Nuclear Apocalypse (2 photos). Descent into Chaos
As you know, today many people are afraid of the consequences of a nuclear apocalypse. It recently happened in the world of Minecraft.
This assembly was developed by a famous reviewer under the nickname Alex.
Game plot
A terrible nuclear disaster occurred in the cubic world. Its devastating consequences are hard to even imagine. You have to take on the role of a survivor in this utter hell and find those few who were also able to survive.
Peculiarities
The "nuclear" assembly includes the following modifications:
. Animated Player Mod - absolutely new animation game characters.
. Lycanites Mobs - great amount aggressive creatures.
. EnchantingPlus - improved enchantment system with new enchantments.
. CrackedZombie Mod - many improved zombies. Now the walking Dead do not take damage from sunlight.
. Buildcraft is a “technological” mod that adds many new items and mechanisms to the game.
. Backpacks Mod - necessary for survival in the nightmarish conditions of a nuclear apocalypse. The mod adds many new bags and backpacks to the game. You can't stay in one place for long, so you'll need them for long trips.
. Dynamic Lights - In pitch darkness you can't do without light, so you'll need an advanced lighting system. New torches and lighting devices will help you stay on track in the dark.
. Roguelike - many new dungeons.
. VoxelMap is a map that will help you navigate the area.
When the Japanese city of Hiroshima was subjected to a monstrous attack. Fortunately, humanity no longer dared to repeat such fatal mistakes. In cinema, nuclear apocalypse is a fairly common theme. However, in films such stories are not revealed with the aim of demonstrating the superiority of one state over another, but are a warning to everyone about the dire consequences of using prohibited weapons. Let's look at which films about the nuclear apocalypse deserve the attention of a wide audience.
"The Book of Eli" (2009)
Our list of films about the nuclear apocalypse opens with the film “The Book of Eli.” The story tells about the lives of people who are on the verge of extinction. Civilization fell into complete decline after a terrible catastrophe. Devastation, chaos, hunger and poverty reign everywhere. Clinging to the last chance for existence, people turned into aggressive, soulless creatures, ready to commit any crime in search of water and provisions.
The only person who manages to resist his animal instincts in the atmosphere of a nuclear apocalypse is Eli, a sage and philosopher from the highway. The word of God guides him forward. The hero wanders through deserted spaces, protecting Holy Bible. Soon, Eli's path is confronted by a gang of the powerful tyrant Carnegie, who plans to enslave the survivors and become the sole ruler of Earth. Will the saint be able to resist anger and blasphemy on the way to his cherished goal?
"Letters from a Dead Man" (1986)
The film is the first example of a good Soviet post-apocalyptic film from director Konstantin Lopushansky. The film, the script of which was developed in collaboration with himself, gives his own view of how life would have turned out if there had been an armed confrontation during the Cold War. After all, during that difficult period, the US intentions to blow up the USSR were seriously considered. Nuclear apocalypse as a result of the confrontation between two superpowers - this was the theme chosen by the authors of the film.
The plot of the picture introduces the viewer to Nobel laureate named Larson The latter sends letters daily to his missing son, who was lost after a disaster that occurred as a result of an accidental nuclear explosion at one of the American military bases. At this time, the remnants of humanity, hiding in underground shelters and catacombs, trying to establish a new social system. The finale of the film is an eloquent warning to humanity on behalf of real world scientists about the dangers of nuclear technology.
Dr. Strangelove, or How I Stopped Being Afraid and Loved the Bomb (1964)
Let's continue to review the best films about the nuclear apocalypse. Without any doubt, perhaps the most sensational film about the global crisis in the entire history of cinema deserves the attention of a wide audience. It's about about the picture cult director Stanley Kubrick - “Doctor Strangelove, or How I Stopped Being Afraid and Loved the Bomb,” which was released back in 1964. The film, based on Peter George's literary work Red Alert, was released at the height of the Cold War.
According to the plot, a certain high rank of the American army - General Ripper gives the order to blow up the USSR. The nuclear apocalypse here is not happening in reality, but in the minds of powerful, self-righteous politicians. Fortunately, the entire confrontation ultimately boils down to just satirical verbal skirmishes in the offices of the leaders of world powers.
"Testament" (1983)
“Testament” is a powerful message to humanity about the horrors and hardships that await all of us after a nuclear war. The director of the film, Lynn Titman, managed to fully reveal the theme of human existence in conditions of a large-scale disaster.
The story takes the viewer to a city that becomes a real cemetery after a nuclear bomb attack. Absolutely everything turns out to be contaminated with fatal radiation, including life-saving water supplies. Without access to safe food, mothers are forced to feed their children poisonous breast milk. Adults drag out miserable lives in the hope of help from those in power. However, salvation never comes.
It is worth noting that the film “Testament” has a very weak plot. But the strength of the film is not in the complex and intricate narrative, but in the amazing acting. The excellent performances of the young actors involved in the film were especially realistic.
On September 17, the 68th session of the UN General Assembly officially opened. The annual general debate began Tuesday and runs until Oct. 1. One of the issues on the agenda of the General Assembly is the next round of negotiations on nuclear disarmament, which reached a dead end 16 years ago.
To a fair extent, initiatives that are not the most beneficial for Russia are legitimized by the ideas prevailing in mass consciousness for seven decades now. The presence of nuclear weapons is seen as a prerequisite for a global catastrophe. Meanwhile, these ideas are largely an explosive mixture of propaganda cliches and outright “urban legends.” An extensive mythology has developed around the “bomb”, which has a very distant relationship to reality.
Let's try to understand at least part of the collection of nuclear myths and legends of the 21st century.
