OT: Nuclear War???
 

I was watching the movie "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" (a good movie by the way), and it got me to thinking about the very real possibility of nuclear war. How it is actually more possible than any of us care to think about. How it would change our lifestyle completely....at least, those of us who survived. We never know what day may be the day that some crazy person gets control of a nuke, and decides to usher in the end of civilization for mankind.

We would be reduced to the technological level that existed 2000 years ago....all around us would be remnants of the technology that exists all around us today, but it would be useless soon. World population would fall immensely, and I don't think I can even imagine anywhere near all the effects such a war would have.

For some reason, I felt like sharing this. No one really wants to think about it, but maybe we should. But eventually, I firmly believe that it WILL happen. Someone will be genocidal, or things will just get out of hand. Who knows when it will happen? But I think it will...

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

That someone will eventually detonate a nuke? Yes, I belive that will happen one day. That we will end up in a civilizaton-ending nuclear war? Unlikely. At best. IMO.

Nuclear War???
 

With so many nuclear weapons that have been built, it's a scary possibility that some of them will fall into the wrong hands. Making an atomic bomb, I read somewhere, isn't very difficult, if you have fissionable materials available.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

Were our civilsation to fall or become extinct no future civilisation would ever reach our level. Why?. Because we have mined all the minerals freely available on the Earths surface. Future civilisation would need to develop deep mining technology to reach our level and they can not do that without the very resources they can not reach.

Re: Nuclear War???
 

I share your fear that someday someone may get their hands on a nuclear weapon or even enough radioactive material to make a substantial "dirty bomb"; but even if that happens, that won't be "nuclear war" and I think it unlikely that there will be a nuclear exchange as envisioned in the first post here like the scenario of T3. Even if a weapon was stolen, they are designed to be as tamper-proof as technology allows. I'm not saying it would be totally impossible, but the very smart minds that created those things also ensured to the best of their ability that they could not be set off by someone who stole one. Let's hope that the unseen forces with the "white hats" who are trying to prevent this on a daily basis don't let us down.

Regarding building a bomb: It is extremely difficult; indeed impossible without some very-expensive-and-extremely-difficult-to-come-by equipment, the production and sale of which is closely monitored by the nuclear-capable countries. IMPO it is impractical. [As an aside, I would recommend reading Tom Clancy's "The Sum of all Fears" for some insight into this task - and remember, it is fiction]

As we saw in OK City, a truck with some fertilizer and fuel oil is pretty much a "precision weapon" because it can be driven anywhere and set off manually. You don't need any special skills, equipment or money to make one of those truck bombs to kill hundreds. As far as damage/kill potential, there are much easier ways to get to people or places. Drinking water reservoirs, shopping malls, stadiums, for example are all much easier targets - a relatively easier-to-get biological agent could infect thousands of people via any of these or countless other places. Infected people would then spread the biological agent to thousands of others before they showed any symptoms.

There are, of course, more of these targets than any country could guard continuously against all possible threats. So, yes, the "white hats" would have to be successful 100% of the time whereas the bad guys only need to be successful on a very small percentage of attempts - the odds of a successful catastrophic attack eventually lies with the terrorists. Any of these isolated terroristic attacks, however many thousand people are affected or killed, won't endanger the whole planet. I say again that I think a large scale WMD exchange between countries is highly unlikely and a worldwide exchange is even more unlikely.

Re: Nuclear War???
 

