Doomsday Weapon and Fallout..

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Just curious...
Last night i watch the "Secrets of War" series. it is about Cuban Missile Crisis and Kruschev. What interest me is the Doomsday weapon. A Ship which will blew if a Nuclear Fallout happened in USSR. The ships didn't carry a bomb. It is a bomb!! The bomb enough to send millions of Radioactive particle to the Atmosphere and eliminate all mankind across the globe except the one who stayed in Vaults. Since they put it in Soviet Borders, all European nation will be perish.
In Fallout universe, what kind of Nukes used during the war? This Doomsday somehow perfectly fit in Fallout Universe since its made in late 50's. And perhaps in Fallout Universe all European Nation perished and no one survived....
Any one know something about 50's nukes and this evil "Doomsday" weapon?

"Knowledge is power, but character is more. But still money is everything..."
 
[font size=1" color="#FF0000]LAST EDITED ON Dec-30-02 AT 02:32PM (GMT)[p]Fallout manual clearly states that a typical yield of a warhead was 200-750 kiloton. From this we can derive the following:
1) that missiles were used in the conflict, not airdrop bombs
2) there were little to no thermonuclear weapons
3) there was no doomsday device, and if there was, it was not activated (if it was, then explain why there were craters all over the west coast).



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If the nuclear warheads had a 200-750 kiloton yield, and more than a dozen warheads were launched, then that certainly would do the job. A 16 kiloton yield, such as the one dropped at Hiroshima in WW2, would produce enough destructive force to take out an entire metropolitian city. In the United States, the highest *successful* kilotonic yield was 500 for the MK-18, MK-43, W-30, and W-45. A warhead with a kiloton yield of 10,000 was being constructed under the name of W-91 but it was ultimately scrapped in 1991 for obvious reasons.

A single 750 kiloton yield could produce enough amassed nuclear fallout to spread around the world. Of course, the effects would dillude as range increased but it could still provide life-changing consequences. When Truman tested out nuclear weapons in the deserts of Nevada, he exposed every single occupant of the United States in 1951 to mild radiation that would later cause cancer for many (though that can't quite be proven). The entire world has only carried out roughly 2000 nuclear tests in which warheads were detonated yet the radiation fallout still lingers today. In Hiroshima, the children that were not covered in white blankets that could repulse the fallout later developed bone cancer, increasing the death toll for just one nuclear warhead. In the Fallout world, radiation is an even greater risk factor.

I also agree that there was no doomsday weapon constructed. Rather, I believe that both countries, China and the United States, had so many stockpiled nuclear goodies that a single warhead fired at both triggered a massive detonation. And the rest is history.

"Credo Ut Intelligam"- I believe so that I may understand.
 
Actually I am not sure of this, but I recall something written in the newspapers quite a few years back when the US and USSR were normalizing and a lot of the Russian generals were feeling more comfortable.

Although not quite what Mr. Bhass indicates, there was an idea developed that if the Soviet high command were to be "taken out" in a suprise strike- say for instance if Moscow was hit before the Russians could launch, than the Soviet's had a device which would launch their missiles automatically. The question for the US was how safe and secure this system was. Not sure what ever came of that, or if it was just a rumor.

The irony of this was that it played out a lot like the Soviet "doomsday device" in Dr. Strangelove.
 
>If the nuclear warheads had a
>200-750 kiloton yield, and more
>than a dozen warheads were
>launched, then that certainly would
>do the job. A 16

Slightly more than a dozen kiloton-range weapons enough to erase multibillion population of Earth with radiation alone? Let's take 24 warheads. 24 * 750 = 18,000 = 18 megaton. Slightly less than the device used in Baker test. While the Baker test produced a huge radioactive cloud, it is hardly a candidate for a doomsday device.

There were probably many hundreds of missiles launched by each side during the conflict, each missile aimed at important military, industrial, or civilian target.



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The doomsdaydevice is only a plan. but Kruschev didn't approve it. Well in 1986 Guinness Book of Record it mentioned but no details. In Secret of War the plan is unfolded.
It back to 50's before Cuban missile crisis, the Soviet developed a bomb 2500 times more powerful than Hiroshima's atomic bomb. The bomb dropped and explodes 1500 feet from ground to minimized the radiation. And it did! If the bomb hit the ground cloud of radioactive would fly to athmosphere and It would reach Northen Europe and Perhaps Odin today got green skins and a horn (just kidding!!).
They got a film taken from 600 miles and i heard a lot of window in Norwegia shattered from the shock waves during the test. Even the explosion could be seen from Iceland. But altough the bomb is powerful, the US still outgunned USSR by 17 to 1 nukes ratio. So USSR developed this thing. A nuke ship or a nuke bomb with the size of ship. But kruschev still got heart to disapprove the device. I don't know if Stalin still in power. I mean he killed many millions citizen during 1926-1955 and for taking Berlin itself, at least 200 thousands Red Army die there. he wouldn't hesitate to create such a powerful weapon like this!
 
