Nukes nukes nukes nukes nukes!

[Jhessail]

Decided to make a dedicated thread since the discussion was monopolizing World News Today.

It all started with:

So... journalists in Germany found out that there will most likely be new US atomic bombs stationed in Germany soon. Yay... >.>
And it's a bargain! It's only going to cost the German tax payer 120 million Euros.
Which will be spent on renovating the runway for the airfield in question.

No statements from any official sides so far, but the magazine the fellas are working for has been (mostly) good with political stuff in the past. So benefit of the doubt goes to them for now.
They also ran a horribly uninformed story about "violence in video games" in the early 2000s, but at that time that was the current fashion anyway I guess.

In the end:
Man, my freedoms feel so protected already. Nice.



/edit
To clarify, there are already US bombs at that airfield, but they now get 20 new ones on top of that. Of the type "B 61-12", whatever the **** that is.

Then Mage added some info:

It's just replacing the weapons that were already there with modernized (and therefore safer) ones. Quit getting your panties in a bunch about it.

http://www.thelocal.de/20120905/44779

Duh got into the disarmament/escalation side:

Oh I couldn't care less about accidents. It's down at the border to France, so let them have it.
It's the principle of the thing, 's all.

What principal? You don't want to do THE VERY LEAST THING POSSIBLE to defend nato? 120 million Euros is nothing when your government budget is >1 trillion.

Germany has ****ed over Ukraine already with their "don't be provocative" nonsense they always say in negotiations.

The principal of not being a two-faced dirtbag

Deescalation is not something you should purely preach and its practise can hold as many merits to an alliance as other options may. Flying Fishy is right - you simply have a hard on for the big boom and can't seem to handle that other views than your own could be promoted or pursued.

If they want to hinder our ability to defend our NATO allies should article V be invoked, perhaps they should lose their own article V privileges and see how well they can stand up to Putin, Iran, North Korea, and Radical Islam on their own?

How does an increased presence of nuclear weapons in germany further your ability to defend nato allies against the opponents you mentioned? How does the rejection of increasing the arsenal hinder it?

Spoiler

The deterrent value is clearly neglible unless you want to argue that you lack the ability to destroy the previously mentioned opponents w/o these additional weapons in that particular location.

and

This is not an escalation, it's replacing existing weapons with newer ones. It's a necessary thing to do, unless you really want bombs that are decades old to just stay laying around.

You mean to say that these bombs aren't regularely serviced and that we are at risk, if they are not replaced with other bombs?

The necessecity of modernization is the standard PR procedure of this discussion, but there is clearly no actual risk and therefore no need on these grounds. This article seems closer to the truth: https://www.rt.com/news/316186-germany-us-nukes-upgrade/

The modernized weapons are more precise and less destructive, which increases their flexibility in regards of how and when they can be used. That may sound good on paper, but when it comes to nukes it isn't necessarily a good thing to make them easier to use.

Anyways, since it appears i phrased things in an unclear manner - the points on deescalation were in response to this bit by Derp Throbbing (though, clearly, upgrading weapon systems qualifies as escalating - see any arms race):

Germany has ****ed over Ukraine already with their "don't be provocative" nonsense they always say in negotiations.

and

I'm in favor of disarmament - it's better for the species overall if we don't have these weapons. In the absence of disarmament, it's better for the species that these weapons be as accurate as possible so that they are less likely to result in global catastrophe.

And if Russia know that the US has nukes which effect a smaller area than the old ones, then they will believe that the US will be more likely to resort to using them if Russia did something dramatic, therefore the principal argument for nukes as a deterrent is strengthened. If the US just replaced the existing nukes with more of the strategic scale bombs, then Russia might be tempted to push their luck a lot further, knowing the US would be extremely hesitant about using such devastating weapons no matter what the provocation.

Because america lacks strategic scale bombs? The only thing this development is achieving is the removal of exclusivity - i.e. the use of nuclear bombs exclusively as a deterrent. Instead the US and Russia both are moving towards being able to utilize them in a seemingly limited manner. That is a very dangerous gamble as we now have a clearly drawn line, whereas things will be much more blurry in the future. If it becomes "ok" to use nuclear bombs in standard conflicts, this use may very well spiral out of control - which nukes are okay and which are not? If the other side has a few more megatons, surely, we should adapt, etc.

That's about it.

 

[Jhessail]

My posts on the technical side:

Is there an immediate risk from current US nukes in germany as you insinuated? Is modernization required due to that?

