How many nukes would it take to destroy a city?

excellent then let us discuss nuclear physics since i have a 2.1 honours in exactly that subject and have worked in the industry for 15 years

and your partially right , but also very wrong;

Gamma radiation is very high-frequency, high-energy electromagnetic radiation, similar in nature to X-rays but of shorter wavelength, emitted by the nuclei of radioactive substances during decay or by the interactions of high-energy electrons with matter. Cosmic gamma rays have been identified as coming from pulsars, radio galaxies, and quasars, although they cannot penetrate the Earth's atmosphere;

as for prompt raidiation effects: whilst there is a degree of prompt radiation the overpressure and both stages of the fireball that is explosion followed by cooling with expansion then seperation of outer layer * the blast wave* then reheating of the core , are now so much larger than the small devices used in japan , that propmpt radiation within the 300 REM area is of no concern - 5000 degree and higher temperatures and mach 1+ winds would kill you far sooner than any propmt radiation.

thermonuclear weapons:

Uranium is radioactive: ten times every second an atom in this sphere decays, releasing atomic fragments and high-energy gamma radiation. The explosive wave reaches the uranium and compresses it to a fluid mass 5 cm (2 inches) in diameter. At this time, 19 microseconds after detonation, a small particle accelerator in the front of the warhead fires neutrons into the uranium sphere. The first of these neutrons is absorbed by a uranium atom and promptly causes it to split or decay. Before now, the atomic fragments emitted generally left the sphere; now, the uranium atoms are so tightly packed that these particles tend to find other uranium atoms and cause them to decay, and the resulting particles do the same, and so on. This chain reaction would cycle about 60 times in the next microsecond, but to increase the efficiency a small amount of compressed deuterium-tritium gas is now injected into a hollow in the center of the uranium core. This increases the cycling rate to 80 times in the next 0.1 microseconds. This 5 cm (2 inch) sphere of uranium now has a temperature of 40,000,000° F (20,000,000° C)--hotter than the center of the Sun. The gamma rays given off by the nuclear reactions radiate through the exploding mass at the speed of light and are absorbed by the weapon casing, 0.003 microseconds later. The casing is heated and reradiates the energy as x-rays, which in turn are absorbed by the other key component of the warhead--the "secondary".

The secondary includes a cylinder of lithium-deuteride--25 cm (10 inches) in diameter and 80 cm (30 inches) long--at the rear of the warhead, with a radiation shield protecting it from direct radiation from the primary. This cylinder is surrounded by a 2.5 cm (1 inch)-thick layer of depleted uranium; it also has a rod of uranium in the center. The x-rays reradiated from the warhead casing heat and compress the outer wrapping of depleted uranium. In 0.1 microseconds this crushes the lithium-deuteride to a cylinder only 6 cm (2 in.) in diameter. At this point, neutrons from the primary arrive at that inner rod of uranium, coming through a hole in the radiation shield. When this happens, a nuclear chain reaction occurs in the rod, superheating the lithium-deuteride from within. Neutrons from the chain reaction strike lithium atoms and split them into helium and tritium atoms. Temperatures and pressures are high enough that colliding tritium and deuterium atoms (both forms of hydrogen) merge into helium atoms instead of bouncing off each other. This fusion reaction--the same that powers the Sun--lasts another microsecond before the energy explodes the deuterium outward and ends the reaction. At this point, 20 microseconds after detonation, the temperature is 600,000,000° F (300,000,000° C)--twenty times hotter than the center of the Sun. The last step occurs in that depleted uranium wrapping: neutrons from the fusion reactions split uranium atoms there, and in this last tenth of a microsecond the energy released is nearly doubled.

the fireball:

This enormous release of gamma radiation is absorbed by the surrounding air, heating it to a point where it releases radiation itself. This process forms a fireball--a glowing ball of gas--and decreases the energy of the radiation: from gamma rays to x-rays to ultraviolet (what causes sunburn), visible light, infrared (heat radiation), and radio waves. An electromagnetic pulse--a very brief pulse of radio waves--is emitted, collecting in metal objects and creating a power surge which damages or destroys electronics. In 0.00005 seconds nearly every computer chip in the local area is ruined. In 0.0007 seconds the fireball is 130 meters (400 feet) across. Continuing to expand at many times the speed of sound, the fireball forms two distinct regions: the center remains extremely hot while the temperature of the outer part falls as it pushes the surrounding air away. The heat radiated by the outer layer produces an initial flash of light as bright as the Sun to an observer 40 km (25 miles) away at 0.005 seconds after detonation. The fireball brightness decreases until 0.08 seconds after detonation, when the fireball is as bright as the Sun to an observer 7.5 km (4.5 miles) away, and breakaway occurs: a blast wave separates from the fireball's surface. The blast wave is an expanding sphere of highly compressed and fast moving air--similar to a sonic boom but much more powerful. Initially the blast wave travels at ten times the speed of sound. The wave pushes the air away before it so that a partial vacuum is created behind it. As a result, the passing wave produces enormous pressures and severe momentary outward winds, followed by less intense inward winds. The blast wave is reflected from the ground and thereby reinforces itself. At a distance of 9 km (5.5 miles) it finally drops to the speed of sound, 19 seconds after detonation.

[edit on 13/10/08 by Harlequin]

Originally posted by Harlequin
excellent then let us discuss nuclear physics since i have a 2.1 honours in exactly that subject and have worked in the industry for 15 years

and your partially right , but also very wrong;

[edit on 13/10/08 by Harlequin]

Wrong? I don't think so. I'm countering the poisiton of some idiots round here that think we
can pop out of underground bunkers after 30 days and start planting potatos and growing cucumbers to feed ourselves and then build new power grids and so on like nothing ever happened.

Yes, fireballs and overpressure will kill billions, nobody is arguing that but any attempts to 'start again' will be hampered by mid/long term cancer effects, mutation of the next gererations and crop failures due to environemental damage.

The people that underestimate the potential of nuclear war do poo--poo the power of the bombs themselves but the real gotcha is the frailty of our transport, agriculture, economic, water, technological and medical systems. This is the achilis heel of or current predicament.

