Nuclear Weapons - Discussion.

Scott Kenny said:
Gamma will go straight through you and not hit much on the way through.
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As another poster has just pointed out Gamma-rays are very, VERY damaging, a Gamma-photon is sufficiently energetic to break a chemical bond in molecules.
 
The most amount of gamma only happens upon the explosion. After all the creation of gamma is a high energy physical event. In this case nothing could save you anyway.

Otherwise a gamma is released after an alpha or beta fission but this can only happen a few times before the original nucleus becomes too small to be radioactive anymore. Considering the inverse-square law for distance the radiation effect won't be compareable to something that fissions right next to your tissue/atoms. Naturally, neutron, alpha and beta on the inside deposite energy 100% of the time. While gamma may be very powerful, but for the same reason it's less easily captured. Not that it won't happen mind you.
 
exclaimedleech8 said:
I don't think you have a choice
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Wearing a dust mask will protect you from alpha and beta sources, but most people feel much safer while wearing a full-face paint mask with military filters on it.

Free neutrons you need to stay as far away as possible from the source to minimize your exposure.

IIRC all the really hot stuff from a nuclear blast will be down to reasonable exposure levels in 30 days.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Wearing a dust mask will protect you from alpha and beta sources, but most people feel much safer while wearing a full-face paint mask with military filters on it.

Free neutrons you need to stay as far away as possible from the source to minimize your exposure.

IIRC all the really hot stuff from a nuclear blast will be down to reasonable exposure levels in 30 days.
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Actually it's 2 weeks, which is a very long time to spend indoors.
 
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Scott Kenny said:
Significantly less damage to you than neutrons.

If you must take a dose, take gamma.
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When exposed to a whole-body, high neutron flux dose one of the things those neutrons do upon entering the body is turn, by neutron activation, a significant amount of Sodium (Specifically Na-23) into Sodium-24. Sodium-24 is an intensely radioactive short-lived radioisotope with a half-life of 15 hours where it emits high-energy gamma-photons before decaying by beta-particle emission into Magnesium-24 (Which is stable). As a result that leaves this unfortunate individual highly radioactive for about a week all the time getting an internal full-body gamma-ray dose.

This neutron activation process of Sodium-23 turning into Sodium-24 was discovered after the now infamous and iconic Crossroads Baker shot in operation Crossroads in 1946 at Bikini atoll. This was a major factor why the explosion's base-surge was so intensely radioactive for about the first week after the shot.

 
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bobbymike said:
You do remember Covid lockdowns right?
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Are you seriously comparing COVID to the period after a nuclear war?

Well there are a few crucial differences:
People were able to go outside during COVID either for exercise or to go to the grocery store or visit the doctor
People had electricity and running water during COVID
 
exclaimedleech8 said:
Are you seriously comparing COVID to the period after a nuclear war?

Well there are a few crucial differences:
People were able to go outside during COVID either for exercise or to go to the grocery store or visit the doctor
People had electricity and running water during COVID
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No I wasn’t “seriously” comparing the two or by another word it was a “joke”

But that said a post nuclear war scenario staying indoors with no running water or electricity eating the food you have on hand any harder than going out everyday to potentially fight “Mad Max” style for food and water against hordes of armed radiation poisoned crazies?

Like to what degree are any choices under your parameters measurably good, better, best (alternatively bad, terrible, god awful, etc.)
 
bobbymike said:
No I wasn’t “seriously” comparing the two or by another word it was a “joke”

But that said a post nuclear war scenario staying indoors with no running water or electricity eating the food you have on hand any harder than going out everyday to potentially fight “Mad Max” style for food and water against hordes of armed radiation poisoned crazies?

Like to what degree are any choices under your parameters measurably good, better, best (alternatively bad, terrible, god awful, etc.)
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That was my point, it would be better if we could give out this radiation vaccine and allow people to emerge from their basements after 2 days instead of 2 weeks to start rebuilding civilization.
 
publiusr said:
New video on the largest test shot

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The problem with this video is that it depicts the Tsar Bomba as a two-stage device but given its very high 50MT yield and other publicly available data the test-device was clearly a three-stage device.
 
NMaude said:
The problem with this video is that it depicts the Tsar Bomba as a two-stage device but given its very high 50MT yield and other publicly available data the test-device was clearly a three-stage device.
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Articles say that it was a 2-stage in the test, using a lead tamper instead of a uranium one to minimize fallout.

The 100MT version would have been 3 stages.
 
