50 facts about US nuclear weapons

Originally posted by Mush


Bush = fanatic.
US has WMD's. (more conclusively than Iraq)
With the US's global policy, that would make invading the US legitimate, no?

Bullies.

The US is allowed to have nuclear weapons thanks to the NPT along with Russia,China the UK and France. Iraq, N Korea, Iran are not by their own signing of the NPT. Some countries decided not to sign it for example Israel and Cuba.

Originally posted by Mush
Bush = fanatic.
US has WMD's. (more conclusively than Iraq)
With the US's global policy, that would make invading the US legitimate, no?

Bullies.

Bush cannot unilaterally decise to nuke a city, there a re checks nad balances in a democracy. Whereas other states which purdue nulcear weapons have no scuh safeguards, one despotic ruler can unilaterally order a nuclear strike on a whim.
that's the difference. Also Western moral values would abhore such an action, it can't necessarily be said so in the Middle East

Originally posted by ShadowXIX

The USSR showed up the US with the biggest bang though with the Tsar Bomba which was detonated at half yeild (50MT) it was a (100MT) design. Lucky too since if Russia detonated it at full yield it by itself would have increased the world's total fission fallout since the invention of the atomic bomb by 25%.

True, however it was only because the USSR could be bothered to build such a weapon. The physics and technology to build a weapon of that size was a straight forwrad to the Americans as it was to the Soviets. The Americans just didn't bother. That may hvae been just as well, because the USSR may have been compelled to detonate a full yield Tsar Bomba and as you said the radiation consequences would have been horrendous.

i find it amusing to see the numbers of weapons the respective parties have according to some of the posts in here.

Russia x amount, America x amount... Whats classic is one will pretty much do these days. If anyone uses 1, the opposing side will use thiers and so fourth, its all over....

Sad sad times...

Originally posted by ufia
Number 44 is a classic!

44. Number of U.S. nuclear bombs lost in accidents and never recovered: 11

I don't know if this number is fact or fiction, but this is dumb beyond belief.

Sh....stuff happens I suppose. Rumor/urban legend has it that the Israelis got a good jump on their nuke program by recovering one of ours lost in the Mediterranean. I've heard other stories of the gov't simply paving over a few square acres of real estate because they knew a nuke was *somewhere* in the area but didn't know a specific enough location to recover it...

My dad used to be a missileer for the Minuteman III and Peacekeeper programs in the Air Force...he's got some good stories.

Neat list, though. You should check out the Atomic Bomb Movie by Peter Kuran. It's got some great footage.

Originally posted by PlasticMoses
Sh....stuff happens I suppose. Rumor/urban legend has it that the Israelis got a good jump on their nuke program by recovering one of ours lost in the Mediterranean. I've heard other stories of the gov't simply paving over a few square acres of real estate because they knew a nuke was *somewhere* in the area but didn't know a specific enough location to recover it...

The Isrealis got their nuke technology from the UK, US, and France. It was given to them, very little of it was done by them.

Russia detonated a bomb, and it's shockwave went around the world three times. The cloud was 60 kilometers high. That was a long time ago, imagine what we have now.

I am to lazy to find a source. But this is true, I just wrote a paper about this...google it if you are skeptic.

Sounds like the Tsar Bomba test to me....i imagine those in the observation plane(s) would have been buffeted about quite a bit on that test...

Exellent link... The nubers are huge... 35 000 000 000 dollars a year... That's a lot...

Good read! Plenty of interesting numbers and stats. # 21 Looks like Japan got screwed on that one. What good could become of all of this material if it were used for peacefull reasons?