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Nuclear Weapons
This category is for questions about weapons that use nuclear fission or fusion to gain explosive power.
3,869 Questions
What are the pros and cons of nuclear arms?
Pros: tremendously powerful, heavily impacts enemy morale
Cons: nuclear fallout, extremely negative reaction by foreign countries towards the user, initiates the possibility of mutually assured destruction.
Answer The nuclear bomb not only causes destruction but it makes the area radioactive. Depending on the amount of radiation used and exposed to an area, the target area would have to be evacuated for 70 years or more. No. The more countries that have it the higher the chances that one leader or general will get desperate enough to use it.
Where can Blueprints to an atom bomb be found?
In top secret government labs.
If you want rough drawings check encyclopedias.
What are the pros and cons of nuclear weapons?
Pros-Prevents total wars (Made Cold Wars)
People will die. :P
Cons-Will assure mutual destruction if used
People will also die :P
To conlude, it' a win win
I'm adding in another thing. Nuclear bombs is what keeps us from raging war at other countries. Other countries have WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) and if we/they decide to nuke one-another then the other country will react in violence and send their own nuke to the country who originally sent the nuke. So countries who are owners of nukes don't want to be bombed, and they know if they do decide to nuke us/them then they two will be bombed.
The con side is owning nuclear weapons strikes fear into many people. Nuke destroy cites and takes many human lives. Nuclear war is feared by many people almost everyday. All most every country has a nuke and even the country with the nukes fear themselves for the possibility of causing a nuclear war.
I hoped this all helped
Jeffrey
How did the development of nuclear weapons affect American society?
1945 marked the beginning of the Atomic Age for mankind. Not just for the United States, but for the whole world. Nuclear weapons led to to nuclear energy and a cold war. A cold war is a military stand-off between two nations. In this particular case, the cold war was a military stand-off between two NUCLEAR ARMED nations. The US & the rest of world were affected by the cold war, and atomic energy. Pros of nuclear energy: It is clean burning and lasts nearly forever (no need to refuel). Cons of nuclear (atomic) energy: ultimately there is a wasted product (by-product) that must be disposed of; and currently there is NO way of disposing of it, other than burying it somewhere. Secondly, the nuclear material that creates the atomic power is in itself a deadly poison. Third, all man made machines and systems are not perfect; sometimes they break...when an atomic plant has a malfunction, things can become serious (such as a nuclear meltdown). See Film:The China Syndrome, starring Jane Fonda.
Most likely the heaviest nuclear explosive ever built and tested was the Ivy Mike device in 1952, it was the first fusion bomb tested and was a cylinder 80 feet tall, 20 feet in diameter, with 2 foot thick walls. This cylinder weighed over 80 tons, then if you added in all the cryogenic equipment connected to it to keep the deuterium-tritium mixture liquid until detonation which weighed over 20 tons. Mike's yield was 10Mtons.
Obviously a bomb that large weighing over 100 tons would be impossible to deliver to a target (but this was a test device). I know of no larger or heavier nuclear bomb ever built.
See:
Swords of Armageddon, Volume III, by Chuck Hansen
Dark Sun, by Richard Rhodes
Which countries have atomic bombs?
The United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and, although they never admit it, in all probability, Israel.
Why did Russia want to acquire nuclear weapons?
TO be the most superpower and to scare USA.wich USA has them beet.and other reasons.
Which nuclear weapons do the most damage?
Thermonuclear weapons, also known as hydrogen bombs, are the most powerful and destructive nuclear weapons. They rely on a two-stage process involving the fusion of isotopes of hydrogen to release immense amounts of energy. These weapons can produce explosions with yields in the megaton range, causing catastrophic damage over a wide area.
Were ICBM'S considered a threat to the US?
Yes. During the cold war, the US was under constant threat of ICBM attack from the USSR. Due to the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, the US was prevented from developing interceptors to shoot down those ICBM's.
Who wanted to use nuclear weapons against the Chinese during the Korean war?
General Douglas MacArthur suggested this, resulting in President Harry Truman terminating MacArthur's military career on April 10, 1951 and replacing him with General Matthew Ridgway.
The Korean War began on June 25, 1950 and an armistice was signed on July 27, 1953. Note: Truman had already had 4 MK-4 fission bombs shipped to Korea but had not authorized their use (so when MacArthur threatened to use fission bombs he could havebut it would have been unauthorized).
What was the atomic bomb in the Manhattan project?
The atomic bomb developed in the Manhattan Project was a powerful nuclear weapon that harnessed the energy released by splitting atoms through a process called nuclear fission. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, known as "Little Boy," used uranium-235, while the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, known as "Fat Man," used plutonium-239. These bombs caused immense destruction and casualties, leading to the end of World War II.
Was the nuclear weapons a positive or a negative effect?
It is a negative effect. While it might be a neat invention to some, it is going to end up destructive and causing a lot of major issues.
