In the links above is said that actual weight of the bomb will be the same as battleship Missuri, that is 20 000 tons. Note, that 510 tons is only amount of cobalt-60 which appeared in the explosion, but as cross-section is not very high, actually one needs to put many thousand tons of raw cobalt in the bomb. (There will be obvious local effects too, for the first thousand km.) For example, large volcanic eruptions were able to cover all sky for months with soot. So, there will be no localised fallout, but it will slowly falling from sky all over the world for months. I will award $50 to the best answer by the end of next week, based on my gut sense, and I might pay out more if someone gives a particularly exceptional answer.Īs the explosion of the cobalt bomb will be very powerful, probably, around 10 gigaton, it will put almost all the cobalt in the upper levels of atmosphere, may be even in space, from where it will fall all over the earth. I am interested in this question because it seems relevant to estimate the worst case scenario of a nuclear war, and the likelihood of civilization recovering after such an event. I don't know whether a single bomb that efficiently distributes 510 tons of material is remotely feasible, and the section about Co-60 conversion also suggests that the actual effectiveness of such a bomb would be far below this theoretical maximum.ĭoes there exist any existing literature that estimates the practical fallout area of a cobalt bomb? Or can we just do a simple Fermi to estimate things ourselves? However, in fact, complete 100% conversion into Co-60 is unlikely a 1957 British experiment at Maralinga showed that Co-59's neutron absorption ability was much lower than predicted, resulting in a very limited formation of Co-60 isotope in practice. If one assumes that all of the material is converted to Co-60 at 100 percent efficiency and if it is spread evenly across the Earth's surface, it is possible for a single bomb to kill every person on Earth. The Wikipedia article only has the following mildly helpful section: Theoretically, a device containing 510 metric tons of Co-59 can spread 1 g of the material to each square km of the Earth's surface (510,000,000 km2). I don't actually know the fallout area of such a bomb. The same goes to Pakistani nukes against the advantage of conventional Indian Armed Forces.Cobalt bombs are the currently most effective way I know of to make large areas of land unlivable for a long period of time. Nations like Syria, Libya, Iran or Nothern Korea are striving hard to develop ICBMs with nuclear warheads, capable to reach the US coast as a safe prevention of an invasion similar to the Operation Iraqi Freedom. Today nukes serve as counter-balance for the overwhelming conventional advantage of the United States military. Now the Cold War is over, thanks God that both sides had nukes.Įven themselves being intended for massive destruction purposes, they got their place on history pedestal. Nuclear weapons helped to save millions of lifes simply by preventing the Cold War from breaking out into a gigantic conventional worldwide conflict. :mad: (this goes also for those who invented them and those who still make money with them) 25th October 2004 at 16:27 - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00Īll nuclear weapons to me are big time BS, undesirable, ugly, stupid, stinky and every single bad name in existence and including those bad names yet to be invented. But the radius of destruction from blast and heat would be considerably less for the former." Although the lethal radius for people inside tanks would be somewhat less because of the protection, pure neutron radiation is more penetrating than a mixture of neutron and gamma, and the lethal radius would be greater for a one-kiloton neutron bomb than for a 13- kiloton fission warhead. It would take a 13-kiloton fission (atom) bomb to produce a combined lethal dose of neutron and gamma radiation over that same distance. A one-kiloton neutron bomb will spread a lethal dose of neutron radiation to exposed people over a one-mile radius. By eliminating that jacket the full fusion emission of neutrons is released. "The neutron bomb, or "enhanced radiation warhead" as it is called in scientific circles, is basically a hydrogen bomb without the uranium-238 jacket which would absorb neutrons to increase the blast.
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