Not an immediate risk but nukes do have a shelf-life. It's pretty long but eventually the electronic circuits will need to be replaced as well as the tritium booster (though I don't know if B61 uses tritium any longer, maybe they have something better in them nowadays) and even the plutonium itself will decay. At some point, maintenance is no longer sufficient and the bombs have to be replaced. It's not escalation, because it's replacing the existing ones, so as Mage said it's more of upholding the status quo, but obviously it is disappointing for the disarmament crowd who would rather see the bombs removed completely.

If you want straight up destruction, you do airbursts so you get a better fireball and especially over-pressure wave. SS-25 Topol, the mainstay of Russian nuclear arm, doesn't create any fallout if the airburst is higher than 2.5km in the air. Obviously the area directly below the explosion will still be irradiated but not too badly. The bigger and dirtier the bomb, the more radiation you get and if its an surface detonation, then you get dozens if not hundreds of tons of irradiated soil thrown around that is high dangerous and will stick around. But there is no rule-of-thumb because it depends on whether the bomb uses uranium or plutonium, what kind of detonation it is, how "clean" the bomb is, what altitude it happens, the surrounding area - just too many factors to generalize and still be accurate.

Not to mention that radiation is hardly a deterrence. Everybody practised during the Cold War to operate on a nuclear battlefield. You just suit up, button up your vehicles and hope that you don't need to dismount while near any hot spots. ABC/NBC units can decontaminate units after a nuke just as well as after nerve gas or anthrax - in fact it's easier.

Right.

Radiation is easy to clean - you literally just wash off the bigger particles, then get out of the hazmat suits or rain-gear you're wearing and move on. That's all you can do. If someone exposes their skin during the process, it's not end of the world - might not even get cancer with little luck. With chemical and biological agents, the cleanup process takes longer and is more complicated and one slipup usually means death. Plus you can measure radiation levels accurately with geiger counters, no such thing for many chemical or biological weapons.

Indeed. Eating radioactive material is the worst thing you could do because it gets the particles right next to all of your soft tissue.

Basically nuclear bombs put out neutron and gamma radiation in the form of particles. With an air-burst device, lot of those particles are shot into space or remain in atmosphere. So you get far less **** on you to begin with. Then you have to remember that the range of the initial radiation is pretty small and with most military nukes the fireball and air pressure will outstrip it, meaning that you get burned or crushed to death before the radiation has a chance to affect you at all. Some of the radiating particles have a half-life of seconds, others have a half-life of centuries, which means that the remaining radiation depends on what sort of "stuff" gets left behind but its general lethality will decrease pretty rapidly as well.

The neutron radiation can be divided into alpha and beta radiation, so we got three types. Alpha particles stick around the longest but are stopped by practically anything. Wearing clothes, goggles and a scarf over your nose and mouth will protect you but you might want to put a bandaid over any open wounds. Beta particles stick around for a bit but dissipate in hours/days and a solid wall or packed earth will stop them, so hiding at the bottom of your foxhole or in the basement of your house is enough to keep you secure. Gamma particles are ****ing nasty but also very short-lived. Only protection is distance from explosion or a sheet of lead, which is how that Japanese woman survived mere 300 meters from ground zero at Hiroshima - she was in the vault of a local bank at the time of the explosion.

Anyway, the dangers of nukes have been vastly exaggerated in the popular mind. FAS currently estimates that the total nuclear inventory of the world is around 15,700 warheads, most of which is held by USA and Russia. Number of operational warheads is vastly lower and could be as low as 4,000. Yields vary: 170 kt, 350 kT, 300 kT, 100 kT, 475 kT, 340 kT. That gives us an average yield of 290 when rounded up, meaning that a rough estimate of the total destructive force of Planet Earth with nuclear weapons reaches 4,553,000 kilotons or 4,553 megatons or 4.6 gigatons. Tsar Bomba was 50 megatons and caused a total destruction radius of 35 kilometers. 4553 megatons divided by 50 gives us 91 Tsar Bombas worth of destruction, meaning 35*91=3185 km. Now that sounds a lot but consider that the total surface area of Earth is 510.1 million km² and about 5% of that is urban area, so roughly 25.5 million square kilometers.

What does all that rough bull**** math mean? It means that we don't have enough nukes to even destroy all urban areas on the planet, meaning that all doomsday scenarios of cracking the planet in two or wiping out the human civilization or ending all sentient life are pure fiction and scaremongering.

 

[SacredStoneHead]

You could add this link as a music suggestion for listening while reading the thread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDgncPD0bew

 

[Cyborg Eastern European]

Sqveeee, we gots a nukular dred! 
_{Shut up, he's half green, half blue, he's perfect for this thread!}

 

[PinCussion]

Okay so the radioactive fallout might not be a big enough deterrent anymore. How about the electromagnetic pulse?

