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No, this the ultimate self defense:
http://www.redsoldier.com/
http://www.cheaperthandirt.com/ctd/default.asp
http://www.remington.com/default
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/

By the way, the site I linked to is not some pro-nuclear-weapons kill-em-all site. It's goal is to curb nuclear proliferation. Even at that, if you look at the facts of the two nuclear attacks and compare them to the rest of the war, it's pretty easy to come to the following conclusions:

1. The nuclear attacks sucked.
2. WWII sucked more.

Also throw in the fact that you must get the Plutonium-240 out of the PU-239, or it will prematurely detonate and all you're left with is a fizzle, not a true bomb.

It appears that the effect of 240Pu has been overstated. The Nuclear Weapon Archive (in section 6.2.2.10, discussing reactor grade plutonium as a weapons material) suggests that the designation of low 240Pu plutonium as "weapons grade" reflects primarily economic concerns rather than strict weapons designs ones. It reports that a Fat Man design using reactor grade Pu (~24% 240Pu) would still have a likely yield of about 0.5 kt. That's obviously quite a reduction from the actual yield, but it would still be capable of causing catastrophic damage in a terrorist attack. A more sophisticated implosion design could boost the yield by as much as an order of magnitude, and fusion boosting (which is admittedly quite sophisticated and likely to be beyond the "crude" terrorist bomb) would essentially eliminate predetonation as a problem.

Now we need to enrich the stuff first. These guys http://www.urenco.com/ do it for a living and have a few nifty articles on centrifuges.

We also need a suitable boiler to make the good stuff(tm). My personal favorite is the Canadian (take that you pacifists) Candu design http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/.

This should get you in the WMD business in no time. Now don't try this at home unless you've got your own TV-show...

Sorry, but that site isn't even close to "everything you might need to know" about building a Bomb. That's more like the 5 minute capsule summary. If you really want to know everything about building a Bomb but don't want to get a security clearance, the best place to look is Carey Sublette's Nuclear Weapon Archive. It's amazing just how much non-classified information it contains.

. . . let's be alarmist about it, because the info didn't exist anywhere else.

We're not really talking about a loss of efficiency in these things. The current stockpiles are based on high efficiency cores. We just don't make the "big hunk of uranium" bombs anymore. I would suggest a fascinating site for anyone looking for some good education. http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/index.html (Be sure to check out the Castle Bravo test.)

The cores on these things break down rather fast, and they aren't sure-fire to work correctly (or even behave themselves) after sitting on a shelf for decades. If we are going to keep them around, fine, but let's make sure we know what the things will do. Otherwise, get rid of them. There is no better way to cut yourself than working with a dull knife.

I heard you and you are WRONG. Not to be rude or anything, but I suggest you take a modern history class.

History has jack-squat to do with it. Physics does. Let me put it this way. The dinosaur killer asteroid was estimated at 75,000,000 megatons. It was not capable of destroying the entire surface, but did wipe out 95% of life from its after-effects. If we assume that every nuke ever made was of 50 megatons (probably high for an average, but we'll go with it), then we'd need 1,500,000 nukes to equal the dinosaur killer. According to NuclearWeaponsArchive.org, the US has built about 70,000 nukes since the inception of such weapons. It isn't known how many were produced by Russia, but it's estimated to be significantly less. We'll double the 70,000 figure and then add on another 2,000 to cover incidental countries with nuclear technology. That gives us a grand total of 160,000 nukes, or about 10% of the force of the dinosaur killer.

In short, you're quoting a lie that has been repeated time and time again. YOU'RE WRONG, and repeating it won't change that. Here's some hard facts for you. Read them, understand them, and stop coming off like a friggin' idiot.
http://www.tinyvital.com/Misc/nukes.htm
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org
http://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/misc/destroy.html

It depends on whether you think a high school diploma makes you educated or not. Given the value of a high school education these days, one could argue either way.

