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Movies of Cold War Bomb Tests Hold Nuclear Secrets (wired.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Nuclear weapons specialists are limited in their research today. Prudence and international treaties prevent them from setting off any nuclear weapons, so they have to run tests through other means and interpret the results. But this wasn't always the case. In the '50s and '60s, the U.S. government performed a huge number of nuclear weapons tests, and filmed most of them. As happened with a lot of film from that time, most laid untouched in storage facilities until people generally forgot about them. But physicist Greg Spriggs recently realized they could be a trove of useful information, so he started tracking them down, eventually locating thousands of them. His team has started scanning and analyzing them. They've finished about 3,000 so far, with more than half yet to go. "Now, of course, scientists have computer programs that can analyze every single pixel in a frame over hundreds of frames. What might have taken days by hand takes only minutes. With computer analysis, Spriggs is pinpointing more precise yields. Computer models then use yield to estimate the damage from a bomb in different situations."
"Shall we play a game?"
The "secrets" they speak of are higher accuracy measurements of the yield of the weapons. It is done by tracking the speed and size of the shockwave captured in the films, which was originally done by hand. There was up to 20% variation in the results of the measurements made by hand. They are now using computer software to perform the optical per-frame analysis of the shockwaves, and the result is more accurate measurements of the weapons' yield.
Better known as 318230.
Its not what you think, there are no actual national secrets that have to be kept disclosed, all researchers can access all material.
The title is clickbait and taken from the press article.
Says the guy posting on Slashdot.
Yes, it isn't law. It doesn't prevent us from more or less complying with it unilaterally, it's just that we aren't binding ourselves to it. That gives everyone else a lot less peace of mind about it, but the US often has its own reasons for basically following the gist of treaties it doesn't ratify, so it usually works out. Usually.
There was the test ban treaty of 1963, and the comprehensive test ban treaty of 1996. On August 5, 1963, representatives of the United States, Soviet Union and Great Britain signed the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited the testing of nuclear weapons in outer space, underwater or in the atmosphere. Of note, this does not include underground testing. But that is still very limiting. France and China were asked to sign the treaty, but refused.
In 1996, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, prohibiting “any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion.”
Interestingly enough, the United States was the first nation to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty, which happened in 1996. Around 180 nations followed. In 1999 the United States senate rejected the treaty.
A quick ctrl + f reveals that the word "comprehensive" is not in the article.
So that there you have it: two treatise. Oh, one last thing. I scraped pretty much all of that from the article linked to in your post. Did you not read the article you linked to?
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
If you want to calculate nuclear yields, I suggest picking up a copy of Samuel Glasstone's The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (that's an Amazon link, but there are a fair number of used copies floating around). I have the revised 1962 edition.
Be sure to pick up a copy that still has the yield computer wheel in the back of the book.
Also, this web page lets you map nuclear bursts using Google maps, and seems to be heavily based on Glasstone.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
>> Did you not read the article you linked to?
You must be new here. :)
Now maybe we can properly calculate the trajectory of that manhole cover
Have gnu, will travel.
If Soviets hit first, then they'll aim for the missile bunkers that are scattered all over the Mid-west. They'll also lob in a load at 'Command and Control' centres (cities). The nukes hitting the midwest will create enormous amounts of radioactive fallout as they're aiming for hardened bunkers so nukes won't be airburst, CONUS is uninhabitable.
A retaliatory strike means only cities are hit, with air bursts. Result, devastation, but not complete annihilation. The remaining 10-20 million could plan WW IV with bows and arrows. So it's 'better' to strike first.