Lethality of nuclear bombs

>>32485149
depends on the yield and if it is detonated at ground level or in airburst
this helps:
nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

select a location, yield and if it is ground level or airburst, it will show you what it does

>>32485149
They are extremely destructive

>>32485149
a serbian lady fell out of a plane onto a mountain side from its cruising altitude and survived with only scratches and bruises

>>32485149

hiroshima is still inhabitable. The threat of nuclear winter is incredibly overstated. Modern bombs are so pure and detonate so cleanly that there isn't much radioactive residue left over after the blast.

The major threat is damage to a nuvlear power plant. Those are dangerous as fuck and even a conventional weapon strive could cause something far worse than ice age.

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>>32487555
And that's why you should shoot someone before throwing them out of a plane.

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>>32488722
>Modern bombs are so pure and detonate so cleanly that there isn't much radioactive residue left over after the blast.
You're an idiot. KYS, please.

>>32487541
For you.

>>32488986
>>32488722
they aren't "clean" but I doubt airburst nuclear explosions would create a stereotypical nuclear wasteland.

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over 12 years in nukemap and MS paint just for (you) OP

yellowy-orange is thermonuclear fireball

red is 20 psi overpressure which can take out hardened targets and concrete buildings

green is prompt hard radiation(not fallout)

grey is 5 psi overpressure which will destroy normal houses

pale orange is 3rd degree burns and fires

>>32488986
>>32489156

Tsar Bomba had nearly 99.9% of its radioactive material destroyed in the detonation

Modern nukes are extremely efficient and leave very little behind, other than flames, a crater and a day or two of deadly fallout and a month of unhealthy fallout.

Still nothing compared to the Japanese nukes, and they've almost completely decayed by now. It's like 20% higher than background radiation there iirc.

>>32488722
>Modern bombs are so pure and detonate so cleanly

You realize the radiation comes from the reaction itself, right? You simply don't have a nuclear detonation without lingering radiation.

>>32488722

There are hundreds of nuclear power plants, and only 3 (2 really) accidents have given big oil and coal corps enough leverage to make defamation campaigns against them, and you fucking fell for it.

Nuclear power is the only way we are gonna make it to a true sustainable energy source without an ice age occuring.

>>32490950
>tsar bomba
>modern bomb
o i am laffin

>>32490966
Nuclear reactions give off radiation only when they occur. The "lingering" effect is from fallout, which is fissile material from the fission stage. With fusion secondary (or tertiary) stages the fission is only used to kick off fusion, so you need less material.

>>32485149
>Hiroshima came up
No it went down

>>32491067
You do realize that nuclear reactions produce unstable byproducts, and that there are many variables that determine the amount of fallout, right? The amount of fissile material is a contributing factor, but it doesn't completely determine the resulting fallout from a nuclear detonation. This is far more complicated than you seem to realize, and while I'm not sure where you got this idea from I am sure that it is incorrect.

I mean a quick google and you get: Local Fallout- "In a land or water surface burst, heat vaporizes large amounts of earth or water, which is drawn up into the radioactive cloud. This material becomes radioactive when it condenses with fission products and other radiocontaminants that have become neutron-activated."

Its quite clear that the amount of unconsumed fissile material isn't the primary contributing factor to radioactive fallout, but rather that fallout is created due to the physical properties of the reaction itself.

>>32491221
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon

Ctrl+f for "Fission products are the principal radioactive component of nuclear fallout."

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>>32491221
>>32491320
I also meant to add a couple things:

The unconsumed fissile material isn't what makes up the bulk of the fallout. It's the radioactive isotopes you get from splitting uranium or plutonium. And the things you get as those decay, and so on. It's the decays that give off the radiation.

This thread would also be good for the man himself.

OPPENHEIMER
OPPENHEIMER
OP
OP
OPPENHEIMER

>>32491350
>The unconsumed fissile material isn't what makes up the bulk of the fallout. It's the radioactive isotopes you get from splitting uranium or plutonium.

