Poll: The Nuclear bomb and The hydrogen bomb

[chunkeymonke]

nukes keep world peace really
if there was nop threat of annihilation the second you started a major major war then it would happen a lot more
thats why terrorists and groups trying to gain nukes are deadly

 

[spartan231490]

Please read all the way through and you will need a basic understanding of atoms.

First I will explain what a nuclear bomb is and what a hydrogen bomb is with the best of my understanding.

A nuclear bomb is also known as a nuke or an atom bomb. An atom bomb has plutonium in its core with TNT surrounding it. The plutonium is radioactive and it decays naturally in smaller atoms that are more stable. Each time it decays it releases energy and extra neutrons which is radiation. This makes the plutonium heat up. Though because of the TNT casing the TNT will explode and force the plutonium in a denser state to where it reaches a state that it so dense that the radioactive material can not escape with out bombing into another atom. When these atoms bump into each other they decay releasing energy even if it is not ready to decay. This chain reaction of atoms splitting and bumping causes a huge amount of energy which leads to a very big explosion.
This is called nuclear fission.

Now a hydrogen bomb is a bit like this but instead of TNT it is atomic bombs and the core is made up of trillions of isotopes of hydrogen named deuterium and tritium. Normally hydrogen is one proton and one electron but these isotopes have one or two extra neutrons. The explosion of the atomic bomb forces these two isotopes, deuterium and tritium together to make helium. Now helium needs less energy to stay together. So this excess energy and extra neutron is radioactive and cause an enormous explosion. This is called nuclear fusion.
What?s even more interesting is how a hydrogen bomb is made. The core is made of these hydrogen isotopes surrounded by atomic bombs and the warhead casing is made of uranium. So these atomic bombs make nuclear fission that causes nuclear fusion which cause another nuclear fission caused by the warhead casing.
This is all happen at the same time which is equal to many millions of tons of TNT or 1000 atomic bombs.


Now that being said we have so much destruction power can we really trust ourselves to not kill ourselves?

North Korea have atomic bombs but they are nothing compared to the power of a hydrogen bomb or the amount of nukes that the united states have so aren?t we asking much to destroy their nukes when the states have much more power?

With all this radioactive material fallout is much more probable.


Just post what you think about this and if you have any related thoughts.


I got this information from a site. If you want to have more knowledge in detail of this subject look at this great site.
http://www.worsleyschool.net/science/files/nuclear/bomb.html

I'm not sure about some of your facts, do you have a source?
specifically, atomic bombs, do they actually use tnt, or have they been upgraded to use c4, or even a completely non-explosive trigger? and also, I'm fairly certain that the hydrogen bomb only has one atomic bomb to set it off, but I could be wrong, could you link a source. Thirdly, North Korea doesn't have Hydrogen bombs yet? I mostly believe you about this one, just found it interesting.(Say mostly cuz I'm a natural skeptic, I probably looked out the window the first time someone told me the sky was blue.)
OT: Of course we should be destroying our nukelear arsenal, and I think we actually are at a very slow rate, but the problem is that we don't have anything to do with all the radioactive materials. They are too dangerous to store except in rare specifically made locations, and too expensive/dangerous to launch into space.

 

[Eisenfaust]

problem is, it's not really enforceable...

and (i'm stealing most of this from west wing, but whatever) when they were first built/over the cold war, the main threat was that no first strike could be achieved without suffering a substantial retaliatory strike... mutually assured destruction... but now with terrorism cells and extremist groups there's not necessarily anyone to target with a retaliatory strike, so if someone sets off a suitcase nuke at time square, or pensylvania avenue, there'd be very few options short of just carpet bombing everything

 

[Zykon TheLich]

Simply move to cyber war. What good is a nuke if none of your planes, ships, submarines, and launching pads can fire them? The Army as we know it is soon to be obsolete, if it isn't already. Hell, I'd even wager that nukes will be obsolete as deterrents in a couple years.

I don't think that our nuclear missile silo computers are connected to the internet. So they only way to get into the closed system would be to actually physically interface with it. And its not like you can remotely hack a submarine or a plane the communications gear in those things are not linked to the flight controls. I'm pretty sure in this day and age the military would be prepared for something like that. Unless someone develops a remote hack think like in bioshock.

Your quote-fu is weak, but I agree with you, unless someone is stupid enough to make all our military equipment remote controllable via the internet that isn't going to be a problem, methinks the guy who quoted me (and who you atributed my name) has absorbed the "hollywood hacking" rules from too many crappy techno thrillers.

Simply move to cyber war. What good is a nuke if none of your planes, ships, submarines, and launching pads can fire them? The Army as we know it is soon to be obsolete, if it isn't already. Hell, I'd even wager that nukes will be obsolete as deterrents in a couple years.

