Can we talk about nukes?

>>7921906
how come the plane didn't get hit by an EMP burst?

Do you not know how fission works senpai?

>>7921919
hydraulics + Faraday cage

>>7921921
I get the idea but I don't really understand where all the energy comes from or how it converts to so much heat and radiation

>>7921941
>I don't really understand where all the energy comes from or how it converts to so much heat and radiation

The nuclear binding force that keeps the protons and neutrons stacked together properly to form a heavy element like uranium are actually measured as a mass of the atomic nuclei. When the nuclei is split a part of this massive binding energy is converted to energy instead(via E=mc^2), either as radiation that's absorbed and heats nearby structures or fission fragments, that does pretty much the same.

The term for the difference in binding energy when fusing and fissioning is refered to as mass defect. And it's not a very large amount that's lost in the mass defective process but the mass->energy conversion rate is extreme.

This is basically how it works. You find yourself some radioactive compound and create a chain of atoms. Heisenberg proved that his chain reaction was successful when he analyzed more neutrons after the reaction than before. So you essentially split a single atom and the rest follow.

On the other side of the world, while this was happening, Openheimer was working in the US to do the same with plutonium. Their method was implosion - strap a bunch of tmt to the plutonium and make them explode at the exact same time. Imploding plutonium causes an EXplosion that's nearly 1000x as powerful as the initial implosion.

yo, is Kim Jong Un going to nuke South Korea yet? He seems to be talking about it and provoking a lot more than Kim Jong Il ever did.

If they nuke Seoul will we respond with 20MT of freedom straight to Pyongyang?

>>7921951
Why is a hydrogen/fusion bomb so much more powerful than a regular fission bomb? Are there just a lot more hydrogen atoms to react with, so it's like having a lot more fuel in the same size bomb?

>>7921961
>Are there just a lot more hydrogen atoms to react with
Something like that. Per unit of mass the energy leftovers from fusion is greater than fission.

And fusion also happens from simple heat and pressure whereas fission needs a neutron economy. And just as it happens a fusion reaction results in a shower of neutrons too.

So the fission reactions gives energy++, the heat catalyzes fusion reactions which gives energy++ and the neutron flux from the fusion reactions also catalyzes additional fission reactions which gives energy++.

>>7921978
Ok I think I get it. So a small primary fission core ignites inside a uranium case, which doesn't violently explode yet and instead contains and reflects all the energy of the first fission reaction into the hydrogen core, starting fusion.
Then the sheer power and abundance of reactions (plus the shower of neutrons) from the fusing hydrogen allows this uranium enclosure and center to explosively go through fission in a much more efficient way than it ever could just by way of using conventional explosives to start the reaction.

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So what are these glowing flames in the explosion in this webm? What is it that is burning? Is the air changing molecular structure?

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>>7921960
you bet

>>7922031
Those straight trails on the middle to right hand side of the image at regular intervals?

I believe those are from sounding rockets set off before launch. It was common back during nuclear tests to send rockets up into the upper atmosphere with instruments to measure various effects of nuclear explosions.

>>7922049
No, I mean what is the bright orange stuff that looks like it is burning in the center of the mushroom cloud? It looks like the fireball from a gasoline explosion, only there is no gasoline

>>7921898
>how does the fusion or fission of atoms result in that sizzling burn and huge shock wave? Does all the energy exclusively come from the fissile material, or is there some kind of chain reaction with the environment that helps drive the explosion?
The energy comes from the bomb itself, but the shockwave comes from the environment. The effects of a nuclear weapon in space are quite different than they are in an atmosphere, and different still underground.

In space, a nuclear bomb will release most of its energy as a pulse of charged particles, along with neutrons and broad spectrum electromagnetic radiation. This can be shielded against by a variety of means. There is little momentum, so the energy can be reflected away relatively easily.

In the lower atmosphere, the nuke will heat a large amount of cool, dense air very quickly causing the pressure to increase dramatically. The shockwave is the wave of this pressure, while the fireball is the region of intense heat. The shockwave involves a large mass of moving material, so it's hard to defend against.