A good movie to watch on this topic would be "The Day After." It takes a look at how an actual nuclear war would play out and how in the end all would lose. Worth a look.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

Well, if you think about it... that's not true. Really, we were just nice enough to bring all of it up to the surface. Sure, we've combined it into various different forms, but it should be relatively easy to take, say, a partially oxidized aircraft, and extract the aluminum and other metals in it. The bigger problem would be the amount of time needed for another intelligent species to develop.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

We discussed the possibility of a nuke war a while back and the topic quickly become very depressing. The human race is determined to kill itself off. When the war for resources will begin no one really knows, but when it ends, I am afraid everyone will know. That is they will know for a breif milisecond before the bLast wave incerates them.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

ALthough it is true that human relics could be recycled for minerals, aLso consider oil. I do not know an exact figure, but say we have depleted oil supplies so that they will only Last another 50 years. ALthough our technology may well come up with an alternative power supply, a less advanced culture that develops after ours may find it difficult to have an industrial revolution if oil is sparse.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

As an aside, Vernor Vinge's novel "The Peace War" describes a high-tech, low-energy civilization that I found fascinating. In that novel, high-energy technologies are actively suppressed by a global "Peace Authority", much like the Antareans in MOO, instead of being wiped out in nuclear warfare, but the result is a proliferation of extremely energy efficient, solar-power / geothermal energy based civilization focusing on super-efficient electronics.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

Renegade: If you're paranoid now I suggest reading "Hegemony or Survival" by Noam Chomsky. It's a book detailing American foreign policy and all throughout the book it paints a very scary picture about the possibility of Nuclear War and the Future.

As for Nuclear War, it will happen one day, Hopefully not in my lifetime as the longer we survive the longer perhaps we have to see the stupidity of Nuclear Weapons.

Speaking of Nuclear War, I was impressed by Stargate SG1 and the episode where Kinsey became a Goa'uld and Russia and America almost blew each other up. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

Once we develop fusion weapons (by which I mean ones that don't need a fission detonator) Nuclear war will become more likely. Correct me if I'm wrong but with Fusion there is no radiation. No fallout means no reason not to nuke the enemy as long as they don't have any.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

The sooner we bukld ourselves permanent, self-sufficient colonies off world the better. THen, even if some idiot does fire a lazy gun at planet Earth, humanity will have at least a chance of survival.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

Respectfully sir, none of the above is true.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

The easiest way to see that is untrue is to look up. The Sun is a fusion reaction and produces and extreme amount of radiation of most types.

Fusion bombs are clean-er-, not clean.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

Clean-er- mainly because the radiation from fusing H -> He is more of a one-shot deal. The big problem with fission bombs is all the radioactive heavy metals that come afterward, which have a tendancy to be absorbed into the soil and water supply. As far as I know, there is no such Lasting legacy from fusion reactions, just a very quick burst of energy and radiation, a la our favorite star.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

All we need is a psychopath that's smart enough to get high enough in political office in a country that has nuclear capability. If, for example, North Korea launched a nuke at the US because one of their leaders was a little bit loopy, what do you think the US would do?? Wait until they got another few nukes thrown at them, or nuke 'em back?? It's really an unwinnable situation, since if they DON'T nuke them back, they run the risk of having other fringe countries throwning nukes at them, since they know the risk of nuclear retaliation would be minimal. But if they DO nuke them, then they run the risk of North Korea's supporters getting involved (China) which could then easily lead to worldwide nuclear war. It will happen. It's only a question of when.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

There's always hard radiation - x-rays or gamma radiation. And it won't improve your health much. Also massed explosions of "clean" fusion bombs could easily destroy ozone layer in whole hemisphere.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

That's a rhetorical question, right?

Hopefully, the US will have developped sufficient missile defense programs/systems by then; It's not as if NK nukes (if they exist) are high tech, most of them would be scuds with with a plutonium bar attached. But should one hit, it is most likely that the US will retaliate, but not with nukes.

Fringe countries throwing nukes at the US? Take out North Korea and how many Fringe countries are there? Iran and Syria? Iran, if it wanted to, would rather nuke Israel first, and Syria is dirt poor; almost if not all of their military hardware is cold war-era French and Soviet equipement. You should be worrying more about dirty bombs from terrorist organizations and mountain men than state-to-state nuclear warfare.

If the US nukes North Korea, they run the risk of nuking South Korea and Manchuria, radiating a bit of Japan and areas near Beijing, and sterilzing the Sea of Japan and the Yellow sea.

