nuclear weapons of today

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by hiimwayne, May 3, 2002.

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  1. hiimwayne Registered Senior Member

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    does anyone know if the government has invented bombs even stronger than the hydrogen bomb? my chemistry teacher told me that the government has created bombs so destructive, they can litterally destroy whole cities.
     
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  3. wet1 Wanderer Registered Senior Member

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    Welcome to sciforums, hiimwayne.

    Much of what you speculate on is classified info and the military is not going to tell you what you seek to know. They are not going to admit or deny any info regarding the subject and that is standard policy.

    This article that I found might be of some interest to you though. I have taken some excerts from it and will leave the link to the page so that you may read the article yourself.

    The rest of the page may be found: *here*
     
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  5. kmguru Staff Member

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    Here is what is available on the Internet. Take it with a grain of salt.

    The largest
    The largest nuclear weapon ever produced was the Soviet thermonuclear Tsar Bomba ("King of Bombs"), which had an estimated yield of 100 megatons (100Mt--equal to one hundred million tons of TNT). The explosive force of this bomb would have been approximately 6,500 times the 15-16 kiloton bomb detonated at Hiroshima. A scaled-down 50Mt version of Tsar Bomba was tested in September 1961, in the largest man-made explosion to date.

    The largest bomb ever produced by the United States was the Mk/B 53, also a thermonuclear weapon, which had a yield of 9Mt. Though the United States and the Soviet Union attempted to make larger and larger bombs early on, the "big bomb" race was later abandoned: in the 1960s and 1970s, the superpowers replaced almost all of these very cumbersome weapons with the smaller yet still formidable multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle (MIRV) warheads that tip today's intercontinental ballistic missiles.

    The smallest
    The Davy Crockett fission bomb, fielded by the United States in Europe from 1961 to 1971, is the smallest confirmed nuclear weapon. Its miniature warhead weighed only 51 pounds, had a yield of 0.1 kilotons and a maximum range of 2.49 miles, and could be launched from a recoilless rifle or a jeep. It was deployed by U.S. Army forces in Europe for use against advancing Soviet troops.

    In September 1997, reports emerged that the Soviet military intelligence agency (the GRU) had developed numerous "suitcase bombs." These reports alleged that the bombs measured 24 x 16 x 8 inches (60 x 40 x 20 centimeters), and were to be used by intelligence agents in Western cities in the event of a superpower war.

    Though doubts have been raised as to the credibility of the reports, a bomb this small is theoretically possible. Carey Sublette of the Federation of American Scientists notes that the smallest critical mass for plutonium is a 10.5 kg sphere 10.1 cm across. While this minimal critical mass alone could not cause an explosion, as little as 10 percent more plutonium could produce a .01-.02 kiloton explosion (10-20 tons of TNT), while 20 percent more plutonium could produce a .2 kt (200 ton) explosion. Not only would the explosions themselves be deadly, but the resulting radiation, especially in heavily populated areas, would be catastrophic. To fit this type of device into a suitcase only eight inches wide would probably require that the device use a linear implosion technology that would "squish" the plutonium together to into a large critical mass, allowing it to explode.
     
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  7. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    I thought our countries got over the "Who's got the biggest bomb" Pi**ing contest.

    As far as I'm concerned there might have been uses for discovering how to manipulate nuclear energy, but a a bomb it was and still is the worst idea.

    Theres still people testing how accurate the data was to this day, and blowing places up just to see what it does for themselves.
    I would say it sickens me, but in the long run if it continues it will sicken everyone.

    Why couldn't you ask something like "Who's got the largest Cream pie?" and "I heard there is a pie big enough to cream a city"?

    Oh well, better than bombs.
     
  8. Azrael Angel of Light Registered Senior Member

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    I found this site while searching Ixquick.com

    http://www.fas.org/


    They got listings for NBC weapons from countries all over the world.
     
  9. Gifted World Wanderer Registered Senior Member

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    2,113
    The biggest bomb contest was probably abandoned because large-yield bombs ar enot nessasary. The Little Boy bomb destroyed almost all of Hiroshima. To date there are two types of nuclear bombs: strategic(approx. >20,000 Kt) and tactical(<20,000 Kt). Strategic warheads are what IBCMs and most bombers carry, and are designed for long-range destruction of cities and military targets. Tactical bombs can be carried by almost any plane, most artillery systems 155mm and above can use them, and are designed for use on th ebattlefield. In The Making of the Atom Bomb, Richard Rhodes says that the plutonium core in the Fat Boy bomb was surrounded by a "tamper" of uranuim at least a foot thick which reflected energy and neutrons inward, increasing yield. The Little Boy also had a tamper. To shrink the bomb to fit in the suitcase would require shrinking the tamper and explosive layers.
    I too will emphasize that the inner workings of modern nuclear weapons are classified, and we need to prevent this information from getting into the wrong hands. Revealing this would be like giving terrorists or other parties a nuke.
     
  10. kmguru Staff Member

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    11,757
    One does not have to be a genius to do destruction of life and property. It comes natural with human beings. If the terrorists are sponsored by a country, it is not that difficult to built one when raw materials are available in black market. There is enough information out there that any one who has some nuclear physics (not even engineering) background can build one. The reason most countries including Muslim counties have not built one is the fact that people who work under such governments are dumbed down by their very culture. So they resort to spying to collect such information or buy it in the black market.

    Lucky for us, the same culture also favors us by reducing the nuclear proliferartion.
     
