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  • Nuclear Explosion Effects

    I know we have several related threads, but I thought it might be useful to have one thread dedicated to the various effects of nuclear explosions. I also have a couple of specific questions re said that I'm hoping someone has the expertise to answer for me.

    Which would be more effective against an oil refinery, a ground strike or airburst
    (Guessing air burst)

    Which would be more effective against oil wells, a ground strike or airburst (Guessing ground strike)

    It's been shared before, in several threads, I believe, but I think it's worth sharing the famous nukemap simulator again.

    NUKEMAP is a website for visualizing the effects of nuclear detonations.


    Also, here's a really interesting piece about recovery time after a nuclear disaster. The parts on the rebuilding of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I think, are particularly useful to the T2k ref:

    August 1945 will forever be remembered as one of the most dramatic months in the history of mankind, when nuclear weapons were used in warfare for the first and last time to date. Tragically, this powerful weapon was aimed at civilian targets: on August 6 the "Enola Gay" dropped the bomb dubbed the "Little Boy" and it blew up over the city of Hiroshima in Japan. The explosion, which amazed the world, instantly killed nearly seventy thousand people and a similar number again died later from injuries and radiation damage.Three days later, the "Bockscar" dropped the "Fat Man" bomb on Nagasaki.


    -
    Author of Twilight 2000 adventure modules, Rook's Gambit and The Poisoned Chalice, the campaign sourcebook, Korean Peninsula, the gear-book, Baltic Boats, and the co-author of Tara Romaneasca, a campaign sourcebook for Romania, all available for purchase on DriveThruRPG:

    https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...--Rooks-Gambit
    https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...ula-Sourcebook
    https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...nia-Sourcebook
    https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...liate_id=61048
    https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/...-waters-module

  • #2
    And here are some more sources:

    The granddaddy of them all, that has all the gnarly scientific details and formulas that the nukemapper site uses is The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 640 pages...

    Some other ones are:

    The Effects of Nuclear War, which was used by GDW when drafting Howling Wilderness

    The Medical Implications of Nuclear War, another brick at 638 pages...

    Survival of the Relocated Population of the US After a Nuclear Attack

    an answer to your specific question, Raellus: Minimizing Damage to Refineries from Nuclear Attack

    The Effects of a Nuclear Attack on Rail Activity Centers

    And how to plan a nuclear war (!!!):

    The US Nuclear War Plan: A Time for Change, which goes into details about things like the "hardness" of various targets and what it means to say "Well, X Target got nuked".

    and (this is a repost from the original site, which gave me a security error), Stuart Slade's Nuclear Warfare 101

    and

    The US Army's FM 101-31-1, Nuclear Weapons Employment Doctrine and Procedures, which gets into the nitty-gritties of how to determine which weapon to use to achieve the objective.


    Longer term I've been toying with the idea of a piece on the nuclear phase of the war... but the above documents combine to equal some seriously depressing reading.
    I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like... victory. Someday this war's gonna end...

    Comment


    • #3
      The Early-Time (E1) High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) and
      Its Impact on the U.S. Power Grid, Prepared for Oak Ridge National Laboratory
      2010

      Appendix
      E1 HEMP Myths

      "Cars dying: Some say that all vehicles travelling will come to a halt, with all modern vehicles damaged because of their use of modern electronics (and one movie even had a bulk, non-electronic part dying). Most likely there will be some vehicles affected, but probably just a small fraction of them (although this could create traffic jams in large cities). A car does not have very long cabling to act as antennas, and there is some protection from metallic construction."
      I will not hide. I will not be deterred nor will I be intimidated from my performing my duty, I am a Canadian Soldier.

      Comment


      • #4
        Still Wondering

        Thanks, Chico. I read the Minimizing Damage to Refineries from Nuclear Attack but didn't see a specific reference to the different effects of air burst and/or ground strikes against oil wells and/or refineries.

        -
        Author of Twilight 2000 adventure modules, Rook's Gambit and The Poisoned Chalice, the campaign sourcebook, Korean Peninsula, the gear-book, Baltic Boats, and the co-author of Tara Romaneasca, a campaign sourcebook for Romania, all available for purchase on DriveThruRPG:

        https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...--Rooks-Gambit
        https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...ula-Sourcebook
        https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...nia-Sourcebook
        https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...liate_id=61048
        https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/...-waters-module

        Comment


        • #5
          Its called Weaponeering

          So what you are thinking of is the Weaponeering. There are a number of books about it which deal with the conventional weapons and I am sure there are books about this for nuclear weapons.

          Just remember there are at least 5 types of bursts. High altitude air, air burst, surface burst, sub-surface burst, deep underwater burst.

