Alternate History: Non-Radioactive Nukes

Over various threads here and elsewhere, I have a somewhat confused view of how nuclear weapons were viewed in the 40s, 50s and 60s, before the truly devastating effects of a nuclear war were known. It’s been said often that they were thought of merely as “really big bombs”. Yet even in the late 40s, Rand Corporation theorists were proposing doctrines of minimal deterrence, meaning that the U.S. only needed a small number of atomic bombs in order to devastate an enemy; the enemy, knowing that, would refrain from aggression.

This doesn’t make sense to me, especially since in Hiroshima and Nagasaki there were fewer casualties from the atomic bomb than there were in Tokyo after its firebombing (70-80K and 40-75K, respectively, vs. 90-100K in Tokyo). If they were really thought of as just great big bombs, then all you’ve really gained is efficiency, not the massive leap in horror that made nuclear war an end-of-the-world scenario.

So, alternate history: say nuclear bombs create no radiation, or that it’s possible to build them such that there are no significant radiation effects. How does that change things? Does the fact that the U.S./allies have a lot of really big bombs lead to the same MAD world, or does the fact that war with these huge bombs no longer destroys the world mean that they’d have been used with much greater frequency–say, against China in the Korean War, as McArthur wanted?

Underlying this is the question: What was it about atomic bombs that freaked out the world enough to come to a stable deterrent posture, before it was widely known just how bad it would be to use them?

Well, the efficiency massively increases the threat potential. Sure the fire bombing raids on Tokyo caused greater casualties, but the mass raids on both Germany and Japan either came with great cost to the attackers, or took place at a time when the air defense system of the defender had already been suppressed. The atom bomb allowed a single plane to do the damage of a 1,000 plane air armada, and therefore, if it could be replicated, drastically reduces the potential cost to the attacker.

Now, when you add in the development of missiles, you have essentially a threat against which there is no protection. Attack the bomber formations on their way to the target, you can potentially stop or limit the raid. Shoot down enough over time and you break the air power of the attacker. If one bomb, on one missile, can take out one city, you are much more threatened.

That’s not alternate history, that’s alternate physics. We might as well debate whether Hitler could have taken Moscow if his troops had antigravity boots.

A much better question. Two answers.

  1. Even without knowing how bad they were, the scientists, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagaski, et al, knew they were really, REALLY bad.

  2. It wasn’t that the world was freaked out right away, it was that neither side decided it was necessary to use the bombs before the world did get freaked out.

With conventional (WWII era) bombs, you have to launch a 1000 bomber raid to destroy a city.

With an atomic bomb, you only need to launch 1.

With or without radiation, the mathematics of war remains unchanged.

I do think radiation and fallout is a factor in that its a risk for the attacker, that provides a strong disincentive to attack unless it sees that the other side is going to attack first.

This is probably why neutron warheads were seen as such a propaganda weapon, because they created the idea of a ‘clean weapon’ destroying people but leaving the environment intact. Not how they really worked, but the concept seemed to make an impact.

What difference we’d have seen without it is hard to say, but I suspect there would have been one. Whether the difference would have been large enough to result in actual use or just greater temptation is really impossible to know.

Otara

The radiation effects were understood. Or at least they were aware of them and knew it was bad. A nuke is FAR more lethal than even the biggest bomb mainly because of the fallout. MAD worked partly because a relative few bombs could wipe out a country. See this fallout map to get an idea.

For an attacker they have an added issue. They may wipe out their enemy but they render the land just bombed essentially uninhabitable for decades at the least. Further, those fallout clouds will eventually circle back and land on them. Look at where the fallout from Chernobyl landed and you get the idea and that was a relatively small thing compared to a massive nuclear attack.

In short, MAD works BECAUSE they are radioactive and not just because they make big booms.

So in your estimation, MAD wouldn’t have worked, and there would have been an increased likelihood of their use following WWII.

One interesting thing to contemplate is that nuclear winter is still a factor, since it’s caused by the massive amounts of soot and debris thrust into the atmosphere by the explosion, not the radiation. A conventional explosive like the MOAB, used extensively, would still risk nuclear winter effects.

I think that if some sort of non-radioactive nuke equivalent was available, that NATO and the Warsaw Pact would have gone to war by the 60s (nuclear winter not being understood until, I believe, the 70s). The Cuban Missile Crisis nearly triggered a nuclear war–absent the ‘end of the world’ problem, I suspect they would have hesitated less to use force. The Berlin blockade might have done it.

I think so. I mean, it would have allowed them to bypass fixed defensive points and thereby weakened the Russian defensive capabilities.

