Bin Laden and his love of aviation terror

Tom Sixkiller wrote:
"C J Campbell" wrote in message
...

"Laurence Doering" wrote in message

news:bsjruk$cjsrv$1@ID-|

|
| Damage would be reduced further by the mountainous terrain and the fact
| that most buildings in that part of the world are made of mud brick,
stone,
| or concrete, which would be far more resistant to blast overpressure

than

| wood frame construction.

I have to wonder about that, given the horrendous damage caused by the
recent earthquake in Iran. These structures do not seem to me to be
particularly well built.


The Northridge (CA) earthquake (7.1 ??) Richter killed a "handful" of
people, given the high density of the population. OTOH, _EVERY_ earthquake
in the rest of the world seems to have death tolls in the tens of thousands.

Go figure!



Most of the rest of the world has no building codes or uniform building
standards.


Matt

On Sat, 27 Dec 2003 21:06:16 GMT, Matthew S. Whiting wrote:
Laurence Doering wrote:
[...]

You're not going to find many wood frame buildings in the mountains of
Pakistan, though, and you need overpressures more in the neighborhood of
15-25 psi to severely damage or destroy masonry or concrete buildings.
Sure, you could break windows and scare people over a larger area, but the
original poster wanted to "obliterate" 200 square miles with a single
missile.

Getting pretty far off topic here, but any idea if this is the response
to a transient shock wave or a steady state pressure difference as would
exist with a hurricane force wind?

Overpressures from the blast wave generated by a nuclear explosion
are transient, lasting on the order of several seconds, not steady
state loads like strong winds would generate.

Is any of this resistance to air pressure available online?

If you're primarily interested in the effects of nuclear weapons,
the Nuclear Weapons FAQ at

http://nuclearweaponsarchive.org

is a good source.

A Google search will turn up a lot of other stuff, for example:

http://www.eqe.com/publications/revf95/explos.htm

which is an article about the effects of explosions at chemical
plants and refineries on buildings on the plant grounds, and
how to improve building construction to better protect occupants
from blast and fires.

The bible on standards for various sorts of loads on buildings
seems to be ASCE 7-02, a publication of the American Society
of Civil Engineers. It doesn't seem to be available online,
but if you're really interested it's for sale on their website.


ljd

You are a complete asshole

C J Campbell wrote:

Right now the governments of both Pakistan and Afghanistan are important US
allies in the fight against terrorism. Both countries have lost more
soldiers in this war than we have. bin Laden and his terrorist networks are
actively trying to overthrow the legitimate governments of these countries
through the use of force.

But you want to threaten our allies with random use of nuclear weapons.
Yeah, that'll convince them to get in line.

wrote in message
...
| You are a complete asshole
|

No, but I will do until one comes along.