By that time, you shouldn't worry about China nuking the US, you should worry about the whole world nuking the US.

Think happy thoughts, now. For every psychopath, there are hundreds of goodwilled rational men and women.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

What makes you think that human bodies won't rot and make more oil, given enough time?

Plus, the Industrial Revolution relied primarily on steam power; the world began using oil because it was an efficient means of making steam. Should Coal exist in the future (and it most certainly will, since even now, many coal deposits exist), the civilization that develops after ours will probably learn how to make do and to develop more stuff from coal, as we have with oil.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

I really don't know where the idea that fusion bombs are "clean" comes from. It doesn't come from facts. Maybe the idea is coming from the so-called "clean" fusion reactors being "cleaner" than fission reactors (fusion reactors still make lots of radiation and generate radioactive waste, it's just that they have a different public impression - and they aren't able to produce usable power yet so who knows how "clean" the final Version will be?).

However, there is absolutely no correllation between reactors and bombs.

No offense to anyone here, but it really bothers me when I see "junk science" being propagated. Someone says something that's completely wrong; either by being totally misinformed and not bothering to even check if it's correct, or by portraying themselves as an expert when they are not. Then other people read the junk and they remember it, and the next time the subject comes up, they believe it is a fact because they read it "somewhere". Then, when more than one person has this same wrong idea, it becomes "common knowledge". This is usually accompanied by "junk logic" in which preposterous conclusions are drawn from these baseless assumptions. I am flabergasted that, on the internet, anyone can say anything - true or not, and the very people who wouldn't believe the word from a total stranger on the street use the internet to find "facts". This is evidenced by a drastic move away from libraries toward the internet for "reasearch" as reported by many colleges and universities. Now, I do believe that there is a lot of good, easy to get truth on the internet; BUT, there is a lot of terrible, easy to get junk on the internet as well - and when you read either, they both kinda sound believable.

Let the reader beware.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

Probably it came from the most trivial fusion reaction: D+T->He+n+E. It doesn't have a decay products in form of radioactive isotopes, so it's considered "clean".

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

Again, no offense, but even in your example of one of the basic fusion reactions:

D+T->He+n+E

Free neutrons just don't hang around, the free neutron "n" in that equation can/does activate surrounding materials and does create radioactive isotopes.

I say again, that "fusion is clean" is just the public impression. Fission has a very negative public image. People think about Bikini Atoll, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, SL-1, and other accident sites. They don't think (or know that) workers at a coal mine or coal burning conventional plant get more radiation exposure from the naturally occurring Carbon-14 than nuclear plant workers. They don't think/know that, although there have been accidents at nuclear power planets, there also have been accidents at conventional power plants which have resulted in a great many more deaths over the years. What about people who fly in airplanes for a living - they spend many hours at high altitudes above some of the protection of the natural radiation protection. People get killed all the time in non-nuclear industry, but people think that non-nuclear industry is "clean" as well. I don't think that acid rain, smog and industrial waste in the country's rivers is "clean", and they didn't come from nuclear plants.

Fusion is considered "clean" because we won't have to mine fissionable materials from the ground; we can pull deuterium out of the ocean - ocean water is abundant, right? and has an infinite supply of deuterium, right? They also think that the the reaction is Hydrogen -> Helium. I don't see any "dirty" by-products in that reaction (that equation is not correct, by the way, but it is "common knowledge") And Helium is very safe and very clean. We all know that. We put it in our kids' balloons. We inhale it to make our voices sound funny.

I personally think fusion will be a great step foward as well, but I work in the industry. I don't think it will be as safe and clean as its current reputation. Let's put it this way: a fission reactor (with all of its bad publicity) works at (or usually below) temperatures & pressures of conventional power plants. Fusion can only work at temperatures & pressures found in the sun. Safe and clean?

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

Offense? No, it's always good to learn something new or dispel delusions. What equation would be correct? Asking this out of curiosity.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

Well said, Slick.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

I'm not vouching for everything on this website, but here's an overview. Any college textbook also has the basics.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu...ne/fusion.html

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

Now, Spoo....

