# Nuclear stockpiles, big explosions, the earth, and the Moon. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 22, 2005, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-stockpiles-big-explosions-the-earth-and-the-moon/291317 "2005-02-22T07:34:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2005, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-stockpiles-big-explosions-the-earth-and-the-moon/291317/21 "2005-02-22T22:51:08Z")
> [@Stranger On A Train](#): > > As for how long the warheads are good, I don’t really know for sure. The weapon material itself is good for quite a while–although it will undergo some reaction due to the proximity of radioactive material, the neutron flux is still fairly low, and lower yet in modern multistage weapons with lower subcritical mass requirements. The real limitation, IIRC, is that tritium decays into Helium-3, which 1)gets into everything (helium, being the smallest and most inert of atoms, is hard to contain – at that scale, all normal matter is porous) and 2)soaks up neutrons (and thus inhibits the fission chain reaction needed to set off any nuclear device). ---
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-stockpiles-big-explosions-the-earth-and-the-moon/291317/22 "2005-02-23T04:50:29Z")
As others have said, unless you’re talking about screwing up the tiny, insignificant, paper-thin, biosphere the Earth is an inconceivably enormous volume of mass which no man-made force could even begin to affect in any real way. BTW, back in the good old early days of the Cold War space race the Soviets seriously considered exploding a large nuke on the surface of the Moon. In their early lead they were the first to fly-by, orbit, hit, and soft-land on it (all unmanned of course). This would have been a non-too-subtle way to reinforce this to any skeptics of the world. ---
**Author:** ![Triskadecamus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b19c9b/32.png) [@Triskadecamus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Triskadecamus)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-stockpiles-big-explosions-the-earth-and-the-moon/291317/23 "2005-02-23T05:29:40Z")
The possible use of nuclear weapons in concert among all the powers possessing them is not even close to fantasy grade believability. Piling them up on one place is the least effective way of using them. Installing them in shallow wells over wide areas, in very carefully mapped patterns could multiply their effectiveness by an order of magnitude at least. By using the same principles as those which gave us Dresden, only executed with twenty first century timing abilities, and any significant fraction of the world’s nuclear weapons, we could ignite firestorms over all the available forest regions of the earth. Those firestorms would burn beyond the area of nuclear blast radii by many miles. Burning that significant a fraction of the biomass of the earth would have irrevocable results, on the scale of mammalian history. We’re out. Next batter up. However, there would be no net change in the planet itself, aside from the effects on living things, and the content of the atmosphere, for a few thousand years. ## Tris “The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.” ~ Albert Einstein ~ ---
**Author:** ![Aankh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ebca7d/32.png) [@Aankh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aankh)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 10:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-stockpiles-big-explosions-the-earth-and-the-moon/291317/24 "2005-02-23T10:08:57Z")
> [@Triskadecamus](#): > > Piling them up on one place is the least effective way of using them. Installing them in shallow wells over wide areas, in very carefully mapped patterns could multiply their effectiveness by an order of magnitude at least. By using the same principles as those which gave us Dresden, only executed with twenty first century timing abilities, and any significant fraction of the world’s nuclear weapons, we could ignite firestorms over all the available forest regions of the earth. Those firestorms would burn beyond the area of nuclear blast radii by many miles. All no doubt very, very true. Nevertheless, I wanted to know what impact a combined explosion would have. Would bursting them all together in one big pile be able to end what life there is now on earth? Would different geographical impact sites have different effects on how this would happen? The moon was just a starting point for my chain of thought. And my other question still stands too: Would it rip out a chunk of the moon, and if yes, woud this affect tides on earth? ---
**Author:** ![mks57](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9bd4f/32.png) [@mks57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mks57)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-stockpiles-big-explosions-the-earth-and-the-moon/291317/25 "2005-02-23T12:43:40Z")
> [@aankh](#): > > Would bursting them all together in one big pile be able to end what life there is now on earth? Would different geographical impact sites have different effects on how this would happen? The moon was just a starting point for my chain of thought. And my other question still stands too: Would it rip out a chunk of the moon, and if yes, woud this affect tides on earth? See [Effects of Nuclear Explosions](http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq5.html). A nuclear weapon detonated in space (vacuum) behaves very differently from a nuclear weapon detonated in the Earth’s atmosphere. A nuclear weapon can be treated as a black-body radiator. It’s a very hot lump of matter created from the remnants of the nuclear device. Most of it’s energy output is in the form of soft x-rays. Since the Earth’s atmosphere absorbs x-rays and gamma rays, that energy is coupled to the atmosphere in a complex process that produces what we consider the normal effects of a nuclear explosion. That process does not happen when the weapon is detonated in space. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2005, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-stockpiles-big-explosions-the-earth-and-the-moon/291317/26 "2005-02-24T08:29:09Z")
> [@clayton\_e](#): > > Yes, a massive nuclear exchange would be less catistrophic than what has happened naturally to the Earth before, but I’m absolutely sure there would be a nuclear winter or other such mess that would clean itself up after a very very long time (short time, geologically speaking) and life would move on. The argument in favor of the Nuclear Winter Hypothosis is neither [politically neutral](http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/88spp.html) nor [factually accurate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter) in it’s assumptions. From the Wiki link: “The authors were inspired to write the paper by cooling effects due to dust storms on Mars and to carry out a calculation of the effect they used a simplified two dimensional model of the Earth’s atmosphere that assumed that conditions at a given latitude were constant. The consensus with more sophisticated calculations is that the atmospheric model used in TTAPS probably overestimates the degree of cooling although the amount of this overestimation remains unclear.” The NWH is based on worst-case estimates and assumptions that just don’t apply. Climate change? Perhaps, but probably nothing as severe as a good El Nino season or a the result from a particularly energetic volcano. A single medium-sized asteroid at super-orbital velocities would do far more damage than every nuclear weapon on the planet today. Would a large-scale nuclear war devistate civilization? Undoubtedly. Would it kill off the human species? Doubtful. Would it severely imapct whole phylums? Unlikely. I’m not saying we shouldn’t get rid of the things, if it’s an option–I’m all for that–but bad science doesn’t do well in support of good politics. Climate science is nothing like; it’s more of a black art, and anyone who pops up and says something absolute is talking through his hat. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2005, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-stockpiles-big-explosions-the-earth-and-the-moon/291317/27 "2005-02-24T16:20:41Z")
> [@aankh](#): > > Would it rip out a chunk of the moon, and if yes, woud this affect tides on earth? It would make a very small crater and would require extremely precise instrumentation to detect any tidal changes. And that’s assuming all the debris flew out into space and didn’t settle back down onto the moon again. As has been said several times already, even all the bombs detonated together don’t come close to equaling the power of a small chunk of asteroid. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nuclear-stockpiles-big-explosions-the-earth-and-the-moon/291317.md?page=1)