Myth #1: The effects of nuclear weapons can have "geological" proportions. Thus, the power of the famous “Tsar Bomba” (aka “Kuzkina Mother”) “was reduced (to 58 megatons) so as not to penetrate the earth’s crust to the mantle. 100 megatons would be enough for this.” More radical options go as far as “irreversible tectonic shifts” and even “splitting of the ball” (i.e. the planet). As you might guess, this has not just a zero relation to reality - it tends to the region of negative numbers.
So what is the "geological" effect of nuclear weapons in reality?
The diameter of the crater formed during a ground-based nuclear explosion in dry sandy and clayey soils (i.e., in fact, the maximum possible - on denser soils it will naturally be smaller) is calculated using the very simple formula “38 times the cubic root of explosion power in kilotons." The explosion of a megaton bomb creates a crater with a diameter of about 400 m, while its depth is 7-10 times less (40-60 m). A ground explosion of a 58-megaton munition thus forms a crater with a diameter of about one and a half kilometers and a depth of about 150-200 m. The explosion of the "Tsar Bomba" was, with some nuances, airborne, and occurred over rocky ground - with corresponding consequences for " digging" efficiency. In other words, “piercing the earth’s crust” and “splitting a ball” are from the realm of fishing tales and gaps in the field of eliminating illiteracy.
Myth #2:“The stockpiles of nuclear weapons in Russia and the United States are enough for a guaranteed 10-20-fold destruction of all forms of life on Earth.” “The nuclear weapons that already exist are enough to destroy life on earth 300 times in a row.” Reality: propaganda fake.
In an air explosion with a power of 1 Mt, the zone of complete destruction (98% of fatalities) has a radius of 3.6 km, severe and moderate destruction - 7.5 km. At a distance of 10 km, only 5% of the population dies (however, 45% receive injuries of varying severity). In other words, the area of “catastrophic” damage during a megaton nuclear explosion is 176.5 square kilometers (the approximate area of Kirov, Sochi and Naberezhnye Chelny; for comparison, the area of Moscow in 2008 is 1090 square kilometers). As of March 2013, Russia had 1,480 strategic warheads, the United States - 1,654. In other words, Russia and the United States can jointly transform a country the size of France, but not the entire world, into a zone of destruction up to and including medium-sized ones.
With more targeted “fire,” the United States can, even after destroying key facilities providing a retaliatory strike (command posts, communications centers, missile silos, strategic aviation airfields, etc.), almost completely and immediately destroy almost the entire urban population of the Russian Federation (in Russia 1097 cities and about 200 “non-urban” settlements with a population of more than 10 thousand people); A significant part of the rural area will also perish (mainly due to radioactive fallout). Quite obvious indirect effects in short time will destroy a significant part of the survivors. A nuclear attack by the Russian Federation, even in the “optimistic” version, will be much less effective - the population of the United States is more than twice as large, much more dispersed, the States have a noticeably larger “effective” (that is, somewhat developed and populated) territory, which makes the survival of the survivors less difficult due to the climate. However, Russia's nuclear salvo would be more than enough to bring the enemy to a Central African state - provided that the bulk of its nuclear arsenal is not destroyed by a preemptive strike.
Naturally, all these calculations are based on the possibility of a surprise attack, without the possibility of taking any measures to reduce damage (evacuation, use of shelters). If they are used, losses will be much less. In other words, two key nuclear powers, possessing an overwhelming share of atomic weapons, are capable of practically wiping each other off the face of the Earth, but not humanity, and, especially, the biosphere. In fact, to almost completely destroy humanity, at least 100 thousand megaton-class warheads will be required.
However, perhaps humanity will be killed by indirect effects - nuclear winter and radioactive contamination? Let's start with the first one.
Myth #3: An exchange of nuclear strikes will generate a global decrease in temperature followed by the collapse of the biosphere. Reality: politically motivated falsification.
The author of the concept of nuclear winter is Carl Sagan, whose followers were two Austrian physicists and the group of the Soviet physicist Alexandrov. As a result of their work, there appeared next picture nuclear apocalypse. An exchange of nuclear strikes will lead to massive forest fires and fires in cities.
In this case, a “fire storm” will often be observed, which in reality was observed during large city fires - for example, the London fire of 1666, the Chicago fire of 1871, and the Moscow fire of 1812. During World War II, its victims were Stalingrad, Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and a number of smaller cities that were bombed.
The essence of the phenomenon is this. The air above the area of a large fire heats up significantly and begins to rise. In its place come new masses of air, completely saturated with combustion-supporting oxygen. The effect of "blacksmith's bellows" or "smoke stack" appears. As a result, the fire continues until everything that can burn burns out - and at temperatures developing in the “forge” of a firestorm, a lot can burn.
As a result of forest and city fires, millions of tons of soot will be sent into the stratosphere, which screens solar radiation - with an explosion of 100 megatons, the solar flux at the Earth's surface will be reduced by 20 times, 10,000 megatons - by 40. Nuclear night will come for several months, photosynthesis will stop. Global temperatures in the “ten thousandth” version will drop by at least 15 degrees, on average by 25, in some areas by 30-50. After the first ten days, the temperature will begin to slowly rise, but in general the duration of the nuclear winter will be at least 1-1.5 years. Famine and epidemics will extend the collapse time to 2-2.5 years.
An impressive picture, isn't it? The problem is that it's fake. So, in the case of forest fires, the model assumes that the explosion of a megaton warhead will immediately cause a fire over an area of 1000 square kilometers. Meanwhile, in reality, at a distance of 10 km from the epicenter (an area of 314 square kilometers), only isolated outbreaks will be observed. Real smoke production during forest fires is 50-60 times less than that stated in the model. Finally, the bulk of soot during forest fires does not reach the stratosphere and is rather quickly washed out of the lower atmospheric layers.