There's only a few kg of Oralloy/Super Oralloy/Plutonium in the pit. That's not a whole lot of fission products in the grand scheme of things. If there is a tamper, either around the primary or acting as the tertiary (I'm not aware of any currently fielded weapons with a tertiary, besides some oldschool bombs Russia might have left over).

The majority of fallout when it's at its worst comes from irradiation of soil which is lofted into the atmosphere. This is why the early hydrogen bomb tests like Ivy Mike and the Castle series were much dirtier than later high altitude tests like the Dominic series.

Unless your aim as a target designator is area denial (which might be used to halt a Russian advance through Europe) or destruction of bunkers, there's actually a motivation to detonate at high altitude because this creates a wider field of damage for a given yield, at the cost of somewhat reduced overpressure at ground zero (a high altitude burst is more than sufficient to level surface structures).

>OPPENHEIMER
>OPPENHEIMER
>OP
>OP
>OPPENHEIMER

This

>>32491320
You not realize that this will still result in fallout, less fallout, but still fallout. Its reduced, but far from negligible.

>>32491506
>Its reduced, but far from negligible.

"far from negligible" from what perspective? Locally, nationally or globally?

>>32491540
Locally. But really its a reduction on the scale of something that was typically one to two months. Sure a week is better than a month, but the effects are still quite serious.

Its a strange argument to have considering the truly destructive nature of these weapons even without their lingering side effects.

>>32491617
I would venture that, unless its a detonation calculated to produce significant fallout or which produces it as a side effect (i.e. buried target destruction) then it's not really an issue as long as you don't aim to reoccupy the destroyed region.

Hiroshima was shitty for the yield because of high humidity and low burst height, causing more fallout to both be generated in the blast and said fallout to be concentrated by rainfall over the immediate area.

>>32491484
You're right, I was assuming we were talking about an airburst. If the goal is to minimize fallout, then an airburst should make the only possible fallout the fissile products and whatever can be neutron activated in the rest of the bomb. Which I assume wouldn't be much, since I don't know of a lot of radioisotopes of metals. But then again I don't know what bombs are made of.

>>32491617
Can you cite any sources for that being the range of how long fallout will be hazardous for a hydrogen bomb airburst? The rule of a thumb is a 10-fold decrease in dosage in 7 hours.

>>32491663
>The rule of a thumb is a 10-fold decrease in dosage in 7 hours.

I think I may be going off too old of tests that were dirtier, like the other guy said, Ivy mike and castle were worse than the designs that succeeded them in this regard. Did not necessarily mean for the statement to be taken too literally, simply wished to express that while lingering radiation has been reduced it still exists and perhaps that the reduction in time of harmful radiation is perhaps not as important as the wide and terrible levels of destruction such weapons could cause.


>>32491657
I realize its not as wide or serious a side effect as it once was. It does follow that air bursting results in less fallout for fission based weapons, thus a weapon with less fissile material would produce even less fallout.

>>32491785
>Ivy mike and castle were worse than the designs that succeeded them in this regard

They were dirty designs but they were also made exponentially worse from being detonated at ground level on a sandy atoll.

>>32491350
why doesnt bismuth decay into a more stable bismuth

>>32488968
god tier post.

>>32489853
>Nukes Manhattan
I like you.

>>32485149
Get 18 inches of overhead cover for your prepared fighting position and you're immune to nuclear weapons.

Wonder if Oppenheimer is up yet. Literally one of the only worthwhile tripfaggots on /k/ anymore.

Last thread we also had some dude from /diy/ who bought a fucking missile silo and was moving in early 2017, I wonder if he's still around.

>>32485149
This should nicely answer your question.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLlgXG93-wIfYWXPZf60toqEdVghjQubEI&v=gOFDFogc6Gk

>>32491026
nope. this has nothing to do with oil and coal. Nuclear is fucking horrible. Solar, motherfucker. The number of accidents so far doesn't have any bearing on the stability of the reactor during military bombardment or how long it can run without a trained human crew.

