Nuclear Weapon question

[RRoan]

By then, it would be easier to lob a small asteroid at the target.

Asteroids aren't usually lined with Cobalt-60.

If you're trying to generate fallout, a giant bomb lined with cobalt 60 (or anything else) isn't going to do much. Remember that surface area squares as interior volume cubes, so a single giant bomb (and a 50gt bomb would be enormous) would have less surface area to line with cobalt than thousands of smaller bombs.

As well, if fallout is what you want, your best bet is thousands of groundbursts.

You know what? I shouldn't have said lined. I should have said encased, as demonstrated in this sucky MS-Paint Drawing.

trying to nuke DC RRoan?

why would you use such an overkill when a 20 MT nuke will do.

I was trying to find a place that is near the center of the Eastern-Seabord, and DC seemed appropriate for that purpose.

Trenton, NJ would be a better choice just going by population distribution. Philadelphia and New York would both be in the total destruction zones, you'd still pummel Baltimore and DC, and you'd even catch Boston at the edge of it.

Thanks! I'll take note of that.



To everybody whos wondering why the huge weapon yeild, the following is the quick and dirty reasoning: Xenophobic aliens see Earth. They assume the Eastern-Seaboard is the most important area in the most powerful country on earth. Because Earth has roughly the same technological level, they assume (incorrectly, as we don't have sheilds of any size) that the area will have a large scale sheilding system. So they load up a nuke of the same size that is required to break through their own high end sheilding(plus a few extra gigatons for good measure). They load it up on one of their FTL drive missiles, and shoot it off at Earth. They stuck all the Cobalt-60 on because the less useable land the enemy has, the better.