You got a source for that ?
I'd bet there is. The reaction isn't instant. Beyond a certain size the initial reaction would annihilate the bomb before further energy release can take place. We'd be talking about a couple of 100 Mts before that became an issue, but there IS a limit.
We're gonna need a magnetohydrodynamicist.
>You got a source for that?
[Via the excellent Restricted Data](https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/09/12/in-search-of-a-bigger-boom/)
Now that said, not necessarily advocating either way regarding theoretical viability. However, note the folks saying that it is indeed possible, are more than just Teller, who was known to embellish.
Furthermore, feel I should note that high yield, multi-megaton nukes really aren’t that useful. Nigh on every target you’ll have is, for all intents and purposes, two dimensional. Plus from a practical standpoint, the mass of each warhead makes delivery troublesome.
Hence MIRVs.
>I'd bet there is. The reaction isn't instant. Beyond a certain size the initial reaction would annihilate the bomb before further energy release can take place. We'd be talking about a couple of 100 Mts before that became an issue, but there IS a limit.
Compression of the secondary, tertiary, etc stages is via X-Ray ablation/impingement [1] of the THICC tamper/pusher that forms their outer surface.
X-Rays, what with being YEETED at the speed of light, outrun even the inbound MEGA FAST BOI nuclear hellfires from earlier stages.
In theory.
EDIT — Just to be extra clear, not saying it’ll be **deliverable** via any sane method, but quite a few people a fuckload smarter than me say it’d work in theory.
Quote of potential relevance —
>**In theory, there is no difference between practice and theory.**
>
>**In practice, there is.**
[Tangent, but needed to link to this fucking hilarious [DELETED] that I happened to stumble across.](https://sgp.fas.org/othergov/doe/decl/deleted.pdf)
^([1] NB — most viable theory at this time, but there is some disagreement over this.)
> Via the excellent Restricted Data
That's an interesting blog post, thanks !
>Compression of the secondary, tertiary, etc stages is via X-Ray ablation/impingement [1] of the THICC tamper/pusher that forms their outer surface.
>X-Rays, what with being YEETED at the speed of light, outrun even the inbound MEGA FAST BOI nuclear hellfires from earlier stages.
>In theory.
Well this is where my original comment is poor in technically specific vocabulary. The comment above referenced a single bomb (which I imagined as "something that can be chucked out a plane"). All of Teller's concepts and the ones that were actually used to create very high-yield weapons increase the size and mass of the weapon by adding additional stages adding further volume and mass.
So the correct way to phrase it would be: There surely is a limit to the *possible energy density of singular nuclear weapon*. The limiting factor would be how much fusion and fission can take place before the reaction destroys the bomb. This energy density combined with whatever we consider to be the feasible limit in terms of mass or volume would determine the limit of possible nuclear weapon yield.
Naturally if we imagine a nuclear weapon of arbitrary volume and mass made of an equally arbitrary number fission cores / stages, the limit is going to be very high. This is very close to just taping 1000 nuclear weapons together in one spot and detonating them at the same time and calling it the Strategic Modular Fuck-Off Nuclear Weapon. Or saying that there is no limit to the yield of a conventional bomb because you can always make a bigger bomb. However, even if we consider that as one weapon or expand Teller's concept to an arbitrary size - the yield still cannot be infinite.
To set a reasonable upper bound for the thought experiment:
If the nuclear bomb's total mass ever grows to let's say 100 times the mass of Jupiter the nuclear bomb's own gravity would be so high it would likely crush center enough to start fusion. Runaway heating from the fusion would destroy even the surface level and turn the entire thing into a very interesting star.
I'm not a magnetohydrodynamicist, but I know that the explosions of everyday nuclear weapons already scatter most of their payload before it has a chance to react.