  11. anim8er Registered Senior Member

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    40
    Big bombs

    The Russians are believed to have designed a "doomsday" weapon. The intent would be to kill everyone on the entire planet. It was not a super huge explosive, but an atomic bomb surrounded by a huge amout of radioactive material. It was to be built into a ship, too big to be transported any way else. Basically it would kill everyone by producing so much radioactive material that everyone and everything would die. It was theorized by some radical communists, but certainly never built.
     
  12. kmguru Staff Member

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    I, by mistake clicked on the signature and ended up here. COOL...

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  13. anim8er Registered Senior Member

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    You need glasses.........

    It looks better if you have the Chromatek glasses.

    Thanks for the compliment on my graphics. While I'm at it........

    You are getting sleepy.......

    Very sleepy........

    You will do as I say.........

    Getting Sleepy......

    Got to your bank and take out all of your money....

    Very Sleepy.......

    You will mail it too.........
     
    Last edited: May 23, 2002
  14. wet1 Wanderer Registered Senior Member

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    8,616
    The dirty bombs such as you speak of are the cheapest to make and the most worrisome. They do the most damage to life forms and it is long term. It also has a way of getting beyond the blast area and being spread by anything that travels through the area. Very nasty.

    I would remind you to please return to topic.
     
  15. anim8er Registered Senior Member

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    I wish I could talk about what I've "recently" learned about the Neutron bomb. But.......

    All together now.......

    "I too will emphasize that the inner workings of modern nuclear weapons are classified, and we need to prevent this information from getting into the wrong hands. Revealing this would be like giving terrorists or other parties a nuke."
     
  16. kmguru Staff Member

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    11,757
    Invented - YES
    Prototyped - No, not yet
    It is called matter-antimatter bomb
    Kinks - It needs a containment field in a very small size - that is yet to be tested.
     
  17. anim8er Registered Senior Member

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    Even if an anti-matter bomb could be made, there would not be much point. A large city is laid out horizontally. A single bomb explodes from a single point perspective. In order for a single bomb to destroy an area twice the size of another design would require the weapon to be more than 4 times as powerful. A dozen smaller bombs, exploding in a regular pattern spread across the whole city, would be more effective. That is why our missles contain multiple warheads. An added benifit is that if one of the bombs malfunctions, it's exploding neighbors could cover the hole in coverage. There is no point in building more powerful bombs.

    A reason for building big bombs in the past was that the delivery systems were not very accurate. A big bomb would help assure that a near miss would destroy the intended target. With the accuracy of modern weapons, you only need a bang big enough to take out your intended target. Any more than that is over kill and a waste of your materials in building the weapon.

    We built an anti-missle system in the late '60s. The warheads of these anti-missle missles were neuclear warheads. We did not have the technogy to take out a single incoming warhead (bullet for a bullet) so a large atomic explosion would be used to take out the small incoming warhead. They could miss by a mile and still destroy the target. By treatie this system was abandoned.
     
  18. Joeman Eviiiiiiiil Clown Registered Senior Member

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    Anti-matter is still not found except for positron.
     
  19. wet1 Wanderer Registered Senior Member

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    8,616
    A lot of this depends of delivery. If you set the bomb to go off when it hits the ground then you wind up with a dirty bomb. The bomb will go off, causing a large amount of surface material at point zero to fuze to glass. It will leave a large slick crater. The outgoing shock wave will knock loose debris, start fires, knock down buildings, ect. until the blast has spent itself and the vaccumn left in it's wake takes over. The loose debris will return to the point of detonation and then be pushed upward into the atmosphere to spread out with the winds, rain, and will continue to a lesser amount with the heat that the fires made during the initial blast. Most of the blast damage will go upward.

    Proximity fuzes however, give a different result. Ariel detonation results in the blast going down and up. Shaping the detonation results in a tailored and designed effect. The damage will be more wide spread with ariel detonation with the same yeild reaching farther. Radioactive debris will be measurably less as less surface dirt and dust gets sucked back into the blast vaccumn.
     
  20. anim8er Registered Senior Member

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    40
    The question was about building bombs with higher yeilds. Sure, you can vary the effect of a bomb of a given yeild by controling the altitude at which it explodes. Once you find the ideal altitude for greatest destruction, then the next variable you could change is the power of the bomb. My point is that building a bomb that is twice as powerful does not translate into twice as much destruction. But two bombs would translate into twice as much destruction. A bigger bomb may be more effective against hardened targets, like Cheyene Mountain, but not softer ones such as a large metropolitan city.
     
  21. wet1 Wanderer Registered Senior Member

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    8,616
    I agree that two smaller yeild bombs make more destruction over open areas than one. It would not be that hard to make a mini MIRV that focused on one area as opposed to mutiple targets scattered over a larger area.

    I am not sure that a larger bomb would be any more effective over a hard target such as you mentioned without penetration. Here depth reached is critical to the destruction of the target. I would suggest that it might be possible to combine two effects to make a more effective end result.

    One would be a design simular to the bunker buster developed for the Gulf War. The second would be to have a second bomb delayed in flight so that it arrived after the first had finished it's purpose. Timing and aim would be critical to the end result.
     
  22. anim8er Registered Senior Member

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    Or build a "bunker buster" with a neuclear warhead.
     
  23. Gifted World Wanderer Registered Senior Member

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    2,113
    It seems that my last post get removed or something. I will redo it:

    Kmguru
    Anitmatter bombs have only been theorized by sci-fi writers. The only antimatter reactions so far have been in particle accelerators.

    We have bmbs that can "destroy whole cities." Look at pictures of hiroshima and Nagasaki before and after. Then consider that we have thousands of bombs 100 and more times as powerful in production.
     
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