Nuclear Bombs

>>8432963
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_device

Okay so here's the deal with nukes.

Even the Tsar Bomba fused a ridiculously small amount of matter. The upper limit for a bomb with today's technology probably isn't that much higher than the Tsar Bomba unless the pilot is willing to die (and even then, planes have a weight limit). Maybe a gigaton yield if a country is stupid enough to go all out is possible. That is a casual large city sterilizer and a regional threat.

Eventually we will master fusion and that's where the real big boys come into play. Our nuclear arsenal, while a significant threat to human life is not enough to exterminate human or animal life on earth let alone cause any significant long-term damage to the planet. With Fusion however, bombs the size of shipping containers (which are a real threat nowadays) would be enough to sterilize something the size of texas and obliterate a very large portion of the U.S.

A shipping container has a capacity of about 30000kg

E= (30000*10^8)^2
E= 9*10^24 Joules
Assuming 10% efficiency from Fusion which is on the low end, that leaves us with 9*10^23 Joules

The Chicxulub impact had an estimated energy amount of 5.43*10^23 Joules

So basically a bomb like this would have A LARGER energy content than that of the Chicxulub impact which was kind of a big deal. This is what true mutually assured destruction looks like. The first country to master fusion will be able to wipe continents off the map with relative ease. A couple of countries will probably blow themselves up in the race to catch up to whoever is first because whoever is first is instantly the top dog in the world. By far. Like the gap will be something like comparing the U.S to the Roman Empire in terms of military strength. This isn't a far off dream either, this is literally a 50 year in the future thing according to current fusion advancements.

Saying that humanity won't make it to the 22nd century isn't some edgy pessimistic cynicism, it's the overwhelming likelihood.

>>8433056
:(

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>>8433056
>Eventually we will master fusion
>this is literally a 50 year in the future thing according to current fusion advancements.

>>8433083

I know about the "fusion is 30 years away meme" that's why I gave it 50 years as a reasonable estimate. I certainly think fusion is less than 84 years away which is why my cutoff point was the 22nd century.

>>8433056
>E= (30000*10^8)^2
What did he mean by this?

>>8433094

He did the calculation wrong. It was supposed to be E=mc^2 and he did E=(mc)^2

The actual number is 2.7*10^21 joules which is about .5% of the Chicxulub impact at 10% efficiency. This is still really really bad because his estimate about something as powerful as a chicxulub meteor destroying something as small as texas was very conservative and 10% efficiency is also a conservative figure. If this hit Texas, regardless of .5% or 150% impact power, everyone in Texas would be dead in minutes.

Any larger than 50 MT, and most of the additional energy will just blow outwards into space.

They can be made bigger, but there's really no point in it, as far as weapons-making goes.

>>8433056
Anon. Humanity does dumb shit. But it literally, as a giant collective isn't suicidal or interested in killing itself off.

When the came to the Cuban Missile Crisis. JFK admitted to being willing to pussy out and let the communist win in the event.

>>8433165
Anon. Humanity might not be interested in a nuclear apocalypse, but it only takes one crazy asshole to blow us all to hell. If Hitler had had enough nukes for that while he was sitting in his bunker at the end of WW2, he would've pushed the button.

>>8433208
>It only takes one crazy asshole
No it takes multiple people. During the 1980's the Soviets had an error occur on their missile defense system and ordered a nuclear retaliation against the US.

The Soviet commander refused to launch and was proven to be right, actually stopping humanity from going Nuclear War. So shut the fuck up you have no idea what you are talking about.

It's not one person, hey lets launch nukes and kill each other you faggot. The hitler comparison is irrelevant, especially since if Hitler had nuclear weapons he would've been used them in the beginning of the war to demonstrate the power of Germany.

If you want the citation for the Soviet Incident: 1983 Soviet False Alarm Incident
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident

>>8433270
This guys right. Hitler is no different to the other leaders of the time and since really. Hes not interested in destroying the world. No more so than the american or soviet. He would have done a demo on some poor unsuspecting country and then it would have been threats from then onward. MAD was inevitable regardless of leaders

You know that modern nukes already use fusion, right?

