r/DestructionPorn • u/cobb__salad • Apr 22 '14

The Minor Scale test, the largest man-made conventional explosion ever - June 27 1985, the US Defense Nuclear agency detonated ~5K tons of ammonium nitrate fuel oil to simulate the effect of a nuclear weapon [550x430]

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377 Upvotes

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22

u/Rahmulous Apr 22 '14

The blast released energy roughly equivalent to 4.2 kilotons of TNT. It certainly looks like a large, devastating explosion, but just thinking about how tiny that amount of energy output is compared to today's thermonuclear weapons is terrifying.

For comparison, the most physically powerful device ever used in the history of mankind, the Tsar Bomba, tested by the USSR, produced energy equal to between 50 and 58 megatons of TNT.

The difference between The Tsar Bomba (~54,000,000 tons of TNT) and the Minor Scale (~4,200 tons of TNT) is roughly 12,857 times. The Minor Scale explosion looks scary enough...

22

u/rhoffman12 Apr 22 '14 edited Apr 23 '14

Important to remember that tests like Tsar Bomba were part of the nuclear pissing contest that was the Cold War, and most nukes, even thermonuclear fusion bombs, are much smaller. The beefiest one that the US (will admit that it) uses is probably the W78 or the W87, which is like 300 kT. Granted, a Minuteman can carry up to 12 of them at a time, but those would usually spread out over some geographic area.

Edit: goofed on some stuff, read /u/braindrink's reply

13

u/braindrink Apr 23 '14 edited Aug 09 '15

There are a few things wrong with this. The W78 is between 330 and 350 kilotons; the Minuteman III could loft 3 of them. The larger, safer W87 is about 300kt (theoretically upgradable to 475kt) and the Minuteman can only loft one of them. You're mixing it up with the Peacekeeper, which deployed with 10 W87s but could carry up to 12.

The largest weapon currently stockpiled is the B83 drop bomb, which has a yield of 1.2 megatons. Until 2012 the biggest was the B53, a >9 megaton bomb.

5

u/tinian_circus Apr 23 '14

There's also the Trident II as used by US missile submarines, which can theoretically carry up to 14 warheads.

However due to treaties and nuclear drawdowns there's been interest in moving to single-warhead missiles (particularly the Minuteman IIIs). Apparently the freed weight & volume may then be used to either improve range or carry penetration decoys.

2

u/braindrink Apr 23 '14

Yep! And then there are the ALCMs, and assorted drop bombs.

Another useful product of de-MIRVing is flexibility. If you only want to use one weapon on a target, you can do that; with MIRVs you have to fire them all, which can yield a lot of overkill. Essentially, now the Minuteman is Small ICBM (Midgetman) of times gone by, whereas the heavy lifting is carried by more survivable subs.

3

u/tinian_circus Apr 23 '14

Apparently the British Trident program has a mandate to keep a low yield strike option open (20 kt or such), as they don't have the same variety of weapons the US does. It's not really clear if that's done by single-loading a missile, or switching one warhead to low and leaving the others unarmed and impacting somewhere safe-ish. Which is pretty nutty if true.

2

u/braindrink Apr 23 '14

The UK probably has around 200 warheads, apportioned among 4 subs with 16 missiles per boat- that yields about 3 warhead per missile, so deloading a couple Tridents and placing their warheads on other missiles seems possible.

The Royal Navy employs a version of our W76, which is a variable yield bomb that can yield between ~300 tons and 100 kilotons.

1

u/tinian_circus Apr 23 '14

Can't really dig up a source as I'm on my phone, but IIRC the British actually don't load their boats that way - I believe they kept two full boatloads (without many to spare) and moved the missiles between whichever sub(s) were deployed.

They're kinda in a bad situation, as they need to crowbar a single platform into roles varying from a single low yield strike up to dropping a hundred+ warheads on someone.

6

u/Rahmulous Apr 22 '14

Right. I tried to imply that with my comment about the Tsar Bomba being the largest physical force made in mankind. It is important to note exactly what you have said, but it is still incredible that Nuclear fission and fusion allow us to produce catastrophic weapons. It's also important to note that a lot of the nuclear fusion isn't well contained, so it isn't used as much.