Underground, in dry rock, the material is much more dense, but it's solid and generally has a high boiling point. Mostly, a lot of rock gets heated (and much is melted) without being boiled, which doesn't increase the volume nearly as much, and a relatively small amount gets boiled, so the shockwave is much weaker than in the atmosphere.

>And what is the bright, burning "fuel" that appears to make up the explosion's fireball?
It resembles a fire in part because the intense heat drives chemical reactions. For instance, after a nuclear blast there will be orange air from nitrogen and oxygen being combined into NO2 (something that happens under heat even in ordinary car engines, although normally not to such a degree as to be visible). Exothermic reactions follow the endothermic ones, as the temperature goes down.

Mostly, though, it's just that the air is very hot.

>>7922052
idk, could just be from the explosion, they are bright. Could be from stuff at the test site, they put all sorts of shit on the ground to see the effect, maybe they had fuel trucks down there or something.

Oh, btw, I'm wrong about the sounding rockets thing. While it is true sounding rockets were used in the nuclear test it isn't responsible for those lines in the pic. A rocket did create those lines but it was only to establish a measurement reference basically.

>>7922019
>which doesn't violently explode yet
It's in an early state of violently exploding, but these reactions are happening at nanosecond scales. So by the time the structure have broken down into a deformed shape of plasma the fusion and fission reactions have already mostly played out.

>>7921960
if you want to see what happens to humanity if it embraces nihilism and hedonism to the max, go to south korea

he would be doing south korea a favor by nuking them

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>>7922053
Thanks for the post, good explanation.
Are any of these "burning" gases in a plasma state? Like, for example, the outer edges of a blast wave like this? Or does plasma more just happen at the hypocenter of the explosion during the initial stages?

>>7922053
Incidentally, you could build cities so they'd be largely immune to nuclear attack. Low, thick-walled, windowless concrete structures and deep basements would make the radius of effective destruction of nuclear weapons small.

Add some air filters and hosedown vestibules, underground train networks and walkways, and electro-chemical food production, and you could have pretty normal lives through a nuclear war.

Of course, building such cities might provoke a nuclear strike before you finished them.

>>7922088
>Are any of these "burning" gases in a plasma state?
Some will be. Air doesn't have to be ionized to be glowing, though. It's not easy to tell the difference between plasma and very hot gas just by looking at it with normal eyesight. You're just seeing the thermal radiation.

Plasma is just when the gas gets so hot that electrons jump right off the atoms. So over a certain temperature, it's plasma, below that, it's gas. Around the boundary, they're both glowing hot.

>>7922070
It surprises me that they could contain the energy of the primary-stage fission explosion within *any* kind of enclosure for long enough to have it reflect onto the hydrogen core and induce fusion.
Is the primary-stage fission device in an H-bomb like a full-fledged atomic bomb on its own? Or is it something weaker, so all that reflection of radiation can happen before the uranium enclosure breaks open?

>>7922130
>like a full-fledged atomic bomb on its own?
Something like that.

>It surprises me that they could contain the energy of the primary-stage fission explosion within *any* kind of enclosure for long enough to have it reflect onto the hydrogen core and induce fusion.

There's nothing to enclose. Some xray and neutron mirrors at most.

From the point of the nuclear reactions the whole bomb is made of butter, it have no chance to enclose the energies. But the neutrons are so fast that from their point of view it doesn't matter if the bomb is hot enough to be boiling, it all looks static to them, and being neutrons the bomb is like a huge hollow lattice for them, they're zipping through the structure and finding additional targets to induce fission in.

The only "effective" contaiment is pretty much just the inertia of the material the bomb is made up from.

>before the uranium enclosure breaks open?
There's no shattering or breaking, the bomb pretty much sublimates from solid one instant into a superheated plasma cloud shaped as the bomb in the next instance.