You missed my point. A diploma is just a piece of paper. It means nothing other than that you've been able to complete a bunch of tests and not get into too much trouble. It does not define whether you are educated or not. There have been many people throughout history who have been very well educated but haven't had diplomas from higher education (or sometimes even high school!). As time goes on and information becomes more available thanks to libraries and the internet, this only becomes more common.

i.e. If you think you *need* an American school to become educated, you've just bought into another lie.

Experience is not the same as education. That is why people separate the two.

Nonsense. If it wasn't, then schools wouldn't make you dissect animals, perform chem experiments, do word problems (math), or a million other pieces of practice that give you experience. That's why we call experience outside of the school "real world" experience, and make the point that the real-world doesn't always align with the simplicity of school experience.

If you believe that your education stops as soon as you leave school, you have bought into a third lie.

It requires a significant industrial infrastructure to process Uranium and Plutonium. [...] Then I guess you couldn't create a bomb all by yourself.

Nice try, but an industrial base is separate from the ability or inability to create bombs. i.e. Just like you need equipment to create an airplane, you need equipment to create create nuclear weapons. It's not anything sophisticated you need, either. A strong enough centrifuge is really the main ingredient. Any country that has access to semi-modern technology can build these things, so don't twist my words.

Twisting my words only pisses me off. Especially since I was only correcting the more questionable points of your original post, and not attacking you. You, OTOH, have seen fit to attack me with lies, half-truths, and twisted words. Good day to you sir, and I hope our paths shall not cross again.

You just admitted that you know that they are saying they'll launch cargo on another vehicle. And yet you go right on in there and do a cost per pound of cargo comparison. Per kilogram. And that's per kilogram of payload - in this case, the payload is humans. The shuttle carries both human payloads and cargo payloads; would you rather I choose a different craft for comparison?

I would rather you not use cargo costs for judging the cost of orbiting people, as they're not the same figure of merit. The Shuttle is the only vehicle which carries both in quantity, and nobody is proposing followons which do that.

Use reasonable methodology.

The capsule shape is called the sphere-cone geometry ... Use its proper name. A) What percentage of slashdotters would recognize the term "sphere-cone geometry"?

Without an introduction? Probably vanishingly few. But you can introduce it and explain it, as I did, and then educate people some about the technical field as you go.

B) What percentage of slashdotters would recognize the term "bell shaped" (which is a reasonably accurate description - in fact, the Mercury capsules were named "Liberty Bell X", where X was a number). Be realistic here: 1) I'm posting on Slashdot, not alt.space. 2) "sphere-cone" isn't even a widely used term - it isn't even mentioned on places like astronautix.com.

Astronautix is a great encyclopedia for the public, but that doesn't make it authoritative in the industry. Everyone at NASA I talk to about capsules, at Bigelow Aerospace, at the FAA AST, the DOD, etc. ... everyone knows and uses sphere-cone routinely. Even in presentations at conferences where most of the audience is nontechnical, it tends to be used as the designator, along with a description of what the word means.

3) You completely misread my post: "Bell shaped" was in reference to later, Mercury/Apollo-style capsules. The key difference in the Corona-style capsules is that the gently sloping sides continue outwards away from the nose, instead of inwards - that is, the nose end is smaller than the aft end.

Then you really have me confused, as Apollo/Gemini/Mercury blunt leading edge capsules look (to me) even less like a bell than sphere-cone geometry capsules.

A little history: The first reentry designs proposed were long needlelike designs, designed to be low drag. These hardly worked at all; they burned up. For the next generation, they widened the capsule, still having a taper, but blunting the nose, thus driving the heat away from the craft (most ICMBs use shapes like this).

US and Russian ICBMs haven't used that shape in 40 years, actually. Using much better thermal protection systems (reinforced carbon-carbon mostly) the current types of ICBM Reentry Vehicle (RV) are very pointy cones, with a roundoff at the nose of less than 10% of the base diameter typically.

See for example: The Nuclear Weapon Archive W-78 warhead / Mk-12A RV webpage.

Later capsules optimized this further by having the capsule itself withdraw inwards further away from the shockwave. I've seen some more recent designs that call for further optimization with a "loaf" shape, in which the top of the cone isn't rounded but truncated; it provides better mass and space ratios.

