I recently finished a book called Swan Song by Robert McCammon, which tells the story of a nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union sometime in the 80’s.
In one of the first chapters, after the button has been pressed and the nukes are flying, the President of the United States rides out the nuclear war in the safety of the Airborne Command Post, a Boeing E-4B flying at about 30,000 feet. From his window, the President can see bits of houses, trees and bridges etc being thrown into the sky by the “tremendous shock waves and super-tornado force winds”.
I could sort of believe that part, up until the point when a Greyhound bus filled with burning corpses comes streaking up 30,000 feet towards the aircraft and knocks it out of the sky.
Now my question is this; would it be physically possible for an object the size of a Greyhound bus to be thrown that far into the air by the force of multiple nuclear blasts? Or is the author just using artistic license to progress the story?
It sounds decidedly implausible. But possible? That’s an interesting question. To launch it that high the bus would have to be pretty much over the point of detonation. You’d have to protect the bus from the initial blast so it would survive. Maybe it was on a flyover and the bomb detonated beneath?
Assume a starting altitude of 0 metres and an end altitude of 10000 metres. A Greyhound bus weighs ~30 tonnes fully laden, half that unladen. Final velocity is zero and g = 10. So we need the bus to start at a velocity of 447 m/s. Call it 500 m/s. So you need an initial force of ~75-150 Mega-Newtons. The Hiroshima bomb had a force of 300,000 N. We’re in Project Orion territory here.
What about a scenario where the bus is lifted off the ground by one explosion/tornado, and is already a few hundred feet off the ground when a second ground explosion occurs below it?
How plausible is it that the shockwave from a “standard” bomb could lift a bus off the ground, and how high could it get if it did? And would that height be enough to “ride” the shockwave from a ground detonation of a second bomb?
I think the scenario described is implausible. Any nuclear weapon used against a city is going to be detonated in the air to maximize damage, meaning the initial shockwave of the blast is going to be traveling downwards near the epicenter and horizontally further out. It might send a bus tumbling, but not toss it high up in the air. The suction of the rising fireball of a hydrogen bomb *might *be strong enough to lift heavy objects into the air, but if the President’s plane is close enough to the blast to get hit by debris in the mushroom cloud, it should have been swatted out of the air by the initial shockwave.
The RAF over Hamburg were flying in formation miles thick, and under 30K feet. Crew members later said they could smell burning flesh. But no planes were damaged by debris sucked in at the firestorm’s base and shot up its plume.
Love that book, but haven’t read it in over 20 years. IMO it’s a quicker-reading version of “The Stand” - so, bear in mind the supernatural element involved in the war etc. That said, a flaming Greyhound taking out the President’s plane isn’t unexplainable or improbable - it was directed.
Something else I remember reading: two IJN pilots on patrol on the morning of Hiroshima in a small flying boat, arrived on the scene and for whatever reason flew into the stem of the mushroom cloud. Not a smart move, considering the hazard of debris fouling the engine, but they got through it OK. Though they did report a coating of greasy soot on themselves and the aircraft.
I remember a news story of a plane flying over the Big Sur fire inthe70’s? 80s?. They never found the plane or pilot. It was assumed that the updraft lifted and destroyed the plane.
If the buss had been lifted inthe air by one bomb and then another one went off close enough to toss it higher I would think it would have been a molten piece of metal not a bus by then. Also the bombs would have had to go off close together an inefficient use of A bombs.
Well, OK then. I have a hard time believing that a bus hit hard enough by a nuclear blast wave to loft it that high would also remain intact enough to knock down a large jet aircraft.