Likewise, a firestorm in cities requires very specific conditions for its occurrence - flat terrain and a huge mass of easily flammable buildings (Japanese cities in 1945 are wood and oiled paper; London in 1666 is mostly wood and plastered wood, and the same applies to old German cities). Where at least one of these conditions was not met, a firestorm did not occur - thus, Nagasaki, built in a typically Japanese spirit, but located in a hilly area, never became its victim. IN modern cities with their reinforced concrete and brick buildings, a firestorm cannot occur for purely technical reasons. Skyscrapers blazing like candles, drawn by the wild imagination of Soviet physicists, are nothing more than a phantom. I will add that the city fires of 1944-45, like, obviously, earlier ones, did not lead to a significant release of soot into the stratosphere - the smoke rose only 5-6 km (the stratosphere boundary is 10-12 km) and was washed out of the atmosphere in a few days ( "black rain")
In other words, the amount of shielding soot in the stratosphere will be orders of magnitude less than predicted in the model. Moreover, the concept of nuclear winter has already been tested experimentally. Before Desert Storm, Sagan argued that emissions of oil soot from burning wells would lead to a fairly strong cooling on a global scale - a “year without a summer” similar to 1816, when every night in June-July the temperature dropped below zero even in the United States . Average global temperatures fell by 2.5 degrees, resulting in global famine. However, in reality, after the Gulf War, the daily burning of 3 million barrels of oil and up to 70 million cubic meters of gas, which lasted about a year, had a very local (within the region) and limited effect on the climate.
Thus, a nuclear winter is not possible even if nuclear arsenals rise again to 1980s levels. Exotic options in the style of placing nuclear charges in coal mines for the purpose of “deliberately” creating conditions for the occurrence of a nuclear winter are also ineffective - setting fire to a coal seam without collapsing the mine is unrealistic, and in any case the smoke will be “low-altitude”. Nevertheless, works on the topic of nuclear winter (with even more “original” models) continue to be published, however... The latest surge of interest in them strangely coincided with Obama’s initiative for general nuclear disarmament.
The second option for an “indirect” apocalypse is global radioactive contamination.
Myth #4: A nuclear war will lead to the transformation of a significant part of the planet into a nuclear desert, and the territory subjected to nuclear strikes will be useless to the winner due to radioactive contamination.
Let's look at what could potentially create it. Nuclear weapons with a yield of megatons and hundreds of kilotons are hydrogen (thermonuclear). The main part of their energy is released due to the fusion reaction, during which radionuclides are not produced. However, such ammunition still contains fissile materials. In a two-phase thermonuclear device, the nuclear part itself acts only as a trigger that starts the thermonuclear fusion reaction. In the case of a megaton warhead, this is a low-power plutonium charge with a yield of approximately 1 kiloton. For comparison, the plutonium bomb that fell on Nagasaki had an equivalent of 21 kt, while only 1.2 kg of fissile material out of 5 burned in a nuclear explosion, the rest of the plutonium “dirt” with a half-life of 28 thousand years simply scattered around the surrounding area, causing additional contribution to radioactive contamination. More common, however, are three-phase munitions, where the fusion zone, “charged” with lithium deuteride, is enclosed in a uranium shell in which a “dirty” fission reaction occurs, intensifying the explosion. It can even be made from uranium-238, which is unsuitable for conventional nuclear weapons. However, due to weight restrictions, modern strategic ammunition prefers to use a limited amount of the more effective uranium-235. However, even in this case, the amount of radionuclides released during the air explosion of a megaton munition will exceed the Nagasaki level not by 50, as it should be based on the power, but by 10 times.
At the same time, due to the predominance of short-lived isotopes, the intensity of radioactive radiation quickly decreases - decreasing after 7 hours by 10 times, 49 hours by 100 times, and 343 hours by 1000 times. Further, there is no need to wait until radioactivity drops to the notorious 15-20 microroentgens per hour - people have been living for centuries without any consequences in areas where the natural background exceeds standards hundreds of times. Thus, in France, the background in some places is up to 200 microroentgens/h, in India (the states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu) - up to 320 microroentgens/h, in Brazil on the beaches of the states of Rio de Janeiro and Espirito Santo the background ranges from 100 to 1000 microroentgens/h. h (on the beaches of the resort town of Guarapari - 2000 microroentgens/h). In the Iranian resort Ramsar, the average background is 3000, and the maximum is 5000 microroentgen/hour, while its main source is radon - which implies a massive intake of this radioactive gas into the body.
As a result, for example, the panicky forecasts that were heard after the Hiroshima bombing (“vegetation will be able to appear only in 75 years, and in 60-90 people will be able to live”), to put it mildly, did not come true. The surviving population did not evacuate, but did not die out completely and did not mutate. Between 1945 and 1970, the rate of leukemia among bombing survivors was less than twice the normal rate (250 cases versus 170 in the control group).
Let's take a look at the Semipalatinsk test site. In total, it carried out 26 ground (the dirtiest) and 91 air nuclear explosions. The explosions, for the most part, were also extremely “dirty” - the first Soviet one especially distinguished itself nuclear bomb(the famous and extremely poorly designed Sakharov “puff pastry”), in which out of 400 kilotons of total power the fusion reaction accounted for no more than 20%. Impressive emissions were also provided by the “peaceful” nuclear explosion, with the help of which Lake Chagan was created. What does the result look like?
