Realistic Nuclear Missile Mods?

[PowderedWig]

You don't have to copy and paste what people say, there is a quote button at the bottom-right corner of the post.

just a tip.

I see, thanks for the tip. By the way, thread is still dead and same rules of meddling and causing trouble apply, which is stated in two posts above.

 

[Badtz Maru]

4) However, it is clear that this is an instance where game balance takes precedent over realism. Imagine what would happen in a game with 50 ICBMs.

That would be a fun mod to try out. Getting the UN and banning the use of nuclear weapons would be a high priority, and every game would have a good chance of having a large scale nuclear conflict.

 

[Badtz Maru]

Checked who started this thread, and I think it's hilarious that the call for "more realistic" nuclear weapons was someone who had so many crazily uninformed ideas about them.

One thing I haven't heard discussed is what effect lots of large buildings would have on a nuclear blast. A nuclear weapon has never been detonated in a heavily developed modern city with skyscrapers and thousands of 10+ story smaller buildings. I wonder what effect it would have on blast radius to have all those buildings absorbing energy and shielding areas from direct line of site with the fireball.

 

[PowderedWig]

Checked who started this thread, and I think it's hilarious that the call for "more realistic" nuclear weapons was someone who had so many crazily uninformed ideas about them.

One thing I haven't heard discussed is what effect lots of large buildings would have on a nuclear blast. A nuclear weapon has never been detonated in a heavily developed modern city with skyscrapers and thousands of 10+ story smaller buildings. I wonder what effect it would have on blast radius to have all those buildings absorbing energy and shielding areas from direct line of site with the fireball.

@Badtz Maru
<snipped>
Maybe not more realistic nuclear weapons but the addition of Cold War era nuclear weapons, I learned recently that ICBMs are not as powerful yet more effective.
Not crazily uniformed ideas as you put it, but theories, cold war era nukes would easily wipe out a city
thousands of 10+ story smaller buildings, they are about 30 megatons of explosive power.
I already stated this thread is dead, enough debating, you really cool guy. If you can't keep this as a Gentleman's Debate then I will talk on the same level as you are talking towards me.
Although I admit it was idiotic of me to name the thread what it is and use the theories I had about the Nuclear weapons without putting more research into nuclear weapons and for that I apologize to everyone, I am just too impatient and bold at times. I will try my best not to repeat that mistake.

Moderator Action: Keep the name-calling out of it.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Badtz Maru]

@Badtz Maru
<snipped>
Maybe not more realistic nuclear weapons but the addition of Cold War era nuclear weapons, I learned recently that ICBMs are not as powerful yet more effective.
Not crazily uniformed ideas as you put it, but theories, cold war era nukes would easily wipe out a city
thousands of 10+ story smaller buildings, they are about 30 megatons of explosive power.
I already stated this thread is dead, enough debating, you really cool guy. If you can't keep this as a Gentleman's Debate then I will talk on the same level as you are talking towards me.
Although I admit it was idiotic of me to name the thread what it is and use the theories I had about the Nuclear weapons without putting more research into nuclear weapons and for that I apologize to everyone, I am just too impatient and bold at times. I will try my best not to repeat that mistake.

MIRVs ARE Cold War-era nukes, unless you think the Cold War ended in the early 1970s.

The fact is that the bulk of both the US and Soviet stockpile was made up of nukes FAR smaller than 30MT. Large bombs were made when it was expected that nukes would be delivered by strategic bombers, which had a much higher chance of interception and where there was a real possibility that you might only get to drop one on a city. They were also made for propaganda purposes and for testing new nuclear weapon design. Once ICBMs became the preferred means of delivery (and this was quite some time before MIRVs and long before the end of the Cold War) most warheads were much, much smaller.

It might make an interesting mod to have bombers that you could load a single large bomb on, and have a real risk of the bomber being intercepted by fighters and other pre-SDI defense systems, but I imagine it would probably get frustrating seeing bomb after bomb fail to be delivered to a well-defended city, and the space of time between the invention of fusion weapons and the invention of ICBMs would be a very small window for a nuclear war.


And this...

cold war era nukes would easily wipe out a city thousands of 10+ story smaller buildings, they are about 30 megatons of explosive power.

Here you go again making proclamations about the destructive power of nuclear weapons when it's obvious from your belief that mutliplying explosive power would lead to a directly proportional increase in blast radius that you have, at best, a grade school level understanding of math and physics.

 

[PowderedWig]

Understood, I see your point.
"cold war era nukes would easily wipe out a city thousands of 10+ story smaller buildings, they are about 30 megatons of explosive power." didn't need my multiplying explosive power theory to know that would happen. Grade school understanding?, Whatever pleases yourself, I was just posting a simple theory. I am aware that a nuclear blast and atomic blast are different and aware that structures of 1949 Nagasaki and Hiroshima were much weaker than modern day skyscrapers but that still won't stop a 30 MT bomb from leveling the city besides the fact that the city is NOT 100 percent made of skyscrapers. I think you need to go back to grade school, they way you think and act is inappropriate. But to be fair, nobody really knows what would happen if a 30mt nuke was dropped on a modern city so, it really is a challenge to say what would happen. Besides when I mean large cities, I was talking about Boston sized cities, not New York sized cities, and yes I consider Boston a large city, I know that a nuke wouldn't completely destroy New York, it is too big.

 

[Badtz Maru]

Understood, I see your point.
"cold war era nukes would easily wipe out a city thousands of 10+ story smaller buildings, they are about 30 megatons of explosive power." didn't need my multiplying explosive power theory to know that would happen. Grade school understanding?, Whatever pleases yourself, I was just posting a simple theory. I am aware that a nuclear blast and atomic blast are different and aware that structures of 1949 Nagasaki and Hiroshima were much weaker than modern day skyscrapers but that still won't stop a 30 MT bomb from leveling the city besides the fact that the city is NOT 100 percent made of skyscrapers. I think you need to go back to grade school, they way you think and act is inappropriate. But to be fair, nobody really knows what would happen if a 30mt nuke was dropped on a modern city so, it really is a challenge to say what would happen.

