posted
How powerful would the blast from one h-bomb be? Don't give me megaton numbers -- those don't mean anything to me.
Let's use Mt. Fuji. If somebody detonated a big h-bomb on top of it, how big a difference would it make? A small scar at tht top? The entire top gone, like Mt. St. Helens? Mt. Fuji disappearing?
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posted
It depends on how many kilotons the bomb is. If I recall correctly, modern nukes can pretty much vaporize everything in a 50 mile radius instantly with the resulting firestorm destruction getting out to...200 miles?
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posted
Or how about putting it into city-slicker terms.
Let's say one goes off in the center of downtown of a major city. How big is the destruction radius? I read Hiroshima a long time ago, but don't remember much.
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I'm pretty sure that it won't vaporize everything in a 50-mile radius. That would create a large hole in the earth's crust and create the biggest volcano man has ever seen.
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Well, from what I've seen, it looks like a big nuke on top of Mt. Fuji would scar it, but it wouldn't remove the top. No Mt. St. Helens.
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posted
I grew up in Suburban DC and the typical scenario of on nuke dropped directly on the White house was discussed from time to time. Lingering but inevitable death at our position, about 11 miles out.
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posted
You can't just say "a nuke." Nukes range from tactical atomic fission warheads designed to be used in artillery by ground troops, that might be equivalent to only 5,000 tons (five kilotons) of dynamite, up to the standard strategic hydrogen fusion warheads on Minuteman or Trident missiles rated at 20 million tons of dynamite (20 megatons). Both Russia and the U.S. have tested much more powerful H-bombs. Allegedly, the Russians denotated a 500-megaton H-bomb in Siberia, back before such testing was stopped.
As for what a strategic-level H-bomb would do to Mt. Fuji, I don't know exactly. Depends on how much rock there is and how dense it is. But in the "Operation Crossroads" tests of atomic bombs in the Bikini Atolls back in 1946, the island where the first test (code-named "Able") was conducted disappeared after the detonation of a 21 kiloton bomb; the sea closed over where it had been. I don't know what the exact size of the island was. The total surface area of the Bikini Atoll islands was about 10 square kilometers. So the one island that was vaporized was smaller than Mt. Fuji. Note that a strategic level plutonium-based hydrogen fusion bomb is about a thousand times more powerful, though.
Oh, I just found this: The "Castle Bravo" test at the Bikini Atoll in 1954 of a hydrogen fusion bomb, with a yield of about 15 megatons, had a fireball four miles in diameter, and dug a crater 250 feet deep, and 6,500 feet wide, in an island made mainly of coral.
[ March 15, 2004, 01:21 PM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]
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mph, I was thinking circle, not globe. Kind of thought that was a given. Sorry I wasn't specific.
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You have to remember that even if you don't die in the initial blast, the chances are fairly good that you'll die from radiation poisoning anyway if you're anywhere near. Do you want to know how far the destruction would extend or how far away you'd have to be to be safe from radiation?
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You don't even have to be that close, as long as the wind blows towards you from the site of the detonation. The Chyernobol(sp?) emmissions were measurable all over the place.
Another thing that also adds the distance of the damage is the height above ground that you dentonate the bomb, you would not normally want to detonate it on the surface, but up in the air a fair distace, to avoid wasting a great deal of you explosion blowing up dirt that happens to be under the bomb.
posted
Not sure on radiation poisoning distances, but you'll always be much safer if not too far on the other side of something large and solid, like a brick wall (assuming you're outside the total destruction area). Those block a lot of radiation as well.
edit to add: a lot of that radiation can be heat radiation. You like having skin, yes? Then hope you're on the other side of a wall if within a certain radius.
quote: Not sure on radiation poisoning distances, but you'll always be much safer if not too far on the other side of something large and solid, like a brick wall (assuming you're outside the total destruction area). Those block a lot of radiation as well.
Until you walk out from behind the wall.
BAM.
The radiation lasts a LONG time. It poisons the water, food, plants, and air. If you are outside the blast but still where the radition hits strongly, then you're pretty much toast...if not right away, then as soon as all your organs forget how to work.
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Which reminds me, who recently made the unacknowledged "build a bridge out of her" reference? We have had recent Monty Python Slippage. Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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PSI -- the most harmful radiation is the direct radiation, including (as noted) the heat. While if you remained in the area you'd probably die of some problem within a few weeks or months, if you left the area you'd have a much higher chance of surviving.
You might consider the account of the author of Barefoot Gen -- he escaped Hiroshima with significantly fewer problems than people at the same radius because he was on the other side of a brick wall. Other people at the same radius had their skin fall off.
Here are some references as to how most of the radiation from a nuclear bomb is released in the form of direct radiation:
Notice in that last link -- about half the deaths and three fourths the injuries were caused by burns (though it is not known what percentage of those burns were from the initial blastwave and what percentage were from secondary fires). Radiation poisoning only 15%.
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Noeman, you said the answer was "7." I thought that Scott Adams in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy said that the answer was 14.
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Ooh, right. The author was Douglas Adams, and the answer the "Deep Thought" computer came up with was "42." My mistakes. Should have checked the Internet first.
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According to my research, thousands of hours playing Missile Command, 1 Nuke could level an entire bunker of missiles.
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One-kiloton yield equals 4.2trillion joules. One-megaton yield equals 4.2quadrillion joules. It takes 334thousand joules to melt a kilogram of ice. 12,574,850,000 kilograms of ice would be melted by the energy of a one-megaton explosion. One kilogram of water fits into a 0.1metre cube. A 2.4kilometre/1.5mile cube of ice would be melted by the energy of a one-megaton explosion.*
*Using the "9/10ths of an iceberg is underwater" water-to-ice expansion rule.
posted
WoW! Imagine the amount of Scotch we'd have to drink straight up if they melted all that ice.
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You might want to take plenty of iodine tablets with that, Dan, to help you withstand the effects of the radioactivity.
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