If Putin has any sense he will only use nuclear weapons on areas for which he has no use, except as forever radioactively poisonous participation trophies.
1. Putin will NOT use nukes. But that's a popular misunderstanding,. In reality the radiation from an airburst is most of it gone in 2 days most of what's left in 2 weeks and hardly anything left months later.
2. A small tactical nuke would have very similar damage to the Bierut explosion.
3. The reason Putin would NOT use even a small tactical nuke is because it would break the partial test ban treaty.
Putin would then become a rogue nation and China and India would h ave to condemn Russia and it might well be expelled from teh Security Council. Not because of the damage from a tactical nuke. A small tactical nuke smaller than Hiroshima, and fired at a military target could even not harm civilians at all.
There have been numerous nuclear tests, many every year when I was a child, in remote places where they harmed nobody. The biggest nuke ever exploded, the Tsar Bomba was in a remote part of Russia, but it was an air burst and so didn't even leave a crater and nobody was hurt. There was very little radioactivity at the test site. That is because most of the explosive yield was from hydrogen that doesn't produce radioactivity when it explodes by fusing into helium.
The reason is they have to object so that other countries like Pakistan, North Korea etc don't start using tactical nukes too. To maintain the nuclear threshold that we never use nukes at all.
So Putin is not going to use nukes ,even a small one, because of the internatrional reaction.
This is about how rapidly fallout fades away (still on Quora not moved it to my substack yet)
BLOG: Most people don’t know: fallout is HEAVY dust - NOT fog - falls to the ground after 15 mins - and fallout gets MUCH less radioactive in hours - so you CAN protect yourself - if authorities thought there was a real risk we’d be told these things
I dispute your assertion that long-term environmental contamination with radioactive products, may not be considered in any way as a deterrent to using nuclear weapons, because the contamination just *goes away* in a couple weeks. If that was true, people would be living in Chernobyl right now. I think it’s very dangerous to imagine the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons in such a permissive delusion.
I write this only to help scared people. And what I say here is about AIR BURSTS. CAPS LOCK is just to emphasize not shouting. That is not what I'm saying. I am not trying to justify nukes! Just sharing factual information about them with no political objective, just to help scared people.
The Chernobyl reactor was NOT an air burst. It was not a nuclear explosion at all. A nuclear reactor cannot explode. Only melt- down which is what happened to Chernobyl.
The explosion was a steam explosion in a nuclear reactor fueled with uranium. In the nuclear reactor that then produces isotopes of iodine, caesium and strontium. amongst many others.
The Tsar Bomba is the opposite, an air burst, of a huge hydrogen bombs. Hydrogen bombs are very clean because the hydrogen explodes by turning into helium with the reaction H + H = He. It has to be started by a fission explosion but then the fision triggers a fusion explosion and the hydrogen fuel is non radioactive and the Helium that results from the fusion is also non radioactive.
That is why the Tsar Bomba which was an air burst fusion bomb with a small uranium trigger had so little radioactivity.
In more detail.
QUOTE STARTS
The Tsar Bomba was a three-stage hydrogen bomb with a Trutnev-Babaev second and third stage design. A three-stage hydrogen bomb uses a fission-type atomic bomb as the first stage to compress the thermonuclear second stage. The energy produced from this explosion is then directed to compress the much larger thermonuclear third stage. There is evidence that Tsar Bomba utilized several third stages.
Tsar Bomba could have theoretically yielded as much as 100 megatons, but it would have resulted in a dangerous level of nuclear fallout (approximately 25% of all fallout produced since the invention of nuclear weapons in 1945). Additionally, the delivery plane would not have had sufficient time to retreat to a safe distance. Therefore, to minimize nuclear fallout, the third stage incorporated a lead tamper instead of a uranium-238 fusion tamper. It has been speculated that the second stage used this method as well.
The uranium-238 fusion tamper greatly amplifies the reaction by fissioning uranium atoms with fast neutrons from the fusion reaction. Because fast fissioning was eliminated, thermonuclear fusion accounted for as much as 97% of the yield. Thus, despite its huge yield, Tsar Bomba did not actually generate much nuclear fallout.
