Nuclear War ... ahhh .. maybe not so bad

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Nuclear blast zone damage estimator. Something to have fun with over coffee.

NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein

The ones we dropped on Japan were about 15 kilotons - which doesn't do as much damage as you might think.

The biggest one ever the was Tsar Bomba @ 50+ megatons that the Commies dropped. Described very well in Wiki as "The Tsar Bomba is the single most physically powerful device ever deployed on Earth"
 

nivek

As Above So Below
The biggest one ever the was Tsar Bomba @ 50+ megatons that the Commies dropped.

That we know of?...Maybe the Space force are testing nukes in space now, big ones, to take out an asteroid that may pose a threat?...:Whistle:

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Standingstones

Celestial
It wouldn’t take much to get a war escalation in space. If one country uses laser, kinetic weapons or outright bombs on another countries’ satellites. We would never know a thing back here on planet Earth.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
NUKEMAP is so you can see what happens when a nuclear weapon hits EARTH. If anybody's randomly shooting nukes off into space I suspect some ground observer might catch a Tsar Bomba fireworks show.

The concept of a 'winnable' nuclear exchange sounds nuts but isn't so far from military planning as we might hope at this point. This is why we upgraded our strategic weapons over the past decade+ and have 'dial a nuke' capabilities to scale the warheads to whatever size you need. This app shows you what going up to 11 does .....

You center 'Fat Man' on the roof of my house and surprisingly most of the small town I live in would still be here. Wouldn't be happy, but it would be here. Then scale it up until you see a nice chunk of the Eastern seaboard go away.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
It wouldn’t take much to get a war escalation in space. If one country uses laser, kinetic weapons or outright bombs on another countries’ satellites. We would never know a thing back here on planet Earth.

A History of Anti-Satellite Programs

In 2007, China used a mobile, ground-based missile to launch a homing vehicle that destroyed one of its aging weather satellites by direct impact, or "kinetic kill"—and created more persistent debris than any other event in space. In 2008, the U.S. demonstrated the ASAT capabilities of its sea-based Aegis missile defense interceptors by destroying a non-responsive U.S. satellite at an altitude of 240 km. In 2010, India announced its intentions to develop a hit-to-kill ASAT system.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
Well, that actually is reassuring. And a bit freaky

So, Gorbachev says Reagan had asked him that if ET attacked the USA would the Soviet union help them, Gorbachev said yes, and after that they made peace, then soon after the Berlin wall fell and the nuclear arsenals were reduced...

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pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
So, Gorbachev says Reagan had asked him that if ET attacked the USA would the Soviet union help them, Gorbachev said yes, and after that they made peace, then soon after the Berlin wall fell and the nuclear arsenals were reduced...

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Interesting but I interpreted it as combining against a nondenominational common foe, like the Nazis.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
Interesting but I interpreted it as combining against a nondenominational common foe, like the Nazis.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, sort of?...

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spacecase0

earth human
Interesting but I interpreted it as combining against a nondenominational common foe, like the Nazis.
back then something flew over some nuke sites and shut them down (USA), or activated them (russia),
each side thought the other one had done it.
pretty sure this is what they were talking about,
on world or off world threats, what did that was not Russia or USA
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
I didn't take them literally.

But .....

Never sure really what to make of Robert Hastings and the shutdowns but they're very compelling. Those occurred in the late '60s though, and we're talking about these two chatting 15-20 years later.

The Soviets got the opposite. Their missiles spun up and were preparing to launch and then just shut down again after a while, so says the story. The incident with the Soviet silos in the Ukraine was about 3 years prior to these meetings so you might think that would be fresh in Gorbachev's mind. But, if you're Gorbachev you might not even be aware of the earlier US incidents but you are aware of the highly visible terrestrial problems he and Reagan are there to deal with.

Emily Post would suggest a few stiff shots of vodka before even mentioning the UFO-ICBM thing.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
So, Gorbachev says Reagan had asked him that if ET attacked the USA would the Soviet union help them, Gorbachev said yes, and after that they made peace, then soon after the Berlin wall fell and the nuclear arsenals were reduced...

...

and we lived happily ever after.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
Yikes, really?...floppy disks?...:ohmy8:

US military will no longer use floppy disks to coordinate nuke launches

As we alarmingly learned in 2014, the US military has been using 8-inch floppy disks in an antiquated '70s computer to receive nuclear launch orders from the President. Now, the US strategic command has announced that it has replaced the drives with a "highly-secure solid state digital storage solution," Lt. Col. Jason Rossi told c4isrnet.com.

The storage is used in an ancient system called the Strategic Automated Command and Control System, or SACCS. It's used by US nuclear forces to send emergency action messages from command centers to field forces, and is unhackable precisely because it was created long before the internet existed. "You can't hack something that doesn't have an IP address. It's a very unique system -- it is old and it is very good," Rossi said.

The Defense Department planned to replace the old IBM Series/1 SACCS computer and "update its data storage solutions, port expansion processors, portable terminals, and desktop terminals by the end of fiscal year 2017," it said in 2016. The Air Force hasn't revealed whether that project is complete, but did say that it has enhanced the speed and connectivity of SACCS.

Despite the age of the system, the Air Force is confident in its security and has a pretty good handle on maintaining it. By contrast, installing an all-new system isn't as easy as it sounds. "You have to be able to certify that an adversary can't take control of that weapon, that the weapon will be able to do what it's supposed to do when you call on it," said Air Force Scientific Advisory Board chair Dr. Werner JA Dahm back in 2016.


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nivek

As Above So Below
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, sort of?...

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Could there ever be real trust and friendship between the US and Russia after the decades of bad blood, artificially created frictions, and the power hungry ambitions both have?...I can see us joining forces for a mutual threat, but I wonder if there ever could be a trusting friendship between the two nations...

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