Questions tagged [nuclear-weapons]
For questions about nuclear weapons. For example, topics could be about their usage in war, their construction, or their effect in a given scenario. Also consider using the tag [weapon-mass-destruction]. Consider reviewing "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons" (link in tag wiki) before asking your question.
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How feasible are nukes as a spotting system in space?
In the semi-realistic space combat I design, the following rock-paper-scissors relation holds:
lasers beat rockets
rockets beat armor
armor beats lasers
The level of technology is not too futuristic:...
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How small can a nuclear weapon get?
Context
I am writing the section following a critical space battle where a rogue UNN Pearl of the Stars is taken down, and its CIC, reactor and, most importantly, its payload of 4 planet buster 15-...
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How close to modern technology can humans plausibly get without discovering nukes?
This is for humans living on a similar planet as earth and similar tech-development (in my setting, there is magic, but I want the most ideal, non-magic answer to this so I can better tweak the other ...
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Could You Use Artificial Volcanoes To Create Buildings?
For the purposes of this question the builders are incredibly wealthy, have access to cheap nukes to use for excavation, and everyone in this world is immune to radiation.
The technology is decades ...
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How big would the AoE/destruction of a nuke 72 times smaller than normal be assuming it still works at that scale?
I had the idea of a nuke that is scaled down for roughly 1 inch tall cockroaches. Why would they make one at all? Because it sounds cool. Would it effect them since they are roaches? Probably not.
...
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Are we able to generate fusion by firing macroscopic particles really fast?
Big gun in space (let's not care about how the gun will work yet)
Pew pew,
If we fire fusion fuel,
Would we be able to cause a fusion reaction upon the particle's impact?
What speed would that take?
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What is the least far-fetched way to defend against nuclear submarines? [closed]
Since the Cold War, nuclear powers have said "don't mess with me" using the Nuclear triad, nuclear warheads on bomber planers, missile silos, and in submarines. Of these, the most important ...
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Reasons for using nuclear weapons? [closed]
When it comes to nuclear weapons use people are in general extremely simple: a full scale war would see nuclear use. There is rarely any reason given beyond “they have it so they’ll use it”, with some ...
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How should I design a cheap, shipping container class nuclear warhead? [closed]
Requirements:
cheap (so rather not Pu-239 but U-235)
easy and cheap to store for years with near zero maintenance (so no tritium and at most little plutonium, as admixture of Pu-240 would be source ...
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How would an alien race destroy all nuclear weapons on earth? [closed]
An alien race has decided that earth is the best place to recruit new soldiers and prepare for a war, and they want to eliminate all nuclear weapons (explosive ones, not dirty bombs) to prevent ...
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What kind of explosion could explode the whole Earth? [duplicate]
I want to make technology that can explode the whole Earth. The problem is that antimatter explosions and nuclear explosions just don't have the juice needed to blow up the planet. Conventional ...
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How could a mostly medieval civilization withstand an invasion by a modern air power? [closed]
In my story a medieval civilization of elves is facing an invasion from a modern day earth power. They have prophetic powers, which have predicted the invasion will happen in ten years, and have that ...
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How close can I get to a nuclear explosion with extreme shielding?
Imagine you are in empty space, and a 15 megaton nuclear bomb is very close to you (D=200 meters), but what's also very close to you is a giant (Tungsten?) cylinder (2? meters in diameter, 100? meters ...
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How effectively recover enriched uranium from nuclear impact site?
In the world(not Earth, but eath-like), I am building there was a nuclear exchange recently. Recently, I mean 25(subject to change) years into the past. I am describing a small clump of cities near ...
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If nuclear weapons were never existed or invented, what could replace it
I know this a very unrealistic question but imagine in a alternate world where scientists and engineers don't have the resources or the requirements to make nuclear weapons, what type of weaponry ...
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Where does the hero go in Central London in a Nuclear strike?
Let me set the scene.
It’s 1994, the cold war is nearing it’s end. Regardless of the fact that the Soviet union is breaking up, a high-ranking general in the Red Army decides this is the perfect ...
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How early could we have had nukes?