For air bursts almost all the radioactivity is from the explosion itself.
But for a ground burst - that's when you use a missile that penetrates into the ground. This then converts soem of the ground itself into long lived radioactive compounds and so is much longer lived
The rapidly decaying radiation is for a typical air burst.
But I was also talking about a tactical nuke. And assuming it was an air burst.
A tactical nuke is designed to be used on a battlefield. So they design it to reduce the fallout so as not to harm their own side. It does still produce fallout But the amount would be smaller.
The smallest tactical nukes would be rather similar to the Bierut explosion in effect. There have been even smaller ones designed but not in use any more they are obsolete now, the US Davy Crocket and the suitcase nukes.
The radioactivity levels from those are low. The main reason that China, India and hte USA would condemn it, that it would make a rogue nation of Russia is not because of the actual damage it does. That depends a lot on where it is exploded. The Tsar Bomba didn't harm anyone though it destroyed a small village that was evacuated before it was set off.
The reason is because it would cross a line that all the nuclera powers have agreed never to cross, to explode a nuke in the atmosphere.
It would turn Russia into a rogue nation and that is why Putin won't do it plus what the USA, China, India etc said to him. As I explained.
Again this is factually accurate to the best of my knowledge.
And remember there have been numerous nuclear tests. When I was a child in the 1960s they were going off somewhere in the world more than once a month on average. In the 10 years between when I was 6 and 16, there were 708 tests.
Between when I was 16 and 26 there were 550 tests. That is a little over 1 per week somewhere in the world.
If you want to know my own position on nukes then I always vote for Scottish independence with my main motivation that I want a nuclear free Scotland. I have been opposed to the UK having nukes since I knew what nukes were in the 1960s.
But I am not answering here as an advocate to eliminate nukes. I am not doing this for ANY political reason. It is just to help scared people and I am very careful to be accurate. If I have made any mistakes do say.
But this is not delusive I hope you can see. It is firmly bsaed on the facts. I explain in more detail with sources in the linked article.
If I have made any mistakes here please say thanks!
It’s crazy to me how we have these elements - that we could be using to power our society’s industries in a much cleaner and safer way - that we instead use to create highly dangerous weapons. Ah, humanity.
1. What do you make of Putin claiming Ukraine has “no means” to counter the new “Oreshnik” missiles.
and 2. What do you make of Putin saying that Russia considers itself entitled to use weapons against military targets of countries that allow their weapons to be used against Russia.
With him saying: “From that moment, as we have repeatedly emphasized earlier, the regionally provoked conflict in Ukraine took on elements of a global nature,” Putin said. “Using such weapons without the direct involvement of military specialists from the countries that produce these weapons is impossible.”
He added: “We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities, and in the event of an escalation of aggressive actions, we will respond just as decisively and in kind.”
Ukraine CURRENTLY has no defences against it. But it can likely be stopped by Aegis Ashore which protects Europe from ballistic missiles. It could also protect Ukraine if Europe made the decision to extend Aegis Ashore to shoot down incoming missiles over Ukraine. They could also give Ukraine a THAAD system to shoot them down though there aren't many of those in the world. I've added a section to my blog post about this now.
2. There is nothing in international law or the UN charter to say he can target countries that supply weapons to Ukraine. Example, the UK and US supply weapons to India. This doesn't mean that Pakistan has the right to attack the UK or the US because it is in constant small border conflicts with India.)
The whole invasion is illegal anyway.
And there is no way that in reality Putin attacks NATO at all.
Putin wants to stop the USA from giving Ukraine permission to use ATACMS against targets in Russia.
If Putin attacks NATO - then it ALREADY has ATACMS with permission to use them against Russia ALREADY along with stormshadows and F-35s and numerous other systems.
It makes no sense to attack NATO to try to stop ATACMS. He can guarantee that Ukraine will be given not only ATACMS but whatever it wants but not only that, every NATO country will be working together to stop Putin from attacking them and they have far more powerful systems than the ATACMS.