I've been meaning to talk to you about your sig...

just kidding. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

Absolutely. Take for example the reactors Canada builds, the CANDU reacter. If I remember correctly (and if I'm wrong, please correct me) it uses deuterium, and somehow or other, uses nuclear reactions to produce power. These reactors are sold to other countries which *may* be a nuclear threat, but these reactors CAN NOT produce materials through their reactions that could be used to make a nuclear or dirty bomb. Therefore reactor does not = bomb making materials.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

At the risk of becoming a pain...

There are some reactors that produce fissionable materials. They are known as "breeder reactors". These are the kind that the nuclear capable countries try to prevent other countries from building. They are generally used for making weapons grade material. [For further reading search for Israeli bombing of 2 reactors in Iraq in 1981.] I am not sure what kind of reactors are used in Canada, but I would be surprised if they were breeders. I'd expect them to be a typical pressurized water or heavy water power reactor used for electrical power generation. I'd guess that information is readily available for anyone somewhere on the net.

Also, all reactors generate radioactive waste. Therefore all reactors produce materials that could be used in making a dirty bomb. Radioactively, the highest of this waste is spent fuel. Any rad waste can be used in making a dirty bomb. Unless the most highly radioactive material was used (unlikely), a dirty bomb is more a public panic/disruption weapon than an actual health threat. If low level radioactive material (say rad medical waste used for treating heart attack victims, which is much easier to obtain than spent reactor fuel) is used in a dirty bomb, it will cause minor contamination in a small area but no real health threat. But nobody will want to go into that area until it is cleaned up.

What people are normally oblivious to is that we live in constant fields of radiation. Naturally occurring isotopes exist in the very ground we walk on. Radon is a radioactive gas that comes out of the ground. Concrete contains trace natural uranium and other radioactive nuclides. We are bombarded by cosmic rays from space, and all kinds of radiation from the sun - what do you think gives you that great suntan??? Heck, even your smoke detector in your house has probably somewhere around 1 microCurie of Americium-241. Americium-241 is a decay product of PLUTONIUM-241. Did you know that you have a radioactive decay product of PLUTONIUM-241 in your house; maybe in your kitchen???

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

Take the door off of your microwave oven, stick something in the tripper switch and set the timer for 3 minutes. Turn on. Been nice knowning you.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

Ah, I didn't think that the free neutrons would have a long-term effect. I thought that of the free neutrons, many decay into a proton + electron + neutrino rather quickly (I seem to remember from high school physics that it's hard to get a free neutron to stick around for more than a fraction of a second), adding to the "one-shot" radiation burst. Then I made the assumption that any neutrons reacting with surface elements would probably make a very short-lived isotope. I'm guessing I was wrong on this.

If I remember right, Uranium fission results in something like Barium and Krypton isotopes, each of which has a rather long decay chain (both in numbers of steps and number of years). It was this that I was saying that fusion bombs would probably be "better" than. Of course, there still will be some radioactive residues, but I thought that it wouldn't linger as long. What would it be that sticks around for so long with fusion? Is it mostly things like C13 -> C14? Are those isotopes then in existence at a substantially higher-than-natural ratio?

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

Free Neutrons have a half life of 11 minutes IIRC.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

And vhat did zey do vith ze ozer havf?! HaHaHaHa!

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

NK's leader is known to be more than a bit kooky.

IIRC standard US policy is pretty simple: any large scale use of chemical or biological weapons, or any use of nuclear weapons, gets a nuclear response. Probably a larger one than the initial attack. As pointed out later dirty bombs are pyscological weapons; the actual damage would be minimal.

Biological and chemical weapons are similar. Yes, they are nasty. No, they AREN'T anywhere near a nuke in potency. Not the ones we have now anyway.