At the site of the explosion of the notorious puff pastry there is a crater overgrown with absolutely normal grass. The Chagan nuclear lake looks no less banal, despite the veil of hysterical rumors hovering around. In the Russian and Kazakh press you can find passages like this. “It’s curious that the water in the “atomic” lake is clean, and there are even fish there. However, the edges of the reservoir “focus” so much that their level of radiation is actually equivalent to radioactive waste. In this place, the dosimeter shows 1 microsievert per hour, which is 114 times more than normal." The photo of the dosimeter attached to the article shows 0.2 microsieverts and 0.02 milliroentgens - that is, 200 microsieverts / h. As shown above, compared to Ramsar, Kerala and Brazilian beaches, this is a somewhat pale result. The particularly large carp found in Chagan cause no less horror among the public - however, the increase in the size of the living creatures in in this case is explained by completely natural reasons. However, this does not prevent enchanting publications with stories about lake monsters hunting swimmers and stories from “eyewitnesses” about “grasshoppers the size of a cigarette pack.”
Approximately the same thing could be observed on Bikini Atoll, where the Americans detonated a 15-megaton ammunition (however, “pure” single-phase). "Four years after the tests hydrogen bomb on the Bikini Atoll, scientists who examined a one and a half kilometer crater formed after the explosion discovered underwater something completely different from what they expected to see: instead of a lifeless space in the crater, large corals bloomed 1 m high and with a trunk diameter of about 30 cm, a lot of fish swam - the underwater ecosystem turned out to be completely restored." In other words, the prospect of life in a radioactive desert with soil and water poisoned for many years does not threaten humanity even in the worst case.
In general, the one-time destruction of humanity, and especially all forms of life on Earth, using nuclear weapons is technically impossible. At the same time, equally dangerous are the ideas about the “sufficiency” of several nuclear warheads to inflict unacceptable damage on the enemy, the myth about the “uselessness” of the territory subjected to a nuclear attack for the aggressor, and the legend about the impossibility of a nuclear war as such due to the inevitability of a global catastrophe even if the retaliatory nuclear strike turns out to be weak. Victory over an enemy that does not have nuclear parity and a sufficient number of nuclear weapons is possible - without a global catastrophe and with significant benefits.
Evgeniy Pozhidaev - international columnist for REGNUM news agency
© 1999-2013 REGNUM
Explosive character
The uranium nucleus contains 92 protons. Natural uranium is mainly a mixture of two isotopes: U238 (which has 146 neutrons in its nucleus) and U235 (143 neutrons), with only 0.7% of the latter in natural uranium. The chemical properties of isotopes are absolutely identical, therefore it is impossible to separate them by chemical methods, but the difference in masses (235 and 238 units) allows this to be done by physical methods: A mixture of uranium is converted into a gas (uranium hexafluoride) and then pumped through countless porous partitions. Although the isotopes of uranium are indistinguishable either in appearance or chemically, they are separated by a chasm in the properties of their nuclear characters.
The fission process of U238 is a paid process: a neutron arriving from outside must bring with it energy - 1 MeV or more. And U235 is selfless: nothing is required from the incoming neutron for excitation and subsequent decay; its binding energy in the nucleus is quite sufficient.
When a neutron hits a fission-capable nucleus, an unstable compound is formed, but very quickly (after 10−23−10−22 s) such a nucleus falls apart into two fragments that are unequal in mass and “instantly” (within 10−16−10− 14 c) emitting two or three new neutrons, so that over time the number of fissile nuclei can multiply (this reaction is called a chain reaction). This is only possible in U235, because greedy U238 does not want to share from its own neutrons, whose energy is an order of magnitude less than 1 MeV. The kinetic energy of fission product particles is many orders of magnitude greater than the energy released during any event chemical reaction, in which the composition of the nuclei does not change.
Critical assembly
Fission products are unstable and take a long time to “recover”, emitting various radiations (including neutrons). Neutrons that are emitted a significant time (up to tens of seconds) after fission are called delayed, and although their share is small compared to prompt ones (less than 1%), the role they play in the work nuclear installations, - the most important.
Fission products, during numerous collisions with surrounding atoms, give up their energy to them, increasing the temperature. After neutrons appear in an assembly containing fissile material, the heat release power can increase or decrease, and the parameters of an assembly in which the number of fissions per unit time is constant are called critical. The criticality of the assembly can be maintained with both a large and a small number of neutrons (at a correspondingly higher or lower heat release power). The thermal power is increased either by pumping additional neutrons into the critical assembly from the outside, or by making the assembly supercritical (then additional neutrons are supplied by increasingly numerous generations of fissile nuclei). For example, if it is necessary to increase the thermal power of a reactor, it is brought to a regime where each generation of prompt neutrons is slightly less numerous than the previous one, but thanks to delayed neutrons, the reactor barely noticeably passes into a critical state. Then it does not accelerate, but gains power slowly - so that its increase can be stopped at the right moment by introducing neutron absorbers (rods containing cadmium or boron).
The neutrons produced during fission often fly past surrounding nuclei without causing further fission. The closer to the surface of a material a neutron is produced, the greater the chance it has of escaping from the fissile material and never returning. Therefore, the form of assembly that saves the greatest number of neutrons is a sphere: for a given mass of matter it has a minimum surface area. An unsurrounded (solitary) ball of 94% U235 without cavities inside becomes critical with a mass of 49 kg and a radius of 85 mm. If an assembly of the same uranium is a cylinder with a length equal to the diameter, it becomes critical with a mass of 52 kg. The surface area also decreases with increasing density. That is why explosive compression, without changing the amount of fissile material, can bring the assembly into a critical state. It is this process that underlies the common design of a nuclear charge.
Ball assembly
But most often it is not uranium that is used in nuclear weapons, but plutonium-239. It is produced in reactors by irradiating uranium-238 with powerful neutron fluxes. Plutonium costs about six times more than U235, but when fissioning, the Pu239 nucleus emits an average of 2.895 neutrons - more than U235 (2.452). In addition, the probability of plutonium fission is higher. All this leads to the fact that a solitary Pu239 ball becomes critical with almost three times less mass than a ball of uranium, and most importantly, with a smaller radius, which makes it possible to reduce the dimensions of the critical assembly.
