NationStates Jolt Archive

Since Alfegos will gripe over my Ignoreing of him for it, I just like to ask if Man-Made Tsunamis are WMDs or not.

Hooray for unbiased polls. :rolleyes:

Yes, they're WMDs. No, they're not godmoding. A decent subsurface nuclear detonation will make one nicely. Of course, the amount of collateral damage will be absolutely horrifying, as it's kind of impossible to prevent said tsunami from reaching other countries.

Yes, they are. And they're wholly feasible. Pack enough explosives into an underwater fault line, and you'd have an earthquake, which causes tsunamis. Or, as Otagia noted before me, nuke some whales, and you'll also get a tsunami.

Unless you where able to create a nuke that had a directible blast.

Easily feasible, and obviously a WMD. However, it isn't a conventional WMD, due to it's pure rarity.

Alfegos used orbital weaponry though. I'm not sure if the physics has been fleshed out, but I'm curious as to how water is affected by a "god-rod."

The penetrator mostly vaporizes upon impact, a significant portion of the energy spent as water converts to steam nigh instantly. At those speeds, the metal in the rod acts almost like a very slow moving fluid, so it kind of splatters and steams and vaporizes and scares the heck out of boats within a few hundred meters. However, it will have no appreciable wave, you need serious power for that.

Remember that tsunami in the Indian ocean? The surface wave was just a normal swell, but the movement of the water was the ENTIRE vertical column, all the way to the sea floor. That's nigh incalculable power right there. Surface nonsense like godrods is like pissing in the ocean compared.

Yes, they are (http://www.higherpraise.com/tsunamid.htm)

This time the Indian and US military are in the frame, while the governments of countries from Australia to Thailand stand accused of deliberately failing to act on warnings of the impending earthquake or the tsunamis it unleashed around Asia.

Among the more common suggestions is that eco-weapons, which can trigger earthquakes and volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves were being tested. More outlandish theories include one that aliens caused the earthquake to try and correct the “wobbly rotation of the Earth.”

Right guys: for information on the orbital impactor I used (a SPHERE, not a rod), refer to the post here (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=13396694&postcount=41). If that is not enough for you, then the orbital impact calculator I used for the projectile is here (http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/).

About the tsunami Ryou, which I didn't explain that well: the wave of water that would have hit your coastline would have had quite a large height (about 20m upwards). HOWEVER, it would not have been widescale: it would have been localised to all coastline within about 30-40km at most, since this form of tsunami loses energy rapidly.

Now Ryou, if you had to make a poll, which I voted the top option for a laugh, then could you make it so it was UNBIASED: That is to say that you give us more options than GODMODE and DUMB. And if you would be so kind as to read through my post FULLY before you come up with one of these, and if you have issues use the lovely system we call TELEGRAMS.

Thankyou for your time everyone.

And I said NO WMDs on my Thread.

You Broke that rule with your Tsunami of Godmod.

that is why Alfegos is being Ignored.

Right mate.
1) As I have explained above, it is NOT godmode. I will repeat, it is NOT godmode. If you do not understand how this is so, I will kindly discuss it with you.
2) It is not a WMD as such, since it does not cause that much in the way of mass destruction...if you read what I have already explained, it falls within the scale of reason.

If you were a good RP'er, you would accept this as an interesting twist in your storyline, possibly building large events around it. Since however you aren't, I will have accept you Ignoring me.
As I said when I joined the sorry affair, I was hoping to see a change from the threads I have seen and see some quality RP'ing from you, as well as what was looking to be a very interesting storyline. As it is, you have let me down, and I will not be participating further in your thread or in any more of your threads, until you can definitively prove that I won't be wasting my time by joining in.

Well, it is a weapon of mass destruction. But not a Weapon of Mass Destruction.

IE, it's the same as dropping a very, very big bomb in the kiloton range on a city, without it being nuclear. A moving wall of water is not a radiological, chemical or a biological weapon.

Like a British GrandSlam bomb from WW2.

Depending on what it hit, I'd probaly categorize it as a WMD on a case-by-case basis. IE, if it took out a coastal city, I'd call it a WMD and start throwing chemical warheads around (I detest nukes) - the same sort of way I treat godrods. It's variable, though it's the other poster's choice to use them or not, and therefore should be prepared for any inevitability.

If you were a good RP'er, you would accept this as an interesting twist in your storyline, possibly building large events around it. Since however you aren't, I will have accept you Ignoring me.
As I said when I joined the sorry affair, I was hoping to see a change from the threads I have seen and see some quality RP'ing from you, as well as what was looking to be a very interesting storyline. As it is, you have let me down, and I will not be participating further in your thread or in any more of your threads, until you can definitively prove that I won't be wasting my time by joining in.

Careful with the insults.

I don't about the specific event, but I agree with others here that a subsurface nuke blast resulting in a tsunami is not a godmod.

Right guys: for information on the orbital impactor I used (a SPHERE, not a rod), refer to the post here (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=13396694&postcount=41). If that is not enough for you, then the orbital impact calculator I used for the projectile is here (http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/).

About the tsunami Ryou, which I didn't explain that well: the wave of water that would have hit your coastline would have had quite a large height (about 20m upwards). HOWEVER, it would not have been widescale: it would have been localised to all coastline within about 30-40km at most, since this form of tsunami loses energy rapidly.