          To me it would work best to have the low altitude air burst against both refineries and oil wells, since the burst wave would do the most damage to all the facilities that would be touched by the pressure wave from an air burst.
          Hey, Law and Order's a team, man. He finds the bombs, I drive the car. We tried the other way, but it didn't work.

          Comment


          • #6
            Keep in mind that T2k is not the real world and physics are slightly different (take a look at radiation half life IRL and in the game for an example.
            There's no reason to think EMP isn't also a little different in the game universe and somewhat nastier than in our own reality.
            If it moves, shoot it, if not push it, if it still doesn't move, use explosives.

            Nothing happens in isolation - it's called "the butterfly effect"

            Mors ante pudorem

            Comment


            • #7
              Top 10 Largest Nuclear Explosions

              A neat infographic, and Top 10 list:



              -
              Author of Twilight 2000 adventure modules, Rook's Gambit and The Poisoned Chalice, the campaign sourcebook, Korean Peninsula, the gear-book, Baltic Boats, and the co-author of Tara Romaneasca, a campaign sourcebook for Romania, all available for purchase on DriveThruRPG:

              https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...--Rooks-Gambit
              https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...ula-Sourcebook
              https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...nia-Sourcebook
              https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...liate_id=61048
              https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/...-waters-module

              Comment


              • #8
                Nuclear Winter is Coming

                Simulation Shows The Devastating Impact Of A Nuclear War Between The US And Russia



                -
                Author of Twilight 2000 adventure modules, Rook's Gambit and The Poisoned Chalice, the campaign sourcebook, Korean Peninsula, the gear-book, Baltic Boats, and the co-author of Tara Romaneasca, a campaign sourcebook for Romania, all available for purchase on DriveThruRPG:

                https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...--Rooks-Gambit
                https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...ula-Sourcebook
                https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...nia-Sourcebook
                https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...liate_id=61048
                https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/...-waters-module

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Southernap View Post
                  So what you are thinking of is the Weaponeering. There are a number of books about it which deal with the conventional weapons and I am sure there are books about this for nuclear weapons.

                  Just remember there are at least 5 types of bursts. High altitude air, air burst, surface burst, sub-surface burst, deep underwater burst.

                  To me it would work best to have the low altitude air burst against both refineries and oil wells, since the burst wave would do the most damage to all the facilities that would be touched by the pressure wave from an air burst.
                  IRL no one would waste a nuke on an oil field. Pump jacks are not soft targets, there are a ton of them servicing a major field spread out over thousands of square kilometers. Juice isn't worth the squeeze even with 1984 stockpiles. Refineries, though, absolutely. Oil storage, yes, Ports capable of loading or offloading, yes,

                  You would probably want an airburst to optimize the 12+ psi range, although anything over 5 psi would probably be a hard kill, and anything over 2 psi would be a soft kill for a refinery. 12 psi would mostly guarantee that pretty much everything but some vertical pipe columns would be flattened.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Effects of Tactical Nuclear Weapons

                    Most of what I've seen on the topic of the nuclear explosion effects focusses on high-yield strategic weapons. From this, I've tended to extrapolate a scaled-down version of these effects for tactical weapons, and applied that in the T2kU. Based on the linked articles, it appears now that that was in error, and that tactical nuclear weapons have some key differences as far as effects are concerned, especially in terms of radiological impact. The article abstract is as follows:

                    "In this article, we offer a detailed explanation of nuclear weapons effects and the misconceptions many readers have concerning the ways in which it is possible to use non-strategic nuclear weapons while reducing collateral effects associated with nuclear weapons."

                    With Russia making nuclear threats with the focus on so-called 'battlefield' nukes, experts examine the potential effects of these weapons.


                    Application to T2k 4e

                    The 4e manual includes 3-4 random encounters in which the PCs run across large surface craters, often containing some standing water, and usually highly radioactive. It's pretty clear that the authors were trying to create a post-nuclear conflict atmosphere for the setting and what better way to do it*. I can't fault them for that but, according to the linked article, such craters would be relatively rare, and not quite as radioactive as portrayed in the game rules.

                    Question:

                    *Assuming most tactical strikes are air-bursts, the apparent damage attributable to a nuclear weapon might be much less obvious. After a year or two, damage from a low-yield airburst would probably be indistinguishable from that left behind by heavy conventional fighting, and radiation in the area could be negligible. How would a PC be able to differentiate between the two potential causes of damage, nuclear or conventional, to a given area If damage was created by a low-yield nuclear airburst, what clues to its actual nature would there be

                    -
                    Last edited by Raellus; 12-20-2022, 02:57 PM.
                    Author of Twilight 2000 adventure modules, Rook's Gambit and The Poisoned Chalice, the campaign sourcebook, Korean Peninsula, the gear-book, Baltic Boats, and the co-author of Tara Romaneasca, a campaign sourcebook for Romania, all available for purchase on DriveThruRPG:

                    https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...--Rooks-Gambit
                    https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...ula-Sourcebook
                    https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...nia-Sourcebook
                    https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...liate_id=61048
                    https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/...-waters-module

