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Comment by ipnon | Hacker News Reader

It was a pretty damn big explosion nonetheless. The US strategic warheads max out at around 1.3 megatons these days. It's hard to imagine a blast 9 times stronger than what even the US military deems excessive in an Armageddon scenario.

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It's not because they're excessive, it's because the deaths/gram are better for smaller warheads, so you can get more Armageddon per missile with smaller warheads

Yes, four 1MT explosions in a spaced square do more damage than a single 4MT in the centre of that square, plus if one of them is a dud or completely misses the target then the target is still effectively destroyed by the others. (Not the case if the single large weapon fails). Also, small weapons means more warheads per missile, some of which can be decoys - which increases the chances of defeating any anti-ballistic missile system.

Sounds like a cluster bomb, weren't these declared illegal?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Cluster_Muniti...

Calling MIRVs cluster bombs is, uh, probably stretching the definition of “cluster bomb” a bit. The problem with the latter is unexploded (but still dangerous) submunitions that are difficult to find and dispose of once the conflict is over, compare antipersonnel mines. But if you’re hit by a MIRV nuclear strike… well, the issue of post bellum disposal of potential duds is very very far down the list of your problems!

The US is one of the few western countries that are not a signatory to that treaty and a few other weapons/human rights related treaties. For... obvious reasons.

Signing a treaty when you would just be ignoring it is typically not a diplomatically smart move. Better to not sign the treaty if at all possible.

Only if you ignore what a cluster bomb actually is.

Leave it to humans to optimize for the most Armageddon per $.

There's a non zero chance each year that we trigger Armageddon. Given enough years it will happen with certainty. Yet nothing is done about it. I think our first mistake in thinking about the possibilities of other intelligent civilizations in the universe is to assume we are an example of one...

You think nature isn't "making" such computations all the time? Say like a virus "deciding" how long to let a host live to spread it before finishing him/her off?

We live pretending we are rational, intelligent beings but in the end we aren't very far from nature and its processes which created us.

Nature seems to make computations that allow for a balance because, usually, breaking out of that balance has detrimental effects. Humanity's technological progress has broken us out of balance, since we're able to steal more energy than we need from our environment.

So yes, humans are obviously part of nature. That's of course where we get our primordial emotions from. But it's misleading to say we're just like other parts of nature, when that's clearly not the case. Our problem is technological progress greatly outpaces emotional development, which may or may not even be progressing. In many ways, technological progress degrades emotional development.

If you think nature is in balance, you are using much too short of timelines for your comparisons.

I am in disagreement. When nature is in an unstable situation, it rapidly seeks equilibrium. Nature spends most time in equilibrium.

Exactly, the "humans are killing machines" argument is false because all life is optimised competitively. We're definitely the best at it, but any species that evolved to our level would behave in the same way because it's fundamental to the way species evolve in general. I find it comforting and disturbing at the same time.

i think i recall reading a RAND study or similar that calculated the most cost effective megadeath per dollar, and it turning out to be equipping a very large number of people (paid minimum wage) with a stout piece of 2x4 wood, and instructing them to hit communists over the head until ordered to stop. i think they may have made some simplifying assumptions about the delivery mechanism to get the 2x4 weilders and the communists in the same location, which is an obvious requirement for this to be effective, but it's better than hydrogen bombs if killing communists and saving dollars are all you care about #amirite

Keep in mind that the size is dictated by MIRVs[1] - one ICBM goes up into space, breaks into lots of independent missiles, and they all rain down on different targets.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targeta...

They used to be bigger though. I think around 20 megatons.

Tsar Bomba, probably the largest nuke ever used was ~50MT (1).

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba

And the Davy Crockett, the smallest nuke ever, could go as low as 10 tons :3

Yea, the US arsenal downsized the weapons in keeping with the tonnage restrictions in the various arms reduction agreements. However, they compensated by increasing the accuracy of the weapons so that fewer bombs per target will be needed, increasing the hard kill power of the arsenal without violating the agreements.

This is important because "in theory" no one is allowed to explicitly target civilians, which don't require much accuracy, per the laws of war. Military targets are often in reinforced concrete or buried and so require a precise high pressure hit to crack. In practice, aiming points are chosen of military targets that are quite close to civilians.

Also because a single large blast wastes a lot of energy, and is easier to intercept.

You’ll do way more damage way more reliably with 20 1MT warheads than with a single 20MT bomb.

But it required reliable ballistic missiles and M(I)RV. If your delivery mechanism is bombers, then at equiv-tech you have to account for high attrition rates, and thus need large payloads to ensure even low success rates will do the necessary damage to the target.

Interesting that the largest nuclear test on Bikini Atoll (just 4000km away from Tonga) was 15 megatons.

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

It wasn't supposed to be 15 megatons, the expected yield was 6 megatons:

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

The larger than expected yield caused a lot of problems.

I'd argue that the very very wrong models for fallout generation and dispersal were an even bigger issue. If they hadn't gotten that wrong, no one would have cared other than the scientists in the near bunkers who had to change their trousers.

You can see the 50 megaton Tsar bomb on youtube of course https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtCTzbh4mNQ

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