A technology that was available towards the end of WW2 - more powerful than the bomb that devastated Hiroshima and portable. Scary, scary stuff.

 

That is what the article claims, but I don't believe much of that statement.

Right after WW2, the US focused on building stock piles of nuclear weapons and we started making them as big as possible. We had the plutonium bomb and we had the B-29 and we thought that was enough. Then the Russians copied both systems. So we focused on making even bigger hydrogen fusion weapons.

It took at least another decade before the US even considered making a fission device small. At first this was to allow our ICBMs to carry multiple warheads, then later to allow cruise missiles to carry nucs.

I believe backpack nucs were a product of the late 1950s and their yield was less than the first uranium bomb called "Little Boy".

Yes, it is still scary stuff.

 

I find it hard to believe anything that man portable could be more powerful than the ones that were dropped on Japan. Can you say hyperbole?

 

I actually find it plausible considering that they were only the second and third nuclear explosions ever. A lot was learned by the Trinity Test, but the real testing was done on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hiroshima being the first Uranium device ever exploded and Nagasaki being the second Plutonium device.

A good example is, of the 64 kg of enriched uranium in the Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima, less than a kilogram underwent nuclear fission.

 

OTE=swen_in_ca;7666987]I actually find it plausible considering that they were only the second and third nuclear explosions ever. A lot was learned by the Trinity Test, but the real testing was done on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hiroshima being the first Uranium device ever exploded and Nagasaki being the second Plutonium device.

A good example is, of the 64 kg of enriched uranium in the Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima, less than a kilogram underwent nuclear fission.[/QUOTE]

and it took how many thousands of pounds of conventional explosives to set that one pound off ?

 

ODA-7, 1st Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne), Bad Tölz, Germany.

 

Have any of you seen modern Nukes?

I have, even back in the 80's and early 90's the actual Nuke itself was pretty small in comparison to the delivery vehicle, be it Bombs or Missiles.

As the cones in these MIRV heads show, and technology has come a long way since then.

Do we have the technology to deploy a powerful suitcase Nuke?
I have little doubt.

If the delivery vehicle is a suitcase, you wouldn't need much size to carry a nuke.
.

 

Better off putting water on your back these days. No S3 is ever going to allow you to blow it. The battlefield nuke is a pipe dream. More wasted resources.

 

Tim

The most disruptive device is a the emp bomb...knocks a civilized society all the way back to 1900...Man portable nukes have a yield that can be dialed in from 10 kilotons to 50 kilotons...yes the way that the explosives are detonated force a
highly refined fissible material to critical mass incredibly fast. Now science can
make a warhead with an extremely short half life...so little radiation but can destroy half a city.

 

Years ago the West German protesters used to say that there cities were, "only 10 kilotons apart in distance." That ought to tell you how some people were measuring things during the Cold War. They had the blast radius of nuclear bombs figured out based upon the distance between their cities and something to do with gaps in the mountains and such. I guess that they were pretty much right on the money too.

 

The book Codename Copperhead goes into backpack nukes a little. The author was a senior Special Forces NCO on an SADM (Special Atomic Demolition Munition) team for part of his career.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munition

lots of misinformation in that article.

 

Old computer...

Modern computer...

But nukes can never get smaller with better technology?

on a side note read the first pics text...kinda funny.

 

Certain things can be boosted through technology, but the basic concept of yield versus fuel doesnt alter all that much. You cant make the pit smaller and expect a similar result.

 

Fatman and Littleboy

Little Boy
Weight: 9,700 lbs
Length: 10 ft.; Diameter: 28 in.
Fuel: Highly enriched uranium; "Oralloy"
Uranium Fuel: approx. 140 lbs; target - 85 lbs and projectile - 55 lbs
Efficiency of weapon: poor
Approx. 1.38% of the uranium fuel actually fissioned
Explosive force: 15,000 tons of TNT equivalent
Use: Dropped on Japanese city of Hiroshima; August 6, 1945

Fat Man

"Fat Man" was the second plutonium, implosion-type bomb. In the implosion-type device, a core of sub-critical plutonium is surrounded by several thousand pounds of high-explosive designed in such a way that the explosive force of the HE is directed inwards thereby crushing the plutonium core into a super-critical state. Dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, it was the second nuclear weapon used in a war.

