Moontanman

I try to not bust this out indiscriminately, but...

 

 

I feel it's warranted here. Who the crap was ever saying that every nuke on earth would be detonated in a realistic scenario? All that talk was about total hypothetical yields, compared to hypothetical scenarios about weaponized viruses.

 

Very funny, but this has been brought up more than once in this conversation. Nice to make me look small when I am offering real information instead of fear mongering.

 

 

I ALSO try to not bust this out indiscriminately, but...

 

 

Modern nuclear weapons are thermonuclear. The weapons dropped on Japan during WW2 were fission bombs. Thermonuclear bombs utilize nuclear fusion. The total yield of modern devices is several orders of magnitude more than the weapons dropped on Japan. In absolutely no way does this make the fallout safer. It only increases the total quantity of fallout produced.

 

I never said it made the fallout safer or the bomb safer but modern nukes do indeed put out less fall out per kiloton or how ever you want to put it. They are made so more of the nuclear material is used up and less is left over they are far more efficient than the old nukes were. As I said this doesn't make being nuked better but it does show nukes are different now than they were even a couple of decades ago.

 

It is also good to point out modern nuclear warheads range can yield 20 megatons to 100 megatons.

 

No, there are no 100 megaton nuclear weapons, never have been, the largest yield ever was Tsar bomba at 60 megatons. it was a very old very dirty very inefficient weapon that was designed to be 100 megatons only one was made but it's yield was much less due to design problems and most the plutonium was wasted in fallout. modern nuclear weapons are not in the multimegaton range. the ones fielded by the USA are less than one megaton in almost all cases, the old 20 megaton bombs have not been fielded sine the late 60 or early 70's.

 

Modern nuclear weapons would be about 20 times the yield of what was dropped on japan, this yield is out of much less nuclear materials that are used up instead of being spread out as fall out.

I think It's more than a little disingenuous to try and say the detonation of one nuke or even several in response to a WMD attack would result in every nuke on the planet being used. Nor would such a limited strike take out most of the planet via fallout since we already detonated a large number of much dirtier nukes back in the 50's and 60's in the atmosphere and it did not kill us all.

Modern nuclear weapons are designed to make far less fallout than the type of weapons used on japan in WW2. This would not make being nuked any better but I honestly cannot see a reason to nuke a population center much less several population centers unless the same was done to us.

Even during the cold war most nukes were targeted toward military complexes, not directly at population centers. It is simply not true that thermonuclear weapons were meant to be used against population centers, back in the days of the cold war this made very little difference. Twenty megaton war heads and or bombs that were not very accurate to start with would destroy any target many times over. Trying to destroy a sub base on the out skirts of a city pretty much meant the city was gone too.

Now days nukes are much smaller, far more accurate, accurate to the point that they are really not needed to destroy most targets. most war heads in the US arsenal are less than 1 megaton, (475 kilotons I think) to destroy a huge population center like for instance New York city would require more than one probably several to really level the city.

(does anyone know which major US city had two multi megaton nuclear weapons dropped on it in the early 1960's?)

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread389946/pg1

They are small enough and accurate enough to make a precision strike against a bio-weapons facility that had been hardened against nuclear attack and or other military targets with far less collateral damage than was done to European cities during WW2 when trying to take out military targets.

The human mindset now days would not tolerate the same sort of wholesale killing of civilians as we did during WW2, I doubt anyone would want to nuke a city but military centers being used by an adversary to launch WMD's against let's say French targets should expect to be nuked. I say French because it is highly dishonest to keep saying Americans will be doing the nuking, there many countries quite capable of nuking an adversary in the modern world and most of them would be more likely to do so because they do not possess the same military advantage countries like the US do.

Is using nukes a good idea? I'd say unequivocally NO! Would a government who had nukes be crazy not to use nukes if confronted with overwhelming military attack from an adversary? YES!

I think a small country like France or England would be far more likely to use nukes in response to a WMD attack than the USA. The USA would be likely to use nukes if confronted by WMD's on the battle field but in retaliation we would be more likely to use conventional weapons to destroy small targets from a long distance or use over whelming military force on an adversary than simply nuke em!

A nuke is a last ditch type of weapon in modern times not a hair trigger use them or loose them weapon like they were in the cold war.

http://www.gizmag.com/nuclear-bomb-damage-map-nuke/12097/

I think most people who think on these unthinkable things seem to think a real nuclear exchange on population centers is most likely between Pakistan and India.

Meshal, I know lots of people have opinions about homosexuality, most of them are based in morality and this morality is based on parts of the Bible (or Koran) that state homosexuals are ungodly and should be killed or some other sort of negative ideas. The idea that homosexuality is immoral and wrong is not universal nor is the idea of homosexuality being simply a way some individuals express their natural emotions and sexual preference new. Homosexual behavior has always been a part of human society and always will be, it can be suppressed and out lawed but it does not go away.