So no, he is not going to do this.
And if he loses the Ukraine war all that happens is it is another unsuccessful invasion like the Soviet Union's attempt to invade Afghanistan. If he loses the war then he has to end the invasion and that's all. Russia isn't fighting for its survival, not like Ukraine is.
And he can spin some story for his people, claim he denazified Ukraine say - just needs to tell them the Special Military operation took longer than expected but was successful and so they have decided to withdraw from Ukraine.
That is Putin's problem not Ukraine's. It would be dumb of Ukraine to fight in such a way as to try to preserve a bit of Ukraine for Putin so he can aspin it as a success at home.
Though if he goes to negotiations they collided then NEGOTIATE a deal like that to save months of fighting.
Pretty bold move of him to pull, to be honest. Putin himself has said it was in response to the decision of the US to allow their weapons to fire deeper into Russia.
Do you think there’s a possibility that he might use more of these experimental weapons??
Yes. But they are expensive - may be over $10 million each not seen an estimate. So far seem clumsy weapons with low accuracy. Not of military value at least at present. But he may think they are useful for terrorism - scaring the civilians in Ukraine - which doesn't work but seems to be a deliberate strategy to target civilians and a declared strategy to destroy their electricity grid.
Essentially he seems to be just using Ukraine as a testing range for an experimental missile. Which is unusual because normally it is done secretly as this can help reveal vulnerabilities to test the missile in ways a potential opponent can study.
*Missleus interruptus* is what Putin did to Ukraine.
If Putin has any sense he will only use nuclear weapons on areas for which he has no use, except as forever radioactively poisonous participation trophies.
1. Putin will NOT use nukes. But that's a popular misunderstanding,. In reality the radiation from an airburst is most of it gone in 2 days most of what's left in 2 weeks and hardly anything left months later.
2. A small tactical nuke would have very similar damage to the Bierut explosion.
3. The reason Putin would NOT use even a small tactical nuke is because it would break the partial test ban treaty.
Putin would then become a rogue nation and China and India would h ave to condemn Russia and it might well be expelled from teh Security Council. Not because of the damage from a tactical nuke. A small tactical nuke smaller than Hiroshima, and fired at a military target could even not harm civilians at all.
There have been numerous nuclear tests, many every year when I was a child, in remote places where they harmed nobody. The biggest nuke ever exploded, the Tsar Bomba was in a remote part of Russia, but it was an air burst and so didn't even leave a crater and nobody was hurt. There was very little radioactivity at the test site. That is because most of the explosive yield was from hydrogen that doesn't produce radioactivity when it explodes by fusing into helium.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba
The reason is they have to object so that other countries like Pakistan, North Korea etc don't start using tactical nukes too. To maintain the nuclear threshold that we never use nukes at all.
So Putin is not going to use nukes ,even a small one, because of the internatrional reaction.
This is on tactical nukes
BLOG: No way Russia uses even a very small tactical nuke against Ukraine and no risk of it attacking NATO
READ HERE: https://robertinventor.substack.com/p/no-way-russia-uses-even-a-very-small
This is about how rapidly fallout fades away (still on Quora not moved it to my substack yet)
BLOG: Most people don’t know: fallout is HEAVY dust - NOT fog - falls to the ground after 15 mins - and fallout gets MUCH less radioactive in hours - so you CAN protect yourself - if authorities thought there was a real risk we’d be told these things
READ HERE: https://debunkingdoomsday.quora.com/Most-people-don-t-know-fallout-is-heavy-dust-NOT-fog-falls-to-the-ground-after-15-mins-and-fallout-gets-MUCH-less
I dispute your assertion that long-term environmental contamination with radioactive products, may not be considered in any way as a deterrent to using nuclear weapons, because the contamination just *goes away* in a couple weeks. If that was true, people would be living in Chernobyl right now. I think it’s very dangerous to imagine the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons in such a permissive delusion.
https://paa.confex.com/paa/2017/mediafile/ExtendedAbstract/Paper11405/Meyers.Fallout.Mortality.03-23-17.pdf
I write this only to help scared people. And what I say here is about AIR BURSTS. CAPS LOCK is just to emphasize not shouting. That is not what I'm saying. I am not trying to justify nukes! Just sharing factual information about them with no political objective, just to help scared people.