>>7921919
For nuke to become emp, it has to be exploded in upper atmosphere. And also plane is just a too small thing to be EMP'ed. Those attacks work against power lines - very long conductors that become antennas and induct a very strong pulse

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>>7922147
thanks for the clarification

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>26 posts in
>No Rapatronic camera

Kinda disappointed, desu. Anyway the spikes on the bottom of the fire ball are from the "rope trick effect", as the reaction progresses the fireball gives out a huge amount of light radiation, any solid structure absorbs the radiation heats and rapidly vaporises. And that's what we're seeing in the bottom of the picture, the spilt second between detonation and the metal mooring cables that support the bomb being completely vaporised.

>>7922130
It's not really being "contained", it's just that that stuff reflects some of the energy and momentum back inward in the process of being vaporized.

Think of it on a particle level: when a gamma ray or fission fragment hits a heavy nucleus, it's going to get scattered while retaining most of its kinetic energy and momentum. If you plan the shape of an object right, you can affect which things get hit by which sorts of radiation in what order, and which volumes are allowed to expand while others are initially in compression.

If you dramatically heat the outer layers of a sphere or cylinder first, their vaporization will cause an increase in pressure. The outermost area will be able to expand outward, but this will exert a reaction force on the inner part, like a bunch of rockets all pushing in.

If the pressure is higher on the outside than the inside, there will be a flow of material toward the lower-pressure region, and compression occurs. Motion toward the center will take time to reverse, even if that time is very small.

Of course, this can't last forever. The "rocket propellant" of the outer layer gets used up, and then the inner layers start to spray out as well. But by the time this has happened, the fuel has spent enough time under the right conditions for a significant fraction to react and release energy.

>>7922052
it's not fire, it's just so hot it shines.

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you guys think nuclear-pulse propulsion could actually work (or be feasible) for space travel?

>>7921898
you can find some great info here.
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq5.html#nfaq5.3
Section 5.3 covers specifically what you're asking about.

>>7921898
Fission and fusion result in stuff getting really fucking hot really fast

>>7922031
Nothing is burning, the air, dirt, and crap from the bomb is just glowing because it's really fucking hot. Exact same reason a light bulb glows(the old ones).

>>7922235
at the moment it's pretty much the only feasible solution for interstellar travel

protoypes were actually built but not tested

even then we could only reach proxima centauri within a century. we'd need a generation ship

every other form of propulsion is either too slow, not enough specific impulse, or purely theoretical

>>7922315
>protoypes were actually built but not tested
No they weren't. Jesus.

There were some experiments with chemical explosive pulse propulsion (at a much, much smaller scale), but that's as close as they got.

>every other form of propulsion is either too slow, not enough specific impulse, or purely theoretical
There's no reasonable standard by which you can call other high-Isp propulsion "purely theoretical" without placing nuclear pulse propulsion into the same category.

>>7922336
>No they weren't. Jesus.

what do you think area 51 is for bruh

>>7922084
pretty much how the whole world is. we should just go ahead and do ourselves a favor and start ww3 nuclear edition.

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kill the mushroom cloud scum

>>7922315
a century is nothing for interstellar travel. All we need is stasis/cryo-sleep technology to be invented.

BTW, would there be any noticeable time dilation caused by moving that fast on the way to Proxima Centauri? Would it even seem like 100 years to the people on-board the ship? Or would it seem much shorter, and 100 years is just how long the journey would appear to take from an observer's perspective on earth?

>>7921898
what the hell are those things at 0:12 and 0:21?

>>7924518
Look like measuring instruments to me.

>>7924526
they are moving though.. it looks like dogs or something locked in cages

>>7924518
Steaks tied to grills.
Nuclear BBQ.

>>7924518
pigs. their skin is very similar to ours. we wanted to see what it would do to people.

>>7922181
Fire is just gas so hot that it shines. Glows would be a better word.

There are several different ways nuclear bombs cause damage.

As already stated, a nuclear bomb detonated in the atmosphere releases a tremendous amount of radiation in a number of forms. Mostly electromagnetic. This is across a huge spectrum from radio, to infrared, to gamma radiation. There's also a large flux of neutrons.

