[FRIAM] Through a Screen Darkly

[Steve Smith]

Marcus -

For whatever reason, the map image you attached  doesn't show any radii 
but I (think I) appreciate the link to the calculator.

<darkness alert>Too Dark Don't Read (TDDR)

I did a demonstration study for DHS circa 2002 using Keyhole (pre-google 
earth) to provide a more visceral (first person POV) of what 
suitcase-sized nukes could do in a city (like DC).   The nuclear effects 
code was unclassified and provided mainly radii for about a dozen 
effects starting with blast/overpressure, thermal pulse, visual system 
damage, direct radiation, fallout, etc.   We then coupled that with 
infrastructure and population models and the cascading effects.    10kt 
is very ugly in any population center.  Conventional weapons are almost 
purely blast/thermal harm, the rest is a bonus on nuclear.   Fallout and 
cascading effects are by far the worst at those scales.

I didn't learn anything new exactly except maybe the one detail that if 
you are going to be looking toward a nuclear detonation from far enough 
away to survive the thermal effects and the overpressure and building 
collapses that come with it, then you are better off staring at it at 
the point of ignition, because the "flash blindness" it causes will keep 
you from then staring raptly at the fireball (as everyone in the movies 
do) because this will cause permanent retinal burns.  This reference 
minimizes the likelihood of retinal burns, but I was informed otherwise, 
I think simple logic is on my side? 
https://www.atomicarchive.com/science/effects/flash-blindness.html

Just imagine the effect of all the airliner pilots on approach to 
BWI/Reagan when both pilot and copilot are in their seats who might go 
blind for 2 minutes if the EMP doesn't take out their fly-by-wire 
controls?   We still had 9/11 images in our heads a that point, so one 
suitcase nuke and some percentage of aircraft on takeoff-landing coming 
down... hell...

Energetically nuclear weapons are fairly trivial on a global scale 
(1000W/square meter flux from the sun across the dayside surface for 
example), I think the whole arsenal of all the countries is on the order 
of one major hurricane.  Non-trivial but not biosphere disrupting.   It 
think Mt. St. Helens was 400MT energetically (order 10 "supers")...  but 
the stratospheric particulates (nuclear winter) were a fraction of the 
equivalent in nukes.

Yes, the "green glass lined holes" left in the top 10-100 meters of the 
earth surface would be trivial by some measure.   But poison fallout and 
stratospheric particulates would ramp up fast with anything more than a 
few "surgical" theater-scale strikes. This is part of the reason for 
developing "neutron" weapons, to enhance battlefield casualties with 
limited infrastructure damage and latent radiation... "clean nukes" I 
think they called them. Just as wicked as the "vacuum bombs" people have 
talked about. Suck the air out of human's lungs without knocking down 
the buildings they are hiding in.  Pretty.   On the other end are the 
cobalt/salted weapons designed to *enhance* fallout and latent radiation 
harm to living things.   Not unlike the Roman's habit of "salting" the 
enemies fields so they can't recover their agriculture in less than 
years, decades, generations.

This whole discussion puts a harsh spotlight on the worst in human 
nature captured well by Thomas Lux's poem The People of the other 
Village 
<https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48485/the-people-of-the-other-village>.

10,000 brutal, beautiful years,

  Darkly,

  - Steve

On 3/11/22 10:06 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>
> Steve writes:
>
> < If you are suggesting that the use of nuclear weapons by NATO or 
> Russia in this conflict would be limited to "a handful" (1, 2, 3 
> digits?) exchanged from each side, and the result of *that* would 
> result instead in Glen's "tacit demonstration". >
>
> Here's 50 kt yield in the context of the country.   (Courtesy of 
> https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/)
>
> I’m just saying it could go on a while.   I think Putin doesn’t give a 
> damn about his armed forces, and would not treat a battlefield 
> exchange the same way he would treat an attack on Moscow.
>
>
>
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