Need the total yield of nuclear weapons during cold war

Qwerty 42 · Post by **Qwerty 42** » 2005-12-22 08:21pm

I'm having a debate with a friend and I need this number to compare it to teh tsunami in Asia. Does anyone know? Google has proved worthless.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2005-12-22 08:44pm

There’s an estimated figure for the peak yield of the US arsenal in the 1960s floating around, its around 20 gigatons, but I’ve never seen anything but vague estimates for the Soviet arsenal at various periods and never have I seen a figure for all nuclear weapons yields put together.

Qwerty 42 · Post by **Qwerty 42** » 2005-12-22 08:49pm

Okay, thanks. I'll just use that, sicne the point I'm trying to make is that a 30 gigaton explosion didn't destroy everyone, and at the height of our nuclear firepower we had about that much.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2005-12-22 09:30pm

Qwerty 42 wrote:Okay, thanks. I'll just use that, sicne the point I'm trying to make is that a 30 gigaton explosion didn't destroy everyone, and at the height of our nuclear firepower we had about that much.

You really shouldn’t be comparing or equating an earthquake to an explosion, because they don’t release energy in anything like the same way. An earthquake could very easily release far more energy then all the earths nuclear devices, but since much of that energy is spent simply moving billions of tons of rock around, the actual damage to humans and things humans have built would be much less.

The differences even between a conventional explosion vs. initiation of a nuclear device (assuming the same amount of total energy) are considerable, for example there is no hard radiation from the conventional bomb while a noteworthy percentage of a nukes energy is just that, hard radiation. An earthquake is just a totally different beast.

But anyway, this person, is he trying to claim the utter but common nonsence, that the tsunami was created with a nuclear device?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2005-12-23 01:50pm

Either that or he's a sci-fi "vs" fucktard who dismisses gigaton-class figures because he thinks they would destroy planets. We've seen that too.

OmegaGuy · Post by **OmegaGuy** » 2005-12-23 04:11pm

Darth Wong wrote:Either that or he's a sci-fi "vs" fucktard who dismisses gigaton-class figures because he thinks they would destroy planets. We've seen that too.

Don't remind me.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2005-12-23 07:23pm

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/nucstock-0.html

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2005-12-23 08:07pm

While I was reading that guy's site I came across this:

Hardly any satellites in Earth orbit are functioning. EMP bursts disabled most civilian satellites.

I was under the impression EMP bursts were mostly a result of neutron radiation interacting with the atmosphere.

Qwerty 42 · Post by **Qwerty 42** » 2005-12-23 10:42pm

Darth Wong wrote:Either that or he's a sci-fi "vs" fucktard who dismisses gigaton-class figures because he thinks they would destroy planets. We've seen that too.

He's of the opinion that a nuclear war happening today would kill enough of the planet so that we would never have a space program again, not even a Soviet versus United States war. Men far wiser and experienced than myself have predicted the results of a war at the height of the nuclear buildup, and we'd survive that.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2005-12-23 11:21pm

Uraniun235 wrote:While I was reading that guy's site I came across this:
Hardly any satellites in Earth orbit are functioning. EMP bursts disabled most civilian satellites.
I was under the impression EMP bursts were mostly a result of neutron radiation interacting with the atmosphere.

Funny. So we're surrounded by dead satellites knocked out by EMP which only propagates in an atmosphere. Cute. Someone buy 'em a Goldeneye DVD for X-mas and a U win at science plaque.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2005-12-23 11:22pm

Anyway. Since warhead effective destruction doesn't scale proportionately to yield, knowing the total yield of every weapon combined is misleading. A single 4 MT device is less destructive than a few 500kt devices.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2005-12-24 12:15am

Nephtys wrote:Funny. So we're surrounded by dead satellites knocked out by EMP which only propagates in an atmosphere. Cute. Someone buy 'em a Goldeneye DVD for X-mas and a U win at science plaque.

While I've found his site generally accurate, he does have a few problems (such as that). Regardless, most satellites in orbit are going to be toast since nuclear weapons can kill satellites in other ways than EMP (or the sleet of hard radiation) so the gist of it is right.

Qwerty 42 · Post by **Qwerty 42** » 2005-12-24 08:55am

Okay, I see my physics knowledge has failed me again. Thanks to those who answered my question.