"Resonance from H Bombs" Topic

As we all know Britain especially would have been plastered with 1-50 megaton warheads if the 3rd Workd war had kicked off big time so was any studies done on how resoanance from shock waves would have made things even worse???

Please tell me that you're "just curious", and will not be using the information in a ruleset.

I would have thought the blast, firestorm, electromagnetic pulse, radiation and nuclear fallout would probably have been enough to contend with, but no doubt someone whose brother-in-law made 'resonance'(earthquake?) proof shelters commissioned a study that lies in the archive for a rainy (hard) day.

I dunno. Seeing those old movies of Nuclear bomb tests sorta shows what kind of effects there are. Robert

how resoanance from shock waves would have made things even worse???

You mean like annihilation, total devastation, complete destruction, no two bricks left together with no survivors and essentially a sea of fused glass type wasteland, as opposed to just total devastation, complete destruction, no two bricks left together with no survivors and essentially a sea of fused glass type wasteland?

Sorta like trying to determine if there would be any difference in effect on earth if the sun went nova as opposed to going supernova or hypernova.

"Resonance" would imply simultaneous detonation. Hardly likely.

I would not worry about those effects from an airburst. A ground burst could have possible resonance effects, though these are dependent upon the type of soil – soft alluvial, rocky, solid rock type formations, etc. also how deep did the device go before detonation, tonnage of warhead, how far from ground zero is the structure. Overall, it is insignificant to any damage assessment analysis. Though i would state that you would have anything from cracked walls to outright breaches depending upon location to device detonation locus.

I doubt it was necessary.

Probably just sufficient to say that most reasonably good sized, targets would have been taken out. Most likely, strategic targets would receive multiple weapons, to ensure obliteration, and to account for errant missile and warhead failures.

So what's the blast diameter of a dud?

Depends on whether it's a bomb or reentry body.

Bomb: assuming that by 'dud' you mean pretty much no fission but a conventional detonation, ehh, maybe as much AOE as a 2000lb bomb or a 16" shell. too many variables involved to really say more.

However, a reentry body is ~500 lbs at near-orbital speeds, packing several times it's own weight in blam even if the physics package is replaced with concrete. KE=.5*200kg*(11000m/s)^2 = roughly 5 tons of TNT equivalent.

I don't even know what 'resonance' is!

IIRC in the nuclear strike in 'Threads' (based on Operation Square Leg) the UK recieved approx 200 Megatons out of a global total of 3000 Megatons exchanged (60 MT in the first strike).

That was sufficient to destroy all the major strategic military targets as well as take out the power, chemical, steel industries and major transportation nodes with a bit of collateral damage on those unfortunate enough to be living nearby by. It did leave a surprisingly large number of survivors, although of course the vast majority starved to death or died of cold and disease and the population returned to medieval levels.

I'm not sure resonance would add anything very much to such complete devastation.

We seem to be calculating how many times the rubble bounces.

Lion in the stars: Thank you , didn't think it would be that powerful.

@Skippy: You could also have a less-than-intended yield, although implosion devices need to be just about perfectly squeezed every time simply to go off at all. That's one of the few details that horrible George Clooney movie 'Peacemaker' got right.

@Grizzly: That's why they called it "MAD".

And Arch, resonance (assuming you're talking the effect that demolished the Tacoma Narrows Bridge) requires *very* specific conditions to achieve, and I don't think that you can get (strategic) nuclear explosions close enough together to get resonance effects. There's this whole problem called 'fratricide' in the way.

Martin

destroy all the… power, chemical, steel industries…

Good job we beat them Ruskies to the punch by destroying our own industries ourselves: that'll teach them to threaten the British with their puny nukes!!

John T

So, are there estimated figures on initial deaths from an all out exchange? 1 year down the road (radiation and starvation)?

There are estimates out there, I don't know where off the top of my head.

But considering that a single Trident sub can carry as many as 8 RBAs per bird times 24 birds (designed for 12, but current treaty limits to 8), at 500kt each: 96 megatons per sub. each sub is at sea for roughly 3 months out of every 4, and there are 14 subs. Call it 9 subs at sea at any given time. 846 megatons that would be deployed in a second strike. Now double that, there's my estimate for the total land-based ICBMs. We haven't even gotten to the bombers yet.

My estimate for the initial exchange is 90% fatalities nationwide. 90% of the survivors would not survive one year. This would put the US population at ~3m one year after.

Going back to the 50s/60s when I was a young lad living in London. I remember seeing posters with the Nuclear bomb dropped on Brighton and rings of devastation going out from there to London .But then on holiday in Brighton the same type of posters but with the bomb dropped on London and rings going out to Brighton. Think these wear for civil defense recruitment.Bit frightening when your 10 year old
but (Dad would tell me they (Germans) bombed Battersea before so you would not know any difference if the Russians did it ) I know it was a joke but when your a 10 old it helps to put your mind at rest before you and your mates go up the Wandsworth common to pay Brits and Germans with our toy guns .

Well as the Soviets missiles had relatively poor accuracy they stuck much larger warheads on their missiles--So typical warhead would be at least 1 megaton with maybe up to 13 megatons for the bigger targets like london…