HH 59 : The Destroyer of Worlds

[C-Mag]

Haven't listened yet, should be fun.

I think we should each send a bottle to Dan

[Ex-California]

One of the problems with SAC, was that is was all Bomber Jockeys, SAC was all about the B-52, Missileers were the black sheep of the family, Missileers didn't get promoted to the top levels, the bomber crews ruled the roost, but the thing is, they didn't know anything about the missiles, nor did they care, the Titan II's were just left to be ticking time bombs, because the bosses at SAC basically ignored them.

The book, Command and Control, that I mentioned earlier and that someone else linked the PBS docco for goes over this a lot.

Basically SAC were the minions of LeMay and his antecessors. The misslers were looked at as just over janitors or mechanics

[Ex-California]

They had bomber pilots in charge of all the missile wings, so if something went wrong, the Colonel was basically asking a 19 year old kid what he should do about it. When the 19 year old kid told him what to do, some bomber pilot General at Omaha overruled them; it's just dumb luck one of those Titan II's never went critical mass.

And I mean, nine megatons yield, ground level detonation, right in the middle of the CONUS? Yikes, Cormac McCarthy; Castle Bravo for the masses.

Here's what the lethal fallout plume looks like for that, superimposed on the Northeast;




Move that ground zero west to Little Rock, that might actually be worse, because the full sized plume is probably around 3000 miles, so you have even more people in the path of it, airburst wouldn't be quite as bad, but surface burst, that would be the worst, the lower it pops, the more fallout you get.

9Mt's detonating just below ground level, kicking all that ground up into the mushroom cloud; radioactive volcano.

Just think of what a Tsar Bomba would do

[adwinistrator]

I'm about 3 hours in, and now have an understanding of how ignorant I am of the Korean War.

Please point me to books, websites, documentaries, etc.

I am honestly a bit ashamed at my blind spot in regards to this, I have family that served there.

[Smitty-48]

Just think of what a Tsar Bomba would do

The Tsar Bomb was all about propaganda, but wouldn't make much difference in an operational sense, 57Mt's produces a larger explosion, but wouldn't make a huge difference in terms of prolonged effects, the limiting factor is the atmosphere, the fallout only goes so high before it runs into the roof, so the fallout plume for the Tsar Bomb wasn't so much greater than Castle Bravo that you would notice, and radioactive is radioactive, so it's not like Tsar Bomb was more radioactive than Castle Bravo.

This is why the US never went bigger than Castle Bravo, because Castle Bravo was already more than was required. If you want to do more damage, you just use more bombs, bigger isn't actually better.

I would also say that the US won the propaganda war, because the secretive Soviets never really captured the majesty of the Tsar Bomb, whereas the Castle Bravo film is the most impressive nuclear weapons detonation recording of all time.

There's dimishing returns, not only is 57Mt's not much more effective than 15Mt's in an operational sense, it's not actually scarier neither, when people envisioned the ultimate hydrogen bomb, what they envisioned was most likely the brilliantly staged and terribly beautiful technicolour film of Castle Bravo, Tsar bomba they heard about, but they never saw it.

I'm a nuclear weapons fanboi, but Tsar Bomba doesn't do anything for me, nothing beats Castle Bravo, when it comes to nuke porn;



The Soviets had the bigger bomb, but the Americans put on a better show, story of the Cold War in a nutshell.

[Ex-California]

Is this not real footage?



I'm glad Im not the only one who watches these videos on Youtube

[Ex-California]

I'm about 3 hours in, and now have an understanding of how ignorant I am of the Korean War.

Please point me to books, websites, documentaries, etc.

I am honestly a bit ashamed at my blind spot in regards to this, I have family that served there.

That 30-45 minutes of the Korean War really makes me want a full HH on it now

[Smitty-48]

Is this not real footage?

Nah, that's animation, this is the only real footage of the Tsar Bomb;

[Ex-California]

Oh yeah, the Castle Bravo footage kills that

[Smitty-48]

Operation Castle FTW, they all beat Tsar Bomba, Castle Bravo, Castle Yankee, Castle Romeo, even Ivy Mike > Tsar Bomba.



Megatons Schmegatons; "pics or it didn't happen". Better footage beats bigger bomb every time.

Grainy and pale Soviet footage from Novaya Zemlya? Meh; doesn't beat living colour from the South Pacific, and most of Tsar Bomba is obscured by cloud cover; poor staging.