And still some muslim fanatics here said that the bomb which explodes in Bali is a Micronukes send by Israel!!
If it is a Micronukes, I'll buy a TIPP-EXX and simply erased Legian town from the maps. SADM (Small Atomics Demolition Munition) got quarter kiloton power! No one near it survives, they simply vaporized..... And don't forget the Radiation and EMP. How could a guy, 200 meters from the explosion, could made a film with his handycam?
 
>Slightly more than a dozen kiloton-range
>weapons enough to erase multibillion
>population of Earth with radiation
>alone?

I meant that the amassed nuclear fallout would be enough to affect all of the population with radiation poisoning, not structual damage.

"Credo Ut Intelligam"- I believe so that I may understand.
 
As far as I know, EMP is generated only during high-yield, high altitude airshots. Something to do with the atmosphere.



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And all of us got green skin and our brain shrink..... Or turned into ghouls.
Heh...heh...heh...
BTW how much the effect of radiation? Extreme case known to scientist? Besides made people sterile? And how long its needed to know the effect. I mean you don't grow horn in a week right?
 
Depends. When the government tested an iodine based nuclear bomb, the surveying population experienced enlargement of the thyroid. But radiation poisoning can prove a gruesome cancer-filled life, though prolonged.

"Credo Ut Intelligam"- I believe so that I may understand.
 
Extreme case? Death. So don't you be walking around in a nuclear explosion crater.



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The only "doomsday" weapon I know about is called a Cobalt Bomb, aka Dirty Bomb. It is a normal A-Bomb encased in a jacket of cobalt.

(The following exerpt was taken from http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes...tChainReaction/TypesofNuclear/CobaltBombs.htm)

"A "salted" nuclear weapon is reminiscent of fission-fusion-fission weapons, but instead of a fissionable jacket around the secondary stage fusion fuel, a non-fissionable blanket of a specially chosen salting isotope is used (cobalt-59 in the case of the cobalt bomb). This blanket captures the escaping fusion neutrons to breed a radioactive isotope that maximizes the fallout hazard from the weapon rather than generating additional explosive force (and dangerous fission fallout) from fast fission of U-238.

Variable fallout effects can be obtained by using different salting isotopes. Gold has been proposed for short-term fallout (days), tantalum and zinc for fallout of intermediate duration (months), and cobalt for long term contamination (years). To be useful for salting, the parent isotopes must be abundant in the natural element, and the neutron-bred radioactive product must be a strong emitter of penetrating gamma rays.

The idea of the cobalt bomb originated with Leo Szilard who publicized it in Feb. 1950, not as a serious proposal for weapon, but to point out that it would soon be possible in principle to build a weapon that could kill everybody on earth (see Doomsday Device in Questions and Answers). To design such a theoretical weapon a radioactive isotope is needed that can be dispersed world wide before it decays. Such dispersal takes many months to a few years so the half-life of Co-60 is ideal."

So instead of using the jacket to generate additional boom, it is used to carry additional radioactive material. Was this what you were looking for?
 
How powerful is that? Is the Chinese and Soviet could produce that in, say 1955?
 
'Fine print'

At the bottom of the page there is a line that says:

"The British did test a bomb that incorporated cobalt as an experimental radiochemical tracer (Antler/Round 1, 14 September 1957). This 1 kt device was exploded at the Tadje site, Maralinga range, Australia. The experiment was regarded as a failure and not repeated."

More 'fine print' on http://nuketesting.enviroweb.org/hew/Uk/UKTesting.html :

...

Test: Round 1
Time: 0505 (GMT), 14:35 (local time); 14 Sept 1957
Location: Maralinga (Tadje)
Test Height and Type: 31 m aluminum tower
Yield: 1 kt

Test of Pixie, a lightweight small diameter implosion system with a plutonium core. This test later became notorious because of the experimental use of cobalt metal pellets as a test diagnostic for measuring yield (presumably by estimating the neutron flux from the degree of activation of the target pellet). Discovery of (mildly) radioactive cobalt pellets around the test site later gave rise to rumors that the British had been developing a "cobalt bomb" radiological weapon.

...

The "mildly radioactive" part is not particulary inspiring, but to answer the original question, yes, all you have to do is get yourself some Cobalt-59 which is naturally occuring, and you are ready to go. There are of course complications involved in testing this weapon, as well as doubts in a possibility that such weapon will produce a desirable results, but it does not really matter as the purpose of the doomsday device is to scare opponents into submission, an ultimate deterrant, as it were.



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kiloton?

The highest yield nuclear tests conducted by the US were a little higher than 10000 kilotons. The highest yield explosive tested by the US was 36 megatons (36000 kilotons) which was the Castle Bravo thermonuclear test. The Russians detonated a 63 megaton (63000 kiloton) bomb in Sibera which was the largest yield actually detonated in the world and was actually scaled down from a 100 megaton design. This was all BEFORE the Cold War ended too.
 
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