Talk:Blast shelter

Latest comment: 4 years ago by SiriusB in topic 500 kilotons at 500 meters burst height

Untitled edit

I'm removing the references flag. The article summarizes the blast shelter section of Cresson Kearney's book, "Nuclear War Survival Skills", which is cited in the references section. Ray Van De Walker 08:17, 3 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

500 kilotons at 500 meters burst height edit

Where does that figure come from? Please give a reference! According to several sources including Glasstone & Dolan "The effects of nuclear weapons" (1977), visualized by e.g. Alex Wellerstein's NUKEMAP, the "optimal burst height" for a 500 kiloton weapon for the destruction of typical civil buildings ("soft targets") is between about 1400 and 2500 meters, optimizing the radius for 20 psi and 5 psi, respectively. A height of burst as low as 500 meters would be sufficient to destroy buildings resistant to about 1000 psi, which can hardly be called "soft targets". Please also note that the Nagasaki bomb exploded at 500 m height but had 'only' 20 kilotons but was sufficient to destroy a large fraction of the city.--SiriusB (talk) 19:31, 8 January 2020 (UTC)Reply