Your average Russian is more likely to have a better stab at starting over given the hardships
they've encountered pre/post communism in fending for themselves, growing their own food , repairing broken old systems etc. Your overweight American couch potato who lards about in sweat pants and drives around in a 6 liter SUV couldn't put a spade in the ground and thinks a courgette is a sports car! I think the Nuclear weapons detractors watch too much Jericho!

Originally posted by StellarX
Why wont you have enough gasoline stored to last for however many weeks you will require use of the shelter?

That was my point- it lasts for a few weeks. Then what? Buy some more from abroad?

A nuclear war is not going to start ( which is why it didn't) in half a hour, a few days or even in a week.

It could start in minutes, and very nearly did in the 80's.

To move all strategic assets to full readiness takes at least days and to get conventional assets ready enough to exploit ( or at least sufficiently dispersed) takes longer than that.

Deliberately planning to fight a nuclear war would be total insanity. Nobody has even thought about that since Strangelove days.

Right and in it's current unprepared state only those in the underground will stand a chance and then only from most prompt effects.

The underground does not offer that much protection. You're dreaming if you think you can get large number of people into it, or that many would come out alive.
It's not sealed or anything.

Now, in you fantasy world it mighjt all be 200 ft deep with a special air circulation systerm and supplies for hunjdreds of thousands...but that's not reality.

So yes, with the technology we have had available since world war two citizens could have been given the type of shelters that nothing short of a ground bursting 500 KT warhead could destroy.

But you're faced with much, much worse threats than that. The SS-18 is 20 megatons - and London would get more than one.

As for whatever is above ground you would be amazed what can and is rebuilt with national efforts when everyone becomes willing to work their asses off for their daily bread.

But nobody would be. The rich would be long gone; the poor would be refugees. International corporations and capital would do nothing. Few people would be insane enough to keep supporting a government that allowed it to happen.
We're not talking about Stalinist Russia here. Your country would be instantly converted into a radioactive wasteland, a bankrupt state with millions of people needing medical help that did not exist and a large number of traumatised survivors. It would be a third-world country which the great powers (like Brazil) might provide some aid to if you're lucky...

The problem that is faced is the beta decay rate of the medium-lived by-products; those being 90sr , 131I and 137cs to name 3 (argueably the nastiest) , and to counter the uptake of said elements into the plants - lime helps with strontium , but iodine and ceasium have there very own associated problems.

whilst i do concur that 30 days is too short - given the beta decay for most medium-lived products is around 90% after 60 days , after that , time limited operations could begin (cleaning) whether by scrapping or ploughing the effected soil


edit:

yes a nuclear war is survivable - BUT , the powers that be have planned for one to go on and on , not like first strike second strike all over - it would go on for days if not weeks - with potentially a city being hit in day 1 , being hit again on day 12;

so yes deep bunkers will help - but at the worst you must plan for an extended underground stay , taking with you everything you need to rebuild from the ground up - water plants , electrical plants , all types of food stuff , millions of gallons of diesel etc.

[edit on 13/10/08 by Harlequin]

Originally posted by StellarX

There is a reason why the USAF never calculated nuclear firestorms into it's warhead allocation; it's entirely mythical

Makes no odds. There is a difference between mass fire and firestorm - Nagasaki had mass fires which are described above and the effect is still lethal.
That amount of thermal energy will cause everything to burn, and good-bye city and anyone in it.

This gigantic fire would quickly increase in intensity and in minutes generate ground winds of hurricane force with average air temperatures well above the boiling point of water (212 degrees F). The fire would then burn everywhere at this intensity for three to six hours, producing a lethal environment over a total area of approximately 40 to 65 square miles - an area about 10 to 15 times larger than that incinerated by the 15 kT atomic bomb which destroyed Hiroshima."

As the earlier source indicated people inside even world war two air raid shelters were generally safe from firestorm effects unless blast damage had compromised the shelter.

You think they won't be damaged by that sort of blast?
You should read Kurt Vonnegut's book, Slaughterhouse 5, on the Dresden bombing which he witnessed first-hand. They had 'corpse mines' to retirve the bodies from shelters.

Cities can only be rebuilt if there is some external assistance. After a nuclear war there wonlt be any. You also have a bit of an issue with radiation.

Defending Soviet Russia with it's millions of square miles, large rural population and totalitarian government is one thing. Defending Britain would be another story entirely.

The UK would be largely unihabitble for at least a few years - the sheer level of radiation would put paid to the idea of rebuilding quickly - if you draw a line on the south of london - and another around nortumbria - the bit inbetween *excluding most of wales* would be a `red ` zone , all the industry , military bases and goverment are targets.

think a population after 2 years of medival england to give you an idea.

edit:

the biggest advantage russia has is sheer size - the USA can`t nuke everything , there are large tracts of land with nothing targeted for hundreds of miles - the same cannot be said for the USA or in fact anywhere else (except AUS)

[edit on 13/10/08 by Harlequin]

Originally posted by Harlequin
time limited operations could begin (cleaning) whether by scrapping or ploughing the effected soil

With what? All those hoes and rakes and fetillizer Stellar smuggled into his 200 ft deep bomb shelter?

Farms and garden centers would be blown away... there would be no seeds or saplings to grow... the starving people would eat any crop seed required for next years harvest.

When complex systems are blown away to their ground state, they cannot be patched up or fixed on the fly, 30 days later, 1 year, two years... the very fact that water would stop running in a day or two means that probably more people would die of cholera than radiation after 2 years.

Harlequin I agree with you on the potential of atomic weapons destructive power but the side effects that they would cause to our systems that we rely on to survive are the biggest factors in making nucelar war a doomsday event for me. We wouldn't recover from, direct effects aside (but not ignored)

yes hoes , rakes and man power - the diesel stored would be needed for vital operations - therefore ploughing would be by hand (since animals would be dead)

seeds are allready stored - but the first years harvest after a war would be very poor and in adition to teh dead from blast/radiation (which need to be burnt or buried) you`ll have the dead from famine to contend with - hence my comment about medival population levels (around 5 million)

Originally posted by Harlequin
yes hoes , rakes and man power - the diesel stored would be needed for vital operations - therefore ploughing would be by hand (since animals would be dead)

Question, is it not obvious that the enemy would attack the US strategic reserves with a ground burst? Although some of these salt caverns are 1000m below ground, a dirty ground penetrator would render the crude oil supplies useless not to mention the close by refineries being destroyed ??

