Actually 50 MT devices. The 100 MT IVAN Shot I did was a prototype, because it needed a HEU U235 Jacket to get it's full yield; so I decided to delete the U235 jacket on the production models to save fissile.Stas Bush wrote:Look, here's the deal. You built 8 gigatons almost instantly. You had concentrated them in 100 megaton devices (presumably of the "Ivan" type). That's tons of nuclear material, isn't it? The best weight ratio is 18 MT per 1 ton of weight, that means you have aquired 444 tons of uranium (that is if ALL your devices are Ivan-type superbombs, and not less efficient ones).
I need about 45-50 kg of HEU for the fission primary, which lights off the fusion secondary, the materials for which are quite a bit easier to get than Plutonium or HEU.
Don't go quoting the dry weight of my TN bombs, and then pretending that all of that is HEU.Yes, that's 900 devices. Even if there's a scant 45 kg of fissile material, that would only be 40,5 tons. Not 400-1000 tons - the amount YOU need, Shep.
Sure. Yeah, go head. Waste all your fissile on that.Why? There's only so many of them. If we assume 50kt devices, that means that sole rail-mobile battery can rain 45 megatons on you in 30 minutes with dispersal; not too bad.
A few coastal cities are an acceptable loss anyway. You think I was planning for a totally invunerable shield? I don't have the last 50 years of ASAT/SAM/Interceptors that either the OTL USSR in the late 80s or the TBOverse USA has.There's no major flaw: you'll obliterate everyone, but your citizens will die. Deal with it.