Fat Man on TinianWeight: 10,800 lbs
Length: 10 ft 8 in.; Diameter: 60 in.
Fuel: Highly enriched plutonium 239
Plutonium Fuel: approx. 13.6 lbs; approx. size of a softball
Plutonium core surrounded by 5,300 lbs of high explosives; plutonium core reduced to size of tennis ball
Bomb Initiator: Beryllium - Polonium
Efficiency of weapon: 10 times that of Little Boy
Approx 1.176 Kilograms of plutonium converted to energy
Explosive force: 21,000 tons of TNT equivalent
Use: Dropped on Japanese city of Nagasaki; August 9, 1945

1945 Hiroshima's "Little Boy" gravity bomb 15 KT
1945 Nagasaki's "Fat Man" gravity bomb 20 KT
2010 B53 nuclear bomb 9,000 KT
2010 Castle Bravo device 15,000 KT
1985 SADM Man Portable device 1 KT
(But was intentionally kept low yield as it was designed for a Battle Field Tactical Strike)

 

Fatman and Littleboy

Once we figured out what we were doing with regard to the physics of creating nuclear weapons and had it down to a science the maximum efficiency of the devices hit a ceiling, although we did learn how to adjust yield downward even on the fly.

Ive been to the Trinity site and its pretty surreal. All kinds of pictures, maintained observation cabins and a monument that very few ever see.

 

The interesting rumor I have heard a few times is that the timer/delay devices are actually complete B.S. The theory says that in order to eliminate the possibility of these nukes being discovered and/or captured by the enemy, the devices are designed to detonate immediately when activated. Since this makes this a "Suicide Bomb", troops are not told about this feature, as volunteers might be hard to find, if they where aware of the truth. Of course the practice bombs have real working timers, since they don't really go boom. Have a nice day!

 

This sounds like a classic barracks rumor.

 

An interesting thing about nukes is that if the fuel produces neutrons at greater than a certain rate, they can and will burn up the fuel without going critical and/or predetonate and produce a small explosion, similar to a dirty bomb. I have no idea about the feasability, but if the bomb were designed so that neutrons could be bred faster after its timer is activated, the risk of abandoning the bomb undetonated would be fairly low. If the bomb is discovered before it goes off and if the timer somehow doesn't make it go off, the inside of the bomb will just burn itself up and leave a burned and irradiated shell. Makes me question the need for lying to soldiers about the timer's function.

 

Mauser6863, if the detonators were designed for immediate explosion, the guys who handled the backpacks would have either been told about that or else they would have been bright enough to figure it out themselves. As to the use of nuclear backpacks being part of a suicide mission, just about every aspect of a SF mission is already high risk. That's a given right from the word go. In some of the scenarios, the survival rate for team members drops down to almost zero the longer the mission goes on, especially if the mission is a long range/distance one behind enemy lines. In other words, if your teams only goes a couple of hundred miles behind enemy lines for a couple of weeks you could have a 90% survival rate. If, however, your team goes behind enemy lines for a distance of 2,000 miles for 6 months or more then your team's survival rate drops down, down and down.

In Jump School they teach paratroopers that, right off the bat, when a group of soldiers parachute into combat the leaders actually expect to start off the war/fighting with a 25% loss of troops before firing any shots at all. All elite troops face the same thing: initial confrontation losses. What makes them good is that they all regroup, reorganize, adapt and move forward to engage the enemy. It doesn't matter which branch of service they're in, they're there to win a battle for their nation. So the key is motivation. Motivation to one's country does not mean that a guy's committing suicide or using a suicide detonator. It may however mean accomplishing a mission or failing to accomplish a mission. So the question is, "Would you set off a backpack nuke with a detonator if it could save thousands of your fellow American soldiers' lives or would you value your own life too much and not set it off?" Your life versus the thousands. Your call. Keep in mind that nobody may ever know what you ever did. All they may know or suspect is that one of the SF guys got to the target and set off the backpack nuke for them. Which one? Who knows?

 

In Jump School they teach paratroopers that, right off the bat, when a group of soldiers parachute into combat the leaders actually expect to start off the war/fighting with a 25% loss of troops before firing any shots at all.

I believe there are usually about 10% jump related injuries on a combat jump. I don't remember it being that high on practice jumps but combat jumps are usually on more hazardous drop zones. That does not factor in KIA and WIA, just the sprained ankles, broken legs, etc.