 

[Swissky]

Electronic devices might experience a surge (that's a high voltage spike, in more casual terms) which might break or decrease their performance but it's fairly easy to repair/replace.

 

[Cyborg Eastern European]

It was never, ever about fallout.


People just like not having all of their **** ruined.

See...

Spoiler: Crater surface area calculation.

Anyway, the dangers of nukes have been vastly exaggerated in the popular mind. FAS currently estimates that the total nuclear inventory of the world is around 15,700 warheads, most of which is held by USA and Russia. Number of operational warheads is vastly lower and could be as low as 4,000. Yields vary: 170 kt, 350 kT, 300 kT, 100 kT, 475 kT, 340 kT. That gives us an average yield of 290 when rounded up, meaning that a rough estimate of the total destructive force of Planet Earth with nuclear weapons reaches 4,553,000 kilotons or 4,553 megatons or 4.6 gigatons. Tsar Bomba was 50 megatons and caused a total destruction radius of 35 kilometers. 4553 megatons divided by 50 gives us 91 Tsar Bombas worth of destruction, meaning 35*91=3185 km. Now that sounds a lot but consider that the total surface area of Earth is 510.1 million km² and about 5% of that is urban area, so roughly 25.5 million square kilometers.

...only concerns the apocalytic imagery of every inch of the planet's surface being turned into wastelands of glassy sand dunes, from what I understood.

As far as taking out a significant fraction of the participants' own infrastructures, the numbers probably aren't nearly so forgiving, and would probably work like the effects of the 1940s bombing campaign delivered in a few hours, instead of half a decade.

 

[Jhessail]

Hey, Jhess, since we're already at it, care to add a bit on how it wouldn't turn everything into a fallout-esque wasteland as well?
_{Just interested in some research. Though, I'm developing a suspicion this might merit a whole new thread at this point...or not, it's still semi-topical.}

You mean the old nuclear winter theory? Yeah, that was debunked ages ago. Apparently the original simulation did not consider topography or weather or atmospheric effects. Now we know better and computer models of the climate have advanced leaps and bounds. So no, nukes on their own would not cause a nuclear winter. So then the argument became of smoke and soot from the fires, if US and Russia nuked all of their respective cities and Europe as well, couldn't all those burning cities release enough particles to the upper atmosphere that global temperatures would be affected, like they have been after gigantic volcanic eruptions?

Sure. But the volume necessary is massive. The 1883 Krakatoa eruption - the most massive volcano in recorded history - only caused a drop of 1.2 degrees Celsius. That is estimated to have been around 200 kilotons of strength but it's not quite a direct correlation because the explosion was underground and threw massive amounts of soot 80 km in the air. Air-burst do not throw material into the atmosphere, so you can only count on the soot from burning cities. Would that be enough? Nobody knows.

The early 80s stuff is the source of nightmares - a global drop of 20 degrees Celsius for years. But they didn't know that most of the soot would drop down in under two months due to gravity and precipitation. More modern estimates drop that down to 5-10 degrees. Then the Kuwaiti war happened and the despite of the predictions, the massive oil fires did not cause a drop of global temperature - not even a drop in Asian temperatures.

The idea persists in scientific circles to this day but it relies on using only the worst case scenario: when all nukes are used and massive firestorms persists for weeks and it happens at summer so that sunlight helps lift soot in the upper atmosphere and rainfall is minimal.

Finally, only Hiroshima produced a firestorm - Nagasaki did not. Modern cities would be unlikely to produce the kind of massive firestorms required to create the kind of soot that reaches upper atmospheres.

So survivors could certainly enjoy some spectacular sunsets but we would not freeze or starve to death.

 

[Cyborg Eastern European]

Actually, I just meant the whole "Nothing survives a nuclear war," thing; Everything is either dead, or has two heads even half a century later.

I knew about the nuclear winter thing, but it's not like I'm gonna stop you from dumping more info.

 

[PinCussion]

Hey, Jhess, since we're already at it, care to add a bit on how it wouldn't turn everything into a fallout-esque wasteland as well?
_{Just interested in some research. Though, I'm developing a suspicion this might merit a whole new thread at this point...or not, it's still semi-topical.}

Sure. But the volume necessary is massive. The 1883 Krakatoa eruption - the most massive volcano in recorded history - only caused a drop of 1.2 degrees Celsius. That is estimated to have been around 200 kilotons of strength but it's not quite a direct correlation because the explosion was underground and threw massive amounts of soot 80 km in the air. Air-burst do not throw material into the atmosphere, so you can only count on the soot from burning cities. Would that be enough? Nobody knows.

