America "Planned to Nuke the Moon"

[beastro]

"Planned" as in look into how feasible it would be for a study and then shelved.

This is how all crazy "Plans" work out. It's no different than the CDC spending some time to look into how to handle a zombie outbreak: It's a change of pace, waaay out there and fun to see what the nuts and bolts of it would pan out in real life.

Does that mean the CDC has ever seriously prepared for a zombie outbreak?

No.

Did the USN seriously look at building the Tillman battleships?

No.

It was to see what the crazy stuff they design that could fit through the Panama Canal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_battleship

Did the US plan to invade Canada in the 1930s?

No.

But they made sure they had a plan if the by some chance in a blue moon the US actually went to war with the British Empire.

The latter is very relevant as this "nuke the moon" thing is spat about to drum up Anti-Americanism just like Canadian journalists will "discover" War Plan Red every few years to drum up the original Canadian nationalism: Anti-Americanism.

 

[DoPo]

And even with the lower yield some scientists feared the bomb could IGNITE THE ATMOSPHERE.

That was actually the first A-bombs that scientists feared would burn the atmosphere, not the Czar bomb in particular.

 

[Treblaine]

SuicideJim, it's obvious you haven't spent much time in the UK as "The Sun" is the most disreputable publication in the UK if not the entire world.

Entire cities have boycotted the paper, it's sister paper was shut down for hacking the phones of kidnapped children, right now it is under investigation for the most onerous invasions of privacy.

I'm sorry, buy you NEED another source other than The Sun. Fox news would be a better source.

The Sun is one of those wacky tabloids that prints HEADLINE stories like "Is there a WWII bomber on the Moon?" without it even being an April fools joke, their only *evidence* being a single unaccounted and blatantly docotroed image of a WWII bomber on a moonscape.

I mean they have soft-core pornography on page-3 FOR EVERY SINGLE DAILY EDITION! Always ALWAYS you open past the first page and there is a topless barely-18 year old girl there.

 

[scorptatious]

So I'm guessing Dr. Eggman proposed the idea?

 

[Swyftstar]

I wouldn't doubt it. Between the USA and the USSR blowing up nukes of ridiculous sizes and yields all over the damn place I'm surprised we made it out of the '80s.

 

[RedDeadFred]

It's not the craziest thing that happened in the cold war.

Look up Czar bomba, the biggest bomb in history - detonated by Russians. First, it had to be scaled down because with the original yield, the plane that dropped it couldn't escape. And even with the lower yield some scientists feared the bomb could IGNITE THE ATMOSPHERE. It didn't, but it still flattened houses and killed a few people tens of kilometers away from the ground zero.

Nuking the moon is child's play compared to what we did to our own planet where we actually live.

Ya. When you think about how devastating the Fat Man and Little Boy were and then you realize that they were minuscule in comparison to the Tsar Bomba, it's kinda terrifying.
http://www.blog.markloiseau.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/tsar_bomba.jpg

 

[Treblaine]

And even with the lower yield some scientists feared the bomb could IGNITE THE ATMOSPHERE.

No, some scientists merely joked it would. They actually had a betting pool on the night they detonated the first device, and the "ignite the atmosphere" was the astronomically small odds as a joke bet.

Serious scientists knew it was impossible as that's not how chemistry works. There is no chain reaction to spark in air no matter how hot any one point gets.

The real bets were on the actual yield which they did NOT know, they honestly had no good idea how high the yield would be, anywhere from 1 kiloton to 40 kilotons.

 

[RufusMcLaser]

...Slight downside to this method of propulsion was that it would irradiate the planet to apocalypse levels...

Sorry, what? None of the studies for Project Orion described any health effects of that scale.

...This is how all crazy "Plans" work out. It's no different than the CDC spending some time to look into how to handle a zombie outbreak: It's a change of pace, waaay out there and fun to see what the nuts and bolts of it would pan out in real life...

Well said. The U.S. is only half of the War Plan Red equation, of course, people tend to forget about Defence Scheme No. 1. Neither are worth raising a fuss over. I wouldn't be surprised if the DoD doesn't still have an OPLAN or CONPLAN for invading Canada, presumably in the event that Canada is occupied by someone more overtly hostile.

My capthca: pumpkin pie.
I hate pumpkin pie.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Well, I suppose commentary on tabloids are on par with most of the ACTUAL articles on The Escapist now...
Still. It's kind of a neat idea. I wonder what such an explosion would look like from earth...

 

[Daveman]

...Slight downside to this method of propulsion was that it would irradiate the planet to apocalypse levels...

Sorry, what? None of the studies for Project Orion described any health effects of that scale.

True, I was more talking about the fact that it would potentially one day enable MASSIVE space travel if we could make it big enough and THAT would totally irradiate the planet. I think I just got a bit muddled.