The old refrain was "the bigger the bang, the cleaner the bomb".

But pure fusion would need the sort of high explosive compounds that currently seems too unstable to safely use. Last I read they got upto seven nitrogen atoms in a stable lattice, but too much vibration and it explodes. The sort of material that make nitroglycerin seem safe.
Though the explosive force was substantially greater than current explosives.

The other 'magic bullet' would be using antimatter to compress matter to fusion.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Fission primary, fusion secondary. Lead tertiary in the test shot. Operational ones would have a fission tertiary.
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When I mean tertiary I mean an actual seperate tertiary as first tested in the Zuni and Tewa shots of the 1956 Operation Redwing, these test shots respectively tested the UCRL BASSOON and BASSOON PRIME devices (The former being a 3.5MT yield with an 85% fusion fraction, the latter a 5MT yield with 87.5% fission yield, it was one of the dirtiest test-devices fired in the US atmospheric test programme).​
 
NMaude said:
When I mean tertiary I mean an actual seperate tertiary as first tested in the Zuni and Tewa shots of the 1956 Operation Redwing, these test shots respectively tested the UCRL BASSOON and BASSOON PRIME devices (The former being a 3.5MT yield with an 85% fusion fraction, the latter a 5MT yield with 87.5% fission yield, it was one of the dirtiest test-devices fired in the US atmospheric test programme).​
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Right. And the operational Tsar Bomba would have had 50MT of raw fission in the tertiary, before you get into however much fission was in the primary. massively dirty warhead.
 
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Scott Kenny said:
Right. And the operational Tsar Bomba would have had 50MT of raw fission in the tertiary, before you get into however much fission was in the primary. massively dirty warhead.
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That's why Soviet leadership decided to only test downgraded version - they were very concerned about enormous fallout the whole thing would create. Same reason (one of them, to be exact) why USA eventually dropped the idea of developing comparable, or even more powerful warhead - the limited-scale test without tetriary would not looks much more impressive than Soviet one, and full scale test would be enormously dirty.
 
Dilandu said:
That's why Soviet leadership decided to only test downgraded version - they were very concerned about enormous fallout the whole thing would create. Same reason (one of them, to be exact) why USA eventually dropped the idea of developing comparable, or even more powerful warhead - the limited-scale test without tetriary would not looks much more impressive than Soviet one, and full scale test would be enormously dirty.
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Actually it was because such a large explosive would destroy the delivery bomber and kill its crew
 
exclaimedleech8 said:
Actually it was because such a large explosive would destroy the delivery bomber and kill its crew
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Nope, it wasn't a problem. By the moment of bomb detonation, the carrier plane was already 40 km away from ground zero, and by the time shockwave reached in - 115 km away. At such distance, even 100-megaton blast would create less than 1 psi overpressure (and due to low air pressure at 11,5 km altitude, it would be even less).
 
Dilandu said:
That's why Soviet leadership decided to only test downgraded version
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IIRC the decision to use a clean, derated bomb was Andrei Sakharov's decision.

Dilandu said:
Same reason (one of them, to be exact) why USA eventually dropped the idea of developing comparable, or even more powerful warhead
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If it hadn't been for the 1963 partial test ban treaty the US would've tested a very high yield three-stage test-device (By three-stage I mean a distinct seperate tertiary).

Dilandu said:
and full scale test would be enormously dirty.
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Not necessarily dirty (UCRL successfully tested the three-stage BASSOON and BASSOON PRIME devices in the 1956 operation Redwing test-series, with shot ZUNI being a 3.5MT 85% fusion shot and shot TEWA being a 5MT 87.5% fission yield test) also unlike the USSR the US had a vast open seas test-site, they just had to be careful with the weather when firing high-yield multi-megaton test-devices.​

Dilandu said:
Nope, it wasn't a problem. By the moment of bomb detonation, the carrier plane was already 40 km away from ground zero, and by the time shockwave reached in - 115 km away
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Not from what I've read, IIRC the modified Tu-95 lost over 3,000 feet in height when the shockwave before the pilot was able to regain control and the Tu-95 was permanently grounded after landing due to heavy structural damage.
 
Dilandu said:
Still would be VERY risky - recall the Castle Bravo consequences.
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The Castle Bravo disaster happened because the weaponeers who'd designed it had assumed that Li-7 was functionally inert and wouldn't meaningfully contribute to the secondary's fusion and fast-fission yield and oh boy were they wrong.
 

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