Since it's in the atmosphere, much of this radiation is absorbed by the air, which super heats it, and makes it explode outward in all directions. Of course some of the radiation isn't absorbed by the air.

The opening of the video shows a burning school bus. This is a bus that has been hit by the wave of infrared radiation caused by the blast. It is so intense that it instantly causes the paint to catch fire and vaporize, which you see there with all the smoke. Now that first wave travels at the speed of light, so it hits the bus first. But a moment later it's hit by the blast wave, all that air that's exploding out from ground zero. So that's a another wave destruction, it's very impressive if you watch that full clip. The bus bursts into flame and smoke, then gets hit by the shock.

It's actually the third wave to hit the bus. What you don't see is the neutron flux. It travels slower than the infrared, but faster than the air. You don't see it because most of the neutrons pass straight through the structure without interacting with the atoms. Those that do cause some structural weakening, but it's not apparent. Living things are another matter. The neutron flux causes enough damage to them that it destroys their metabolism and kills them. A neutron bomb was a special type of nuclear bomb created to cause an immense neutron flux, with relatively small actual explosion. The idea was you could kill all the people, but leave plenty of the structures still mostly intact, even if weakened.

cont...

>>7924630
Alright, so we've had the electromagnetic blast, the neutron flux, and the air blast.

We've still got a giant ball of superheated gas at ground zero. As hot air does in an atmosphere, that ball rises. This creates a vacuum for colder air to replace. So as soon as the first air blast goes one way, outwards from ground zero, there's a second powerful blast of air going inwards to replace it. That's why, in the video, the trees bend first one way, then the other. This one can be just as devastating, since structures were already weakened in the first three blasts, and can be destroyed in the last of them, in addition to spreading all those fires among all that debris.

Of course the last damaging effect of the nukes is the fallout, which kills people slowly and horrible, and contaminates the structures even if they are still standing.

>>7924634
I was actually about to ask you about the second inward wave thanks. I never really thought about it but is that what gives notable-sized explosions the signature atom bomb shape?

>>7924647
Yeah, the head of the mushroom is the ball of gas, cooling and flattening a bit as it runs into the air above it. The "stem" is all of the smoke and ash being drawn up with it, some being pulled up as some of it is falling down.

It's not a matter of the nuclear nature of the bomb itself. Even really big conventional explosions create the same basic shape, though they're not as well formed, and they last just a second or two instead of lingering for minutes.

>>7922147

>before the uranium enclosure breaks open?
There's no shattering or breaking, the bomb pretty much sublimates from solid one instant into a superheated plasma cloud shaped as the bomb in the next instance.

this. when people talk about the "vaporization zone" from ground zero of a nuke detonation, it literally means you go from a solid to a super heated atomic matter in an instant.

>>7922147
This is an oversimplification.

You can have a critical mass that undergoes supercritical nuclear fission and it blows itself apart, but if it's not contained it creates a fizzle instead of the megaton explosion that you want.

That's why you can have emerging nuclear powers like North Korea creating enough nuclear material for a bomb, but it fizzles because they don't know how to properly contain it.

It's not enough to have all the atoms undergo fission or fusion. You've got to contain it all long enough that it all happens at about the same time. Sure it happens on the order of microseconds, but that's still a lot longer than an infinitesimal "instant."

In the case of the original fat man plutonium bomb, they surrounded it with conventional shaped explosions, and the explosions of these charges were enough to contain it for the small amount of time needed, as nuclear reactions are much faster than chemical explosions.

>>7924701
>>You can have a critical mass that undergoes supercritical nuclear fission and it blows itself apart, but if it's not contained it creates a fizzle instead of the megaton explosion that you want.

I meant from the perspective of a proper functioning nuke.

> You've got to contain it all long enough that it all happens at about the same time.

It's much less about containing anything than ensuring it plays out in an efficient manner. You can't ignite the fissible material in one end and expecting neutron burn to get through all of it before it blows itself apart. Everything needs to be coordinated

>the explosions of these charges were enough to contain it for the small amount of time needed

I wouldn't say it's a form of containing, it's a method to accelerate them into eachother fast enough to overcome fizzle reactions, a spherical variant of the uranium gun design.

