1 Gigaton nuclear bomb

3rdplanetfromsun

3rdplanetfromsun

In 1994 Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacted Jupiter and was seen by many astronomers around the globe. A guy named Edward Teller and many others saw this as a serious reminder that any day an asteroid could approach Earth and wipe out humanity just like what happened to the Dinosaurs. Teller had an idea that the USA and Russia should work together to develop a 1 gigaton nuclear bomb to defend Earth from an asteroid. For comparison that bomb would be 10 times more powerful than the tsar bomba in its 100mt configuration and would have the power to wipe out the human race on its own which is pretty ironic considering that it was proposed to save the human race. POD: In 1979 Voyager 2 flew by Jupiter and was positioned by coincidence at the perfect time to witness a comet impact Jupiter, the images made world headlines and made many people concerned about protecting Earth from an asteroid, Edward Teller came to the US government later that year to propose developing a 1 gigaton bomb, Teller and his supporters hosted rallies and showed calculations and illustrations of what would happen if an asteroid hit Earth and the death and destruction it would cause. Many people supported Teller and the government decided to begin development of a 1 gigaton bomb in 1980, this caused controversy between anti nuclear activists and supports of asteroid defense and became a hot topic in the USA, on one hand people saw the bomb as being nescessary to defend humans from extinction and on the other hand people saw it as helping human extinction. The 1 gigaton bomb was completed in 1985 but was never actually tested because it would cause irreversable damage to the atmosphere and would devestate whatever area it would be detonated in. On the other side of the world the Soviets believed that the asteroid defence story was just a cover for a plan by the US to destroy the soviet union with a single bomb so they developed their own 1 gigaton bomb. In 1989 a computer error in the Soviet Union made them think the United states had launched a missile attack and so the Soviets launched their 1 gigaton bomb towards the US, the american gigaton bomb was never meant to be used militarily and was kept in heavily guarded underground bunker in Florida ready to be put on a rocket at a moments notice that was hidden from the public. The US launched its smaller nukes at the Soviet Union causing the 6th mass extinction, around 50% of life on Earth was wiped out and the North American continent would have a massive 12 mile wide crater that would be visible from space for many thousands of years. To add insult to injury a 1.2km wide asteroid impacted Earth in 2043.
 
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Andristan

Andristan

By the 1980s, were there not all the nuclear arms treaties that limited testing, and/or building certain kinds of bombs that would prevent making such a massive bomb?
 

CaptainCalvert

Even if a working gigaton weapon could be made [1], the Tsar Bomba was about the biggest useful bomb before blast enery starts going places it shouldn't. Militarily, more modest sized bombs provide a cheaper and more reliable way to create comparable damage, and with lower risk of planetary catastrophe [2].
In reality, for an asteroid, a small well-timed nudge is all that's needed, provided you have time to react. And if you don't have much time (and Bruce Willis is unavailable) it's quite possible the 1Gt is not going to be enough (though you might as well try).
I think you're right that if people did follow that line of reasoning, a 1Gt blast on earth would be excessively destructive, leading to who knows what level of destruction. I'd watch the film...


[1] I'm not sure it could be using current technology, let alone 1980s technology.
[2] in this context planetary catastrophe means much worse than millions of immediate casualties plus a few hundred million due to societal disruption. That gives a hint at how mad Teller was.
 

jlckansas

It is easier to control the direction of a Comet/Asteroid with a lot of little explosions going off instead of one large one. You can reposition each one as needed to make sure you are moving it the correct direction.
 
marathag

marathag

Banned
The problem found with weapons exceeding 5MT is that much of the energy is reflected into space, rather than making a still impressive crater.
Turns out that atmosphere makes for a lousy tamper.
In Space, nuclear weapons have no blast. It's all radiation, from below visible Light to past X-Rays. For Asteroids, that means vast differences in temperature from exposed areas to shielded areas, and a bit of plasma if a surface blast.

This will cause a course deviation over time till the temperature returns to baseline.

