How many nukes would it take to destroy a city?

While a TOT(time on target) attack on a city where all the nuke go off at the same time would cause much more damage then the same tonnage of nukes going off randomly.
the blast waves would be amplified where they met.
causing lines of damage at those points

The worst type attack could be one where no cities were hit.
This would be a full-scale EMP attack where 10 to 30 nukes are detonated at a high altitude of 50 to 80 miles over the US.

This would destroy every non hardened electronic device in the US.
This means few vehicles would run(less then 5% of the cars in the US do not have a computer chip in them)
The power system would be out for months to years.(its computer controlled
No computer would survive unless hardened.
No street lights
No microwave ovens
No tvs
No radios (HOW would you ever hear the CD net.)

Every thing with a electronic chip in it.

Most airplanes would fall from the sky(there fly by wire computer controlled)
Even the few chip manufacturing companies in the US would have a hard time making new chips because there equipment is controlled by computers.
all this plus.
How would you survive.

Plus what would the US do to retaliate no nukes have landed in the US.

Countries like china use fewer vehicles with computer chips in them.
and have a third world infastructer would be hurt a lot less.





[edit on 22-4-2008 by augoldminer]

You guys don't get it. One 100K bomb as an airblast and Los Angeles would cease to exist. When the infastructure is gone, the rioters, criminals and gangs would destroy any left standing after the bomb. LA would be in a state of complete ruins and it couldn't be stopped. It would be complete anarchy. Every man for himself just to survive. Remember Katrina. A single bomb would be 10 times worse and the US would be parallized for days, politically and financially.

reply to post by eagledriver

Once again and I do stress this point severely...

WHO has a 100 megaton warhead?

Shattered OUT...

reply to post by ShatteredSkies


I did not say 100 Megaton. I said 100 Kiloton. Besides, the largest production bomb is widely beleived to be in the 40-50 Megaton, which are considered overkill by todays strategists, because a relatively small area devoid of infastructure would cripple a fery large regional area.

Just image a small air burst (20 Kiloton) over Pasadena. It would fry all of the city, but all of Southern California would grind to a halt shortly after. The water utilities, electricity and roads grids would cease to exist. Civil unrest would soon take hold.

I need to get my eyes checked because I could have swore you said 100 megaton.

Shattered OUT...

The russians let off a 52 mega ton nuke with roughly a 120 mile blast radius including nuclear wave off.

This could destroy ALL of london.

The real question is, how much damage could a modern day nuke do.

That we have no clue of.

reply to post by Anderi

My thread with some good images with blast radius, fallout zone and affected areas for some major cities. Thanks for looking.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by TheRealYoda7


I think we all agree that 52 megatons is not enough to achieve a 120 mile blast radius. Maybe that's how far the fallout went, but for an initial blast radius, it was more like 15 miles.

120 miles is a LONG way, if you look at a map of the east coast, a 120 miles is half the way from NYC to the southern tip of New Jersey.

Shattered OUT...

Just to go back to the original question posed by Anderi... My friend, if a nuke drops on Canberra, I hope you have a will left with a lawyer in Perth.
Seriously, where is there to run? Any city may be targeted and if you decide to run for the vast desert areas, then the US bases will get you killed as they are probably targets too. Ever seen the buildings out there? I have. I've even had a military vehicle escort me along one of the roads out there just to make sure I didn't stop for a look around.
Best bet? Get the US bases out of Australia and greatly reduce the chance of ever being a target. True, that will never happen, but it's the obvious way of taking Australia off the nuke target list.

I think with megaton range & up airburst weapons, the thermal effects begin to outrange the blast effects by a significant degree. Structures largely untouched by blast will ignite from the initial thermal pulse.

You'll note most of the available blast mappers do not model thermal effects, only blast.

I'm not sure a 52MT weapon would set fires at 120 miles, but might well result in burns to exposed skin.

