MW2: how did the [spoilers] blow up?
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An EMP is simply an electro-magnetic pulse. In more general terms, it is a short duration, high-intensity electro-magnetic event. Nuclear detonations are simply one example of such a thing (and the most powerful man-made example). The reason such things are dangerous is that there is a curious connection between magnetism and electricity (or indeed, any form of radient energy). Simply put, placing a conductive material in an EM field can result in an electrical current. You can see this applied any time you turn on your lights - the power likely came from a plant that used a spinning magnet and a coil of wire to produce the energy. Almost all forms of electricity generation in use today relies on this principle and the only way they vary is in the means used to drive the turbine. Wind power relies on pressure differences in the atmosphere to turn the turbine, where nuclear/coal/oil/gas rely on superheating water to accomplish the same.Offworlder said:
The goal of an offensive EMP is to create a strong enough EM field that the current generated in a circuit is sufficient to damage the circuit in some capacity. There are ways to shield against such a thing. Using a non-conductive covering is the most common (and generally least effective) way. More effective mechanisms rely on using another conductor to force the new current down a path that mitigates damage. This can be a simple as simply wrapping the device in a conductor to an incredibly complex system of fail-safes (like a fuse or circuit breaker) and back up systems.
While I agree with your end conclusion, I would point out that the weapon's yield was at least an order of magnitude greater than 16kt. The only atomic weapons used in war both registered explosions in excess of 30kt afterall, and a fairly standard yield for a single warhead carried by a missile or bomb is above 1 megaton. This doesn't change the conclusion however - the resulting energy that would likely reach the ISS would be insufficient to destroy or even damage the structure or it's occupants.Kubanator said:
Play nice, guys.
A video of the explosion can be found [a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYorxd-pLIM"]here[/a] at 6:18 (pardon the extremely annoying voice - not mine F.Y.I.). Odds are a nuke going off in space would have some sort of effect on satellites and the like, but would it really make 'em go "kerflooie?" Personally, I think the science here is dubious. Sure, the explosion would send superheated gas in all directions, but it clearly took place at least a good two or three thousand kilometers away. At that distance, there is no way the shockwave could have had any significant impact without anything to propagate it.
Of course, strictly speaking, the brilliant flash of light should have blinded him and anyone else who was looking at the sky at that moment...
But also strictly speaking, the astronaut would have been wearing a protective visor to protect himself from the raw power of the sun's rays in the first place.
...And also strictly speaking, it was a kick-awesome scene. And so it goes.
A video of the explosion can be found [a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYorxd-pLIM"]here[/a] at 6:18 (pardon the extremely annoying voice - not mine F.Y.I.). Odds are a nuke going off in space would have some sort of effect on satellites and the like, but would it really make 'em go "kerflooie?" Personally, I think the science here is dubious. Sure, the explosion would send superheated gas in all directions, but it clearly took place at least a good two or three thousand kilometers away. At that distance, there is no way the shockwave could have had any significant impact without anything to propagate it.
Of course, strictly speaking, the brilliant flash of light should have blinded him and anyone else who was looking at the sky at that moment...
But also strictly speaking, the astronaut would have been wearing a protective visor to protect himself from the raw power of the sun's rays in the first place.
...And also strictly speaking, it was a kick-awesome scene. And so it goes.
Why would it be nuclear, there is no acceptable reason for why Russia would just say NUKE THEM because of a terrorist attackhebdomad said:
M.A.D. (Mutuallly Assured Destruction) is a reason why nuclear war hasn't occured, because if Russia sent a Nuke to the US the US would send a nuke straight back and so on and so forth.
They invaded because they were pissed off about an American terrorist attack on Russian soil.
This occured in real life (See: US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan) even though they believed they had nuclear weapons they still invaded.
In World War one every country had gas they could use on the enemy and this occured. So in World War 2 they recognized the harm it did so all governments agreed upon a policy of "We only use it if they do it first" The same applies with nuclear weapons in modern times
Not really a plot hole, in my mind
well nothing but curiosity working here and it bugged me a lot....CORRODED SIN said:who cares? it was fuckin sweet. lets stop knit-picking and just enjoy the experiencekommunizt kat said:
I will not deny that the sequence was in fact, awesome. Honestly, I was kind of surprised when the ISS fell apart and my nameless Astronaught decided to continue his orbit until his air ran out.The Big Eye said:
The issue here does not lie in the lack of transmission medium. The medium exists (there is atmosphere at a LEO) and even if it did not, the base energy created in a nuclear detonation (EM) is more than sufficient to cause damage on it's own. The simple argument against the destruction of the space station lies in distance. Simply put, washington DC is several thousand miles (straigh line) from the equator. The energy created by a nuclear explosion is reduced across a distance (doubling the distance from the blast results in 1/10 the energy received). There is certainly a quantity of energy that could result in the destruction of the ISS when emitted from the vicinty of washington DC, but I would conjecture that the loss of a handful of astronaughts would pale in comparision to the tens of millions of people that would have died on earth as such a detonation would represent more firepower than the combined might of all the nucler arsenals in the world.
EMP doesn't break structures, it creates current within wires. And you're ignoring the massive amount of EMP dissipation and heat dissipation that occurs, as very little energy actually become directed kinetic energy. And you do realize that picking up an apple 1 m in the air is 1J of energy? If the space station was that fragile, people would destroy it by touching it.Kermi said:
And who said that the russians goal was to conquer the US? If "all" they did was land, smash everything in sight and then leave, they would be in a very powerful position on the world stage. Not to mention that they would have gotten their revenge for the airport incident.Zenode said:
Bear in mind that the energy produced by a nuclear detonation without some sort of medium is almost entirely EM in nature. Even if we consider this scenario in a true vacuum (there are zero atoms in the theoritical space), and thus no dissipation (absorbtion/reflection/redirection) of energy, it is still spreading, in a fairly uniform fashion, in a sphere. The ISS represents a known volume, and we could pull any reasonably large number out of the air to represent the energy of the detonation. Under the worst case (and utterly incorrect) scenario, we could even assume that this energy is uniformly distributed across the surface of this sphere. Thus, the energy absorbed by the ISS is going to be equal to a similar area of the surface of this ideal sphere.Kubanator said:
Even a very rudimentary grasp of mathematics would demonstrate that, as the distance from the point of detonation increases, the surface area increases as well (4*pi*radius^2). If we assume that the nuclear detonation was 1 megaton (1000000000000000J) and arbitrarily assign a nice round number for the distance (we will use the low-ball estimate generated thus far - 1250km), we get an energy of about 50j/M^3 at the edge of our ideal sphere. The ISS, when compleated, will at worst have 7898.8 M of surface area, and would thus be required to absorb 394940J of energy (395 kiljoules). This may sound like quite a bit but the total energy per meter is roughly 1/7th that of a .45 caliber pistol round. The likelyhood that ANY component in the ISS is going to be damaged by such a quanty of energy is fantastically low. An inductive reason for this is simple - if it were so fragile it would never have made it into space in the first place as it would have been subjected to at least 3g worth of accelleration for an extended period of time.
