Political Crossfire Forums

[micfranklin]

I know for a fact that the US has quite a lot of nuclear weapons lying around. But my question is that is it possible for us to detonate enough nukes to, say...destroy all of mankind?

Or worse, destroy the entire planet?

[Gremlin]

There is defiantly enough weapons to make the earth uninhabitable for man.
Not everything would be completely destroyed unless each blast was evenly spread around the globe. If the nuclear holocaust came large numbers of the nukes would go off in the population centers. This would only leave the outskirts effected by the blasts and fallout. My guess is at least 25-45% of the of the world population would survive the initial blasts but would soon die from the intense radiation and fall out. The reason why i believe those numbers to be so low is that most of the weapons will be detonated in mid air to be more effective.


Here is a blast calculator that i found on a quick google search.


Im not totally sure who has the biggest megaton yield weapons and what that number is, but the Russians set off a 100mt bomb that they scaled down, its dubbed Tsar Bomb.





From what i have read that the larger the weapons the least effective they are because the physical weight of the bomb becomes to great for delivery. My guess is that many of the American nukes act like a mirv and 1 ICBM may have up to 10 nukes to disperse them over a wide area. Thats just speculation from little bits and pieces ive come across in my years. im sure someone might have the information behind that.

[George W Bush]

you wouldnt need that much nukes as the fallout would slowly erode life, given enough payload.

[Demonic Spoon]

Yeah... nukes release a lot of Gamma radiation. In case you don't know, the only way to stop this type of radiation is with a two foot thick block of concrete.

[Selfish_Meme]

Apparently the animals around chernobyl have started coming back, their DNA shows damage but is so much more resilient than at first thought. I doubt we could kill of mankind let alone most of the biosphere. Sure it would be tight for a few decades but the world would recover, places to live would be found, DNA would adapt.

[Narvik]

Selfish_Meme wrote: Apparently the animals around chernobyl have started coming back, their DNA shows damage but is so much more resilient than at first thought. I doubt we could kill of mankind let alone most of the biosphere. Sure it would be tight for a few decades but the world would recover, places to live would be found, DNA would adapt.

Do you really think that humanity would survive?
It's said that the Americans have enough nukes to wipe out humanity 5 times over.

[bob.appleyard]

Selfish_Meme wrote: Apparently the animals around chernobyl have started coming back, their DNA shows damage but is so much more resilient than at first thought. I doubt we could kill of mankind let alone most of the biosphere. Sure it would be tight for a few decades but the world would recover, places to live would be found, DNA would adapt.

Problem is that human DNA protection mechanisms are pretty poor compared to many mammals. Mice would be sweet in a nuclear winter...

[perdidochas]

micfranklin wrote: I know for a fact that the US has quite a lot of nuclear weapons lying around. But my question is that is it possible for us to detonate enough nukes to, say...destroy all of mankind?

Or worse, destroy the entire planet?

Well, we could probably make the planet unlivable for humans and for most other critters for the immediate future. IMHO, though, we couldn't destroy all life.

[perdidochas]

Selfish_Meme wrote: Apparently the animals around chernobyl have started coming back, their DNA shows damage but is so much more resilient than at first thought. I doubt we could kill of mankind let alone most of the biosphere. Sure it would be tight for a few decades but the world would recover, places to live would be found, DNA would adapt.

The radiation from Chernobyl is minimal compared to the radiation from complete thermonuclear war. However, I agree, that life will still be here. I do think that the earth could become unlivable for humans.

[AceKingQueenJack]

It depends..... There are ways other than striking the groung with a nuclear bomb to kill everybody with it. If you were to nuke the moon back-to-back many times in a row you could have massive pieces of it coming toward earth, if your goal was to desrtoy earth and not just your enemy that could be your best bet.

[Darbyh25]

Well, at least if we had nuclear winter we wouldn't have to worry about global warming.

joke, and my first post. YAY!

[bob.appleyard]

Oops.

[bob.appleyard]

AceKingQueenJack wrote: It depends..... There are ways other than striking the groung with a nuclear bomb to kill everybody with it. If you were to nuke the moon back-to-back many times in a row you could have massive pieces of it coming toward earth, if your goal was to desrtoy earth and not just your enemy that could be your best bet.

It would be fantastically difficult to do that with nukes. The moon is huge. I doubt very much would happen if the entire world threw all their nukes at it (which, due to the limitations of the delivery systems, is impossible now anyway).

[Demonic Spoon]

You gotta admit though...as far as methods of exterminating mankind go, that is the coolest one I have seen yet short of a raygun that turns half of earth into zombies and the other half into parapalegics.

[sparsely]

bob.appleyard wrote: AceKingQueenJack wrote: It depends..... There are ways other than striking the groung with a nuclear bomb to kill everybody with it. If you were to nuke the moon back-to-back many times in a row you could have massive pieces of it coming toward earth, if your goal was to desrtoy earth and not just your enemy that could be your best bet.

It would be fantastically difficult to do that with nukes. The moon is huge. I doubt very much would happen if the entire world threw all their nukes at it (which, due to the limitations of the delivery systems, is impossible now anyway).

Much to our surprise and confusion, it would shoot back.