Small Nukes for Bunker Busting

[mars01]

I was watching the News and they were talking about a new small nuke under research to be delivered as a deep penetrating bunker busting bomb.

My first reaction is, great, we are building a nice small nuke that in the right hands would be perfect to take out a city.  But then I guess that tech already exists.

What do you freaks  think?

[bullett308]

Not a good idea:(

[Boroda]

Some bunkers were built to withstand 10 direct hits by 10 megaton Titan-2 warheads...

I don't think it's clever to joke with nuclear weapons.

[mars01]

It's no joke, this is a Bush Admin approved R&D effort, with quite alot of money behind it.

They mentioned it's use would be against burried weapons and checmical bunkers as well as I guess anything else.

I also think this is a step backwards, but proponents say that we need to stay on the cutting edge so that we are ready and seriouse when the theats come along.

[rogwar]

Look at some of the links under my posting regarding Environmentally friendly nuclear missles for some interesting things done with nukes.

In fact, go up one level within the links and look at some of the history....interesting.


I believe a deep penetrating low yield tactical nuke for certain bunker busting might be a handy weapon to have in one's arsenal.

[mosgood]

Did getting out of the nuke treaty allow them to do this?

[rogwar]

Originally posted by mosgood
Did getting out of the nuke treaty allow them to do this?

I thought they got out of the ABM treaty, not nuke treaty.

[Hristo]

Originally posted by mars01
It's no joke, this is a Bush Admin approved R&D effort, with quite alot of money behind it.

They mentioned it's use would be against burried weapons and checmical bunkers as well as I guess anything else.

I also think this is a step backwards, but proponents say that we need to stay on the cutting edge so that we are ready and seriouse when the theats come along.

You mean against buried WMDs ? WOW

[mars01]

All of the above.  Its designed to be a small very deep penetrating high destruction war head.

[NUKE]

There is something better in the works, part of a US plan to put weapons in space that can strike any targeg on earth within 2 hours notice.

They are 20 foot long tungston steel rods deployed from a space based platform . Thewy have no explosives, the impact along takes out the bunker.

Im at work, I'll get a link when I get home.... describes the US space planes, bombers and launch platforms. Designed to eliminate the need for foreign bases.

[Capt. Pork]

Originally posted by NUKE
There is something better in the works, part of a US plan to put weapons in space that can strike any targeg on earth within 2 hours notice.

They are 20 foot long tungston steel rods deployed from a space based platform . Thewy have no explosives, the impact along takes out the bunker.

Im at work, I'll get a link when I get home.... describes the US space planes, bombers and launch platforms. Designed to eliminate the need for foreign bases.

Will it be called 'Satellite rain' -- as in the weapon from Syndicate Wars?

Intense idea, though, I'd love to see test footage if and when they choose to develope it.

[LePaul]

Surviving hits is one thing.  they have to eventually walk outside that bunker and enjoy the radioactivity

[Wolfala]

Ok guys, the premise behind these weapons is to take out hardened targets - yes and its a sound NOTION, but not a practical idea. What they are using are modified B-61 freefall bombs - basically with a hardened steel cap nose designed to penitrate into the ground.

NOW FOR THE PROBLEM....

IN order to keep the blast contained WITHIN the ground, the warhead is REQUIRED to PENITRATE upwards of 200 feet into the GROUND. As yet, no bombs have been able to get past 50 feet - so regardless if you had the yield dialed to .01 KT or 10KT, you STILL HAVE THE SAME amount of FISSILE material being blown up and contaminating the area.

YOU NEED that extra 150 feet of penitration into the ground inorder to destroy the underground complex AND CONTAIN THE BLAST within the ground cavity, because remember, the idea is not to destroy the underground facility by a high yield device - but by transfering the energy into a ground shock wave which destroy's the facility. Its exactly the opposite of using a 10 MT device to "dig out" deeply buried facilities - which would actually kill more people in the long term then if they had only used air bursts which are effective against cities and soft targets such as airfields, etc which can be destroyed with a 2PSI pressure differental.

For a brief review on the medical impacts of a thermonuclear detonation - continue reading an impact study I constructed awhile back.