What the guy above said.

 

[spartan231490]

of trillions of isotopes of hydrogen named deuterium and tritium.

This sort of annoyed me from my knowledge of chemistry. There are trillions of atoms in the entire universe. There are probably millions of atoms in a given bomb. Hydrogen has two useful isotopes that can be put to use, Deuterium and Tritium. One of these uses is weaponry. However one of the more common uses of Deuterium is the manufacture of heavy water for Nuclear Reactor stabilization. (An Isotope is a variant of an Element that has a different atomic weight than the normal Element because of additional neutrons.)

A isotope could have a different atomic weight because of too few neutrons, and even the variant that is "normal" meaning more common, is still considered an isotope.
second:
trillion is 12 zeros. this means that there are about 7 thousand, trillion, trillion atoms in the human body, on average. There are very many more than trillions of atoms in the entire universe. Check your 'facts' before posting definitive information. Honestly, Avogadro's number and molar weight says that about 2 grams of deuterium would be about 600 billion, trillion atoms.
Source:
http://www.foresight.org/Nanomedicine/Ch03_1.html
http://education.jlab.org/qa/mathatom_04.html

 

[chunkeymonke]

Give 'em to the superpowers to maintain peace. If every country has them, the unstable or weak ones are taken over by insurgents, who then have nukes and will bomb something.

And what if one of the superpowers is taken over? Then everyone is screwed. Hell, the USSR was a superpower at one point. Want another Cold War?

superpowers can only be taken over by other superpowers really
it's not possible for one rouge country to take over a super power its just not

 

[capin Rob]

I don't think they're Good, but you can't just say "From here on, there shall be no nukes EVAR" And think it'll happen, that would be naive. people will still make them, and we need to have insurance for the crazy people who would actually consider using them for stupid reasons.

 

[Anarchemitis]

of trillions of isotopes of hydrogen named deuterium and tritium.

This sort of annoyed me from my knowledge of chemistry. There are trillions of atoms in the entire universe. There are probably millions of atoms in a given bomb. Hydrogen has two useful isotopes that can be put to use, Deuterium and Tritium. One of these uses is weaponry. However one of the more common uses of Deuterium is the manufacture of heavy water for Nuclear Reactor stabilization. (An Isotope is a variant of an Element that has a different atomic weight than the normal Element because of additional neutrons.)

A isotope could have a different atomic weight because of too few neutrons, and even the variant that is "normal" meaning more common, is still considered an isotope.
second:
trillion is 12 zeros. this means that there are about 7 thousand, trillion, trillion atoms in the human body, on average. There are very many more than trillions of atoms in the entire universe. Check your 'facts' before posting definitive information. Honestly, Avogadro's number and molar weight says that about 2 grams of deuterium would be about 600 billion, trillion atoms.
Source:
http://www.foresight.org/Nanomedicine/Ch03_1.html
http://education.jlab.org/qa/mathatom_04.html

I hope you enjoyed that nitpick for the sake of me not caring.

 

[BonsaiK]

It doesn't matter if any countries have nukes, how many, or what sort. They will never be used. Those weapons are obsolete, conventional weapons get the job done better, cheaper, faster and with less of a stain on the country's PR record. The big mondo nuclear war will never happen now or at any time in the future of human history.

And don't give me that "what about terrorists" nonsense. If 9/11 taught anybody anything it should have taught people that terrorists are very good at doing cost/benefit analysis. While everyone was worried about nukes in suitcases or some fancy-ass Tom Clancy bullshit, they snuck a few guys on some planes with $5 box cutters and a bit of flight training. Radioactive material is unneccesary when a sharp stick get the same result for 1/100000th of the price.

You can not say that nuke will never be used because alot of muslim extremist want death to Isreal and they said it and might do so any means nesseceary includeing a nuke and north Korea has nukes and they say that their war against south korea is a holy war which gives an excuse for them to move their moral standards and use their nukes. (in their point of view.)

The proximity to Israel to various holy sites important to Muslims guarantees that nukes will never be used by Muslims to attack Israel. Same situation with North and South Korea, if the North is attacking the South, it doesn't want to turn the South into a nuclear wasteland, it wants to overthrow it and occupy it, and turn it into something it can use. All wars since the beginning of time are about one thing, and one thing only - control over territory and resources. Sure, concepts like "religion", "freedom", "our prestigious ruler" or whatever are good ways to get people to fight, but control over territory and resources is always the underlying issue. Why blow up or contaminate useful resources for thousands of years? To put this in a language any gamer can understand, if you've ever been just about to board an empty enemy tank in a Battlefield game so you can use it, and then your dickheaded teammate destroys it with a rocket just before you get in, and you've become pissed off at that, then you'll understand why nuclear war in the 21st century and beyond is an impossibility. Nobody will do it because nobody running a country is as dumb as your noob teammate.