The assembly is made of two carefully fitted halves in the form of a spherical layer (hollow inside); it is obviously subcritical - even for thermal neutrons and even after being surrounded by a moderator. A charge is mounted around an assembly of very precisely fitted explosive blocks. In order to save neutrons, it is necessary to preserve the noble shape of the ball during an explosion - for this, the layer of explosive must be detonated simultaneously along its entire outer surface, compressing the assembly evenly. It is widely believed that this requires a lot of electric detonators. But this was only the case at the dawn of “bomb construction”: to trigger many dozens of detonators, a lot of energy and a considerable size of the initiation system were required. Modern charges use several detonators selected by a special technique, similar in characteristics, from which highly stable (in terms of detonation speed) explosives are triggered in grooves milled in a polycarbonate layer (the shape of which on a spherical surface is calculated using Riemann geometry methods). Detonation at a speed of approximately 8 km/s will travel along the grooves at absolutely equal distances, at the same moment in time it will reach the holes and detonate the main charge - simultaneously at all required points.
Explosion inside
The explosion directed inward compresses the assembly with a pressure of more than a million atmospheres. The surface of the assembly decreases, the internal cavity in plutonium almost disappears, the density increases, and very quickly - within ten microseconds, the compressible assembly passes the critical state with thermal neutrons and becomes significantly supercritical with fast neutrons.
After a period determined by the insignificant time of insignificant slowing down of fast neutrons, each of the new, more numerous generation of them adds an energy of 202 MeV by fission to the substance of the assembly, which is already bursting with monstrous pressure. On the scale of the phenomena occurring, the strength of even the best alloy steels is so minuscule that it never occurs to anyone to take it into account when calculating the dynamics of an explosion. The only thing that prevents the assembly from flying apart is inertia: in order to expand a plutonium ball by just 1 cm in tens of nanoseconds, it is necessary to impart an acceleration to the substance that is tens of trillions of times greater than the acceleration of free fall, and this is not easy.
In the end, the matter still scatters, fission stops, but the process does not end there: the energy is redistributed between the ionized fragments of the separated nuclei and other particles emitted during fission. Their energy is on the order of tens and even hundreds of MeV, but only electrically neutral high-energy gamma quanta and neutrons have a chance of avoiding interaction with matter and “escaping.” Charged particles quickly lose energy in acts of collisions and ionization. In this case, radiation is emitted - however, it is no longer hard nuclear radiation, but softer, with an energy three orders of magnitude lower, but still more than sufficient to knock out electrons from atoms - not only from the outer shells, but from everything in general. A mixture of bare nuclei, electrons stripped from them and radiation with a density of grams per cubic centimeter (try to imagine how well you can tan under light that has acquired the density of aluminum!) - everything that a moment ago was a charge - comes into some semblance of equilibrium . In a very young fireball, the temperature reaches tens of millions of degrees.
Fire ball
It would seem that even soft radiation moving at the speed of light should leave the matter that generated it far behind, but this is not so: in cold air, the range of quanta of Kev energies is centimeters, and they do not move in a straight line, but change the direction of movement, re-emitting with every interaction. Quanta ionize the air and spread through it, like cherry juice poured into a glass of water. This phenomenon is called radiative diffusion.
A young fireball of a 100 kt explosion a few tens of nanoseconds after the end of the fission burst has a radius of 3 m and a temperature of almost 8 million Kelvin. But after 30 microseconds its radius is 18 m, although the temperature drops below a million degrees. The ball devours space, and the ionized air behind its front hardly moves: radiation cannot transfer significant momentum to it during diffusion. But it pumps enormous energy into this air, heating it, and when the radiation energy runs out, the ball begins to grow due to the expansion of hot plasma, bursting from the inside with what used to be a charge. Expanding, like an inflated bubble, the plasma shell becomes thinner. Unlike a bubble, of course, nothing inflates it: with inside There is almost no matter left, it all flies from the center by inertia, but 30 microseconds after the explosion, the speed of this flight is more than 100 km/s, and the hydrodynamic pressure in the matter is more than 150,000 atm! The shell is not destined to become too thin; it bursts, forming “blisters”.
Which of the mechanisms of transferring the energy of the fireball to the environment prevails depends on the power of the explosion: if it is large, the main role is played by radiation diffusion; if it is small, the expansion of the plasma bubble plays a major role. It is clear that an intermediate case is possible when both mechanisms are effective.
The process captures new layers of air; there is no longer enough energy to strip all the electrons from the atoms. The energy of the ionized layer and fragments of the plasma bubble runs out; they are no longer able to move the huge mass in front of them and noticeably slow down. But what was air before the explosion moves, breaking away from the ball, absorbing more and more layers of cold air... The formation of a shock wave begins.
Shock wave and atomic mushroom
When the shock wave separates from the fireball, the characteristics of the emitting layer change and the radiation power in the optical part of the spectrum increases sharply (the so-called first maximum). Next, the processes of illumination and changes in the transparency of the surrounding air compete, which leads to the realization of a second maximum, less powerful, but much longer - so much so that the output of light energy is greater than in the first maximum.
Near the explosion, everything around it evaporates, further away it melts, but even further away, where the heat flow is no longer sufficient for melting solids, soil, rocks, houses flow like liquid under the monstrous pressure of gas, destroying all strong bonds, heated to a radiance unbearable to the eyes.