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Who would take the brunt of an attack on the USA's nuclear missile silos



                      This article suggests that America's breadbasket would get a heavy dosing of radioactive fallout. This could provide an alternative explanation for the famine described in Howling Wilderness.
                      Author of Twilight 2000 adventure modules, Rook's Gambit and The Poisoned Chalice, the campaign sourcebook, Korean Peninsula, the gear-book, Baltic Boats, and the co-author of Tara Romaneasca, a campaign sourcebook for Romania, all available for purchase on DriveThruRPG:

                      https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...--Rooks-Gambit
                      https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...ula-Sourcebook
                      https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...nia-Sourcebook
                      https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...liate_id=61048
                      https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/...-waters-module

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Raellus View Post
                        https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...missile-silos/

                        This article suggests that America's breadbasket would get a heavy dosing of radioactive fallout. This could provide an alternative explanation for the famine described in Howling Wilderness.
                        The v1/v2 canon attack wasn't large enough.

                        Aside from hotspots created via runoff, fallout would be well attenuated to safe levels in most areas by 2001 from Nov/Dec 1997 nuclear strikes. Using the 7/10 rule (every 7-fold factor in time results in a 10-fold reduction in radioactivity), if an area was in a 3000 rem/hr fallout region (which is intense fallout), after 7 hours it would be 300 rem/hr, 49 hours, 30 rem/hr, 14 days, 3 rem/hr, 100 days, 0.3 rem/hr, and 2 years, 0.03 rem/hr. At 0.03 rem/hr, you are looking at 1 month of unshielded exposure to accumulate 1 rem.

                        This is an exaggerated fallout map (in that I modeled airbursts creating fallout) for the T2K target list in North America:



                        The burgundy red is basically the 3000 rem footprint, the red the 1000 rem footprint, and the light red the 100 rem footprint.

                        Now, if the attack followed NAPB-90, you would get a dramatically different result:



                        (I didn't model fallout for this yet, but use your imagination, most of those black dots are ground bursts).

                        So anyway, timeline bit.

                        Immediate T2K attack kills around ~9 million + maybe another 9 million die from injuries & fallout over the next 60 days, so around 8% of the population. That means most of the population of the country is still alive, largely unemployed and unproductive, and needs food.

                        You have 12-18 months worth of grain on hand, but...you also have a world war, and some of that grain would likely be sent overseas to help keep our allies from starving.

                        But technically you have enough food stored on hand to see you through 2 more harvests, so it's a distribution problem. It's too bad the national transportation network completely collapses around August 1998, which forces the mass urban exodus in search of food. IMHO, this is when the real die off should occur. The North East, for example, produces about 1 calorie in food output for every 10 calories consumed. Ergo, a 80-90% die off is not hard to imagine or justify.

                        Rolling into 1999, farmers in the Midwest suffer from a lack of fuel, which means little to no mechanization for planting or harvesting. So, in 1997 a single farmer might be able to plant and harvest 2000 acres with a combine. In 1999, that farmer would be able to plant and harvest ~3 acres by hand, maybe as many as 40 acres with draft animals, and more than that if they had farm hand labor.

                        So you go from 1 farmer feeding >10,000 people to 1 farmer feeding 9 people (low side) to ~100 people (high side, with draft animals). Factor of 2 decrease in productivity. Actually, net fed amount would be less because instead of buying seed, you would need to hold grain back for seeding (and with declining yields, about 20% of your harvest would need to be retained for next year's seeding).

                        Starting in fall 1998, transportation/distribution grid collapses, country falls into widespread disorder (especially urban areas), and civil government collapses leaving the military in control.

                        The country as a whole would need a whole lot more farmers to feed itself than it did in 1997. Luckily, you have a lot more unemployed labor to be farmers. Unluckily, as said above, your transportation grid collapses, and you probably don't have a way to get seeds to all those would be farmers.

                        Hunting, well, most game animals would be hunted to near extinction in a few months. There would be very little game by 2000. Similar problem with animal agriculture - it's an industrial process; most places that raise animals don't have the pasture to raise their animals to maturity - they depend on other farms / pastures for that. So, 1998 = a large cull of animals. Meatpacking is geographically concentrated in the Midwest, and loss of refrigeration = no way to queue up processing backlog, and most of the animal protein would be wasted and never go to feeding anything but buzzards and crows.

                        There's your 2000-2001 famine in a nutshell, no drought needed really (never mind the fact that the US basically has 3 independent, reliable large scale continental patterns that deliver water for agriculture vs. most other regions have 0-1, so a continental drought affecting North America is not really a very realistic scenario).

