there are less violent forms of energy to be derived from
ordinary water in some way.

Concept my butt. A neutron bomb is just a fission weapon with dedicated implosion componant that limits fallout. We first used neutron bombs as war heads for our NIKE ZEUS anti-bomber missles. We wanted to limit blast and certain frequencies to what we needed to blow a plane or missle out of the sky. Spare those below the full pentional of what nukes can do.Any questions?

Kinda weird that it is more "humane" to totally destroy an area for Decades if not centuries. We are definetly a weird species, no wonder aliens use us for experiments.

reply to post by ANNED

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Nasty and clever...... I even like the name.

What if they miscaculate the rentry temps, you would get air blasts?

reply to post by ANNED

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sorry nuclear fusion via "rods from god" (i HATE THAT NAME, the projects original name was CROWBAR), is not possible.


Nuclear fusion is initiated by radiation compression, ie neutron flux, from a fission reaction.

There would not be enough energy available in a physical collision to initiate fusion.
But there might be enough energy available to initiate a fission reaction in a properly designed warhead.
But that would be taking the long way to get there, it would just be easier to use an icbm.
Its funny how crowbar grew from 2" dia x 4' long projectiles for anti tank use, and a 6" dia x 6' long for antishipping uses, to mythical 1' x 20' objects that would be way to heavy to put into orbit, each 20' long bar would weigh 75,000 lb, compared to the 53,000 lb capacity of the shuttle.
And far above that of any heavy lift rocket in use.
There is also the fact that it is a mass drop weapon, as originally envisioned the would be dropped in waves on advancing soviet armor columns, from expendable satellites.

the larger anti-ship version was planned to have had some sort of terminal guidance, but I highly doubt its effectiveness, for the same reasons I dont worry to much about chinese anit ship balistic missles.

neutron bombs are still in the arsenal, but are on a decommisioned status.

The nuetron bomb was tacticaly deployed to stop soviet armor columns by rendering the crew incapacitated.
they are still a bombs and would have done extensive damage to any nearby structures.

oops db post

[edit on 25-8-2009 by punkinworks]