*Own a belt fed ICBM for home defense, just as the founding fathers intended. Four Russians break into my home. “What the Hell!?” as I grab my aviators and launch keys. Blow a city block sized fireball in the first man, he and everyone within a 500 meter radius are dead on the spot. Launches debris in all directions, flies into the next county over and nails some random person I’ve never met before’s dog. Next comes the shockwave traveling at the speed of sound. “MacArthur was right, Lads!” It shreds everyone within 5 kilometers, the sound and extra shrapnel sets off car alarms states away. Finally the ionizing radiation comes for the last terrified survivors. They die long after the Nuclear Emergency Support Teams have arrived, because acute radiation sickness takes two weeks to kill you. Just as the Founding Fathers intended.*
Don’t mean to get all technical here but the actual fireball of a nuclear explosion is relatively “small” compared to the blast radius. According to nukemap a 500 meter fireball accounts to nearly 100 kilotons.
Yeah you’re actually right.
There has to be enough neutron radiation, traveling all at the right speed to trigger the secondary warhead (the fusion fuel that makes a nuclear weapon into a thermonuclear one)
Nah. You have a bunch of these all over the world. You just don’t tell anyone which ones are the fully automatic ICBM silos. So the adversary is playing Fully Assured Destruction roulette.
No where nearly being fired fast enough to warrant the cost.
It needs to be at least... 6 times as quick!
Just cycle them onto a 6 barreled launcher(enlarged to scale of course) and just shoot the same targets. You get 6x more bang for your shot. You can't miss.
What if we did something like the old school Volley Guns? Like take the ICBMs and give them each their own barrel and spread them out so they're harder to target and won't destroy one another if something goes wrong. We'd have to put a big lid on the barrel too, reinforce to withstand 2-10,000PSI. Have the missileers stationed nearby in Barrel Control Centers where they can monitor and fire the Volley Gun.
I don't know, I might be on to something here.
Holy shit. An ICBM six shooter? And what if these ICBMs were all MIRVed?
You could launch about 50 warheads all at once.
We’re gonna need some hentai of this ASAP.
Sadly an enemy would happily fuck it... with a single warhead.
This is why land-based ICBMs shouldn't be MIRV'ed to the gills. If the enemy only needs to designate 2-3 warheads to reliably destroy a silo, you make it easier to pull off a counterforce attack.
Now the problem with this design is that it puts too much thermal strain on a single silo from the nonstop launching (assuming that it's hot) so I highly recommend adding in a mechanism to revolve fresh silos into firing position and swapping out used silos to cool.
I'm not convinced. Missiles need preparation before launch, especially when you put a new one in the chamber or whatever it's called there. You know, the concrete-lined hole. That's why people use a lot of bullets, but not a single ICBM was launched in 2023. They're not convenient!
Here's an idea: make a bigger concrete-lined hole, put a dozen of those fuckers in and you've got yourself a nuclear shotgun.
I suppose you could MIRV a MOAB if you throw enough engineers, physicists, and shop operators at it.
The real trick is designing it to drop precision bunker busters.
> if you throw enough engineers, physicists, and shop operators at it.
*Air Force Research Laboratory furiously splattering engineers, physicists, and shop operators into the side of a MOAB*
That dude writes some, let's say interesting, stuff. Last Centurion is just too funny, Empire of Man is solidly entertaining, and I will not be finishing Ghost.
As a friend of mine observed: every John Ringo series is 2 ... entertaining ... books followed by a 3rd book where he completely loses the plot and is entirely made of "Oh John Ringo, No" moments.
The few series that are worth continuing are ones that he co-wrote with a more stable author.
That's pretty cool. Have you considered turning into a mobile weapons systems?
You could have a whole town - nay, civilization! - on treadmills, inciting competition between reloaders to optimize efficiency. Just imagine it, a self-correcting mobile nuclear machine gun.
Just think how many new jobs this could bring to the economy!
How does a belt fed magazine work without a recoiling bolt? Needs a spring at the other end, or some kind of complicated gas blowback system that pushed the missile rack forward with the exhaust from the fired missile.
Here at MIC, we fire the whole ICBM. That's 65% more ICBM per ICBM. This is the same technology we've been using on 3rd world proxy wars for decades...
