Effects of a 250000 Megaton nuclear detonation...

No it would not... nuclear explosions going off in close proximity to each other simultaneously do not 'snuff the other explosion out'. Otherwise, we would not have such gross overkill when it comes to targetting(Moscow, during the 80's, had 200 warheads targetted on it alone).
He's a troll, ignore him.
EIT: Well, borderline, anyway.
 
Yield (megatons)...............................................250,000


Thermal radiation radius (3rd degree burns).........1905.5 kilometres
Air blast radius (widespread destruction)..............436.5 kilometres
Air blast radius (near-total fatalities)....................165.4 kilometres
Ionizing radiation radius (500 rem)......................33.1 kilometres
Fireball duration.................................................1208.6 seconds
Fireball radius (minimum).................................... 62.4 kilometres
Fireball radius (airburst)......................................76.2 kilometres
Fireball radius (ground-contact airburst)...............100.5 kilometres
 
Damage could a 250000 megaton nuclear bomb cause?

250000 Megaton NUKE :eek:
is some one here a Perry Rhodan fans ?
(its a German SF pulp serie and they use even bigger Nukes... )

back to that Monster, used it kill the planet ans all his life on it.

but how you gona make this think work ?
as H-Bomb: over 520000 tons and size of battelship
its more a Doomsday Weapon for Dr Stangelove.
 

Nietzsche

Banned
Not at all. If I remember correctly, Tsar Bomba was designed for a 100 Megaton payload, and reduced to 50 Megatons so that the bomber crew would be able to escape the blast area.

Your Bomb is 250 Gigatons. Compared to Tsar Bomba (50Mt):

Tsar Bomba triggered a 5.0 Earthquake on the ground, despite being burst well above the ground. It's fireball was 4.6 Km across, Third Degree Burns would happen at 100 KM from the blast radius and blast damage was found as far as 1,000 KM from the blast effect.

So your weapon is going to have about 16 times the blast radius--a Fireball over 73 KM across, Third Degree Burns at 1,600 KM from the blast radius and damage at 16,000 KM from the blast effect (which happens to be on the other side of the entire planet).

Now, its possible with advance warning that many people would survive @1,600 KM if they could get to a subbasement or something. But then there is the question of Radiation, which would almost certainly reap a terrible toll on humanity. This explosion is so powerful that it would trigger volcanic activity if detonated near the ground and a huge amount of dirt will become irradiated. This might not extinct humanity, but if the weapon was detonated in Europe I'd expect the survivors to be in Australia and South America.

Very fortunately, the emphasis on giant nuclear weapons has ebbed with the increase precision of computers. Nuclear weapons are getting smaller, and a 250 Gigaton weapon is not in the cards.

What affect, if any at all, would mountain ranges have on the blast?
 
What affect, if any at all, would mountain ranges have on the blast?
given a little 5~10 megaton [normal warhead] there would be a difference 20 miles away between a Miami [Straight level Beach] and a Pittsburgh [2 - 5.000 ft mountains] Bomb.

But here the Minimum Fireball is 37 miles in radius. [20 minutes] I doubt if the Entire Himalaya Range would be able to affect it.
 
Umm,it may seem like a slightly odd question,but how much damage could a 250000 megaton nuclear bomb cause? How would it affect the environment if tested on land or in the Ocean?

Thermal radiation radius (3rd degree burns) 1905.5 km
Air blast radius (widespread destruction) 436.5 km
Air blast radius (near-total fatalities) 185.4 km
Ionizing radiation radius (500 rem) 33.1 km
Fireball duration 1208.6 seconds
Fireball radius (minimum) 62.4 km
Fireball radius (airburst) 76.2 km
Fireball radius (ground-contact airburst) 100.5 km

Source: Effects of nuclear weapons. Its the bible on this sort of thing.

However, the reality is that it simply wouldn't happen. A bomb like that would simply blow itself apart long before it could develop its full yield. Herman Kahn did calculations on that in the 1960s and proved that such bombs (doomsday bombs) are unworkable.
 
Operation Crossroads. Operation Crossroads was the detonation of the first hydrogen bomb. It was at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. It involved using old ships from World War II. Now if we have a 25,000 megaton bomb, that's a horse of a different color. It would kill everyone and everything in the vacinity.

