Change in nuclear weapons information

[Trigger Mike]

When I was a teen I read a book about nuclear war and it showed a map of destruction that showed a fireball damage out to 100 miles possibly further .  Then in the army I was tasked with protecting fallout from a NBC attack for our platoon should it happen and was taught the blast radius was substantially large.  
 

now days when I google blast radius it shows maybe 6 miles or so and at most wind damage at 100 miles and fire really small radius.  
 

when did it change?  

[Hardpan Curmudgeon SASS #8967]

Have fun...!  

 

https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

“Just cover up with your poncho”

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

The Soviets issued gas masks to everybody. Gas mask training was part of the school curriculum.

 

it was a crude made too.

[watab kid]

when i was young what i learned was all based on nagasaki and hiroshima , there have been a lot of significant advancements to the technology since then so i know what i once knew no longer matters and what i learned then was relavant in that this is nothing we want to have happen on any scale at any time no matter what ,  

[Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103]

8 hours ago, Hardpan Curmudgeon SASS #8967 said:

Have fun...!  

 

https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

I'm wondering how accurate Soviet ICBMs are, or if they even strive for accuracy, given the Radius of Hell a nuclear device generates.

Targets that were of military value a half century ago might still be on their hit list despite having been long since decommissioned.

Methinks the Watab Kid speaks truly indeed!

 

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

6 minutes ago, Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103 said:

I'm wondering how accurate Soviet ICBMs are, or if they even strive for accuracy, given the Radius of Hell a nuclear device generates.

Targets that were of military value a half century ago might still be on their hit list despite having been long since decommissioned.

Methinks the Watab Kid speaks truly indeed!

 

My guess, just a guess, is that money intended for maintenance was siphoned off to fix up a few generals’ dachas, same as maintenance money for the rest of the military.

[Cypress Sun]

 

I live about 12 miles (straight line) from MacDill AFB, a first strike target...a miss by a few miles isn't going to make much difference in the overall scheme of things. If it they do miss by a few miles, I hope they drop it right on top of my head...instant vaporization.

[irish ike, SASS #43615]

There is also the potential to use EMP's as the means to destroy/kill people but leave the area livable. As in buildings etc would be intact. The idea is the loss of food and water, power etc the citizens would soon turn on each other. The enemy can move in and take over.

 

When I was a kid in Southern California, 50's and 60's, we would do the duck and cover drills. As an adult I realized it was a waste of time.

There was Long Beach harbor/Naval station, El Toro Marine base, McDonald Douglas, Northrup, Norton AFB, March AFB, refineries, you get the point.

A friend later said all you could do was go in the garage, get a can of spray paint, paint an X on your chest and lay down in the driveway. 

[Cypress Sun]

38 minutes ago, irish ike, SASS #43615 said:

There is also the potential to use EMP's as the means to destroy/kill people but leave the area livable. As in buildings etc would be intact. The idea is the loss of food and water, power etc the citizens would soon turn on each other. The enemy can move in and take over.

 

When I was a kid in Southern California, 50's and 60's, we would do the duck and cover drills. As an adult I realized it was a waste of time.

There was Long Beach harbor/Naval station, El Toro Marine base, McDonald Douglas, Northrup, Norton AFB, March AFB, refineries, you get the point.

A friend later said all you could do was go in the garage, get a can of spray paint, paint an X on your chest and lay down in the driveway. 

 

If you've ever lived in a heavily populated area that has lost power for more than a few days, you'd know that people start turning on each other within just 4 or 5 days. Seen it for myself after hurricanes. I can just imagine what happens at weeks 3  and 4.

[Chantry]

Some of it might be the switch from a single multi-megaton nuclear warhead to the multiple kiloton nuclear warheads designed to hit multiple targets.

[Matthew Duncan]

14 hours ago, Trigger Mike said:

When I was a teen I read a book about nuclear war and it showed a map of destruction that showed a fireball damage out to 100 miles possibly further .  Then in the army I was tasked with protecting fallout from a NBC attack for our platoon should it happen and was taught the blast radius was substantially large.  
 

now days when I google blast radius it shows maybe 6 miles or so and at most wind damage at 100 miles and fire really small radius.  
 

when did it change?  

You need to follow the science……………….sarcasm.

