Yes, in thus in lies the problem It was Fallout that I was looking for more than the half life, I blame it on the game tbh... On you?
This post just opened up a can of worms in my head thats been festering for a long time, i was going to type a post worth reading but then you'd probably all think I was either insane or well, worse
I'd rather die from the direct hit of that as opposed to the residual radiation/fallout of a nuclear attack which may not even be on our country yes.
Let the worms roam, you know you want to, and if it's to correct me or someone else's ignorance then all the better.
although, when you think about it. If they drop a bomb like that in a forested area to take out some terrorist training camp or something. all thoes trees were removing pollution from the enviroment. So really it is bad for the enviroment. not to mention the smoke from the fires.
On a global scale I don't think it would make a massive difference unless say, dropping the bomb caused the entire amazon rainforest to die because some critical balance was screwed up. I think globally there's something like the radius of that bomb (probably a lot more) being cut down every day.
To be honest, if you've got a bomb that has the destructive affect of a nuke but doesn't have the fall out issue it actually makes for a viable weapon that CAN be used. And they should, everyone is so worried about collatoral at the moment, it's a war, it happens. Only thing is, you can't surgically remove a problem like groups of insurgents (small armies), it takes big ass bombs and massive assualts with cassulaties, that hasn't changed since war's first started
It should be noted that while this is a very big bomb indeed, it's nowhere near nuclear bomb territory. The russians would love it to be, but it really isn't. Even small nukes these days are measured in kilotonnes (that's thousands of tonnes) of equivalent TNT explosive power. This thing registered a mere 40 tonnes. That's a lot of explovies, but it's only around 0.03% of the power of the hiroshima nuke, and the hiroshima nuke was crap. This is only really a big deal because you could do quite a bit of damage to a city with a single one. But when you have B-52's and various Tu's already able to drop in the region of 30-40 tonnes of munitions already this only changes the number of explosives required, not the ammount of damage a single large bomber can do. And when you have 85 of them in your airforce, it really shows that just loading a few thousand 2000 pound bombs into a small wing of these bombers could easily do massively more damage than the FOAB. So what are we left with? A bomb that could be useful for being scary as ****, useful for mine clearance, and useful in that it's progress on the vacuum bomb front, which could lead to vacuum bombs that provide real benefit over conventional explosive munitions. But for now? No biggie.
Of course, this post shows a striking example of the lack of appreciation that the fallout that a bomb produces does not necessarily have to be radioactive. It can be political as well.
Political fallout doesn't usually give you a slow agonising death though (in the literal sence of course, no smart alec responses please!) I'd rather go from one of these than radiaton poisoning that's for sure!
Tell that to the population of Iraq, or Palestine, or Zimbabwe, or Darfur... There are people dying slowly every day due to politics.
These things may well have a practical (and surprisingly non-lethal) use. Remember during Gulf War 1 when the US dropped BLU-82s on empty desert? Everyone around knew that one big, honkin bomb had just gone off and that they may be next. Oddly enough, this caused a lot of enemy soldiers to surrender without firing a shot. As someone I think mentioned, such a weapon could also be useful for clearing minefields. That said, the utility of such a weapon is likely more political than military. Basically it's Russia's entry in the ballistic urination contest and probably cost a bundle to build without any real military value.
Heres the thing Huge arse bombs being used on small armies doesnt work. it didn't work in Vietnam or Iraq or now The only thing that is going to remove insurgents would be troops on the ground acting intelligently (or better yet a real police force) and not blowing up a block to get 1 guy or gang raping 14 year old girls
It depends. A 2000lbs bomb might decimate, what, a block? Being able to take out a quarter of a city OTOH, that could bring shock and awe to a whole new level. Colatteral damage numbers would just be ludicrous though.