The Big One

[lukexcom]

It's amazing, really, everytime I think that something in the TBO is a bit exaggerated, or maybe a bit contrived, or something that's just at the edge of belief, I do my research, look up the facts, dig deep and find out for myself that Stuart is exactly on the mark. The RB-36 easily pushing past 50,000ft., the F-108 Rapier being actually built in its magnificent form, the Tomcat being made as what it was supposed to have been: the F-113, the brilliance of the designers at Tsybin...

Truth be told, I have gained a new-found appreciation for what miracles the defence/aerospace industry in both Russia and the US have pulled off (or could have pulled off if their programs were allowed to be completed) during the Cold War.

[Crayz9000]

A Dish

Surprised nobody posted a link here yet.

[Stuart]

That many nukes and imperalism is what I exoect frin a 'historical forum'. Amercia had trouble building TWO bombs RL/OTL. Dayum.

Dealing with nuclear weapons production first. The "trouble" the US had with nuclear weapons production pre-1945 was what every mass-production program faces - the difficulty building infrastructure. The Manhattan District had the problem that they were building production lines that used technology that was - just barely - understood. However, once those production lines were built, producing equipment from them ceases to be difficult. Its routine. In @, the US had built four nuclear devices by August 1945 and had produced two more by the end of the year. Of those, three had been expended (one at Trinity, one at Hiroshima and one at Nagasaki). Two were expended at Bikini Atoll and one had deteriorated beyond use. At the end of 1945, the US made a policy decision; the production lines in existance were jerry-built and unsafe. They were dismantled and replaced by properly-designed and built ones. US nuclear weapons production almost stopped as a result for almost 18 months. In TBO, the old lines are kep in service AND new ones built. The production rate of nuclear devices is that projected by 1945 industrial planning assuming the post-war freeze and reconstruction didn't happen. The overall effect was to advance production by two years - and we have the 1949 inventory in 1947. The number of devices used on Germany in TBO is that which was in the @ US arsenal in 1949.

As for imperialism, this is simply wrong. It is frequently stated in all the appropriate stories that the US is isolationist; it will NOT get involved in other people's problems unless its own vital interests are involved. In fact, one of the lessons of the TBO series is the varying effect of American isolationism vs involvement.

Amercians service men are always lookers.

In fact, with the sole exception of the Seer's female associates having long hair (which is an important plot point) there are no physical descriptions at all in any of the TBO stories. There are some vague comments (for example we know the Ambassador is short which is a big surprise - she's an Asian woman. We know that Marisol's crew are short because of the cramped cockpits of the B-58 - that is historically correct) I know what the characters look like in my mind but I deliberately left the descriptions unwritten. That is so readers can project their own favored appearances onto them.

Amercians are always feared and respected.

Feared yes - they are ready to destroy whole countries. Respected? Hard to say. The description of world opinion on Americans is that they are regarded as vicious guard-dogs - people appreciate the protection they offer but don't want to associate with them socially. That doesn't sound like respect in any affectionate sense.

They are always the screw the world turns on.

Not so; in fact, once again, the Americans are isolationist. Unless somebody steps on their toes, they don't want to be involved. In fact, the TBO world turns on the conflicts between the Triple Alliance (cynically capitalist), Chipan (struggling communist) and The Caliphate (irrationally religious). Now, the results of those rivalries may well involve Americans when a US interest gets stepped on but the American interest is not the driving force.

Any massive reversals?

Crusade is one almighty screw-up after another. It was deliberately written to show how decision making processes go astray and result in seriously inconvenient consequences. Neither SAC nor the Americans in general are omnipotent - they're just people doing the best they can in a very imperfect world.

I can't search for it.. where is a snippet of what happened to postwar germany? Where are the irradiated cities? Where are the fallout mutants? Marvelverse mutants?

Before I look at this, I'd better tell you a little about myself. I used to be what's called a targeteer - an analyst who evaluates the effects of nuclear weapons on specific types of targets. Over the years I did a lot of such evaluations and I'm very familiar with what nuclear weapons do and how. A lot of that work was tied up with anti-ballistic missile technology and I was (to some extent still am) a systems analyst working on such programs.

The TBO strike used mostly air-burst fission devices against cities. By and large, unless the devices are ground-bursts (initiated in such a manner that the fireball touches the ground) such weapons do not cause long-lasting radioactivity problems. Ground bursts do, that's another matter, but air bursts do not. For example, it was quite safe to walk around both Hiroshima and Nagasaki within a few weeks of the attacks. Now, it is absolutely safe to do so. However, I did point out that all the cities in Germany are considered uninhabitable. Part of that is the hot-spot problem, more is a social ethic that develops. As a rule of thumb though, within a year of a fission device being initiated over a city, the radiation will be almost entirely gone within 12 hours and will be indistinguisable from background within a year. If you are interested in looking further into that, there is a book called "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons" that is very good.