The Chernobyl reactor was NOT an air burst. It was not a nuclear explosion at all. A nuclear reactor cannot explode. Only melt- down which is what happened to Chernobyl.
The explosion was a steam explosion in a nuclear reactor fueled with uranium. In the nuclear reactor that then produces isotopes of iodine, caesium and strontium. amongst many others.
The Tsar Bomba is the opposite, an air burst, of a huge hydrogen bombs. Hydrogen bombs are very clean because the hydrogen explodes by turning into helium with the reaction H + H = He. It has to be started by a fission explosion but then the fision triggers a fusion explosion and the hydrogen fuel is non radioactive and the Helium that results from the fusion is also non radioactive.
That is why the Tsar Bomba which was an air burst fusion bomb with a small uranium trigger had so little radioactivity.
In more detail.
QUOTE STARTS
The Tsar Bomba was a three-stage hydrogen bomb with a Trutnev-Babaev second and third stage design. A three-stage hydrogen bomb uses a fission-type atomic bomb as the first stage to compress the thermonuclear second stage. The energy produced from this explosion is then directed to compress the much larger thermonuclear third stage. There is evidence that Tsar Bomba utilized several third stages.
Tsar Bomba could have theoretically yielded as much as 100 megatons, but it would have resulted in a dangerous level of nuclear fallout (approximately 25% of all fallout produced since the invention of nuclear weapons in 1945). Additionally, the delivery plane would not have had sufficient time to retreat to a safe distance. Therefore, to minimize nuclear fallout, the third stage incorporated a lead tamper instead of a uranium-238 fusion tamper. It has been speculated that the second stage used this method as well.
The uranium-238 fusion tamper greatly amplifies the reaction by fissioning uranium atoms with fast neutrons from the fusion reaction. Because fast fissioning was eliminated, thermonuclear fusion accounted for as much as 97% of the yield. Thus, despite its huge yield, Tsar Bomba did not actually generate much nuclear fallout.
https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/tsar-bomba/
For air bursts almost all the radioactivity is from the explosion itself.
But for a ground burst - that's when you use a missile that penetrates into the ground. This then converts soem of the ground itself into long lived radioactive compounds and so is much longer lived
The rapidly decaying radiation is for a typical air burst.
But I was also talking about a tactical nuke. And assuming it was an air burst.
A tactical nuke is designed to be used on a battlefield. So they design it to reduce the fallout so as not to harm their own side. It does still produce fallout But the amount would be smaller.
The smallest tactical nukes would be rather similar to the Bierut explosion in effect. There have been even smaller ones designed but not in use any more they are obsolete now, the US Davy Crocket and the suitcase nukes.
The radioactivity levels from those are low. The main reason that China, India and hte USA would condemn it, that it would make a rogue nation of Russia is not because of the actual damage it does. That depends a lot on where it is exploded. The Tsar Bomba didn't harm anyone though it destroyed a small village that was evacuated before it was set off.
The reason is because it would cross a line that all the nuclera powers have agreed never to cross, to explode a nuke in the atmosphere.
It would turn Russia into a rogue nation and that is why Putin won't do it plus what the USA, China, India etc said to him. As I explained.
Again this is factually accurate to the best of my knowledge.
And remember there have been numerous nuclear tests. When I was a child in the 1960s they were going off somewhere in the world more than once a month on average. In the 10 years between when I was 6 and 16, there were 708 tests.
Between when I was 16 and 26 there were 550 tests. That is a little over 1 per week somewhere in the world.
https://www.atomicarchive.com/almanac/test-sites/testing-chronology.html
If you want to know my own position on nukes then I always vote for Scottish independence with my main motivation that I want a nuclear free Scotland. I have been opposed to the UK having nukes since I knew what nukes were in the 1960s.
