How Cold War nuclear testing once made orbit unsafe for Apollo | Hacker News Reader

How Cold War nuclear testing once made orbit unsafe for Apollo

arstechnica.com

58 pointsllambda23 comments

The Soviet Union K project was responsible for quite a bit of EMP damage to civilian infrastructure.

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

Here is the more detailed report on K-3 test (source link form the above wiki page)

http://www.futurescience.com/emp/test184.html

Some of the effects were seen at 1000km range from the detonation site (which makes sense since it is the altitude is so high).

I guess in the case of an all out nuclear war, a handful of high altitude nuclear EMP devices will be enough to cover any continent.

In the case of an all out nuclear war, a handful of high altitude nuclear EMP devices will be the least of our problems!

Yes but an EMP pulse will probably be one of the events. It will be one of the first ones as well, as rocket will only need to travel up and not come down.

It is just seems like the quickest way to disable a large chunk of an entire class of opponents' infrastructure. Personal communications, cars, water pumps, transportation, food delivery, produce a media blackout. Very nasty stuff.

Can anybody reconcile these two statements?

  > At 15 rads, blood count starts to change. At 150 rads,
  > death becomes inevitable without treatment.

  > The maximum operation dose-limit for Apollo astronauts
  > was 400 rads on skin, which is equivalent to an x-ray.

I was a bit confused as well, would it be that the skin is a good barrier to the radiation, so most would be deflected away, meaning you would only 'absorb' a very small amount?

But rads are a measure of absorbed radiation. However, rads don't distinguish between different types of radiation like sieverts do. So 400 rads of alpha particles (hardly penetrating skin at all) have a very different effect on the body than 400 rads of gamma radiation (messing things up in deep tissue).

Ah I was unaware that Rads meant absorbed radiation.

Anyone who ever thought detonating a nuclear warhead in space was a good idea was a moron, plain and simple. It doesn't matter how good of an engineer or general they were, they were of low intelligence and low morals.

Why? Don't just come here and be an ass, explain yourself.

It's akin to teenagers setting something on fire because "it would be cool", as Beavis and Butthead would do.

He said to the room of nuclear engineers.

Personally, I'd far prefer a small, relatively weak state attacked by a larger state respond with a single weapon detonated at high altitude, causing an EMP, as both a show of force and a way to cripple the higher tech aggressor, rather than with a countervalue strike against population, or even a non-nuclear strike against population.

Destroying communications and military infrastructure at the cost of very few lives (maybe some people in aircraft?) seems a lot more moral than incidental deaths of hundreds of thousands or millions of civilians in a counterforce strike, or intentional deaths tens or hundreds of millions in a countervalue strike.

(Similarly, I think assassination of foreign leaders is by far more moral than conventional warfare. The only problem is that decapitation strikes as a policy compress decision time and encourage postures like "launch on warning" or "launch on we're pretty fucking scared and think you might launch", which increases the overall odds of a nuclear exchange.)

High-altitude EMP over the Pacific is often cited as the first step in a Chinese response to open conflict with the United States, followed by cyber-strikes against US infrastructure.

It's a very good asymmetrical warfare weapon for weaker states. Regardless of what course I'd prefer an adversary to take, it certainly makes a great deal of sense from their perspective. By no means are the creators of this strategy of "low intelligence."

I'd probably start with the cyber-strikes, before the EMP :)

EMP over the Pacific primarily targets military communications, preventing an organized conventional response. Cyberstrikes are used to pressure the civilian population into demanding peace.

Theoretically you could just blanket the North American continent with a few EMPs, but you'd likely provoke a nuclear response or an all-out war, hardly the desired resolution for China in such a scenario.

I'm still amazed that until maybe 2002, the Chinese nuclear arsenal was most likely smaller than the (unconfirmed) Israeli arsenal, at around 50 weapons -- a genuine deterrent, but certainly not enough to wage a first strike, and probably not survivable vs. a counterforce first strike from US or Russia (probably enough vs. India/UK/France, though). Apparently they've stepped up to surpass the Europeans, though.

This strategy is known as "Minimum Deterrence". Jeffrey Lewis has written a book on the PRC's strategic nuclear force posture that explores this:

http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/minimum-means-reprisal

...and a short essay on the broader concept of Minimum Deterrence:

http://newamerica.net/node/8908

China's force is intended to be survivable despite its small size. Their ICBM force is road-mobile, launched from TELs rather than fixed silos.

My concern with assassination, is that by default they are a secretly run affair. War is a public statement, that brings with it judgement of the international community.

Secret and private wars waged by countries against unfriendly leaders, while they may result in less loss of life, cannot be considered moral. Examples of assassinations and executions by MOSSAD certainly break local and international laws, and I would guess the moral code of the vast number of people around the world.

History is written by the victors...

> History is written by the victors...

It's written by those who can write. When the Germanic tribes came to Rome, the Romans still wrote the history.

They needed to know what would happen. I don't see a better way to test it. The cold war was a different time and the threat was real; our view on events is shaded by hindsight.

Is that better or worse than dropping it on a city (or two)?

I'm not sure where your position comes from.

I'm not sure why this received so many down votes. Give me one reason that nuclear explosions in the atmosphere are a good idea (one that preferably isn't "the russians").

The fragments that probably triggered downvotes are:

> * moron, plain and simple.*

> they were of low intelligence and low morals.

Which are overly vigorous.

Also, the post doesn't talk about nuclear explosions in the atmosphere but in space.

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