![]() Even 1st-degree burns are unlikely past 8.5 miles or so, and to get slightly sick from radiation would require being within 1.7 miles. If we take the American W88 (455 kT) as representative of this range, if slightly on the larger end, my handy nuclear bomb slide rule 2 gives severe damage to typical buildings (5 psi overpressure) out to about 3.3 miles and light damage like broken windows (1 psi) out to about 10 miles. In practice, most strategic nuclear warheads today are in the 300-500 kT range, with tactical weapons being smaller. Many of the scarier numbers come from unreasonably large bombs, the vast majority of which have been retired. Or between MOAB and an 8" artillery shell. To put it in other terms, the ratio between these two is approximately the same as the ratio between Little Boy and MOAB, the most powerful conventional bomb in the American arsenal today. The biggest-ever American nuclear test, Castle Bravo, was a thousand times more powerful than Little Boy, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The obvious next question is what each of those bombs can do, which in turn requires us to remember that not all nukes are the same. Note that this is a worst-case all-out nuclear war, and there are potential off-ramps short of it even if there was, say, a tactical nuclear exchange in Eastern Europe, although they aren't certain. 1 Some of these won't work, or will get shot down, but we can assume that other nations and the surviving stockpile weapons will bring the total back up. Worth adding to this are the Chinese (380 warheads), the French (280) and British (120), for a global total that we can round to 4,000 warheads for simplicity. Arms-control treaties limit both nations to 1,550 deployed warheads, although FAS estimates 1,588 for Russia and 1,644 for the US, probably due to slight differences in definitions. Denying the other side this time is undoubtedly a major objective of both nation's nuclear forces, so in practice, we should instead look at deployed warheads. The majority of these are in the reserve stockpiles of the United States and Russia, which are there in case the current arms-control regime fails, and would take time to deploy. ![]() After peaking at around 70,000 warheads in the mid-80s, it's fallen to only 12,700 according to the Federation of American Scientists. It's pretty murky.We should probably start with a look at the state of the global stockpile, because it's fallen dramatically in the last 30 years. There are precious few documentary resources declassified on this, and to my knowledge I have them all. It is of note that the Air Force staff thought gigaton weapons were both unnecessary and undesirable. That's not totally undeliverable but it's pretty huge. The mass of a 10 gigaton bomb, assuming standing yield-to-weight ratios (and maybe even a little better than normal ones), would be something on par with the Space Shuttle. But that may have just been tongue-in-cheek. As for delivery methods, it was not discussed, though it was implied at times that this was a "backyard" bomb, e.g., some kind of doomsday device. Whether that's all fission or not, I don't know. It would then set off another 9 gigatons. In any event, the main charge was 1 gigaton. It may have been some kind of Classical Super design, which Teller (and his proteges) believed would work if you scaled it up to huge ends. I don't think it was just an idea to him.Īs to how to do it - it's not at all clear whether it's anything special or not. He repeatedly returned to gigaton weapons over the years as the next step in nuclear arms. It wasn't just a theoretical thing to him - he actively lobbied for it, and studies were done into its feasibility over the period of several years. Again using the method of just chaining tertiary stages would've made this thing far too heavy for any practical military use as it just wouldn't be deliverable so my question is basically was there some design different to the standard Teller-Ulam design that he hoped this and the 10 gigaton bomb would be based off? ![]() I also heard he seriously wanted a 1 gigaton bomb made and put into the stockpile. I heard this was more of a theoretical thing for him however, but the same principle still applies. I don't think that even Edward Teller would be interested in such a design not necessarily because of it's too powerful but because the concept of just chaining a bunch of tertiary stages together doesn't seem like something Teller would find innovative enough to pursue with as much effort as he did the 10 gigaton bomb. While very powerful, the 10 gigaton doesn't seem to be a particularly innovative design as I imagine it's just a case of surrounding a fission primary with perhaps 4 or 5 large secondary stages and chaining even larger tertiary stages onto the ends of those until the yield is 10 gigatons, building this onto some type of ship, sailing it into a city's port and detonating it.
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