NationStates Jolt Archive

So I was looking through wikipedia and I found an interesting article about the w54 nuke, as I read the article it said that at 10 tons it could destroy 2 block area now I found this hard to believe since when I think of nukes I think of huge explosions an I was just wondering is this true or is it just some BS that is on wikipedia?

I know that the 10 megaton war head in the table top card game Nuclear War kills 2 million without the spinner. This concludes my knowledge of specific yields of nuclear weapons.

So I was looking through wikipedia and I found an interesting article about the w54 nuke, as I read the article it said that at 10 tons it could destroy 2 block area now I found this hard to believe since when I think of nukes I think of huge explosions an I was just wondering is this true or is it just some BS that is on wikipedia?

Is it that hard to follow links?

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/w54.htm
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Allbombs.html

You can get tactical nukes for taking out targets such as armoured columns. These are typically alot less powerful than their strategic counterparts.

So I was looking through wikipedia and I found an interesting article about the w54 nuke, as I read the article it said that at 10 tons it could destroy 2 block area now I found this hard to believe since when I think of nukes I think of huge explosions an I was just wondering is this true or is it just some BS that is on wikipedia?

Was 10 tons the weight of the weapon, or was that supposed to be the explosive yield?

Either way, it sounds like a typo. The Hiroshima bomb was a 500Kt weapon which is feeble by today's standards.

The W54 mini-nuke was meant to be used as a nuclear RPG to take out large numbers of enemy ground personel and equipment.

A nuke doesn't need to cause a huge explosion that levels a city. A nuclear weapon is simply a more efficient explosive device.

I suggest that you take the time to learn more about nuclear explosives and science in general. It's this sort of ignorance and fear that holds back progress. I'd also like to suggest a good book on nuclear weapons and their peaceful application, Project Orion: the True Story of the Atomic Spaceship by George Dyson chronicles the engineering study that could have put a man on Mars.

I hope your not suggesting that nuclear weapons constitiute progress. I agree, however that there is a great deal of fear-mongering over anything nuclear. I've seen intellligent and educated people insist that our uclear arsenals could literal blow up the Earth multiple times over.:rolleyes:

Personally I'm not to comfortable with using nukes here on Earth, around major population centers, but I agree they'd be a great help to the space program, where, to my mind, the long-term gains outweigh the potential risk.

I hope your not suggesting that nuclear weapons constitiute progress.

That would depend, the weapons themselves, no the research behind them, yes.

I hope your not suggesting that nuclear weapons constitiute progress. I agree, however that there is a great deal of fear-mongering over anything nuclear. I've seen intellligent and educated people insist that our uclear arsenals could literal blow up the Earth multiple times over.:rolleyes:

Personally I'm not to comfortable with using nukes here on Earth, around major population centers, but I agree they'd be a great help to the space program, where, to my mind, the long-term gains outweigh the potential risk.

Project Orion, ftw

I hope your not suggesting that nuclear weapons constitiute progress.
They stopped the most destructive conflict in world history, prevented a repeat of it, could have been used to carve through mountains and could have taken man to Mars and beyond. I'd call that progress and I'm not even counting the 2 versions of clean energy production that the research has led to. Fission is here today as a source of power and perhaps some day we'll have fusion as well.

I agree, however that there is a great deal of fear-mongering over anything nuclear. I've seen intellligent and educated people insist that our uclear arsenals could literal blow up the Earth multiple times over.:rolleyes:
Destroying a planet like this one isn't as easy as they say. What they mean is that the nuclear arsenal could destroy the habitable surface of the planet turning the world into a raging inferno of radioactive hell. But the planet would still be here, it'd just look a lot different.

Personally I'm not to comfortable with using nukes here on Earth, around major population centers, but I agree they'd be a great help to the space program, where, to my mind, the long-term gains outweigh the potential risk.
Pfft! Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead! (on scientific advancement, even if it puts some people in peril)

They stopped the most destructive conflict in world history, prevented a repeat of it, could have been used to carve through mountains and could have taken man to Mars and beyond. I'd call that progress and I'm not even counting the 2 versions of clean energy production that the research has led to. Fission is here today as a source of power and perhaps some day we'll have fusion as well.
Most definitely. The invention of nuclear weaponry was progress despite its negative aspects, just like the invention of any other weapon is a form of progress.

And the simple fact is, we have to take the good with the bad. Real life isn't a movie: science cannot be performed without taking risks.


Destroying a planet like this one isn't as easy as they say. What they mean is that the nuclear arsenal could destroy the habitable surface of the planet turning the world into a raging inferno of radioactive hell. But the planet would still be here, it'd just look a lot different.

I wonder how much life would remain...what all is radiation resistant again?

Pfft! Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead! (on scientific advancement, even if it puts some people in peril)

Now, now, let's not be TOO hasty. By all means, we shouldn't let Luddites and similar such people stop science from progressing, but neither should we progress blindly without taking into account solid, sensible ethical concerns and safety issues. In other words, don't be stupid and speed things up. (You probably meant that anyway, but I just figure I'd say it for anyone who didn't understand.)

Was 10 tons the weight of the weapon, or was that supposed to be the explosive yield?

Either way, it sounds like a typo. The Hiroshima bomb was a 500Kt weapon which is feeble by today's standards.

The Hiroshima bomb was 15 kilotons. not 500. Most modern nukes are maybe 400 kilotons. (As in American Sub launched MIRV warheads.)

So I was looking through wikipedia and I found an interesting article about the w54 nuke, as I read the article it said that at 10 tons it could destroy 2 block area now I found this hard to believe since when I think of nukes I think of huge explosions an I was just wondering is this true or is it just some BS that is on wikipedia?