I've designed several capsules which were generically Apollo shaped but truncated the cone lower down; it has its uses, but it's not really better from a mass or space ratio point of view. You can stick a larger hatch in the nose that way, you can stick cargo outside the pressurized capsule that way; I put pressurized Mars rovers riding outside some big (40 plus foot diameter) capsules of that geometry for one mission design.

Masswise, it end

• Aljazeera, the news service the US doesn't like.
• Stormfront, one of the last remnants of the Klu Klux Klan.
• Cocaine synthesis instructions, which somebody probably doesn't like being out there.
• Elements of Thermonuclear Weapon Design, how an H-bomb works.
• How to build a truck bomb, by Timothy McVeigh.

Are any of these blocked in your area?

The US hasn't made a nuclear weapon in over a decade. Read the list. We just keep up maintainence on the current ones.

I thought it was common knowledge that the United States has not manufactured nuclear weapons in over 15 years. See http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Wpngal l.html

And what that has to do with space based nuclear power systems is beyond me. I don't see the point you're trying to make here, care to elaborate?

GE makes NUKES! It's their job. They crank them out like candy.

If you're going to accuse any company of cranking out any kind of weapons "like candy," at least be sure to include Lockheed-Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing and Raytheon (in that order), because they are the real big dogs in that industry. Unless you have better information than I do, GE isn't even in the defense market anymore. They sold that off to Lockheed-Martin years ago (please feel free to correct me if you have more recent information). In any case, your panic about BIG, SCARY NUKES just makes you look ignorant.

..it as OVER Hiroshima. Had it been at ground level the greater share of the energy would have been directed upward into the atmosphere. Airbursts are discussed here in the FAQ you linked to. And unless terrorists lug their device onto an airplane and detonate it at the right altitude, my statement stands.

"10 or 20 kilotons. That's enough to take out a city block"

When a 20 kiloton bomb went off over Hiroshima, everything for half a mile was vaporized. 10 or 20 TONS might take out a city block. There's plenty to read at the Nuclear Weapons FAQ.

No design test has ever failed? What utter rubbish.

I suggest you consult the HEW Archive, especially US test tables and the USSR test tables. Note any test with a yeild below 1T (One ton) was a fizzle; a failure.

No design test has ever failed? What utter rubbish.

I suggest you consult the HEW Archive, especially US test tables and the USSR test tables. Note any test with a yeild below 1T (One ton) was a fizzle; a failure.

No design test has ever failed? What utter rubbish.

I suggest you consult the HEW Archive, especially US test tables and the USSR test tables. Note any test with a yeild below 1T (One ton) was a fizzle; a failure.

30 kilos of weapons-grade is enough to make no more than 2 crude bombs, so the whole world is not really in danger. Just a couple of large cities.

If it wasn't weapons-grade, you could make one hell of a dirty bomb out of it, but not really anything that makes a big boom with a pretty mushroom cloud on top.

Lookie here

Check this site out. It has a history of all recorded nuclear weapons tests. http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/index.html

Nuclear tests are now conducted underground. Above ground testing was banned by the UN decades ago and any country who has nuclear weapons has always tested them below ground. The exception being Israel who was testing its nuclear weapons with South Africa when sanctions were on South Africa for its apartheid policies.

No known large-scale tests were evidenced but there is some evidence to support small tests as seismic data indicated unusual earthquake-like motion.

As far as seismic data is concerned with North Korea, since they gave their info to Pakistan, who successfully set off at least one nuclear device, it would be reasonable to assume that North Korea knows its design will work.

Here are some links which show the before and after photos of Pakistans underground nuclear tests:

Link 1
Link 2

This link has a very nice and detailed story, with pics, about Indias nuclear tests as does this link.

In the case of Indias tests, there were some clouds thrown up but nothing near like one is used to seeing from the nuclear tests the U.S. performed in the Nevada desert.

Nuclear tests are now conducted underground. Above ground testing was banned by the UN decades ago and any country who has nuclear weapons has always tested them below ground. The exception being Israel who was testing its nuclear weapons with South Africa when sanctions were on South Africa for its apartheid policies.