Does anybody know how much refined product the US military has in stock at any one time and how dispersed it is? If sizable military reserves are stored on bases then surely they will destroyed too?

Originally posted by Unknown Perpetrator
Sorry, I'll have to tackle your ignorance of nuclear physics here (I actually have a degree in physics)

Apology accepted. It's really OK as i have met plenty of people who proclaim a deep knowledge of physics who believe in the very strange , and sometimes standard, explanations as offered by universities.

When a thermonuclear bomb goes off, the primary fission precharge doesn't release
all it's radiation in one burst. Uranium 235 splits into smaller fission products such as Iodine and Barium as initial radioactive nuclides .

But you could agree that these remaining effects are very modest as compared to the damage that the initial blasts does to biological systems?

As these decay due to their short half lives, radioactive Strontium and Caesium take over as the main mid/long term radioactive hazards.

And there is then in your opinion no defense against these effects for trained and equipped personal?

The secondary stage is usually 'clean' unless the fusion tamper is swapped for a uranium-238 one. Initial radioactive nuclides also decay through time into other different 'radioactive' isotopes. It's not a one shot thing

Neither is bullets and most weapons effects which can cause long term health problems. The point here isn't how dangerous nuclear weapons effects and after effects is but why the measures that could save the vast majority of the population have not been taken.

People always think that Gamma is the main threat but shortly after
detonation people can get 'beta burns' from Strontium and alpha radiation which can't pentrate the skin but is deadly when ingested.

People might but i didn't and merely discussed the Gamma effects as that was the question at the time. Either way Beta particle's can penetrate the human body quite deeply.

The radiological effects aren't just down to the energies or types of radioactive decay, the biological properties of the chemicals play the biggest role. Iodine builds up in the Thyroid gland, Strontium in the bones or bone marrow and Caesium in the muscle tissue....

Provided that one is exposed to high concentrations without shielding and takes no preventative measures by taking supplements that counteracts these effects.

The latter of the two have half lives of 28 and 30 years, which is great if you're going to grow
your own food on a fallout zone.

Maybe you should go the areas surrounding our most recent nuclear accident to see just how well stuff grows and note that they never stopped growing in the first place. Presuming these static measurements ( no account is taken of how quickly environmental forces degrades them) are useful there isn't any reason why affect top soil can't be removed ( in modern farming soil is little but a binding material) or be plowed under. Either way smaller exchanges of nuclear weapons are bound to be relatively easily countered by both active and passive defenses so the initial exchange is really the one likely to do by far the most damage to the environment.

Then there is the induced irradiation of soil/earth components in a low altitude or ground burst. [/quote

Sure and once again the most serious of after effects can be dealt with given some preparation. I don't take much pleasure in discussing what we will or can be doing after such a war but what should i do when accosted by defeatist nonsense/pseudo-science(tist) who proclaim that nothing can be done and that we should just make our peace and give up whichever freedoms to prevent such a war from ever happening.

Obviously that's the point of all this but there is no telling this to your average doomer.

Stellar

Taking supplements ??

What? pop a few Centrum ?? I guess you don't know much. Sure taking Iodine lessens the risk of Thyroid but it doesn't negate it completely.

As to Strontium and Caesium build up in the body, there's no way to prevent it. Post nuclear war there's no way that people could spread potassium on fields on a scale to stop radioactive nuclide build up in the food chain. Also without petro-based fertillizers the soil
across continental US isn't going to support crops as you see now. I love how your quack science equates weeds and scrub growth in Chernobyl to 'oh we can ride out a Nuclear Holocaust'... you can't be serious? Have you seen the second generation children of Chernobyl? Some of them can't get of of bed they're so sick

I think you are meganaive, the Russians need only target all US power stations with a single warhead each to turn the US into a white hot radioactive hellhole.

Only 190 tonnes of Chernobyls radioactive material was expelled, 97% remains intact inside the sarcophagus... Imagine all of the below reactors vaporized with a 400KT warhead...100% of the below 67 stations, some with multiple reactors that haven't been decommisioned...all their contaminated material up in smoke.

It's not Pseudo-science, it's plain fact that if these are targetted (and most key infrastructure
facilites are)...w e're talking weapons and power based radiation devasation on scale that makes the mind boggle.


Power station reactors

[edit]
NRC Region One (Northeast)
Beaver Valley, Pennsylvania
Calvert Cliffs, Maryland
Connecticut Yankee, Connecticut (Decommissioned)
FitzPatrick, New York
Ginna, New York
Hope Creek, New Jersey
Indian Point, New York
Limerick, Pennsylvania
Maine Yankee, Maine (Decommissioned)
Millstone, Connecticut
Nine Mile Point, New York
Oyster Creek, New Jersey
Peach Bottom, Pennsylvania
Pilgrim, Massachusetts
Salem, New Jersey
Saxton, Pennsylvania (Decommissioned)
Seabrook, New Hampshire
Shippingport, Pennsylvania (Decommissioned)
Shoreham, New York (Decommissioned)
Susquehanna, Pennsylvania
Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania
Vermont Yankee, Vermont
Yankee Rowe, Massachusetts (Decommissioned)

[edit]
NRC Region Two (South)
Bellefonte, Alabama (Unfinished)
Browns Ferry, Alabama
Brunswick, North Carolina
Carolinas-Virginia Tube Reactor, South Carolina (decommissioned)
Catawba, South Carolina
Crystal River 3, Florida
Farley (Joseph M. Farley), Alabama
Grand Gulf Nuclear Generating Station, Mississippi
Hatch (Edwin I. Hatch), Georgia
McGuire, North Carolina
North Anna, Virginia
Oconee, South Carolina
Virgil C. Summer, South Carolina
Plant Vogtle, Georgia
H.B. Robinson, South Carolina
Sequoyah, Tennessee
Shearon Harris, North Carolina
St. Lucie, Florida
Surry, Virginia
Turkey Point, Florida (hit by Hurricane Andrew)
Watts Bar, Tennessee

