Suppose a super-power decided it wanted to be able to credibly hold all of humanity hostage at UN meetings or whatever.
Wikipedia gives an example, stating that a fusion bomb with a cobalt jacket would produce a certain amount of cobalt-60 from the neutron flux at detonation. It states that if there were enough cobalt-60 to produce a gamma ray exposure of 10 sieverts per hour at minute 0, it would be enough to keep the area uninhabitable for between 50-100 years.
What “conversion ratio” of cobalt to cobalt-60 could you plausibly expect?
How many grams/square kilometer of C-60 could would it take to reach 10 sievert/hour, and how many square kilometers would an affordable bomb cover?
Knowing these numbers, and using historical prices for mass-produced nuclear warheads converted to today’s dollars, how much would it cost for this many bombs?
What about the cost of the ICBMs to deliver them?
In total, is the price affordable for a major world power? Could someone plausibly hold all of humanity hostage? (since the only survivors would be in incredibly tiny and isolated enclaves, surrounded by countless square kilometers of irradiated wastelands. I think this amount of radiation would kill most large animal and plant life, so the world probably would turn into a brown desert. There’s a plausible chance that no group of humans would survive the 50-75 years before things became inhabitable again, it depends on if every island and isolated area got a dose of the cobalt)
I doubt we know the answer to all your above questions since as Wiki states Cobalt bombs have never been built.
But I’d just like to say its going to be a very inefficient way, you can hold the world hostage much more efficiently by instead using high altitude nuclear explosions, detonate them directly above the stock exchanges of every major financial capital. Google starfish prime to see what you would expect. You’d only need 15 or so bombs to take down civilization.
Everyone would still be alive after the bombs went off, they just would not know how rich or poor they were. Oh, and they’d all need new cell phones and a lot of other gear would be fried.
Technically, the backup tapes that contain the financial records would also survive, passive magnetic tape on a spool isn’t going to lose information from an EMP. Of course, most of the computers and probably most of the electrical equipment in the building would be toast, so it might be a long time before those records were restored.
One, the doomsday bomb. But there was never enough description behind it. The guinness said it had to have a 20,000 megaton force (!!!) That was the only weird figure I saw in that book (and hopefully a typo.)
Rule #1 of fiendish plans. Don’t overcomplicate them. Just get a load of anthrax, use it on a demonstration target and then threaten to release it in random spots over the next 30 days or so.)
(Rule #2 of course, is don’t tell the hero all about the plan before you tell your henchmen to kill him.)
I’ve seen references that claimed that 50,000 megatons of cobalt-salted devices would do it; either 500 100-megaton bombs or a single ginormous “doomsday bomb”. Still looking for cites though.
I have no cite, but during the 1980s I read that as few as 18 cobalt-salted hydrogen bombs would exterminate everyone in the Northern Hemisphere, if properly placed to account for wind patterns.
The Southern Hemisphere has much smaller land area and lower population, so presumably fewer than 18 would do it in.
Allowing for some margin of error, 30 ought to be quite effective.
Of course, you could “hold the world hostage” with the threat of damage, not needing total annihilation, so even one ought to bring people to the negotiating table…in theory.
The story will be too short if you follow 1 & 2. To assure victory, kill the hero straightaway. Don’t put him in an unnecessarily slow-moving death device and then leave him to figure a way out.
I’ve read that the effects of EMP are massively overblown and wouldn’t have nearly the devastating effects as depicted in fiction.
Actually having heard that unlike most nuclear weapons cobalt bombs really are doomsday weapons I’d be interested in a straight answer to the OP’s question as well.