The "fusion is 50 years away" thing refers to *controlled* fusion, not explosions.

The reason nukes don't use fusion primarily is that fusion generates fast neutrons, which results in the energy being spread out over a much larger volume (so you end up making a huge volume of air slightly warmer, whereas an explosion requires making a much smaller volume of air insanely hot).

That's a fundamental property of fusion reactions, which isn't something we could change by "mastering" it.

>>8432963
>Theoreticly speaking, is there an upper limit to how powerfull a nuke can be?

Once you go beyond a certain point, it starts losing efficiency faily quickly, and you run into diminishing returns.

>>8432963
Yes the theoretical maximum yield is 6KT/Kg of fissile material.
A quick Google search would have revealed that.

>>8433056
The Tsar bomba was a fusion bomb you fucking idiot.

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>>8433437
that's not what op is asking.
>>8432963
the way the Primary on the thermonuclear devices works relies on a subcritical mass being compressed explosively until it's critical and then super critical. I suppose there will be a point where the mass of subcritical U235/plutonium cannot be bigger before it is critical on it's own. I dunno what that is.

However, theoretically there would be nothing stopping a design that has two hemispheres that are each max subcritical that do not come together until detonation... or taking this further other complex fractional portions of the spherical primary.

The secondary fusion portion is usually the main bulk of the explosive power though, i suppose it can be scaled in the same way as the primary.

To answer - For a maximum size regardless of space/practicality/delivery method, i don't suppose there is one (other than available primary critical mass) if you continuously up the design and efficiency.

Gigaton bombs are conceivable using tech available today, but these would be extinction events for sure.

>>8433056
>The upper limit for a bomb with today's technology probably isn't that much higher than the Tsar Bomba unless the pilot is willing to die (and even then, planes have a weight limit).

>literally what are rockets

Christ almighty you are a fool, how does someone so stupid have the gall to write this much

>>8433444

He said that the Tsar Bomba is a fusion bomb lol. The problem is that it's a 26 ton bomb that only fused a couple of grams of material. I don't know if he's right or not but bomb making still has a long way to go. it won't stop until we get hyper dense anti-matter beams/bombs which seem to be the peak of destructive damage as we know it.

>>8433546
I am not an expert in this area. I do understand improving fuel efficiency is exponentially more difficult. I would have thought that double fuel = double the yield.

>To answer - For a maximum size regardless of space/practicality/delivery method, i don't suppose there is one (other than available primary critical mass) if you continuously up the design and efficiency.

I think this what you said. Am I interpreting this correctly?

>>8433550

Hey dumbass the scenario is just a contrived one. If you wanted to ship a bomb by train you could have it be multiple gigatons if you really wanted and much stronger than anything a rocket could carry. The Tsar Bomba was dropped out of a plane so I was just speculating on what could be the largest bomb dropped out of a plane.

And hurr durr I got my calculations wrong, the new nukes would only destroy countries instead of continents so they're obviously not a big deal amirite?

>>8433560
>The Tsar Bomba was dropped out of a plane so I was just speculating on what could be the largest bomb dropped out of a plane.

Why?

Friendly reminder that even relatively small nuclear weapons are among the most horrifying imaginable. A weapon that can kill 10.000 people indiscriminately is bone chillingly frightening. Let's not diminish the impact of the two times nuclear weapons were actually applied.

>>8433551
the tritium/deuterium is much easier to come by though.
>>8433552
I was saying that there isn't a wall technically, you are going to be limited by your U235/plutonium though.

I assumed you understood the difference between subdritical/critical/supercritical masses, which you apparently don't.

>>8433581
>A weapon that can kill 10.000 people indiscriminately is bone chillingly frightening.

Yet I still get more scared about approaching girls

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>>8433581
>two times nuclear weapons were actually applied.
thank God. pic related.

>>8433581
>A weapon that can kill 10,000 people indiscriminate is bone chilling.
Wow. Did you know the common cold killed over 10,000 people indiscriminately and still kills people?