[edit]
NRC Region Three (Midwest)
Byron, Illinois
Braidwood, Illinois
Clinton, Illinois
Davis-Besse, Ohio
Donald C. Cook, Michigan
Dresden, Illinois
Duane Arnold, Iowa
Elk River, Minnesota (Decommissioned)
Enrico Fermi, Michigan
Kewaunee, Wisconsin
La Crosse, Wisconsin (Decommissioned)
LaSalle County, Illinois
Marble Hill, Indiana (Unfinished)
Monticello, Minnesota
Palisades, Michigan
Perry, Ohio
Piqua, Ohio (Decommissioned)
Point Beach, Wisconsin
Prairie Island, Minnesota
Quad Cities, Illinois
Zion, Illinois (Decommissioned)

[edit]
NRC Region Four (West)
Arkansas Nuclear One, Arkansas
Callaway, Missouri
Columbia, Washington - formerly WNP-2
Comanche Peak, Texas
Cooper, Nebraska
Diablo Canyon, California
Fort Calhoun, Nebraska
Fort Saint Vrain, Colorado (Decommissioned)
Grand Gulf, Mississippi
Hallam, Nebraska (Decommissioned)
Hanford N Reactor, Washington (Retired - see Plutonium Production Reactors below)
Humboldt Bay, California (Decommissioned)
Palo Verde, Arizona
Pathfinder, South Dakota (Decommissioned)
Rancho Seco, California (

Originally posted by zero lift
Or alternatively, you could actually read and fully understand what you cut and paste.

Speak for yourself please.

The main danger in radioactive fall-out (and a full nuclear attack on the UK would produces enormous fall-out levels of gamma) is exposure to very high levels of high-energy gamma radiation.Please try and understand the following, its not hard - No NBC suit in the world can prevent this type of radiation. You need many feet of concrete, or earth, or steel to give adequate protection form gamma radiation.

Actually the graph provided earlier shows that you may need 'several feet' ( which means more than two) feet of concrete. Gamma radiation is a line of sight prompt weapon effect phenomenon so even those in direct line of sight shielded by modern building materials are likely to escape serious dosages and will be far more likely to be overcome by blast and thermal effects. Those that are further away without the benefit of buildings or such nearby will escape serious prompt radiation exposure by being in 2-3 meter deep fortified OPEN trenches given they are crouched and far enough away to escape the same old blast and thermal effects. Gamma radiation is not going to kill you if you have a meter or two worth of sand between you and explosion.

When I served in the Royal Observer Corps (part of the United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation) the maximum wartime dose of gamma radiation was 150 roentgens. UK Government peak estimates of the radiation rates expected in a global nuclear exchange were 20,000 roentgens per hour.

How can it be measured in per hour amounts when Gamma radiation does not persist and when blast effects are far more likely to kill those before the Gamma/neutron ever get the chance?

Do you have a objection to the source i supplied?

That's a possibility and one your going to have to prove.

Blast damage can be survived ( shelters created at test sites), prompt radiation is largely overcome by virtue of all those subjected being killed by blast and thermal effects and civil defense springing into action is merely a question of organization, training and suitably equipping personal. There is absolutely nothing to prove here other than how little you know and how much of a defeatist it has turned you into.

The JIC list of target cities was the basis from which all UK Government Departments developed their wartime contingency planning (more commonly known as Home Defence).
Unfortunately for you, the JIC proves your speculation of 'hostage targets' to be wrong. In a full nuclear exchange, cities would be hit just like any other target.

So what? I mean doesn't all our modern nuclear safety standards and regulations stem from the mistaken ( proved ) presumption that all radiation effects are harmful? What does the hopelessly flawed working plan prove other than the fact that common sense were not allowed to set government policy? The JIC list of target cities proves absolutely nothing other than the fact that the Russians might have targeted such cities if the British government employed it's ballistic missile submarines to cooperate with NATO efforts. Any country that refuses to prepared itself for a nuclear war other than creating offensive weapons is obviously going to suffer the full possible effects as outlined in the JIC report.

You're not serious?

Perfectly serious.

Are you that desperate so as to suggest that the UK's Governments realisation of a fact (after conducting extensive planning studies/exercises from 1955) could be compared to the possibility of Churchill surrendering during WW2?

Yes, it's directly comparable as the Uk government under Chamberlain were preparing for a million or more casualties in the first weeks of air bombardments as well as most of the coastal cities being destroyed by bombing. This was the accepted standard of the day and it proved to be hopelessly wrong despite the fact that the British government did not prepare much in the way of civil defenses and likewise concentrated on creating offensive power.

Oh dear *shakes head in disbelief*
Er...I think its safe to say that your main problem in understanding the effects of a full nuclear attack on the UK, is that you assume fighting WW3 would have been conducted in a similar way to fighting WW2?

It will be conducted in a similar way. At first nations will concentrate on trying to reduce each others counter force capabilities ( nuclear and strategic) and then work down the list destroying operational units and lastly attack enemy cities/industry if the enemy focus their efforts on targeting yours. There is no reason to suggest that either countries will initiate strikes on each others civilian targets ( obviously if you build arms manufacturing capacity in the middle of a city.... ) before the destruction of short term offensive means have not been reduced.

Do go on StellarX, please show me how the entire UK Government and their scientists got it wrong about the dangers of gamma fall-out.

Why are you obsessed with Gamma fall-out? Of all the things you could worry about why have you chosen, presuming that you aren't just parroting the JIC nonsense, this ?

Have you any idea of how small the UK is and how vulnerable it is to fall-out?

The UK is small but then again reigning atmospheric affects will ensure that only very limited fallout takes place over the UK unless far less efficient ground bursts are employed.

Perhaps you disagree with the ground-breaking Strath Report of 1955, which proved (not speculated) that ten ground-burst H-bombs in shallow waters off the western coast of the UK would render the country unviable.

Just ten. And before you start, I'd better inform you that Strath has never been proved wrong.

The need for Burlington was established in the early 1950s by defence planners who estimated the effect of 132 atom bombs falling on Britain. In London, they said, 422,000 would be killed, 241,000 seriously injured. In Birmingham the numbers were 127,000 and 72,000. In Manchester, 98,000 and 57,000. In the Clyde area, a similar number, and so on.

