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Russia Tests World's Largest Non-Nuclear Bomb
mahesh_gharat writes "Russia has tested the "Father of all bombs," a conventional air-delivered explosive that experts say can only be compared with a nuclear weapon in terms of its destructive power.The device is a fuel-air explosive, commonly known as a vacuum bomb, that spreads a high incendiary vapour cloud over a wide area and then ignites it, creating an ultra-sonic shock wave and searing fireball that destroys everything in its wake."
Now that Putin's dissolved that pesky and meddlesome parliament, his plans for the Russian conquest can proceed apace.
First up: Ukraine! Ukraine is weak.
These weapons are nothing more than grandiose show-offs with alleged dubious psychological effects. They're not going to launch one of these on an ICBM any time soon, unless Russia started using Antonovs as ICBMs while I was on vacation.
This is the military equivalent of having a nuclear warhead that has to be set off with a match. Flashy but completely useless.
- 223,188 kilograms benzol
- 56,301 kilograms of nitrocellulose (guncotton)
- 1,602,519 kilograms of wet picric acid
- 544,311 kilograms of dry picric acid (highly explosive, and extremely sensitive to shock, heat and friction), and
- 226,797 kilograms of TNT
The Explosion leveled Halifax, and caused over 10,000 casualties.The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
Yes, environmentally friendly in this case means no readiation. So they can come in and rebuild as soon as it cools. With a Russian economy that is growing at 7-8% per year, they are capable of big rebuilding projects, so this is a rather useful weapon.
Has it ever occurred to you that Russia could be using these bombs to:
a) Sell to other countries.
b) Act as a counter-balance to U.S. global hegemony.
No, of course you haven't.
As for Russia being a superpower, they're getting closer to that status everyday, now that they actually have a competent leader.
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Russia refers to their inanimate objects as masculine, the US feminine, and Germany as "it". It has always been such, for whatever reason.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
preads a high incendiary vapour cloud over a wide area and then ignites it, creating an ultra-sonic shock wave and searing fireball that destroys everything in its wake.
Here's a slightly more accurate description of what it does....to people.
They're indiscriminate and quite possibly the cruelest way of killing people save WW1-era chemical attacks.
The fact that the US and Russia are the only countries to use and develop them should speak volumes.
Please help metamoderate.
Actually, the russian came out and said that they did in fact have our plans. They were stolen in 75, and according to Russia, did play a part in building their shuttle. But as I pointed out, they made a number of intelligent choices, in particular the changes of the engine placement. I only wish that they had not killed off the energia.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Nah...that type of thing is more widely known as a fuel-air explosive. Even my old flight sims from the late 1980s called them that. (Even back then the common target was Iran...)
The Blackjack might look like the Lancer but it really is a completely different aircraft. Not only is it bigger, it's also heavier, faster and carries a lot more ordnance.
The Soviet Union designed the TU-160 as a counter weight to the US carrier groups. If WWIII had actually started, those birds were the only thing in their inventory that could effectively counter a Navy task force. In fact their entire strategy for a land war in Europe depended on them interdicting shipping from the US across the GIUK line. The bombers would attack the escort ships with massive conventional cruise missile swarms, or single nuclear ones.
Bears, Bisons, Backfires and Blackjacks. That's why the Aegis cruisers were designed, and that's why the F-14 Tomcat and the AIM-54 Phoenix were rushed into service.
it's also faster. the B-1B's supersonic ability is a joke. mach 1.2, and it's not very useful at all. the B-1A would have been faster (mach 2 i believe), but the whole canceled, brought back, and remissioning kinda screwed that up. should probably be noted that when you designed a supersonic swing wing bomber, there arent too many shapes you can make. just like when you design a giant bomb. or a reusable space launch platform. soviet's did copy/steal a lot of stuff from us (good for them, it was a good use of their money), but not everything they do should be automatically ridiculed for being a 'cheap knockoff'.
And the money shot is where Russia claims that it doesn't believe this clear weapons-based pissing contest won't result in another arms race...
I can't tell if that statement is a.) a lie or b.) the result of extreme stupidity.
Clearly if they saw who was in the White House, or I don't know, maybe studied the past 200 years of American history, they'd have a pretty good idea that this would probably trigger an arms race... How often does America like to have its arsenal out-done by foreigners? How often is that translated into leverage used by politicians to justify further military spending?
Well, anyways, kudos Russia! Here's to the apocalypse...
