That's a big bomb

[scaeagles]

A freakin' 700 ton bomb? Yikes!

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/03/30/060330162648.wxde5ocl.html

[Gemini Cricket]

I hope this will be covered well by the media in the area before it happens. It could freak people out. (Not that you can see out from a casino.) Ha ha. :D

[BarTopDancer]

He said the Russians have been notified of the test, which is scheduled for the first week of June at the Nevada test range.

"We're also making sure that Las Vegas understands," Tegnelia said.

Why do I have the video of 99 luftballoons in my head?

And this

http://rpgplayers.tripod.com/zerowing/snap003.jpg

[Ghoulish Delight]

A conservative 1985 estimate of the total world aresenal (don't know if it was nuclear or nuclear + conventional) put the number at around the equivalent of 10 tons of dynamite per human being.

[Gemini Cricket]

10 tons of dynamite per human being.
Holy cow!

Anyone remember the movie 'The Day After'? Scared the poop outta me as a kid.
:eek:

[Moonliner]

Wow!

That could just possibly be the biggest bomb since Chicken Little.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Sorry, the number was more like 4.5 tons of TNT-equivalence per capita. That's only including nuclear arms, and it was 1982, not 1985. Whether there might be more or less nuclear firewpower now...who knows. Disaramament treaties surely have reduced the number of warheads lying around, but advances in technology surely have made those the do exist more powerful. And even a small fraction of that is still a staggering number.

A little bit of perspective on what a 700 ton bomb means:

1 pound of TNT in a car kills everybody within and leaves a fiery wreck.
10 pounds totally demolishes the average suburban home.
1000 pounds [that's one half of one ton] packed inside an old German tank sent the turret to disappear in low overhead clouds.*

So, imagine 1400 German tanks lined up in the Nevada desert...

*Quoted from the book Metamagical Themas, by Douglas Hofstadter, attributed therein to one Wolf H. Fahrenbach

[scaeagles]

And I would figure the explosives being used in the bomb are more powerful than TNT. not that I am any sort of demolition expert.

[Ghoulish Delight]

And I would figure the explosives being used in the bomb are more powerful than TNT. not that I am any sort of demolition expert.700 tons is not the literal weight of the bomb. When talking about the "tonage" of a bomb, it refers to the explosive force and means that "X number of tons of TNT would produce the same force explosion."

[scaeagles]

Ahhh...here I was figuring how they were ever gonna drop something that big anywhere. Don't I feel a bit stupid....

I did, of course, realize that was how nuclear weapons were rated....I did not think that 20 kiloton nukes required thrust to launch an actual 20 kiloton (in weight) bomb. I did not realize all other explosives were done in the same way.

[tracilicious]

700 tons is not the literal weight of the bomb. When talking about the "tonage" of a bomb, it refers to the explosive force and means that "X number of tons of TNT would produce the same force explosion."

Thanks for that, as I was picturing a ginormous bomb.

[€uroMeinke]

I don't know what was Hiroshima, 15 kilotons? This is but a fraction - I want to see a Real mushroom cloud.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Oh, and I just noticed that this is a British report, which leaves some ambiguity.

Do they really mean tonne, or did they just "translate" the Amercain defense official's "ton" into "tonne"?

An American standard "ton", which can also be called a "short ton" is defined to be exactly 2,000lbs.

A "tonne" however, as commonly used in Britain, is a metric ton which is 1,000 kilograms, which is actually about 2,200lbs.

So, if they really mean "tonne", then it's actually 770 tons. However it's probably more likely that the reporter didn't know the disctinction, or decided to ignore the relatively insignificant 10% difference and just "translated" ton to tonne and left the 700 alone.

(incidentally, a 700 ton bomb would be a 635 tonne bomb)

[BarTopDancer]

I want to see a Real mushroom cloud.

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2005/04/20/mushroom_cloud_wideweb__430x269.jpg

[Alex]

Video of the May 4, 1988 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq2DL7NXM38&search=pepcon%5C) explosion of the PEPCON rocket fuel factory outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. The resulting mushroom cloud momentarily had people thinking that Henderson, Nevada had been nuked by the Russians.

In the video note the time between the explosion and hearing the explosion and just how loud it was from a camera position many miles away.

[scaeagles]

That was amazing.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Video of the May 4, 1988 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq2DL7NXM38&search=pepcon%5C) explosion of the PEPCON rocket fuel factory outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. The resulting mushroom cloud momentarily had people thinking that Henderson, Nevada had been nuked by the Russians.Gotta love the 80s...when they thought the Russions would actually bother to nuke Henderson, NV.

[Alex]

Well, it isn't so farfetched to think they might nuke Hoover Dam and miss.

I don't know how many people thought that, that is just the recollection of one of my former coworkers who lived in Vegas at the time and was in school when the building started shaking.

[Moonliner]

Yup, people were silly back then. As opposed to today when people think Osama bin Laden is going to attack Dillingham, Alaska (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-secure28mar28,0,3284078.story?coll=la-home-headlines).

[scaeagles]

It seems as if we are talking about a literal 700 tons of explosives, not explosive yield.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060331/D8GMGPLG8.html

"Plans for a Pentagon-led experiment that involves detonating 700 tons of explosives in the desert drew criticism from state leaders and a disarmament activist."

"The test, named "Divine Strake," will involve nearly 40 times the amount of commercial ammonium nitrate and fuel oil explosive set off in the largest open-air, non-nuclear blast at the site to date. In 2002, 18 tons of explosives were set off at the Nevada Test Site."

[NickO'Time]

Holy cow!

Anyone remember the movie 'The Day After'? Scared the poop outta me as a kid.
:eek:
I remember this too well and couldn't sleep for a couple of days. Scariest thing is it could happen at anytime. Times have changed.

[Kevy Baby]

It seems as if we are talking about a literal 700 tons of explosives, not explosive yield.I wonder what the explosive yield is?