               Apocalyptic predictions require, to be taken seriously, higher standards of evidence then do assertions on other matters where the stakes are not as great.   Since the immediate effects of even a single thermonuclear weapon explosion are so devastating, it is natural to assume -- even without considering detailed mechanisms—that the more or less simultaneous explosion of ten thousand such weapons all over the Northern Hemisphere might have unpredictable and catastrophic consequences.  
   A typical thermonuclear warhead of today has a yield of approximately 500 Kilotons (.5 megatons, a megaton being the explosive equivalent of a million tons of TNT).  There are many weapons in the 9 to 20 megaton range in the strategic arsenals of the United States and former Soviet Union: the largest weapon ever having been detonated 58 Megatons.  
   Strategic thermonuclear weapons are designed to be delivered by ground-based or a submarine missile launching platform.  The other method of delivery is by air breathing bombers to attack the enemy homeland directly.  Many weapons with yields in the 10-20 Kiloton range (Roughly the size of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki detonations) are assigned to “tactical” or “theater” weapons systems.  Such systems are nuclear tipped Surface to Air Missiles (Russian S-200D: SA-5 GAMMON) and Air to Air Missiles (Hughes AIM-23 Falcon) designed to be used against bomber formations, Antisubmarine Nuclear Torpedoes, Nuclear Depth Charges (ASROC – Anti Submarine Rocket System) and artillery.  It has been said that strategic warheads are often larger then their tactical counterparts…this isn’t always the case.  IRBM (Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles) such as the Perishing II and Russian SS-20 has sufficient range to blur the distinction between “Strategic” and “Tactical” weapons systems.  Both classes of warhead are fully capable of being delivered via either land based ICBM’s (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile), SLBM’s (Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile), and aircraft; as well as IRBM classes of missile.  Nevertheless, there are around 18,000 Strategic Thermonuclear weapons and the equivalent of fission triggers in the United States and former Soviet Republics, with an amassed yield of approximately 10,000 megatons.
   No one knows how many warheads would fall in a nuclear conflict.  It seems plausible that even a “small” nuclear war would become impossible to contain before it spread to other countries of the nuclear club.  
   The adversary’s airfields, missile silos, naval bases, submarines at sea, weapons manufacturing and storage depot’s, civilian and military command and control centers, early warning facilities are the most probable targets.  
While it’s often stated that cities are not targeted, many of the above targets are located around major population centers.  Modern military war doctrine says that “war supporting” facilities are targeted.  This includes the enemy’s power grid – transportation hubs, raw materials production facilities, roads, canals, railways, oil refineries, and radio and television transmitters.  
 
PRELUDE TO APOCALYPSE

          Any attempt to describe and measure the medical effects – the human death and injury-caused by even a single moderately large nuclear warhead over a United States City creates a paradox.  On one hand, the nature and magnitude of the impact are within reasonable limits of precision allowed by the physics of the explosion.  On the other hand, despite this apparent specificity, the consequences are unfathomable, for we are attempting to describe and understand an event that is without precedent in human experience.  
            Let’s make this very clear: Hiroshima and Nagasaki will not serve as precedents.  The weapons used on those cities were much smaller then the nuclear weapons of today.  Describing the effects of a single megaton explosion requires us to try and imagine 80 Hiroshima explosions at the same instant in one place.  

The Fireball
   
   At the moment of detonation, all of the energy of the nuclear explosion is condensed in a small superheated sphere of nuclear debris – at temperatures and pressures not unlike the core of the sun.  It only takes less then 1/1000th of a second for this fireball to cool to 300,000 º Centigrade.  The energy of the explosion, which is largely in the form of X-rays, transforms first into a brilliant flash of light – and then a pulse of thermal radiation that sets fires for miles around the hypocenter.  In the case of an airburst over a city – the radioactive components of the bomb would rise with the formation of the fireball, high into the stratosphere.  This causes other problems with long living radioactive fallout – which will be dealt with later.   
In this case – the fireball from a one-megaton explosion grows to more then a mile in diameter in seconds, while forming a mushroom cloud over ten miles across punching through the atmosphere up to 70,000 feet MSL.


[/IMG]

[Wolfala]

Prompt Nuclear  Radiation

   Associated with the fireball as mentioned before are the production of gamma rays and neutrons during the first few millionths of a second post detonation.  Granted the atmosphere weakens the particles, this radiation is lethal out to approximately 1.7 miles. Within this distance, people close to the hypocenter of the explosion would be rendered unconscious within minutes.  But for all intensive purposes – radiation at that close a range to ground zero would be of little consequence – for other by-products of the detonation are far more destructive.

