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Pentagon Document Confirms Existence of Russian Doomsday Torpedo (popularmechanics.com)
Popular Mechanics reports that "a key U.S. nuclear weapons document confirms that the Russian government is developing the most powerful nuclear weapon in more than a half century...a 'new intercontinental, nuclear-armed undersea autonomous torpedo'" with a range of 6,200 miles.
But what really makes "Kanyon" nightmare fuel is the drone torpedo's payload: a 100-megaton thermonuclear weapon. By way of comparison, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 16 kilotons, or the equivalent of 16,000 tons of TNT. Kanyon's nuke would be the equivalent of 100,000,000 tons of TNT. That's twice as powerful as Tsar Bomba, the most powerful thermonuclear weapon ever tested. Dropped on New York City, a 100-megaton bomb would kill 8 million people outright and injure 6 million more.
Kanyon is designed to attack coastal areas, destroying cities, naval bases, and ports. The mega-bomb would also generate an artificial tsunami that would surge inland, spreading radioactive contamination with the advancing water. To make matters worse there are reports the warhead is "salted" with the radioactive isotope Cobalt-60. Contaminated areas would be off-limits to humanity for up to 100 years.
Slashdot reader schwit1 adds that "being sea-based makes it immune to ballistic missile defense."
Kanyon is designed to attack coastal areas, destroying cities, naval bases, and ports. The mega-bomb would also generate an artificial tsunami that would surge inland, spreading radioactive contamination with the advancing water. To make matters worse there are reports the warhead is "salted" with the radioactive isotope Cobalt-60. Contaminated areas would be off-limits to humanity for up to 100 years.
Slashdot reader schwit1 adds that "being sea-based makes it immune to ballistic missile defense."
Can it?
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
WTF is going over there, Vlad ? Are you guys having some kind of retro movie festival (Dr Strangelove, Wargames, On the Beach) with free vodka and meth ?
Large exchanges of salted weapons is mindlessly catastrophic.
wpold be more effectivw
Part of Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" program was satellite based ballistic missile defense. I've seen little sign that its various researched programs ever worked, but there were several theoretical programs, such as the nuclear device triggered orbital X-ray lasyers, that might theoretically have been effective against such an attack. Part of the difficulty is that such a "defensive" technology is far easier to target against ground targets than against moving ballistic missiles: it would have constituted a direct violation of the "Outer Space Treaty". That treaty is now over 50 years old, and has helped prevent the deployment of weapons of mass destruction in orbit.
Other powerful orbital weapons also run into some treaty limitations. The nuclear pumped X-ray laser may be the most notorious.
Murphy's Law, everything that can go wrong will go wrong, has not been abolished. Nuclear weapons have prevented major wars for 70 years, but this may be the conservation of catastrophe. Putting out many small forest fires builds up to a huge one. Connecting our cities to a large electric grid stops frequent small blackouts but builds up to occasional huge, multi-state blackouts.
"being sea-based makes it immune to ballistic missile defense."
What would its performance be in a situation whereby a target is inundated with hundreds of such missiles?
That's why I sometimes laugh when I hear our PHBs brag about the marvelous missile defense systems we in the USA have. The Russians must be laughing even harder.
Considering that this is a torpedo and those travel through and under water, does it really make sense to talk about what a 100 megaton atomic weapon would do if it were dropped on a city?
Something like this is scary enough in its own rights, if only because there may not be as good of defenses in place which make it individually more likely to succeed, but even a much smaller warhead would be effective if it came to nuclear war. Never mind that if we're in that situation at all, both the U.S. and Russia already have enough conventional nuclear weapons to destroy each other several times over and neither of us could stop the others entire arsenal.
Title makes it sound like some kind of a secret
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I don't find this scary in and of itself because we're already at the point where we could destroy human civilization several times over, and have been for decades. I'm far more concerned that so many are goading Trump into escalating with Russia to "prove" he isn't a puppet.
Such information being made public so quickly seems to be in line with the "make people fear the Russians" campaign that's been going on since the election. Normally, this kind of thing would be classified (we overclassify EVERYTHING, and Russian nuclear capabilities is a legit secret), so a public release likely indicates an attempt to shape policy. IIRC, US intel overestimated the number of Soviet nukes by an order of magnitude, which made an easy sell for building a fuckton of nukes.