An attack with chemicals in a Japanease subway- basiclly the best possible enviroment for such an attack, since its enclosed and has a ventilation system to spread the chemicals for you- only killed about 10 people.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

I stand corrected then. It was just an idea I had.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

Not carbon-14, that is present everywhere. Actual uranium and thorium are present in most coal in trace amounts, and burning releases it into the atmosphere. It's true that this is a far larger source of radiation than actual nuclear power plants since the standards are so high for nuclear containment and the volume of coal burned is so large. There is also mercury in coal. The mercury content of fish that we are constantly hearing health warnings about is not from some nasty chemical plants dumping mercury. It's from coal-burning power plants.

On the other hand there is simply no possibility of an accident at a coal-burning plant dumping tons on uranium and highly radioactive decay products into the environment. What people are concerned about is not the 'routine' low-level problem, but the worst case problem. The worst case for a nuclear plant is dramatically worse than the worst case for a coal plant.

The 'worst case' for fusion power would be more like coal power. You might get a big 'whomp' if things failed, but tons of highly radioactive and posisonous elements would not be dumped into the environment.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

And if you have a box of spare 'mantles' for your camp lantern you have some thorium in your house, too. Yes, the glow from those gas-fired camp lanterns is partly radioactive!

Not to mention the radium in 'glow in the dark' clock dials or any other 'glow in the dark' goodies you might have.

And if you are still using a CRT for your computer monitor, you've got x-rays being created right in front of you. Modern CRTs are designed to very high standards, with lead shielding, and carefully tested to not emit more than trace amounts of radiation beyond their internal workings, but the x-rays are still there in any CRT.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

Heh, Uranium ain't that bad! Some wells around here are undrinkable, due to the high uranium count. And it hasn't affected me yet....

*falls on the ground, twitching, and muttering incomprehensible gibberish...*

On a more serious note, I read that the decay of Thorium in the ground is the root cause of most of the geothermal heating on the earth. Does anyone know if that's true or not??

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

I don't know how you can come to that conclusion since a working fusion power plant is something not yet achieved by science. Who knows what the final Version will be like and what its risks will be? I do know that an accident in which we effectively lose control of a fusioning piece of the sun is not going to be a small thing. The intense radiation in a fusion reactor will generate undesirable radioactive materials (waste) in a similar manner that fission reactors generate rad waste. How much? Who knows... that will be determined after one has been operating for a while; but I would think if one of those things blows, it could spew lots of nastiness, not just residual hydrogen and helium.

----------------
As far as earth's heat source goes, most reputable studies have postulated that there is a contribution from some long-lived radioisotopes in earth's core as well as some frictional heating due to a difference in rotational velocities of the earth's surface relative to the core. As to the exact nuclide(s) heating the earth, different studies have postulated different nuclides.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

Of course, that's why I replied "that's a rhetorical question right?", as anyone who's been mindful of the news from that region would know better than to ask if the leaders of Norks would be kooky enough to launch nukes.

As I've said before, the US would most certainly retaliate should it ever come under nuclear attack from North Korea, but to strike it down with nukes is just not feasable; the Korean Peninsula is home to 70 million people, more or less, all of whom are looking forward to eventual reunification, if not an immediate reunification. Radiating the northern half won't help that cause very much. Not to mention that Seoul, the capital of South Korea and home to more than 10 million people is only about 110 miles away from Pyongyang, and would most certainly be in the fallout range of any attack on Pyongyang. South Korea is also home to 37000 US troops; many of them around the DMZ and Seoul. Dropping a nuke on the norks and irradiating them along with many South Korean civilians, citizens of a (more or less) pro-US nation would be insane. Dropping a nuke further north won't do any better; fallout from those bombs would most likely reach China or Russia. Any bomb would almost certainly spread radioactive fallout on the Sea of Japan or the Yellow sea, furthering the risk of turning China into a true enemy and/or Japan into an Anti-US nation. Dropping a nuke on the norks would be akin to dropping a nuke on the Syrians to save the Israelites, or on Serbia while trying to conserve the balkans.