But I am not answering here as an advocate to eliminate nukes. I am not doing this for ANY political reason. It is just to help scared people and I am very careful to be accurate. If I have made any mistakes do say.
But this is not delusive I hope you can see. It is firmly bsaed on the facts. I explain in more detail with sources in the linked article.
If I have made any mistakes here please say thanks!
That goes for any world power that committed the folly of investing resources in nuclear weapons production.
It’s crazy to me how we have these elements - that we could be using to power our society’s industries in a much cleaner and safer way - that we instead use to create highly dangerous weapons. Ah, humanity.
Two queistons.
1. What do you make of Putin claiming Ukraine has “no means” to counter the new “Oreshnik” missiles.
and 2. What do you make of Putin saying that Russia considers itself entitled to use weapons against military targets of countries that allow their weapons to be used against Russia.
With him saying: “From that moment, as we have repeatedly emphasized earlier, the regionally provoked conflict in Ukraine took on elements of a global nature,” Putin said. “Using such weapons without the direct involvement of military specialists from the countries that produce these weapons is impossible.”
He added: “We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities, and in the event of an escalation of aggressive actions, we will respond just as decisively and in kind.”
Source: https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/ukraine-russia-war-11-21-24/index.html
Ukraine CURRENTLY has no defences against it. But it can likely be stopped by Aegis Ashore which protects Europe from ballistic missiles. It could also protect Ukraine if Europe made the decision to extend Aegis Ashore to shoot down incoming missiles over Ukraine. They could also give Ukraine a THAAD system to shoot them down though there aren't many of those in the world. I've added a section to my blog post about this now.
2. There is nothing in international law or the UN charter to say he can target countries that supply weapons to Ukraine. Example, the UK and US supply weapons to India. This doesn't mean that Pakistan has the right to attack the UK or the US because it is in constant small border conflicts with India.)
The whole invasion is illegal anyway.
And there is no way that in reality Putin attacks NATO at all.
Putin wants to stop the USA from giving Ukraine permission to use ATACMS against targets in Russia.
If Putin attacks NATO - then it ALREADY has ATACMS with permission to use them against Russia ALREADY along with stormshadows and F-35s and numerous other systems.
It makes no sense to attack NATO to try to stop ATACMS. He can guarantee that Ukraine will be given not only ATACMS but whatever it wants but not only that, every NATO country will be working together to stop Putin from attacking them and they have far more powerful systems than the ATACMS.
So no, he is not going to do this.
And if he loses the Ukraine war all that happens is it is another unsuccessful invasion like the Soviet Union's attempt to invade Afghanistan. If he loses the war then he has to end the invasion and that's all. Russia isn't fighting for its survival, not like Ukraine is.
And he can spin some story for his people, claim he denazified Ukraine say - just needs to tell them the Special Military operation took longer than expected but was successful and so they have decided to withdraw from Ukraine.
That is Putin's problem not Ukraine's. It would be dumb of Ukraine to fight in such a way as to try to preserve a bit of Ukraine for Putin so he can aspin it as a success at home.
Though if he goes to negotiations they collided then NEGOTIATE a deal like that to save months of fighting.
Pretty bold move of him to pull, to be honest. Putin himself has said it was in response to the decision of the US to allow their weapons to fire deeper into Russia.
Do you think there’s a possibility that he might use more of these experimental weapons??
Yes. But they are expensive - may be over $10 million each not seen an estimate. So far seem clumsy weapons with low accuracy. Not of military value at least at present. But he may think they are useful for terrorism - scaring the civilians in Ukraine - which doesn't work but seems to be a deliberate strategy to target civilians and a declared strategy to destroy their electricity grid.
Essentially he seems to be just using Ukraine as a testing range for an experimental missile. Which is unusual because normally it is done secretly as this can help reveal vulnerabilities to test the missile in ways a potential opponent can study.