No known large-scale tests were evidenced but there is some evidence to support small tests as seismic data indicated unusual earthquake-like motion.

As far as seismic data is concerned with North Korea, since they gave their info to Pakistan, who successfully set off at least one nuclear device, it would be reasonable to assume that North Korea knows its design will work.

Here are some links which show the before and after photos of Pakistans underground nuclear tests:

Link 1
Link 2

This link has a very nice and detailed story, with pics, about Indias nuclear tests as does this link.

In the case of Indias tests, there were some clouds thrown up but nothing near like one is used to seeing from the nuclear tests the U.S. performed in the Nevada desert.

For those interested, there was a lovely article about HANEs (high alt. nuc. explosions) in a recent SciAm article last year. It seems its been ripped off and re-posted here by some or other anti-nuclear group (thanks!). The article had a decidedly ominous tone as it explained how detonating a HANE would flood the van allen belts (creating new ones too!!) with a vast amount of electrons which then would happily spiral around the field lines of the earth for months at a time. Kinda cool and not so dangerous in the 1950's, and a horrifying nightmare scenario of near complete destruction of all satellites in LEO and MEO if done today.

-A splendid shot of the hot plasma and charged particle debris from shot Dominic Starfish Prime (taken from a plane) at T+3 minutes after "bang time" as it follows the earth's field lines through the upper atmosphere.

70 nuclear explosions throws a tremendous amount of irradiated dust into the atmosphere, and each renders several square miles of land uninhabitable. Period. Several thousand square miles of land would be contaminated by nuclear fallout. All this in one of the most densly populated parts of the world.

Read up on exactly how nasty low-yield nuclear weapons can be.

Particularly the section on delayed effects. Life would suck for most of Asia. You would see a world war break out simply from the billions of people living on contaminated land looking at Australia, Africa, and Europe for arable land.

Even pure Pu-240 or Pu-242 could be built into a bomb. A really, really difficult to engineer bomb, but a bomb nonetheless.

You can engineer rock into a weapon. Launch some sort of spacecraft capable of deploying a solar sail and cruising to a small asteroid. Hook on with a piton and a few km of line, then use the photon thrust to aim the rock at the desired target.

Too much effort, you say? Too hard to make sure it will all work? Takes too long? Other things pay off much more easily? Sure, no argument. Same thing with bombs from spent PWR fuel.

And any reactor output of plutonium can be processed with the types of equipment used to enrich Uranium to get modern weapons grade Pu, if you want. With hundreds of times less separation effort.

But orders of magnitude more threat of detection at any of these stages:

1. Diversion of spent or reprocessed fuel.
2. Chemical or radiological accident during purification.
3. Accident during isotope separation, especially a criticality accident.
4. Chemical, radiological or criticality accident during conversion to solid.
5. Fire while in the metal phase.
6. Explosive accident during or after bomb assembly (this would contaminate an area but would likely not result in detonation).

You can get rid of most or all of these problems by enriching uranium instead, or stealing bomb-grade materials (or finished weapons) from the ex-Soviet block nations. Given these avenues someone would have to be a fool to divert spent PWR fuel for bomb-making, and it appears that nobody with the money to make the attempt is that foolish.

Your own source agrees. I quote:

Now and in the future, reactor grade plutonium appears to be the material most likely to be available to a terrorist group. Given the spontaneous fission rate, and the limited technology for rapid assembly, predetonation is a foregone conclusion....

Given that the system will disassemble well before compression is complete, an accurate symmetrical implosion is not really a necessity. Simply imploding the fissile material at a high rate even if imperfectly (that is, without a true plane or cylindrical shock wave), could produce the necessary rapid compression. For this to work, the fissile material would have to be fairly close to critical at the beginning of the implosion since an imperfect implosion would create unacceptable distortions if the compression factor were very large. As noted earlier in the discussion on nuclear testing, manufacturing a device that is close to critical is extremely hazardous and itself requires substantial sophistication. [emphasis added]

Sophistication which a terrorist group (as opposed to a cats-paw for a state actor, which would not require diverted PWR fuel) would simply not have. They would be at high risk of having an accident which reveals their plot, kills their essential skilled personnel, blows up friendly territory or all three. To be a threat to the US they have to avoid all of those failure scenarios and then get their bomb to the target undetected. This isn't trivial and is getting harder.

