Tactical nuclear weapons = useless?

Just as a small addition, but there is another use of tactical nuclear weaponry, in a purely defensive form - that of nuclear SAM's, such as the SA-2 varient, or Nike Hercules.

No better way to ensure you destroy an enemy ICBM or mass bomber formation.

akinkoo, cold fusion is fusion that occurs in a room temperature environment, and has the potential to release as much energy as hot fusion. hydrogen bombs require an atomic warhead to generate the heat for fusion. thats why hydrogen bombs are so huge. a cold fusion bomb can be made of an electrode and soem heavy water, and be able to blow up half a city. quite a scary thought. fortunately, technology isnt at that stage yet. cold fusion would be the ideal weapon for terrorists, living up to the armageddon principle of "a world when anybody can kill everybody".

Yimmy said:

Just as a small addition, but there is another use of tactical nuclear weaponry, in a purely defensive form - that of nuclear SAM's, such as the SA-2 varient, or Nike Hercules.

No better way to ensure you destroy an enemy ICBM or mass bomber formation.

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Hmm, I haven't thought about nukes as a defensive weapon, but what SAM has enough range to destroy an enemy bomber formation without risking any radioactive fallout on friendly territory or troops?

and can someone please explain cold fusion to me

I thought cold fusion was explained fairly well but I’ll give it another shot.

both nuclear reactions (fission & fusion) release a massive amount of energy because they both destroy small amounts of matter via E=mc^2. traditional fusion smashes two atoms together to form a larger atom and loses a small bit of mass to heat energy. Atoms typically like to stay the same atoms(# of protons) so an enormous amount of energy is required to force them to join together (like a nuclear fission explosion). Cold fusion is basically the same idea, but much less energy to get the reaction going (not sure about the room temp).

regarding tactical and strategic nuclear weapons, I am slightly confused as to why it should matter as long as they are only used against military targets? If its about the radiation, hydrogen bombs don’t have to release a large amount of radiation, a tactical fission warhead should fulfill the energy requirements for nuclear fusion same as a strategic one. Though if you want a radioactive bomb, I believe all you have to do is encase the fusion weapon in weapons grade uranium, a fission, fusion, fission bomb.

As for other uses of nuclear weapons, anti missile seems like a good idea, you get to miss by a couple of km and still have a good chance of destroying the warhead. Even if you don’t the emp might still fry the arming mechanism leaving you with a dud missile. As for radiation, if you detonate at a high enough altitude it shouldn’t cause more harm than the ozone layer being destroyed.

Couple of spin offs of traditional uses of nukes.

An anti communications device: detonate a nuke in high orbit above the an enemy city and watch the emp fry every single electronic device, instant black out.

Neuron bomb: the opposite effect, use radiation(or was it microwaves?) to fry every occupant in a city without harming the buildings for instant occupation.(I don’t think this one is finished though)

is it confirm that cold fusion requires less energy to reaction. from my understanding no one was able to replication the result and the initial myth of less energy was likely equipment error than anything. but even if it requires less energy, it doesn't mean the supporting system will be lighter or smaller than a fission core either nor the blast any better than the standard hydrogen bomb.

Couple of spin offs of traditional uses of nukes.

An anti communications device: detonate a nuke in high orbit above the an enemy city and watch the emp fry every single electronic device, instant black out.

Neuron bomb: the opposite effect, use radiation(or was it microwaves?) to fry every occupant in a city without harming the buildings for instant occupation.(I don’t think this one is finished though)

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could be...

As for other uses of nuclear weapons, anti missile seems like a good idea, you get to miss by a couple of km and still have a good chance of destroying the warhead. Even if you don’t the emp might still fry the arming mechanism leaving you with a dud missile. As for radiation, if you detonate at a high enough altitude it shouldn’t cause more harm than the ozone layer being destroyed.

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but wouldn't the radiation fall back to the surface? my understanding radiation fallout weapon was considered quite effective. also such critical system could have be sheided from EMP or even be mechnically in nature, in a ticking clock?

i was think of using a fusion warhead both for bigger blast radius and as i wrote earlier far less radiation. though if you only had fission weapons then you could hope to detonate it over some sparcely populated area, or the sea.

emp shielding can be done, but it seems very expensive, think a lighting surge protector only it has to be 10,000 times stronger. also not only the warhead is vulnarable, the missiles guidence systems are fair game. so you would have to shield the entire missile. i think it would be cheaper to send another one, after all you do have some 25,000 doing nothing if your the U.S or Russia .

also nuclear devices are always electronically controlled, because generally a electronic system is more reliable than a mechanical one. the super power are more concerned(and rightfully so) about a nuclear weapon going off when its not suppose it, after all its generally still in your turf most of the time.