 

[Gabanuka]

Novices

*goes back to work on his evil scheme to set fire to the sun*

Didn't they realise that nuking the moon would lead to a shit tonne of luna rock about to crash into the earth?

 

[Reincarnatedwolfgod]

your source is the sun... i advise you come back back with a reputable source
i am not reading reading a article from the sun because it would be a complete waste of my time.

It was only a matter of time, those Pinko Commie Moon-People needed a nuke!

but does nuking the moon prevent Commie ghosts from paint moon pink and draw a lenin face on it ?
if you are confused then watch this or watch it because no bark crazy in the best way possible

Spoiler

 

[Eggsnham]

Meanwhile, in Russia...

 

[RufusMcLaser]

...more talking about the fact that it would potentially one day enable MASSIVE space travel if we could make it big enough and THAT would totally irradiate the planet. I think I just got a bit muddled.

I see what you mean. It's a fun post-post-apocalypse scenario, put that way... The remnants of humankind setting out from the remains of a ruined Earth in search of a new planet, etc.

...
- the americans had plan for atomic powered planes
...
- my personal favourite. the american davey crockett.. take one specially built recoilless rifle mounted on your jeep, dig a trench nearby, fire a small nuclear weapon at advancing soiet forces, jump in the trech because you are in the blast radius of the weapon you just fired....
- the AIM-26 falcon american nuclear tipped air to air missile was another. fire that from your fast moving fighter and you have a 6 mile maximum range and a 20 kiloton warehead detonating

The Americans went so far as to actually fly a reactor in a converted B-36, and managed to construct functional turbofans powered by small reactors (although these never flew). I saw two of them at EBR-1 in Idaho several years ago... great big monstrosities which never lead to anything useful.

You're a bit off on the Davey Crockett and the AIM-26. The M388 had a tiny yield- 10 or 20 ton-equivalents- with a tiny blast radius and radiation danger to go with it.
Here's [http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/gmap/hydesim.html?dll=50.63144,9.84769&yd=.02&zm=13&op=156] the approximate blast radii centered on a town just east of Fulda.
It would have to be employed at the inside of its range in order to put the users in direct danger from the blast effect. Cold warriors recount [http://www.fulda-gap.de/waffeneinsatz.htm] that employment was a shoot-and-scoot model, rather than shoot-duck-cover.
As for the AIM-26, similarly, the yield was somewhere between [http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/m-26.html] 250 tons and 1.2KT, not 20KT. Six miles is plenty of range. The AIR-2A had a 1.2KT yield and the same range, and was successfully tested & deployed.
My personal favorite for nuttiest/ballsiest DoD Cold War nuclear project was Project Pluto. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto]

 

[Thaluikhain]

Did the US plan to invade Canada in the 1930s?

No.

But they made sure they had a plan if the by some chance in a blue moon the US actually went to war with the British Empire.

The latter is very relevant as this "nuke the moon" thing is spat about to drum up Anti-Americanism just like Canadian journalists will "discover" War Plan Red every few years to drum up the original Canadian nationalism: Anti-Americanism.

Er, a war with the UK wasn't that improbably. Still unlikely, of course, but there were tensions between the wars that the Washington Naval Treaty calmed down.

Ya. When you think about how devastating the Fat Man and Little Boy were and then you realize that they were minuscule in comparison to the Tsar Bomba, it's kinda terrifying.
http://www.blog.markloiseau.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/tsar_bomba.jpg

Mind you, that was because they couldn't guarantee getting the device near the target, so both sides built them big so a near miss was still a hit. It makes sense from that point of view.

- the soviets never made it thank goodness but they did have plans for a doomsday weapon incase the nukes did fire. take one ship the size of a large oil tanker, fit it with automated sensors to detect radiation from fallout which would automatically trigger the bomb.. which happened to be an oil tanker sized nuclear weapon.

Hey? As I understand it, there's a limit to how big you can make a nuclear device, beyond that sticking more material in doesn't help. The Tsar Bomba might have hit that point, and not made 100MT. As an aside they don't make devices that big anymore, because if you double the amount of material, you get less than double the yield (and doubling the yield gets you less than double the amount of useful energy anyway). So, make three at a third the size...if the target is really solid you hit it with a MRV, not a big device.

Talking about weird/scary things, though:
The USSR had submarines which would stay underwater during WW3, and for a year after, then surface, launch rockets with spy satellites, see who is rebuilding, and target them.

Also, they'd target neutral nations, and their own allies. It doesn't matter if you aren't a threat to the USSR, if you would be a threat to what's left of the USSR after a nuclear war, you get at least one, normally aimed at your capitol.

 

[FalloutJack]

Relax. This is still alot more sane than the Doomsday Machine...


[HEADING=1]...WHICH WAS REEEEAAAALLLL!!![/HEADING]

 

[pilouuuu]

Hey, it's what happened in the Planet of the Apes! Sci-fi is dangerously close to reality sometimes!