It helps if you link what you're talking about so people can go see it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W54

And if you'd followed the links from there, you'd have discovered that it was about 2-4 times as powerful as the OK city bomb.

I know that the 10 megaton war head in the table top card game Nuclear War kills 2 million without the spinner. This concludes my knowledge of specific yields of nuclear weapons.

Awesome game. :)

Was 10 tons the weight of the weapon, or was that supposed to be the explosive yield?

Either way, it sounds like a typo. The Hiroshima bomb was a 500Kt weapon which is feeble by today's standards.

10 tons is the yeild. It weighed 50 lbs.

The W54 warhead used on the Davy Crockett weighed just 51 pounds and was the smallest and lightest fission bomb (implosion type) ever deployed by the United States, with a variable explosive yield of 0.01 kilotons (equivalent to 10 tons of TNT, or two to four times as powerful as the ammonium nitrate bomb which destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995), or 0.02 kilotons-1 kiloton.
http://www.brookings.edu/projects/archive/nucweapons/davyc.aspx

Now, now, let's not be TOO hasty. By all means, we shouldn't let Luddites and similar such people stop science from progressing, but neither should we progress blindly without taking into account solid, sensible ethical concerns and safety issues. In other words, don't be stupid and speed things up. (You probably meant that anyway, but I just figure I'd say it for anyone who didn't understand.)
Ethics are abitrary. Besides, if Seaciety has taught us anything it's that war is a universal constant.

The w54 produces a sub-critical yield. It's a nuke in much the same way that Andaras is a communist. *nod*

I wonder how much life would remain...what all is radiation resistant again?
Well since it turns out that even if you used every nuke in the world, a world wide nuclear winter would not exist.

The world would gain a large amount of moderate radiation, that would kill or cause enough damage to kill off most humans, but many animals would survive.

And as for animals in long term radioactive areas.

Chenobyl is one of the greenest areas of Eastern Europe, the animals are thriving in that abandoned place, despite the low to medium levels of radiation that are constant in the zone.

I suggest that you take the time to learn more about nuclear explosives and science in general.

Well said. It's a poor mind that reads something, finds it interesting, but can't keep reading without the forum to tell them if it's true or not.

It's this sort of ignorance and fear that holds back progress. I'd also like to suggest a good book on nuclear weapons and their peaceful application, Project Orion: the True Story of the Atomic Spaceship by George Dyson chronicles the engineering study that could have put a man on Mars.

I would quibble about whether it's a weapon if it's not used even to destroy property. But I take the meaning, nuclear explosions which are currently only used in weaponry.

The fifties eh. Back when folks assumed that a bit of radiation was good for us all. :rolleyes:

I found this, non-military nuclear explosions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaceful_nuclear_explosions) interesting. It's only on-topic in the sense of "interesting, but I only spent ten minutes reading it." And only "interesting" in the sense that I only spent ten minutes reading it, from one source.

Sometimes I think we should just rip NSG out by the roots, and transplant it to the WikiPedia forums. They would hate us, and we'd love that. :D

The fifties eh. Back when folks assumed that a bit of radiation was good for us all. :rolleyes:

They still do (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis) :p

Or rather, it hasn't been properly studied because studying the effect of low or moderate level of radioactivity on humans is highly unethical IF its effects are per LNT model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNT_model) - Which is still the standard assumption.

The world would gain a large amount of moderate radiation, that would kill or cause enough damage to kill off most humans, but many animals would survive.
I would really doubt it would kill off most humans if many animals would survive.

Chernobyl accident directly killed off only 47 people and further 9 deaths have been directly linked to the accident - While total death toll is estimated to be in range of 4,000 to 100,000 most of the deaths come after long period of time enabling people to procreate before dying to a cancer the absolute cause of which is very hard - nigh impossible - to link to the accident instead of other causes, like pollution or life style (good ol' Soviet standards & vodka ;)).

edit:
It's interesting that most studies made by anti-nuclear advocates display death tolls into high 10s of thousands while pro-nuclear studies limit them to low thousands while both claim to be unbiased and objective.

They still do (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis) :p

Is joke. Is not funny.

Is not funny, because exposure to radiation we have no control over (cosmic rays, discharge from volcanoes etc) is implicitly "natural" -- conditions of evolution -- whereas anthropogenic radiation is a moral issue, of how we treat ourselves and other life.

We do things which have no precedent in the history of life on earth. Rare isotopes from controlled fission explosions being the salient example.

Or rather, it hasn't been properly studied because studying the effect of low or moderate level of radioactivity on humans is highly unethical IF its effects are per LNT model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNT_model) - Which is still the standard assumption.

If "properly studied" means deliberately harming people under controlled conditions, then further debate is ruled out by Godwin.

Hi! I'm here!

You'll get an hour of sensible debate out of me if you want it. After that (10:53 GMT) I will be too drunk to do anything but joke.

*adjusts her prima-donna curls*

If "properly studied" means deliberately harming people under controlled conditions, then further debate is ruled out by Godwin.
Yes, that's the problem.

If the assumption - which is backed by significant amount of evidence - is that all levels of radiation are harmful to you then exposing humans, even voluntarily, to artificial radiation for the sake of finding out if LNT stands is automatically out of the picture. To further augment the problem most of the involuntary or accidental doses people recieve which are used as basis of LNT model are orders of magnitude larger than what hormesis would cover.


For that matter, does anyone know what are the cancer rates among astronauts and cosmonauts?

Is it that hard to follow links?

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/w54.htm
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Allbombs.html

No but its time consuming, time which I don't have much of. But thanks for some links

For that matter, does anyone know what are the cancer rates among astronauts and cosmonauts?

100%. Space travel is the malignant growth of humanity beyond the bounds prescribed by their genes.

Thus, cosmonaughts ARE cancer. :p