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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Would somebody from the middle ages be able to identify an atomic / nuclear bomb?
Setting: a fantasy world with a culture loosely based on the late middle ages or early renaissance, with more value placed on the fantasy elements than strictly adhering to a proper "time period" (i.e....
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How dangerous is a 500-year-old nuclear warhead?
Inspired by this question:
For several excellent reasons, a 500-year-old nuclear warhead is not going to produce an actual nuclear explosion. But that doesn't mean it's not dangerous anymore.
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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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Would the capability for Japan to drop a nuclear bomb on the USA have deterred the USA from dropping a nuclear bomb on Japan?
Would the USA have been deterred from dropping a nuclear bomb on Japan if Japan had the means of retaliating with a nuclear weapon in WW2?
Leading on from that, would Japan have used the nuclear ...
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How would one design an undetectable nuke to hit the Moon with?
Colonists have set up a viable, long term lunar colony on the near-side of the moon in the mid-21st century. They are quickly reaching total self-sufficiency and the earth governments who sponsored ...
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How realistic is a dirty bomb for area-denial?
I need a city-sized (10 km2 minimum) area to be declared inaccessible for 50 years minimum.
My thought was to justify this with a dirty bomb attack of some sort. Radiological dispersal devices (RDD)...
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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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Would it be possible to accidentally nuke ourselves?
I understand that the U.S. has accidentally dropped bombs on ourselves many times without actually detonating the bombs. These accidents have caused craters, but no radiation (or in a couple cases, ...
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How can Mutually Assured Destruction be made...not assured?
By the late 1950s, the USA, the UK and the Soviet Union had enough nuclear weapons and the ability to deliver them that any nuclear exchange was virtually guaranteed to result in the destruction of ...
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Railgun-launched nuclear warhead
I'm making a world where sub-FTL interstellar travel is a thing, and so is interstellar war, but for the purpose of this question we'll assume the scale to be of a single system.
Spaceships have ...
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Would a civilization on a planet with no natural Uranium-235 NEED to first achieve fusion before it can build nukes?
If a much older solar system - say 10 billion years with a slow burning star - would sprout intelligent life at around that age, given the half-life of U-235 and natural Uranium reserves, according to ...
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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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Could alien observers detect the Castle Bravo nuclear test?
I am considering writing an alternate history story in which 1950s nuclear testing attracts the attention of benevolent extraterrestrials who do not want to see us destroy ourselves. However a ...
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How long would it take to nuke an alien spaceship in orbit?
Some gigantic, and presumably evil, alien spaceship has taken up residence in LEO. This spacecraft is ominously blocking all satellite communications, and launching smaller flying saucers towards the ...
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How long could a nuclear warhead remain functioning underground?
So, in my world, a nuclear war engulfed the Earth in the autumn of 1962. It is now the year 2568. In my story, a cult of mutants known as “The Followers Of Uranius” have sprung up in Kansas City. ...
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How to make nuclear fireworks?
Meg Al O'man, empress of all the lands where the sun never sets, bringer of peace across the oceans, archmaster of the secret order of the water puppets and so on and so forth has set her mind on ...
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Can one guy with a duplicator initiate a nuclear apocalypse?
The setting:
Present day. The country is up to you. Whatever would be easiest.
The guy:
Highly skilled. Maybe ex-Marine? Special forces? You can have him be "top of his class" at just about ...
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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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Deployment of nukes on "home" soil? [closed]
You see it in movies: an invading entity is unstoppable with conventional weaponry and a desperate leader is forced (after much soul-searching) to detonate a nuke against said invader as a last ditch ...
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How plausible is it for nuclear power to be invented but not nuclear weapons?
I don’t need a super detailed answer here, so this is definitely going to be pretty opinion-based. For context, let’s say you have a world where WW2 was ended by an all-American superhero punching ...
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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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Are nuclear armed missiles effective weapons for spaceborne combat?
So I've read up (NASA has good stuff) that nuclear weapons detonated in space are primarily a radiation hazard. Thermal and concussive effects are negligible, other than I suppose hot fragmentation ...
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Can we hit the spaceship
Setting: close to present day. Aliens in ships about the size of the Pentagon are detected at about 10 AU, moving at about 100km/s, and will therefore take about 6 months to arrive.
