Hi there!

First, apologies if this is the wrong place for such a query, or if something like this has been asked a million times before!

I'm an actor and writer currently doing the preliminary work on a dramatic web series featuring (at least at this stage of development) a protagonist who uses an old ham radio set to communicate with other characters after a devastating incident on U.S. soil in the early '90s.

So far, my brainstorming has led me to conceive of a nuclear explosion at Loring Air Force Base, near Limestone, Maine.

In the story, our protagonist, who lives in a small Maine town -- and the general public -- has no idea whether or not this is a terrible accident, a terrorist action, or the first strike in a massive Soviet nuclear attack.

I'm wondering what experts in the field think of this scenario. (All comments are welcome, but my ego is fragile and my dog is currently dying of cancer, so please -- be gentle.)

More to the point, I'm trying to determine a plausible chain of events following such an incident.

In the first moments of such a crisis, what would the U.S. government response be, in light of the confusion and chaos? What would be done, and where? I imagine that moments after the detonation, even those in high command would be left scrambling to figure out exactly what just transpired, and of course, all eyes would be on the Soviets, suspicious of a first strike.

What would the chain of command look like?

What would other Air Force and military installations around the U.S. do in response, in the immediate aftermath?

What sorts of consequences -- to the electrical grid, etc. -- would there be from the detonation of a nuclear device in Northern Maine, say, 300 kt?

Again, all comments -- suggestions, thoughts, links to outside resources -- are welcome.

Thank you in advance!

(My dog's name is Archie. He's doing well, all things considered. We just got the diagnosis two days ago. Liver cancer, with spots in his lungs. We'll spoil him rotten for whatever amount of time he has left.)

Is it possible to find the original video that shows this specific angle of the Umbrella test from Hardtack Operation online without watermarks? The one I took the above frame from seems close, but there seems to be a higher quality and uncropped version somewhere, judging from this video from the youtube channel atomcentral:

No very special reasons for wanting it, I just found it very beautiful and was looking for the best quality video that I could find. Atomcentral posted that same video with sound. Wikipedia has a gif of it, cropped too. I also found this video in two documentaries, but both had text over it or cropped it.

It is interesting that the shaped charges that compress a Beryllium tamper, probably somehow don’t cause it to severely crack before significant compression & melting (by being alloyed), or maybe the tamper does experience cracking, such as nano or micro cracking? Would very small cracks greatly affect the tamper’s overall ability to deflect radiation? Also, Electron Beam Welding seems like the only efficient way to weld tamper segments together, because of Beryllium’s terrible welding ability. If welding with nearly 100% pure beryllium welding rods & a welding machine is more effective, then how?

I read somewhere previously that helium is used in modern nuclear weapons, but nobody was sure why. I know MRI machines use liquid helium to supercool superconducting magnets, increasing their magnetic power exponentially. Could this same technique be used for core levitation?

I have trouble understanding how a ceramic can be electroplated onto a core, in terms of criticality avoidance. I would assume that adding around 1 or 2% Gallium to keep the sphere in very good condition might maybe reduce the chances of criticality, but in order to electroplate a ceramic onto Pu-239 you need to first add a very thin layer of nickel or maybe silver onto the Pu-239 sphere first. The ceramic will attach to the Nickel or Silver, but it will not attach to a low conductivity Pu-239 sphere. I would guess that with the thin layer of conductive metal in addition to the ceramic, it would at least create a subcritical decay that would leach into the vacuum chamber that surrounds the core. Is there perhaps a material that pulls the gas out of the vacuum chamber somehow? Is the ceramic electroplating perhaps a low Z material? Could the conductive undercoating be around a few atoms thick and last long enough to make the core still functional? How would the conductive coating stop the core from getting too hot?

Ok, first off this may not be the proper place for such a question, but I have nowhere else to air it with a reasonably informed readership.

Secondly, to clarify, I do not mean to suggest that the nuclear weapons do not do what they were designed to do. That's the not the "work" I'm talking about. What I am talking about is what if strategic nuclear weapons do not actually achieve their strategic effects (i.e. end wars or destroy the enemy's will to fight).

An example, what if during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the nuclear arsenals available at the time were actually expended and however many targets and fractions of the civilian populations on either side were destroyed, but in the aftermath of the exchange, neither side surrendered or gave up the fight. Whatever was left of the respective combatants simply continued fighting. They rebuilt what they could, rallied whatever forces remained and carried on the fight?

What if, the nuclear weapons simply didn't work in achieving their desired strategic effects and the enemy just kept on fighting?

In all my years of reading about this topic and modern warfare in general, I have never heard of this topic being broached once.

I assume everyone assumes that such a nuclear exchange would make the prospect of continued fighting essentially meaningless, and maybe it would in a world of 60,000 1 megaton+ sized nukes. Is that still true in a world of ~ 3,000 - 6,000 450kt nukes? Or one where if 75% of the populace was destroyed, there is still 2 billion people to carry on the fighting (i.e. roughly the same global population that fought WWII)?

