This isn't a request for "advice" so much, as just a few questions. I wasn't quite sure where to ask this, and these happen to be the only forums I frequent, so my apologies if this question seems out of place.
I'm writing an analysis for a game, and I'm trying to rationalize that statement that a city was affected by a nuclear bomb. I know VERY little about actual nuclear weaponry, and thus these questions may come across as dumb/obvious.
1. If something is referred to as irradiated, does that mean that it is filled with radiation? I've read a few things online about radiation being used to cure food, making it irradiated (but in a positive way), so I wasn't sure.
2. Would a nuclear bomb blast cause grass to die? Or something to that effect. I read that it might cause soil to turn over and cover the grass, effectively appearing to be the same thing.
3. How small can nukes be? Could one land in the middle of a street and not bring down the entire block?
Thanks in advance for the help. Again, I'm aware these may be weird/stupid/obvious questions, but I haven't exactly made a point to research these things. Thanks.
I doubt you'd find any reliable sources on The Escapist. It's not meant as an insult, but anyone passing themselves off as nuclear scientists online is highly unlikely unless you're on a university messageboard.
This [http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/] would be a good place for you to start reading up on the matter.
Possible answers to #1 and #2. [http://www.atomicarchive.com/Effects/effects14.shtml]
For #1, food irradiation is not on the same level as the stuff released from a bomb. The irradiation techniques used to cure food (and also change the color of certain gemstones) is of such a low level that they are safe enough to handle after only a few months or weeks.
Regarding #2, plant life would likely die more from the effects of nuclear winter than anything else. There are open areas affected by the Chernobyl disaster that look perfectly fine, only there are radioactive hotspots that require detectors in order to be avoided.
Regarding #3, there is/was such a thing called a SADM, which stands for Strategic Atomic Demolitions Munition. It's commonly referred to as a suitcase nuke. Here's a video. As you can see it's considerably larger than a suitcase and probably weighs 200 pounds, so a better description would be man-portable:
God these kind of threads to make me wonder about certain agencies and their monitoring of perfectly law abiding citizens. Anyway, you've got a bit of reading to do. Yep, a bit of reading from perfectly legal internet source material that is 100% open to the public and not in any way indicative of ill intent.
No worries John - if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.
I imagine it'd be pretty funny if you're actually called John.
Anyway, for #3, I think OP asks how small can nuclear explosions be. I am not sure how big a "city block" would be but probably a nuke going off would damage most buildings there. It may not destroy them and demolish everything but damages would be present. You can forget about anything at ground zero - that'd be glassed but buildings could probably stand if they weren't in the immediate vicinity. Again, depends on how big the nuke is and how big the block is, but I'm willing to go with "yes" - you could have a bomb that doesn't destroy the city block. Physically, that is, the people would still be better off if they weren't in the block if it was nuked.
Also - electronics in a large area would be fried from the nuke's EMP, something to take into account.
And here is something interesting nuke your own cities [http://www.carloslabs.com/projects/200712B/GroundZero.html] - it uses Google Maps to show you what various bombs would do if they fell somewhere. I tried it with my home town and sheesh, the smallest nuke could take out half of it.
1. It means that that thing has been exposed to radiation. Radiation itself does not stick, it is transformed to heat, normal matter or a combination thereof, and possibly leaves some changes to the atom or molecule that it impacted. These changes under some circumstances could leave behind radioactive atomic nuclei that will later on emit radiation. Food irradiation in general is of a type and an amount that minimise this issue.
Stuff that has been exposed to large amounts of high energy radiation will in general be radioactive itself, so possibly dangerous. But regarding nukes a high part of the resulting radioactive material is created directly by the fission process.
2. The heat wave as fas as it reaches certainly would kill grass, though I suppose grass is too soft a plant to be affected much by the shock wave. Radiation would of course have an impact on grass like on any living thing, though I'm not sure how badly grass is affected, it varies much from species to species for both plants and animals.
3. There is a minimum amount of fission material and conventional explosives needed to get the reaction going properly, that gives a nuke a minimum physical size. What that size is is probably not public knowledge, but a wild guess is that you could probably with modern technology make one in around 100 litres. But there is no real lower limit to the size of the blast, to make it smaller all you would have to do is to mess up the process a little, which can be done in a number of ways, all resulting in the fission process expending less of the available fuel. But at some point it would of course be more a standard chemical explosion than a nuke.
This isn't a request for "advice" so much, as just a few questions. I wasn't quite sure where to ask this, and these happen to be the only forums I frequent, so my apologies if this question seems out of place.
I'm writing an analysis for a game, and I'm trying to rationalize that statement that a city was affected by a nuclear bomb. I know VERY little about actual nuclear weaponry, and thus these questions may come across as dumb/obvious.
1. If something is referred to as irradiated, does that mean that it is filled with radiation? I've read a few things online about radiation being used to cure food, making it irradiated (but in a positive way), so I wasn't sure.