I'll repeat - WE HAVE NEVER TESTED A NUCLEAR WEAPON IN A LARGE CITY WITH SKYSCRAPERS AND THOUSANDS OF LARGE BUILDINGS. You can repeat all day "That's a lotta megatons, it would of course wipe out all those buildings" but there is no evidence or reasoning (beyond "bigger numbers are better") behind that assertion.

In nuclear weapon tests, we've shown that large concrete and steel constructed buildings can withstand the blast wave. On a flat plain with no obstructions a 30MT (friggin huge, only a few existed, and 3 times more powerful than the biggest in use today) nuke's overpressure will have reduced to 5 PSI in less than 5 miles. At this distance from ground zero, damage would be "Complete destruction of ordinary houses, and moderate to severe damage to reinforced concrete structures". Now, if this blast wave only does damage to a concrete structure, that means this concrete structure has absorbed the energy from the blast, and things behind that structure are going to receive even less blast energy. This absorption of energy at ground level is going to be cumulative, and if there are thousands of large buildings, this is going to logically reduce the level of damage from what it would be if there were no obstructions to the blast wave.

Now, on that hypothetical flat plain (the one without a bunch of concrete buildings to disperse and absorb the blast), your antique supernuke's blast is going to be reduced to 2 PSI of overpressure at a little under 9 miles. This level of damage is "Severe damage to ordinary houses, and light to moderate damage to reinforced concrete structures". Military planners calculate an app. 20% immediate casualty rate at this distance (this does not include later deaths due to radiation, of course). Even with no buildings in the way, most people would survive the blast of this supernuke at 8.7 miles, and probably most houses would be still standing though severely damaged.

I live within the Dallas, TX city limits. I also live over 9 miles from downtown. If one of these supernukes was dropped on the middle of Dallas, I would probably survive, as would most of the people in North Dallas, and nearly everybody in Richardson, Plano, Addison, and the other suburbs north of where I live. A single 30MT nuke would not wipe out the entire city.

 

[PowderedWig]

All right, I admit defeat. You have proven me wrong, I have to admit you have more facts to back up your theories than I have facts to prove my own theories. But now I won't make the mistake of saying nukes could destroy a city, although I still question it. You are a good debater Badtz Maru but at least I had learned something new so, it wasn't a complete defeat on my part. Peace out.

 

[1veedo]

@Silu go back to post #28, I admitted I made a mathematical error, the real destructive power of the Tsar bomb would have been 2,500, I'm guessing that but mathematically I could be incorrect again. You cant just pick a piece of an argument you don't like and comment negatively without seeing how the rest of the debate had gone, it makes you look arrogant and pretty stupid, by the way your sarcasm was a complete failure, as I had already corrected myself, way to look stupid Silu, but one could wonder if that is a surprise as you must do things like this often.

I realize this is about a year old but I found the thread very interesting .

When you're talking about an explosion you have to consider that the blast area is a cubic measurement. I would imagine a lot of the blast energy gets reflected and thus sent away from the surface. So if this Tsar bomb is 25,000 times more powerful than another bomb which caused 1 square mile of surface damage then, using cube roots, we're talking about a 29.24 square mile blast radius. This is based on pure mathematical speculation though .

I like the idea that a single nuke in civ actually represents several missiles. If a single nuke cant take out a city what happens when you drop ten or twenty?

I would also enjoy being able to load nukes on planes and even subs (they do that, right?) just for the fun of it. Regular cruise missiles would be nice as well. By modern estimates China has enough cruise missiles to sink the entire US navy several times over (a threat that is taken very seriously btw). Cruise missiles are an extremely cheap way for a civilization to defend itself against a naval offensive and yet that aspect of gameplay is almost completely lacking from the game.

The problem with some of these "current-techs" is that in the real world none of these technologies have ever been deployed so it hasn't had a chance to sink into our collective psyche what the implications are. When every country around the world has similar cruise missiles as the Chinese it will make a standing navy (floating? lol) almost useless - something that stands in stark contrast to the image of battleships and carriers ruling the high seas. So the question in civ is simply a matter of preference. I guess they assume we like having our battleships, cruisers and admittedly overpowered nuclear weapons. Just think of how many people would be disappointed when they launched their first nuke and it only did one tile of damage. If this thread suggests anything, it's that people are *still* disappointed by their nukes! Hell the reason I found this thread was exactly because I was disappointed by a nuclear exchange in my own game. I was trying to send our planet into the fallout™ era but none of the other civs are building nuclear weapons. Someone needs to make a mod for that .

 

[gilmore606]

funniest thread ever. I will go build some ICBMs in Civ now just to celebrate this thread.

 

[Loukoum427]

For me, the big "realistic problem" with nuclear weapons is... SDI ! It seems every time someone builds the Manhattan Project in one of my games, 10 rounds (OK, I'm exagerating a bit) later SDIs start popping everywhere... Which ruins the "pleasure" of launching multiple ICBMs...

But then, being born in Europa in a time the possibility of missiles falling from the sky was quite likely, it's quite disturbing for me to read about these speculations... I'd rather never know if it'd take 1 or 10 warheads to wipe out Paris...

 

[jwez11007]

lmao at this thread...I wish I'ld seen it in time to jump in on the dogpile over the practicalities of nukes with blast radius's the size of small countries...alas I shall have to settle with converting magic monies into nukes equally in arctic towns and pacific atolls to fuel my dreams of nuclear annihilation