As to what goes on in a modern nuke only few really knows.

>>7924717
I thought there were no true "modern" nukes (with new and different detonation-designs) because of all the test bans and disarmament stuff?
Also because we basically perfected the weapon's design during all those tests in the 50's-60's. The old bombs definitely worked, so why change them?

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Thanks for the cool webms guys

>>7924630
>A neutron bomb was a special type of nuclear bomb created to cause an immense neutron flux, with relatively small actual explosion. The idea was you could kill all the people, but leave plenty of the structures still mostly intact, even if weakened.
This is a myth. The neutron bomb is a tactical nuclear weapon. The purpose is to kill soldiers in tanks and APCs, which would effectively protect them against the flash, shockwave, fires, and fallout. Armor also protects against neutrons, but to a lesser extent (unless designed for it).

There's no way to produce neutrons without also producing a lot of energy, and neutron activation would tend to leave neutron-bombed areas very unattractive to occupy and use.

Nuclear effects are not very penetrating. They work best against light wooden structures, flammable things, unsheltered humans, etc. Sometimes you'll see sneering cynicism about how useless it would be to "duck and cover", but this is unwarranted. In some cases, a layer of paper could save you from dying of severe burns.

There's a myth of nuclear weapons as all-annihilating. They aren't. They will fuck up a city something awful, but dug-in soldiers and sheltered civilians are very hard to kill with nuclear weapons.

>>7925947
I mean, go ahead and watch OP's video again, with a critical eye: >>7921898

Are you seeing things get utterly wiped off the face of the Earth? No. There's a bus, and a car, and a house, and they get a thin layer dramatically burned off them, but they're still there. That's the flash effect. The same happens to the trees, and they get pushed back and forth by a strong wind, but they're still standing. Just trees. Are they even dead? Then the shockwave hits, and it knocks things over. That's a strong push, a hurricane-force wind, but not something far beyond a hurricane. The bus gets dented in and knocked over, but it doesn't go flying off into the wild blue yonder. It's not shredded one tenth as badly as it would be by a targetted explosive weapon.

Think about, if you're going to be in this area, how you could survive? What would you need? Not a whole lot. A sturdy building. Not being near a window.

There would be a lot left after a total nuclear war, even if people were totally unprepared. With a little planning, an awareness of when things were getting tense, and a few minutes of warning before it hits, you could save a lot. Maybe enough to rebuild quite quickly afterward.

>>7922150
Does this create a huge "hole" in our ozone layer?

>>7922169
Outstanding pic. I'd love to see a modern test detonation captured with our current camera technology.

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I'd like to see a bike in space

>>7926503
Nuke*
A bike would be interesting too but not in the same way

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18 kilotons

>>7926001
OP webm is listed as "grable 15kt". A modern thermonuclear bomb is 100+ times more powerful.

>A sturdy building.
A sturdy reinforced concrete building not too close. I don't remember the overpressure zones but if you live in a city center your future in a bomb scenario is rather bleak unless you spend your days in a bank vault.

>>7926833
>OP webm is listed as "grable 15kt". A modern thermonuclear bomb is 100+ times more powerful.
About 10 times more powerful, maybe. Megaton+ weapons are impractical. They're too heavy to launch on reasonably-sized rockets, and past a certain size, most of the energy just blasts into space.

The flash effect, of light around the visible range, is largely unaffected by the atmosphere and only falls off with the square of the distance, but is easily shielded against since it only affects things in direct line of sight, aside from the fires it starts. The shockwave, fireball, and hard radiation effects are absorbed and reduced much more effectively by the , so they have a more or less fixed maximum range which isn't increased much with larger yields.

The area of total destruction by nuclear weapons is pretty small, and there's a fairly small number of strategic nukes. Most of their area of effect is the flash and its fire-starting effects.

