Nuclear-explosive fearmongering, revisited (was Awe comparing app

>> Please do note that nuclear plants are the next best
>> (in my opinion) to massive space based solar power.
>> On the other hand, read the end notes here:
>> http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2007/10/30/18253/301
>
> Why? It contains implications that nuclear explosives are unusual in their destructive potential. This has long been known to be false, of course. Have you read Garwin?:
> http://www.fas.org/rlg/20.htm

I don't think the end notes say anything which indicates nuclear
weapons are more destructive than they actually are. I.e., a 15kt
weapon within a hundred yards of a county zoning board meeting is
going to kill the lot of them and flatten the building. The end notes
are about how to lower the cost of building homemade nuclear devices
by a hundred or a thousand times.

> He notes that both chemical and biological terror weapons are more cost-effective and easier-to-obtain than nuclear.

Replacing fossil energy is a 10-20 TW hole to fill. That's 10,000 to
20,000 1 GW nuclear plants all over the world. With that large a
number, some dedicated Aum type cult is eventually going to tap one
for neutrons and make pure plutonium 239 out of depleted uranium.
It's not likely they would kill more than 100,000 people per device.
Since hundreds of millions to several billion will die from famines
and resource wars without the energy, tens of thousands of reactors
are a better deal even assuming a homemade bomb goes off ever few
years.

> The destructive effects of nuclear explosives have been exaggerated, both by their owners and by other conflicted parties.

That just means that the psychological effects are worse. That alone
is a significant factor. The Aum cult did attempt to obtain a
tactical weapon from the Soviet Union.

>Please study every currently-archived post at the following blog before further commenting on, or making implications about, dangers or effects of nuclear explosives:
> http://www.google.com/search?q=site:glasstone.blogspot.com

I sampled it, seen a lot of it before even though such material is
only of passing interest. The site claims to need IE and then crashes
IE upon loading.

> Adding hiroshima to that search returns insightful posts about the differences between bombing (a) a medieval tinderbox shanty town, and (b) a real city complete with real (e.g. concrete and steel) buildings.

Right. Consider the effects of one in the basement of a high rise building.
>
> A large cargo ship loaded with fertilizer is a half-megaton-yield bomb. Both the ship and the fertilizer are cheap and easy to obtain, and easy to place at desirable targets. A fertilizer ship seems to be neither sexy- nor ignorant- enough for a Clancy novel, though.

I don't think bulk ships have been built that are close to that size.

Keith Henson