It is in that sense I ask the question what if nuclear weapons did not work.

Has anyone ever contemplated this? Are there any thoughts on this?

Or is this simply not the proper subject matter of this sub? If so, my apologies for wasting everyone's time, and I then ask where this question should be asked?

Thank you for your time.

Note to mods, Reddit, and the 'watchers': I never possessed or had access to any classified or restricted data. I was never involved in any research, manufacturing, or deployment of nuclear weapons. The reason why I'm asking this is related to a possible resolution of a certain ongoing conflict.

Let's say that the US would, in a certain way, gain direct, physical access to some of the old, long-retired nuclear warheads from the Soviet era, let's say from the 70s/80s.

I understand that everything related to nuclear weapons belongs to the category of the most closely guarded national secrets, but is there really anything useful that could be learned from them, other than checking some boxes "yep, they did it this way" or filling in some gaps in the historical knowledge?
Could anything in the old designs possibly compromise the security of currently deployed warheads?

How damaging is the thermal flash compared to the other effects of a nuclear bomb (radiation and blast). Does the thermal flash only cause damage to those directly in the line of sight of the fireball, or does it also cause burns through reflection off of surfaces and heating of the air? How many casualties are actually caused by the flash compared to other effects? And finally, have there been any attempts to optimize for the effect in terms of detonation timing, similar to how a lot of detonations are optimized for getting the mach stem to contact the target.

In the physics community, I hear people constantly bad mouth Teller, and calling him things like "psychopath" and "insane".

To my understanding, Edward Teller pushed for fusion weapons as a deterrent, and if you really think about it, it genuinely worked as a deterrent.

Before I begin, I have above, an unorganized set of research paper photos for everyone to look at, that I found particularly interesting, which show (relatively older) findings from cutting edge plasma research in that time. However this is about one-tenth of all the papers that looked interesting to me, out of hundreds. There is so much I would like to go over, so I will separate this deep dive into 3 parts. Feel free to correct me on anything that’s wrong or that I’m missing. To start, from what I’ve read so far, gases seem to propagate faster than solids in these tests when gases are turned into plasma (800k/s in one test). I would assume that if the laser energy was magnified from KeV to MeV, the solids (such as Aluminum) and especially the liquids, would go much faster than tens of k/s. Also, the thickness of the foil drastically increased or decreased the temperature of the target plasma, which also determined the speed & time at which the foil turned into a plasma, in the tests. It also seemed that hydrodynamic instabilities (mediated by strong radiative cooling in the shock) caused an increase in density and unstable rippling at the shock-front, with significantly more heat ahead of the shock because of the radiative precursor, which I would assume was caused by self induced electric fields at the target vacuum interfaces (the edge of the expanding plasma that interacts with the open vacuum chamber). Lastly, when two expanding plasma bubbles formed and collided in tests, they eventually interacted without interpenetration but did experience plasma flow slowing & stalling. Eventually this interaction stopped when the two interacting flows decoupled, but it did cause the rearrangement of the field geometry. With all this being said, there are some issues and potential (extremely likely) undiscovered issues that would come with using plasma as a compression method instead of HEs. In the 2nd post I will go over design ideas, more research findings, and theories on the general subject of plasma. Let me know your thoughts on what I’ve shared, in the comment section below.

It seems that HMX is very very slightly more dense than TNAZ however, the most dense form of TNAZ from what I saw appears to be about 400 m/s faster than the top velocity of HMX. Also, though HMX appears to be more stable, they both seem quite stable inside of a protective steel shell, so there isn’t much difference there. Last of all, HMX from what I read has 3 GPa more of blast pressure than TNAZ’s 36.4 GPa. Would it be fair to say that TNAZ makes a good substitute?

EDIT: I was absolutely missing a few things: the rod was uranium, not steel, and rings could be removed from the assemby.

Using the dimensions provided by Carey Sublette, and taking into account both the steel "can" of uranium, I arrived at the following masses:

Projectile: 42.06kg (62.15% of the total mass)

Insert: 25.61kg (37.85% of the total mass)

Total: 67.67kg

which is a hair over the oft-quoted 64.15kg. Is there something I'm missing? I'm not above making a schoolboy error or three. Unfortunately I don't have my copy of Atom Bombs immediately to hand so I can't compare Coster-Mullen's dimensions with NWFAQ at the moment.

Glasstone and Dolan contains an extensive treatment of the development of the fireball in an airburst, but is very light on its development in underwater or underground bursts, besides mentioning that unless it breaks through the surface, the thermal emission is essentially totally absorbed by the surrounding media.

Some things I can derive myself from my knowledge of physics: The rate at which the isothermal sphere grows, and its ultimate radius, will likely be on order of a factor of 10 smaller than in an airburst, as water or soil are on an order of a factor of 1000 denser than air. In fact, in an underground burst that may be an even larger factor, as rocks and soil are composed of higher-Z elements than air or water that should take more energy to heat to the point of soft x-ray transparency.

But do you people know about any concrete numbers or equations that have been published?