If you want to break up the Asteroid(not necessarily a great idea) you have to do the Hollywood way and drill it in.
Then you have a bunch of chunks headed your way. Also not good, and most chunks are too big to burn up in the atmosphere.

So if you wanted Change paths, the best way would be to land and affix an Orion Pulse bomb drive to the big Asteroid, and let many tiny bombs put in the Delta-V over time to redirect the rock to a safe path
 

The Shrike

sovietcomrade2 said:
Teller had an idea that the USA and Russia should work together to develop a 1 gigaton nuclear bomb to defend Earth from an asteroid. For comparison that bomb would be 1000 times more powerful than the tsar bomba
Click to expand...
Initial blueprint of the Tsar bomba had a target of 100 MT device, scaled down to 50 MT for the actual bomb detonated in 1961.
A 1 Gigaton bomb would have been 10/20-time more powerful than the Tsar bomba, not 1000.

This is hardly a extinction-level device in my opinion: for reference the energy of the K-Pg / K-T impactor was estimated to be 100.000 Gigaton
 
3rdplanetfromsun

3rdplanetfromsun

marathag said:
The problem found with weapons exceeding 5MT is that much of the energy is reflected into space, rather than making a still impressive crater.
Turns out that atmosphere makes for a lousy tamper.
In Space, nuclear weapons have no blast. It's all radiation, from below visible Light to past X-Rays. For Asteroids, that means vast differences in temperature from exposed areas to shielded areas, and a bit of plasma if a surface blast.

This will cause a course deviation over time till the temperature returns to baseline.

If you want to break up the Asteroid(not necessarily a great idea) you have to do the Hollywood way and drill it in.
Then you have a bunch of chunks headed your way. Also not good, and most chunks are too big to burn up in the atmosphere.

So if you wanted Change paths, the best way would be to land and affix an Orion Pulse bomb drive to the big Asteroid, and let many tiny bombs put in the Delta-V over time to redirect the rock to a safe path
Click to expand...
For context my idea is that teller didnt want to just fly the nuke into the asteroid he wanted to use the nuke to deflect it off course for good basically so that the asteroid will not have a chance of encountering earth again for millions of years. and for smaller asteroids detected at the last minute the bomb could be used to obliterate it into small enough chunks to be relatively harmless. On wikipedia also it says the bomb would have enough power to vaporize a 1km wide asteroid
 

CaptainCalvert

The Shrike said:
Initial blueprint of the Tsar bomba had a target of 100 MT device, scaled down to 50 MT for the actual bomb detonated in 1961.
A 1 Gigaton bomb would have been 10/20-time more powerful than the Tsar bomba, not 1000.

This is hardly a extinction-level device in my opinion: for reference the energy of the K-Pg / K-T impactor was estimated to be 100.000 Gigaton
Click to expand...
It's not going to break the planet but atmospheric disturbances alone would have potential for catastrophic changes even if only temporary ones.
 

Minchandre

sovietcomrade2 said:
On the other side of the world the Soviets believed that the asteroid defence story was just a cover for a plan by the US to destroy the soviet union with a single bomb
Click to expand...
It wouldn't. Don't get me wrong, it would be devastating, and if detonated over, say, Moscow, would destroy much of the Russian heartland. You'd get very serious damage and deaths out to a radius of about 120-150km, and if there was a ground detonation, fallout would be...not fun. But it wouldn't be fun for western Europe, either, so it seems unlikely.
 

RanulfC

As an FYI when I was stationed in Europe around 1982 there was a small article in the European Stars and Stripes paper that noted a nuclear conference in New York had been interrupted by the removal of a Soviet nuclear scientist from a presentation he was giving. He was escorted off stage and directly to the airport where he was put on a flight back to Moscow and the white board he was using confiscated. The reason given was it was a conference on the peaceful use of nuclear power and his formula was showing the initiation sequence of a gigaton nuclear reaction. This ONLY appeared in the European Stars and Stripes :)

A standard case of the the Soviets showing off and the US saying "Yes we know what that means so go home and think about that" :)

Randy
 
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