The sooner we can decommission ever nuclear plant and replace it with solar, the better.

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>>32493461
>nothing to do with oil and coal. Nuclear is fucking horrible. Solar, motherfucker

>Solar, motherfucker
>nothing to do with oil and coal

who could be behind this post?

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hiroshima was firebombed not nuked. jap gov agreed to it so their nation wasnt decimated by an invasion.

>>32488722
>hiroshima is still inhabitable
???

Go here to calculate actual nuke effects:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/bombcalc/

Today's popular idea of what nukes can do is based on what 100-150 kt nukes do. The smaller ones like the 1945 models are actually quite weak, little more devastating than what a division's worth of artillery can pull off.

>>32488722
There's a million fucking people living in Hiroshima. That's hardly "Uninhabitable". You should stop getting your talking points about Nuclear power and weapons from Solyndra and the Obama Administration.

>>32491663
The rule of thumb (using the Rule of 7 that you cited) is 1/1000. So, 7*7*7, or just over two weeks.

After that, unless the nuke was deliberately salted, the fallout will have decayed to the point where it is considered statistically harmless to human life (i.e., not even measurable cancer risks).

In addition, airbursts are considered "self-cleaning", because they do not create any fallout other than from the matter inside the warhead itself, which is negligible when spread across the fireball, and because an airburst causes updrafts (the mushroom cloud) that fling almost all of those still-dangerous atoms into the stratosphere, where they will drift with the wind, dispersing their concentration (less damage) and keeping them away from people for much, if not all, of the 2-week danger period.

So, basically, it's a non-issue.

Now, if you want to talk dangerous fallout, you need a surface (or shallow-water) burst. The kind, unfortunately, needed to reliably crack open missile silos.

This version causes other particles (dirt) to become radioactive, and doesn't get dispersed into the stratosphere. So, yes, this is where you should be concerned over fallout--if you live within a few hundred miles downwind of a missile silo or other hardened target.

However, there's an important distinction to consider. Gamma radiation is the bad stuff--it takes 1" of lead, 1' of reinforced concrete, 3" of packed dirt, 8' of water, or <2 miles of air to protect you from it. BUT... gamma radiation is only really produced in the initial explosion (what is called "prompt" radiation). Fallout is alpha (which can be blocked by skin) and some beta (thin clothes) radiation.

So why is fallout dangerous? Outside of your body, it isn't. Inside, is another matter. So, the entire threat from fallout consists solely of breathing it in or swallowing it (e.g., food left in the open) during the two-week danger period.

>>32494051
>cont.
Remember the Bush-era FEMA recommendations to buy plastic sheeting and duct tape? The ones that were widely mocked by the press?

Guess what can seal up your windows and doors adequately enough to last you the two weeks until fallout runs its course?

Seriously, unless you live close enough to a strategic target (see OPpie's nukemap pic for an example) that a near miss could put you in the blast radius (or worse), you don't have anything *from the warheads* to worry about.

The big danger, as with any major infrastructure-destroying catastrophe, is what happens afterwards. So, instead of investing in Demron suits, you need to be thinking of bug out/in plans, stocked supplies, etc. Same stuff that you'd need for any other world-changing scenario.

All these questions will be answered when Obama pushes us to WW3 to avoid a Trump presidency

>>32494051
>3" of packed dirt

Whoops, that should have been 3'. Sorry.

>>32494051
Yeah, fallout is a non-problem if you eat processed food instead of agriculture direct from the fallout zone e.g. 1950s American farmers (who probably had mason jar preserves in their fallout shelters anyway).

Neutron activation OTOH may prove a problem for the unwary near blast zones.

>>32492509
As far as I know it's because there aren't any radiation processes which would just knock neutrons off. Alpha and beta radiation change the number of protons in the nucleus, so it's not bismuth any more.

