Posted on 10/25/2016 6:24:55 AM PDT by C19fan
Russia has unveiled chilling pictures of its largest ever nuclear missile, capable of destroying an area the size of France.
The RS-28 Sarmat missile, dubbed Satan 2 by Nato, has a top speed of 4.3 miles (7km) per second and has been designed to outfox anti-missile shield systems.
The new Sarmat missile could deliver warheads of 40 megatons - 2,000 times as powerful as the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is reportedly planning to replace the country's older SS-18 Satan weapons with the new missiles.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
“A 40 MT blast will not wipe out France.”
No, but it would crater the hell out of Paris. Then the rest of France would be scrambling around, leaderless, surrendering willy-nilly instead of in an orderly fashion.
Ivey-Mike—1952
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DDOS?
Every cloud has a silver lining!
No, there are published papers from Sandia and Lawrence/Livermore that even if every single SS-18 Satan had the Mod 3 warhead (25MT) all launched and detonated at EMP altitude, it still wouldn't cover all of CONUS or have long lasting effects. I forget the yield, but for ONE nuclear warhead to cause catastrophic EMP damage over all of CONUS would be in the gigaton range or high hundred megaton. Every nuclear weapon (less SADM/tactical nukes) the Russians have is approx. 1,056GT.
The SS18s with the 25MT warheads were strictly for destroying the LCCs outside of Warren, Malstrom, and Minot AFBs, plus Site R, Mount Weather, Greenbriar Hotel (now untargeted), NORAD, Camp David, White House Bunker, Pentagon bunker, and Naval Observatory Bunker.
I’m glad to meet another nuclear history buff like myself.
Don’t forget Castle Bravo, Upshot Knothole and Crossroads.
No need to worry about a pin point strike to take out the target.
Ok, thanks for the info.
“Russia has unveiled chilling pictures of its largest ever nuclear missile, capable of destroying an area the size of France.”
The force of ANY explosion (nuclear or otherwise) diminishes by the cube of the distance. “Blast effect is a volume effect. The blast wave deposits energy in the material it passes through, including air. When the blast wave passes through solid material, the energy left behind causes damage. When it passes through air it simply grows weaker. The more matter the energy travels through, the smaller the effect. The amount of matter increases with the volume of the imaginary sphere centered on the explosion. Blast effects thus scale with the inverse cube law which relates radius to volume.” http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq5.html
Thus, the force felt at 1 mile will be 8 times greater than at 2 miles, 27 times greater than at 3 miles, 64 times as great at 4 miles and 1,000 times as great at 10 miles. Conversely, you will feel only 1/8, 1/27, 1/64 or 1/1,000 as much force at those distances.
This missile has 16 warheads...so each one has considerably LESS power (2.5 megatons) than a single 40 megaton warhead.
Plug that into your handy-dandy nuclear weapons effects calculator http://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/ABC_Weapons/Nuke_Effects_Calculator.htm and see that such an explosion produces the following overpressure in PSI (pounds per square inch):
5,000 PSI Radius 75 meters
1,000 PSI Radius 230 meters
300 PSI Radius 535 meters
100 PSI Radius 1.2 kilometers
20 PSI Radius 3.6 kilometers
10 PSI Radius 5.8 kilometers
5 PSI Radius 9.4 kilometers
3 PSI Radius 13.5 kilometers
1 PSI Radius 29 kilometers
20 psi Heavily built concrete buildings are severely damaged or demolished.
10 psi Reinforced concrete buildings are severely damaged or demolished. Most people are killed.
5 psi Most buildings collapse.
Injuries are universal, fatalities are widespread.
3 psi Residential structures collapse.
Serious injuries are common, fatalities may occur.
1 psi Window glass shatters. Light injuries from fragments occur. http://www.atomicarchive.com/Effects/effects4.shtml
Thus, outside of 13.5 km (about 8 1/4 miles), you stand a good chance of survival, though your house might not survive. Outside of 29 km (about 17.7 miles), your windows will break and you may have some cuts - but that’s all from blast.
Now let’s analyze: 16 2.5 megaton nukes, placed optimally to produce at least 3 psi across the widest distance will produce it over an area of (16 x 8.25 miles) = 132 miles long, by 8.25 miles wide = 1,089 square miles. France has, per Wikipedia, 248,573 square miles. That means that 0.438 percent of France (i.e. 438 parts per 10,000) would experience 3 psi or more. The rest would be relatively unscathed. Not a pretty picture within those areas, but hardly “total destruction” as the sensationalism of the headline claimed.