 

[dogenzakaminion]

Well, I did'tn vote because I honestly don't know where I stand, but I wish that they didn't exist at all. Like many have said, they're obsolete weapons.

If I would have to choose though, I would say: "Everebody has some"
This would create a natural deterent. No one would use one, because someone else could always retaliate. Seems rational and sane...but the world isn't rational and sane, so I don't know.

 

[verindae]

Everyone has nukes so nobody would risk going to war

There's a slight problem with this recurring argument, see the first world war for details. Ok so it's not exactly the same scenario, but I think we can all agree that M.A.D does not stop idiots from starting conflicts.

I haven't voted 'cause I can't say for sure where I stand there, I just wanted to add that little snippet to the discussion

 

[Brett Alex]

Seriously, they're just too powerful and it's too easy for them to get in the wrong hands. I get that if all world powers get rid of theirs and some terrorist group gets one we're all screwed but there has to be some way to remove them all and all ways of making one if people try hard enough.

Say that you could, somehow, convince everyone to give them up; that still wouldn't solve the issue. People still know how to make them. People still know they existed. And if you can manufacture one, well, shit, you now have the only one(s) and can Screw the Rules I have a Nuke to the entire world.

So you need complete and total global nuclear disarmament. You also need to round up every physics professor who understands/can replicate the nuclear process, and place them in protective custody, should they be kidnapped and forced to manufacture new nuclear weapons (to be on the safe side, do the same to all their students and colleagues as well). After that it's a simple matter of burning every physics textbook or paper that could be used to extrapolate basic understanding into complex understanding, as well as every history textbook that mentions any use of nuclear weapons ever, in case people are inspired by the storied destructive powers and attempt to 're-invent' this awesome technology.

Give it a couple of generations, and fingers crossed, nuclear weapons will be a myth of the past.

See? It is damn near impossible. We now live in a world with nuclear weapons. Disarm all you want, but killing the the memory, the knowledge, the very concept of nuclear weapons? Good luck.

 

[Brett Alex]

There's a slight problem with this recurring argument, see the first world war for details.

What is the WWI parallel in this case?

 

[Astoria]

-snip-

Well... maybe we can go back in time and erase their creation. All I'm saying is I'm sure people would sleep a lot more soundly at night if they knew these weapons didn't exist but I get that it won't happen. I can dream though.

 

[Brett Alex]

Well... maybe we can go back in time and erase their creation.

Heh, that really is the best option.

All I'm saying is I'm sure people would sleep a lot more soundly at night if they knew these weapons didn't exist but I get that it won't happen. I can dream though.

I think they'd have to be prepared for the differences though. Larger wars would probably be a lot more common. Superpowers gotta demonstrate their strength somehow, and without nuclear reprisal that basically means throwing bodies at each other.

 

[Astoria]

Well... maybe we can go back in time and erase their creation.

Heh, that really is the best option.

All I'm saying is I'm sure people would sleep a lot more soundly at night if they knew these weapons didn't exist but I get that it won't happen. I can dream though.

I think they'd have to be prepared for the differences though. Larger wars would probably be a lot more common. Superpowers gotta demonstrate their strength somehow, and without nuclear reprisal that basically means throwing bodies at each other.

Eh, the whole idea of war is stupid to me. I don't see how killing people solves anything when most conflicts get solved in the end by talks anyway. Against groups like the Taliban yeah I understand but just in general it seems so pointless.

 

[Plurralbles]

super powers need to be reminded tha tthey can destroy or be destroyed with a moment's notice. So I choose only them having them. Easy way to exert influence too searching for them(like Iraq) no it isn't moral... and it bites people in the ass, but it's something.

 

[bl4ckh4wk64]

There's a misunderstood concept about nuclear weapons. People think the nukes won WWII, they didn't. People think nukes are "war enders", they're not. People think they're "War preventers," they're not. Look at the Yom Kippur war. Two non-nuclear countries invading a nuclear country. The only reason nuclear weapons helped in WWII was the idea that one single weapon did that much damage. However, the firebombing campaign did a whole lot more than the nukes. My friend wrote a whole 3 page paper on what he calls the "nuclear paradigm." That being said, I believe that only certain countries, not necessarily superpowers, should have nukes. The countries that won't are countries that are more than willing to use them if given the chance, say North Korea or Iran.

 

[BoogieManFL]

Just wait until anti-matter is easier to create and utilize.

 

[olicon]

It would be best if we just get rid of what we have, and not make anymore.

I can't wait until some hostile aliens finally show up, so we could all be humans together.