Now Ryou, if you had to make a poll, which I voted the top option for a laugh, then could you make it so it was UNBIASED: That is to say that you give us more options than GODMODE and DUMB. And if you would be so kind as to read through my post FULLY before you come up with one of these, and if you have issues use the lovely system we call TELEGRAMS.

Thankyou for your time everyone.
First off, you seem to be having difficulty with this simulator.

Distance from Impact: 1.50 km = 0.93 miles
Projectile Diameter: 2.00 m = 6.56 ft = 0.00 miles
Projectile Density: 19,250 kg/m3
Impact Velocity: 45.00 km/s = 27.95 miles/s
Impact Angle: 55 degrees
Target Density: 1000 kg/m3
Target Type: water


The seismic effects of such aren't much:
The major seismic shaking will arrive at approximately 0.3 seconds.
Richter Scale Magnitude: 3.2
Mercalli Scale Intensity at a distance of 1.5 km:

III. Felt quite noticeably by persons indoors, especially on upper floors of buildings. Many people do not recognize it as an earthquake. Standing motor cars may rock slightly. Vibrations similar to the passing of a truck.

Now, the energy that is cited in this simulator is about 20 kilotonnes. 10 is dispersed as friction in atmosphere, and 10 is spent in the impact.

The air blast will arrive at approximately 4.55 seconds.
Peak Overpressure: 14600 Pa = 0.146 bars = 2.07 psi
Max wind velocity: 32.4 m/s = 72.4 mph
Sound Intensity: 83 dB (Loud as heavy traffic)
Damage Description:
Glass windows will shatter.

Okay, so it says 2.07 PSI at a range of exactly 1.5km. So, the pressure wave is inversely proportional to the square of the distance, we can negate the wind doing jack at any serious range. As for the wave action, the cited depths are likely deeper than the impact point, which will be comparatively shallow and likely to be too close to be remotely near a shelf. There will be a crater at the bottom and some impolite waves, but we're talking comparable to a minor hurricane at most. Any city made to take a storm surge (which most coastal cities tend to be, by the way) will be able to ignore it. There are no ZOMG TWENTY FOOT WAVEZ! here. I'd be surprised to see seven footers.

Essentially, I'm saying that it will be flashy, blow out some windows, capsize a few pleasure ships in the harbor, and maybe put a wave or two up into stores on the street nearest the ocean. That's it. 80 decibel sound is NOTHING, wind at 120 km/hr is only moderately hurricane force. Scare the heck out of beachgoers but do no real damage. We're talking about what amounts to a minor inconvenience in real life, in NS it's just stupid. It's grounds for him to slag the heck out of you (I certainly would in a heartbeat) and far more expensive than necessary.

I never thought I'd side with Ryou on much of anything, but Alfegos, you're giving me the prime opportunity.

And Alfegos.

I would listen to No Endorse. He knows what-the-fudge he's talking about.

It's certainly possible, and in no way a godmod, but not in the way Alfegos is implementing it.

Alfegos' giant sphere would be almost immediately rendered infeasible by the cost (be it MT or PMT) of launching such a massive object into orbit, presumably keeping it up there, which means blasting back into higher orbit every once and awhile, and then having it drop back down onto the earth. Even if this was accomplished, it would be hard for any nation to not notice the presence of a large orbiting sphere and wonder what it's doing up there disobeying laws of physics.

Even then, the ocean to which it would fall into is likely so massive that it would be much like throwing a pebble into a lake. The resultant wave would not be high enough to classify as a tsunami of any sort. It would probably cause more of a normal wave, which, of course, wouldn't damage anything.

Beyond that, the heat of re-entry is going to set this sphere on fire, which would vaporize some of the water on contact, which wouldn't help the wave get particularly big.

The only repercussions from this would be sailors and fishermen who become rather inconvenienced at the appearance of a large sphere that would hinder their operations.

To generate a tsunami, you'd need to detonate something like a nuclear explosion near a large fault or other underwater rock formation so that the explosion would force the rock to displace large amount of water and create a tsunami.

Of course, this only works if the country you're trying to attack is close to any fault line or something similar.

Whether or not a tsunami is a WMD would be based on opinion and scope. Most tsunamis deal a great deal of material damage, but, thanks to warning systems, don't kill a great deal of people.

Also, if a wave were larger, or hit more coastline, it could potentially more effect.

In my opinion, the only way a tsunami would be a WMD would be if it hit a major coastal city with tremendous force and no warning at all. Any other way and it'd just be a natural disaster.

All in all, weapons like nukes and VX are likely to accomplish the WMD task with much less effort and much more efficiency.

I'll have to go with No-Endorse on misreading the figures (not to good at standard form am I?)

However, as I said before, any waves will probably have very little power due to the nature of this attack: a normal tsunami is caused by a seismic shock that moves the entire ocean. As a result, you have a wave that is not necessarily high (depends of slope of shoreline) but has a lot of power behind it.
The mechanics of impact-generated tsunamis are not understood as much, yet the current accepted theory is that it will produce a wave initially very high, but losing energy very rapidly.
I wasn't looking for United Estovakia's "5 miles inland" waves, but then I should have gone into a hell of a lot more detail in that post.

As for cost, have you seen what these do when you shoot a land target, Akinmoad? It is well worth its cost when you can do masses of damage to a city. And a projectile weighing multiple tonnes can be lifted into orbit with the right launch vehicle, and not necessarily all at once.

However, since I have withdrawn from this RP in which this occurred, I will not be continuing with this matter, other than to use a much bigger projectile next time!