Suppose a message was sent to the past with a diagram, description, and use, of the simplest fission weapon.
It didn't describe how to mine Uranium, enrich it, or even a description of WHY it works or ...
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Making plutonium and tritium nuclear fuel with N.I.C.E. (Nuclear Ice Contained Explosions)
I want to produce fissile material.
I want to produce a lot of fissile material.
Fortunately, I read the Wikipedia page on Ted Taylor. It states that:
Apart from bombs, Taylor also explored concepts ...
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Would an air burst nuclear weapon make a crater? [closed]
In specific it would be a 300kt warhead detonated around 3000ft above the ground.
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A potential way to use "space mines" to guard a moon or small planet
Space mines have a glaring problem which is the fact that space is really big, But I have devised a space mine which could be used to defend a moon or small planet.
My space mine would be Casaba-...
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What might case cause the development of biological nuclear weapons as a natural evolutionary adaptation of a species?
Im doing a one-shot space campaign with some friends. One of the navigation hazards I wanted to add for my PCs was the system being infested with space Bourne biological life forms that, like some ...
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How would an invading force purposely put high levels of radiation on a planet?
The planet I've built was at one point inhabited by a society of somewhat advanced (think late 1800s) humanoids. Earth-people came to the planet in their first attempt at universal conquest, but ended ...
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Is there a metric for how far underground a nuclear bomb needs to be to safely be tested?
I'm running a one-shot cold war campaign where the PCs are going to sabotage a prototype Soviet giga-ton bomb. Realistically, how far underground would a giga-ton bomb have to be buried to be safely ...
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How far away from earth could atomic weapon detonations be detected?
Let us suppose that ten high kiloton to low megaton range fission/fusion weapons are being detonated between three and five kilometers under the surface of the sea on a planet much like earth, in a ...
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How do I design a city to be habitable under a constant barrage of low-yield nukes?
In this setting, international treaties restrict the yield of legally usable nuclear weapons to under the equivalent of 1,000 metric tons of TNT (one kiloton). If an entity detonates nuclear warheads ...
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The USA breaks up. Who gets the nukes?
When the USSR broke up into fifteen independent states, it's well known that Russia inherited the nuclear arsenal of the dissolving state. I don't know exactly how this was decided: if it was just &...
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How do you have Mutual Assured Destruction in space politics
Space is VAST, and many country occupied only a part of it. They do trade and make war just like we do on Earth. On Earth, we have our "peacemaker" between powerful nations in the form of ...
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Can a NASER be used as a weapon?
Before I go to my question, let me refresh the basic principles of operation of a LASER (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation): an active medium is brought in an excited state and, ...
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Joint Nuclear Weapons Control?
As stated in a previous question, the main political entity of my world, the United Commonwealth, is protected by a combined Army and Navy, made up of personnel from all nations, and funded by all ...
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How weight and volume-efficient can you make a high-yield nuclear weapon for setting off a volcano?
Let's say that we need a nuke that can fit into a very small space while also providing a very large boom.
Now, the US's B-41 nuclear bomb was quite mass-efficient indeed; it put out 22 petajoules, or ...
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Could a supervolcanic eruption in the Phlegraean Fields be triggered by detonating a 1-gigaton nuclear bomb and then fracking the resultant salt dome?
So. There's a group of nutcases in my setting; they are an ages-old, all-powerful secret society, yadda yadda yadda, control massive amounts of the world behind the scenes, have agents everywhere of ...
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How rapidly can small nuclear weapons be produced?
In my setting, there is a ban on nuclear detonations greater than one kiloton in magnitude. This ban is enforced with a supranationally controlled strategic nuclear arsenal capable of essentially ...
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Nuclear weapons with 1850s technology
Let's say a group of people in the 1850's had access to all modern knowledge of nuclear physics, but nothing else from modern technology. They have at their disposal resources equivalent to those of ...
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Wizards have nuclear weapons now but how have they not killed themselves
The wizarding world is a cut throat place. It's divided between several great mage families. Each one of these has a network of lesser families allied to them through marriage. Relations between ...
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What shape most efficiently disperses an overpressure wave from a nuclear weapon?