When it comes to nuclear weapons, CHECK YOUR FACTS. Over-hyping the effects of nukes was THE thing to do before the hoax of Global Warming showed up.
Using the application, for a 40 Mt weapon (4,000 kt) airburst the over pressure is (pounds per square inch):
8 psi at a 4 mile radius, virtually no freestanding structure survives collapse. A moonscape of unrecognisable rubble that is 8 miles across.
“Something does not add up in this report, which is no surprise coming from todays media. A Trident II, which is one of the more modern MIRVd missiles, carries 8 to 12 W88 fusion bombs; each with a yield of 475 KT. The W88 is the most advanced weapon we have.
It would seem highly improbable you could create a MIRVd weapon with a yield of 40MT unless there was a break thru on the design of the weapon; such as a theoretical matter/antimatter bomb.”
The W88 warhead is described at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W88
It was designed in the 1970s (so, one would think, further technological progress would make higher yields possible), and it and its “physics package” (what makes it go “boom!”) weigh about 800 pounds. We can fit 12 of them onto a Trident II missile.
The Satan missile that the Russians have would simply require similar (i.e. 40-year-old) technology to the W88, and both more thrust and more physical space at the top of the missile (to fit 16 larger warheads, vs. 12 smaller ones). I’m no expert, but the RS-28 Sarmat missile weighs in at over 100 tons; the Trident II missile weighs in at 130,000 pounds (65 tons). It seems logical that the extra weight would allow for a greater throw-weight for the missile, sufficient to hold 16 2.5 megaton warheads.
So, yes, it does add up. What DOESN’T add up is that 16 2.5 megaton warheads can “destroy an area the size of France.” That is pure bunk, pure hocum. See my post # 51 for the debunking of this sensationalist claim by the writer.
It will at the least “cheese” them off.
“My belief:
A completely decisive first strike is the only answer to this kind of weapons development. Vlad Putin is a Russian devil.”
The Satan II missile will replace the Satan I missile (also known as the SS-18, of which there were 5 versions, the Mod. 5 being the most lethal, as one might imagine). The missile generally had 10 warheads of approximately 750 kt to 1 Mt each (though the Russians said that the yield was lower). This was definitely a first strike weapon - and they had 308 of them, so you’re looking at 3,080 warheads (assuming 10 per missile, even though some had 20 or 25 MT warheads for taking out extremely hard targets like NORAD HQ). Note that this would have allowed the Soviets to first-strike every single land-based US missile with 2 warheads, and still have about 1,000 warheads left JUST FROM THE SS-18.
Note that the SS-18 was initially deployed in 1974, so we lived with it (and thousands of other Soviet nukes) for quite a while. So don’t be in such a rush to start WW3 with a first strike - peace has prevailed, and will continue to prevail, so long as sane people are in control of both countries. You should not, for that reason, ever run for President.
Oh, and on the “Vlad Putin is a Russian devil” issue, let’s also think that one through, shall we? I don’t have access to data on Putin like I do (and everyone else does) about the SS-18 or the Satan II. However, I think it logical to assume that the Russian leadership would not allow a “devil” to assume and retain authority to start a war that would end up largely destroying Russia, a nation with a very long history and a very hard kept independence. They’re not going to allow another Stalin to come to power. Also, my read on Putin (and you’re free to have your own) is that he is simply a nationalist that wants to first preserve his nation and make it more prosperous, and second to expand its power (the goal of which is to make it yet more likely to survive and prosper than simply keeping things as they are now). He has picked off weak adversaries (Ukraine, Syria, etc.), but NEVER had a conflict with anyone tougher. He makes noise occasionally about conflict, but it is similar to what a rattlesnake does - warn you to stay the F away, or he’ll bite you. He really doesn’t want to bite you, because he knows that this carries unacceptable risks - he’ll do it if backed into a corner, but that’s about all. Wisdom on our part would AVOID backing Russian into such a corner, and not even a lot of wisdom, at that.
Again, please don’t run for President, you’re not suited well for the job.
Detonated high above France, the EMP would be truly impressive. The Starfish Prime test, which damaged electrical systems hundreds of miles away, was just around 1.4MT
Given the throw weight of the Satan II, theoretically the weapon could deliver a single 40 MT warhead but you are right no weapons system ever deployed had that type of warhead.
That was the "clean" version. If it used uranium instead of lead in various components the same bomb could have had a 100 MT yield.
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