"Geoffrey Sinclair" wrote in message ...

Using nukes, it is possible to subject a city to multiple groundbursts
resulting in at least 100 PSI overpressure throughout a large area.
Bomb shelters that are conspicuous enough to be detected by
reconnaissance flights can be targeted for a direct hit.

I see, bomb shelters that are conspicuous, direct hit, I presume
you have noticed the accuracy of the nuclear weapons strikes,
the aiming points were missed.

Visual bombing gave reasonable accuracy. Good enough to get an A-bomb
close enough to hit any shelter that was noticed.


Ah yes, the myth of accurate visual bombing persists. Presumably
the atomic attacks have agreements with the rain gods so clouds
will not interfere with the clockwork precision attacks being used
in these make nuclear weapons look as bad as possible scenarios.

They could always scrub the raid if the weather didn't cooperate.




I presume also the shape of the nuclear bombs will be altered to give
them the needed aerodynamic qualities to maximise accuracy

No. I was using WWII technology, which didn't have such.




I presume you have noticed the
average accuracy of WWII bombers dropping from 30,000 feet.
I presume all the aircraft release together and achieve a perfect
bombing pattern, with no weapon caught in the blast of another
before it detonates.

The bombers could release together,

Ah yes the wonder hyper precision attack force, formation
bombing when the aircraft are dispersed to achieve the
wonder bomb pattern with no problems for the aircraft in the
middle to escape the blasts.

The area being blasted doesn't seem so great that an aircraft in the
middle couldn't escape.




Ah yes, one wonders why more WWII attacks were not done like
this, maybe the chance for the defences to intercept individual
bombers?

They could have decoy aircraft fly in each time a bomb was dropped.




Maybe the way dust and smoke from the first strikes
played a part, dodge that mushroom cloud, go left at the next
mushroom cloud, now where are those landmarks again?

The mushroom clouds themselves can become landmarks.




Well that cuts down the casualties given topography, the shielding
effects of hills, see Nagasaki for a good example, and the energy
wasted digging a crater, as well as upping the chances of the
bomb failing to explode.

I am not sure that topography would be that significant that close to
a nuclear explosion.

I am skeptical that the bomb would fail to explode. I'd think a
reliable contact fuse could be devised using WWII technology. If not,
an extremely close range proximity fuse would work.




Ground bursts were a perfectly realistic option using 1945 nuclear
technology.


Ah a change of subject, from giving the attackers far greater abilities
than historical,

I see no basis for saying that WWII technology could not achieve a
ground burst.




So how close and how big does a blast have to be in your
opinion to destroy an underground shelter?

Depends on the shelter's blast resistance. A 49kt bomb would have a
blast overpressure of 200 PSI at 1,000 feet.




Everyone within the 100 PSI overpressure area in my example does
experience such a blast wave. In addition, many of them would be
directly exposed to fireball plasma, and to incredibly intense
radiation.

Presumably after being carefully staked out on the ground, in an
area of no cover etc.

The 100+ PSI overpressure, followed by 1,777+ MPH winds, would do a
good job of removing any cover that might protect against the 200,000+
rads of penetrating radiation that people would experience, unless
they were in a shelter designed to resist it.




This is becoming very funny, we have the arrival of the nuclear
cluster bomb, multiple bursts so close together people are caught
well within the lethal blast radius of the individual bombs. What is
the radius being used for this 100 PSI overpressure?

For a 37kt groundburst, 0.228416 mile.




This is good, given the larger atomic strike in WWII was 25 kt, so
we have 40 such weapons being used to make a 1 Megaton attack.

By 1946, we would have been able to produce 37kt bombs at a rate of
7.76 per month. And we would have been able to produce some
additional 18kt bombs at a rate of 2.516667 per month. The material
for the 18kt bombs could have been used instead to produce 49kt bombs,
but at a much lower rate.

I used a three-month production of 18kt and 37kt bombs. However, I
was conservative in my initial figures, and the specified level of
damage could be achieved by the 37kt bombs alone. This would give the
US the opportunity to forgo the 18kt bombs and make some 49kt ones for
use against bunkers.




Just remember folks throw away all the perfects above and just
chant how bad nuclear weapons are, even though someone who
hides behind an assumed name needs to cook the books to prove it.

I am cooking nothing. These ARE the levels of damage that nukes can
provide.




It looks as though the peak month in the war in Europe saw around
150,000 tons of bombs dropped.

Which was less than half of the explosive output that our A-bomb
program would have been able to produce once it got going.




How many Japanese cities would be left by the time the
nuclear weapons for the 1,000 kt strike would be ready?

However many cities we chose to spare from conventional bombing.




The above wonder attack at 1,000 kt would therefore take 3 months
supply of weapons once production reached this level, if indeed it
could do so in 1946.

It would have reached that level of production. And yes, I used three
months of production.




Especially if those weapons can be delivered with far better
accuracy than achieved historically and the methods for computing
lethality can be rigged in favour of the weapons.

Nothing is rigged. 100 PSI overpressure, 1777 MPH winds, 200000 rads
of radiation, and (for many people in the targeted area) exposure to
fireball plasma, all tend to produce very high fatality rates.




This is becoming funny, after setting up a hyper precision attack,
after altering the definitions to make the weapons look more lethal
the claim is no bias. If the weapons are that much more deadly there
is no need to rig the results.

There is no rigging of results. Just an accurate statement of the
destructive force produced by nuclear weapons.




It is also possible to achieve, with conventional weapons, the sorts of
lethalities that were seen in the nuclear attacks.

How much conventional explosive do you think it would take to kill 50%
of the people in a 2km radius?

I presume you have forgotten Pforzheim? I presume you have forgotten
40,000 deaths at Hamburg with less than 3,000 tons of bombs?

Oh sorry, I forgot, nuclear weapons are bigger bangs, so we now go
to those killed in the blast radius of an individual bomb, but wait I can
drop thousands of conventional bombs, each lethal to humans within
so many feet, so I can make up my 2km by 2km by pi area that way,
just adding the 100 PSI blast areas of individual bombs together,
all against an unwarned population out in the open (fragmentation
bombs come to mind), or my precision guided AP bombs on those
well known and marked air raid shelters, in perfect weather, with no
interceptions, smoke problems etc. etc.

So how many conventional bombs do you think it would take to achieve
that?