The truth is that homosexuality and the sexual desire for some one of your own sex is indeed difficult for heterosexual people to understand especially when the people who form your own moral values say unequivocally that homosexuality is wrong. if you question them they always come up with the "unnatural" idea but if you point out that homosexual behavior is quite natural and is practiced in many if not most animals then they say well humans should know better as we are intelligent and animals are not.

Of course their argument is biased from the start and no argument can convince someone who refuses to consider any one else as correct. Homosexuality has been shown to be natural behavior, people are indeed born homosexual. It has even been demonstrated how homosexuality can even be helpful to reproduction. Evidence for these ideas have been provided many times on this forum, i suggest you read more of the threads on homosexuality to understand this.

There are species of animals that are all homosexual, all of them, and there are animals who change their sex routinely. Homosexual behavior can be forced on an individual as can heterosexual behavior. Even if you truly believe from a moral or religious stand point that it is wrong it's difficult to justify treating individuals who's behavior is different as wrong as long it does no harm to anyone else.

Our society or at least the ideas behind our society would, at least on the surface, appear be based on adults being able to freely choose their behavior as long as it does not imping on anyone elses life significantly. I would suggest that even if homosexual behavior is chosen their is no reason to justify denying anyone one their basic rights as human beings based on homosexual behavior.

You can think it's not right much as you or anyone can think that driving a motorcycle is not right or that oral sex is not right, or that eating raw fish is not right and you can think such behavior is wrong and that it is immoral and that these behaviors contribute to the moral decay of our society but unless you can prove such things then your dislike of them is not something that the rest of us need to base our behavior on.

Galileo, didn't exactly have a Celestron, it's a good bet his view wasn't all that clear. The image is a pretty good representation of the moon, you can see the seas, and craters, my binoculars give a much clearer view but the optics of my binoculars are far more advanced than what Galileo had.

Khryzs Maars, tell us about your idea in detail, links to other sources of information about the fuser would help too.

When does the omgponies go away?

some good ideas i supose...

nuclear fusers are very simple devices made as simple science projects...

they are a confermed form of nuclear fussion...

thanks for advice.

Can you provide links to information about these fusors? I am interested.

Actually a high altitude nuclear detonation is more damaging than one close to the ground due to interactions with the earths magnetic field and the effects of the earth absorbing the EMP when it is close to the ground.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse

The relatively small magnitude of the Starfish Prime EMP in Hawaii (about 5600 volts/metre) and the relatively small amount of damage done (for example, only 1 to 3 percent of streetlights extinguished)[8] led some scientists to believe, in the early days of EMP research, that the problem might not be as significant as was later realized. Newer calculations[9] showed that if the Starfish Prime warhead had been detonated over the northern continental United States, the magnitude of the EMP would have been much larger (22 to 30 kilovolts/metre) because of the greater strength of the Earth's magnetic field over the United States, as well as the different orientation of the Earth's magnetic field at high latitudes. These new calculations, combined with the accelerating reliance on EMP-sensitive microelectronics, heightened awareness that the EMP threat could be a very significant problem.

Merged post follows:

very funny

It has always bothered me that because I do not agree with all Conservative or Republican ideas that I am immediately labeled a Liberal or Democrat (as though there are only two possible ways of thinking) and that as a Liberal I am automatically assumed to believe everything Liberals are supposed to stand for.

Conservatives are more of a mono culture and Liberals are more of a jumble of different cultures or ways of thinking. But I do not think either party represents everyone no matter what culture they affiliate themselves with. I do know people who are Conservative who do not agree with all Conservative view points.

In a sane political system there would be several parties (at least) who would share power through coalitions instead of one group opposing another.

Far too many people do not really fit into either extreme for either party to really represent everyone. Several different parties would better represent everyone and allow for power sharing instead of constant dead locks between two opposing parties.

you could possibly dehydrate the person first.

there has been cases of people being lost in the Arctic, froze, then reviving once they warmed up.

 

Can you support this contention? No one has ever been revived after being frozen.

 

 

One theory of why this worked was because of the extreme lack of oxygen caused the cells to hibernate instead of dying, but the people lost probably got dehydrated first.

assuming that the rest of the cells stay pliable long enough, the water could probably freeze and expand without damaging anything.

 

Drying out the human body would be just was impossible to revive from as freezing.

No! I wanted to know how long giant squids live!

You left out lazercats!

Everything shakes mentioned and conscious control over pregnancy so recreational sex doesn't result in unwanted children! Oh yeah, practical immortality would be nice.

Check this out juice, it should give you some mental exercise and expand your ideas about life.