If people have made reasonable preparation for nuclear war (as people used to be concerned with doing, but no longer seem to bother with), an all-out nuclear strike would kill a minority of the population in pretty much any major city on Earth, let alone the countryside, which would be largely untouched. The fallout would also be less troublesome than is usually presumed. Modern strategic nukes are much cleaner than the bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the populations of those cities had no understanding and no preparation to help them avoid the hazards. When it comes to growing crops, earth can be effectively decontaminated by scraping a thin layer off the surface, a measure little more taxing than the usual preparation of a field for planting.

A nuclear war wouldn't be the end of the world, just a very bad time, like other major wars. Thinking about it as some kind of apocalypse is counterproductive and irresponsible.

>>7926833
The bomb "Little Boy" (which was dropped on Hiroshima) was also 15 kilotons, like Grable, so we pretty much already know exactly what happens when a bomb like in the OP's webm goes off in an urban center. But you are right, you cant generalize on all nuke damage just based on footage of the effects of a 15kt blast. It means very little when you have H-bombs that are over 1000x more powerful, like this one: >>7921906

>>7922169
you can see the effect in this webm: >>7926745

>>7927023
>we pretty much already know exactly what happens when a bomb like in the OP's webm goes off in an urban center.
Hiroshima was small, dense, entirely unprepared, and built in a primitive, old-fashioned way mostly of flimsy, flammable buildings. About two-thirds of the population survived.

Nagasaki was similar, but even more primitively built and flammable, and at least two-thirds of the population survived.

People were so ignorant of nuclear weapons that when the flash happened, they came out from cover, into the open or to windows, to see what was going on, to be hit by the shockwave.

Both were cities concentrated in small areas. You get less than a linear increase of affected area with increasing yield, and when you attack modern cities with lots of tall buildings full of steel and concrete they're going cut down on severe effect ranges quite quickly. In fact, this problem is so bad that strategic nukes are now designed to explode high in the air and depend mainly on the flash effect, which is relatively easy to protect against.

>>7926014
Holes in ozone layer are but a hoax made up by environmentalists

>>7927050
H-bombs generate explosions are thousands of times larger and more powerful than Hiroshima or Grable. And the immensely strong flash they generate is nothing to be taken lightly.
You set off a hydrogen bomb anywhere near the size of Castle Bravo (or especially Tsar Bomba) over the commercial district of some major city and the shockwave's tremendous pressure-differential is going to pulverize the entire skyline.
Some outer ruins may still stand when all is said and done, but every single floor of these affected skyscrapers will, without-a-doubt, be burned to a charred ruin. And there would almost certainly be a nigh unstoppable firestorm ripping through the city's entire metropolitan area (mostly because there will be no fire dept left to battle it.)

Also, losing some blast range as a trade off for destroying highly populated skyscrapers in a valuable financial district is not what I'd call a "problem" with the weapon. I mean, if a pineapple grenade lands in a crowd of enemy soldiers and only kills the 15 who were standing right around it (because of their dead bodies blocking the shrapnel from hitting the ones further away,) does that mean the grenade is a flawed or weak weapon? Fuck no.

>>7926014
No. Depletion of ozone on a significant scale requires the presence of specific catalysts that convert O3 into O and O2. The heat could possibly cause some O3 molecules to spontaneously break apart but not a significant amount.

>>7923429
We will have already been to another star before we invent viable stasis technology.

And this ship wouldn't be moving at a great enough percentage of the speed of light to have significant relativistic effects.

>>7921956
they only did this to bypass the fact that the plutonium core rapidly melts down the surrounding uranium if slowly inserted. 'imploding' uranium is not important, it is merely there to accelerate a nuclear cascade faster than it can self-react

>>7927022
You understate the ease with which you can remove contaminated soil. It's one of those things that is simple but hard - like digging a 1 mile ditch with a spoon. Simply removing soil and disposing of it is one of the most expensive things you can do to remediate a contaminated site, just from the number of truckloads it takes. Not to mention the loss of valuable topsoil (as if it wasn't already ruined by fallout)

>>7927023
>over 1000x more powerful

my fucking sides

they are indeed much more powerful but don't just make up a number

>>7921960
Realistically no, there's a reason nobody has used nukes since 1945.

