Common misconceptions about nukes

Post by **weemadando** » 2006-09-19 05:52pm

Xeriar wrote:
weemadando wrote:I hate with a passion the morons that think a nuke is actually a quick, clean kill. They seem to believe that a properly executed airburst will have no ongoing effects as anyone who could be affected by with will be killed by the blast. I really want to slap these people hard.
Assuming you are referring to radiation, and not 3rd degree burns at range, flying debris, obliterated infrastructure and stuff like that:

1: Hiroshima and Nagasaki were intentionally dirty bombs.
2: Temperature and blast effects go down with roughly the cube and square roots of range. Radiation effects go down with roughly the -sixth- root of range. Nuclear fallout is dramatically overplayed on more levels than making giant monsters. If you survive the blast, radiation is a minor concern. If you survive the blast and can stay cooped up for six months, it's practically of no concern at all.

Cobalt bombs are a different story, but, AFAIK no one has even bothered building one, or even put any effort into trying to convince people that there is a need for such a weapon.

I'm referring to radiation, burns from the blast, secondary effects like burns from fires started by the blast and all manner of other things. Too many morons I've dealt with seem to think that if you drop a nuke on something there is absolutely no ongoing effects and that if you were going to be affected by it, the inital blast would have killed you anyway.

Junghalli · Post by **Junghalli** » 2006-09-19 07:11pm

There was the hilariously stupid argument I once heard from the boyfriend of one of my mom's friends when I was little, although I couldn't really appreciate it's true idiocy at the time.

As I remember he argued that a sufficiently large nuke could destroy the Earth by cracking open the crust. Not because such a bomb would be tremendously powerful though, mind you. No, you see the lava is only kept inside the planet by the crust. If you broke the crust it would all leak out.
Yes, you read that right. He thought the planet was like a giant Coke bottle, and if you made a hole in it the stuff inside would all come out by itself.

Wyrm · Post by **Wyrm** » 2006-09-19 07:16pm

Junghalli wrote:Yes, you read that right. He thought the planet was like a giant Coke bottle, and if you made a hole in it the stuff inside would all come out by itself.

The Pertwee adventure "Inferno" had a similar idea, only with a long-ass drill. Also the yellow gunk that comes out of the Earth turns people into hairy green monsters that can pass the curse to other people and turn them into hairy green monsters. Oh, and the TARDIS's console could shift between the standard issue universe and Nazi England universe with the power of an on-site nuclear reactor.

Ariphaos · Post by **Ariphaos** » 2006-09-19 07:29pm

Darth Wong wrote:You are ignoring radioisotopes which you ingest into your lungs and other internal passages. Prompt radiation is not as serious a threat as radioactive particles.

While still present in an airburst (of course), the worst isotopes normally have the shortest half-lives. If you are in a position to survive the heat effect from the initial blast of something like a 300kt+ nuclear warhead in good health, and are still downwind of it, you have time to take cover, find/make a facemask, and take other precautions. I didn't say it -wasn't- a concern, but it's far from an unsolvable issue.

Cobalt bombs are nothing special in terms of survivor risk. They gained a special reputation because it was theorized that they could make land uninhabitable for a long time because their radioactive byproduct half-life was just long enough to pose a serious long-term problem, but not so long that the radiation level is too low to cause noticeable widespread damage.

Cobalt-60 releases a lot of gamma rays while undergoing decay, and with a halflife of five years it's in the nice middle zone where it's too long to take shelter yet, because of its unusually high radiation, is still potentially dangerous in the quantities a bomb could feasibly dump into the atmosphere.

Supposedly it also forms into very fine particles which makes it nearly impossible for the average civilian to expect to filter as opposed to 'normal' fallout, but I don't have a good source for that.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-09-20 12:42am

Seggybop wrote:
Xeriar wrote:1: Hiroshima and Nagasaki were intentionally dirty bombs.
source? AFAIK their dirtiness was attributable to the inefficiency of the designs, not any deliberate attempt to spread extra fallout.

Exactly. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were efficienct in the single digits.

Ariphaos · Post by **Ariphaos** » 2006-09-20 01:22am

Ace Pace wrote:
Seggybop wrote:source? AFAIK their dirtiness was attributable to the inefficiency of the designs, not any deliberate attempt to spread extra fallout.
Exactly. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were efficienct in the single digits.

Err, sorry I missed that. It wasn't a deliberate attempt to spread extra fallout so much as it was to ensure maximum possibility of detonation (to the point where Little Boy was a breath away from self-detonating. So they used configurations to increase neutron output, etc, stopping short of a design that would undergo meltdown on its own.