Fallout mutants basically don't happen. Sorry about that. In the TBO context, the effects of radioactivity are only going to be noticable within a short period of the initiation and within a limited radius of Ground Zero. There are two groups of people in that category. Those who were already there (and who were killed by blast, heat, pressure and fragmentation - when somebody has been reduced to the size, shape, color and rough physical characteristics of a McDonald's hamburger, irradiating them as well is superfluous) and those who enetr the area withina few minutes or hours of the initiation. The latter will die of radiation poisoning - which is a truly horrible way to die and one which does not give rise to thoughts about reproduction. If somebody gets a sublethal dose, they will die of cancer eventually or (if pregnant) spontaneously abort. A lot of studies on offspring from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki events have been made; they make interesting reading. If we use fusion devices, then we do get some fallout but the general effect is to kill or maim rather than mutate.

Having said all of that, please note there are radiation effects mentioned in passing. Note the description Lord Halifax gives of eggs after The Big One - black, bloody and stinking inside (that's deliberately intended as a hint of what embryos in farm animals and humans look like). The Great Famine is a radiation effect (plus a climactic one) . However, the primary casualty-causing mode in TBO is burns. People are burned alive and die horribly as a result. Remember the figures - millions of ghastly burn victims and barely a couple of hundred hospital beds to treat them. After that, the problems of short-lived radiation are pretty inconsequential.

Marvelverse mutants? Sorry, I don't get this one. Do you mean superhumans created by radiation? Doesn't happen for reasons we've already discussed. By and large, mutations are negative (overwhelmingly so) rather than positive. Mostly the "mutants" are fast-developing cancers and leukemias. Radiation kills, either directly or indirectly, but it kills. That's why when we targeteer an event we do so to reduce radiation as much as possible.

[MKSheppard]

Stuart, I continue to be even more impressed by you and the
way you comport yourself over the internet. The urge to lower
your civility and hurt Zerg Goddess must have been overwhelming,
but you didn't.

Bravo, Stuart.

*raises glass in honor*

[CaptainChewbacca]

You know, I never realized that there were no descriptions of the characters. I think its because there are a few real-world characters in there to make it more interesting, and through them we can imagine the surrounding world.

[technomage]

In fact, with the sole exception of the Seer's female associates having long hair (which is an important plot point) there are no physical descriptions at all in any of the TBO stories. There are some vague comments (for example we know the Ambassador is short which is a big surprise - she's an Asian woman. We know that Marisol's crew are short because of the cramped cockpits of the B-58 - that is historically correct) I know what the characters look like in my mind but I deliberately left the descriptions unwritten. That is so readers can project their own favored appearances onto them.

Well, you did provide pix of Lillith and Naamah.

Note the description Lord Halifax gives of eggs after The Big One - black, bloody and stinking inside (that's deliberately intended as a hint of what embryos in farm animals and humans look like).

Not to mention the grass on the Tower Green when they took him for his last haircut.

[phongn]

Well, the grass might have been an effect of the Seer & Co. being nearby, or simply from frequent usage of the chopping block.

[Stuart]

Well, you did provide pix of Lillith and Naamah.

I have photographs of all the primary characters so I can keep my image of them consistent. I did put up the ones of the ladies just to reassure people that they are indeed human - in appearance anyway. In fact, the text of Crusade does give a slight description of Naamah in that she is pictured as having red hair and dead, slime-green eyes.

Not to mention the grass on the Tower Green when they took him for his last haircut.

My basic mental image is that Europe in general was not a healthy place to be for a year or two after The Big One. There is a sort of general, low-level malaise that is debilitating rather than directly lethal. Partly it is the presence of radiation and the toxic by-products of the initiation of so many nuclear devices (people always speak on radiation as the primary hazard, but forget that the fission products - even the marginally radioactive ones - are chemically toxic as well. Sometimes in great dilution. There is also a cocktail effect - there are so many toxic agents present that they interact in unusual and unpredictable ways). Added in is also a psychological effect; Europe's been severely occupied for seven years and then suddenly, in one day, gets blasted out of that position. There is a crisis of confidence, a feeling of helplessness, a general air of futility. Then, of course, farming and agriculture collapsed so there is malnutrition (actual widespread starvation being prevented by rice and pasta from Spain and Italy plus meat from Australia and the U.S.). There's shortages of almost everything. A final factor is that the dirt and dust in the atmosphere from the destroyed German cities (Germany was effectively burned to the ground and there were probably extensive forest fires as well) have pulled down the temperature by a couple of degrees with some fairly nasty effects on crop growth. The same effect would be to reduce daylight, increasing the general air of dimness. I suppose it could be said that Europe is suffering from a continent-wide state of clinical depression, rather like that following a very bad case of flu.

