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Subject: how powerful is the most powerful most nuke
scss    4/17/2005 11:41:05 AM
how many cities can it destroy? land area?
 
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displacedjim    RE:how powerful is the most powerful most nuke   4/17/2005 12:34:29 PM
Right now about the most powerful nukes on any missiles are the Chinese ICBM warheads at a couple MT. Russian and US ICBMs use MIRVs in the sub-MT range. I'm sure there are a wide range of opinions on what something like 2MT can do to a city, but unless we're talking a couple small cities right next to each other, it's only going to do its most significant damage to one city (and if there are two small cities right next to each other, then what's the difference than if it hits one big city?) Again, it totally depends on what definitions you use, but in general I'd guess you're looking at "total destruction" on the order of a couple miles in diameter, and "great damage" on the order of a few miles around that, with "serious damage" for a few miles beyond that. Assuming landing directly over the center of the population of a very large and densely populated (by American standards) urban area, I bet you could kill a million people outright, and maybe another half-million from radiation sickness/increased cancers/etc. in the 50 years following. Displacedjim
 
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19790214    RE:how powerful is the most powerful most nuke   4/18/2005 5:30:53 AM
EX-Soviet SS-18 "SATAN" (aka. RTM36 Mod 2/3) single warhead approx 25MT yield
 
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Jerry W. Loper    Big H-bomb webpage   4/28/2005 2:28:45 PM
Below's a link to a webpage listing large (over 4.5-megaton) H-bombs. http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/multimeg.html#U1
 
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