The attack was made by civilians who actually bumbled the attack, where only a few of the homemade pockets of sarin were released and spread successfully. Should a military ever undertake such an attack, with soldiers trained in releasing chemical agents to their most effectiveness, with a more potent form of sarin or any other agent, and with more stockpiles of the agent used befitting any military-style attack, the effects and the death toll would have been far greater.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

So what was wrong with an equation? It was just written in simplified form, and equalent to strict equation:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu...gnuk/hfus1.gif

edit: see Last reaction

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

I wonder how the military was able to keep its war mongering fanatics of the 50's and 60's from lighting up Russa with our nukes?

You know there had to be at least one guy who wanted to push the button without permission. I wonder what ever happened to him?

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

[quote]
Slick said:
Funny, I always assumed it was via tidal forces due to the moon effectively "stirring" the core...very...slowly...

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

[trolling]Yeah, JK was quite in the mood to starting WW3 during Caribbean Crisis. Thanks lord our GenSek was smarter than your President and receded.[/trolling]

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

My understanding is that at one time (80's I think) the Soviet Union was anxious about NATO excercises in Germany (I may be getting confused with Gen. Hackets WW3). Anyhow at one stage there was a malfunction in the Soviet Unions detection system that for a short while made them think the US had launched nukes. It was up to one officer to decide if he should react. Luckily he did not want to overreact and decided not to jump the gun.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

Well those missiles in Cuba might have had something with provoking our President at the time. Besides his dad gave in the russan demands for Germany lock stock and barrel. Not that I could car about such things, but what do you think would have happened if your GS had decided to stick to his guns?

Have any of you ever dreamed about seeing a nuke light off? I have, a couple of times, and lets just say that I awoke and was very sobered by the experience. If our world leaders, those who have the nukes, have ever had one of these dreams, I will bet they too awoke in a cold sweat and voved to do what they could to prevent such a thing from ever happening.

How we made it out of the 80's without lighing up the world like a roman candel is beyond me, but I am thankful that we did not. I can remember where I was when the movie the Day After was aired on ABC. It was a sunday in October 83. There was a follow up movie about life after the bLast, where people went on with their lives like normal as the depth of what happend began to sink in. People died not only from radation poisoning, but because they simply saw no hope in the future. It was a deeply profoundly sad movie and one, if watched, will turn your stomic.

I would not want my children, if I had any, to live in such a post war world. The thought of them trying to survive the death around them would be too much to bare. Better to die in the bLast than live in the aftermath.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

Consider me a crazy sob, but since I've seen nuclear tests chronicles for the first time, I had thought that nuclear explosion and bLast wave are one of the most beautiful things in the world. I'm talking about destructive beauty of catastrophes in general, as if there are no people who could be killed by disaster.
You could agree, that there's something fascinating in tsunami, volcano eruption or nuclear explosion. Maybe it's an inconceivable power, but probably it's only my kooky brains.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

I agree with Aiken, Although Destructive there is Nothing more Awe Inspiring or Humbling than the force of Nature. (The Exception to Nature being Nuclear Weapons) The Extreme power of these is a reminder to us that it's far easier to destroy than preserve or create.

Also Aiken. JFK and the Russians? No, everyone knows that it was the British M16. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

"Oh look at that beautful ligh----------------"

Excuse me for saying this, but there is nothing beautful about it. If you happen to see one up close, your blinded. By the time you realize what it was that blinded you, your roasted.

If you happen to be at a distance and see the bLast, "its beautful" will be the Last thing on your mind as the horror of what your looking begins to settle in.

No guys, beautful is something I would not use to describe a nuke bLast. Perhaps awe inspiring, but defenantly not beautful. Just my take on it.

Re: OT: Nuclear War???
 

Aiken, sorry for the confusion, but I never said your equation was wrong. This is what I said:

What I did disagree with is the Last sentence here:

because of unmentioned following reactions involving the free neutron and I said:


I see that I am becoming a pain here and that wasn't my intention. I'll leave this thread quietly now. Sorry if I upset anyone.