Yes, Putin is bad. Russia is bad. That doesn't mean we should trust something the Pentagon releases.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
It's not like manned submarines are immune to getting lost and into possibly the wrong hands - but unmanned drones will be even more likely to lose contact, getting lost and later found by someone who sells them to those willing to put some effort into hacking the fuse. Sounds like a new generation of "ransomware" will emerge - like "transfer us $$$$$$$$$ or we'll detonate the flotsam we just got hold of"...
leaked by Russian television in November 201
Old news indeed!
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Does anyone know whether this weapon (assuming it actually exists) would fall within any of the current US-Russia arms control treaties?
At first thought, it would appear that this wouldn't be suited at all as a first strike weapon. Despite the immense damage it would cause, it would not directly cripple a retaliatory strike. The U.S.'s bombers and missiles are far inland and it would only sink the nuclear subs that happened to be in port nearby.
However, it COULD be used to decapitate much of the the political "leadership" (if one were to call the Trump administration that) and also much of the military leadership if it were detonated right off of Washington D.C. In fact, assuming that it could get close enough to be used (which of course is the only way it could be useful) it would be an almost instantaneous first strike weapon. Unlike a ballistic missile launched from a sub offshore on a depressed trajectory (5 min.?) or a nuke disguised as a satellite that suddenly de-orbits (20 min.?) it would be able to wipe out its target with too little time to escape. That, coupled with a "normal" first strike that would take out the land based bombers and missiles might be enough to keep the retaliation to a minimum. Or in the words of General 'Buck' Turgidson, "10-20 million (casualties) tops. Sure (they'd) get their hair mussed but (they'd) win".
Insane? Well so is the idea of an autonomous (meaning I presume there's no way to call it back) doomsday torpedo. Sounds like one could remake "The Hunt for Red October" with just a few changes; a robotic submarine capable of ending the world (or just the coast of many large nations) is accidentally launched and it must be found and destroyed before it gets within range (or becomes sentient).
Since Russia isn't nearly as vulnerable as the U.S. from coastal attacks but seems to be way behind and falling further in space technology (thanks Elon!); why not put a big rock in the sky that, with just a little nudge, would fall down the gravity well and give a non-radioactive 100MT blast? Or, if the Russians are going to go ahead and violate the nuclear arms treaty (I'm pretty sure developing a whole new strategic nuclear weapon system is not allowed), use America's lead in new biotechnologies that could target specific regions or exact populations (I'd tell you how but probably not best to talk about such things publicly).
Just ask Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, or Eisenhower.
"Contaminated areas would be off-limits to humanity for up to 100 years. "
That would launch a planetary destruction and no humanity would be left to wait for a hundred years.
Something only that short-arsed Chekist cocksucker could dream up, thinking that somehow this makes ROSSIYA STRONK.
Only a diseased, drunken gopnik Russian mind could come up with something simultaneously evil and totally useless.
About thirty minutes after Putin uses this weapon, Russia ceases to exist -- forever.
globalism is. The Aristocracy is global now. They don't own countries, they own the world. More specifically they have property all throughout the world and don't want to see it blown up. They'll allow a few bush fire style conflicts to keep war profiteering going (Iraq, Afghanistan, etc) and they'll put down rebellions (Yemen) but they won't allow another full scale war to dip into their profits and break their stuff and, well, they're the aristocracy so they're in charge.
Hell, maybe about a decade ago Pakistan basically looked the other way while a major terrorist incident happened in India and nothing came of it. That's because an India/Pakistan war would be bad for business.
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As Nicole Kidman said: "I'm not worried of the man who wants 10 nuclear warheads, I am afraid of the man who only wants one."
While the article, true or not, is ripe with fearmongering...I wonder what our geopolitical rivals have to say about our undeclared "Doomsday" arsenal.
Tantalum salt would be worse, not that Cobalt-60 isn't bad enough... Besides, in the past year, the Russian presence in the Baltic area has more than doubled.. Rattling the saber? Or a prelude to a salted nuclear torpedo, I cannot say... Just hoping that the Swedish superpower keeps all this shit at bay...
