Megaton and Mr Burke's Request

[WrathOfDeadguy]

I suppose that the Pip-Boy's sensors are just really, really sensitive then. Remember, we are talking about technology from almost 70 years in the future, even if it looks like it was made decades ago- in a world where nuclear technology advanced so far, one would expect that their detectors and protective gear would be greatly improved as well.

 

Being in a crater, wouldn't a bulk of the explosion be directed upwards into the air, exxagerating the height of the 'shroom cloud and minimizing spread? Plus the bomb may have been designed and intended for air burst mode, then it malfunctioned (obviously), hit the ground undetonated, causing the eventual blast to be even less effective.

 

It's rather difficult to explain as I really don't know the math behind it, but that isn't quite how it works. The fireball produced by the explosion is so big and so hot that it will produce that blast wave even as it rises (you can see this effect if you watch a video of one of the nuclear tests taking place on a cloudy day; the effect on the ground is more obvious but there is still a significant shockwave as the fireball rises), and the vacuum created as it dissipates will still suck up a column of dust and debris. As for airburst vs ground detonation- some effects are different (most notably EMP, which is far more powerful from an airburst), but by and large you get the same result with a nuke. We just don't have any surface structures that can survive a direct hit; if we did then you'd probably see a marked difference in the physical damage done, but as is the only way anything will survive at ground zero or within the "death zone" is pure dumb luck.

 

The physics are a bit different, of course, for an underground blast; if the bomb site is buried (and I mean buried deep), then the fireball is contained and all you really get is an artificial earthquake that makes the ground explode and produces a rather large crater. This, however, is not the case at Megaton.

 

Of course, the fact that the bomb obviously malfunctioned is very telling; it would not have ever "just gone off" on its own. If the trigger mechanism for the detonator fails, that's it- while the conventional explosives may still detonate on impact or at a later time from some kind of damage, the explosion will not be the perfectly symmetrical spherical blast necessary to compress the core to critical mass (assuming we're dealing with an implosion bomb, which we probably are). Your act of disarming it (if that's what you chose to do) was more than likely just the removal of some vital component (for example one of the explosive segments, which would ensure that even if reactivated it could never go nuclear), while if you accepted Mr. Burke's offer you would have simply added a new device to replace the faulty trigger circuit. Unless, of course, the bomb was the far cruder "gun type" bomb like the Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima- in that case, if the explosives go off at all you're pretty well screwed as it works by smashing two masses of Uranium together (almost all weapons, however, are of the implosion type- the gun design was only used because it was guaranteed to work no matter what and the implosion design wasn't tested until a month before it was used).

[Guest]

This is a great topic guys, it is very informative.

 

I noticed near the start people were mentioning how unlikely it would be that Tenpenny Tower along with many other buildings would not be standing. And you are right but in the art book in the collectors edition it makes mention on how they did reasearch on what the actual effects of a nuclular bomb dropping on DC would do and what would be left.

The answer was "Not Much" so they took some liberties on putting stuff in the game that there would not be in real life. So just remeber this is just a game and that it is made to be fun not realistic.

[ComicKaze]

Good effort but as Fallout 3 is an alternate universe, all the scientific principles and technology in that universe are also different. Instead of a dependance on oil, following WWII where our histories diverged, the Fallout world ran everything on fusion power. That's why the cars all explode so dramatically when you shoot them. They run on fusion. Those are in effect, mini nuclear explosions much the same as shooting the fatboy.

 

The bomb in Megaton was not likely the same technology that you associate from what you gleaned from our history but even then, we have bombs that are much lower in yield or have different kinds of fallout (uranium v. plutonium). You can make nuclear weapons dirty or cleaner. If you surround the core with gold or cobalt, etc. you can make a salted bomb which yields a ridiculous amount of fallout. Anyway, there is a difference between tactical nuclear weapons (small weapons for use in the field with low yields) and strategic nuclear weapons (which are the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

 

The science, medicine, and physis in Fallout are all very different from our own. You cannot take a medicine or drug to remove radation from your body. Radiation instantly goes right through your body and permeates all your cells and causes damage to their genetic structure. You must wait for radiation to decay which takes hundreds of years.

 

Your basic thesis is based on the nuke in megaton having roughly the same yield as those nuclear weapons we are most familar with...and perhaps it's a good guess but it's really only based on exterior dimensions and overall look. The nuke in Megaton is obviously patterned after the Little Boy and Fat Man bombs of WWII. That's odd and raises another question if you are really serious about this (which I think is a bit absurd). Basically the type of bomb in megaton is the kind that is dropped at altitude. These bombs are the type are specifically designed to be dropped by plane at very high altitudes (32,000 ft) and exploded about 2000 feet above the target so the concussive damage radiates downward (also minimizes nuclear fallout since it explodes in the atmosphere so the wind will spread most of the radioactive materials, damage is caused by the thermobaric shockwave that comes down). Why would the Chinese be dropping bombs by plane? Missile technology obviously exists but it seems the chinese are still dropping air burst bombs by traditional bomber and not by ICBMs. And at the altitude that they are dropped by, you can do some math with physics to figure out just how fast the bombs were travelling at terminal velocity from a height of 32,000 ft. If it failed to explode over the megaton area and actually hit the ground to make a crater...that's totally ridiculous. The bomb and all it's components should probably have been destroyed on impact without going to critical mass (neutron reflectors cracked or separated, core vaporized). There should not be a physical bomb left in that crater unless it's amazingly strong.

[WrathOfDeadguy]

An Air-dropped weapon in the age of the ICBM is still plenty believable. Although the loss rate for bombers would probably be atrocious, every major nuclear power today maintains a large number of bombers capable of delivering conventional gravity bombs. Our own B-52H is one such design- as are the B-1B and the B-2A, although both of those planes were designed more around the use of precision guided and standoff munitions like cruise missiles. Still, the concept of the nuclear triad is still very much alive- the whole point is redundancy; the more ways you have of delivering your weapons the more likely your attack is to succeed. Like ballistic missile submarines, bombers are less likely to be caught on the ground by a surprise attack- and unlike the missiles fired from either silos or submarines, the target package may be altered right up until the drop point, or the entire mission aborted without the loss of the weapon or its delivery system (a missile abort destroys the entire weapon system after launch).

 

The markings on the bomb, however, indicate that it is an American weapon, Chinese. This would mean two things:

 

-First, that the weapon may not have been dropped from altitude; it may have been on board a bomber taking off from a nearby airbase which was either shot down by the Chinese (they had invaded at the time of the nuclear exchange, and since you can find remnant Chinese forces in the DC area it isn't too much of a stretch) or damaged/disabled by the detonation of the bomb(s) which struck DC. SOP for a US bomber in distress carrying nuclear ordinance was to jettison the weapon at low altitude before attempting a landing- an unarmed bomb would not likely explode from impact alone, but its weight would make the damaged plane difficult to handle and the combination of impact and burning jet fuel might set off the conventional explosives. Also, the bomb could very possibly break free of its mountings during a crash; a prominent US General was actually crushed to death by a bomb which broke loose during a crash back in the 1950s, and I believe that is where the policy originated.

 

The Megaton bomb may have been jettisoned, but since nobody was left who particularly cared to attempt a recovery it ended up just sitting there for 200 years. Of course, that's rampant speculation, but it makes a fair bit of sense.

 

-Second, that it may not have ever been armed in the first place, as the bomber that carried it (if my wild speculation is assumed to be true) was nowhere near its target.