From Encarta: Nuclear Weapons:

The very high temperatures attained in a nuclear explosion result in the formation of an extremely hot incandescent mass of gas called a fireball. For a 10-kiloton explosion in the air, the fireball will attain a maximum diameter of about 300 m (about 1,000 ft); for a 10-megaton weapon the fireball may be 4.8 km (3 mi) across. A flash of thermal (or heat) radiation is emitted from the fireball and spreads out over a large area, but with steadily decreasing intensity. The amount of heat energy received a certain distance from the nuclear explosion depends on the power of the weapon and the state of the atmosphere. If the visibility is poor or the explosion takes place above clouds, the effectiveness of the heat flash is decreased. The thermal radiation falling on exposed skin can cause what are called flash burns. A 10-kiloton explosion in the air can produce moderate (second-degree) flash burns, which require some medical attention, as far as 2.4 km (1.5 mi) from ground zero; for a 10-megaton bomb, the corresponding distance would be more than 32 km (more than 20 mi). Milder burns of bare skin would be experienced even farther out. Most ordinary clothing provides protection from the heat radiation, as does almost any opaque object. Flash burns occur only when the bare skin is directly exposed, or if the clothing is too thin to absorb the thermal radiation.

Do the research. The A-bomb that we used on Japan was a 15KT bomb, most nukes built today are around the 1,000KT area. That one blast will heat to around a million degrees in the center and will destroy everything in a 50 mile radius, the after shock of that will continue to about 110 miles.

Well one could take out most of America

Why should we tell you how many nukes it would take to destroy a city? You could be Osama Bin Laden for all we know

Beware of terrorists lurking on the internets!!!



Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

^^ how random , as once you get above 20 MT the actual area destroyed reduces in compariosn to the effect till the fire ball and area destoryed expand at teh same rate - 100MT is useless.

reply to post by LDragonFire

Can someone say what is being targeted in Jefferson County Missouri for a nuke?
What is there for a nuke to hit?

The UK Government have recently declassified (albeit in a very low-key manner) their 1967-1972 List of Probable Nuclear Targets In The UK. It was produced by the Joint Intelligence Committe (JIC) and approved for planning use by the UK Chiefs of Staff.

Although it is now some years out of date, it gives us an idea of the expected scale of a nuclear attack on the UK - and in particular, the expected scale and type of attacks on major cities within the UK.

As you would imagine, it makes very grim reading; especially the part which details the number and type of bursts expected over major UK cities.





[Sorry the pic is on its side, but it was the only way I could post it in a manner which shows the full information.]


The JIC forecast that a few major cities - Glasgow, Birmingham, Liverpool - would have be hit by 4 x 1 MT (missile delivered) airbursts, followed by 2 x 500 KT (aircraft delivered) airbursts.

The rest of the major target cities in the UK - Cardiff, Manchester, Southampton, Leeds, Newcastle, Bristol, Sheffield, Swansea, Hull, Middlesborough, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Leicester, Stoke-on-Trent, Belfast, Edinburgh, Nottingham - would have each been hit with 2 x 1 MT (missile delivered) airbursts, followed by 2 x 500 KT (aircraft delivered) airbursts.

As you can see, counter-city strikes were always assumed by the JIC to be of a massive scale. Interestingly, it was assumed that the attacks would comprise of at least two separate waves - estimates I've seen have stated they would be up to 17 hours apart - just enough time to take down any rescue/relocation attempts by survivors of the first wave.



zero lift

[edit on 23-9-2008 by zero lift]

Originally posted by Harlequin
^^ how random , as once you get above 20 MT the actual area destroyed reduces in compariosn to the effect till the fire ball and area destoryed expand at teh same rate - 100MT is useless.

The reason you say it's use;ess is because of the Tsar Bomba, but the Russians, deliberatly withheld some things from being put into it, so it would only have half the yield, so a real; 50-100MT bomb can be built and it will be the most destructive, if dropped inthe center of L.A., L.A. and ALL of the cities surrounding it will be vaporised even and the fire ball will spread out to the Pacific, (in the west) and to the north east and south to about 10 miles out of SanDiego it might even get S.D. The MK-17 was a U.S. nuclear bomb that was rated at 20 MT I would have loved to see it tested, but I'm not sure if the Rus/U.S. tested 5-10 MT bombs frequently, from what I leanrd 13 mt was what the Russians/U.S. tested, and the Tsra Bomba was just a 1 time thing, does any body know anything else??