The Strath report, which was not declassified until 2002, said: f no preparations of any kind had been made in advance,a successful night attack on the main centres of population in this country with 10 hydrogen bombs would, we estimate, kill about 12 million people and seriously injure or disable 4 million others." At the time, that was almost a third of the population. And, of course, there would be many more deaths as a result of radioactive fallout. Strath was the first to point out the unprecedented effects of thermonuclear weapons: a 10-megaton H-bomb would devastate an area of 28 square miles.

Strath recommended a programme of shelter building for the population, but estimates put the cost at £1.25bn. At today's prices, that would amount to almost £23bn. It was considered too costly, so military planners determined that the best form of defence was the guarantee of immediate retaliation against an aggressor. And to do that, someone would have to be tucked away safely ready to push the button.

www.guardian.co.uk...

I'm not sure about the 10 hydrogen bombs in the Ocea as it takes tectonic movements to create serious water movement. Logically such steps were considered for a invasion of Japan back in 1946 as it were clear that such a method could be used to 'was away' beach defenses and deployed soldiers. Either way as you can see opinions varied wildly with the alarmist one presuming no preparation and complete surprise of a enemy that doesn't seem to be attacking for any reason but to destroy. As you can see the costs to provide shelter only amounted to a few years of defense spending and was thus as doable then as it is today. If you started digging into 'welfare' programs and started adding taxes and or tax breaks for people who prepared their own shelters there is absolutely no reason why this can't be done as Switzerland ( western economy) easily proved.

www.ukpublicspending.co.uk...

As that source indicates defense spending ammounted to 1.6 billion in 1955 so clearly the British government had the resources to prepare civil defenses.

Thats one way to look at it, albeit in a very jaundiced way.

Yes, clearly the person who advocates defense, instead of surrender, against foreign threats is 'jaundiced'.

Continued

Of course another way to look at the statement is to realise that it is an accurate assessment of the effect of a full nuclear attack on the UK.
Which one you believe is up to you, but personally, given your previous assertion that NBC suits would protect one from gamma radiation, I'll stick with the H.M. Treasury.

You are free to huddle in a doorway praying to whatever god your believe in ( God will after all protect them) but why you would advocate the same for the rest of British society i just don't know. As for my earlier comment about NBC suits you persistently presume a unprepared society with no underground shelter space to hide from the prompt effects themselves while alarmist such as Strath basically admitted that for a few billion £ shelters could be prepared with NBC suits then obviously used by those military personal that had to remain outside and everyone who had to leave the shelters to aid in rescue and cleanup operations. Depending on how much you are willing to write off few would have to leave the shelters very soon but obviously those countries that could train/equip people to do so quickly and safely would be able to prevent added damage.

Likewise, it could be argued that anyone whose massive ego
causes them to ignore the facts produced by their own scientific panel, isn't fit to govern - because their decisions would not be based on fact, but on personal delusion.


zero lift

Anyone who allows a scientific panel to come to the conclusion that 'nothing can be done' and allows them to continue providing the government with advice were not selected by the people in the first place. The problem with some of these panels is basically that they said the only 'defense' was a offensive use of nuclear weapons against a threat nation that were already targeted by the massive US arsenal at the time. Since a few dozen British warheads would not have changed the the lot of the SU at that time these reports were obviously written by those who wanted the power to attack while they constructed for themselves very nice deeply buried bunkers at home while claiming that it 'wouldn't help. Right. Hypocrisy of the highest order but then what can you expect from the elitist who almost always seem to get/stay in power?

Frankly i couldn't care less what you thought about the possibility of survival and i hope whoever else is reading this can involve the common sense required to figure out that ALL problems have solutions if your either willing to pay enough or wait long enough. As there were nothing miraculous about building underground shelters it was just a question of investing enough money which the British government apparently chose to rather spend on a few bunkers for themselves and tanks, nuclear bombers, aircraft carriers and surface fleets with which to attack the USSR.

Stellar

BTW, I dont think you should be too worried about anyone wanting to nuke Canberra . Even then, I doubt any major military power capable of doing that is in range.

Originally posted by StellarX

As for my earlier comment about NBC suits you persistently presume a unprepared society with no underground shelter space to hide from the prompt effects themselves while alarmist such as Strath basically admitted that for a few billion £ shelters could be prepared with NBC

You still don't get it, do you?
The UK government abandoned the idea of trying to protect a small percentage of the population for extremely good reasons: 1) any preparation for nuclear war means it is more likely to happen and 2) it's a democracy and 90% of the population don't want to die so an elite can survive in the shattered wasteland that used to be home.

The ignorance of nuclear policy, strategy and ability in this thread is appalling to me. The largest nuclear weapon ever detonated was detonated by the Soviet union and they found that they do not scale. There ARE no weapons that will destroy a continent or state and so on. the current doctrine, (And so on back 20 years or so) is to use multiple overlapping air bursts to destroy a civilian target and the same but ground burst for dug in silo type targets. Warheads have gotten not larger as it would seem but smaller and more accurate. (The Russians non-withstanding) Hiroshima and Nagasaski both have thriving cities on the ruins of the worlds first atomic attacks. iT's both worse, and better than you think.

Originally posted by Wembley
You still don't get it, do you?

Why would i want to have to become ignorant to understand your nonsensical rambling?

The UK government abandoned the idea of trying to protect a small percentage of the population for extremely good reasons:

They abandoned preparation for DEFENSE while scaling up their means for OFFENSE.

1) any preparation for nuclear war means it is more likely to happen and

Not NEARLY as much as creating offensive nuclear weapons and conventional forces made it likely to happen.

2) it's a democracy and 90% of the population don't want to die so an elite can survive in the shattered wasteland that used to be home.

Which is why the Uk public were not allowed to vote on the issue and instead subjected to government propaganda meant to discourage people wishing for more defensive measures. Why is it so fantastical to believe that countries able to build nuclear weaponry can not build in concrete and alloy materials protective measures to safeguard their populations is very hard for my to understand.

Why don't you get any of that? The UK government could build ballistic missile submarines, hunter killer submarines, dozens of warships including aircraft carriers and long range bombers but could not find the resources to protect their citizens? What on earth could the Royal Navy, army and RAF do to the SU that the US could not do at the time? Why can you not grasp that the USSR would have still lost a strategic war against the US in 1963 giving the UK two decades since the inception of the nuclear age to construct defenses for it's civilians?