[ShadowCatcher]

Blast radius and lethal zones are a function of yield and detonation altitude. 

 

Fallout and the amount generated are a function of how much material is brought into the fireball and irradiated.

 

There is a significant difference in total destruction between a 100 Kt burst at 15K feet and

a 1 Megaton burst at 1500 feet, and a 1 M burst at 100,000 feet.  The latter is how you create EMP's and shut

down any Electronic circuit not protected in a Faraday cage.

 

The aforementioned neutron weapons are designed to kill by lethal doses of radiation but not blast effect

potentially leaving the civil infrastructure ready for re-use. 

 

There are some hardened targets that require a penetrating warhead and at least 100Kt to break them and render them

unfit. 

 

There is a lot of info in the public domain that you can read if you want, and one particularly harrowing book is

Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, available on Amazon.

 

SC

 

[Pat Riot]

16 hours ago, Hardpan Curmudgeon SASS #8967 said:

Have fun...!  

 

https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

Great minds and all that. 
 

I never really feared nukes but I do fear the fallout and the slow agonizing death. I have always said that if there is a nuclear war I hope I am standing under one when it goes off. That “Survivalist” crap is out the window when nukes get tossed around. 

[Pat Riot]

14 hours ago, watab kid said:

when i was young what i learned was all based on nagasaki and hiroshima , there have been a lot of significant advancements to the technology since then so i know what i once knew no longer matters and what i learned then was relavant in that this is nothing we want to have happen on any scale at any time no matter what ,  

Both those bombs were between 10 and 15 Kilotons. Imagine what a megaton warhead could do. 

[Dilli GaHoot Galoot]

Did someone say "Fallout"?

 

[Rip Snorter]

Hairy thought. I can remember grade school air raid drills in the early '50's.

[watab kid]

4 hours ago, Pat Riot said:

Both those bombs were between 10 and 15 Kilotons. Imagine what a megaton warhead could do. 

exactly , thats why i i gave the casis of my knowledge 

[Pat Riot]

4 hours ago, Dilli GaHoot Galoot said:

Did someone say "Fallout"?

 

 

More like…

 

[Trigger Mike]

9 hours ago, Chantry said:

Some of it might be the switch from a single multi-megaton nuclear warhead to the multiple kiloton nuclear warheads designed to hit multiple targets.

That does make sense like the one Russia sent the other day, 6 warheads instead of a huge one(yes it was conventional this time)

[Dubious Don #56333]

On 11/21/2024 at 10:43 PM, Hardpan Curmudgeon SASS #8967 said:

Have fun...!  

 

https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

Alex Wellerstein's excellent tool. It's a handy reference "with slides" that illustrates to the layman the area of destruction regarding nuclear weapons. It shows the area and defines the differing effects found for heat, radiation, air pressure and so on.

 

One of the texts I used back in the day was Glasstone's Effects of Nuclear Weapons. it came with a circular slide rule, the Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer. Did basically the same thing as Wellerstein's website without the slides, LOL.

 

To do these calculations you need to know the size of the device. Airburst versus surface, wind direction/speed altitude and more importantly, the estimated yield. (size of the blast.) This allows the effects or radiation to be calculated, among other factors. In addition, you can survey the damage and estimate the yield that way.

Estimate.

 

These above calculations allow you to do a reasonable estimation on fallout. Wellerstein's website does that too. Fallout is spread by wind, weather. Google  "Downwinders". This is a specific group of people living in a defined area, primarily in the Southwestern USA (and others) in the 1950's-60's that were exposed to fallout from the above ground nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site. (and other places in the world like Bikini)

 

Circular Error of Probability; this is the radius of a circle where the probability of 50% of the impacts will be inside. Back fifty years ago, that circle could be a mile. Or more. Today, that circle can be measured in stadium size and some systems can drop the warhead on specific seats. Which is why they don't need a nine megaton nuke to destroy NORAD under its granite mountain or buried command bunkers anymore.

 

Because of the above, nuclear weapons were quite large, 500kt, 1.4 Mt and the big one, what they put on the 56 Titan II's the W-53. Nine Mt.