Non-Sequitur Man strikes again!
 
What affect, if any at all, would mountain ranges have on the blast?

Impossible to know for sure, as its not known whether this blast is orbital, surface or airburst. Figure with an explosion of this size, the optimal altitude would be so high that mountains would be meaningless. If you have line of sight to the bomb, you are hit by its blast effect and its radiation effect--and if the cover is vaporized, you are probably gone as well.

If the shot is orbital, the geometry is all wrong--you are hiding in a cave, not behind a mountain. That would help considerably--if the cave doesn't collapse in the Mag. 8 earthquake that follows (Epicenter on the nuke itself). A Nuke this size, however, is going to chew through hundreds of feet of dirt, and a shallow cave will become a shallow grave. If you are mile underground you're probably going to survive even at ground zero.

In the end, though, the nuke is going to create massive firestorms and dump silly large amounts of fallout all over the place. A mountain's shade will not help you survive either of these effects, and you've still got to worry about the blast effect, which would be considerable. A Mountain range probably is going to suffer an avalanche as a result of the burst, although it might soak the worst of the damage.

Really, it sucks for this happen.
 
Thermal radiation radius (3rd degree burns) 1905.5 km
Air blast radius (widespread destruction) 436.5 km
Air blast radius (near-total fatalities) 185.4 km
Ionizing radiation radius (500 rem) 33.1 km
Fireball duration 1208.6 seconds
Fireball radius (minimum) 62.4 km
Fireball radius (airburst) 76.2 km
Fireball radius (ground-contact airburst) 100.5 km

Source: Effects of nuclear weapons. Its the bible on this sort of thing.

However, the reality is that it simply wouldn't happen. A bomb like that would simply blow itself apart long before it could develop its full yield. Herman Kahn did calculations on that in the 1960s and proved that such bombs (doomsday bombs) are unworkable.

Scary stuff there---that's a 20 minute fireball!!!

I'd point out, though, that Anti-Matter has a yield on the order of thousands more energy than a nuclear detonation. A large AM weapon might have this kind of yield--I'd consider it impossible for 100 years and improbable thereafter.
 
Umm,it may seem like a slightly odd question,but how much damage could a 250000 megaton nuclear bomb cause? How would it affect the environment if tested on land or in the Ocean?

Oh vey...

First off, how about "250 gigaton"? Second, it's impossible to build a bomb with such a huge yield. The upper theoretical limit is circa 100 megatons, and the largest bomb ever built had about 60 megatons.
 

Vanzetti

Banned
Thermal radiation radius (3rd degree burns) 1905.5 km
Air blast radius (widespread destruction) 436.5 km
Air blast radius (near-total fatalities) 185.4 km
Ionizing radiation radius (500 rem) 33.1 km
Fireball duration 1208.6 seconds
Fireball radius (minimum) 62.4 km
Fireball radius (airburst) 76.2 km
Fireball radius (ground-contact airburst) 100.5 km

Source: Effects of nuclear weapons. Its the bible on this sort of thing.

I doubt your numbers are right. This calculation will have to consider the width of the atmosphere and the curvature of Earth. And lots of unknowns exist, like geology and geography around the blast zone.

However, the reality is that it simply wouldn't happen. A bomb like that would simply blow itself apart long before it could develop its full yield. Herman Kahn did calculations on that in the 1960s and proved that such bombs (doomsday bombs) are unworkable.

You can make several bombs and detonate them at once. And I think no one actually tried to develop doomsday bombs of this type, so we can`t be sure there is no way to force arbitrary amount of hydrogen to fuse...
 
Since we're looking at an explosion and NOT an impact, its possible that the force of the blast would largely be directed in one direction and thus NOT see the widespread devastation

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 

bard32

Banned
Umm,it may seem like a slightly odd question,but how much damage could a 250000 megaton nuclear bomb cause? How would it affect the environment if tested on land or in the Ocean?

On a related, or semi-related note, when the atomic bomb was developed,
J. Robert Oppenheimer, and other Los Alamos scientists, feared that if they
detonated Trinity, they'd break the planet.
 
