They do expire. Problem is that there’s a lot of them. Fire 100 nukes, and even if 99% fail, that’s at least one mushroom cloud in the most fertile land on earth. And the ones that did expire become essentially dirty bombs.
That’s pretty much why I was asking, I figured that no level of neglect would make one of these not dangerous. Which also makes it pretty clear that someone who’s so comfortable with their use is likely confident that they would not be victims of that use.
Neglect measured on the scale of centuries might make them effectively safe…you need to have all the conventional explosives in the implosion shell fail to explode. If some of them fail, you likely won’t reach criticality in the warhead itself, in which case you just detonated a regular bomb that had enriched uranium shrapnel.
That being said, most modern explosives become less stable and more sensitive over time, not inert. So the implosion timing is gonna be off, which means no criticality. Just spreading radioactive material.
Umm. Not really? I’m kinda pulling together basic implosion-type nuke design, where you have a nuclear core surrounded by conventional shaped charges that are supposed to detonate and compress the nuclear core just prior to the nuclear reaction.
As you would expect, most governments are a bit touchy on details about military explosives that they use…I just happen to have done a decent amount of explosives R&D in the past. Picked up a few things.
You probably won’t be able to get enough material for a true cobalt bomb.
What you could do, however, is build a Farnsworth fusor. That’s very doable in a basement using…relatively easily acquired parts. As long as you keep the operating voltage under 30kV you won’t need lead shielding, but you won’t be getting many neutrons either. Get a couple plates of lead, get yourself a bunch of cobalt salts (ask someone that does glass art) and put them in the reactor chamber. Then crank that bitch up as high as your transformer will let you, and soon you’ll have radioactive cobalt. Then you go to a gun store and buy a block of tannerite, US gun culture makes this a commonly available explosive, and tape the cobalt to it.
Now you have a salted dirty bomb.
If you’re feeling really lucky, you could try modifying a time-of-flight mass spectrometer to integrate into your reactor chamber vacuum output, allowing you to collect reasonably pure tritium in tiny amounts. Get enough of that, add some deuterium, figure out a way to ignite it, and you have a thermonuclear device.
Edit: if you manage to pull off any of this, that will be impressive. Reach out to your local university, and collect an honorary degree in mechanical, electrical, or nuclear engineering.
Because I value the gain and spread of knowledge above all else.
You will note that I didn’t give you exact instructions, just pointed you in the right directions. None of this is easy, but it is doable. There are maybe a couple thousand Farnsworth fusors in personal operation across the world, for technology that has existed for 70 years.
Someone who just wants to cause harm can go buy a gun. The direction I just pointed you in leads to an illustrious career in genuinely useful engineering. Or failure, followed by doing something else.
Maybe you’ll discover an interest. Maybe you’ll go on to revolutionize fusion energy, which has been just ten years of R&D away since the 50s. Probably you’ll have a laugh and move on.
Scaling is the big issue. If you do what I described, you’re probably not even going to be a danger to yourself (apart from the high voltage), unless you are able to rapidly industrialize this. Of course, of you were capable of rapidly industrializing this, you wouldn’t need me to point you in the right direction.
They do expire. Problem is that there’s a lot of them. Fire 100 nukes, and even if 99% fail, that’s at least one mushroom cloud in the most fertile land on earth. And the ones that did expire become essentially dirty bombs.
That’s pretty much why I was asking, I figured that no level of neglect would make one of these not dangerous. Which also makes it pretty clear that someone who’s so comfortable with their use is likely confident that they would not be victims of that use.
Neglect measured on the scale of centuries might make them effectively safe…you need to have all the conventional explosives in the implosion shell fail to explode. If some of them fail, you likely won’t reach criticality in the warhead itself, in which case you just detonated a regular bomb that had enriched uranium shrapnel.
That being said, most modern explosives become less stable and more sensitive over time, not inert. So the implosion timing is gonna be off, which means no criticality. Just spreading radioactive material.
Do you have a source to read further on this at all?
Umm. Not really? I’m kinda pulling together basic implosion-type nuke design, where you have a nuclear core surrounded by conventional shaped charges that are supposed to detonate and compress the nuclear core just prior to the nuclear reaction.
As you would expect, most governments are a bit touchy on details about military explosives that they use…I just happen to have done a decent amount of explosives R&D in the past. Picked up a few things.
How interesting! Can you tell me how one would theoretically build a cobalt bomb inside their garage…for educational purposes of course.
/j and in Minecraft
I don’t want to get banned for trying to do warcrimes again.
You probably won’t be able to get enough material for a true cobalt bomb.
What you could do, however, is build a Farnsworth fusor. That’s very doable in a basement using…relatively easily acquired parts. As long as you keep the operating voltage under 30kV you won’t need lead shielding, but you won’t be getting many neutrons either. Get a couple plates of lead, get yourself a bunch of cobalt salts (ask someone that does glass art) and put them in the reactor chamber. Then crank that bitch up as high as your transformer will let you, and soon you’ll have radioactive cobalt. Then you go to a gun store and buy a block of tannerite, US gun culture makes this a commonly available explosive, and tape the cobalt to it.
Now you have a salted dirty bomb.
If you’re feeling really lucky, you could try modifying a time-of-flight mass spectrometer to integrate into your reactor chamber vacuum output, allowing you to collect reasonably pure tritium in tiny amounts. Get enough of that, add some deuterium, figure out a way to ignite it, and you have a thermonuclear device.
Edit: if you manage to pull off any of this, that will be impressive. Reach out to your local university, and collect an honorary degree in mechanical, electrical, or nuclear engineering.
Lmao, why would you unironically tell me this xD
And not in DMs.
I’m no longer that misanthropic, would rather build Solarpunk.
Because I value the gain and spread of knowledge above all else.
You will note that I didn’t give you exact instructions, just pointed you in the right directions. None of this is easy, but it is doable. There are maybe a couple thousand Farnsworth fusors in personal operation across the world, for technology that has existed for 70 years.
Someone who just wants to cause harm can go buy a gun. The direction I just pointed you in leads to an illustrious career in genuinely useful engineering. Or failure, followed by doing something else.
Maybe you’ll discover an interest. Maybe you’ll go on to revolutionize fusion energy, which has been just ten years of R&D away since the 50s. Probably you’ll have a laugh and move on.
Scaling is the big issue. If you do what I described, you’re probably not even going to be a danger to yourself (apart from the high voltage), unless you are able to rapidly industrialize this. Of course, of you were capable of rapidly industrializing this, you wouldn’t need me to point you in the right direction.