Thermal Radiation

         The thermal pulse is the first major medical effect of a thermonuclear detonation.  When the device explodes, a great wave of heat, traveling at the speed of light is emitted from the fireball.  This enormous pulse causes direct effects on humans in the form of flash burns to exposed skin.  It should be noted that flash burns accounted for nearly 1/3 of fatalities at Hiroshima.          
     The severity of the damage to the tissue is directly related to the amount of heat given to an area in a period of time.
First-degree flash burns occur at 3.2 calories cm² and would be present out to a distance of 18 kilometers.  First-degree flash burns are not serious, no tissue destruction occurs. They are characterized by immediate pain, followed by reddening of the skin. Pain and sensitivity continues for some minutes or hours, after which the affected skin returns to normal without scaring of any type.  
       Moving into 14 kilometers, we have Second degree burns occurring at 6 calories cm².  Second degree burns cause damage to the underlying dermal tissue, killing some portion of it.  This is characterized by intense pain and redness, which is then followed by blistering.  Within a few hours, fluids would begin to collect between the epidermis and damaged tissue. Sufficient tissue remains intact however to regenerate and heal the burned area quickly, usually without scarring.  The biggest problem would be broken blisters and their unique ability to provide possible sites for infection.
         Closer then 14 kilometers, we have Third degree burns searing at 10 calories cm².  Third degree burns cause tissue death all the way through the skin, including the cells required for regenerating skin tissue. The only way a 3rd degree burn can heal is by skin re-growth from the edges, a slow process that usually results in scarring, unless skin grafts are used. Before healing 3rd degree burns present serious risk of infection, and can cause serious fluid loss. A third degree burn over 25% of the body (or more) will typically precipitate shock within minutes, which in of itself requires prompt medical attention.  
     It’s important to realize that even more serious burns are possible, which have been classified as fourth (or even fifth) degree burns. These burns destroy tissue below the skin: muscle, connective tissue etc. They can be caused by thermal radiation exposures substantially in excess of those in the table for 3rd degree burns. Many people close to the hypocenter of the Hiroshima bomb suffered these types of burns.  In the immediate vicinity of ground zero the thermal radiation exposure was 100 calories cm², some fifteen times the exposure required for 3rd degree burns.  This is sufficient to cause exposed flesh to flash into steam, flaying exposed body areas to the bone.  

The Shock Front

   By far the most destructive impact of a nuclear detonation on humans and the population is the shock wave. The shock wave is produced at the surface of the fireball in the first fraction of a second after the warhead detonates.  The shock wave travels as a sudden increase in air pressure followed by extremely high winds.  Its primary effects are the collapse of buildings, bridges, and other structures, and the crushing of occupants within, below, or near them.  
       Within 1.5 miles of ground zero, static overpressures would exceed 20 PSI, which is sufficient to collapse and destroy even the strongest steel and reinforced concrete office buildings.  Within three kilometers, almost everyone would be killed, either directly by the blast or by collapsing or flying masonry.  
         At 4 miles from ground zero, the overpressure would be 5 PSI, or over 180 tons of pressure on the wall of an average two-story home.  It should be noted that very high static overpressures on human bodies will produce internal hemorrhaging and fatal impairment of the cardiopulmonary system, but the overwhelming medical impacts are due to the collapse and destruction of buildings and other physical structures.
         At 8 kilometers, it’s estimated that the impact effects of the blast would kill about fifty percent of the people.  Immediately following the blast wave would be hurricane force winds, first outwards from the explosion and then inward to replace the air that went out.  Crushing injuries of the skull, chest, abdomen and limbs; traumatic amputations; multiple compound fractures of bones; paralyzing lesions of the spinal cord; damage to internal organs, particularly the brain, liver, kidneys; rupture of the lungs and eardrums; multiple severe lacerations.   People at a distance, if they realized what had happened when they saw the flash, would have a few seconds to lie down, or even to dive into a ditch before the blast hit.
         
Secondary and tertiary blast effects

     This is best described as flying objects and flying people, being primarily related to the extremely high dynamic pressures – or winds of velocities exceeding 600 mph near the hypocenter.  The range of secondary blast effects is in fact much greater then the primary effects – i.e. collapsed buildings.  As far as 13 miles from ground zero, people would be in grave danger of enormous amounts of flying debris consisting of bricks, pieces of masonry, steel, wood, and shards of glass.  At a range of almost 15 miles, these objects would have a high probability of severely injuring anyone hit.  The overwhelming medical effects would include fractures, penetrating wounds of the chest and abdomen, not to mention serious lacerations.  
   Another example would be the effects of wind on a human body.  As far as 8 miles from ground zero, the wind is sufficient to hurl a 180-pound man against a wall at several times the force of gravity.  