Discussing such matters with such biased, misinformed and generally misguided people is clearly pointlessly and i hope that others reading this forum have not been so totally overcome by propaganda.

Stellar



[edit on 14-10-2008 by StellarX]

Originally posted by Unknown Perpetrator
Taking supplements ??

What? pop a few Centrum ?? I guess you don't know much. Sure taking Iodine lessens the risk of Thyroid but it doesn't negate it completely.

I can see that you just want to mock the legitimate preparations that can made. As you will see from the following if you are underground at the time of the explosions and most can remain there for at least a few hours before venturing out for small but increasing amounts of time per day health side effects are minimal and well within what many people live with today without apparent consequence.

Only a very small fraction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki citizens who survived radiation doses some of which were nearly fatal have suffered serious delayed effects. The reader should realize that to do essential work after a massive nuclear attack, many survivors must be willing to receive much larger radiation doses than are normally permissible. Otherwise, too many workers would stay inside shelter too much of the time, and work that would be vital to national recovery could not be done. For example, if the great majority of truckers were so fearful of receiving even non-incapacitating radiation doses that they would refuse to transport food, additional millions would die from starvation alone.

The authoritative study by the National Academy of Sciences, A Thirty Year Study of the Survivors qf Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was published in 1977. It concludes that the incidence of abnormalities is no higher among children later conceived by parents who were exposed to radiation during the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki than is the incidence of abnormalities among Japanese children born to un-exposed parents.

www.ki4u.com...

The human toll from the world’s worst civil nuclear accident has been hotly debated ever since the Ukrainian power station’s No. 4 reactor blew up on April 26, 1986, spewing radioactive dust across Europe.
Now a top British scientist has evaluated the comparative risks and concluded that for those most affected by the disaster —- emergency workers and people living nearby —- the increased risk of premature death due to radiation is around 1 percent.

That is roughly the same as the risk of dying from diseases triggered by air pollution in a major city or the effects of inhaling other people’s tobacco smoke, said Jim Smith of Britain’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.Some people are also living in the area and surviving well into their 70s, he noted.
“Populations still living unofficially in the abandoned lands around Chernobyl may actually have a lower health risk from radiation than they would have if they were exposed to the air pollution health risk in a large city such as nearby Kiev,” Smith wrote in the journal BioMedCentral Public Health.

His study focused on long-term health risks to survivors who received high but non-lethal doses of radiation.
It excluded the cases of 134 firemen and helicopter pilots who suffered acute radiation sickness, leading to death in around 40 cases.

www.mosnews.com...

HOW HOT ARE DR. HAUGHTON'S RUNNING SHOES?

The running shoes of Dr. Dennis Haughton of Phoenix, pictured on page 1 of The Medical Tribune, July 23, 1986, were said to radiate at a rate "over 100 times background" afterbeing in Kiev at the time of the Chernobyl accident.This report is typical of media accounts, which give the radiation rate in units of "times normal."How hot is that? It is impossible to say.The background in Colorado is "2.5 times normal" if Texas is defined as normal (250 vs 100 mrem/yr).An area near the Library of Congress receives"700 times normal" if normal is defined as what Congress allows at the boundary line of a nuclear power plant.A whole year's exposure of "50 times normal" is within NRC standards for occupational exposure.These figures refer to total body irradiation. The volume of tissue irradiated is crucially important.The safest available treatment for hyperthyroidism -- radioactive iodine -- delivers up to 10,000 rads (10 million millirads) to the thyroid, and about 14 rads to the body. Also, the duration of exposure is important. A dose of "100 times background" for a week might subject a person to the dose he would have received from living in Colorado for a year (where the cancer rate is lower than elsewhere.) A meaningful report of radiation exposure would give the dose (rems, rads, etc). But journalists seem to be more interested in alarming the public than in enlightening them.

www.physiciansforcivildefense.org...

Both issues are "hot." Comparison of doses may influence the future foundations of radiation protection principles and regulations. The report's appendix on Chernobyl (115 pages and 558 references) is obviously politically incorrect: it denies the claims of a mass health disaster caused by radiation in the highly contaminated regions of the former Soviet Union.

At the global scale, as the report shows, the average natural radiation dose is 2.4 mSv per year, with a "typical range" reaching up to 10 mSv. However, in the Annex on natural radiation, UNSCEAR presents data indicating that this dose range in some geographical regions is many tens and hundreds times higher than the average natural global dose, or than the currently accepted annual dose limits for general population (1 mSv) and occupationally exposed people (20 mSv).

No adverse health effects related to radiation were ever observed among people exposed to such high natural doses. This strongly suggests that the current radiation standards are excessively, and unnecessarily, restrictive.

www.21stcenturysciencetech.com...

ex]In his presentation at the DDP meeting in Las Vegas, Myron Pollycove, M.D., of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission highlighted the following:

* Aging and cancer result from DNA alterations caused by reactive oxygen species (ROS). Normal oxidative metabolism causes at least a million such changes per cell every day. Normal background radiation causes about two.
* Low-dose ionizing radiation stimulates the body's enzymatic repair mechanisms. DNA repair is tripled by exposure to 25 cGy (25 rads). A tenfold increases in background radiation from 1 mGy/yr to 10 mGy/yr stimulates overall DNA damage control by 20%.
* Total body irradiation or TBI (e.g. 150 r in fractionated doses in non-Hodgkin's lymphoma) has improved survival compared with chemotherapy alone.
* TBI in mice, especially when combined with chronic caloric restriction, prevents or causes regression of spontaneous mammary tumors.
* Dr. Pollycove summarized a number of epidemiologic studies that support hormesis, involving populations in areas with high background radiation; survivors of the atomic bombs or radiation accidents; nuclear workers; and patients exposed to multiple fluoroscopies. He also presented experimental evidence of life extension effects, immune stimulation, suppression of malignant transformation of cells, slowing of tumor growth, and reduction in number of metastases.

