A Comparison of Nuclear Explosion Effectiveness against Underground Terrorists.

Bluebay | OCT 26 01 | VANNROX

[Alas]

So, to level Afganastan and then turn it into a sheet of glass, we ned what, about four of the 52,000 Kilo ton devices?

Nukem

[jimtorr]

The United States would be reneging on its pledge not to develop new nuclear weapons, and this would violate the spirit if not the letter of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which are geared to the elimination of nuclear weapons, not the making of new ones.

In other words, we have never pledged not to develop new weapons. Most treaty signatories have developed new bombs and missiles, and some have even tested them. Why shouldn't we?

[Arthur McGowan]

You know what a millihelen is, don't you?

The amount of beauty sufficient to launch one ship.

[glock rocks]

Why shouldn't we?

zactly.

[Texaggie79]

What are the criss cross smoke patterns in the 2 ones near the top?

[eclectic]

52 Mton is what the doctor ordered ;-)

[Cachelot]

However, it is appropriate to talk in terms of megatons, not thousands of kilitons.

Ummm.. May I be the first to tell you that your nick is not in order, Gigahertz? Straighten out, man ;).

[Cobra64]

"Bunker busters, "Bunker busters, Now that is the solution, Ya-Hoo!" (sarcasm)

They have limited capability to "bust" through more than about 20 feet of concrete much less than thousands of feet of granite. Look at a topo map of Afghanistan. Those living in caves, the cave dwellers there don't live in dessert sand dunes with a slab of concrete over their heads (some might).

Bunker busters will have limited capabilty in Afghanistan from the enemy we were routing out in the Gulf War. This is different terrain... Rhetorical question: would a bunker buster be as effective on killing an enemy submarine submerged at 1,000 feet as a torpedo fired from one of our subs at a similar depth? If you disagree, then we don't need subs, just more BUNKER BUSTERS!

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

Any footage of ultra small warheads designed for howitzer shells? I know they used to exist, do they still lie around in a magazine somewhere?

[winged1]

There is method in this idea that goes unnoticed. If you've ever spelunked you'd know that caves are the result of water erosion and their tunnels always bend and turn. Therefore flying a nuke into a cave would still result in it's exploding within a few yards. However, the resulting explosion and instantaneous pressure increase would be felt within the entire cave system, rendering it's occupants deaf or dead. Possibly blowing them clean out the other end. This effect can also be experienced with conventional warheads and I am immediately herewith applying for copywrite and patent rights to the idea. Pentagon - are you listening ?

[Cachelot]

Bunker busters will have limited capabilty in Afghanistan

Yes, perhaps. How about just laying down something extremely persistent around all the entrances and let them starve?

[vannrox]

Q: Can nuclear explosions cause earthquakes?

A: On January 19, 1968, a thermonuclear test, codenamed Faultless, took place in the Central Nevada Supplemental Test Area. The codename turned out to be a poor choice of words because a fresh fault rupture some 1200 meters long was produced. Seismographic records showed that the seismic waves produced by the fault movement were much less energetic than those produced directly by the nuclear explosion.

Analysis of local seismic recordings (within a couple of miles) of nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site shows that some tectonic stress is released simultaneously with the explosion. Analysis of the seismic wavefield generated by the blast shows the source can be characterized as 70-80 percent dilational (explosive-like) and 20-30 percent deviatoric (earthquake-like). The rock in the vicinity of the thermonuclear device is shattered by the passage of the explosions shock wave. This releases the elastic strain energy that was stored in the rock and adds an earthquake-like component to the seismic wavefield. The possibility of large Nevada Test Site nuclear explosions triggering damaging earthquakes in California was publicly raised in 1969. As a test of this possibility, rate of earthquake occurrence in northern California (magnitude 3.5 and larger) and the known times of the six largest thermonuclear tests (1965-1969) were plotted and it was obvious that no peaks in the seismicity occur at the times of the explosions. This is in agreement with theoretical calculations that transient strain from underground thermonuclear explosions is not sufficiently large to trigger fault rupture at distances beyond a few tens of kilometers from the shot point.

The Indian and Pakastani test sites are approximately 1000 km from the recent Afghanistan earthquake epicenter. The question that has been asked is whether or not the occurrence of these nuclear tests influenced the occurrence of the large earthquake in Afghanistan. The most direct cause-effect relationship is that the passage of the seismic waves, generated by the thermonuclear explosion, through the epicentral region in Afghanistan somehow triggered the earthquake. For example, following the occurrence of the magnitude 7.3 Landers earthquake in southern California on June 28, 1992, the rate of seismicity in several seismically active regions in the western US, as far as 1250 km from the epicenter, abruptly increased coincident with the passage of the earthquake generated seismic wavefield through each site. The abrupt increases in seismicity occurred primarily in regions of geothermal activity and recent volcanism. The mechanism by which this occurred remains unknown. The Afghanistan earthquake occurred at 06:22:28 UT on May 30, 1998 and the thermonuclear test most closely associated in time occurred at 06:55 UT or after the occurrence of the earthquake. The other nuclear tests occurred 2-20 days before the earthquake.

The elastic strains induced in the epicentral region by the passage of the seismic wavefield generated by the largest of the nuclear tests, the May 11 Indian test with an estimated yield of 40 kilotons, is about 100 times smaller than the strains induced by the Earth's semi-diurnal (12 hour) tides that are produced by the gravitational fields of the Moon and the Sun. If small nuclear tests could trigger an earthquake at a distance of 1000 km, equivalent-sized earthquakes, which occur globally at a rate of several per day, would also be expected to trigger earthquakes. No such triggering has been observed. Thus there is no evidence of a causal connection between the nuclear testing and the large earthquake in Afghanistan and it is pure coincidence that they occurred near in time and location.

One last point. The largest underground thermonuclear tests conducted by the US were detonated in Amchitka at the western end of the Aleutian Islands and the largest of these was the 5 megaton codename Cannikin test which occurred on November 6, 1971. Cannikin had a body wave magnitude of 6.9 and it did not trigger any earthquakes in the seismically active Aleutian Islands. Suggested reading: "Nuclear Explosions and Earthquake, the Parted Veil", by Bruce A. Bolt, W. H. Freeman and Co., San Francisco, 1976.

[Cobra64]

Not sure where you total pro-nuke guys are coming from. Atmospheric detonation of these devices would cause nuclear fallout which would kill most of Asia, and drift over the Pacific ocean and wipe out most of America. Nice solution, huh? Read through the articles above. Again, I say, if we want to use nukes, we should use "underground testing" on the enemy "living underground in caves." The caves close up with nuclear fission fallout. Please think through what you're proposing. I'm trying.

[vannrox]

One MILLION people in Iran were killed by Saddam's Iraq. He used SMALLPOX, ANTHRAX and EBOLA. Are we going to wait until that happens here?

[vannrox]

You are wrong. Not "atmospheric" detonation, but rather "ground" detonation would cause fallout of sufficient density to warrant the concerns that you raised. War is HECK. But if you are in it, make it as harsh and quick as possible so it ends quickly...

[95Tarheel]

Actually, most of these very large devices were detonated above ground, ie "atmospheric", and we didn't all die. The islands where we detonated bombs are much closer than Afghanistan, and the Soviet test range where the largest device ever used was detonated is probably about as close as Afghanistan is to us. Regardless, the size of the explosion does not correlate all that well with the amount of radioactive fallout.