Why bother. As I said below now that she has ripped up some of the shaped charges it isn’t, no way, no how, going to go boom. Even if it does the French, Russia for what they’re worth, NATO, China, the IAEA, a bunch of Intelligence agencies that aren’t part of the US and American ones which aren’t under DoD, as well as highly compartmentalized ones inside Defense with legal authority to tell the Secretary to pee up a rope will all be on it like white on rice. The contingency plans have contingency plans. Sabotaging them would have set off alarms, and if just one E-5 is willing to do her duty the whole thing falls apart.
So how do you shoot down a nuclear-armed cruise missile? The plutonium payload vaporised all over the landscape would still make a very dirty bomb. But hey, half will have degraded after 50,000 years, three-quarters after 100,000.
If we are at the point where we are talking about having to shoot down nuke ALCMs, then the consequences of a dirty bomb is the least of our concerns.
By then, many, many MIRV ICBMs would have been launched and the only thing we could do is stick our head between our legs and kiss our arses goodbye.
Friend of the family was a world-class health physicist. One of the studies he did was on how plutonium dust spread. Turns out it’s … very dense. Even if you grind it fine and set it on fire in a high wind it doesn’t travel all that far. And no, he couldn’t say exactly how far that was for security reasons
Interesting. Imagine being the guys tasked to do those experiments – “Ok, now go out there and set fire to some of it, wait a while then walk around with a geiger meter…” 🙂
Tsath
Disable one or two of the shaped charges and it’s not a nuclear weapon any longer
Heck, mash a couple of the krytrons which are fragile and the explosives won’t go off. A nuclear weapon is very, very fiddly even with perfect upkeep which is one reason the US military’s official religion is Maintenance.
I’ve never studied engineering but I’m imagining it as pretty high, higher than any human anyway… she’s mostly made of graphene and similar stuff, so, if she’s able to ‘lock’ her grip somehow, that grip would be about as high as the tensile durability of her fingers right?
You know, this is not “a regular sexbot” – this is a speacial make.
That’s why we can’t consider this a case of “overbuild”.
But anyway – sure the robots are overbuilt in fiction. Normally you would have a serious structure built to withstand the load needed to lift a car like a bed mattress… And there you have it – in many sci-fi it’s done by a humanoidal robot standing on a single leg, dancing and smiling at the same time… 😉
I was going to ask the same thing. Very interesting.
Blackhead
As seen in some movies from the 90’s – the core is shelled in some sort of high-explosive. But also there should be a mesh of initiators, to make the sphere compress in all the possible directions at the very same time.
See The Peacemaker movie for the hint on how this could look – I’m not sure it should be exactly like depicted in the movie, but hey, it’s sci-fi anyway! 😀
And thank you Steven for the good job you are doing!
Blackhead
… and I forgot to add the last bit:
As to the warhead damage on the fifth panel – this is enough to make the bomb not to be a nuclear bomb anymore. This removal of the explosive “casing” on such a “large” part of the inner spehere is far enough. In such a case the radioactive material would be ejected out of the warhead in case of activation. Dispersed, instead of compressed.
Now it is a dirty bomb.
Removing the inner core totaly would make it just a conventional bomb.
But then again, how to dispose of the radioactive material? If this should be the berylium-coated Pu238 core, then there is no safe way – only lab-conducted chemical or radiological treatment is the “safe” way. You can’t just drop that into the water. That would kill any living thing down the stream…
Hey look, a Norwegian.
Aw, they look a bit sad. You might even say … blue.
Make sure to smash the neutron gennie once you have removed the Be-9 sphere containing the Pu-239.
Better safe than sorry.
Local wearing a backpack? Probably a Yank. Or a Brit, pining for the fjords.
Why bother. As I said below now that she has ripped up some of the shaped charges it isn’t, no way, no how, going to go boom. Even if it does the French, Russia for what they’re worth, NATO, China, the IAEA, a bunch of Intelligence agencies that aren’t part of the US and American ones which aren’t under DoD, as well as highly compartmentalized ones inside Defense with legal authority to tell the Secretary to pee up a rope will all be on it like white on rice. The contingency plans have contingency plans. Sabotaging them would have set off alarms, and if just one E-5 is willing to do her duty the whole thing falls apart.
So how do you shoot down a nuclear-armed cruise missile? The plutonium payload vaporised all over the landscape would still make a very dirty bomb. But hey, half will have degraded after 50,000 years, three-quarters after 100,000.
If we are at the point where we are talking about having to shoot down nuke ALCMs, then the consequences of a dirty bomb is the least of our concerns.
By then, many, many MIRV ICBMs would have been launched and the only thing we could do is stick our head between our legs and kiss our arses goodbye.
Friend of the family was a world-class health physicist. One of the studies he did was on how plutonium dust spread. Turns out it’s … very dense. Even if you grind it fine and set it on fire in a high wind it doesn’t travel all that far. And no, he couldn’t say exactly how far that was for security reasons
Interesting. Imagine being the guys tasked to do those experiments – “Ok, now go out there and set fire to some of it, wait a while then walk around with a geiger meter…” 🙂
Disable one or two of the shaped charges and it’s not a nuclear weapon any longer
Heck, mash a couple of the krytrons which are fragile and the explosives won’t go off. A nuclear weapon is very, very fiddly even with perfect upkeep which is one reason the US military’s official religion is Maintenance.
What is her grip strength!?
I’ve never studied engineering but I’m imagining it as pretty high, higher than any human anyway… she’s mostly made of graphene and similar stuff, so, if she’s able to ‘lock’ her grip somehow, that grip would be about as high as the tensile durability of her fingers right?
I’m always amused by how overbuilt robots are in fiction! A sexbot with that grip strength might be a little off-putting to a customer…
Orrrr, she might be able to charge extra.
/You know, if that’s your kink.
You know, this is not “a regular sexbot” – this is a speacial make.
That’s why we can’t consider this a case of “overbuild”.
But anyway – sure the robots are overbuilt in fiction. Normally you would have a serious structure built to withstand the load needed to lift a car like a bed mattress… And there you have it – in many sci-fi it’s done by a humanoidal robot standing on a single leg, dancing and smiling at the same time… 😉
Yes, true, it would make a boring story with a weak ass robot… 😀 and anyway, I tell myself, she’s built to be a bodyguard as well as an escort.
Changed the fourth and fifth panels?
Yes, true, I got some feedback from someone who seemed to know, that it shouldn’t be flexible but brittle like that 🙂
I was going to ask the same thing. Very interesting.
As seen in some movies from the 90’s – the core is shelled in some sort of high-explosive. But also there should be a mesh of initiators, to make the sphere compress in all the possible directions at the very same time.
See The Peacemaker movie for the hint on how this could look – I’m not sure it should be exactly like depicted in the movie, but hey, it’s sci-fi anyway! 😀
And thank you Steven for the good job you are doing!
… and I forgot to add the last bit:
As to the warhead damage on the fifth panel – this is enough to make the bomb not to be a nuclear bomb anymore. This removal of the explosive “casing” on such a “large” part of the inner spehere is far enough. In such a case the radioactive material would be ejected out of the warhead in case of activation. Dispersed, instead of compressed.
Now it is a dirty bomb.
Removing the inner core totaly would make it just a conventional bomb.
But then again, how to dispose of the radioactive material? If this should be the berylium-coated Pu238 core, then there is no safe way – only lab-conducted chemical or radiological treatment is the “safe” way. You can’t just drop that into the water. That would kill any living thing down the stream…