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Interactive Nukemap Now In 3D
Lasrick writes "The brilliant Alex Wellerstein has an interactive map that shows the effects of a variety of atomic bombs on whatever city in the world you choose (you can designate the yield or choose from a wide variety of pre-programmed yields, like Fatman, Little Boy, or what the Soviets had at time of the Cuban Missile Crisis). Compelling in a scary sort of way. A 3D version is available."
The only way to win is not to play.
Of course the maps weren't as pretty, but this has been done to death.
The danger of nuclear war in minuscule compared to the days when Soviets and Maoists were a threat. Now Russians and Chinese are our business partners.
Detente worked, thanks be to Richard Nixon!
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Christ, it really puts into perspective the rate at which these things have gained destructive power since their inception. The difference between the effects of "Little Boy" and the Tsar Bomba on Hiroshima are...jarring.
This is so outdated; Today's significant threat to US is a 30 years old person hidden in a Moscow airport.
Actually one reason they went to smaller bombs is because they're more effective. Two 500 Kiloton bombs actually do more damage than one 1 Megaton bomb.
And with separate delivery mechanics, one is likely to come through.
Meh. He knows someone will retaliate, and it'll end up wiping out enough citizens to significantly hurt the corporate base of power in the U.S. If a significant portion of the population is dead, we can't exactly go out and buy stuff, can we?
When have you not had a reckless and irresponsible president?
Terrain effects are very important. Nagasaki is a practical example.
What he's basically done is take the calculations form the Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer and draw circles on Google Maps. A good first step, but really, not particularly useful.
A decent model would
a) take into account terrain (there are all the databases, and a simple approximation for shadowing isn't all that tough. You don't need to model the shockwave over ground, for instance, but the flash is important for large yield devices.
b) do fallout analysis based on climatological model for winds. Easily available databases (NCAR reanalysis project for instance)
Now Russians and Chinese are our business partners.
So were Germans and Japanese in 1939.
...and the simulation reported a 40% increase in property values inside the blast radius.
I had no idea the sim was that accurate.
(I kid. I kid because I love. 519 represent! )
DG
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My expectations are simpler than all out war. At some point a terrorist group will manage to get their hands on a nuke. The easiest delivery method is cargo container. One day, one of our ports is going to disappear. I hope I'm wrong...
This is a relatively boring app. It's drawing circles on Google Maps based only on estimates of yield, height, and level of destruction. I wanted to see the effects of geography and prevailing weather patterns on the distribution of destruction.
Have a nice time.
Explosive power dissipates as a function of the cube root of the equivalent mass of explosive.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
My expectations are simpler than all out war. At some point a terrorist group will manage to get their hands on a nuke. The easiest delivery method is cargo container. One day, one of our ports is going to disappear. I hope I'm wrong...
You are wrong. The worst a terrorist is ever going to be able to do is a dirty bomb - basically a bunch of C4 next to the radioactive material. The bomb will spread radiation across one or two city blocks and that's about it.
The reason that they will never actually detonate a real nuke is that they are complicated and extremely delicate. The shape of the bomb must be absolutely perfect and the timing of the charge detonations must be accurate to within microseconds, else nothing happens. Getting the shape right is so important that people working on at least one major nuclear programat Los Alamos had to classify all spheres, including oranges.
It will take the resources of a nation-state to blow up a nuke on US soil and no matter what any war-mongering politicians have said, no actual nation-state is stupid enough to do that because it means the end of that country. Not Iran, not North Korea. Not going to happen.
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So were Germans and Japanese in 1939.
And some multinationals continued those business relationships between 1939 and 1945, or nominally severed the relationship with their subsidiaries in those countries and then collected the profits after the war.
Big business is only loyal to profits. Flags, ideals, countries, and people are secondary concerns at best.
I am officially gone from
It was the multinationals that made a mess in the 19th century.
Like England, France, Russia, Germany, Belgium, etc.
The answer isn't to simply shift power around. It's to devolve and extinguish power completely.
Can't be done. Someone will always be stronger, smarter, or have a hold on someone else.
Pakistan. Should an islamic revolution take over the military, I fully expect a bomb to go "missing" only years later to be found exploded on US or European soil. Of course, not by Pakistan, but by some Islamic fuck looking to jihad himself to paradise.
Life is not for the lazy.
The only way to win is not to play.
Actually the only way to win is for nobody to play. Even if you don't play yourself the fallout from the idiot playing next door may still get you.
The main fear for nuclear terrorism is not that they build their own bomb, but rather that they get one thru stealing/corruption/or jsut plain buying from the soviet or other state with nuclear weapon. Can you be sure that nuke from ,say , France are as secure as the US one against stealing ? Now repeat the same question with say, Pakistan or India ? That's the real deal. If nuclear terrorism ever happen, it will be that way.
But far more likely before nuclear terrorism will be bio-chemical terrorism which do not need as much facility. VX gas, for example. Or even some changed virus, because some apocalyptic cult want us all dead.
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The answer isn't to simply shift power around. It's to devolve and extinguish power completely.
Can't be done. Someone will always be stronger, smarter, or have a hold on someone else.
The best answer I know is to dilute power. It never goes away but giving a huge number of smaller groups and individuals power makes it less dangerous as no one group or individual has a lot.
A Little Boy design requires an artillery tube and regular explosive. It can be built from a standing start with 1940s technology and is so straightforward the Manhattan Project didn't need to test it.
It's inefficient and unsafe but it works.
Just that this time, it's you Americans who are the warmongering expansionist extremist crazy country.
Yep, to us Europeans, you're worse than Russia and China. Combined, even.. I think only North Korea or Pakistan can still beat you. But Pakistan doesn't have a big lead on you, to be frank.
And I'm a European who usually defends the USA by saying that one can't generalize this, since there are a lot of great people in the USA too. But honestly, that's true for Pakistan and North Korea too. It's always the few confident assholes who spoil it for the pathetic rest.
Oh, and we here in Germany try hard to imitate you guys by the way. So the joke's on us, I guess... ;)
And some multinationals continued those business relationships between 1939 and 1945, or nominally severed the relationship with their subsidiaries in those countries and then collected the profits after the war.
And just think, without WW2, Fanta would never have been developed! What kind of a world would that be?
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Hit Israel, Mecca, and the Vatican at the same time. Watch all the Abrahamic nutters wet themselves. Bet none of the books predict that coming.
You are wrong. The worst a terrorist is ever going to be able to do is a dirty bomb - basically a bunch of C4 next to the radioactive material. The bomb will spread radiation across one or two city blocks and that's about it.
The reason that they will never actually detonate a real nuke is that they are complicated and extremely delicate. The shape of the bomb must be absolutely perfect and the timing of the charge detonations must be accurate to within microseconds, else nothing happens. Getting the shape right is so important that people working on at least one major nuclear programat Los Alamos had to classify all spheres, including oranges.
It will take the resources of a nation-state to blow up a nuke on US soil and no matter what any war-mongering politicians have said, no actual nation-state is stupid enough to do that because it means the end of that country. Not Iran, not North Korea. Not going to happen.
I don't know about that. Most of the problems in shaping it comes down to having the machines to craft and shape the bomb to tight tolerances. We've been able to keep the machines that can make objects and refine materials with such tolerance out of foreign states for the most part. That's what has saved us as much as anything. The math is pretty much out there in the open to a degree. With 3d printing and 3d shaping (lathes/cnc/etc) I don't think we are far from being able to shape any material into any shape. And there are explosives that could certainly be printed and shaped to the nth degree. With some of the new technologies going mainstream and available from all quarters it's going to be downright impossible for us to control those technologies. I think the chances are going to be much higher.