If the mission was not limited to consolidating on the DZ and there was a follow-on mission like a movement to contact, I remember it being SOP for a rifle company to move out of the assembly area once it was up to 75%.

All elite troops face the same thing: initial confrontation losses. What makes them good is that they all regroup, reorganize, adapt and move forward to engage the enemy.

The rule of the LGOP: Little Groups Of Paratroopers.

 

You've got to remember I'm probably older so the estimate was based on older information. I was kind of shocked when I heard that right off the start we'd begin the fight with a 25% reduction in manpower because the guys were lost to injuries received during the drop, killed while coming down in the chutes or because their planes were shot down enroute to the drop zones. That's the kind of information that makes you think long and hard about the guys around you and how much pride you feel for them.

 

We've gotten off topic a bit since the OP. Back to subject:

In the book I mentioned, the SF SADM team trained on hydro-electric sites around NC for their mission. They would jump in with the SADM, infiltrate the site, and the place the device in a way that it would blow out the dam and cause massive flooding down river from the reservoir.

I'm sure that's just one way the SADM was anticipated being used but we do have a record from the memoir of that particular SF soldier that hydro-electric sites were a probable target.

 

Military has known since at least the 80's that you wreak much more devastation and loss of life by hitting infrastructure than you do killing people outright. Then you sit back while people kill each other.

That is why I think we are at a high risk from Terrorists.

They don't need to kill people, and IMO usually only do for the shock value and the TV air time.
We know if they really wanted to cause devastation you take out the grid.
Like was tried in California and one other place here recently IIRC.

Just think if they were successful?
.

 

remember, the KT was the TNT equivalent power, not the amount of fissile material

 

Here's a 'suitcase' sized nuke (SADM) and one way of deploying it. Dated film but pretty interesting. If a single parachutist can deliver it that's pretty scary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lbJGuMj1J4

 

Wish he had a Kindle version of that book

 

As I recall, portable nuclear devices require frequent maintenance and its specifications very quickly worsen over time

 

I think this applies to all Nukes. They are high maintenance.

 

I kinda want one now for SHTF. It would be a highly convenient way to eliminate a roving gang, or a bunch of UN goons...

 

I know what you're saying, but I think about how big the computers were back then, because they couldn't touch the laptop I'm typing on right now. So as far as possible, I have no doubt, given our ability to shrink things down now, while keeping or increasing their power, that it is possible

 

Apples and oranges though really. I'm sure some improvement has been made

 

That would be pretty insane if they used it for that. LSD I would venture to guess is probably close to 100 percent unpredictable as far as people's brain. Same acid, 1 trip could be awesome and smiles and everyone having fun...then the very next trip could be everyone is out to get you, you see the devil, the walls are growing vegetables on them. LSD is one of the CRAZIEST drugs ever as far as the mental aspect. It would be the last drug used for subduing (In my opinion) Definitely don't doubt you or your buddies story, but that would be crazy to use that powerful of a mental drug to "subdue".

A better use would be to drug a bunch of ISIS folks with that at the same time. With their mentality already (which factors in to play with lsd), they WOULD start killing each other, running around yelling, doing goats and each other, shooting at imaginary people in the air floating, and more importantly....blowing themselves up maybe

 

Well I can't claim to know any facts about this but I do know how the government and the military operate and I can't imagine they didn't have a pretty controlled environment and a pretty good idea that the application they tried would render most people staring at walls drooling on themselves. But as we know, no drug has the exact same reaction in all people.

But testing is how we discover amazing new things.
.

 

Seems to me that at one hostage situation years ago the Russian Spetnatz tried to use sleeping gas to their advantage and overdosed a bunch of the hostage takers and hostages. Killed a number of people by being too excessive in their use of the sleeping gas. Later on they figured out that the dispersal pattern in a large room was too irregular to let such a tactical use of gas work right for them.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2365383.stm

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/29/w...e-drama-in-moscow-the-toxic-agent-us-suspects-opiate-in-gas-in-russia-raid.html

 

Funny about whole a lot of the people who died did post operation. After they pulled the people out half drugged they left a bunch on their stomachs face down. These people were so far gone they ended suffucating from their own body weight.

 

A bit if a tangent in this thread but I do find this stuff fascinating to learn about.

Released video of LSD tests performed on soldiers;

.