``All statistically significant adequately controlled epidemiologic studies,'' he writes, ``confirm low doses of radiation are associated with reduced mortality from all causes, decreased cancer mortality, and may be protective against accidental high- dose radiation.'' In US nuclear shipyard workers, for example, those with a cumulative exposure between 0.5 and 40 cSV or rem had a standardized mortality ratio 16 standard deviations below that of matched nonexposed workers for all causes, and 4 SDs less than nonexposed workers for all malignancies.

www.ddponline.org...

And there is far more basic source material indicating fallout to be of far less consequence than widely propagated.

As to Strontium and Caesium build up in the body, there's no way to prevent it.

4. What are the major health effects for exposed populations?

Thyroid scan on childrenThere have been at least 1800 documented cases of thyroid cancer children who were between 0 and 14 years of age when the accident occurred., which is far higher than normal. The thyroid gland of young children is particularly susceptible to the uptake of radioactive iodine, which can trigger cancers, treatable both by surgery and medication.Health studies of the registered cleanup workers called in (so-called “liquidators”) have failed to show any direct correlation between their radiation exposure and an increase in other forms of cancer or disease. The psychological affects of Chernobyl were and remain widespread and profound, and have resulted for instance in suicides, drinking problems and apathy.

5. What radioactive elements were emitted into the environment?

There were over 100 radioactive elements released into the atmosphere when Chernobyl’s fourth reactor exploded. Most of these were short lived and decayed (reduced in radioactivity) very quickly. Iodine, strontium and caesium were the most dangerous of the elements released, and have half-lives of 8 days, 29 years, and 30 years respectively. The isotopes Strontium-90 and Caesium-137 are therefore still present in the area to this day. While iodine is linked to thyroid cancer, Strontium can lead to leukaemia. Caesium is the element that travelled the farthest and lasts the longest. This element affects the entire body and especially can harm the liver and spleen.

Continued

[edit on 14-10-2008 by StellarX]

8. Was the rest of Europe/the world affected?

Scandinavian countries and other parts of the world were affected by the radioactive releases from Chernobyl. Caesium and other radioactive isotopes were blown by wind northward into Sweden and Finland and over other parts of the northern hemisphere to some extent. During the first three weeks after the accident, the level of radiation in the atmosphere in several places around the globe was above normal; but these levels quickly receded. No studies have been able to point to a direct link between Chernobyl and increased cancer risks or other health problems outside the immediately affected republics of Ukraine, Belarus and the Russian Federation.

www.iaea.org...

Once again you simply throw your hands into the air loudly proclaiming the end of the world as if nothing can be done proactively to ensure that contamination is countered. What sort of minerals and or materials can be mixed with conventional fertilizers ( or used temperately ) that will react with it or prevent it's uptake by either the human body or food stuffs.

Post nuclear war there's no way that people could spread potassium on fields on a scale to stop radioactive nuclide build up in the food chain.

Why not? It's not like plants don't need it to start with.

Brief description: potassium is a metal and is the seventh most abundant and makes up about 1.5 % by weight of the earth's crust. Potassium is an essential constituent for plant growth and it is found in most soils. It is also a vital element in the human diet

www.webelements.com...

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Yield results averaged over hybrids (Table 1) show a small but consistent advantage of the EAS treatment. In both years the highest yielding treatment combination was EAS & KC1, while Ca(NO3)2 & KC1 was the lowest (1989) or nearly the lowest (1990) yielding treatment. The other potassium sources, KHCO3.and K2SO4 tended to yield less than the KC1 treatment where EAS was provided.

frec.cropsci.uiuc.edu...

So yes and beside for the fact that it's essential for plant growth added treatment have small growth benefits as well.

Also without petro-based fertillizers the soil across continental US isn't going to support crops as you see now.

Such materials can be stored with proper subsidies to farmers. In fact if the massive subsidy that is currently given to big agri business is redirected to farmers they could easily afford to keep many years of fuel supplies on their farms as well as afford protection for their equipment and generally become more prepared for such. This is all a matter of organization as the funds is clearly available.

I love how your quack science equates weeds and scrub growth in Chernobyl to 'oh we can ride out a Nuclear Holocaust'... you can't be serious?

There was never wholesale destruction of the environment or extinction of even major herbivore species. Please stop parroting hearsay you have never bothered to investigate from primary sources.

"A lot of birds are nesting inside the sarcophagus," he adds, referring to the steel and concrete shield erected over the reactor that exploded in 1986.
"Starlings, pigeons, swallows, redstart - I saw nests, and I found eggs."
The picture was not quite so rosy in the first weeks and months after of the disaster, when radiation levels were much, much higher.

Four square kilometres of pine forest in the immediate vicinity of the reactor went ginger brown and died, earning the name of the Red Forest.
Some animals in the worst-hit areas also died or stopped reproducing. Mice embryos simply dissolved, while horses left on an island 6km from the power plant died when their thyroid glands disintegrated. Cattle on the same island were stunted due to thyroid damage, but the next generation were found to be surprisingly normal.

Now it's typical for animals to be radioactive - too radioactive for humans to eat safely - but otherwise healthy.
"We marked animals then recaptured them again much later," he says.
"And we found they lived as long as animals in relatively clean areas."

news.bbc.co.uk...

And yes, we all know these mice cooperated, built shelters and wore protective clothing. And those birds are clearly just faking health and someone planted the eggs; he probably works for the nuclear industry that thinks it's a good idea to convince people that these disasters aren't in fact so bad. Yeh.

Have you seen the second generation children of Chernobyl? Some of them can't get of of bed they're so sick

4. What are the major health effects for exposed populations?

Thyroid scan on childrenThere have been at least 1800 documented cases of thyroid cancer children who were between 0 and 14 years of age when the accident occurred., which is far higher than normal. The thyroid gland of young children is particularly susceptible to the uptake of radioactive iodine, which can trigger cancers, treatable both by surgery and medication. Health studies of the registered cleanup workers called in (so-called “liquidators”) have failed to show any direct correlation between their radiation exposure and an increase in other forms of cancer or disease. The psychological affects of Chernobyl were and remain widespread and profound, and have resulted for instance in suicides, drinking problems and apathy.

www.iaea.org...

You really need to start doing your own research and stop relying on popular MSM propaganda as source.