"Pentagon Document Confirms Existence of Russian Doomsday Torpedo"
I would be be far more worried about this if it was a Russian document, of any sort. The headline basically says "The Pentagon thinks the Russians have this torpedo". If I wrote "I am Donald Trump" on a piece of Pentagon-headed paper, it wouldn't make it true, now would it?
Same with recent "dossiers"...
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People should watch "The Power of Nightmares" and learn about Team B, a set of Ronald Regan advisers who made up a bunch of shit about Russia and gave them capabilities they didn't have.
You remember the Caterpillar drive from Hunt From Red October? That came from a real Team B memo, where they couldn't identify all the Russian submarines, so they assumed they must have some super secret silent drive that makes them undetectable. Not the obvious answer of "We over estimated the number of Russian submarines."
I bet this is all bullshit too. No one can use a nuclear weapon today. We are still in a world of mutually assured destruction.
a 100-megaton bomb would kill 8 million people outright and injure 6 million more.
Good riddance. Bring it on.
Your quote is out of context.
Dropped on New York City, a 100-megaton bomb would kill 8 million people outright and injure 6 million more.
Torpedoes, last time I checked, weren't very good at leaping from the water into the sky thousands of feet to allow themselves to drop onto a city, thereby taking advantage of the largest possible and most lethal blast radius. An underwater nuke is far from trivial, but it's in another league, and a much less lethal league, in terms of mass casualties.
Well that's it then. To ensure continuation of our species, I say we immediately hole out at the bottom of a some of our deeper mine shafts. Of course we'd have to decide who gets to go, and it only makes sense to select for youth, health, intelligence, cross-section of necessary skills, sexual characteristics of a highly stimulating nature...
With the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, 10 females to each male, we could work our way back to our current population within say, 20 years. I for one am fully prepared to provide prodigious service along these lines, in sacrifice for my country.
Hopefully, they'll tell the vorld when its ready, or ze whole point vill be lost, despite the fact that the Cobalt Thorium G definitely seems like overkill, if I may use the word.
- paraphrasing the wise Dr. S.
Underwater explosion can't create any remotely dangerous tsunamis. Look it up.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
So you havet ad sub speeding with about 200 mph into the harbour, and you can not imagine it shooting a payload 300m high?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Wants on too!
We have a Doomsday Weapons Gap!
globalism
Unless of course we are actually fighting a war now - but nobody recognises it?
What is the point of conquering an adversary and having to go to the trouble and expense of occupying it, suppressing it and only then being able to exploit it. When you can simply buy it, or its assets without causing damage. It seems to have the same beneficial results but without the hassle.
Maybe the "war" we have been fighting for the past 20, 30 ... 40 years is one of economic conquest rather than military conquest. The only questions that remain are who are we fighting and who is winning? Maybe the "enemy" now is actually our own corporations and all the assets they keep offshore, tax-free.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
So this thing is slow, can only get at the coasts, and with a boom that big, there'd be no doubt the Russians did it. Thus, 40 minutes later, they die.
It was to be announced at the Party Congress on Monday. As you know, the Premier loves surprises.
I'm a nature photographer.
Putin isn't a lunatic who wants to end the world. He has murdered and robbed his way to the top, and he very much wants to retire with all his loot somewhere and enjoy it. Greedy materialists aren't really the type to want to destroy the world. North Korea isn't likely to shoot first unless Kim thinks that the US is about to kill him, and Putin is no different. His life is great, he has an entire country under his thumb. Both of these guys are monsters, but they are somewhat predictable in that they have motivation to want to keep their money, power, and health intact. They will act to preserve these things first and foremost.
Any investigation into doomsday weapons will be colored by these motivations. A super torpedo would be very, very slow compared to a ICBM. It would also be very large, and if detected in transit, it would give an opponent quite a bit of time to react. Moreover, there is the Dr.Strangelove problem: Unless you tell everyone about it, it serves as no deterrent so you cannot keep it secret. By telling people about it, you are giving them a first strike target and making it less likely that it will survive to complete its mission. This weapon is also limited to hitting coastal targets, that is quite a limitation.
This seems like a really expensive and risky weapon to construct. Wouldn't it just be simpler to restart the nuclear arms race, and start cranking out thousands and thousands of more conventional nuclear weapons to saturate anti-missile systems? You only need one or two to connect with a target.
