TDA unrealistic (?)
Jon McCombie
The war depicted what MIGHT have happened if 10-megaton warheads were
dropped. It is my understanding that no major power maintains missles with
< 20-megaton warheads; usual firepower is more like 100-megatons.
As the producer (or was it the director?) said in an interview (quoting
from memory...): "Sure, if we'd been completely realistic, the film would
have been real short: introduce the characters, show the flash, pan the
crater, roll the credits". Nothing more. Bi-i-i-i-lions and bi-i-ilions
of square meters of fused silica parking lot.
jmcc...@bbncca.arpa
Posting-Version:version B 2.10 5/3/83; site bbncca.ARPA
Path:duke!decvax!bbncca!jmccombi
Message-ID:<3...@bbncca.ARPA>
Date:Wed, 23-Nov-83 21:19:54 EST
Organization:Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma.
Henry Spencer
The war depicted what MIGHT have happened if 10-megaton warheads
were dropped. It is my understanding that no major power maintains
missles with < 20-megaton warheads; usual firepower is more like
100-megatons.
Not true. 10 megatons is an *enormous* warhead for a missile, there are
no 20-megaton missiles that I'm aware of, and nobody has ever even tested
a 100-megaton bomb. (The USSR did test a 67-megaton bomb that could most
likely have been upgraded to 100, which is where the 100-megaton number
comes from.)
The typical warhead for Minuteman missiles is a few hundred *kilotons*.
Poseidon warheads are typically 20 kilotons. I'm not sure about MX and
Trident, but I believe they're similar. The only US strategic weapons
that carry multi-megaton bombs are the manned bombers, and these days
even they tend to carry larger numbers of smaller warheads. The Soviet
weapons are similar, although they do have one quite large ICBM that
might carry a few megatons.
Why? Two reasons. First, all those megatons aren't really necessary.
Remember that a measly 13 kilotons smashed Hiroshima, a sizeable city,
pretty badly. Second, multi-megaton bombs are terribly inefficient.
Most of the power goes into re-re-re-devastating the central area.
The radius of destruction scales as somewhere between the square and
cube root of the power of the bomb, so it grows slowly with bomb size.
To get a bigger area of destruction, several small warheads are a
much better approach. The really big bombs are useful only against
something like a deep-buried military base that needs to be smashed
*hard*. Not many of those. For ICBM silos, accuracy is more important.
In fact, a major argument against the development of the H-bomb in
the early 50's was that there was no legitimate military requirement
for it: A-bombs of various types could meet all known needs. This
is still true today, although it is often *easier* to build the more
substantial warheads as fusion bombs.
In short, hundred-megaton bombs are the stuff of poorly-written
novels (like Down To A Sunless Sea, a real turkey), not reality.
Most real warheads are small fractions of a megaton. Of course,
they'll still kill you just as dead if you're under them...
--
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry
wrb...@aluxp.uucp
Typical warheads on Minuteman missiles are typically in the 100s of
kilotons range not mega-megatons. If memory serves me right, Titan II
warheads were(are? They still around?) approx. 10 megatons each (no MIRVs)
No nation has ever built a 100 megaton nuclear device although the Russians
claimed to have one in East Berlin in the 1970 time frame - Typical Lies.
Just a brief comment. I hope public education in this country hasn't sunk
so low that people don't have enough sense not to frolic about in fallout
like it's the first snowfall of the year like what was depicted in TDA.
WR Bullman
do...@arizona.uucp
For all you people in favor of disarmament, what I would like to know is this.
Do you seek a unilateral disarmament, or a bilateral disarmament?
If unilateral:
1) Do you believe that the Soviets will follow suit later?
2) If not, do you believe that the Soviets will at least leave us alone to
practice our democracy in peace?
3) Will they leave the rest of the non-communist world alone, or will they
continue their expansionist policies?
4) If the Soviet Union were the only country with nuclear weapons, what would
they do?
5) If the United States of America and its NATO allies were willing to disarm
unconditionally, but the Soviet Union and its allies were unwilling to disarm
under any condition whatsoever, would you still seek disarmament in the US and
NATO?
6) Are you advocating "Peace at any cost" even at the cost of freedom?
If bilateral:
1) Would you accept a unilateral disarmament? A unilateral freeze?
2) If the Soviet Union refuses, what would you do?
3) Do you consider the US and NATO to be the driving force behind the
arms race?
For those in favor of EITHER one:
1) Do you believe that anyone in Washington (or anywhere else) actually
seeks nuclear war, a conventional war, or world dominition (partial or total)?
2) Is disarmament the complete solution?
3) If you are successful, will the threat of world destruction be over?
4) What do you consider to be the next most important issue facing the
world today?
Send replies to ...kpno!arizona!doug and I (or John Placer) will summarize
them and post them on the net.
Pase