Neutron radiation does exist but it's a result of a heavy atom splitting into two lighter ones or fusion of two lighter atoms. The leftover neutrons go on their merry way as neutron radiation.

There are decay chains that include Bi-209, such as the Neptunium series.

>>32488968

under-fucking-rated

>>32493489
lol why would oil companies fund their biggest competitor? Why would a dirty industry that literally owns almost every single privately owned nuclear power plant fund an energy source that could put them out of business?

Oil/coal refineries and nuclear plants require the same power infrastructure, and if solar takes over, will make obsolete trillions of dollars of utility equipment, transformers, and all sorts of ggizmos needed to convert energy from fuel plants into something that the grid can use; whereas solar is a lot simpler!

Anyone standing in the way of solar is a shill, and pointing out some shitty scan of a long island, new york utility company doesnt mean shit.

>>32493972
Reread the post, shithead? It says inhabitable. the point is that nuclear weapons arent the lasting threat that they make them out to be because the metropolitan areas that have been nuked are all still INHABITABLE.

>>32494300
I'm not that guy, but how about this: fossil fuel companies figure if they can slander nuclear, once solar takes over, fossil fuel plants will have to be used to supplement solar during night or peak hours. If they recognize solar as inevitably dominating, then shitting on nuclear is the only way to retain any market share.

Really makes you think, huh?

>>32494300
>what is load

Something (like EROI) solar plebes will never understand, because their dream hinges on not understanding.

>>32494300
Simple. They know that solar will never be able to actually replace coal, because it's a dead-end technology when it comes to baseload capacity.

>>32494130
Is this before or after those FEMA deathcamps and Operation Jade Helm?

>>32494490
1. WW3 (invade Canada?)
2. Invade Texas
3. FEMA
4. Death panels!
5. Biblical Apocalypse
6. Obama descends to Hell hand in hand with Satan
7. ATF shoots all dogs

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>>32494300

they weren't funding solar

only shilling for it and exploiting the stupidity of you and other NIMBY soccer moms to stymie the construction of a new NPP

throwing a spanner in works for the construction of a large fully mature and ever evolving rival source of baseload power is more important than the complete non-threat of increasing public support for solar

retards like you create the strange situation where the country that invented controlled self-sustaining fission hasn't built a new commercial reactor since the 70s because you protest over ill informed safety concerns every time they plan to replace an old reactor with a sleek new more efficent and safer 3.5th/4th gen reactor

or why Yucca mountain and other deep waste storage sites that literally solve the nuclear waste storage issue perfectly and forever get shut down because fat middle class soccer moms get worried about "muh baybies""muh lil chillins" even though their is no real threat to the outside world and their whale pods is at more risk from their horrific driving

>>32485149
I was under the impression most of the casualties from the WW2 nukes where from the flash fires that followed

>>32488722
>>32488986
>>32489156
>>32490950
>>32490966
>>32491067

Radioactive fallout is the end result of ionizing radiation which consists primarily of apha and beta particles, as well as neutrons emitted when the fissile material goes supercritical. Alphas and betas can do a lot of damage to biological processes, but don't propogate very far in air due to their electrical charge (from a few centimeters to a few meters). Airburst nuclear blasts yeild very little radioactive fallout because the only thing to ionize is the surrounding air and bomb case material, but on a surface or subsurface blast it can ionize much heavier elements found in soil and throw them into the atmosphere.

This ionization makes the previously stable nuclei unstable and they seek a more stable state by emitting radiation, this is the lingering 'radiation cloud' that can kill vegetation and give you radiation sickness.

Of course neutrons are neutral and rately interact with particles unless they hit a nucleus. These propogate outwards at ~180Mev (~90% lightspeed) but diverge at 1/r^1.6 (ish). Thus the altitude of the blast is logarithimically related to the ionization density of the surface it detonated above.

>>32494432
>solar will never be able to actually replace coal

Solar wont be replacing coal, natural gas is already replacing it.