2. Would a nuclear bomb blast cause grass to die? Or something to that effect. I read that it might cause soil to turn over and cover the grass, effectively appearing to be the same thing.
3. How small can nukes be? Could one land in the middle of a street and not bring down the entire block?
Thanks in advance for the help. Again, I'm aware these may be weird/stupid/obvious questions, but I haven't exactly made a point to research these things. Thanks.
I study chemistry, not physics, but I'll answer as best I can.
1. If something is irradiated, it's been exposed to radiation. Radiation itself doesn't cause things to become radioactive. In the case of food, they expose it to radiation to kill bacteria.
2. The heat from the blast could burn the grass, or the shock wave could rip up the ground beneath the grass. I don't know if the radiation would be able to kill the grass, but I imagine if it's far enough away to escape burning or shock wave, it could probably survive the radiation (fallout landing on it is another matter)
3. I don't know. For a nuclear reaction to be self-sustaining, the rate of fission has to be greater than the rate of neutrons being absorbed or escaping, which means that there is a lower limit to the size nukes can be. One of the smallest I know about was this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device), a nuclear bazooka.
1. If something is referred to as irradiated, does that mean that it is filled with radiation? I've read a few things online about radiation being used to cure food, making it irradiated (but in a positive way), so I wasn't sure.
I think this one has been answered to an extent. However, nuclear blasts have a high neutron flux as well. These neutrons transmute matter they are absorbed into which can cause it to become radioactive. High density matter is particularly vulnerable: someone's skeleton would far more radioactive than their fat and muscles, for example.
camscottbryce said:
2. Would a nuclear bomb blast cause grass to die? Or something to that effect. I read that it might cause soil to turn over and cover the grass, effectively appearing to be the same thing.
Nuclear warheads are typically designed to detonate in the air above ground-zero. Near the blast the grass would be incinerated. The shockwave would turn the soil over, but the grass if fairly likely to survive that - try ploughing your lawn and see how it takes for the grass to re-appear. Grass is fairly hardy, but there will be level of radiation that it cannot survive.
camscottbryce said:
3. How small can nukes be? Could one land in the middle of a street and not bring down the entire block?
Californium-252 has a critical mass of around 2.73 kg - that amount would fit into a 7 cm sphere (about the size of a baseball). The yield would probably be equivalent to around a few 100 tonnes (or maybe a few 10s of tonnes) of TNT.
Source: Astrophysics degree, SAS Survival Guide [someone though it would make a good Christmas present one year...] although I looked up specific values for Californium up on Wikipedia.
1. If something is referred to as irradiated, does that mean that it is filled with radiation? I've read a few things online about radiation being used to cure food, making it irradiated (but in a positive way), so I wasn't sure.
I think this one has been answered to an extent. However, nuclear blasts have a high neutron flux as well. These neutrons transmute matter they are absorbed into which can cause it to become radioactive. High density matter is particularly vulnerable: someone's skeleton would far more radioactive than their fat and muscles, for example.
camscottbryce said:
2. Would a nuclear bomb blast cause grass to die? Or something to that effect. I read that it might cause soil to turn over and cover the grass, effectively appearing to be the same thing.
Nuclear warheads are typically designed to detonate in the air above ground-zero. Near the blast the grass would be incinerated. The shockwave would turn the soil over, but the grass if fairly likely to survive that - try ploughing your lawn and see how it takes for the grass to re-appear. Grass is fairly hardy, but there will be level of radiation that it cannot survive.
camscottbryce said:
3. How small can nukes be? Could one land in the middle of a street and not bring down the entire block?
Californium-252 has a critical mass of around 2.73 kg - that amount would fit into a 7 cm sphere (about the size of a baseball). The yield would probably be equivalent to around a few 100 tonnes (or maybe a few 10s of tonnes) of TNT.
Source: Astrophysics degree, SAS Survival Guide [someone though it would make a good Christmas present one year...] although I looked up specific values for Californium up on Wikipedia.
Seconding this post, especially point 1.
Irradiated food is typically treated with beams of electromagnetic radiation (the same spectrum as radio waves, or the light we see) to kill bacteria. That radiation doesn't really stick around so the food is safe to eat (in the same way that there isn't light left in the room when you switch a lamp off)
However, what's called 'radiation' in the 'nuclear reactor/fallout/cancer' sense is actually streams of particles. These particles collide with atoms and 'ionize' them (give them an electric charge). This makes atoms unstable in a more long term way.
Additionally, nuclear detonations are so extreme that they actually cause by-products that themselves emit more of these ionizing particles
So the colloquial phrase 'radiation' actually describes three or four distinct things, hence the confusion. If you want I can attempt to clarify the different types and how they're linked, ask away!