There's a common delusion, pushed by IFR fans among others, that there is a "safe" Plutonium output type which will not be a practical proliferation concern.

There's a common delusion among people world-wide that nuclear powerplants are more dangerous than chemical plants or oil refineries. Nothing could be further from the truth, yet the public misperception persists. If a terrorist wants to kill people, it would be much easier to put some sort of poison into municipal water supplies than to divert, process, and fabricate PWR fuel into a bomb; neither would such efforts tip off the civilized world beforehand and place the program at risk before it could yield results. It is easier

Those factors make it so difficult to make bombs out of recovered PWR plutonium that not one proliferator, not India or Pakistan or Iraq or Iran or North Korea, has even tried to make a bomb that way.

This is grossly unsupported by proper engineering analysis and history. India's first bomb used reactor material, which had even been used as plutonium in a fast fission plutonium fueled research reactor. Many other nations have fired test bombs using RGPU.

There is no dispute that it's harder to use RGPU than Weapons Grade, or U-233. But the arguments that RGPU weapons are impractical have been thoroughly discredited. Harder is not impractical. More dangerous to handle is not impractical.

See:

Reactor Grade Plutonium's Explosive Properties by J Carson Mark.
India's Nuclear Weapons Program - Smiling Buddha: 1974 from the Nuclear Weapons Archive (Carey Sublette)
Nuclear Weapons FAQ Section 6.2: Fissionable Materials, 6.2.2.10 Reactor-Grade Plutonium from the Nuclear Weapons FAQ (Carey Sublette)
Nuclear Weapons FAQ Section 4.2: Fission Weapon Designs, 4.2.6.1 Clandestine Weapons, 4.2.6.1 Terrorist Bombs from the Nuclear Weapons FAQ (Carey Sublette)

Those factors make it so difficult to make bombs out of recovered PWR plutonium that not one proliferator, not India or Pakistan or Iraq or Iran or North Korea, has even tried to make a bomb that way.

This is grossly unsupported by proper engineering analysis and history. India's first bomb used reactor material, which had even been used as plutonium in a fast fission plutonium fueled research reactor. Many other nations have fired test bombs using RGPU.

There is no dispute that it's harder to use RGPU than Weapons Grade, or U-233. But the arguments that RGPU weapons are impractical have been thoroughly discredited. Harder is not impractical. More dangerous to handle is not impractical.

See:

Reactor Grade Plutonium's Explosive Properties by J Carson Mark.
India's Nuclear Weapons Program - Smiling Buddha: 1974 from the Nuclear Weapons Archive (Carey Sublette)
Nuclear Weapons FAQ Section 6.2: Fissionable Materials, 6.2.2.10 Reactor-Grade Plutonium from the Nuclear Weapons FAQ (Carey Sublette)
Nuclear Weapons FAQ Section 4.2: Fission Weapon Designs, 4.2.6.1 Clandestine Weapons, 4.2.6.1 Terrorist Bombs from the Nuclear Weapons FAQ (Carey Sublette)

Those factors make it so difficult to make bombs out of recovered PWR plutonium that not one proliferator, not India or Pakistan or Iraq or Iran or North Korea, has even tried to make a bomb that way.

This is grossly unsupported by proper engineering analysis and history. India's first bomb used reactor material, which had even been used as plutonium in a fast fission plutonium fueled research reactor. Many other nations have fired test bombs using RGPU.

There is no dispute that it's harder to use RGPU than Weapons Grade, or U-233. But the arguments that RGPU weapons are impractical have been thoroughly discredited. Harder is not impractical. More dangerous to handle is not impractical.