However, this doomsday weapon is a great disinformation weapon if you want to 'leak' its existence and cause your opponents to worry. How much time and money will they spend trying to detect and defend from such a weapon?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Dr. Strangelove: Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you *keep* it a *secret*! Why didn't you tell the world, EH? Ambassador de Sadesky: It was to be announced at the Party Congress on Monday. As you know, the Premier loves surprises.
Russia has a long history of designing the "biggest, longest, most powerful" weapons. Occasionally, they actually try to build or prototype them. Usually they make a big bang and then rot. They pretty much always turn out to be too expensive to maintain, or too impractical to use effectively, or a logistical nightmare, or have some other critical flaw. I would be surprised if this ever gets fielded.
Matt, where's your crew?
I beamed them down to the Third Planet.
There is no Third Planet.
Don't you think I know that? There was . . . but not anymore!
looked into it and rejected it because of what is happening right now.
So Russia with a GDP the size of Italy is now magically creating wonder weapons like this? Looks like oropaganda to me.
you might have been right. The aristocracy couldn't coordinate and communicate. Misunderstandings would happen and could escalate. Like a certain arch duke being assassinated. But that's not true anymore. The wealthy don't fear each other. They work together. Sure wish the working class would do the same.
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"Cobalt thorium G has a radioactive half-life of ninety three years. If you take, say, fifty H-bombs in the hundred megaton range and jacket them with cobalt thorium G, when they are exploded they will produce a doomsday shroud. A lethal cloud of radioactivity which will encircle the earth for ninety three years!"
"Mr. President, we must not allow a mine shaft gap!"
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
Fewer marketplaces when the Russian mafia sells the fuel. I think a better deterrent would be a plethora of rural civilization bootstrapping stations. Some of the robots predicted to take all the jobs can manage not to live in cities.
Russia deserves every ounce of antipathy from the Western world that it gets. I have no beef with ordinary Russians at all. However, their government is autocratic, kleptocratic, violent, crafty and sneaky. Russia can't stand toe-to-toe with the modern Western world, and they can't bring themselves to admit that it's a superior system, so they pride themselves on screwing with Western countries in just about any underhanded way they can get away with. Russia has absolutely no ambition to make the world a better place.
Because of it's yield, minimum safe distance to fire that thing would be like 500 miles, and with a range of 6000 miles, the torpedo must look more like a small submarine. On top of that, the top speed of something that size is only going to be 30 knots or so. A few hundred sonar buoys/beacons up and down each coast in a grid from 100 miles offshore to 400 miles offshore (ideally a moving grid, so you never know where a buoy will be) and you can intercept this behemoth with anti sub weapons deployed from a helicopter within 10 miles of it's launch point (10 minutes after launch). Contrary to Hollywood, nuclear bombs do not detonate when you explode them, they implode to trigger the nuclear detonation, any other form of explosion just breaks the bomb apart.
Given all that information, this looks like a last gasp of an irrelevant regime at trying to reclaim superpower status. Furthermore, I think we should tell the Russians that we are fine if they want to build that, but if they chose to, we will deploy a sonar defense net and sink any unidentified or Russian sub within 400 miles of US coastline, because we can't be sure if it is a sub or their nuclear torpedo, and if we do have to sink something Russian made in that safety barrier and we get a radiological response from the detonation, we will be firing 10% of our ICBMs (about 190 missiles) to vaporize every major city in Russia, while at the same time using missile defenses deployed in Eastern Europe to shoot down any Russian ICBMs over Russian airspace. If they don't like that they can cool their shit and stop trying to threaten the US and behave like the second tier country that they are.
They had 8 years of dickless in chief reset button and hot mic "more flexibility" B. Hussein Obama, but that ended, and regardless of the tin foil hat wearing alt left conspiracy nuts, Trump is not going to take shit from the Russians any more than the Chinese or the North Koreans.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
They fear our Doomsday arsenal, which is why we have so little war and things to worry about. If the good cop carries the only gun, the neighborhood is much safer. Weapons including WMD are, at the end of the day, tools, the ability to project force. In the hands of a stable, peaceful democracy, they are a deterrent to despots, dictators and governments with designs on world conquest as well as genocide and holocausts.