[Stuart]

The urge to lower your civility and hurt Zerg Goddess must have been overwhelming.

I must admit I was a little disappointed she didn't follow up by explaining her own train of thought a little better. (What is a Zerg Goddess by the way?) The radiation point was actually a useful one - whenever people who aren't in The Business start talking about nuclear weapons "radiation" and "fall-out" are almost the first things that they bring up. Radiation/fall-out are perfect demons in many ways - they are largely invisible yet lethal. So much has been made of them that its hard to get people to put their actual significance into perspective. The other effect class that people get obsessed with are the electronic phenomena associated with a nuclear initiation - again, everybody outside a fairly small circle has almost no idea what those effects actually entail. Its routine to find that SREE, EMP, Corona Effects, Van Allen Pumping all confused and lumped together as an amorphous whole (the usual one is to take SREE effects and apply them over the area affected by an EMP).

[Stormbringer]

(What is a Zerg Goddess by the way?)

The Zerg were a race of mutating insects that were the villianous race in the game Starcraft.

[Stuart]

The Zerg were a race of mutating insects that were the villianous race in the game Starcraft.

Ahhhhhh. Interresssting......


Thank you very much for clearing that up.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I just spent the last hour and a half reading through The Big One, and I am definitely impressed by it. I honestly wanted the Germans to at least save one city at the end, or shoot down the bombers that hit Berlin, at least something that would put up more of a fight then being bent over and mercilessly ass raped like they were.

The destruction of Germany was concentrated basically within the boundaries of modern-day Germany, possibly with even some small areas of modern day German spared--the decision was to punish the German people, not the regions they had conquered in the war or those they had previously held which had distinct non-German identities. So, for example, IIRC, Silesia was untouched except by fallout/pollution from nearby areas of Germany. Likewise, Austria still exists, though it would have suffered horrendously from the radioactive pollution of the Danube--I suspect that they're an Italian puppet state by the time of the follow-up stories. Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Hungary would have also suffered seriously from the pollution of the Danube, which would be probably considered sufficient punishment for their varying degrees of collaboration with Germany.

[technomage]

Isn't fallout itself little bits of the bomb's reaction mass that doesn't get destroyed? I would have thought that that stuff would be dangerous irregardless of a ground-burst or an air-burst.

On the other hand, that's probably just an indicator of my ignorance. All I really know about nukes comes from TBO and from The Sum of All Fears, by Tom Clancy. And I know that the latter has deliberate errors in it.



Stuart, have you been reading the DrakaFics on this board? Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany are best buds in that universe.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Isn't fallout itself little bits of the bomb's reaction mass that doesn't get destroyed? I would have thought that that stuff would be dangerous irregardless of a ground-burst or an air-burst.

That is the source of fallout in an air-burst. In a ground burst, however, the matter from the crater which is created by a groundburst is sucked up into the fireball and irradiated there, and that matter forms a much, much larger about of fallout.

Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany are best buds in that universe.

It is not Nazi Germany--though it is run by Herman Goering, and definitely fascist, Goering kept the basic structures of the Weimar Republic intact and rules through alliances with the conservative/monarchist parties, in part cementing them by promising to "eventually" restore the Hohenzollerns.

[Crayz9000]

Isn't fallout itself little bits of the bomb's reaction mass that doesn't get destroyed? I would have thought that that stuff would be dangerous irregardless of a ground-burst or an air-burst.

That's one component of fallout. Another component is formed when a bomb is detonated close enough to the ground that dust and debris is sucked up into the mushroom cloud. This irradiated material is then dispersed (but IIRC it's shorter-lived than the leftover bomb material).

Stuart, have you been reading the DrakaFics on this board? Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany are best buds in that universe.

Well, in DrakaFic, Adolf Hitler never really appeared on the scene, so Germany (while still Fascist) never goes to the extremes that it did in @. So I can see Russia supporting Germany against a common foe in that case.

Edit: Damn the stupid board maintenance shutdown...

[technomage]

It is not Nazi Germany--though it is run by Herman Goering, and definitely fascist, Goering kept the basic structures of the Weimar Republic intact and rules through alliances with the conservative/monarchist parties, in part cementing them by promising to "eventually" restore the Hohenzollerns.

I know what you mean. It's not the psychotic nation gone mad that it was in the real world. That's the Draka's role. But Goering is the leader of the Nazi Party, isn't he? That's what I meant.

