[HN Gopher] Revisiting the "Tsar Bomba" nuclear test
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Revisiting the "Tsar Bomba" nuclear test
Author : Tomte
Score : 62 points
Date : 2021-12-09 12:37 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| retrac wrote:
| It's only implied in the article, but developing such a 1000+
| megaton bomb would probably have been possible. There is no clear
| upper limit to the yield of a thermonuclear device; it seems it's
| mostly a question of adding more fuel.
| dragontamer wrote:
| The Tsar Bomba was the practical limit for what could be
| dropped by an airplane.
|
| In fact, the Tsar Bomba had a large parachute, to ensure that
| the airplane could fly away in time.
|
| ---------
|
| Allegedly, the Tsar Bomba weighs 27 tons, which is a little bit
| beyond what a modern C-130 could carry. (But maybe a modified
| C-130 could carry such a weapon).
|
| EDIT: Bigger bombs could be made, but the question of "how to
| deliver" the weapon to our enemies becomes a significant
| question. There's always the Dr. Strangelove approach of
| building an infinitely huge bomb in your own country, and
| hoping the bomb is big enough to blow up the world... but that
| was a joke / sarcastic movie and not an actual plan (I hope).
| echelon wrote:
| > The Tsar Bomba was the practical limit for what could be
| dropped by an airplane.
|
| > Allegedly, the Tsar Bomba weighs 27 tons, which is a little
| bit beyond what a modern C-130 could carry.
|
| Turn a C-5 Galaxy into a drone and then you have 140+ tons to
| work with.
| irrelative wrote:
| There was a sort of doomsday device built by the Soviets:
|
| https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113242.
| ..
|
| > If there's a crisis, somebody in the Defense Ministries has
| to turn it on, so that's the first step. It then tries to
| find evidence that there's been a nuclear hit on the Soviet
| Union. If it determines that there has been a hit, then it
| tries to communicate back to the Defense Ministries. And if
| it can talk to them, it says, okay, humans are still alive. I
| don't need to work. I'll shut off.
|
| > But if it can't communicate with them, then it knows
| there's been a crisis. We've been hit by a nuclear warhead
| and all the lines of communications with the Defense
| Ministries have been taken out. So now, we need to bypass all
| the traditional layers of command authority, and suddenly,
| the ability to launch a nuclear retaliatory strike is given
| to some junior official in a bunker.
| dwighttk wrote:
| I mean. Drop the bomb and just don't let it go off until the
| plane is far enough away. You'd miss out on the airburst, but
| it's big enough that probably wouldn't matter.
|
| Or throw it out and give it some sort of self propulsion that
| keeps it at the airburst height until the plane is far enough
| away.
|
| C-130 is just a little guy... looks like a C5 could carry at
| least 3 of those bombs (if I'm doing my math right.)
| mithras wrote:
| I think Starship could deliver a 150 metric ton bomb.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| The use of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe by both sides
| would have left the USSR conquering ruins and ghouls.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| What about delivery by ship? I wonder what are the limits for
| cargo ships. Personnel could evacuate and remotely detonate.
| [deleted]
| trhway wrote:
| Modern Russian "Tsar Bomba" in an autonomous nuclear
| powered 10000+ miles range mini submarine https://en.wikipe
| dia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpose_... . They are
| already being put into service.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The problem with nuclear UUVs is that they don't solve
| any tactical problems Russia actually has.
|
| Want to nuke Jacksonville, Norfolk, New London, San
| Diego, and Puget Sound? Russia can already clobber them
| with enough ICBMs.
|
| So... first strike? In which case the silos in the Great
| Plains launch on you, followed shortly thereafter by any
| SSBN on patrol.
|
| It only makes sense as a defensive weapon. And while
| Russia is paranoid, I don't think they're strategically
| expecting the US to be able to neutralize their road/rail
| mobile forces and submarines and strategic bombers in a
| first strike.
|
| In which case it only makes sense as a propaganda device.
| Good use of limited funding, there.