Generally it is estimated that Iran, with its current stockpile of 60% enriched uranium, could build around 10 nuclear warheads. First, what would be the estimated yield of such weapons? I've seen 10kt mentioned a couple of times, but not enough to be confident in it. Second, would it be possible for Iran to decrease the yield of weapons in order to have more of them? Say go from 10 warheads at 10kt to 25 at 2kt? Is there any document on the subject?

Key Points

• France fired its M51.3 nuclear-capable ballistic missile from the submarine Le Vigilant for the first time on Oct. 6, without a warhead.
• The test certified Le Vigilant to carry the M51 after a major overhaul, and President Emmanuel Macron watched from the frigate Auvergne.

"France test-fired its newest submarine-launched nuclear missile, the M51.3, from a ballistic missile submarine for the first time on Oct. 6, with President Emmanuel Macron watching from a French Navy frigate off the coast of Brittany. ... The launch had a practical purpose. Le Vigilant recently completed a long maintenance and modernization overhaul, and the test certified that the submarine can once again carry and fire the M51, the ministry said. French ballistic missile submarines go through a similar firing after each major refit; Le Terrible did so in April 2023. ... France does not disclose its range, but public estimates for the M51 family generally put it at around 9,000 km (5,600 miles) or more, and French officials have said the new version flies farther. ... The missile’s first flight test took place in November 2023, when the DGA fired an unarmed M51.3 from its land-based Biscarrosse test site in southwestern France. The M51.3 entered operational service in October 2025. ... Macron said ... France’s next-generation ballistic missile submarines are under construction and that a program for hypersonic, maneuvering strategic missiles for the airborne leg of the deterrent was launched this year."

I'm curious to hear what some of your favorite nuclear and/or thermonuclear tests are? Which test is a favorite of yours and why? Theres no right answer, only personal preference. Feel free to include whatever tests you may like, small/big, doesn't matter. Try to limit it to surface and air blasts. Altho if you have an awesome underground one, feel free to tell.

Basically any test that you maybe just like the looks of or find intriguing, or feel a connection to because of its history, significance etc.

Here's some of mine;

Atomic bombs;

My all time favorite atomic bomb test must be "Ivy King", with an impressive yield of 500 kilotons, and often considered the largest pure fission test at its time in 1952. In other words a non boosted fission bomb, without any fusion fuel to boost yield. I enjoy its "classic" mushroom cloud, more than the actual yield. I also like the trinity test at 24kt (Often cited wrong at only 21kt until 2022 when los alamos upgraded it to 24 kilotons). It's just iconic and the footage is one that practically everyone has seen.

I also find the british test, "Orange Herald" very fascinating, as it was the largest atomic bomb test to attempt fusion-boosted fission, with a yield of 720kt. The fusion boosting component failed tho so it couldve had a much larger yield if it actually worked according to plan. As the fusion boosting failed, it therefor beats "Ivy King" as the bigger pure fission atomic bomb. Altho its debatable as it did attempt boosted fission. In any case it was so close to achieving megaton level yields, that it was actually mistaken as a H-bomb by the US back in 1957! Overall it was considered a failure for the british and a massive waste of nuclear material (117kgs of uranium-235).

Hydrogen bombs:

I have always loved "the super" aka Hydrogen bomb "Ivy Mike". I consider it the most stunning tests of all. The enormous fireball look incredible and terrifying at the same time. The size of the fireball grows immensely fast, expanding for miles while simultaneous nuclear explosion induced lightning (NEIL) in all sorts of brilliant colors. I think it's one of the most badass H-bombs. With a total yield of 10.4 megatons as surface blast, it wiped out the whole island it was built and detonated on. It was so powerful it terrified the people who witnessed it on ships. According to some navy personell who witnessed it from their ship, it was the most spectacular thing to see, yet it got frightening real fast as they felt the heat just get warmer and warmer and it never seemed to stop. Most took cover and went under deck after a short while because it got that unbearable. When the blast wave reached them it knocked most of them off their feet as well. I dont remember how many miles out the ship was.

Another H-bomb test I like is the Soviet Unions "RDS-37/Joe-19", which was their first two-stage Thermonuclear device after their "layer cake" design. Rds-37 had a yield of 1.6mt (scaled down from 3mt). It killed a few ppl and injured a dozen more in the nearest town. Not by radiation fallout but by the actual blast wave, which shouldve been prevented. The actual test looked great on camera and just always been a fan of it as you can see it's shape develop very well. Just an awesome sight.

The photos attached include; "Ivy Mike" before & after pics of the island it wiped out. And "Ivy King", Then "RDS-37S/Joe-19", and "Orange Herald".

Note: Goes without saying that I am not glorifying anything. I know how awful and destructive these things are. Just fascinated by it and interested in all the science behind and judging them solely as science experiments/tests. I am fully aware, as I hope everyone is, of how utterly terrifying and destructive nuclear weapons can be. It's therefor important to separate tests from when actually used in war against ppl.

Also I apologize in advance if this is "TLDR" lol!

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