h a l f b a k e r yRenovating the wheel
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This is an idea I had of the top of my head once. My Mates laughed for some reason?
Basically get a grenade, and instead of putting so poxy explosives in it give it some of the real stuff! Yep, a thermo-nuclear grenade. It would wipe out everything in a wide area, (you could adjust this)
Obviosly
there is one small hitch with this device, which you've probably already guessed.
Maybe some bright spark out there could think of a way to limit the blast to a concentrated area.
(??) Completely nuked.
http://www.infowar....4i/dinardo.html-ssi
Down near the bottom. [StarChaser, Jun 18 2001, last modified Oct 04 2004]
The Curve of Binding Energy
http://regehr.org/b...fbindingenergy.html
A marvelous book about one of the leading designers of nuclear weapons, Ted Taylor. Good bedtime faire. [bristolz, Feb 12 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004]
(?) Complete List of U.S. Nukes
http://www.fas.org/...a/Tests/Storax.html
Davy Crocket warhead Mk 54 (same site as above). [pottedstu, Feb 12 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004]
(?) Rogue State Rollback
http://mccain.senat...koreaweeklystan.htm
McCain's January 20 (sic), 2003 note in the Weekly Standard [FloridaManatee, Oct 04 2004]
Nuclear Gernade
http://video.google...pe=search&plindex=6
[quantum_flux, Oct 17 2007]
"Pay attention..."
http://politicalhum.../blterrorschool.htm
[Ander, Oct 18 2007]
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I'v thought of this before aswell... quite funny at the time. About as usefull as the solar powered torch... |
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I also had an Idea for a potasium boat. It has all the most necesary properties: less dense than water, easy to cut.... unfortionatley there is one small snag: it reacts violently with water. |
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Fully baked, actually. The 'Davy Crockett' nuclear bazooka.
"See Gen Maxwell Taylor, The Uncertain Trumpet (New York, 1960); and Andrew F. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore, 1986). The Davy Crockett was a hand-fired tactical nuclear weapon with a range of 1,500 meters and a blast radius of 3,000. " |
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I'm with SC on this one. John McPhee's outstanding book on Theodore Taylor, "The Curve of Binding Energy," discusses very small tactical nukes. Even though Mr. Taylor refused to say exactly how small they had gotten, he did discuss weapons with fissile cores that have cross sections the size of a penny. |
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"...with a range of 1,500 meters and a blast radius of 3,000."
Is that a blast radius of 3,000 meters? Are we to understand that firing this bazooka would be the last thing that soldier ever did? |
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Yeah, my eye caught on that, too. Sounds like it would be the fiery last act. |
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That's why it's called Davy Crockett. He *died* defending the Alamo. |
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See link for a little more (incl. picture). |
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I think I'd chip in for a little more gun powder, thankyouverymuch. |
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I don't think nuclear weapons are as important as they once were. Their era as the dominant and most powerfull military weapon has ended, of course they still serve a powerfull puch as political weapons. However it seems like chemical and biological weapons are now far superior to the nuke as a weapon of mass destruction. |
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"a US attempt in the 1950's, ludicrous but true, to develop a nuclear hand-gernade ended when it was realized that even the strongest thrower would inevitably be within the lethal radius of his own weapon!" - see Modern Land Combat (Salamander Books Ltd., 1987) |
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Oh lovely, a weapon of mass destruction that only our worst enemies would want to use! Wait, didn't I see one of these on Ebay? |
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BTW, regarding your Japan comment: Sen McCain's recent speech on N Korea's development of the Bomb (link) sent shivers down my spine. News reports over here suggest that the US has hinted that it may be willing to allow Japan to get the bomb if N Korea becomes nuclear capable. |
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Has this guy no memory and no sense of irony? Imagine a combination of Pearl Harbour and Hiroshima. |
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What StarChaser said, plus, the Russians also developed a nuclear mortar shell that had a blast radius greater than it's range. |
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They developed the Dog Mine, too (WW2). That tells you all you need to know about how the Soviet General Staff viewed their front line troops. |
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It's not hard to make a hand grenade MUCH more powerful than the exisitng designs. However, the delivery system remains Arm, Human, Standard, Mk 1. which limits the range and hence the calculation of the "lethality radius". |
