12 kiloton vs 475 kiloton warhead?

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outrun

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Okay kilo-ton is an ambigous term for me.

In laymans terms can some "analogize" how destructive these two yeilds are?

For, example intel says the India blasts of 1998 had a yield of 12-30kt (conservative). There attempt for a 1-mt hydrogen blast said to have failed/

The US Trident D5 Mk4 has the sophisticated W88 warhead of 475-kt. Mind you not the W88 is what Slick Willy may have allowed the Chinese to steal. Obviously huge difference in yeilds here.

What do they mean?
 
kiloton is the yield equivalence in TNT.

So a 12kiloton warhead is the explosive power of 12kilotons of TNT detonated at once.

TB
 
quote:
Originally posted by outrun:
Okay kilo-ton is an ambigous term for me.

Click to expand...
It's the equivilant explosive energy of 1,000 tons of TNT.

For an example of what 20 kT does, look at pictures and articles about Hirohoshima. That was about 20 kT.

The effective killing radius goes up with the cube root of the yield. If a 10 kT weapon would kill an exposed person from blast effects at 0.8 km slant range, it would take 10 MT to kill at 8 km slant range under the same conditions.

The Soviets and the US both had 20 and 20+ Mt weapons in the 1960s. Both backed off on size because a few ~1 MT weapons do far more damage than one 20 MT, not to mention they are easier to deliver. With the accuracy of modern delivery systems, 1 MT weapons are probably overkill.

Google "nuclear weapons effects" for more than you want to know.

[ March 18, 2004, 01:23 AM: Message edited by: XS650 ]
 
I think by now most weapons fall into the 100-175 kiloton range. The ideal is to use smaller devices and land them in a pattern which means it overlaps. You cover more ground and use less uranium that way. The size of weapons went down as accuracy and the ability to put multiple warheads on a single missle came to pass.
 
Additionally, now that we have projectiles that can hit a tin can on a mountain side 6000 miles away, huge 20+ MT bombs are overkill... not to mention the unintended effect of irradiating half a continent. We also have projectiles that can penetrate 40 meters of solid earth/concrete before they blow, so a much smaller bomb can take out underground bunkers.

Also, hydrogen bombs (fusion bombs which are much more powerful than fission--or atomic bombs) are expensive to make, maintain, test, etc... atomic bombs on the other hand, with yields in the KT range are child's play to us now. We could produce and maintain those with less expense or risk--and no testing. And with guidance and delivery improvements, that's all we need.

Finally, if mucho kaboom-o is desired, three warheads can be detonated in a triange pattern which effectively cubes their output.
 
Asinine:
True, 20 MT would definitely be overkill. But imagine what that would have done to all the Al Queda hiding in those mountains. Their will to fight would have been gone in a "flash"!
 
I can tell you what would have happened if we sent a Minuteman III ICBM into the Bora mountains in Afghanistan...

1) We wouldn't have a clue if we got him or not. If fact, we wouldn't know WHO we got or didn't get.

2) We'd have broken treaties and made enemies all over the world... even after 9/11, dropping a nuke of that magnitude would have been a disaster to every inhabitant of this planet.

3) Al Queda would be recruiting at record levels today.

4) We'd have had even LESS legitimacy to go into Iraq, but would have anyway.
 
Mmm... actually, the Sovs exploded a 58 megaton device on Oct 31 1961. As I recall, I believe they were actually looking to get 100 megatons but didn't quite make it.
 
quote:
Originally posted by Asinine:
Finally, if mucho kaboom-o is desired,
Click to expand...
Hahahahaha I like that
lol.gif
 
Obviously I am not pacifist *lol*

For these posts any megaton yield is litterally madness.

New Questions?

Perhaps molekule or anyone with a physics interest has the answers on these:

For the worlds future & aging Nuclear Arsenals to be maintained are new tests inevitable?

Would you trust Supercomputer simulations alone with such a high stake endeavor?

What is a "Sub-critical" test exactly? (or these so called micro-explosions?)
 
What good is a treaty (a piece of paper) if your enemy threatens you or your allies with another atomic weapon, or has the ability to create one? It comes down to who gets killed first, you or your enemy? Do yo wait for your country to get vaporized, or do you strike first to save your country?

With regards to computer simulations:
My view is that we have enough information from above and below ground explosions, and enough data about nuclear "events" that we can safely simulate new weapons without exploding them. In fact, LLL has been doing this for many years in terms of developing new weapons and variations of such.

Subcritical testing is a way of taking small amounts of fissionable material and testing it for yield, then extraoplating that information to yields of higher mass, and for different fissionable (and fusionable) materials.

Maintaining an arsenal mostly involves replacing detonators, electronics, and other materials that have been degraded by radiation.

BTW, fission and fusion bombs aren't the most powerful nuclear weapons.
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[ March 18, 2004, 11:23 PM: Message edited by: MolaKule ]
 
At one time, during the cold war, both the US and Soviets had 50 MT warheads.

We had the capability to deliver, but the Soviets did not.

One 50 MT bomb in an air explosion could potentially wipe out a whole section of a country.

As someone else said, more smaller weapons (MIRVS) scattered around will do more precision damage than one big bomb.
 
The largest ground test of a nuke was a 37MT released above ground by the Soviet Union in the early 70's. It did so much damage that the Soviets never detonated one that large again.
 
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