How about the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer

 

[Jhessail]

Electronic devices might experience a surge (that's a high voltage spike, in more casual terms) which might break or decrease their performance but it's fairly easy to repair/replace.

The EMP is also quite limited but inside its area of effect, it will fry all civilian electronics. Military stuff is usually hardened but it might not be enough.

As far as taking out a significant fraction of the participants' own infrastructures, the numbers probably aren't nearly so forgiving, and would probably work like the effects of the 1940s bombing campaign delivered in a few hours, instead of half a decade.

Well yeah. Russia has under three thousand warheads in operational use. Both Satan and Topol have 800 kT warheads, though Topol is probably configured in MIRV version with smaller warhead and decoys but who knows for sure. Bulava has a 150 kT warhead. Less than a thousand warheads are Bulavas, rest are Topols and Satans. But cities are also pretty big. Only SF is small enough that one Topol takes it out, for every other city you need two or three. Let's go with two, it's a good average. With about 1800 missiles, that means 900 cities to burn. Though obviously a whole bunch of those missiles are aimed at US silos and NATO command centers. NORAD for example will probably eat three or four warheads, just to be safe.

Yeah, Russia can still wreck the infrastructure of Europe and North-America pretty well. Of course, US can do the same to Russia and China.

Actually, I just meant the whole "Nothing survives a nuclear war," thing; Everything is either dead, or has two heads even half a century later.

I knew about the nuclear winter thing, but it's not like I'm gonna stop you from dumping more info.

Well that's bull****. Cockroaches and fruit flies will certainly survive as they can take much more larger radiation dosages than mammals. And again, the radiation from air-bursts is not bad and will not affect a large area. The hot spots will be small even if there will be thousands of them over the planet. Background radiation will increase, no doubt about it, meaning that cancer rates will jump up - but not enough to wipe out the human race or cause cows to transform into brahmin.

 

[Madhal]

What about earthquakes

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3020810/The-Apocalypse-Simply-Cheaply-Russian-military-analyst-recommends-bombing-Yellowstone-supervolcano-San-Andreas-fault-nuclear-deterrent.html

 

[Cyborg Eastern European]

a) Daily Fail.
b) Good luck setting that up reliably without someone noticing.
c) Good luck getting away with it when they do.
d) Good ****ing luck getting away with it from the rest of the world if you actually manage to set it off.

 

[Swadius 2.0]

Personally, I think purposefully mixing a giant batch of cheap CFCs and blowing it up into the atmosphere in one go would probably wreak more long term havoc than a contained nuclear attack.

Some nukes would be helpful in blowing that stuff up that high though, but you also need to dig a giant shaft and then put the butt-load of the chemicals there. Might also need to make the whole shebang reusable. Can't aim this at anyone, just a giant FU deterence device.

How much CFCs can be made for 120 million do you think hmmmmmm.

 

[Jhessail]

wat

 

[CryoNomad]

If this is a thread about nukes then...

The world needs to Nuke Mars so we can live on it. 

 

[Bluehawk]

Indeed. Eating radioactive material is the worst thing you could do because it gets the particles right next to all of your soft tissue.

Basically nuclear bombs put out neutron and gamma radiation in the form of particles. With an air-burst device, lot of those particles are shot into space or remain in atmosphere. So you get far less **** on you to begin with. Then you have to remember that the range of the initial radiation is pretty small and with most military nukes the fireball and air pressure will outstrip it, meaning that you get burned or crushed to death before the radiation has a chance to affect you at all. Some of the radiating particles have a half-life of seconds, others have a half-life of centuries, which means that the remaining radiation depends on what sort of "stuff" gets left behind but its general lethality will decrease pretty rapidly as well.

The neutron radiation can be divided into alpha and beta radiation, so we got three types. Alpha particles stick around the longest but are stopped by practically anything. Wearing clothes, goggles and a scarf over your nose and mouth will protect you but you might want to put a bandaid over any open wounds. Beta particles stick around for a bit but dissipate in hours/days and a solid wall or packed earth will stop them, so hiding at the bottom of your foxhole or in the basement of your house is enough to keep you secure. Gamma particles are ****ing nasty but also very short-lived. Only protection is distance from explosion or a sheet of lead, which is how that Japanese woman survived mere 300 meters from ground zero at Hiroshima - she was in the vault of a local bank at the time of the explosion.