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Thanks for the info, Castlebravo. Really impressive research and effect modelling.

                          -
                          Last edited by Raellus; 11-18-2023, 01:53 PM.
                          Author of Twilight 2000 adventure modules, Rook's Gambit and The Poisoned Chalice, the campaign sourcebook, Korean Peninsula, the gear-book, Baltic Boats, and the co-author of Tara Romaneasca, a campaign sourcebook for Romania, all available for purchase on DriveThruRPG:

                          https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...--Rooks-Gambit
                          https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...ula-Sourcebook
                          https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...nia-Sourcebook
                          https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...liate_id=61048
                          https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/...-waters-module

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Raellus View Post
                            Thanks for the info, Castlebravo. Really impressive research and effect modelling.

                            -
                            I don't know what came first, me being a nuclear war nerd, or Twilight 2000, but they certainly fed each other. I remember stashing canned food in my mother's garage, just in case, as a kid in the 80s.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by Raellus View Post
                              *Assuming most tactical strikes are air-bursts, the apparent damage attributable to a nuclear weapon might be much less obvious. After a year or two, damage from a low-yield airburst would probably be indistinguishable from that left behind by heavy conventional fighting, and radiation in the area could be negligible. How would a PC be able to differentiate between the two potential causes of damage, nuclear or conventional, to a given area If damage was created by a low-yield nuclear airburst, what clues to its actual nature would there be

                              -
                              Just read this and wanted to share some thoughts.

                              You're correct that most tactical strikes would be air bursts. With (reactivated) B57 and the (almost ubiquitous) B61 probably delivering most of the strikes during the Twilight War. Nuclear bunker busters, such as the B83 nuclear bomb, which could also be dialed into the small kiloton range, would instead be used in ground burst or even subterranean explosions.

                              For explosions in these low kiloton and up to mid-double digit kiloton ranges, there are some important differences to keep in mind to the much bigger, strategic device explosions: First and foremost, their fireballs do not reach into the stratosphere, making them irrelevant for any discussions on the "nuclear winter" topic as this phenomenon is caused by black soot reaching the stratosphere in relevant amounts to have long lasting effects. Everything not reaching the stratosphere and thus remaining in the troposphere will fall back down onto the surface quickly, within hours or days, and thus have a negligible effect on climate (but not weather, an important difference!).

                              Second, even though we're talking tactical devices, these explosions are huge and extremely pinpointed. A 20 kt device will leave a crater 25 m deep, 15 m for a 5 kt device and still 6 m deep for the lowest possible yield a B61 can be dialed upon: 0.3 kt. These are no values conventional devices could attain, maybe with the exception of the Mk. 118 demolition bomb. The massive difference of nuclear bombs stems from the high pressure (psi) values reached, I believe, and not so much purely from the blast yield in tons TNT equivalent.

                              Third, the mode of why craters are formed is different, I believe. A nuclear device produces enormous levels of pressure (psi) an simulations from this site suggest that crater depth does not depend on whether a burst occurs on the surface or in the air. Conventional, "dumb" bombs however tend to explode after hitting the surface and thus in the ground. This changes crater creation dynamics and the amount of matter ejected out of the crater: I would presume a nuclear airburst crater to have a wider crater lip radius (from the center to the outer boundary of the lip) due to the explosion ejecting matter outward to the sides. A conventional explosion might eject matter more into the air as well.

                              This latter point, the blast wave going to all sides, is what creates the immense pressure waves that destroy the surrounding area. A 0.3 kt blast, still being ca. 335 times larger than a that of a Mark 118 demolition bomb (with its 896 kg warhead) will result in moderate blast damage out to about 300 m to 340 m (depending on air burst optimization (radii or overpressure). Moderate blast damage here means 5 psi overpressure, most residential buildings collapse, injuries being universal, and fatalities being widespread. Light damage, including shattering glass and probably broken off trees, would go out to 1.32 km.

                              So, the main differences visible to the naked eye between a nuclear and a conventional explosion would simply be the massive damage to the surrounding environment far beyond the immediate crater. When the Saudis used a Mk. 87 bomb on a Yemeni market in March 2016 (with a 428 kg warhead filling) they killed 97 people. Hitting a market in an urban center with a 0.3 kt device would likely kill close to 6,000 people immediately and wound another 20,500 people, many of them would die from maiming and 3rd to 2nd degree burns, which occur out to about 380 m and 480 m respectively. These burns would be also visible on trees, with charring marks at least out to 350 m, but probably more, and knocked over trees out to beyond 1 km in a concentric pattern around the 6.18 m deep crater (that's easily a two story building).
                              Liber et infractus

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