[edit on 23-9-2008 by wantawanta]

ok here's the skinny on ICBM's with nuclear warheads.

First off, i was trained by the USAF to fix these Continent killers. You can flame me all you want, I was trained. If i can find my camera, I will take shots of my badges, orders, and job description.

Anywho, sadly enough it would only take one "Nuke" otherwise known as a nuclear warhead. Detonation rolls like this...

0-25 miles = Massive Fireball incinerating everything it touches instantly.
25-50 miles = Shockwave. If it's standing, it gets knocked down/ripped apart
50-150 miles = radioactive fallout.
50-75 miles = nasty fast-acting radioactivity. (skin falls off) takes weeks
you will die.
75-125 miles = nasty long term. deformities and MAJOR health problems
takes months. you will die.
125-150 miles =very long term effects. major health problems,
cancer/diseases. takes years. slim chance of survival

Without health care every living thing within 150 miles will die within 10 years. That's just one warhead. Some countries have the ability to hold 10 warheads per missile.

1 missile = australia's demise.

hope this clears some of the nonsense up.

Originally posted by Sliick
ok here's the skinny on ICBM's with nuclear warheads.

First off, i was trained by the USAF to fix these Continent killers. You can flame me all you want, I was trained. If i can find my camera, I will take shots of my badges, orders, and job description.

Anywho, sadly enough it would only take one "Nuke" otherwise known as a nuclear warhead. Detonation rolls like this...

0-25 miles = Massive Fireball incinerating everything it touches instantly.
25-50 miles = Shockwave. If it's standing, it gets knocked down/ripped apart
50-150 miles = radioactive fallout.
50-75 miles = nasty fast-acting radioactivity. (skin falls off) takes weeks
you will die.
75-125 miles = nasty long term. deformities and MAJOR health problems
takes months. you will die.
125-150 miles =very long term effects. major health problems,
cancer/diseases. takes years. slim chance of survival

Without health care every living thing within 150 miles will die within 10 years. That's just one warhead. Some countries have the ability to hold 10 warheads per missile.

1 missile = australia's demise.

hope this clears some of the nonsense up.

I don't think you were in the military, at the rates you gave almost everyone in Nevada should have died 30 years agaon, you mean to tell me even at 25 miles from the blast skin falls off in weels, I have read quite a few things on nukes but nothing like that.

Originally posted by Sliick
ok here's the skinny on ICBM's with nuclear warheads.

First off, i was trained by the USAF to fix these Continent killers. You can flame me all you want, I was trained. If i can find my camera, I will take shots of my badges, orders, and job description.

Anywho, sadly enough it would only take one "Nuke" otherwise known as a nuclear warhead. Detonation rolls like this...

0-25 miles = Massive Fireball incinerating everything it touches instantly.
25-50 miles = Shockwave. If it's standing, it gets knocked down/ripped apart
50-150 miles = radioactive fallout.
50-75 miles = nasty fast-acting radioactivity. (skin falls off) takes weeks
you will die.
75-125 miles = nasty long term. deformities and MAJOR health problems
takes months. you will die.
125-150 miles =very long term effects. major health problems,
cancer/diseases. takes years. slim chance of survival

Without health care every living thing within 150 miles will die within 10 years. That's just one warhead. Some countries have the ability to hold 10 warheads per missile.

1 missile = australia's demise.

hope this clears some of the nonsense up.

You seriously claim that a nuke would produce a fireball 25 miles wide?

And just how many MT is this previously unknown nuke meant to be?

C'mon own up, you know you haven't cleared up any 'nonsense' at all... you've instead started a whole new world of nonsense.

A 25 mile wide fireball!








zero lift