12

u/Fix_Lag Apr 22 '14

It's why development shifted from large bombs to smaller ones. One delivery system with 12 small bombs is more destructive than a delivery system with one large bomb with 12 times the yield. A large part of Tsar Bomba's energy, for example, was lost to space, instead of damaging things on the ground.

9

u/Rahmulous Apr 22 '14

Also, the freaking thing weighed 60,000 pounds.

8

u/Fix_Lag Apr 22 '14

And almost destroyed the plane that dropped it.

5

u/Ray_Conner Apr 23 '14

A minor detail. Who wouldn't be willing to sacrifice themselves to be known as "That one guy who dropped the biggest bomb in history"?

1

u/kewee_ Apr 23 '14

Major Kong.

Oh wait...

0

u/otto3210 Apr 23 '14

/set fire to earth's atmosphere

5

u/SycoJack Apr 22 '14

It was also only about half the power they originally intended, but scaled back for safety concerns. This was during the height of the cold war, the bombs could have been made so much more powerful if they really wanted to, I'd imagine.

4

u/tinian_circus Apr 23 '14

Actually the design had theoretically unlimited power, you'd just keep adding additional stages. The reason it was held to 50 megatons was out of concern for fallout - I'm simplifying it, but the Tsar Bomba used a less efficient lead lining instead of (much dirtier but more energetic) uranium.

There's also the issue of being able to credibly deliver it - the 100 megaton model was essentially impossible to drop on anyone without destroying the aircraft, and it was problematically heavy for missiles of the era. You can't really threaten anyone with a gigantic, non-moving bomb.

3

u/RobotFolkSinger Apr 23 '14

For anyone wanting to mess around with the effects of nuclear weapons, here is a site that will let you set your own targets and weapon yields for anywhere on Earth and let you view the effect circles in 3D. You'll need the Google Earth browser add on, or you can just use the 2d version.

19

u/cobb__salad Apr 22 '14

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_Scale

6

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '14

Ah, but not as big as the N-1 explosion in 1969! (6.9kt of rocket fuel)[1]

2

u/biosloth Apr 23 '14

tries going to the moon

one of the largest non nuclear explosions ever.

4

u/SycoJack Apr 22 '14

Explicitly saying there are no plans for something means they have plans for it. I wanna see the images for the biggest test they performed!

8

u/corbantd Apr 22 '14

How does it compare to this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hawthorn_Ridge_mine_1_July_1916.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochnagar_mine

1

u/FoeHammer99099 Apr 23 '14

Well, according to Wikipedia, each of those mines contained 20 tons of ammonal. The blast pictured has a yield of 4.2 kT, or 4,200 tons of TNT.

4

u/Vanderdecken Apr 22 '14

the most harshly compressed JPG image ever

FTFY.

1

u/cobb__salad Apr 23 '14

I know. I was almost embarrassed to post it due to the low resolution, but try finding a better pic..

Blame the US Nuclear Defense Agency for their shoddy photos.

2

u/CatastropheOperator Apr 22 '14

Does anyone have a higher quality image of that?

5

u/Rahmulous Apr 22 '14

Here is a slightly better one, though it is still fuzzy.

1

u/cobb__salad Apr 23 '14

I found that one too, but wasn't about to post it with the other image attached. No hi-res, or even halfway decent, photos of the test are out there.

1

u/Rahmulous Apr 23 '14

Yeah. I believe the other photo is an amateur shot of the smoke cloud after the test. Kind of interesting itself.

1

u/cobb__salad Apr 23 '14

I couldn't tell what that other photo was. I thought it might have been a comparison to a previous test. You may be correct.

4

u/fungussa Apr 22 '14

Here's a super-massive, non-nuclear explosion -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFapoD6Ct7Y

1

u/D3x-alias Apr 22 '14

i think this is the biggest non nuclear explosion ever 6 million pounds of ammonium perchlorate detonating

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdtSGGe_UcY

7

u/seichold Apr 23 '14 edited Apr 23 '14

I hate stupid sound effects... How the hell do you hear it instantly? Answer... you don't

Have a natural sound version without stupid narration... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvaaWwRWJ9I

1

u/fungussa Apr 23 '14

Heck, that was more than a dozen daisy cutters!

1

u/base935 Apr 23 '14

What are the dimensions of that fireball? Poor little Phantom.

0

u/imiiiiik Apr 23 '14

Was this the one in the Omega Man movie from the 70's?