Finally, the shock wave goes far from the point of explosion, where there remains a loose and weakened, but expanded many times, cloud of condensed vapors that turned into tiny and very radioactive dust from what was the plasma of the charge, and from what was close at its terrible hour to a place from which one should stay as far as possible. The cloud begins to rise. It cools down, changing its color, “puts on” a white cap of condensed moisture, followed by dust from the surface of the earth, forming the “leg” of what is commonly called an “atomic mushroom”.
Neutron initiation
Attentive readers can estimate the energy release during an explosion with a pencil in their hands. When the time the assembly is in a supercritical state is on the order of microseconds, the age of the neutrons is on the order of picoseconds, and the multiplication factor is less than 2, about a gigajoule of energy is released, which is equivalent to... 250 kg of TNT. Where are the kilo- and megatons?
The fact is that the fission chain in the assembly does not begin with one neutron: at the required microsecond, they are injected into the supercritical assembly by the millions. In the first nuclear charges, isotope sources located in a cavity inside the plutonium assembly were used for this: polonium-210, at the moment of compression, combined with beryllium and caused neutron emission with its alpha particles. But all isotopic sources are rather weak (in the first American product less than a million neutrons were generated per microsecond), and polonium is very perishable - in just 138 days it reduces its activity by half. Therefore, isotopes have been replaced by less dangerous ones (which do not emit when not turned on), and most importantly, by neutron tubes that emit more intensely (see sidebar): in a few microseconds (the duration of the pulse formed by the tube) hundreds of millions of neutrons are born. But if it doesn’t work or works at the wrong time, a so-called bang or “zilch” will occur - a low-power thermal explosion.
Neutron initiation not only increases the energy release of a nuclear explosion by many orders of magnitude, but also makes it possible to regulate it! It is clear that, having received a combat mission, when setting which the power of a nuclear strike must be indicated, no one disassembles the charge in order to equip it with a plutonium assembly that is optimal for a given power. In ammunition with a switchable TNT equivalent, it is enough to simply change the supply voltage to the neutron tube. Accordingly, the neutron yield and energy release will change (of course, when the power is reduced in this way, a lot of expensive plutonium is wasted).
But they began to think about the need to regulate energy release much later, and in the first post-war years there could be no talk of reducing power. More powerful, more powerful and more powerful! But it turned out that there are nuclear physical and hydrodynamic restrictions on the permissible dimensions of the subcritical sphere. The TNT equivalent of a hundred kiloton explosion is close to the physical limit for single-phase munitions, in which only fission occurs. As a result, fission was abandoned as the main source of energy, and the focus was on reactions of another class - fusion. More about them in the next issues of PM.
Nuclear Delusions
The density of plutonium at the moment of explosion increases due to a phase transition
Metallic plutonium exists in six phases, the density of which ranges from 14.7 to 19.8 g/cm3. At temperatures below 119 °C there is a monoclinic alpha phase (19.8 g/cm3), but such plutonium is very fragile, and in the cubic face-centered delta phase (15.9) it is plastic and well processed (it is this phase that they try to preserve using alloying additives). During detonation compression, no phase transitions can occur - plutonium is in a state of quasi-liquid. Phase transitions are dangerous during production: with large sizes of parts, even with minor change density, it is possible to reach a critical state. Of course, there will be no explosion - the workpiece will simply heat up, but nickel plating may be released (and plutonium is very toxic).
Neutron source
In a vacuum neutron tube, a pulse voltage of 100 kV is applied between the tritium-saturated target (cathode) (1) and the anode assembly (2). When the voltage is maximum, it is necessary that deuterium ions be between the anode and cathode, which need to be accelerated. An ion source is used for this. An ignition pulse is applied to its anode (3), and the discharge, passing along the surface of deuterium-saturated ceramic (4), forms deuterium ions. Having accelerated, they bombard a target saturated with tritium, as a result of which an energy of 17.6 MeV is released and neutrons and helium-4 nuclei are formed.
In terms of particle composition and even energy output, this reaction is identical to fusion - the process of fusion of light nuclei. In the 1950s, many believed that this was fusion, but later it turned out that a “breakdown” occurs in the tube: either a proton or a neutron (which makes up the deuterium ion, accelerated electric field) “gets stuck” in the target core (tritium). If a proton gets stuck, the neutron breaks away and becomes free.
Neutrons - slow and fast
In a non-fissile substance, “bouncing” off nuclei, neutrons transfer to them part of their energy, the greater the lighter (closer to them in mass) the nuclei. Than in more collisions, neutrons are involved, the more they slow down, and then, finally, they come into thermal equilibrium with the surrounding matter - they are thermalized (this takes milliseconds). Thermal neutron speed is 2200 m/s (energy 0.025 eV). Neutrons can escape from the moderator and are captured by its nuclei, but with moderation their ability to enter into nuclear reactions increases significantly, so the neutrons that are not “lost” more than compensate for the decrease in numbers.
Thus, if a ball of fissile material is surrounded by a moderator, many neutrons will leave the moderator or be absorbed in it, but there will also be some that will return to the ball (“reflect”) and, having lost their energy, are much more likely to cause fission events. If the ball is surrounded by a 25 mm thick layer of beryllium, then 20 kg of U235 can be saved and still achieve the critical state of the assembly. But such savings come at the cost of time: each subsequent generation of neutrons must first slow down before causing fission. This delay reduces the number of generations of neutrons born per unit time, which means that the energy release is delayed. The less fissile material in the assembly, the more moderator is required to develop a chain reaction, and fission occurs with increasingly lower-energy neutrons. In the limiting case, when criticality is achieved only with thermal neutrons, for example in a solution of uranium salts in a good moderator - water, the mass of the assemblies is hundreds of grams, but the solution simply periodically boils. The released steam bubbles reduce the average density of the fissile substance, the chain reaction stops, and when the bubbles leave the liquid, the fission outbreak is repeated (if you clog the vessel, the steam will rupture it - but this will be a thermal explosion, devoid of all the typical “nuclear” signs).
