"How Can I Make An Atomic Explosion?" Topic

How can I make a representation of an atomic explosion on the wargame table, without the use of fissionable materials? I am looking for a way to make a mushroom shaped cloud, for 1/72nd scale for a tactical nuclear weapon.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

Many year sago I saw one done with a large plastic plate on top of a traffic cone, all covered with cotton wool.

Throw a kitten on the table?

At 1/72nd scale it would still be about 150 feet tall, lol.

I would use steel wool over a wire maquette. Spray black and dry brush flame and smoke layering. Maybe put a red light in the core with a battery pack in the base.

Is that mushroom cloud supposed to look like a smiling Bozo the Clown?

Look up some of the old Starship Troopers articles in Mongoose's Signs & Portents magazine, they should be free PDFs. One person made a huge one using Great Stuff Foam Insulation.

link

Try confining expanding urethane foam insulation in a tied off bag or pillow.
Pull the bag through a toilet paper tube to get the column. Cut the tube away later.
Or use two tubes, separated by an inch or so.
Maybe you can pinch the bag as the foam sets to get lumps in the cloud. Or pinch it in with strings,

spray paint it black later and admire your work.
I doubt you will be able to remove the pillow.

Ha ha, I see the clown durnford,
a tube of expanding foam might work,let us know how it goes.

It does, doesn't it?

I made mine out of grey computer packing foam, I used my existing 15/20mm burning vehicle markers (which are around 4" high) and made up some seperate mushrooms with a cut cross in the middle to push over them as needed.

I'm using them with a ground scale of 10cm = 1km, so they are reasonably in scale for tac nukes, but obviously not strategic weapons. I made a few as one tac nuke on its own isn't any use to anyone is it:)

Man, I hate clowns. I bet the NSA jumped on this thread like a fat kid on a pork chop.

"one tac nuke on its own isn't any use to anyone is it:)"

Least of all the people it drops on!

Martin Rapier, pictures please?

CmdrKiley, that seems pretty doable.

Many people are afraid of clowns. Combining them with atomic weapons seems to add a psychological aspect to atomic warfare.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

Well you have to throw out scale first, then decide what you're trying to do.

At 1/72 even the smallest workable nuclear explosion simply clears the table. If you look at the photo (nice photo!) there's a flat disc at the bottom, then a column, then the exciting cool part at the top. All you ge to model if you stick to scale is the flat disc at the bottom, and it will cover your table. Done. All you need is to buy a couple cheap pillows at WlaMart, pull out all the cheap filling, spray a little black spray paint on there, cover your whole table, and you're done.

If you're supposing this is a really small nuclear weapon then there's more bad news:you won't get a mushroom cloud. that iconic cloud comes not from the nature of the explosion but from the scale of it. A very, very large conventional explosion will also give you a mushroom cloud, and a theoretical very small nuclear explosion will *not* give you a mushroom cloud.

Now I will stop being Karl Killjoy. If you want a mushroom cloud on the table, you should have one!

First you need to decide on the size, since this is imaginary anyway you can make it as big or small as you like. My next thought would be to the base – it has to be heavy to keep that oversize top part stable. I'd go to Home Despot and see if I could find a grey paver or brick of some kind. Next you need something rigid to hold up your cloud. This could be wire or dowels. That I would wrap in the cheap pillow filling. Then the black spray paint. Then comes the storage problem, but I never think about that until after I've built big awkward terrain pieces.

Nukes are only funny once….errr, twice.

Could be a collapsed tac nuke round from Space Opera or Traveller to be for 1/72nd scale. Stay away from Vortex bombs, those just suck.

I recall that the old Gene McCoy 1950ish set had rules for tactical nukes on the table. The blast area was huge.

@ durnford 1879 … thanks for my first LOL of the day !

@ Mike …have you seen this ; ?

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… I like how they come in 'small , medium or large' … I don't own one ..but they are on a wish list.

..or you could get a saucer with a little metho or turps and ping-pong ball shavings/small pieces (for smoke effect) … and drop a match onto it … you may not be invited back once the sprinklers kick in tho' .

just the title of this topic could summon black helicopters to your house

My game table is 16 X 7 and we used a 1KT nuclear weapon once. You gotta aim for the middle while you sit on the edge. I also game outside on the ground in my backyard, 24 X 60. So space is not too big of a problem.

The Litko one was sort of my inspiration to ask about it. It's a bit small and notional for my taste.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

Dirtside II has rules for nukes too.

There used to be an SPI board game in the 1980s called WWIII or something equally snappy about the Central Front in Europe.

This had a mechanism for simulating the use of tactical nuclear weapons by trebling the attack value of units.

The rules said that if you wanted to simulate a strategic nuclear exchange you should pour lighter fluid on the centre of the paper map and cardboard counters and apply a lighted match.

The same should work well with miniatures, but I suggest that you play when the wife is out of the house…

Cheers,
Bertie

"A very, very large conventional explosion will also give you a mushroom cloud, and a theoretical very small nuclear explosion will *not* give you a mushroom cloud."

Even 2000 pounders in Afghanistan produce a nice mushroom cloud.

As for tac nukes? Well, Modern Spearhead has perfectly workable rules for their use, and if you are simulating Warpac tactics where they are just used as part of the preparatory bombardment, then their use is almost essential.

Just remember to spread out…… 6km per battlegroup and all that.

If you are doing company sized actions, they might be a little excessive, but for battlegroup, regiment and up, why not?

Military wargames include them too, with 'tactical' including weapons up to 100KT (which is quite capable of flattening a decent sized city). Ideal for creating those instant anti-tank obstacles in West Germany.

I have the Litko mushroom clouds, the big one is something like 18" tall.

This was posted on TMP a couple of years ago. Expanded foam I think.

link

If you're supposing this is a really small nuclear weapon then there's more bad news:you won't get a mushroom cloud. that iconic cloud comes not from the nature of the explosion but from the scale of it. A very, very large conventional explosion will also give you a mushroom cloud, and a theoretical very small nuclear explosion will *not* give you a mushroom cloud.

Dunno where you got that info, but I've seen a mushroom cloud the size of a pie plate. Quite literally, as it was from a pie plate with some chemicals (dunno what, I was ~12 at the time) on it. FOOMP! and there was this little bitty mushroom cloud rising above the campfire.

I think it comes down to the amount of heat directly in the center of the blast versus the amount of blast.

Some chemical blasts will produce the mushroom cloud.

You're also confusing the scale of 'small nuclear weapon' and 'very large conventional explosion'. I've seen 100+ton conventional explosions in Iraq and Afghanistan (videos) that won't produce a mushroom cloud, when a tiny nuke is something less than a kiloton of explosives. A thousand tons of TNT or less. That's an order of magnitude bigger than the largest conventional ordnance disposal ever recorded.

Great job-now we are all on "the list"

Getting back to my pillow or plastic bag suggestion…
Punch a few holes in the bag before you spray in the expanding insulation foam to give it lumpy irregularities.

Well, you get some plutonium or uranium, shape into hemispheres, arrange the shaped charges…excuse me, gotta answer the door for the Neighborhood Survey Association…hi, no I really don't have time…<clunksmackscrabblescrabbleclump! draggggg…..ka-chunk.>