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/A/astrobiology_entries.html

What is at the core of the Earth?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georeactor

So it will much deeper in the crust where temperatures would be quite warm right? Mars said to have geysers so I think it's going to be pretty warm somewhere.

 

Thanks ttyo888.

Yes, assuming Mars is warmer inside like the Earth there might even be an aquifer on Mars and anaerobic organisms could very well live there.

Hey speaking of which scientists just discovered a bacteria that uses methane to produce oxygen.

 

Moontanman can you verify if this is true? I know that wikipedia has mistakes on the science parts.

 

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100324/full/news.2010.146.html

I think it is misleading to say oxygen is released in the same way photosynthesis releases oxygen, the bacteria actually use nitrogen oxides to produce oxygen it then uses the oxygen to metabolize methane, no free oxygen is produced. This is however an interesting metabolic pathway but some energetic reaction must produce the nitrogen oxides.

Many bacteria use oxides of various elements, usually a metal, to produce energy often oxygen is an intermediate part of the reaction but the oxygen is not released as waste like photosynthesis does. Even some metabolic pathways involving photosynthesis do not produce free oxygen. (some release sulfur) There are even metabolic pathways that do not use oxygen as energy at all but actually use sulfur or even hydrogen as an energy source.

I think mouse is wanting an underground oxygen atmosphere on Mars due to chemo-synthesis and I doubt this is possible. some sort of photosynthesis using another energy source such as heat or even radioactive particles might be possible in theory but the conditions to allow this are hard to imagine. Some fungi use gamma rays to produce food in a photosynthesis (gamma-synthesis?) process using melanin as a energy gathering pigment.

Chemo-synthesis is actually based in the heat energy of the earth released by radioactivity, this excess energy produces chemicals whose energy content is higher than it's ground state and life uses that chemical energy to metabolize. In other words, there is no free lunch.

It might be relevant to mention that the surface of mars is thought to contain lots of peroxide chemicals that might be used by life forms, even complex life forms as an energy source, these peroxides are produced by sunlight and might even be used as a body fluid by these life forms since hydrogen peroxides stay liquid at lower temps than pure water.

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/H/hydrogenperoxide.html#H2O2

I see thanks for clearing this up Moontanman.

 

so the result is CO2 instead right?

If I read the equation correctly the end result is eventually ferric oxide.

Where concentrations of organic material exceed the concentration of dissolved oxygen required for complete oxidation, microbial populations with specialized enzymes can reduce insoluble ferric oxide in aquifer soils to soluble ferrous hydroxide and use the oxygen released by that change to oxidize some of the remaining organic material:[1]

You'll notice this oxygen is not released into the environment but is used by the bacteria to oxidize more organic material, they have to have organic material to start the process, no net free oxygen is produced by these bacteria.

Well according to what I found out iron bacteria can turn ferrous oxide into ferrous hydroxide and oxygen.

 

Or is the article I found wrong?

Do you have a link to the article?

How do they do what?

It would take energy input to produce oxygen from ferric oxide, where would this energy come from? Photosynthesis uses sunlight to produce carbohydrates, oxygen is a waste product produced in the presence of sunlight, in the dark, plants use oxygen just like animals. Without a surplus of energy how would any martian microbes produce oxygen? Doing so would use more energy than they are getting from the chemicals like an over unity energy machine. For chemo-synthetic microbes energy is already bound up in the chemicals.

I am an atheist and I do not get my morals from god but I see the whole sex with a coma patient as fundamentally wrong on every level I can possibly conceive of, and just how deeply does your wife sleep skeptic? I am skeptical any one could have sex and not wake up. I thought my wife was a heavy sleeper

But most chemosynthetic organism today use oxygen right? If say all of the photosynthetic orgamism die out, will they suffocate?

No, the vast majority of chemo-synthetic organisms are poisoned by free oxygen and would do quite well if it were to disappear.

It's no more implausible than nuclear detonations or hydrogen fusion. As for a flying Chernobyl you really should read the article and it's take on risk mitigation. Having made my living at one time at Du Pont and being part of a very successful "risk mitigation" team you should know there is a big difference between the unexpected accident and the expected accident. As is quoted in the article one hydrogen bomb detonation released many times the radioactive debris of Chernobyl and no one died, Chernobyl is not a reasonable example of risk mitigation by any sense of the word and using it as such is nothing more than fear mongering.

it might. It depends on the materials. We could build a lunar space elevator with current materials if we wanted.

 

I'm not so sure, a space elevator implies an orbit that allows the anchor of the elevator to be stationary over the surface of the object it rises from, a 28 day orbit would mean a very tall, much taller than from the earth, elevator.

 

also, you really don't want a nuclear powered rocket for lifting things from earth into space. you really don't.

 

 

And why would that be? Risk mitigation can deal with any risks involved.