[Stuart]

On the other hand, that's probably just an indicator of my ignorance. All I really know about nukes comes from TBO and from The Sum of All Fears, by Tom Clancy. And I know that the latter has deliberate errors in it.

They weren't deliberate errors when Clancy made them; he just made them into "deliberate errors" when people in the know started to poke fun at him.

The unconsumed mass of the nuclear device is one source of radioactive contamination. In the early devices, this was quite significant because they wree very inefficient. The Mark One dropped on Hiroshima was about 4 - 8 percent efficient; the Model 1561 dropped on Nagasaki was a little bit better. The efficiency of initiation went up quite markedly - one of the main factors was the shift in device design was to 32-point, then 64-point initiation for implosion devices. There is also the class of radioactive residues called "fission products" that are the result of the nuclear fission process. In a fission initiation, these all settle reasonably close to Ground Zero and thei long-ter significance (or lack of it) can be judged from the fact that both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were safe to inhabit within days of the attacks. In fact, the radioactive residue yield from a nuclear initiation is mostly gone within 12 hours (I have the graphs; they are a very steep declining J-curve).

The catch is that if the fireball from the initiation touches the ground, then debris from the ground is swept in and sucked up into that fireball and is seriously irradiated. It is then spread over much the same sort of area as the device residue yield - its just that there is a lot more of it. The precise area covered is determined largely by two factors. One is the sheer power of the device; the bigger the bang, the more the residue gets dispersed. The other is the weather. High winds and hot, dry weather are all conducive to greater dispersion of residue and fission products. The catch is that a nuclear initiation changes the weather at the laydown site.

In general, radioactivity from a fission device isn't really a problem. A study of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors has definitively proved there were no long-term mutagenic consequences from the initiation. However,. that isn't the reason why residue radioactive generation and fission products are not a problem. The actual reason is that a fission device is simply not powerful enough to disperse the products beyond the area. If you're in the area where radiation is a problem, you're either already dead or you're dying from other effects (mostly thermal burns).

This picture changes dramatically when we shift from considering fission devices to fusion devices. Some of the gain is positive. When we start to look at fusion devices, the first thing that happens is that the efficiency of the fission component goes way, way up. We're talking leaps into the high nineties. The reason is that the fusion reaction super-compresses the fission core and that results in very high efficiency. So, the amount of residue radioactivity drops significantly. On the other hand, the amount of fission product radioactivity rises proportionally but, again, that's only a problem in areas where the victims are dead anyway. The really problematical point is that the fusion devices are powerful enough to blast their radioactive products high enough into the air so that they are carried by air currents far from the initial laydown. This is the famous fall-out plume. If the fusion device was an air-burst and no debris was sucked into the fireball, the "fall out plume" isn't a problem. It's there, but the components have mostly decayed to harmlessness before they get back down to the ground. However, if the device was a ground-burst, then the fall-out plume is a very serious problem indeed. The products are in the worst possible activity/life bracket and they do get back down to earth. Under these circumstances, the radioactivity of the plume is such that it can kill very quickly hundreds of miles of ground zero.

A note on products by the way. Outside The Business, it's common for people to speak of both residues and fission/fusion products to be murderously radioactive and long-lived (just as with electronic effects, the terminally bewildered take the area affected by HEMP and attribute the effects of SREE to that area). In fact, the viciously radioactive products are that way because they have very short half-lives (and are gone by the time they get back down); the products with very long half-lives have low levels of activity (and are essentially no more than a contributor to background radiation). The deadly danger comes from the ones in between . They last long enough to come back down and are active enough to be dangerous. By the way, mostly they are also very toxic so its quite possible the victims would be chemically poisoned before the radioactivity got them

Returning to fission devices, Germany and radioactivity. Residue yield and fission products come down in two forms. One is black rain. The products coalesce with water vapour in the air (there always is some and the initiation will have its effects on that as well but ....) and form a severely contaminated black rain. This soaks into clothing, gets into ground and surface water and is breathed in. All probably fatal. (By the way; if you're in the area hit by a nuclear initiation, don't go for the water; it'll be poisonous, corrosive and radioactive. Since you're probably already dying anyway it won't matter much but it means somebody like me has to make a value judgement as to what actually killed you. This complicates the paperwork.) The other is snowfall. This isn't really snow but flakes of solid fission and (mostly) residue. This is especially nasty because it sticks to the skin like napalm and its effects are much the same - it burns and poisons. Its also radioactive of course. Both black rain and snowfall are short-term effects and are limited in area. That's why if you are a survivor and are in healthy condition (or think you are) get under cover fast. A piece of metal wreckage pulled over your head will do wonders for you if you are going to survive.