See:

Reactor Grade Plutonium's Explosive Properties by J Carson Mark.
India's Nuclear Weapons Program - Smiling Buddha: 1974 from the Nuclear Weapons Archive (Carey Sublette)
Nuclear Weapons FAQ Section 6.2: Fissionable Materials, 6.2.2.10 Reactor-Grade Plutonium from the Nuclear Weapons FAQ (Carey Sublette)
Nuclear Weapons FAQ Section 4.2: Fission Weapon Designs, 4.2.6.1 Clandestine Weapons, 4.2.6.1 Terrorist Bombs from the Nuclear Weapons FAQ (Carey Sublette)

You may have missed the bit at school where they mentioned that the nuclear club contains Isreal

To be pedantic Israel is not a confirmed nuclear power. There is very little data available on their arsenal, types of warhead and delivery systems. HEW provides some more information.

Isreal is not a superpower.

They don't need to be. They have the worlds largest superpower on puppet strings already. They can let someone else do the dirty work.

"Blessed are the Peacemakers" ring any bells?

Sure, isn't that the advertising slogan for a Colt handgun or a missile?

Now our sepcies has the power to destroy a small town in a convenient, 1 gram package? This kind of technology should never be researched or developed. Just imagine the consequences if such weapons were to fall into the hands of terrorists or even...*gasp*...the military. Instead of the infamous suitcase nukes, we would now have the equivalent in a soda-can sized bomb. We would enter the age of MWMDs...you heard it here first.

In over 50 years of deployment, we've only used nuclear weapons in one campaign and against an enemy that had initiated hostilities and had been at war with for 4 years. Not only that, we had them for over a decade before anybody else, including the Soviet Union, without excercising anything close to Pax Americana. (Emphasis mine.)

• First US atomic bomb detonation: 12 July 1945 (deliverable)
• First Soviet atomic bomb detonation: 29 August 1949 (deliverable)

• First US hydrogen bomb detonation: 1 November 1952 (stationary)
• First Soviet hydrogen bomb detonation: 12 August 1953 (deliverable, first use of fusion in thermonuclear device), 22 November 1955 (deliverable, first "real" H-bomb)

We will develope [sic] big fucking sticks and we will make sure you know we have them, but we never use those big fucking sticks unless you absolutely deserve it.

Out of curiosity, what did I get wrong in my post? I really am curious; nukes have been a long-standing interest of mine (geek that I am), and though I am not a weapons-physicist, I am trained as a physicist and have talked a fair amount with folks who built bombs (I took a couple of physics classes from a guy who used work on bombs - one of the most memorable times was when he explained in detail how the castle Bravo test gave a much larger yield than predicted. I'm glad that I work in a field where if I make a miscalculation the worst that happens is a delayed research paper, not 6 extra megatons of explosive yield.

In any case, the "Spark-plug" is definitely of weapons grade material and should be removed.

The unplanned irony in the photo is hysterical.

Nuclear weapon. Fire extinguisher.

Very informative and very frightening. Googling "Castle Nectar" returned - among others - this interesting page: Project Castle with an image of the beast.

Very informative and very frightening. Googling "Castle Nectar" returned - among others - this interesting page: Project Castle with an image of the beast.

You're thinking of Tsar Bomba (The King of Bombs) that the Soviets detonated. It's theoretical yield was over 100MT, but as they only tested two of the three stages, actual yield was in the 50-60 range (estimates vary from 51 to 57). It is widely speculated for a number of reasons that the weapon was more of a political gesture than an actual weapon system intended for deployment.

more info here

The double flash of a nuke is a very unique signature and yes, there are space assets looking for exactly this - read more about the South Africa test in 1979 - unknown if these same satellite can pick up the Slashdotting of my 22,000 Christmas Lights ... ;-)

Before the Trinity test during the Manhattan project, a test was done with en explosion of 108 tons of Composition B (RDX/TNT). Among the explosives were tubes containing fission products. Looks like the biggest "dirty" bomb ever made.

Of course the fireball would not be as hot as a nuclear one, but the pictures look very impressive nontheless.

Before the Trinity test during the Manhattan project, a test was done with en explosion of 108 tons of Composition B (RDX/TNT). Among the explosives were tubes containing fission products. Looks like the biggest "dirty" bomb ever made.