How much more efficient is a modern day nuclear bomb to a World War 2 nuclear bomb?
Answer:
See appended link for interactive demonstration of various nuclear devices.
Answer:
Well,to me a WW2 nuclear bomb means Hiroshima and Nagasaki.They were respectively 15 kilotons and 20 kilotons nuclear devices.
15 KT (kilotons) means that the damage from the blast is roughly equal to 15 kilotons
( or 15 000 tons) of TNT explosives.
a "Modern" Nuke can easily reach 20 megatons( (they were achieved in the 1960s) -
this means 15 million tons of TNT.
The most powerful nuclear explosion was a 50 Megaton nuclear device used by the Soviet union.(30.X.1961) This device was successfully constructed as a 100 Megaton bomb,but was then reduced to ~50 and some materials changed,because there would be too much pollution and there was a risk that the plane dropping it couldn't reach safety distance fast enough.
According to physics the most powerful bomb was 4000 times more powerful than the one in Hiroshima.
The bomb in Hiroshima destroyed almost every building in 2 kilometers radius from the explosion.
The Emperor Bomb (the 50 megaton one) could destroy anything in more than 10 kilometers radius. Makes you think what a 100 Megaton can do,because they had it.
But radius isn't the only thing that matters.It is known for Hiroshima that one building just 420 meters from the explosion was "as if untouched" from the bomb.The building was from thick Concrete.And this building was build with materials from 1945.Yes,in 2008 we have several times more reinforced structures,but i don't know a material that won't be destroyed by a "Modern" nuke.
Modern nukes produce temperature at amount of millions of degrees. The diamond is ruined at 800 degrees.the Titanium melts at 1625 degrees.The surface of the sun(as long as i have heard and read) is about 4000 degrees,and we can't reach it with space shuttles.And you want something to survive at millions of degrees?
Why was the hydrogen bomb built?
The hydrogen bomb was built because it is more powerful then the atomic bomb. The atomic bomb was the type used on Japan and as bad as those were, hydrogen bombs are even more powerful. Nuclear weapons are very controversial. Most countries want them but they don't want anyone else to have them. The US claims the reason they developed such powerful weapons is a deterrent. The idea is no one will dare attack you if you have such weapons. The atomic bombs used on Japan were very controversial even in the US. Some congress men didn't think it was right to use them on civilians. The reason they did was President Truman and others thought it was the lesser of two evils. They believed the Japanese would fight on for a long time which would kill many more people in the long run then the bombs would. No one knows if that would have been true or not but the bombs did end the war very fast. Japan had little choice but to surrender immediately. Now days that there are several countries with nuclear weapons we have what is called MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). Both sides are afraid of war because both sides would be destroyed no one would really win. This was the state between the USSR and the US. It may actually have prevented war all these years, because everyone is afraid of the consequences. Hopefully no crazy dictator will get his hands on one and deiced to use it.
Who invented nuclear bombs and why were they dropped on two Japanese cities during World War 2?
The people in the Manhattan Project invented the Nuclear bombs, the americans. They were droped on Japan because they had no other choice, the Japanease were willing to fight till the last man.
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EDIT: 25/07/2010
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What is posted here is slightly wrong as they did contemplate invading Japan but it was decided there would be too many deaths, which is a bit ironic really as there was many more deaths due to the bombings, even to this day people are still dying from the effects of the nuclear weapons dropped on Nagaski & Hiroshima.
Also The Japs were willing to fight to their last man but, there is also the argument that they were ready to give up the war before the atom bomb was dropped.
This page (link below) gives both sides of the debate.
These are a few quotations to show that even American commanders disagreed with the bombings.
"The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan." - Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet
"The use of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons." - Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman
"I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives." - Supreme Allied Commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower
A Hydrogen bomb is nearly 1000 times stronger than an atom bomb, the reason for this is the methods in which they are made. Atomic bombs are made from the process of nuclear fission, in which two atoms crash into each other releasing a chain reaction of exploding atoms, hence the supernova, and shockwave. For a hydrogen bomb the process used is nuclear fusion, in which two atoms are fused. In this case, two hydrogen atoms are used. These two hydrogen atoms form a helium atom while releasing an enormous amount of energy. Leading to my point that a hydrogen bomb can destroy everything in a radius of about 40 miles.
What was the nick name of the development of the atomic bomb?
By:http://inventors.about.com/od/astartinventions/a/atomic_bomb.htm == ==
Why does US make nuclear weapons?
The US no longer makes nuclear weapons, it only refurbishes existing ones that are wearing out.
Pure fission atom bombs contain no gas.
Atom bombs using a technique called fusion boosting have a small canister of deuterium and/or tritium gas (hydrogenisotopes). Some of this gas is injected into the sealed hollow pit (core) of the bomb as the last stage of arming.