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huh,
Most of Russia's new equipment has been in development for nearly 2 decades and now is being ramped up in production.
America, in fact the west, has not been 'warmongering' that long.
NATO's response is due to Russia's , and other nation's, increasing focus on weaponry.
And BTW, it was Eastern Europe that really stepped up the push for NATO, not America.
Why did they do that? Because they know Putin quite well.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
autonomous nuclear torpedo. when the time comes to nuke The Breach, beats pouring trillions into giant mind-controlled robots and walls in cost/benefit.
The whole "salted bomb" thing just screams FUD at me. Nobody has ever seriously considered using such a thing, because there's no point to them.
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
How many would be needed to kill 90% of the United states' population?
Its all about Cina and Russia now. The waves of US domestic propaganda will flow all over social media now.
Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media" (18 Mar 2011)
https://www.theguardian.com/te...
Operation Earnest Voice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So now its a confirmed story about a super big torpedo thats got a super long range and a super sized payload.
Kanyon has what designers crave.
It's got Cobalt-60.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Dropped on New York City, a 100-megaton bomb would kill 8 million people outright and injure 6 million more.
"being sea-based makes it immune to ballistic missile defense."
Being sea-based also makes it immune to being dropped on NYC.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
The Dossier?
Appears solid
Seems Steele merely confirmed FBI info from inside the Trump campaign so not random speculation
Yes, but we're talking about the USA here.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
"Global Thermonuclear War. Strange game. The only way to win is not to play."
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
they already had the tsar bomba
Which, contrary to what TFS says, was this powerful. The test detonation was at half yield.
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In WW2 the U.S. Navy had a problem with torpedoes turning back 180 degrees after launch and attacking the submarine that launched them. Lets hope the Russians didn't get the memo.
E Proelio Veritas.
What if the US stopper encircling Russia/IRAN with military bases, and missiles and RESUMED the SALT treaties (instead of dropping off)? What if we kept just just enough to have MAD?
The only reason for having a large warhead is poor accuracy. If this thing has a 100 megaton warhead it's CEP must be like a mile or so!
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Please tell me, specifically, which other free democracy with a bill of rights and rule of law is keeping despots and rogue countries like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea in check from either world conquest or nuclear exchange/blackmail? ....
That is what I thought smart ass.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Let's see your original statement:
In short: fuck off with your American Exceptionalism. 'Keeping despots in check' while arming fucking Saudi Arabia? It is to laugh.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
One of these days America is going to be gone, and you idiots will be squashed in a week by China or Russia and they will skin you and turn you into lamp shades, and you will have no one to thank but yourselves and your own stupidity. You have been watching too much BS on the BBC and other alt left propaganda. Assuming you don't completely abolish free speech and become a bunch of fascist dictatorships first (my bet is on the later).
- Stable: We can actually fund the government just fine, thanks, and contrary to the fake news, no essential services are ever shut down. We just have some alt left nut jobs who want to import themselves a new voting block.
- Peaceful: It is peaceful in the US. Crime is quite low outside of Democrat run big cities. We are all armed to the teeth and polite to our neighbors and fellow citizens. Global politics is complicated. Sometimes you make a deal with an evil dictator because the alternative is worse. We conquered Germany and Japan after WW2 and then rebuilt and modernized them and gave them democracy. Show me a European country ever that did that with the losing side. The shits in Europe have been warring for 1000 years and they always occupied the losing country and stole their wealth...
We rebuilt and gave democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq after we were attacked by foreigners on 9-11 and it was apparent that we couldn't ignore foreign threats any longer, but it is apparent that democracy is unfit for Islamic nations...
- Democracy: If you are comparing the free and fair US elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... to those in Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... which are demonstrably rigged, your brain has rotted beyond hope and I am done with this discussion. Comparing the most free and open elections to those held by a totalitarian state is a sick joke made by a fool eagerly waiting to reap the whirlwind.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Simply re-asserting your some empty bullshit is not a refutation. Now fuck off.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Simply re-asserting your some empty bullshit is not a refutation. Now fuck off.
The last refuge of the ignorant and ill informed who want to stay that way...
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like