Project Sundial

I've Watched that video, interesting question is how accurate is the information? I think the Soviets too designed such a weapon.
Didn't the 50Mt Tsar bomb related to this weapon or it's proposed 100Mt version?
 
Tzoli said:
've Watched that video, interesting question is how accurate is the information?
Click to expand...
Not exactly. According to available sources, Teller proposed to use gigaton-scale devices, such as SUNDIAL, as "skyburner bombs". They were supposed to be exploded in space, 50-80 km over the enemy territory. The enormous x-ray flux, absorbed by upper atmosphere, would create something that Teller called "nuclear pancake" - an enormous disk-shaped flat fireball, hundreds of kilometers in radius. The heat, emitted by this plasma shroud, would ignite everything flammable below it, creating essentially a continental-scale firestorm over territories as big as Germany. Everything below would either burn, or die from neutron radiation, released at the moment of explosion. But - since the fireball did not contact the surface, there would be zero fallout. The scorched ground would not be irradiated seriously, and could be reclaimed fast.
 
Tzoli said:
Didn't the 50Mt Tsar bomb related to this weapon or it's proposed 100Mt version?
Click to expand...
The AH602 was initially designed as three-stage 100+ megaton device. For the live test, the third stage was replaced with inert one, which reduced the yield to circa 58 megatons. This was done because calculations showed that full-scale blast would creat enormous fallout, which could easily spread to populated areas, such as Karelia or Scandinavia, causing massive damage. Soviet leadership did not want to create major international crisis, so they decdied that 50 megaton air blast - which would be clean, since fireball did not contact the surface - would be impressive enough (they were right)
 
Dilandu said:
Not exactly. According to available sources, Teller proposed to use gigaton-scale devices, such as SUNDIAL, as "skyburner bombs". They were supposed to be exploded in space, 50-80 km over the enemy territory. The enormous x-ray flux, absorbed by upper atmosphere, would create something that Teller called "nuclear pancake" - an enormous disk-shaped flat fireball, hundreds of kilometers in radius. The heat, emitted by this plasma shroud, would ignite everything flammable below it, creating essentially a continental-scale firestorm over territories as big as Germany. Everything below would either burn, or die from neutron radiation, released at the moment of explosion. But - since the fireball did not contact the surface, there would be zero fallout. The scorched ground would not be irradiated seriously, and could be reclaimed fast.
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Aside from being utterly on fire...
 
Dilandu said:
Well, the fire would die out reasonably fast, and while the surface would be utterly scorched, it would not be significantly irradiated.
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A couple of weeks. I live in "forest fire country", fires burn a long time without anyone trying to put them out.

Though the resulting firestorms might successfully draw rainstorms over...
 
Tzoli said:
I've Watched that video, interesting question is how accurate is the information? I think the Soviets too designed such a weapon.
Didn't the 50Mt Tsar bomb related to this weapon or it's proposed 100Mt version?
Click to expand...
Tsar Bomba was - in context! - just a big bomb. The actual 'Doomsday Machine' in Dr Strangelove was in reality 'Dead Hand.' Peter George (the author of the novel Red Alert that inspired the film) and Stanley Kubrick would not have been aware of it specifically but it was a perfect distillation of Mutual Assured Destruction. Dead Hand, also known as 'Perimeter' itself was and still is real.

Dead Hand - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

The more time passes and the more that is revealed, Dr Strangelove looks more and more like a documentary. We keep rolling the dice and one day...
 

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Dilandu said:
Not exactly. According to available sources, Teller proposed to use gigaton-scale devices, such as SUNDIAL, as "skyburner bombs". They were supposed to be exploded in space, 50-80 km over the enemy territory. The enormous x-ray flux, absorbed by upper atmosphere, would create something that Teller called "nuclear pancake" - an enormous disk-shaped flat fireball, hundreds of kilometers in radius. The heat, emitted by this plasma shroud, would ignite everything flammable below it, creating essentially a continental-scale firestorm over territories as big as Germany. Everything below would either burn, or die from neutron radiation, released at the moment of explosion. But - since the fireball did not contact the surface, there would be zero fallout. The scorched ground would not be irradiated seriously, and could be reclaimed fast.
Click to expand...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malevil

I have this feeling that Robert Merle heard about that nightmarish weapon, and used it for the novel. The pitch: on Easter 1977, a bomb of that kind incinerate the entire France. The narrator and a few others only survive through random luck - they were in a old castle underground cellar, bottling wine.