 Incendiary impacts

         In a word, fires would be the greatest vehicle for human injury and death.  The thermal pulse is so intense that paper; dry trees, leaves and grass, debris and wood outside buildings would burst into flames as far as 10 miles away.  Within buildings, there would be spontaneous combustion of upholstery, bedding, which are all likely to create self-sustaining fires.  To these numerous conflagrations we’d add exploding boilers, overturned furnaces, stoves, broken gas mains, and downed power lines.  Fires will directly ignite or spread to gasoline stations, fuel storage depots, large natural gas storage tanks, and industrial chemical stockpiles.  
        In any large city stricken with a thermonuclear detonation, a mass fire would cause a staggering increase in the number of burns and burns combined with other injuries.  With a one-megaton detonation, the circle within which the entire population is counted as fatalities is labeled at 4.3 miles from ground zero.
Mass fires, and especially firestorms, pose a significant threat to the human population.  Burst fuel tanks, gas mains, and collapsed buildings would provide more fuel, and it is likely that confluent fires would cause a firestorm. This is when coalescent fires cause sufficient updraft to form their own wind, blowing inwards from all sides and thereby increasing the intensity of the fire.
         The temperature even in basements and bomb shelters rises above lethal levels, and the fire uses all available oxygen. The wind blowing inwards is of gale force, so that even strong uninjured people would have difficulty walking or trying to run outwards away from the fire.  Control or containment of these fires---hundreds of them per acre---would be virtually impossible.  Water mains would be shattered and pressure non-existent.  Streets would be impassable.  Fire-fighting crews and equipment would be destroyed or disabled.  
       Firestorms pose a threat in addition to their searing temperatures: the generation of large amounts of carbon dioxide and other toxic gases.  Blast or fallout shelters would provide little protection.  The survival of occupants within a shelter would depend critically on the temperature and humidity within the shelter.  Unless there is an independent oxygen supply and a venting system for each shelter, toxic gases would be deadly to the occupants.  Ordinary shelters would then become crematoria in which occupants would be burned to death and asphyxiated.

[Wolfala]

Delayed Radiation “Fallout”

   The radiation from a nuclear detonation can be classified into two separate categories: Initial Burst and Residual – the latter being fallout.  Depending whether the weapon is detonated as an air burst or ground burst, fallout can be either Initial or Long term.  
        The initial burst is comprised of gamma rays and neutrons, a dose so intense as only to be lethal at a short range within 1.75 miles of the hypocenter.  However, this wouldn’t so much be of a factor since anyone within that ring of destruction would be dead or morbid from the subsequent thermal pulse and passage of the shock front.  Only over two miles is radiation exposure from the initial pulse down to a relatively insignificant level, at least compared to the other threats.
   If the device were exploded on the ground, early or local fallout would be as a result of soil and rock descending from the fireball’s ascension into the stratosphere. Airbursts tend to deliver a smaller radiation dose over a longer period of time, to global populations.  The direction of fallout is a misnomer since wind patterns make fallout widely scattered and unpredictable – leaving certain areas hot and others untouched.  

 Radiation Injury

   Most medical estimates of risk are in that of LD/50 or the lethal dose for 50 % of the population exposed.  Short-term exposure is rated at 450 REMS with excellent medical care available.  That meaning that possible bone marrow transplants would be needed, in addition to whole blood transfusions. Lethal doses for the very young, elderly or those with serious blast and burn injury can be as low as 225 REMS.  
                 
Effect   If delivered over one week   If delivered over one month
Threshold for radiation sicknes150   200
Five percent may die   250   350
Fifty percent may die   450   600
(It doesn’t matter much whether a dose of radiation is received as intense radiation for several hours or at a slower rate over several weeks.  What matters is the total accumulated dose.)

 Rescue Problems

         If the bomb exploded squarely over the center of a city, no rescue services within the area of major structural damage would be able to function.  All downtown hospitals would be destroyed, and there would be no electricity, water, or telephone communication in the area served by city utilities.  Impassable roads would hamper rescue services from the outside world and the central area of severe damage would be inaccessible.  
The number of injured in the peripheral area would be so great that emergency services of surrounding cities would be completely overloaded, as would be any surviving suburban hospitals and all the hospitals of neighboring cities.  Even to be seen by a doctor and given analgesics, the injured from one city would need to be distributed among all the hospitals of North America.  
         The destroyed city would be radioactive.  Decisions to attempt rescue work would depend first on a survey of the area by a specialist team with appropriate protection, and then on a policy decision as to how much radiation the rescue teams should be permitted.  Willingness of the team members and their unions to accept the risk would be the final factor.