When did it happen Caribbean crisis, the world found itself on the brink of a global catastrophe - a large-scale nuclear war between two superpowers, the USSR and America. What would the remnants of human civilization be like after a massive exchange of blows? The military, of course, predicted the outcome using computers. They like to calculate everything, this is their strong point.
Walter Mondale once said that “there will be no World War III veterans.” Contrary to this seemingly absolutely correct remark, in just a few decades since its creation atomic bomb, the world has turned into a huge powder keg. Although, if it were gunpowder. By the end of the Cold War, the number of strategic nuclear warheads and related intermediate-range munitions alone in the arsenals of NATO and the Warsaw Pact exceeded 24,000 units.
Their total power was 12,000 Megatons, more than enough to repeat the tragedy in Hiroshima approximately a million times. And this does not take into account tactical nuclear weapons, various mines filled with atomic warheads, torpedoes and artillery shells. Without an arsenal of chemical warfare agents. Not counting bacteriological and climate weapons. Would this be enough to bring about Armageddon? Calculations showed that - behind the eyes.
Of course, it was difficult for analysts to take into account all the factors, but they tried, in various institutions. The forecasts turned out to be frankly depressing. It has been calculated that during a large-scale nuclear war, the parties will be able to rain down on each other about 12,000 bombs and missiles of various bases with a total capacity of about 6,000 Mt. What could this number mean?
And this means massive attacks, first of all, on headquarters and communications centers, locations of intercontinental ballistic missile silos, air defense positions, large military and naval formations. Then, as the conflict grows, it will be the turn of industrial centers, or, in other words, cities, that is, areas with a high degree of urbanization and, of course, population density. Some nuclear warheads would be detonated above the surface to cause maximum damage, and some would be detonated at high altitudes to destroy satellites, communications systems and the power grid.
Once upon a time, at the height of the Cold War, the military strategy that implied all this madness was called the second strike doctrine. American Defense Secretary Robert McNamara defined it as “mutually assured destruction.” American generals calculated that the US Army and Navy would have to destroy about a quarter of the USSR's population and more than half of its industrial capacity before they themselves were destroyed.
We should probably not forget that in terms of the invention of new weapons, humanity has advanced much further than in the production of anti-cancer drugs, so the American “Little Boy” bomb, which destroyed Hiroshima in August 1945, is nothing compared to modern exhibits. So, for example, the power of the SS-18 Satan strategic missile is about 20 Mt (that is, millions of tons in TNT equivalent). This is approximately one and a half thousand “Kids”.
“The thicker the grass, the easier it is to mow.”
This phrase was said by Alaric, the legendary Gothic leader, who made proud Rome tremble. In a hypothetical nuclear war, residents of all large cities without exception would become this very grass. About 70% of the population Western Europe, North America And former USSR consisted of city dwellers and suburbanites. If they exchanged massive nuclear strikes, they would be doomed to immediate death. Calculations show that the explosion of even a bomb as obsolete by today’s standards as “Baby” over a city the size of New York, Tokyo or Moscow would result in the immediate death of millions of people. Just imagine what losses could be caused by the use of thousands of atomic, hydrogen and neutron bombs.
This, at one time, was more or less accurately predicted. As a result of a large-scale nuclear war, most of the cities of the warring parties were prepared for the fate of radioactive ruins. The shock waves and heat pulse would destroy buildings and highways, bridges, dams and levees over areas of millions of square kilometers in a matter of seconds. This is not so much in relation to the entire land surface of the Northern Hemisphere. But it is quite enough for the beginning of the end.
The number of people who evaporated, burned, died in the rubble or received a lethal dose of radiation should have been seven figures. Electromagnetic pulses, which spread over tens of thousands of kilometers during high-altitude nuclear explosions, caused paralysis of all power supply and communication systems, destroyed all electronics and would lead to an accident at those thermal and nuclear power plants that miraculously managed to survive the bombing.
Most likely, they would disrupt the Earth's electromagnetic field. As a result, this would provoke devastating natural disasters: hurricanes, floods, earthquakes.
There is an assumption according to which, with the massive use of weapons of mass destruction, the position of the Earth relative to the Sun would change. But we will not deal with this hypothesis, we will limit ourselves to such “trifles” as the destruction of storage facilities for spent nuclear power plant assemblies, and the depressurization of military laboratories producing bacteriological weapons. Some next superflu, hundreds of times deadlier than the notorious “Spanish flu,” once released, would finish the job that was started by the cholera and plague pandemics raging over radioactive rubble, overflowing with decaying corpses.
Humanity has accumulated millions of tons of toxic chemical waste, primarily dioxin-containing. Occasional accidents, in which a small part of them end up in river basins, lead to environmental disasters local scale. It’s better not to imagine what could happen in a disaster on a one-to-one scale. Serious scientific sources assure that this complex issue has not been thoroughly studied. As you can see, it is unnecessary. And it is clear that this would be the end.
Bah, we forgot about penetrating radiation - the fourth factor behind thermal radiation, shock wave and electromagnetic pulse, which distinguishes nuclear weapons from other products that are designed to destroy their own kind. Radioactive contamination would have poisoned colossal territories, the regeneration of which would have taken centuries. In rural areas, crops would be damaged by radiation, leading to starvation among the survivors.