| handrous wrote:
| > EDIT: Bigger bombs could be made, but the question of "how
| to deliver" the weapon to our enemies becomes a significant
| question. There's always the Dr. Strangelove approach of
| building an infinitely huge bomb in your own country, and
| hoping the bomb is big enough to blow up the world... but
| that was a joke / sarcastic movie and not an actual plan (I
| hope).
|
| I could _absolutely_ see a country planting too-big-to-drop
| nukes along potential invasion routes. Especially during the
| Cold War, but even now.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Nuclear artillery did the job just fine though.
|
| When you have a gun that can deliver nukes 50km away (ie:
| standard M777 Howitzer), it makes more sense to shoot the
| nuke at the enemy rather than plant a bomb in an expected
| path. That way, you remain flexible.
|
| Artillery guns like the M777 can be fired roughly 10-times
| per minute (depending on the skill of its crew). Give them
| nuclear rounds, and they'll deliver.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_artillery
| handrous wrote:
| Sure, but heavy artillery might not survive a loss of air
| superiority over "friendly" territory. A deep-buried
| super-heavy nuke does, and forces the invaders to slow
| down and try to deal with it while using other, worse
| routes that aren't in its blast radius, or else risk
| having it go off at a very inconvenient time. Like the
| ultimate scorched-earth plan.
| openasocket wrote:
| A nuclear land mine was deployed by the US: https://en.wiki
| pedia.org/wiki/Medium_Atomic_Demolition_Munit... . Not
| actually high yield, apparently only up to 15 kilotons. I
| could see it being useful to blunt an attack, and small
| enough that you could easily deploy them during a conflict
| and not have to deal with the political considerations of
| pre-positioning them. And unlike other tactical nuclear
| weapons it isn't really possible to intercept them. I could
| definitely see the DPRK deploying something like this to
| delay an invasion.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I remain fascinated by the W54, a nuclear weapon that has
| a _carry bag_.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W54
| ethbr0 wrote:
| It's not overly linked on Wikipedia, but apparently the
| Green Light teams were the intended delivery method of
| tactical nukes in the late 50s / early 60s.
|
| Haul a nuclear backpack in, bury it, set the timer /
| unroll a cable, and then evacuate (optional) and
| detonate.
|
| Pretty crazy stuff.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Light_Teams
| dragontamer wrote:
| Davy Crockett nuke was a point-and-shoot rocket launcher.
|
| A bag makes some semblance of sense: you are intending to
| run away before the bag goes off. That's not the case
| with Davy Crocket: you almost certainly will be exposed
| to the radiation.
|
| EDIT: Hah. Apparently the Davy Crockett used that W54 you
| were talking about as the warhead.
| duxup wrote:
| I would argue anyone without a robust ICBM program might
| find the land mine method attractive.
|
| And there are a number of those nations.
| foobarian wrote:
| It's interesting that they also thought it would not be
| possible to deliver such a bomb due to its expected size. It's
| water under the bridge now but I wonder if that constraint
| would have been overcome had they chosen to develop the bomb.
| duskwuff wrote:
| As mentioned in the article -- if the bomb is large enough,
| that no longer matters. You can detonate it wherever it
| happens to be and destroy your target -- along with yourself,
| and everyone else on the planet.
|
| Whether this is a useful strategy remains (unfortunately) up
| for debate.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| If the goal is mutually assured destruction, then wouldn't
| it be more economical for all countries to just share one
| bomb rather than duplicate all the development efforts and
| go to the trouble of putting rockets under them?
| lliamander wrote:
| But who gets to push the button?
| lapetitejort wrote:
| Perhaps form an alliance with as many countries as
| desired, each of which gets one button wired in parallel
| with the rest. If any one country were to feel threatened
| by any other, they could just hover their hand over it.
| foobarian wrote:
| I took that note as hyperbole myself. But the other
| comments about dev testing the bomb were interesting -
| there was (thankfully!) serious concern about fallout
| wherever the bomb would end up getting tested.
| dragontamer wrote:
| The Dr. Strangelove movie was excellent in its satire of
| this concept.