In Germany in TBO (like Hiroshima and Nagasaki) nobody knew any of this. They did most of the wrong things (Like rushing rescue teams into the destroyed areas) and they were all counterproductive. One thing about the TBOverse - people in a general sense are much better educated about the real effects of nuclear weapons. They know what to do and what not to do. That didn't happen in Germany - to some extent a lot of their casualties were self-inflicted.

[Pastor Andy]

Has "Patron of the Arts" (the story covering Goerings' postwar history) been completed/posted anywhere? I'd be very interested to see it if it were.

[Stuart]

Has "Patron of the Arts" (the story covering Goerings' postwar history) been completed/posted anywhere? I'd be very interested to see it if it were.

Haven't got it up yet; I had a bad case of flu over Christmas and that's held things up. High Frontier 12 is coming soon, will be followed by Patron of the Arts.

[technomage]

I remember reading a description of Hiroshima after the blast. That black rain (the description said it was purple) was one of the few things that really stood out. It said that the stains didn't wash off, and I remember thinking that that stuff couldn't possibly be good.

As for the toxic effects, I can believe that. I think I read a piece of trivia once that said that plutonium was the most poisonous substance on the earth. Screws up your bone marrow, right?

[Stuart]

I think I read a piece of trivia once that said that plutonium was the most poisonous substance on the earth. Screws up your bone marrow, right?

Actually, the toxicity of plutonium is significantly overstated by a lot of "sources". It's one of those things that got floated some years back (like a few decades) and has found its way into popular acceptance. Ralph Nader has said that a pound of plutonium could cause 8 billion cancers, and former Senator Ribicoff has said that a single particle of plutonium inhaled into the lung can cause cancer. There is no scientific basis for any of these statements. The basic culprit is a thing called the "hot particle theory" that suggests a single particle of plutonium inhaled or otherwise absorbed can start cancers. In reality, this theory has been definitively disproven. (This whole area is the subject of a very interesting paper called "The Myth of Plutonium Toxicity" by Bernard L. Cohen Department of Physics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260. It can be found on the web at This place

The chemical toxicity of plutonium is common with (and on the same level as) other heavy metals. Normally, it isn't considered since the alpha-particle radioactive effects of small-amount ingestion outweigh chemical effects. As far as can be determined there has never been a fatality (in the US at least) due to plutonium poisoning.

The real problem with nuclear toxicity is the cocktail effect. The initiation of a nuclear device results in a wide range of products that interact in strange and often highly unpredictable ways. This is a non-standardized effects - in fact the spectrum of products from a nuclear initiation is as individual and identifiable as a finger print. That's why the US in the 1950s and 60s made such a great effort to collect product samples from other people's nuclear tests - analysis of the product told us a lot about the devices (for example how they were initiated, what sort of fissile was used and where it came from and how the device was designed. It gets more complex if there are two nuclear initiations with their effect areas intersecting - then we get a really strange mixture of products. Also, we appear to get a lot more hot spots along lines where such intersections take place.

To put plutonium into context, the compund used in the cosmetic "botox" treatment is 10,000 times more toxic than the chemical and radiological hazards of plutonium. combined.

[MKSheppard]

Under these circumstances, the radioactivity of the plume is such that it can kill very quickly hundreds of miles of ground zero.

How long before it becomes safe to wander into
a contaminated area from a groundburst without
dying horribly in a short time?

[Stuart]

How long before it becomes safe to wander into
a contaminated area from a groundburst without dying horribly in a short time?

The duration of a fallout plume depends dramatically on circumstances - for example how strong was the wind, was it raining (rain washes the dust out of the air giving a shorter, more intense plume), what was under the initial burst, what sort of device was used. All of those affect the cocktail of contaminants in the plume. Then we have inequalities of distribution within the plume - the hot spot problem, difficulties caused by intersecting or coincident plumes, effects of changing winds etc. As a very crude estimate, the radiation levels will have fallen dramatically within six months to five years after the initial laydown. However, hot-spots and other phenomena will continue to be dangerous for much longer. It would be wise to carry a radiation detector when entering suspect areas for up to fifty years after laydown. However, by the second half of that period, carrying such equipment would be a precaution rather than a necessity. It would be terribly sad to survive a nuclear war and the reconstruction then enter what was once a fallout plume and be killed by the last active hot-spot.

[MKSheppard]

Stuart, have you thought about compiling your brief essays into
a book, much like Herman did for On Thermonuclear War?

It would be very interesting to see this stuff explained in more detail
than is possible with an internet board.

[MKSheppard]

High Frontier 12