BUNKER-BUSTER REPORT: Earth-penetrating nuke would not spare civilians

[norml]

BUNKER-BUSTER REPORT: Earth-penetrating nuke would not spare civilians
No such thing




There can be no such thing as a clean, tidy little nuclear bomb that would destroy a deeply buried target without killing a lot of people. Wishing otherwise, as the Bush administration does, cannot change the laws of physics.
That's the conclusion of a science panel that studied the government's proposal to build an earth-penetrating nuclear bomb, a so-called bunker-buster. The panel's report punches a hole in the government's argument for designing, and subsequently testing, such a bomb.
The study found that a bunker-buster could destroy the target, but it would not be much better at sparing people nearby than an above-ground nuclear warhead of the same yield. For one thing, it would create a huge amount of radioactive debris.
Casualties would range from hundreds to millions of people, depending upon the explosive force of the weapon, whether the target was in an urban or a rural area and how fallout was distributed by the winds.




snip




http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_2719403

[swag]

1. Silly me.

I had thought all the bombs nowadays spared civilians.

Darn, I guess.

[Nostradammit]

2. Well, how many not spared civilians are we talking here?

I mean, that is to say, are there better ways of not sparing civilians? As you know, you go to war with the earth-penetrating nuke you have,
not the earth-penetrating nuke you might want or wish to have at a later time.

[DrDebug]

3. And... and... it's important to stop "rogue" states from getting them

So we need to pre-emptively nuke them before they get nukes to nuke us. That way we spare the civilians, right?

[shraby]

4. Plus.....we all know how accurate those

bombs are. :crazy:

[Up2Late]

5. Hell, I could of told them that

The Bunker buster can't go deep enough to contain the radiation.

Hey, what ever happened to the "neutron Bomb" from the 1970's?

[dxdem]

6. "Clean..."

and nuclear, just don't get along well. Yes, Nuclear energy has a pretty decent track record. I'm still not totally comfortable with it, though, especially when I live within spitting distance of both a large military base and a large nuclear facility (Savannah River Site). It's like wearing a "kick me" sign.

[LynnTheDem]

7. Somebody on THIS planet had thought they WOULD???

:wow: