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Watched the commercial for the new movie: Stealt.
When the AI stealth bomber goes AWOL, they fret that "OMG! he can take out 50 Million people with that payload" while we watch visuals of city scapes roll by the aircraft.
I did a quick search on the population of the largest cities and come up with:
http://www.mongabay.com/cities pop 01.htm
So #1 is at 12,778,721 in Bombay, Mumbai, India.
I assumed that by the tension and panic caused by the thought, that they are worried about the initial impact of the nuclear blast and not a longer drawn out poisoning potentual over several generations.

Lets grab a single fact:
The "Sedan" test at Nevada Test Site, July 6, 1962 to study high-yield subsurface burst effects. "Sedan" was detonation of 104 kt device at depth of 635 ft.; explosion made 320 ft. deep crater 1,280 ft. in diameter, Dust was thrown to height of 2,000 ft. and radioactive cloud rose to 12,000 ft.; more than 12 million tons of soil was displaced. Underground explosion of this size will destroy any buried or "hardened" structure. Device diameter was less than 36."

Now they are using extreamly small missiles on this prototype aircraft here, so I cant imagine the yeild being too large. I estimate that in appearance they are probably no more than ...lets say... 10-12 " diameter and maybe 6-7' long? (at a quick glance in the commercial)

OK?
So how? Anyone wanna speculate on how one nuclear detonation would do this? Is there a sweet spot somewhere that I am not aware of? Is there a simpson'esque ball of 50 Million people rolling around nomadicly that attracts military AI?
Have we come so far that a nuclear device in 1962 had a diameter of 36" that can now be 100's of times more powerful nowadays and be less than 10" in diameter while carrying 1000's of kt more explosive material?
Remember that this would be the payload portion alone as the "Sedan" test was a suface test and required no guidance or ballistics.

OR are all rules and laws just fair game now in the name of box office? I know that director Rob Cohen (*** and The Fast and the Furious") is not known to be big on the laws of physics, but you cant tell me that we shouldnt show some responsebility to "truth" when portrayed as coming from a source in the know (IE: "our" military who built, designed and maintained this ordinance).
So if I'm not a total kook, there will be several generations of youth out there insisting that the military has these capabilities. Or at the very least is testing them.
And if THAT is true, then what ever happened to nuclear disarmament?

And how much explosive power would it take to affect plate tectonics? Is it close to the same amount that could anahilate 1/130th of the total population of the planet? (or approximately 1/50th of the US population alone). Think of it, thats an entire state sized crater approx.
Or maybe I just hate marketing so much that I'm seeing devils in every commercial?
?

Usenet · Accepted Answer

Your stats from 1962 are completely obsolete. Much larger explosions are possible from much smaller devises. And detonated in the air, they're going to affect a much larger area.
And municipal population stats aren't necessarily informative for two reasons. First, they don't reflect the influx of suburbanites during the business day. Second, they don't reflect the fact that one geographic region may contain multiple municipal populations.

For example, a detonation originating in the air over San Francisco on a Tuesday afternoon would affect not only the residents of San Francisco, but also those commuting into the city as well as whoever happens to be in any of the several other jurisdictions in the Bay Area.
You'd probably come up with much better stats if you looked at metro areas.
For example, NY's 2000 census turned up some 8 million folks. But the metro area is said to have 22 million.
So, spread a half dozen bigguns around NY and a couple of nearby metro areas and you might get to 50 mil between the initial blast, consequent fires and radiation poisoning.
Ditto for other heavily populated regions.
In fact, probably more so for other populated areas, since they would have more vulnerable infrastructure. For example, the Turks seem to have had unfortunate building codes allowing construction of massive structures capable of being collapsed by the slightest vibrations.

So, perhaps the payload consists of several warheads intended for disbursed release over a goodly set of metro areas would get the numbers they claim without much trouble.
And to any g-men patrolling these waters: How many people died becasue of my decisions last year? How many people died because of your boss' decisions last year? I mean, is this what you're doing right now really what you want your mother to be proud of when she tells her friends about her baby's noble profession? You're just wasting tax dollars to keep people distracted from the body count in Iraq and elsewhere. For that: you.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Watched the commercial for the new movie: Stealt. When the AI stealth bomber goes AWOL, they fret that "OMG! he ... sized crater approx. Or maybe I just hate marketing so much that I'm seeing devils in every commercial? ?[/nq]
Okay, current nuclear weapons the actual "bombs" themselves are really terrifyingly compact. A person could easily carry one and we're not talking some dinky hiroshima type bomb we're talking the real deal an H-Bomb something that could turn the island of Manhattan into two separate islands if it were detonated above the Empire State Building.
Now, not knowing anything about this piece-of-*** movie like, for instance, why anyone in their right mind would conceivably load live nuclear weapons on board an experimental unmanned aircraft I would presume, if it has anything in common with other airplanes that carry nuclear weapons, that it doesn't simply carry one but carries a bomb load maybe three, maybe four ****, the movie is made up depending on what the bombs are mounted on and how the missiles are stowed which is what really takes up the weight and the room you might be able to carry five or six of them. The bombs themselves are really the smallest part of the deal.
As for plate tectonics that's another whole order of magnitude of power. A single volcanic eruption on the scale of Krakatoa was more powerful by far than every atomic weapon ever made set off at once. And that was not, by far, the most powerful volcanic eruption in history.

What we do on the scale of atomic explosions isn't even in the same ballpark in terms of the geological forces that move the Earth's tectonic plates.
NMS

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]What we do on the scale of atomic explosions isn't even in the same ballpark in terms of the geological forces that move the Earth's tectonic plates.[/nq]
*Phew!*
We can all breathe easier now...
Doug
Just a virtual guy... in a virtual world

Usenet · Answer

In my new script, a madman gets his hands on an earthquake, and..

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]In my new script, a madman gets his hands on an earthquake, and..[/nq]
...shakes, rattles and rolls Los Angeles?
"Rolls" has a double meaning, as you'll understand.

RonB
"There's a story there...somewhere"

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Watched the commercial for the new movie: Stealt. When the AI stealth bomber goes AWOL, they fret that "OMG! he ... of the largest cities and come up with: http://www.mongabay.com/cities pop 01.htm So #1 is at 12,778,721 in Bombay, Mumbai, India.[/nq]
[nq:1]Or maybe I just hate marketing so much that I'm seeing devils in every commercial? ?[/nq]
Not sure where you saw or heard this, but the line in the trailer currently advertised on UK TV, clearly mentions 50,000 (thousand) people, not 50 million.
Matthew

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Watched the commercial for the new movie: Stealt. When the ... 01.htm So #1 is at 12,778,721 in Bombay, Mumbai, India.[/nq]
[nq:2]Or maybe I just hate marketing so much that I'm seeing devils in every commercial? ?[/nq]
[nq:1]Not sure where you saw or heard this, but the line in the trailer currently advertised on UK TV, clearly mentions 50,000 (thousand) people, not 50 million. Matthew[/nq]I definitely remember hearing the "fifty million" thing in one of the trailers for stealth which, by the way, is yet another example of bad movie pushing out good idea namely another produced movie that blows one of my ideas out of the water I had an idea for a movie called, "Sting" along the same lines an experimental unmanned fighter aircraft that can out-perform any manned vehicle simply because the fact that it doesn't have a human being in it means that the designers could build it to do things like make ten-G turns manuevers that airplanes are capable of doing, but which would incapacitate human pilots.

But this business of "it's struck by lighting and now it's reprogrammed" that's ***. In my version which I never actually wrote this incredibly stealthy thing is sent out for a test flight and somebody has re-programmed it and it flies away and none of the chase planes sent out to follow it are fast enough to keep up with it and radar can't track it and at first everybody just thinks it malfunctioned and crashed until it shows up and starts firing missiles missiles that it never had in the first place.

Clearly, somebody has stolen it and has armed it and is now blackmailing the U.S. government for a really large sum of money which they'll have to pay, unless they want the thing sold to the highest bidder which it might be anyway. That is, unless they can shoot the **** thing down extremely difficult, given that it's almost impossible to find, they don't know who stole it, who's arming it, or where or how it's being refueled and launched (as I imagined it, it was actually being kept inside the belly of a redesigned cargo plane and dropped in flight).
Yet another *** movie I'll never get a chance to write.

NMS

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I definitely remember hearing the "fifty million" thing in one of the trailers for stealth which, by the way, ... of a redesigned cargo plane and dropped in flight). Yet another *** movie I'll never get a chance to write.[/nq]
No need now, we all just saw it in the screen in our head. (And it went massive on DVD.)

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I definitely remember hearing the "fifty million" thing in one of the trailers for stealth which, by the way, ... I imagined it, it was actually being kept inside the belly of a redesigned cargo plane and dropped in flight).[/nq]
Hey Neal, did you see that thread about the "em dash"?

Hint ... hint ...
-)
Lois

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