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by D-Coder 979 days ago
> What is the range of uncertainty on that system after 3 decades?

On a NUCLEAR BOMB? Who cares if it's 50% bigger or smaller than expected? These are not precision weapons.

2 comments

There are multiple ways in which nuclear weapons are 'precise'.

The yields are known to precise amounts - with more than 2,000 nuclear weapons already detonated both below and above ground there's a mind boggling array of technical data available.

There's data on the physical impulse of various types of nuclear detonation, and data on how much or little direct radiation is created by doping the core and surrounds.

The effects of those yields is known for a wide range of scenarios; very high in the atmosphere, above the ground such that the blast radius barely touches the ground, at ground level and below ground.

Data exists to show they essentially suck for technical engineering and canal building, they irradiate vast amounts of debris at ground level and create massive clouds of fallout, and that they flatten cities with minimal side effect if detonated high enough for the shock wave to do all the work of crushing buildings.

The precision is sufficient to setup in advance to create 'Dixie Showgirl' bad ballet photoshoots:

https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/05/18/friday-image-the-...

FWiW I'm not pro nuclear war here, but it pays to be realistic about what has been achieved in the nuclear weapons domain.

Problems don't make it go to 50%, they make it go to 0.1%. Not only are these precision weapons, these are the most precision weapons.