|
| Its an insane concept, and no normal / rational human would
| ever dream of that argument. But the problem is that we are
| not all rational people.
|
| The majority of the people in the movie are rational, it
| only took a couple of crazies to turn the whole situation
| into a darkly hilarious and apocalyptic turn of events.
|
| ---------
|
| Spoilers for the old movie:
|
| That's exactly the point of the doomsday device. The
| problem in the movie, is that the Russians didn't announce
| the existence of the doomsday device yet... they were
| __planning__ to inform the USA on Dimitri Kissov birthday
| next week. Which is... a comedic but somewhat believable
| reason to hold back on the announcement of such a weapon.
|
| So the Russians were only crazy because they didn't inform
| the USA of the weapon yet. And it only took one crazy
| commander ("Precious Bodily Fluids") to go against the US
| President and start the nuclear war.
| Retric wrote:
| It's possible to scale ICBM's to basically any size. The
| "unwieldy" Tsar Bomba was only ~60,000lb in 1961, but by 1967
| the Saturn V could have launched ~5 of them to LEO.
| dragontamer wrote:
| "Fortunately", its a more efficient plan to instead launch
| MIRVs. That is, instead of launching 5 Tsar Bombas with one
| rocket, you should launch 100 smaller (but still nuclear)
| bombs in one rocket.
|
| The explosions from a nuclear blast have a radius
| proportional to cube-root(power), and radius-squared is
| roughly the level of damage you deal.
|
| As such, MIRVs of smaller weapons (large enough to be of
| incredible destructive power, small enough to fit many many
| of them on a rocket) is simply a superior strategy over the
| old Tsar Bomba.
| Retric wrote:
| In general yes, but the specifics get complicated. Both
| cost and weight are non linear with bomb size. For
| maximum efficiency vs surface targets relatively small
| H-Bombs win, but it's more complicated when you start
| looking at bunkers, tactical nuclear weapons, fallout,
| EMP, and targeting accuracy. Which is why the US and
| Russia both had a wide range of bombs.
|
| Historically a significant portion of the push for MERVs
| was simply an increase in targeting accuracy.
| philipkglass wrote:
| I don't have citations to hand because I've been reading too
| many different nuclear weapon publications, but I seem to
| recall there was an idea to deliver these super-size weapons
| by unmanned submarine. The targeting wouldn't have been very
| accurate, but it wouldn't need to be.
|
| It's interesting how nuclear weapons in general were solving
| the problem of accurate targeting by making it unneeded.
| Today one attack helicopter can plausibly take out 16
| 1969-vintage T-72 tanks before rearming. In 1969 the expected
| solution to a giant herd of Soviet tanks coming through the
| Fulda Gap was tactical nuclear weapons, because NATO forces
| could not fire their conventional weapons accurately enough
| to stop such an advance.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Any book recommendations in that category? Ive been eyeing
| "109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of
| Los Alamos" for some time but have not started anything.
| philipkglass wrote:
| I read the big Richard Rhodes classics [1] a long time
| ago. Now I'm mostly reading blogs, declassified primary
| sources, and publications from open source intelligence.
| Two somewhat lesser known books I recommend if you are
| looking for details more than broad history are _U.S.
| Nuclear Weapons: The Secret History_ and _The Swords of
| Armageddon_ , both by Chuck Hansen. Both are currently
| out of print. The latter can be found on Library Genesis.
| I scanned _The Secret History_ about 10 years ago and
| uploaded it to a technical book sharing forum but sadly
| nobody seems to have propagated my scan to Library
| Genesis and I can 't be bothered to go through their
| sign-up process right now.
|
| [1] _The Making of the Atomic Bomb_ and _Dark Sun: The
| Making of the Hydrogen Bomb_.
