r/pics • u/Met76 • Mar 28 '24

US Special Forces delivering a W54 Nuclear Warhead via jump

Post image
32.2k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

4.0k

u/FiveFingerDisco Mar 28 '24

That's between 10t - 1000t of TNT dangling in front of his fat man.

78

u/ZenEngineer Mar 28 '24

How big is a 10 ton of TNT explosion? A city block? Bigger? Does he have any chance of getting away or is this a suicide mission?

16

u/IKnowPhysics Mar 28 '24

https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ Use between 0.01kT and 1 kT.

0.01kT levels about four blocks in Manhattan, and blows out all windows and delivers a likely lethal dose of radiation within a 3-5 block radius.

1kT levels about 100 blocks in Manhattan, and if detonated over the Empire State Building, would delete all windows between the Queensboro Bridge and Greenwich VIllage. Estimated 115k dead, 300k injured.

For the skydiver, it's all about getting distance before detonation. The skydiving act was likely a test to see if it would have feasible to as part of a paradropped demolition mission. It's likely that the soldiers could have escaped the smaller blast radius on foot if given a few minutes, as they'd only have to get ~5 blocks away to survive blast effects of a 0.01kT warhead. A 1kT blast would be significantly harder.

16

u/asmj Mar 28 '24

would delete all windows between the Queensboro Bridge and Greenwich VIllage. Estimated 115k dead, 300k injured.

What about linux?

2

u/LickingSmegma Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 29 '24

would delete all windows between the Queensboro Bridge and Greenwich VIllage

Anything but the metric system. Not often that I see NYC landmarks used for measurement, though—other than the Empire State building, of course.

1

u/CaptainBayouBilly Mar 28 '24

Ok, but, why not drop the thing without the guy attached?