On a related, or semi-related note, when the atomic bomb was developed,
J. Robert Oppenheimer, and other Los Alamos scientists, feared that if they
detonated Trinity, they'd break the planet.
That was more a fear that either the detonation would ignite the atmosphere, or the detonation would cause other, nearby materials to undergo fission, and son on in a self-replicating cycle, destroying the planet.
 
I doubt your numbers are right. This calculation will have to consider the width of the atmosphere and the curvature of Earth. And lots of unknowns exist, like geology and geography around the blast zone.

The numbers are right for a nuclear explosion of the size specified. There's an events calculator in the back of "Effects of Nuclear Weapons". The bare-bones data given would also have to be modified for detonation height, terrain etc but the basic specs are correct/

You can make several bombs and detonate them at once.

Doesn't work. It's not possible to have them all go off within the time window; the first one would destroy the rest even if there's only microseconds in it.

And I think no one actually tried to develop doomsday bombs of this type, so we can`t be sure there is no way to force arbitrary amount of hydrogen to fuse...

Of course we can be sure; its basic physics. Doomsday bombs are fiction, they were 'invented' by Herman Kahn as a reductio ad absurdam to highlight the idiocy of some nuclera policies, he never for one moment believed that they could actually be built.
 
The nearest thing to a practical doomsday weapon that I have read about was in a novel "ragnorak" years ago.

This involved exploding a very high yield thermonuclear device in the caldera of a undersea megavolcano near Iceland. The bomb kicked off the megavolcano by crushing the crust at that point. Result was disasterous for the North Atlantic NATO countries and changed the global climate drastically.

How would it go if the Yellowstone caldera was targeted by a whole series of 100MT groundbursts I wonder?
 
The nearest thing to a practical doomsday weapon that I have read about was in a novel "ragnorak" years ago.

This involved exploding a very high yield thermonuclear device in the caldera of a undersea megavolcano near Iceland. The bomb kicked off the megavolcano by crushing the crust at that point. Result was disasterous for the North Atlantic NATO countries and changed the global climate drastically.

How would it go if the Yellowstone caldera was targeted by a whole series of 100MT groundbursts I wonder?
There was the Alistair McLean Novel "Goodbye California" Where the Terrorists plan to detonate a series of Under Ground Nukes along the San Andreas.
 
On land it will probably destroy everything around it for miles and miles causing earthquakes and volcanoes and such, fallout will probably spread around the world, killing every living thing and blot out the sun for decades to come, ensuring a horrible fate for anyone one unlucky enough to die. At sea it will do much the same, only with more water based disasters like tsunamis. It will also probably kill everything in the ocean, which is a source of most of our food and oxygen, so we get to see if we starve or suffocate to death first. Of course this is a assuming we are not blown off of our gravitational orbit, or just blown to pieces.
Actually, a 250K megaton explosion would NOT have enough energy to knock the Earth out of its orbit around the sun, or blow da planet to bits, but it sure as hell will bring da party on this planet to a screeching halt in a freaking hurry. Besides this scenario sounds like part of the FAT TL, where a massive nuke was lit off over Korea, although that nuke wasn't quite as powerful as the one described here.
 
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Yep. For All Time. This is the Glorious People's Revolutionary Hammer we're talking about, no doubt. I recall in one discussion, someone said that it would cause nuclear fusion to occur in the atmosphere and consume everything. :rolleyes:

In fact, 250000 megatons is the exact yield of the GPRH, although it never was detonated at the full yield. I wonder if Dornan cheered and whooped Major Kong-style on the way down, though?

Anyway, it depends. How clean is this aggregate bomb, for example? You'd get regional devastation from the blast effects, and it'd cause a nasty earthquake, but nothing world-ending. As for the radioactive materials, most of that would settle out for several days; you might get substantial effects, but that'd be confined to a narrow latitude band. Climate disruption? Well...there'd be a big crater, but much of that would also settle out quickly.

Regional devastation, but nothing too world-threatening.

Personally, though, I'd like to know more about the delivery vehicles they used in the FaTL; what were those spaceplanes like, exactly? I know they were nuclear-powered and air-breathing...so, what? A cross between an XB-70 and the Supersonic Low Altitude Missile, with big nuclear-thermal mixed-cycle jet engines?
 
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