Medical Responses

   Medical help of any sort would be virtually non-existent.  Medical care, in fact, serves most usefully as an illustration of the impossibility of coping with such a horrific impact.  Civil defense estimates suggest that the ratio of surviving uninjured physicians to the number of seriously injured attack victims being somewhere between 1:350 and 1:1500.  Looking back, even this calculation is optimistic.  
         There are no emergency rooms, no operating rooms, and no diagnostic or therapeutic equipment within reach.  There are no blood banks left; drug stocks have been destroyed.  The number of injured, if they could be distributed throughout the hospitals or North America would occupy something like a third of all beds available – no hospital can deal with such an influx of cases.  A whole year's supply of blood for transfusion would be needed immediately, and of course is not available in storage nor could it be collected from volunteers in a few days.  The injured that reached hospitals would have to be assayed for radioactivity, for the safety of the staff, which would cause a serious bottleneck and delay in most hospitals.  
        There might be fifty times as many severe burn cases as there are beds available in all North America.  Let me remind you – this is if there was only a 1-megaton weapon targeting a single city.  
         The true scope of the medical impact of a thermonuclear weapon only becomes clear if you turn to a major nationwide attack.  If you can imagine the impact of a single 1-Megaton warhead – just try to comprehend 6,000 Megatons aimed simultaneously at military targets, other basic industries and population concentrations of 50,000 or more.  

 Survival

            In the post-shelter survival period, when fallout has reached an “acceptable” level that allows survivors to emerge for longer times, the problems will change.  Tens of thousands of still surviving injured must be nursed.  There will be millions of human and animal corpses to be buried or burned.  Food will be an overwhelming concern since most of the food stored in shelters would’ve been destroyed.  Other food supplies, grain in particular is stored where the population density is least concentrated, on farms.  Approximately 99% of the refinery industry would’ve been destroyed; there would be no means to transport the food since there would be no fuel.  
          Locally food-rich regions may try to fight off any attempt to share their holdings.  But throughout this period, the epidemic potential will continue and worsen, probably made more intense by both malnutrition and rampant disease.  Since insects are far more resistant to radiation then humans, it is anticipated that cockroaches, mosquitoes, and flies—will multiply unchecked in an environment that is devoid of birds but has ample waste, untreated sewage and human and animal corpses.  Trillions of flies will breed in the dead bodies alone.  
         Disease problems in the survival period may be heavily skewed toward infections.  Particularly hazardous epidemics of TB and plague may occur, but outbreaks of flu, amoebic dysentery, rabies, cholera, hepatitis, and bacterial dysentery are also very likely.  All of this is in addition to the usual incidence of coronary heart disease, stoke, diabetes, and occurrences or cancer.  Antibiotic supplies would be rapidly depredated.  Since the pharmaceutical industry will be almost totally destroyed, there will be little chance of replacement.  Diagnostic labs will be non-existent.  Vaccines and other immunizing agents will be unavailable.  
         For physicians and other health care workers, all these scenarios are apocalyptic in scale.  It will not only raise practical burdens but the ethical as well.  Within the shelter or outside…how are health workers to accomplish making life and death decisions on the basic of radiation exposure estimates that may be inaccurate by several orders of magnitude.  Shall the demands for euthanasia be fulfilled as opposed to living maybe 3 or 4 weeks?  Should antibiotics or narcotics be reserved for those whose prospect for survival is best?   For those who survived this grotesque destruction of human beings, it would change the meaning of being human.

References

Countermeasures:  A Technical Evaluation of the Operational Effectiveness of the Planned US National Missile Defense System, Union of Concerned Scientists, April 2000

Arms Control Today:  October 2000

The Nuclear Age:  Arms Control and Defense Are Back in the News:  Brookings Review 1994

NUCLEAR ALMANAC M.I.T. ed. Jack DENNIS 0-201-05331-2 Addison Wesley 1982

SECURITY AND SURVIVAL-THE CASE FOR A NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONVENTION-published by IPPNW, IALANA and INESAP(1999), Cambridge, Mass.

CENTER FOR DEFENSE AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY STUDIES (http://www.cdiss.org)

EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS; JAMES GREEN 1996

THE COLD WAR; A MILITARY HISTORY; DAVID MILLER 1999

THE CLIMATIC BIOLOGICAL AND STRATEGIC EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR WAR; HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMITTEE ON NATIONAL RESOURCES AND ENVIROMENT; 98TH CONGRESS, SEPT 12, 1984

MEGATOONS, CARTOONISTS AGAINST NUCLEAR WAR, 1984

SHAPING NUCLEAR POLICY FOR THE 1990'S; A COMPENDIUM OF VIEWS, REPORT OF THE DEFENSE POLICY PANAL FOR THE COMITTEE ON ARMS SERVICES, HOUSE OF REPS, 102ND CONGRESS, 12/17/92