Increased doses of radiation are a source of cancer, pathologies in newborns and genetic mutations due to disruption of DNA chains. In a post-apocalyptic world, after the health care systems are destroyed, these issues from the field of modern medicine would move under the jurisdiction of sorcerers, because the survival of individual doctors does not at all mean the preservation of medicine as a whole. The millions burned and maimed at the first stage of a nuclear conflict, immediately after the exchange of blows, do not count. They would have died in the first hours, days and months after the nuclear Apocalypse. Long before the advent of healers.
"And those of you who survive will envy the dead"
And these ominous words were spoken by John Silver, one of the most famous heroes English writer R. L. Stevenson. They are said on a completely different occasion, but surprisingly fit into the context of describing the world after a nuclear war. Scientists agreed that nitrogen oxides generated in the fireballs of nuclear explosions would be thrown into the stratosphere, where they would destroy the ozone layer. Restoring it could take decades, and this is in best case scenario- at our level scientific knowledge it is impossible to predict the timing more accurately. Once upon a time (about 600 million years ago), the ozone layer of the stratosphere played the role of a kind of cradle of life, protecting the Earth's surface from the deadly ultraviolet radiation of the Sun.
According to a report by the American National Academy of Sciences, the explosion of 12,000 megatons of nuclear weapons could destroy 70% of the ozone layer over the Northern Hemisphere - presumably the theater of war - and 40% over the Southern Hemisphere, which would lead to the most disastrous consequences for all forms of life. Humans and animals would go blind, burns and skin cancers would become commonplace. Many plants and microorganisms would disappear forever, completely and irrevocably.
“Our arrows will block the Sun from you”
This famous phrase: “Our arrows will block the sun from you,” said the envoy of the Persian king Xerxes to the Spartan king Leonidas, who fortified himself in the Thermopylae pass. Leonidas’ answer is known from history books: “Well, that means we will fight in the shadows.” Fortunately, the brave Spartans did not know the consequences of using nuclear weapons. In the “shadow cast by atomic arrows,” there would simply be no one to fight.
In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, due to water pipelines destroyed by the shock wave, it was impossible to contain the fires. A “firestorm” developed. This is the name of a powerful fire that causes intense vortex movement of air. The city was covered with a huge thundercloud, and it began to rain - black, greasy and oily. Attempts to fight the fire, which was caused by an atomic flash and many short circuits in electrical networks, ended in complete fiasco.
We can say with absolute certainty that in the event of a large-scale nuclear war, there could be no talk of any such attempts, because there would simply be no one to put out the fires. In general, the fire would have spread in earnest, compared to the sea of flames that engulfed Dresden after the ritual raids of allied aircraft. Nowadays, industrial centers contain colossal reserves of paper, wood, petroleum, lubricants, gasoline, kerosene, plastics, rubber and other flammable materials that are capable of blazing and darkening the sky to blackness. Ejecting millions of tons of smoke particles, ash, highly toxic substances and highly dispersed radioactive dust into the atmosphere over the Northern Hemisphere.
Calculations prove that in a few days impenetrable clouds comparable in size to continents would cover the Sun over Europe and North America, and impenetrable darkness would fall on the Earth. The air temperature would drop by 30 - 40°C. The earth's surface was struck by bitter frosts, which in a short period of time would have turned it into permafrost. The cooling would continue for centuries, aggravated by a gradual decrease in ocean temperatures. That is, the end result of a large-scale nuclear war is a climate catastrophe.
At first, due to significant temperature differences between the continents and the ocean, severe storms would arise. Then, as the temperatures dropped, they would have calmed down a little, the surfaces of the seas and oceans would have been covered first with ice chips, and then with hummocks. Even at the equator it would become more than cool, about -50 degrees Celsius! Animals and plants that would survive a nuclear cataclysm would certainly die from such cold weather. There would be total extinction. The jungle would turn into a forest bound by severe frosts, a taiga of dead vines and palm trees. Well, people who could miraculously survive would probably know that there is real hunger.
Radiation would permeate almost everything - air, water, and soil. Surviving viruses and insects, having undergone powerful mutations, would spread new deadly diseases. A few years after a nuclear war, a population of seven billion would remain, at best, an insignificant shadow - about 20 million people scattered across the Earth immersed in nuclear twilight. Maybe it would have been Twilight of the Gods. Humanity would return to its primitive state under incomparably worse conditions environment. I don’t want to think about looting, ritual murders and cannibalism, but probably the most creepy pictures apocalypses depicted by science fiction writers would become commonplace.
Degenerate descendants of the Normans
There is no doubt that humanity would be very lucky if it were able to survive the cataclysm at all. And what kind of knowledge would he have preserved, and the memories of cars, airplanes or televisions passed down from generation to generation would not become akin to the legends that Plato brought to us. Albert Einstein once said: “I don’t know what weapons it will be with, but I know for sure that the Fourth World War will be with stones and sticks.” Do you think this is not a particularly optimistic forecast? Imagine yourself as just Robinson on a desert island and honestly admit: will you be able to recreate a hot water supply system, design a radio or just a telephone?
Alexander Gorbovsky in his book “Fourteen Thousand Years Ago” cited as an example the fate of the Norman settlements that were founded in the 14th century on the coast of North America. Their sad fate is very indicative. In a nutshell it looks like this. The colonists brought with them from Scandinavia knowledge of pottery, the ability to smelt and process metal. But when communication with the metropolis was interrupted, they found themselves assimilated by local Iroquoian tribes, who were at a much lower stage of development, and knowledge was lost forever. The descendants of the settlers were thrown back into the Stone Age.
When European conquerors arrived in these places 200 years later, they found only tribes that were light-skinned and used a number of Scandinavian words. And, that was all! The great-grandchildren of the Vikings had no idea of the crumbling, moss-covered structures that had once been iron smelters and mining shafts. But they didn’t have a nuclear winter...