Realistically at ...
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Making nuclear weapons almost impossible to build
The Issue
I am currently working on a world that is supposed to take place around the 1980s, in terms of parity with Earth, technology-wise. There is a lot of magic mixed into it as well.
The real ...
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Could an object from space crash into Earth and set off a majority of the nuclear bombs created?
I'm currently trying to create a separate kind of Earth, without just changing my setting to a world that fits my criteria. So I'm trying to figure out a way for Earth to have a new beginning, so that ...
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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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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 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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What could be the the consequences in this world if nuclear bombs didn't release radiation anymore?
In an alternative earth, or just a few decades from now, someone was able to make a breakthrough in nuclear bombs. Developing a way to make the radiation be nullified by its extreme chain reactions or ...
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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 would happen if 250 nuclear weapons were detonated within Owens Valley in California?
(NO CIA/FBI/NSA IM NOT A TERRORIST ARMED WITH 250 STOLEN/UNACCOUNTED FOR NUKES)
I’m writing a Godzilla fanfiction and in it, while Godzilla was doing Godzilla things on the West Coast (destroying ...
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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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Appearance and effects of a 200 mt fusion bomb explosion on the moon
Let's suppose that a fusion bomb device with a yield of 200 megatons (4x Tsar Bomba) is detonated in Mare Tranquillitatis on the Moon.
My question is:
Would the explosion be visible from Earth at ...
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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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What situation would prompt the world to dump the use of Atomic and Nuclear Explosives entirely?
Atomic and nuclear weapons are certainly the most destructive weapons Earth has in modern times, able to rupture cities. In the present, while we have the NPT (Treaty of Non-Proliferation of Nuclear ...
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Could a nuclear explosion occur naturally on a planet with crazy enough (but still possible) conditions?
My question here is if there is any circumstance, however unlikely, that could lead to explosive nuclear fission that was not set off by intelligent creatures. I'm working on some bizarre planets for ...
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If people were the size of squirrels, would we ever have developed nuclear fission?
If people were about 1 foot tall and weighed about 1 pound, would we ever have made a reactor or an atomic bomb? Because critical mass doesn't change, the scale of the project to mine and process ...
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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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Hard sci-fi super weapons?
So in my questions about the intergalactic highway and simulated ship quarters I established a universe where the navy fights a cult of alien worshipers over star gates. 500 to 700 years in the future....
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I'm looking for an event that would have accelerated the American nuclear program
I've been brainstorming this idea of America conquering the world right after World War II, during the period when USA was the only nation with the atomic bomb.
I'm looking for something either ...
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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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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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Could a robot that can survive at the center of the Earth also survive a nuclear explosion?
The robot in question is a very large, worm-like mining robot with a huge drill on its front end, built to survive staggering levels of heat and pressure. It's so resiliant, in fact, that it can ...
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How to make nukes useless?
I am currently trying to write a story about a World War 3, but the major issue I am having is the presence of nuclear weapons. I want the war to constantly escalate to a point where it becomes a ...
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How long can the entire civilization be powered by converting all nuclear arsenal into commercial reactor fuel?
Imagine a miracle happened and all leaders decided to wind back the minute hand of the doomsday clock and passed a bill that can transform all kinds of nuclear weapons into fuel for power plants, ...
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What subatomic particle is best for a particle accelerator gun?
Theoretically, assuming it was possible and practical to take a particle accelerator and turn it into a gun/cannon weapon, and use it to shoot accelerated subatomic particles. What sort of subatomic ...
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Can a brainwashed American president end the human race?
Suppose a group of intelligent but insane people has developed mind control technology. They have managed to plant a chip inside the US president's head. They can wirelessly send signals to his mind ...
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How a nuclear war in north hemisphere would affect the south hemisphere?
I'm trying to figure out how a nuclear war in the north hemisphere would affect the south (specially South America, where my story is set).
I read about the nuclear fallout and nuclear winter ...
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How many nukes can explode in the US without seriously affecting Canada?
Perhaps you have read Margaret Attwood's story 'A Handmaid's Tale' (spoiler alert- entire plot synopsis)?
I thought a prequil is in order. A story to explain how American society got to that point. ...
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