If only the Russians had developed this in the 80s they would have won in Afghanistan(by using these to clear the cave complexes) and Afghanistan would be a nice quite developed nation based on exports of oil, dry fruits and buddhist religious tourism instead of being the cradle of vicious terrorism. A Soviet victory in Afghanistan would have also meant Osama would be just another failed mujahiddin with no following and the Africa bombings, 9/11, Spain bombings and all the other shit would not have happened. Sigh if only communism was still alive the world would be so much a nicer place. Its not communism per se but the balance of power which ensured a relatively peacefull period of time in the late 20th century.
**Life is too short to be serious**
I wouldn't be that dismissive of FAE's -- the overpressure from the blast is truly impressive, and what causes most of the damage. The main problem with FAEs is that their yield is really variable -- not as big of a bang on a windy day. Anyway, both are thermobaric weapons, and both are massive overkill for almost any job.
- There are no large swathes of people who refuse to assimilate in Britain, a scattering of small communities is more accurate - look at numbers rather than hysterical tabloid newspapers.
- It is a good thing. Most of the people who refuse to assimilate live in areas where the native culture and values can be summed up as having children (or being a confirmed petty criminal) by the age of 13, and then being a dole scrounger for the rest of your life.
Incidentally, I assume you deliberately not seeing the benefit immigration has brought to Britain. A far more vibrant culture (things like books and music), "alien" values like discipline and hard work (Have you ever met an Asian chav or dole scrounger?), and even better food. Do you know that there are treatments available for paranoia?There are lots of Asians in places like Wimbledon (where I grew up): completely assimilated in a generation or two because a decent culture is something worth assimilating with.
Have you ever seen a 70 year old copy of the Daily Mail (British tabloid newspaper)? At that point they were saying that the Jews would over-run the country and impose their alien values etc. Now its Muslims/Asians. Apart from the irony, the pattern is pretty obvious.
Personally I think mindless xenophobes should be deported (perhaps we would bribe some poor country to take them?) and replaced with decent people from elsewhere.
Do we like it or not the cold war is back and sabre rattling is in full swing.
Sadly, you're right. I's never been gone, though - just lying low for a while.
BBC exorcising with extreme prejudice any footage and any mentioning of Russian
fire fighter planes during the Greek fires this summer
Do you have any more info on this?
sigs are hazardous to your health
Personal observations. All photos which showed any of the Be200ES, 6 or so Mi26, 2 Mi 8 or 5 Ka32 which have been there since the beginning of the summer lived at most 15 minutes on the site. After that the photo sequence for "fires in Greece" was changed with the offending photos being excorsized. Further to this, despite being the second largest firefighting fleet in operation (after Greece own aging Canadairs), they got 0 mention in all articles after this one: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6917002.stm.
That is besides the fact that the plane shown in this one was in Bulgaria (which also contained its wildfires) and went to Serbia, not to Greece. Serbia, surprise, surprise managed to contain its fires. Actually not surprising considering that compared to this monster any other firefighting kit out there is a child's toy. Same as with the bomb actually - from the "mine is bigger" series.
As far as the fires this summer - just search the web (and gootube). It is full of pictures and videos.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Well, Chicago *was* levelled by the Great Fire about a century ago. It's also far, far nicer than NY with (as the OP claimed about Halifax) big city facilities and a small-town feel. Interestingly, it's also a city on a major transport bottleneck (rails from the midwest / ships on the great lakes) which couldn't be abandoned after the disaster.
I guess the moral of this is, if you want a big city that's actually a nice place rather than a big pile of people in boxes, have it blown up a century ago.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
There actually was a proposal back in the 50s to build a nuclear ramjet powered high speed unmanned multiple warhead delivery system. It got through a few rounds of discussion, but then someone said "Well, where does it go after it drops its last nuke?" One of the scientists said "Just have it zig-zag around the enemy's country as long as it can fly; it's cranking out enough radiation to kill everything it flies over." Then someone realized that it would have to fly over some allied countries to get to enemy countries, and they finally realized that maybe this wasn't a good idea.
(yes, I know a joke when I see one).
Wouldn't it be ironic if Iran were prevented from developing nuclear weapons only to find that they then developed fuel air bombs using a resource that they had in far more abundant supply than uranium? Moreover, wouldn't it be ironic if the ubiquitous availability of fuel in civilization enabled terrorists, gangs, etc. to bring down civilization?
Seastead this.