Of course the fireball would not be as hot as a nuclear one, but the pictures look very impressive nontheless.

here (left-bottom).
Sure, smoking is much more dangerous than a 15 megaton nuke...

There's also the fun little thing known as Tsar Bomba">Tsar Bomba. Largest nuke ever tested. 50 Megatons actual, due to some changes made before test - the design was for a 100Mt yield.

For reference, 100Mt would have been roughly enough to cause 3rd degree burns to everyone inside of West Germany. Except for the ones within 60km of ground zero, who would have just been vaporized.

Read the history of this shot:CASTLE-BRAVO

Apparently the bomb designers miscalculated something. The yield was supposed to be about 5 megatons. Turned out to be closer to 15. (Miscalculated!) The fallout irradiated other islanders and a fishing boat that were supposed to be safe. I'd say this event qualifies as one of the biggest engineering f-ups in history.

Here's an interesting animation about fallout from the Nevada tests. Guess it's for people who don't like to read.

Well, "Jennifer", you've got the wrong quote. The passage made famous when Dr. Oppenheimer was purported to have quoted it after the Trinity shot ended with "I am becom Death; The shatterer of Worlds." Read all about it here along with lots of other interesting tidbits about nuclear history.

what if some ancient civilization was just as advanced as us but nuked themselves out of existence?

This item came a little closer to the goal. I once saw a blurb that estimated that for a few nanoseconds it produced about 1% as much power as the entire sun.

Doing a few calculations:

A golf ball must have a diameter of not less than 1.680 inches (42.67mm)

or a volume of 40.679 cm^3.

Feeding that into Calculation of Density with Halfnium, gives a mass of 0.54143749 kg for a golf-ball sized chunk of Halfnium (neglecting the particular isotope in question).

Assuming metric tons for simplicity, a yield of:

10 tons / 0.54143749 kg

Is equivalent to:

18.5 tons / kg

Compare that with existing nuclear weapons. Once you scale the weapon above a certain size, and using optimal designs, you can obtain much higher yield efficiencies, or Yield-to-Weight Ratio's.

"The W-54 Davy Crockett warhead ... was the lightest ever deployed by the US, with a minimum mass of about 23 kg (it also came in heavier packages) and had yields ranging from 10 tons up to 1 Kt in various versions."

Yield-to-Weight Ratios of US Mk-53 Nuclear Weapon
2.25 kt/kg

Or

2,250,000 tons / kg

Which is a MUCH higher efficiency weapon - at least in the energy sense.

Doing a few calculations:

A golf ball must have a diameter of not less than 1.680 inches (42.67mm)

or a volume of 40.679 cm^3.

Feeding that into Calculation of Density with Halfnium, gives a mass of 0.54143749 kg for a golf-ball sized chunk of Halfnium (neglecting the particular isotope in question).

Assuming metric tons for simplicity, a yield of:

10 tons / 0.54143749 kg

Is equivalent to:

18.5 tons / kg

Compare that with existing nuclear weapons. Once you scale the weapon above a certain size, and using optimal designs, you can obtain much higher yield efficiencies, or Yield-to-Weight Ratio's.

"The W-54 Davy Crockett warhead ... was the lightest ever deployed by the US, with a minimum mass of about 23 kg (it also came in heavier packages) and had yields ranging from 10 tons up to 1 Kt in various versions."

Yield-to-Weight Ratios of US Mk-53 Nuclear Weapon
2.25 kt/kg

Or

2,250,000 tons / kg

Which is a MUCH higher efficiency weapon - at least in the energy sense.

But you can't go into orbit. Also, of you were to start from the surface of the Earth with several times excape velocity you will a) be vaporized by the atmosphere, b) likely be slowed down such that you don't ever reached space, c) killed by the deceleration forces.

A while back this topic came up over a lunch discussion and I did some looking into it. Check this link for some interesting background. As best I can estimate the lid made it up to about 10 km altitude before it came back down.

So, what does all this mean? Simply that a jet engine will NEVER get you into space.