This was France very own "On the beach" albeit with very different themes and message.

When I spoke, I am fairly certain it was purely for Meyssonnier’s sake. I just couldn’t go on any longer bearing what he was thinking to himself over there, all alone, sitting in the blackness in front of my desk.


“Thomas?”


“Yes.”


“How do you explain the fact that there hasn’t been any radioactivity so far?”


“It may have been a lithium bomb,” Thomas said. Then in a weak yet objective tone, apparently devoid of all emotion, he added, “It was a clean bomb.”


I heard Meyssonnier shift in his chair. “Clean!” he echoed in a dead voice.


“That means it doesn’t produce fallout,” Thomas’s voice explained.


“Yes, I realized that,” Meyssonnier said.


The silence fell again. Breathing, nothing more. I pressed my hands against my temples. If the bomb was clean, that meant that whoever exploded it intended to follow it up with an invasion. But he wouldn’t be doing any invading. He had been destroyed in his turn; the total radio silence told us that much. And as for France, it wasn’t worth bothering with the possibility that she might have had time to engage in any war. She had been destroyed as part of a global strategy, so the territory could be occupied. Or so the enemy could be prevented from occupying it. A tiny preliminary precaution. A little pawn, sacrificed at the very beginning of the game. In short, “a calculated write-off,” as the military jargon had it.


“And would that be enough, Thomas, just one bomb?”


I didn’t add “to destroy the whole of France.” He knew what I meant.


“Yes,” he said, “one large bomb would be enough, exploded twenty-five miles up, above Paris.”


He said no more, obviously feeling there was nothing to be gained from further details. He had spoken in a clearly articulated, unemotional voice, as though he was dictating a math problem to a classroom of students.


That’s the sort of problem I ought to have used myself, it occurred to me, in the days when I was a teacher with students. A bit more up to date, after all, than the one about the two taps and the plughole. Given that the explosion cannot transmit itself as pressure because of the low air density at high altitudes, but given also that the effect of its heat, for the same reason, will be experienced at a distance that will be proportionally increased by the height of the explosion, at what height above Paris must you explode a bomb of so many megatons in order to burn down Strasbourg, Dunkirk, Brest, Biarritz, Port-Vendres, and Marseilles? And I could have introduced variations too. Have two X factors instead of one; have them calculate the necessary number of megatons as well as the optimum altitude.


“It’s not just France,” Thomas said suddenly. “It’s the whole of Europe. The world. Otherwise we’d have been able to pick up something on the radio.”
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Archibald said:
I have this feeling that Robert Merle heard about that nightmarish weapon, and used it for the novel. The pitch: on Easter 1977, a bomb of that kind incinerate the entire France. The narrator and a few others only survive through random luck - they were in a old castle underground cellar, bottling wine.
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Yep, apparently he got some hint about Teller "skyburner" proposal.
 
monyon1712 said:
yea but fire is better than radiation I think.
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Yes and no. Yes in that you can see what the threat is, and that it doesn't kill you but leave you alive and suffering unless you get burned. No in that it removes oxygen from the local area and creates weather effects that can make the fires worse (firestorms like in Dresden and Yellowstone)

Also, remember that there is basically no lingering radiation from SUNDIAL, while fire is lingering.
 
Scott Kenny said:
No in that it removes oxygen from the local area and creates weather effects that can make the fires worse (firestorms like in Dresden and Yellowstone)
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Hard to say, actually, the continental-size firestorms weren't modelled, as far as I know. Wouldn't fire at center quickly die out due to oxygen being blocked from reaching the area?
 
I would say it's hard to say how anoxic the central regions would be, but that we'll be lucky if we never have to find out.
 
Tzoli said:
I've Watched that video, interesting question is how accurate is the information? I think the Soviets too designed such a weapon.
Didn't the 50Mt Tsar bomb related to this weapon or it's proposed 100Mt version?
Click to expand...
https://thebulletin.org/2021/11/the-untold-story-of-the-worlds-biggest-nuclear-bomb/ The information comes from the atomic scientist bulletin and if you search the scientist Edwin Teller its even describes he was part of that project. the Tsar Bomba is nothing compared to the bomb they wanted to build they first started with 1000 megatons after that they wanted to try 10000 megatons but the project was cancelled due to concerns of the scientific community that calculated the risks of testing these bombs
 

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