UTMC

No, REALLY.


(Thanks, Geekologie.)

--Jaeger

wow. the Tsar Bomba.....

red wrote:wow. the Tsar Bomba.....

Why go any smaller?
My doG, I could play this game all day.

right around CASTLE BRAVO we decided it was time to learn to aim, then we didn't need the czar.

damn. i still live too close to the ex inlaws.

Ah, another nuclear weapons effects radios simulator. Certainly a great user interface, unlike others.

According to wikipedia, the czar bomba generated 97% of it's yield from fusion, making it one of the cleanest bombs in terms of fallout in relation to it's yield, the Prius of hydrogen bombs. Also it had a quarter of the punch of the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, the single largest volcanic eruption recorded by human history.
As much as I hate them atomic bomb things, I am perversely fascinated by them and this one in particular. It was way to big to go on any missile, couldn't be accurately aimed because no adequate inertial guidance was available and it needed a parachute retarder so the bomber could make a getaway...they even scaled it down to minimized pollution (should have had more U238 by design and hence about twice the tested yield). No military purpose at all, except...well, basically, the soviets opened their fly and waved their wang in the wests face. "Look at the size of this, capitalist pigs!". That and the fact that they made a machine that performed on the level of a massive natural disaster (a quarter Krakatoa is still a big fucking eruption) and, in turns of power output per volume, outperformed the SUN by a factor of TRILLIONS, heck, for a few microseconds apparently had about 1% of the Sun's power output, that's a civlisatory achievement. Not a nice one, but impressive.

Mk3 wrote:
CEP of one football field

Is that what you're allowed to tell us about US warheads or is it for the russian ones which would actually, if nuclear war broke out, do the killing of most on this board?

I don't get it. I click on the link and it shows a balloon down by Portland, over 2 hrs away.

What gives?

Whats this tsar bomba, a drink? a dance?

CEP?

Any other acronyms?

Sisyphus wrote: Whats this tsar bomba, a drink? a dance?

Big ass nuke.

Sisyphus wrote: CEP?

Circular Error Probable, basically the margin of error for hitting your target. Using Mk3's one football field, if you aimed at the center of the football field it would hit somewhere within its bounds.

I saw a documentary on that bomb the other day, if I remember correctly, the initial project was 150 MT but they scaled it back to 100 to "minimise" pollution.

So, it's a neutron bomb?

Sisyphus wrote:So, it's a neutron bomb?

I'm no expert but I think a neutron bomb is designed to minimize the physical explosion in favor of super energetic radiation in order to leave infrastructure intact and just kill off the living stuff. The giant fucking soviet bomb was designed for a big fucking explosion but less fallout. Ymmv.

/RM

The tsar bomb was designed for 100 MT yield, as I understand it, but they replaced a few tons of U238 in it's design with lead. The U238 would have been split by fast neutrons from the fusion, aparently, and delivered half the bombs total yield. 50 MT is what they got.
A neutron bomb is a bomb optimized to produce many neutrons, but doesn't use them to fission anything but just radiates them out. A tiny nuclear explosion that would leave a small West German town nearby largely intact, but would produce enough neutrons to turn any soviet tanks nearby into radioactive deathtraps. Just destroying a lot of tanks spread out would have required, otherwise, a huge nuke that would have levelled any West German towns nearby and, more importantly, would have been so big, it would have been impossible to evacuate American troops to a safe distance. At least that's what I heard.

The baloon is the hypocenter, the spot where you detonate the nuke. Top right, you can choose a town, a nuke type or a yield of your choice and then detonate to see the area affected by the nukes blast, radiation, heat, etc.
You can also drag the map to wherever in the world you want it and click a button to center the point of detonation there.

The CEP tells you in how big a radius around what you're aiming a certain percentage of your shots will fall.

Sorry, can't be too helpful on this one. the czar was theoretically capable of 100MT, but was detonated at 50MT. how/why they did that is stuff junk and things Ahmadinejad can't figure out.

The overarching US concept of operations was accurate strikes with specific redundancy. The USSR lobbed radioactive spaghetti at the wall that eventually the target would be destroyed.

More fusion is cleaner, but fallout is much more related to the height of burst than the bomb make up. Fusion makes energy by spewing out Bugatti speed neutrons which will jack up anything they hit. A "ground burst" picks up some dirt in the process of detonation, radiates the hell out of it, and that makes the fallout. An "airburst" is actually the most destructive detonation, but produces very little fallout, and an "atmospheric burst" is effective for EMP, and if detonated at the right height can zonk out a HUGE portion of the planet, with a relatively small weapon; no significant fallout (unless you ask the hippies). Subsurface is the nastiest, creating an area denial zone for a particularly long ass time.

Czar Bomba was experimentally significant, but strategically mediocre. Remember that U and Pu are heavier than lead, so hauling that beaststrocity around would be quite a feat. Basically only good for LA and Seattle, etc. (take that PNW cell). It was a thermonuclear bomb, but not a "neutron" bomb. It's design was not to produce an overabundance of neutrons in order to eliminate soft targets with minimal structural damage; It blew a big flippin hole in the ground.

Mk3 wrote: (take that PNW cell).

I remember coming to the positive conclusion that "at least I'll probably die in the fireball" when I was about 8 or 9 years old.

...and P*rtland was reduced to glowing embers.

That felt good.