Look up the Casaba-Howitzer project sometime. Or the PASCAL-B test shot that (accidentally) inspired it.
300 mega-ton fusion bomb? Are you serious? (GalNet)
- Thread starter CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost
- Start date
Look up the Casaba-Howitzer project sometime. Or the PASCAL-B test shot that (accidentally) inspired it.
The Tsara bomb was 100MT, so you'd need to adjust your numbers.
Either way: I would love to detonate one of these puppies!
The total yield is an estimate from observation, and the one that was detonated actually about 50MT, the design was supposed to be able to reach 100MT but not run at full power. The numbers for Chicxulub are also taken from wikipedia and relative to the Tsar bomb, rather than Tunguska, so I'm relying on whoever did that conversion to get it right, but it's at most a factor of two compared to 7 orders of magnitude. Tunguska is a bit smaller than the Tsar bomb, but I dropped it in as an example of a not particularly planet threatening event of about the same size (and went relatively unnoticed). The uncertainty on the Big Splash (an estimate of the energy in an event that we think might have happened about four and a half billion years ago) is just under an order of magnitude, the largest in the whole comparison, I picked the middle of the range. Tweaking small multiples on those kind of ratios is a bit pointless, and the Tsar bomb for everyone on Earth is a ballpark figure (for example, the population of Earth is somewhere over seven billion, not ten, so a slightly larger bomb or a slightly smaller splash is required), but it gives you an idea of the scale; if it's one terrifyingly large nuclear weapon between two or two each makes little difference to the sheer distance in scale between a nuclear bomb and Star Destroyer type planet busting. Of course, all human life would be wiped out at far lower numbers, so maybe don't try it at home (by which I mean the inner solar system...), and make sure you've got a friendly First One around for after-care.
Doesn't that describe Elite as a whole?
It totally does.
Get an itch to fly, fly. Get bored, leave. No investment to keep coming back to it for anything other than scratching an itch.
The question is what was the original intended use of such a large warhead and how did the raiders know it was there.
https://community.elitedangerous.com/en/galnet/uid/5c667ef723d8ab6ede7748b2
OK, some fluff about secret research outpost and stuff. And GalNet reports that a 300 mega-ton yield fusion bomb got stolen - "enough to level an entire city"
300 mega-tons? How big are cities in Elite Dangerous?
A reminder, the tsar bomb - the biggest H-bomb ever exploded in real world - had a yield of around 50-60 mega-tons. And that thing would have been enough to level a big city (circle of total destruction of 35 Km).
I understand that bigger is better in story telling, but that is a bit over the top. Even a 30 mega-ton fusion bomb would have been a really scary bomb. 300 mega-tons is a bit of overkill in terms of story telling (in my opinion).
Please time travel back to 2019 and nuke London. This UK government is hopeless. Fresh blood ( with added radiation defects ) are needed!
In space, nukes are just EMPs. What you need is something akin to a 360d^3 "thunderwell". Picture a big tank of mercury vapor, flash-evaporated by a contained nuclear blast and forcing 1000s of molten tungsten bits at mach 30 out in every direction like a gigantic frag grenade. The chassis of the bomb only has to last a split second longer than the fragments.
or put a lot anything dense that melts relatively easily into a really thick metal container.
If it gets consumed in the second stage, great. If not, it ejects a massive particle wave...with extra gamma rays.
or put a lot anything dense that melts relatively easily into a really thick metal container.
If it gets consumed in the second stage, great. If not, it ejects a massive particle wave...with extra gamma rays.