The $1.5T Nuclear Weapons Program You've Never Heard Of

Re:The $1.5T Nuclear Weapons Program You've Never Heard Of by scrumper on Friday November 17, 2023 @12:22PM (#38306693)

I'm not sure any country is fielding 10 megaton monsters anymore. Maybe Russia has a few. The biggest weapon in the USA's inventory is "only" 1.2 megatons and that has to be dropped by an airplane so it's not going to have much chance of landing on Shanghai. Most weapons now are an order of magnitude smaller (hundreds of kilotons), with a high degree of accuracy ("circular error probable") obviating the need for extreme yield.

Nukemap, known to lots of people here, can help you explore your predictions. Here, I airburst a B-83 over Shanghai so you don't have to: https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=1200&lat=31.2322758&...

Sleep tight...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The $1.5T Nuclear Weapons Program You've Never Heard Of by Retric on Friday November 17, 2023 @01:48PM (#38308102)

Nukemap is rather optimistic, you aren’t getting the kind of medical attention to give people who got a 500rem dose a 50/50 shot of survival after a nuclear bombing. It also ignores fallout, secondary fires, etc.

Hard to say what hypothetical countries arsenals actually look like. The B-41 was supposedly 5.2 megatons of TNT per tonne of bomb designed in the late 1950’s. At 5 tons each a non reusable falcon 9 could get ~4 different 25 Mt bombs to LEO and possibly more on a ballistic trajectory. So it’s not like monsters don’t fit on rockets, saturation bombing is just more effective.

[ Parent | on HN ]