Kiloton = Equal to a thousand tons of TNT

Megaton = A million tons of TNT

 

Today they use something like 300Kt, depending on the system and some missiles have three, up to ten or more warheads. Each. Which can be independently targeted. Some can be decoys as well.

 

Back in the day, my State, Arizona was A-Numbah #1 on the hit list for nukes. We had two wings of Titan II ICBM's around Tucson and several SAC bases, plus strategic assets in the Phoenix area. Today, not so much. The Air Guard refueling wing is still based out of Phoenix. The old SAC base in Tucson does different stuff than ICBM's. Luke AFB west of Phoenix is only a training base, these days for F-35's. Sound of FREEDOM, baby!

 

None of these would be a Primary target in WWIII. In Theory. Not all that long ago, I did new calculations for my AO. If. If they dropped one on Luke, because of their long runways and ability to potentially service strategic assets, they just might drop one or two on that base. I live nine miles, as the crow flies. Weapons of @ 300kt, the most common, actually, that "they" might use, my home is just outside the major effects of blast, heat, overpressure.

In Theory.

Provided I'm not on the roof or in an exposed area, I and my family would be fine. Fallout comes after. How long depends on the factors discussed previously. The short version is IF, if we bugged out immediately, we could make it to a "safe" distance north and east away from that detonation and OUT of the initial fallout zone.

 

If the power doesn't go out and scramble all the traffic lights. IF the other three, four million others sharing this Valley of the Sun with me don't all panic and hit the streets too, that is. LOL.

 

When I was a young troop stationed in Western Europe we knew any incursion by the Soviets would include nukes/chemicals. Which is why we practiced the bugout, basically. Then "we" as in the entire frickin' US Army turns into a spearhead aimed right for those commie so-and-so's trying to storm through the Fulda Gap. They never told us this but "everybody knew" that if the WWIII balloon went up, BOTH sides would probably immediately go to nukes and chemicals. First tactical (in theater) size, then strategic.<---this means they bomb DC. Omaha. Etc.

 

Oh. And if you were wondering, in my experience, I and my fellow Soldiers were acutely aware that should WWIII happen to us, we weren't going to make it home. Even if we "won", we knew the score of life in a nuclear post-WWIII world. We knew we were never going to make it home. We knew that THAT didn't matter, because the defense of Freedom from the commies rested at OUR feet. So, we might as well stand tall, fight like hell and take a few commies with us in the hopes that future generations would rebuild and prosper. As they did after WWII. As they did all down through Human History.

At least that's how it rolled in my little AO, simply a part of a small cog in the Big Green Machine. Now you know how Private Snuffy got his name.....

 

Since it's been fifty years, the declass of most of this information is astounding. You can look up the above ground testing they did in Nevada and other places.

 

Here's a good place to start;

List of United States nuclear weapons tests - Wikipedia

 

Special points of interests; testing series of Operations Plumb bob and Upshot-Knothole.

Yes. They built "towns" then nuked them to see what would happen.

Yes. They exposed our own troops DELIBERATELY to then study the effects of radiation/fallout protection.

Yes. They did extensive testing to ensure that none of these weapons would go high-order on accident.

(None did, but they surely cracked a few up during the times of SAC/Airborne Alerts/Launch on Warning. Oh. What FUN those days were)

 

One of the best texts on the subject is Effects of Nuclear Weapons by Glasstone. Considered "the" text. It's one I used back in the day and I still do...as a hobby. LOL

 

[Pat Riot]

Here is an excellent site for seeing active jet-stream information. It’s not very intuitive but it’s fairly easy to figure out. Click on “Earth” in the lower left corner to see an index. 
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/250hPa/orthographic=-83.99,21.81,141

 

Here is a good site for calculating the hPa vs altitude. 
https://www.weather.gov/epz/wxcalc_pressurealtitude

 

With the first site one could estimate fallout patterns. God forbid it’s ever needed for that. 

[Trailrider #896]

I only remember doing a duck-and-cover drill once, in school, in the 50's. We went into the hall and crouched down on the floor.  In civilian life, I figured, if I had the warning, to go outside with a semi-automatic rifle, and...in the ultimate act of defiance...to shoot at the incoming warheads!  Otherwise, if you have any warning at all, and are near a target area, bend over, place your head between you legs...and kiss your a$$ goodby!