But if Hitler had anti-grav boots, the technology probably would have been with an Allied power as well. Anti-air would probably have become extremely important and heavily deployed by all sides. Hitler would have had a much higher chance of being assassinated, since defensive planning would have been much, much harder when you can have random guys flying at him from any direction. Who knows how that would have affected the mid-war situation?

Combined with the snappiness of their uniforms, they’d’ve won the war on coolness alone.

I suspect that if nukes had been non-radioactive, humanity would have expanded into space on a much larger scale. Without radioactivity, an Orion nuclear pulse ship would be a lot more attractive. By now, we’d be all over the solar system with manned vessels and stations, not just a few probes.

Rather like a lot of old sci-fi assumed we would be, where they had nuclear rockets and ignored the radioactivity problem.

Yes, we didn’t have nuclear war because it’s bad for the environment. :rolleyes: Stoned hippies as far as the eye can see…

Actually, the massive nukes, the ones that operate on fusion, aren’t all that radioactive given their strength.

(If people wanted especially-radioactive bombs, there’s a pretty easy way to go about it. You strap a mass of a common element like cobalt-60 to one. On detonation it absorbs flying neutrons and transmutes to a highly radioactive isotope. Radiation everywhere! Oh man, the things a terrorist with a nuke can do…)

Now that’s a thought. Or simpler, radioactivity-powered jet engines. Or electric cars. Or toasters. Jesus Christ, it’d be an entirely other world.

Although, a lot of that stuff is possible anyway, if you use the right fuel and have the right shielding. (Eg, variations on the nuclear battery.) But people are just overly sensitive about radiation. Even the safe kinds. Heck, all our gadgets could have permanently-on backlights next year if we just stimulated our fluorescent pigments using alpha radiation instead of high voltage. That’s how some watches used to work, before the partpooping hippies arrived.

While radioactivity, fallout, weird long lasting effects and so on are a big factor in M.A.D. and the fear of Atom, I don’t think it’s the only reason - the big boom factor counts for much, too. If a single plane or missile can carry enough boom to level an entire city indiscriminately, that makes it much more feasible to vitrify an entire continent in one massive strike. So instead of sending the bomber fleet to level Dresden, you can send it to level Germany as a whole in one go. Scary stuff, and definitely an incentive for control.

It must be said that today, the US has got a handful of conventional bombs that come really close to the explosive power of Fat Man & Little Boy (google “Daisy Cutter” and “T12”). They don’t use them much outside of psychological warfare - they make really, really big booms that can be seen and hear from miles. Scary stuff. AFAIK no such superbomb has ever been used on cities, but I really believe that if they were, the aftermath pics would generate the same amount of outrage and fear in the world’s civilian population as the Hiroshima ones.

Also of note : the Russians have recently created and tested a massive “Father of all bombs” with a 300 meter blast radius. They plan to use it to replace the lower yield nukes in their nuclear arsenal in the context of MAD. One could even argue that it’s an even better deterrent, since no radiation and no “nuke stigma” means it’s more likely to be used. Scarier stuff.

(gah, I made a mistake, the superbombs aren’t yet on Fat Man level - I mistook their weight for their blast yield. Scratch that then.)

I doubt it. You’d have to use a helluva lot of them to get a global effect.

When Krakatoa went boom it was the equivalent of 13,000 Hiroshima bombs in power. It did have a global cooling effect but nothing like a nuclear winter. The FOAB has a 44 tons of TNT explosive power. The Hiroshima bomb was about 15 kilotons. Big difference.

In short, you’d have to toss many thousands of FOABs to get a global effect. Even then I am not so sure since I do not think a FOAB can loft enough stuff high enough to get a real effect. Most of the junk it toss up would just come right back down again. Nukes are able to get a lot of stuff high into the atmosphere where it can linger.

Slight nitpick, cobalt 60 is already highly radioactive. You probably meant cobalt-59 which would turn into cobalt-60 when it absorbs some of the free neutrons released during a nuclear blast.
On the OP, there are two things many people conflate with regards to nukes. Radiation, which is short lived (the energetic particles released during the reaction) and acts as a multiplier by killing living things that might survive the blast. And radioactivity, which lasts a long time (the material left after the blast that continues to emit radiation).

Jonathan

Well, the real physics are good enough. Fallout can be minimized by proper weapon design and fuzing. If you look at the scaling laws for the effects of nuclear weapons, prompt radiation is a minor factor for high-yield weapons.

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq5.html

I dont view this so much as hippyism as cynicism about human nature - if the attacker doesnt have something to lose as well, they’ll be more likely to use it. MAD is one, self damage through fallout is another, particularly for Europe based conflict where your neighbour is only a matter of miles away.

The perception of self harm was the significant thing, regardless of how accurate is really was.

Otara