Alpha particles are Helium-4 nuclei: two protons and two neutrons. When this particle is emitted by a radioactive material, the mass and atomic number changes and the isotope becomes a different element. Beta particles are electrons or positrons that are emitted when protons convert into neutrons or vice versa as a nucleus tries to stabilize itself. Although beta radiation penetrates further than alpha, alpha radiation is much more biologically active and dangerous if it actually reaches your vital organs. It does not "stick around the longest", it ionizes almost instantly on contact. Gamma radiation are photons beyond the frequency of X-rays. They're the least ionizing but much more practically dangerous because of their penetrating ability. Intense gamma waves may possess the same threat as the odd alpha particle, but with the added danger of negating your protective gear. Free neutrons or neutron radiation are not the same as alpha or beta as you implied, but are a fourth kind of ionizing radiation - they do not directly ionize since they have no charge, but when they're absorbed by nuclei, they result in gamma ray emission. Their neutrality also allows them to penetrate deeper than alpha and beta.

Half-life describes the length of time it takes for a quantity of material decaying to decrease by half. For example, Uranium-232 has a half-life of 68.9 years. During that time, the uranium molecules are spitting out alpha particles and becoming Thorium-228. If you had a kilogram of pure U-232 and left it for ~69 years, you should have a deformed hunk containing 500g of U-232 and 500g of a mixture of Th-228, its own product, Radium-224, and its products.... so on and so forth all the way down to Lead-208, which is stable and terminates the "Thorium chain". So isotopes with short half-lives are extremely dangerous during that time, but become safer quickly, while long half-lives indicate low, persistent radioactivity. Short half-life isotopes generated by a nuclear warhead are more likely to cause illness to the immediate victims of the blast, but not to anyone who enters the area days or weeks later, while long half-lives can make a region dangerous for generation after generation. During the Chernobyl clean-up, the most dangerous isotope by far was Iodine-131 (8 day half-life), but now Strontium-90 and Caesium-137 have supplanted it.

Radioactive material can be washed off which cuts short the effects of their emission on your body, but the exposure to ionizing radiation itself can not be reversed. All forms of ionizing radiation can cause unnatural chemical reactions that will impede or alter the function of cells in the body. If a cell in your heart or lungs has mutated and begun to reproduce at the expense of the surrounding tissue, then the damage will persist or even worsen long after the contaminant is washed off or flushed out of the body. All is takes is one grain of iodine dust suspended in a glass to water to ruin your life. Sleep tight, kids.

 

[PinCussion]

wat

I think he means that a crapton of Freon (Chlorofluorocarbon) released in the atmosphere would cause more long term damage than a crapton of nukes.

 

[Comrade Crimson]

I do have a question for anyone who is well educated about nuclear stockpiles and that sort of thing.

I'd presume this was more of a potential threat in the 1990's after the fall of the Soviet Union and the following chaotic period that followed the Post Soviet era, but how likely is it radical extremists can obtain nuclear weapons from old Soviet (or other) stockpiles? What is the estimated threat level in this day and age for a radical group, per say ISIS, grasping hold of one of these weapons?

I'm generally curious, and somewhat wary because ever since the Soviet Union fell I've heard of stories where a lot of silos were not properly guarded or maintained (not that they were necessarily well maintained during the Soviet era, but they were at least guarded sufficiently enough) and it being a huge vulnerability to the black market.

I'm also aware that there is often huge "rust camps" in Russia and other former Soviet nations that are large reserve stockpiles of outdated military equipment left to more or less gather dust. Just curious if someone knows more about this sort of thing, I've seen pictures of rust camps before but the nuclear question evades me.

(This one is near Bagram Airbase after the Ruskies withdrawed, but worth showing I guess.)

I'm also curious if these reserve rust camps have been utilized by Ukrainian military groups. I've heard of one story where a WW2 tank was taken off a memorial pedestal, used in active combat, and then driven back and returned to its spot after use 

 

[Cyborg Eastern European]

There was at least two memorial tanks, a T-34-85 and an IS-3. There's videos of those early in the Ukraine thread itself. IS had a machinegun mount welded onto it, I think. Is was returned when government forces (re)captured it.

Afghani T-62s rely on a similar rust pile, I think. VICE had a video on them. Though, I think that one might be closer to Kabul.

As far as nukes go...well, I'm guessing the chances of them falling into the hands of people who would actually know how to use them are rather slim, let alone for ones that would know how to use them effectively.
I'm guessing a nuclear technician is still a position sought-after enough that someone would be willing to have them employed and paid...for the most part.

On the other hand, if someone did abscond with a warhead, it probably wouldn't be detonated in an air burst, so recovery operations would be a bit more expensive.

wat

I think he means that a crapton of Freon (Chlorofluorocarbon) released in the atmosphere would cause more long term damage than a crapton of nukes.

Why would you even want to? You still have to live on the same planet.
And...

Good ****ing luck getting away with it from the rest of the world if you actually manage to set it off.