Is it possible to build 1 Gigaton bombs?

[Sea Skimmer]

A question: As far as anyone knows, is anyone working on matter/antimatter weapons right now? I only ask as I remember reading that the new generation of scientific particle accelerators can produce (microscopic) amounts of antimatter every operational cycle. If you find a way to isolate it, I'm sure that the stuff would build up pretty quickly.

This is on-topic as a M/AM device could easily reach the 1GT range. However, such a device has a 'doomsday weapon' feel to it. I doubt that anyone in the same hemisphere as the explosion could hope to escape some environmental side-effects like a nuclear winter or fall-out.

Even with a one-gigaton bomb you would not have a nuclear winter, and indeed that whole concept was discredited a couple decades ago. The yield of the worlds peak nuclear arsenal has been estimated to have been at most 20 Gigatons, possibly much less then that but still well over 1000 megatons. That amount could not come close to a nuclear winter.

Krakatoa threw twenty solid cubic miles of ash and debris into the stratosphere and it only lowered temperature a few degrees for a few years. The destruction of the island released about 10-15 Gigatons of energy over a year.

A matter/anti matter bomb would have no fallout. Fallout is a result of unused bomb material getting attached to dirt and dust. An anti matter bomb doesn't have any uranium or plutonium in it in the first place.

[Uraniun235]

10-15 megaton is more then enough to destroy any city in the world

Eh, no. Try again.

http://pub82.ezboard.com/fhistorypoliti ... D=23.topic

Initiate a 1 megaton device over the center of London and 95 percent of the cities assets and 80 percent of the population will survive...

And, as a 10 megaton bomb will NOT do 10x the damage of a 1 megaton bomb, you're quite incorrect. Besides which, nobody (save *maybe* the Russians) uses 10 megaton bombs anymore... the largest bombs in the US arsenal are IIRC ~3 megatons, and those are dropped by bomber only. The vast majority of all nuclear warheads are sub-megaton, and for good reason.

[Uraniun235]

The yield of the worlds peak nuclear arsenal has been estimated to have been at most 20 Gigatons, possibly much less then that but still well over 1000 megatons. That amount could not come close to a nuclear winter.

Plus, not every warhead in the world is mated to a delivery device.

[Sea Skimmer]

10-15 megaton is more then enough to destroy any city in the world

Eh, no. Try again.

http://pub82.ezboard.com/fhistorypoliti ... D=23.topic

Initiate a 1 megaton device over the center of London and 95 percent of the cities assets and 80 percent of the population will survive...

And, as a 10 megaton bomb will NOT do 10x the damage of a 1 megaton bomb, you're quite incorrect. Besides which, nobody (save *maybe* the Russians) uses 10 megaton bombs anymore... the largest bombs in the US arsenal are IIRC ~3 megatons, and those are dropped by bomber only. The vast majority of all nuclear warheads are sub-megaton, and for good reason.

Nine megatons actually, the B-53. Currently this is probably the biggest nuclear bomb that will actually function. The Russians have remanufactured few warheads since the Union fell and uber city busters would be low on their list of priorities.

The US has 30 B-53's on hand, but there being discarded in favor of the low kiloton range B-61 mod 11 earth penatraitor. They where only kept to deal with superhardded targets.

[BenRG]

A matter/anti matter bomb would have no fallout. Fallout is a result of unused bomb material getting attached to dirt and dust. An anti matter bomb doesn't have any uranium or plutonium in it in the first place.

True, but it does have the potential to create all kinds of short-life exotic particles that could do aggravating technobabbly things to the local laws of physics.

Seriously, this was just a thought that I had flying around my head. At what point do these things get so powerful that if anyone used even [/i]one[/i] of them, it would be 'bye-bye civilisation'?

[Sea Skimmer]

A matter/anti matter bomb would have no fallout. Fallout is a result of unused bomb material getting attached to dirt and dust. An anti matter bomb doesn't have any uranium or plutonium in it in the first place.

True, but it does have the potential to create all kinds of short-life exotic particles that could do aggravating technobabbly things to the local laws of physics.

Seriously, this was just a thought that I had flying around my head. At what point do these things get so powerful that if anyone used even [/i]one[/i] of them, it would be 'bye-bye civilisation'?

For a single detonation, probably well into the hundred Gigatons. And even then while you would have world economic collapse the direct impacts would not actually be that great. Power stations would still work and ships could still move around stuff. It might actually take a Teraton level blast to really do it to the whole world.

However 15 Gigatons of firepower spread around in thousands of 50-kiloton bombs would knock the world back to 1800, or at least the parts that aren’t already at that tech level.