Say I become the Supreme Dictator of the Icelandic Empire. Even say I get my will and get to build a space shuttle center in the middle of the highlands, enabling me to send satellites into orbit.
Now, most Supreme Dictators would probably want to have a few nukes there, enabling them to nuke their enemies from orbit (it being the only way to be sure). But as Iceland is not a member of the Nuke-club, I don’t have any
Instead, I want to put biological and/or chemical weapons on my weapon satellites, for the purpose of being able to rain death on any who oppose me.
My questions are therefore:
1: Would this even make sense? Or would the death-canisters most likely burn while entering orbit?
2: If it makes sense: What would be the maximum altitude for them to be released, without being dispersed by pesky winds, hence diluting it and making it ineffectual
3: What would be the maximum area I could cover with an orbital BC-attack?
4: What am I forgetting?
I don’t know anything about this, except what’s written in the OP, so for all numbers - you’re welcome to use your own (I’m the Supreme Dictator, not a friggin number cruncher ).
You are forgetting that there is huge difference betven various bioweapon vectors. There are quite different altitude/area/etc requirements for dropping highly resistant, dry spores and quite different for bubonic plaque infected fleas. So answer for 1., 2. and 3. for bio-weapon is “that depends”.
Now, chemical weapons are easier: 1. That doesn’t make sense. For any chemical attack to be effective you need much more toxic agent than it is feasible to carry up gravity well and drop it back.
Ok, striking chemical weapons off my list (hey I’m down to just B of the doomsday ABC, maybe other countries will like me?).
So ok. I go with dry spores - how far up would it make sense if I still want a decent concentration and how big an area could I cover? Could I get entire Perth* (5386 km² (2,079.5 sq mi)), or just the neighborhood where the Mayor lives?
*Perth only chosen since it was the first city that came to mind. I have nothing against anyone or anything from or in Perth.
Look, just throw rocks. A terminally guided steel rod (flying crowbar) from orbit is incredibly damaging. Bigger rocks mean more damage, and a small amount of design ensures a ground impactor that could flatten a city.
Yeah, I could use the Asteroid-CannonTM. But in this case I’m quite curious about how much of an area impact a “bomb” containing biological weapons (or dry spores) could have, given wind and other things affecting it.
(seems like everyone decided to pounce upon the less serious parts of the question :D)
Orbital delivery will be similar to conventional delivery, except coming down. You probably cannot deploy your agent from much higher than normal weapons or in much larger payloads, due to control/dispersal pattern/atmospheric wind patterns issues. These are the critical factors for Biological/Chemical weapons, and I suspect that they are pretty well understood.
Your best bet would be a cluster style munition - a single large re-entry unit that explodes at a high altitude to disperse submunitions in a massive footprint over the target area, which all then explode at the optimal height for dispersal over the entire target region.
Oh yes, very good point. If I were to design orbital biological bomb using anthrax spores for example, I would make something along that lines:
re-entry vehicle would be as big as possible (probably limited by maximum payload of your shuttle), with solid heat shielding and couple of parachutes; it would be dropped on trajectory aimed at Western Australia;
thanks to shielding and parachutes it should be capable to slow down to reasonable speeds, as well as able to correct trajectory to get within, say 100 km from Perth at altitude of, say, 100.000 feet;
then, it would disperse it’s payload in form of classical (albeit with biological payload), GPS guided bombs in 250 - 500 lbs range, each programmed to hit different target (Mayor Office, Waterworks, you get the drift);
each bomb would disperse it’s payload at low altitude of, say, 500 meters.
You want to do it on dry and not windy day.
Of course, you still won’t kill majority of Perth citizens - I guess couple thousands max - but it should be enough to cause panic and make them flee for their lives.
Also, you can do all above substituting re-entry vehicle with transport plane and couple of refueling stops.
As an aside, I must say that Perth is my favorite place on Earth (best climate evar) and I strongly discourage you from bombing it.
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