| eesmith wrote:
| Quoting a different article by the same Wellerstein, at
| https://thebulletin.org/2021/11/the-untold-story-of-the-
| worl... :
|
| > It is hard to convey the damage of a gigaton bomb, because
| at such yields many traditional scaling laws do not work (the
| bomb blows a hole in the atmosphere, essentially). However, a
| study from 1963 suggested that, if detonated 28 miles (45
| kilometers) above the surface of the Earth, a 10,000-megaton
| weapon could set fires over an area 500 miles (800
| kilometers) in diameter. Which is to say, an area about the
| size of France.
|
| Yes, it's so powerful it's blasting the air into space.
| Adding more power doesn't so much make the blast more
| powerful as make the air go into space more quickly!
| Arrath wrote:
| < Yes, it's so powerful it's blasting the air into space.
| Adding more power doesn't so much make the blast more
| powerful as make the air go into space more quickly!
|
| Wow. How many of these would it take to appreciably reduce
| atmospheric pressure world-wide?
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| > Adding more power doesn't so much make the blast more
| powerful as make the air go into space more quickly!
|
| I guess more power would make a difference to what it does
| with the ground beneath it, though. Not sure what that kind
| of energy would actually do, though, vaporize a chunk of
| the crust?
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| I wonder if a ship might actually be a decent delivery
| mechanism for a multi-gigaton device
| krylon wrote:
| Technically, yes. Practically, the Tsar Bomba was already
| beyond what was useful in military terms. Above a certain
| yield, most of the energy is radiated off into space, IIRC.
|
| Not that I'm eager to find out, if you're catching my drift.
| markdown wrote:
| No, I'd rather not catch your radioactive drift.
| jumboshrimp wrote:
| Using the tool Nukemap linked in the article has completely
| ruined my day.
| procarch2019 wrote:
| Yes, it makes perfect sense now, but after looking at the
| different radius's I will not run to the window when I hear
| blasts.
| kmote00 wrote:
| The lethal effects of the blast travel faster than the speed
| of sound [1], so, once you've heard it, I'm afraid, it's
| already too late.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explos
| ion...
| dragontamer wrote:
| Well, not quite lethal or "too late".
|
| https://senseis.xmp.net/?AtomicBombGame
|
| > The blast from the atomic bomb "Little Boy" above
| Hiroshima interrupted the game in its third day. It came at
| 8.15 am and at a point where the players had replayed the
| position - but had not yet started the game again. There
| were injuries to some of those there caused by flying
| glass, and damage to the building. Hashimoto was blown off
| his feet. The game wasn't resumed until after lunch. The
| game was then played to a conclusion, Hashimoto winning by
| five points with White (there was no komi). This tied the
| match 1-1.
|
| --------
|
| So we know what to do when a nuclear weapon goes off. You
| get knocked off your feat, wonder wtf is going on. Then you
| reset the gameboard and play your next move.
| 404mm wrote:
| I came across the tool when calculating blast radius of re-
| entry vehicles carrying nuclear war heads launched in the
| previous season on Fear The Walking Dead to see how realistic
| it was.
| roywiggins wrote:
| "Physicist Edward Teller in particular strongly advocated in
| favor of developing two even more powerful hydrogen bombs"
|
| to be fair, that was how Teller wanted to solve most problems
| ajuc wrote:
| When all you have is a fusion bomb ...
| vipa123 wrote:
| ... everything resembles a glass lined crater?
| wussboy wrote:
| Not yet. But it will.
| yeuxardents wrote:
| I believe he lobbied JCOS to build a 'continent killer' capable
| of wiping Europe, for example, off the map. The ultimate
| deterrent...I believe the response was 'only if we had to use
| it would it work..so no, you crazy man' paraphrasing, read
| about it a few years ago
| kranke155 wrote:
| Jebus lord, I have to read about this. Any idea on sources?
| arethuza wrote:
| http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/09/12/in-search-of-a-
| big...
| [deleted]
| ourmandave wrote:
| "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they
| could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
|
| If there was _ever_ a project that embodied the quote, this is
| it.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| There's a Russian plane mounted autocannon that was not
| practically usable because it shook the plane apart. Light
| bulbs and other glass would break when fired and the airframe
| sustains structural damage.
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