I think you are meganaive, the Russians need only target all US power stations with a single warhead each to turn the US into a white hot radioactive hellhole.

This is a added effect that is obviously problematic but the weapons themselves are in fact rather more dangerous than the damage that may result from targeting nuclear installations. If their materials are properly stored/evacuated and the reactors shut down in the days preceding a serious threat to the nation these targets are still worth the effort because of the industrial capacity they represent but hardly worth the effort in terms of radioactive elements they can release.

Only 190 tonnes of Chernobyls radioactive material was expelled, 97% remains intact inside the sarcophagus...

That isn't even true even if you include the graphite moderator mass. Please do the basic research that would indicate that there remains 'only' ( yes, yes, i know ) two hundred tons of what can be classified as highly radioactive material. Admittedly there was no core meltdown which would have have far more serious consequences for the area and would certainly have resulted in more than the fifty deaths suffered so far.

Imagine all of the below reactors vaporized with a 400KT warhead...100% of the below 67 stations, some with multiple reactors that haven't been decommisioned...all their contaminated material up in smoke.

Well why should the American people be held responsible for their governments incompetence/criminal negligence? I mean why on earth are decommission reactors not made safe with their dangerous materials removed? Maybe there isn't a profit in that? Maybe there isn't a profit in having 95% of the American public survive? Why don't you just think about the implications of this OBVIOUS liability created for no other reason than commercial greed. Either way if the reactor is shut down ( it would have to be to prevent the worse EMP effects) and the core building properly designed and reinforced nothing but a close hit is going to destroy it with the possible added benefit of actually vaporizing the content thus ridding us all of it.

It's not Pseudo-science, it's plain fact that if these are targetted (and most key infrastructure
facilites are)...w e're talking weapons and power based radiation devasation on scale that makes the mind boggle.

Well why should the American people be held responsible for their governments incompetence/criminal negligence? I mean why on earth are decommission reactors not made safe with their dangerous materials removed? Maybe there isn't a profit in that? Maybe there isn't a profit in having 95% of the American public survive? Why don't you just think about the implications of this OBVIOUS liability created for no other reason than commercial greed. Either way if the reactor is shut down ( it would have to be to prevent the worse EMP effects) and the core building properly designed and reinforced nothing but a close hit is going to destroy it with the possible added benefit of actually vaporizing the content thus ridding us all of it.

It's not Pseudo-science, it's plain fact that if these are targetted (and most key infrastructure
facilites are)...w e're talking weapons and power based radiation devasation on scale that makes the mind boggle.

Maybe it stuns your mind but i would be the first to admit that not many people have the mental fortitude ( to say nothing of the knowledge ) to discuss these types of topics in their basic of senses. Millions will die but since it's quite insensible to argue that we should allow tens of millions of Britons to die because we don't want to mourn the rest we should in fact ( as most sensible people can understand) protect the vast majority we can.

Basically you should stop wasting my time and indulging in this needless fear mongering.

Stellar

Originally posted by Unknown Perpetrator
With what? All those hoes and rakes and fetillizer Stellar smuggled into his 200 ft deep bomb shelter?

Why smuggled? Why 60 meters deep ? Do you know how close you need to get a nuclear weapon to damage such deeply buried structures? How would they know which of the tens of thousands of excavation sites you were busy working at has anything of use? I mean don't you think in any terms but defeatist one's?

Farms and garden centers would be blown away... there would be no seeds or saplings to grow... the starving people would eat any crop seed required for next years harvest.

Why? How? How could they possibly attack everything or contaminate properly covered growth? Ever heard of a greenhouse? Do we really have to make it from glass? Is there any issue related to this question that you wont hopelessly misrepresent?

Why would people with sufficient food stores eat plant seeds?

When complex systems are blown away to their ground state, they cannot be patched up or fixed on the fly, 30 days later, 1 year, two years...

Not if everyone is standing around at street level with a majority dying, no? I mean sure if you stop breathing right now i would be rid of your nonsensical whining but it's not like you HAVE to be that considerate?

the very fact that water would stop running in a day or two means that probably more people would die of cholera than radiation after 2 years.

Why would water stop running? Is there any reason to suspect that gravity will stop functioning and or that all slopes will be levvelled all over Britain?

Harlequin I agree with you on the potential of atomic weapons destructive power but the side effects that they would cause to our systems that we rely on to survive are the biggest factors in making nucelar war a doomsday event for me.

Yes, provided ( as Strath and others points out ) no preparedness the casualties could and probably would be devastating but that has been the case for unprepared nations for centuries. What did the Mongols to do China, Baghdad and various other nations that isn't easily comparable to nuclear devastation? Do you know that it's been a tactic of even two THOUSAND years ago to poison a land ( with salts or other chemicals) when it resisted or rebelled? What has changed other than our technological means to both destroy and protect ourselves?

"Iraq in 1258 was very different from present day Iraq. Its agriculture was supported by canal networks thousands of years old. Baghdad was one of the most brilliant intellectual centers in the world. The Mongol destruction of Baghdad was a psychological blow from which Islam never recovered. Already Islam was turning inward, becoming more suspicious of conflicts between faith and reason and more conservative. With the sack of Baghdad, the intellectual flowering of Islam was snuffed out. Imagining the Athens of Pericles and Aristotle obliterated by a nuclear weapon begins to suggest the enormity of the blow. The Mongols filled in the irrigation canals and left Iraq too depopulated to restore them."

Steven Dutch

en.wikipedia.org...

There are worse episodes but why dig deeper when you are clearly not familiar with even the present?

If you can protect your population ANYTHING can be rebuilt and restored which is why you spend EVERY cent you have on building up stores and shelters so as to enable your population to ride out the worse underground. If you have money left that you believe you can expend on weapons you make anti ballistic missile defenses ( yes , they have worked since 1961) and if you have more you start building conventional or nuclear means of retaliation. In this way you not only prove that your main interest is survival but do so without instigating violence.

We wouldn't recover from, direct effects aside (but not ignored)

And defeatist are almost always right as they almost always do what is required to make their predictions come true. I am sure you aren't prepared and refuse to do so having convinced yourself that it's not worth the effort. Well done with that.

Stellar

[edit on 14-10-2008 by StellarX]