It's worth mentioning that the amount of radioactivity required to completely kill off grass and plant life is likely to be *a lot*. Heat and blast effects will do the vast majority of damage to plants in a conventional nuclear detonation. With a dirty bomb or salted nuke, residual radioactivity might well be significant enough to poison plants, but only in the absence of a large blast wave destroying them first.
Also, if you're looking for small nukes, there are good real life examples:
**Edit: More modern and less ridiculous:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_Atomic_Demolition_Munition **
You can probably get a very small yield nuke into a bulky suitcase or backpack by using as small a critical mass as you can (as per the above post). There is still the assembly of conventional explosives needed, which do add to the size and weight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitcase_nuke
It's plausible that such a small device detonated close to the ground would only destroy a block or two, though there would be significant damage over a wider radius.
camscottbryce said:
I'm writing an analysis for a game, and I'm trying to rationalize that statement that a city was affected by a nuclear bomb. I know VERY little about actual nuclear weaponry, and thus these questions may come across as dumb/obvious.
Ya most people here have already given some good answers and I'm no specialist so I'm not going to pretend, I will however give you another source to check. It's a bit out there but there's a show called "surviving disaster" (I think it's even on netflix) with a "surviving a nuclear attack" episode. It had some things that I never knew and definitely wouldn't have thought about (for example a dust like material that is expelled after a nuclear weapon detonates that emits a very dangerous form of radiation). Just food for thought.
This isn't a request for "advice" so much, as just a few questions. I wasn't quite sure where to ask this, and these happen to be the only forums I frequent, so my apologies if this question seems out of place.
I'm writing an analysis for a game, and I'm trying to rationalize that statement that a city was affected by a nuclear bomb. I know VERY little about actual nuclear weaponry, and thus these questions may come across as dumb/obvious.
1. If something is referred to as irradiated, does that mean that it is filled with radiation? I've read a few things online about radiation being used to cure food, making it irradiated (but in a positive way), so I wasn't sure.
2. Would a nuclear bomb blast cause grass to die? Or something to that effect. I read that it might cause soil to turn over and cover the grass, effectively appearing to be the same thing.
3. How small can nukes be? Could one land in the middle of a street and not bring down the entire block?
Thanks in advance for the help. Again, I'm aware these may be weird/stupid/obvious questions, but I haven't exactly made a point to research these things. Thanks.
1. Irradiation is the process of sterilization using radiation. This is different from radioactive but not mutually exclusive. You can expose food to certain kinds of radiation and it will kill all bacteria but without making food radioactive. Back in the days of the soviet union, all grain imports were irradiated by beta particles to kill off any disease and fungus that might be there.
2. A nuker can kill grass, either through the flash or with radiation. If grass is caught is the fireball its dead like everything else. If the grass receives a high enough dose of radiation, it will die from radiation poisoning. Radiation poisoning is when the radiation cause enough damage to the cells form them to stop working properly and slowly die. The penetrative nature of radiation means the entire body is affected from the surface to the centre.
3. The smallest nukes ever deployed where the enhanced radiation devices, otherwise known as the neutron bomb. They were battlefield nukes with yields around 0.1 kt, or about 100 tons of tnt. It terms of nukes that's tiny, but in conventional weapons terms that is a huge explosion. Its equivalent to 10 bunker buster bombs going off at once, you are going to notice that from a long way away. If you set off ground burst it would break windows 10 miles away and easily smash a city block. The other thing is that anyone unprotected would die of radiation sickness in a radius of 8 miles of the blast.
3. The smallest nukes ever deployed where the enhanced radiation devices, otherwise known as the neutron bomb. They were battlefield nukes with yields around 0.1 kt, or about 100 tons of tnt. It terms of nukes that's tiny, but in conventional weapons terms that is a huge explosion. Its equivalent to 10 bunker buster bombs going off at once, you are going to notice that from a long way away. If you set off ground burst it would break windows 10 miles away and easily smash a city block. The other thing is that anyone unprotected would die of radiation sickness in a radius of 8 miles of the blast.
Jesus, that would be horrifying. But Neutron bombs were never that effective!
A 1kt bomb wouldn't lethally radiate [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb#Effects_of_a_neutron_bomb_detonation] outside of a mile and a half, let alone 8. They were originally designed to be used en-masse against tightly packed armour formations. They were meant to do the same job as the Davy Crockett I posted above, but to also rapidly kill tank crews that survived the blast and thermal emissions.
Salted warheads [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salted_bomb] and nuclear mines could hypothetically cause the massive amounts of radiation like you describe but that's in addition to 'normal' nuclear effects (huge blast damage, fireball, etc). It's because of the release of radioactive isotopes (typically Cobalt) instead of neutron flux, the prime effector in Neutron bombs.
Normal and salted nukes are great for irradiating a large area for a long time, but neutron bombs are better for instantly irradiating a much smaller area for a shorter time period.
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