Here's what will happen though, we are gonna dresden/Syria the shit outta them.
Nuking north Korea would be bad lota people in China and south Korea would be hit with fallout and a lot of people could die.

>>7929525
>Simply removing soil and disposing of it is one of the most expensive things you can do to remediate a contaminated site, just from the number of truckloads it takes.
We're not talking about prissy perfectionism, we're talking about practical methods.

You don't truck the contaminated soil to a special disposal facility, you just scrape a layer off into a pit or heap locally, using ordinary tractors, diggers, and bulldozers, and you cover it with a layer of clean soil.

Yes, you lose some topsoil. No, it's not perfect. But you remove most of the contamination, and topsoil isn't so precious in the modern world, where we understand what it is and how to build it up.

Higher cancer rates would just be a fact of life in a post-nuclear-war world. However, technology will march on, and we'll continue to get more competent at treating cancer. Twenty years into the future, cancer might be regarded as lightly as a bacterial infection: as long as you catch it before its done anything horrible to you, you just have to take the cure. When we lose the terror of cancer, we may lose most of our terror of low-level radioisotope contamination.

>>7928952
>H-bombs generate explosions are thousands of times larger and more powerful than Hiroshima or Grable.
The biggest ones, sure, back when biggest-bomb dick measuring was a thing. Actual deployed strategic nukes are more like 10 or 20 times more powerful. You can carry them around with a hand truck. This makes them practical to launch on smallish solid-fuelled ballistic missiles.

>a nigh unstoppable firestorm ripping through the city's entire metropolitan area
Concrete, steel, glass, and asphalt don't burn so easily. Firestorms are a problem of primitively-built old cities.

>every single floor of these affected skyscrapers will, without-a-doubt, be burned to a charred ruin.
Nonsense. If they stay standing and are outside the fireball (which is a pretty small area of effect), they're just going to get fires on the sides facing the flash, and you have to expect that their sprinkler systems are mostly going to work.

Anyway, how much does it really matter to destroy office space in the modern world, with all of our communication technology? Are you assuming that this all-out nuclear attack will come with no warning, and everyone will just go to work in city centers like normal?

>>7930033
Well, if Russia or China were to attack, say, NYC.

You would have about 15-10 minutes warning, depending on how long it takes for the government to distribute the information.

Modern ICBMs go sub-orbital and just drop a dozen smaller nukes from space. From Moscow to NYC, this takes the missile about 13 minutes to get past the mesosphere and then another 7 minutes to align and drop their payload.

But, even worse, is that if a real nuclear attack were to happen from a world power that has a Navy, SLBMs would be used which makes that time less than 10 minutes. Which also means those people in those office buildings might have about 5 minutes of warning.

>>7930064
>You would have about 15-10 minutes warning
Really? You think so? They'd just attack out of the blue, without making any threats or demands?

You're only thinking about how it works physically, not about the sociopolitical realities. We're a long way away from any all-out nuclear war right now. The major arsenals are in the hands of people with a lot to lose, who are mostly getting along and generally willing to compromise with each other.

>>7930079
Yes, they would in fact just attack out of the blue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov#Involvement_in_Cuban_Missile_Crisis

Think about it, if you were actually going to launch a weapon that would result in a catastrophic trade of those weapons resulting in global nuclear fallout, would you really sit around and play Dr. Evil?

You can pray that threats don't lead to an action, but when they do that action will not be done in a predictable manner.

I'm not saying we're anywhere close to global nuclear war, I'm just saying that if it were to happen, anyone in a targeted area would have almost no warning.

I secretly want a nuclear war, I'm in the middle of fucking nowhere so I don't give a damn but I would love to see that.

>>7930033
Asphalt melts at a pretty low temperature. Just a hot day is enough to soften it quite a bit - almost all affected roads would be ruined. And glass melts and steel loses integrity.