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Notably, the Mills bomb historically provided to British and commonwealth forces (the familiar little black "pineapple" grenade) has a very poorly defined lethality radius. Due to the way the cast steel casing randomly fragments (the indentations are there to provide for better grip, they don't control the fragmentation), portions of casing can be lethal up to 100m, yet completely miss a target only a metre away. |
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Modern grenades are designed to provide an isotropic distribution of fragments with a controlled radius of action to linit the risk to the thrower. A larger or more powerful device would be better described as a demolition charge or a mine than a grenade. |
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[Briztolz] It's an advanced squeeze technique combined with a complex initiator to get a limited yield out of a subcritical mass. |
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Personal opinion: fission weapons are a really bad idea, especially in urban areas. |
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Lets see, I can throw 30-60 feet and a nuclear grenade blows a mile or more. HMMMMMM, sounds to me like my ass would get nuked trying to eliminate my enemies |
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i do believe there is a critical mass that needs to be obtained before the plutonium will start to destabalize. Nuclear weapons .....a full sphere split in two, the two halves are brought together to induce painfull results....or at least thats how we learned it in Chem 202 |
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lkbio, critical mass is determined by the radiation energy that any particular particle experiences, i.e. a larger mass will spontaneously undergo fission once a certain threshold is reached. The method used in "little boy", where a total mass that exceeds critical mass is separated into 2 or more pieces which will spontaneously begin fission when brought together, is similar to what you describe. Another method, as used in "fat man", is where a single fissile mass which is smaller than critical mas is compressed by high explosives until it becomes dense enough to initiate cascade fission. |
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While any amount of material can be made to undergo fission, a smaller mass (much smaller than uncompressed critical mass) requires a higher explosive charge to compress it than a larger mass (only slightly less than critical mass) would require. As fissile material volume goes down, required explosive volume goes up, and so there is a point of minimum total volume required to produce a nuclear explosion of significant yield. |
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ahh thats where the terrorist went, j/k. Thanks for the clarification, sorry for the confusion |
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So wrong. So very, very wrong. |
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(Thanks [Freefall] - I'd never heard of the "fat man" method before.) |
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Baked in soooooo many sci-fi books. |
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Ah yes. Exactly what this world needs. Thermonuclear devices that are more easily accesible to the general public!
I wish I could give you more than one fish. |
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There you are, I just did it for you. |
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This reminded me of Lady Penelope's atomic pistol. When I was about eight I thought they might exist. The thought bothered me somewhat. |
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What about a thermite-primed full fusion "plasma grenade"? |
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what if you made it into a nuclear RPG (Rocket propelled grenade) that way you could give it enough range to get out of the blast radius |
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//StarChaser// Great, now suicide bombers can do more damage and be fairly far from the target. I like it! |
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This would sterilize whoever has one in his pocket. Suicide bombers listen up, "your reproductive equipment won't work anymore if you handle one of these gerenades, and then the virgins in the afterlife will really have something to laugh at! Also, people who die virgins are usually fat or ugly." |
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//What about a thermite-primed full fusion "plasma grenade"?// |
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Say what>? Oh, you're referring to the model with the unobtanium firing pin, right? |
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Under what set of obscure physics laws would thermite be energetic enough to trigger a fusion reaction? |
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//This would sterilize whoever has one
in his pocket.// Actually, I'm not sure
it would. According Mr. Wiki's paedia
(which shows someone holding 235U
pellets in their latex-clad hand), the
half-life is 700 million years, which
means it's not all that fiercely
radioactive (assuming a chain reaction
doesn't get under way). And it allegedly
decomposes (non-fissilely) by alpha
emission: alpha particles are pretty easy
to stop (for example, with a sheet of
paper). I therefore don't think it would
do you much harm to carry a sub-
critical mass around. But I may be
wrong. Does anyone here have a father
who has tested this? |
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