Such a scary weapon. I'm shaking in my boots. Get over it you fucking pussy.

>>8433569
You're being pointlessly hypercritical.

>>8432963

No, although building such a device would not be an efficient weapon design, since most of the radiation would be directed skyward (as with the Tsar Bomba event).

Also they were very close to building the 100 megaton device, but Soviet physicists were worried that they would waste perfectly good uranium with the tamper design. Lead was ultimately used.

>>8433596
Sorry I'm confused by the arbitrarily chosen criteria of your explications you kept to yourself

>>8433590
the damage that a flu epidemic can do is actually legitimately terrifying and it's probably the biggest threat to humanity that currently exists

>>8432963

No, there's no upper limit; more fissile material = more boom, and there's no practical upper limit

And the "igniting the atmosphere" with 100 mt. is wrong

>>8433854
Eh, I could see a bigass thermonuclear bomb that big causing a small (relatively) chain reaction where the atmospheric nitrogen and smaller elements go plasma and start fusing together. I doubt it would burn a hole much bigger than your boom-boom room, but like atmospheric oxygen and especially ozone could start binding with some other stuff too.

>>8433588
Japanese war flag is the sexiest flag ever designed in human history. Prove me wrong. (Hint: Can you? Why?)

>>8433590
psssh...nothin personnel...kid...

>>8433581
>muh feels
>much scared

Friendly reminder that you're a pussy.

Could you make a nuke so massive you push earth out of orbit with the sun or at least change the course significantly?

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>>8434165
Yes

>>8433270
>Hitler would have used them

I think Hitler was a bit more conservative than that, anon. Einstein was just another kike kicked out of Germany by the dominant party, his fears were, in my opinion, very carefully crafted.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/nov/11/rorycarroll

>>8433884

>ladies and gentlemen, Edward Teller is apparently still alive

>>8432963
A gigaton level meteor explosion took place here 66 million years ago yet the atmosphere is still here.

>>8434394

Yet it's not as thick as it was 66 million years ago

>>8433056
>Eventually we will master fusion.

H-bombs are fusion devices. Your 'eventually' happened in 1951 as far as weapons are concerned.

>>8433056
You fucked up the calculation, your assumption of turning 10% of the mass into energy with fusion is ridiculous, the tsar bomba was a fusion bomb, so you don't need to master fusion to build a fuckhuge bomb (the fucking commies had the tech to build a 100 megaton device more than fifty years ago), no-one would use a plane to drop an H-bomb on another country, because planes are slow and can be shot down, while ICBMs can't, and finally, a small country, like Israel for example, wouldn't become top dog by building a multi-teraton device, since they could still be very easily be wiped out due to the country being small. You wrote a gorillion character post on a topic you have no understanding of, you are everything wrong with this board.

>>8432963
How big is the limit? Until you get enough fusing mass in one area to form a black hole. The sun is a continuous nuclear explosion.

you can just build a stationary nuke with a yield in the level of 10^100 petatons that will, when detonated, destroy not just the earth but also the moon.

>>8434547
That due to rocks you fucking moron.

>implying nukes exist

>>8433056
>[math]e=(mc)^2[/math]

>>8434768

>due to rocks you fucking moron

Just do us all a favor and set yourself on fire in the middle of a busy intersection

>>8435614

This will never not be funny

>>8435614
Wait, how the fuck did the temperature go back to normal within a minute

>>8435985
It didn't. Stop taking jokes so seriously.

>>8435614

Was this caused by global warming?

>>8436133
i though people on /sci/ were smarter... this is not only an obvious bait but you should be locked up for being this dumb.

>>8433608
Bombs are dropped out of planes and detonated far above ground to give greater damage and spread of fallout.

The U.S. Had plans for a 1gigaton nuke and a 10 gigaton nuke senpaitachi

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>>8435985
I agree: it lessens the joke, here is updated version.

>>8436133
In fact it shows clear evidence of global cooling. We need more cars and shit to counter this effect.

>>8436154

>you aren't dumb the right way therefor you should be punished

kys

>>8436204

that's a sharp observation there coooz