One rule of architectural design in one of my settings is the prime number rule: a building that abides by this rule can survive a 2-kiloton nuclear surface burst 300 meters away 5 times in a row ...
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Can nuclear intercontinental missiles be launched into space to destroy asteroids menacing Earth?
Wikipedia states that intercontinental ballistic missiles can fly a minimum of 5500 kilometers, can we shoot these missiles into space to reach beyond the thermosphere and explode on contact with an ...
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How do I design a main battle tank to fight a tactical nuclear war?
Exactly what it says on the tin: how do I design a tank to fight a nuclear war?
Nukes in this setting are limited to one kiloton yield or below by treaty, with the smallest ones having a yield of ten ...
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What would an above-ground residential apartment designed to negate the effects of a one-kiloton nuclear surface burst at 500 meters look like?
Exactly what it says on the tin: what would an above-ground residential apartment designed to negate the effects of a one-kiloton nuclear surface burst at 500 meters look like?
NUKEMAP-2 says that the ...
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Why do the nations in my world use tactical nuclear weapons but not strategic ones while still having both?
Exactly what it says on the tin: why do the nuclear bomb-having nations in my world use tactical nuclear weapons but not strategic ones while still having both?
They're not launching ICBMs at one ...
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What quantity of neutron radiation could a water-filled inflatable mattress functionally negate?
I have a character who's a paranoid lunatic that's convinced that a nuclear war is about to break out. As a result of this, they've pumped several inflatable mattresses - you know, the type used for ...
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What is the best place to sleep health-wise inside an M1 Abrams tank?
There are several characters crossing an NBC-laden apocalyptic landscape in an M1A1 Abrams tank. For various reasons irrelevant to the scope of this question, they cannot leave to set up some kind of ...
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How do you defend against a nuclear torpedo?
For reference: the nuclear torpedo. It is a torpedo with a nuclear munition for a warhead - exactly what it says on the tin.
Range is 100 kilometers at 75 knots; guidance is sonar, with gyroscope ...
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Would the successful creation of nuclear powered bombers in the 1950s have had any meaningful impact on the Cold War?
As far as I am aware nuclear powered bombers were the first attempt by the USSR and USA (either unintentional or not) at enhanced nuclear deterrence. Intending to place a nuclear reactor in a plane ...
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How does one subvert a Dead Hand-style automated nuclear weapons system? [closed]
For reference: Dead Hand.
Let's say that there's a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and people are attempting to get into it to rebuild/provide aid to survivors.
However, there's an automated nuclear-...
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Why would it take years to decades for aid to reach the survivors of a localized nuclear war?
Background: in my setting, there's a regional-scale nuclear war across most of Europe that primarily uses gun-type and boosted fission weapons. Essentially, mash this map and this map together, and ...
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What are some sociological or military justifications for localized nuclear warfare?
I'm not talking about world-ending, global-scale thermonuclear war, nor about massive salvos of missiles being fired at countries by other countries. I'm talking about, say, a few divisional-level ...
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What yield of nuclear explosive would need to be detonated in Valencia, Spain, to flood the Balearic Islands?
A nuclear device goes off on the beach in Valencia, Spain - immediately adjacent to the ocean. How large will this device need to be in order to flood a majority of the human settlements in the ...
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How much thermal energy, in joules per centimeter squared, is required to ignite common aerospace materials?
How much thermal energy, measured in joules per centimeter squared, would be required to:
melt (or ignite, if possible) commonly-used commercial airliner paint
melt (or ignite, if possible) commonly ...
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What would the effects of a 25-megaton thermonuclear weapon be on a military vehicle 13.7 kilometers away?
Let's say you have a B-41 nuclear bomb with a yield of 25 megatons.
It ground bursts in the direct center of Madrid, Spain.
A Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet multirole fighter is flying directly away ...
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Would dropping a nuclear bomb in a hollow world civilization be more disastrous compared to a surface world?
In my world (a very soft sci-fi world), humans live beneath the surface in a large planet that is largely inhospitable on the surface. It's not Earth. The hollow planet is kind of like Swiss cheese in ...
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