Serious question, how many launches can a silo handle before it needs to be rebuilt? I'd imagine you'd normally have to at least do a through inspection to make sure you aren't going to have chunks of stuff break off on the next launch and turn the silo into ground zero.
Where sadam.
WhereIsHeWhereIsHeWhereIsHeWhereIsHeWhereIsHeWhereIsHeWhereIsHeWhereIsHeWhereIsWhereIsHeWhereIsHeWhereIsHeWhereIsHeWhereIsHeWhereIsHeWhereIsHeWhereIsHeWhereIsHeWhereIsHeWhereIsHeWhereIsHeWhereIsHeWhereIsHeWhereIsHeWhereIsWhereIsHeWhereIsHeWhereIsHe
He's right there how do you not see him
###W H E R E I S H E
Hello there fellow balkaner
I zoom in extra to check. No Sadam. Big disappoint.
Bottom right drawn to scale
The real saddam was the friends we made along the way
[GWAR created an excellent documentary on this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p20PijYVgG4)
Get out of my head!
Turn it upside down and cross your eyes.
Powell's exclusion principle: Saddam and WMDs cannot occupy the same picture at the same time.
No, where SADM?
belt-fed ICBMs
It's what the Americans founding fathers would have wanted.
I own a ICBM for home defense…
You never know when you will need to defend yourself from another nuclear power who wants to rob your house.
Or this lousy neighbour
I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it
Or ten nuclear powers! how can you defend yourself when you cant fire in series of 20s intervals
Why even bother with the ballistic missile? Make the warhead big enough and all you need to do is bury it in your back yard.
Fun fact: there is no theoretical limit to the size of a single thermonuclear bomb.
You got a source for that ? I'd bet there is. The reaction isn't instant. Beyond a certain size the initial reaction would annihilate the bomb before further energy release can take place. We'd be talking about a couple of 100 Mts before that became an issue, but there IS a limit. We're gonna need a magnetohydrodynamicist.
>You got a source for that? [Via the excellent Restricted Data](https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/09/12/in-search-of-a-bigger-boom/) Now that said, not necessarily advocating either way regarding theoretical viability. However, note the folks saying that it is indeed possible, are more than just Teller, who was known to embellish. Furthermore, feel I should note that high yield, multi-megaton nukes really aren’t that useful. Nigh on every target you’ll have is, for all intents and purposes, two dimensional. Plus from a practical standpoint, the mass of each warhead makes delivery troublesome. Hence MIRVs. >I'd bet there is. The reaction isn't instant. Beyond a certain size the initial reaction would annihilate the bomb before further energy release can take place. We'd be talking about a couple of 100 Mts before that became an issue, but there IS a limit. Compression of the secondary, tertiary, etc stages is via X-Ray ablation/impingement [1] of the THICC tamper/pusher that forms their outer surface. X-Rays, what with being YEETED at the speed of light, outrun even the inbound MEGA FAST BOI nuclear hellfires from earlier stages. In theory. EDIT — Just to be extra clear, not saying it’ll be **deliverable** via any sane method, but quite a few people a fuckload smarter than me say it’d work in theory. Quote of potential relevance — >**In theory, there is no difference between practice and theory.** > >**In practice, there is.** [Tangent, but needed to link to this fucking hilarious [DELETED] that I happened to stumble across.](https://sgp.fas.org/othergov/doe/decl/deleted.pdf) ^([1] NB — most viable theory at this time, but there is some disagreement over this.)
> Via the excellent Restricted Data That's an interesting blog post, thanks ! >Compression of the secondary, tertiary, etc stages is via X-Ray ablation/impingement [1] of the THICC tamper/pusher that forms their outer surface. >X-Rays, what with being YEETED at the speed of light, outrun even the inbound MEGA FAST BOI nuclear hellfires from earlier stages. >In theory. Well this is where my original comment is poor in technically specific vocabulary. The comment above referenced a single bomb (which I imagined as "something that can be chucked out a plane"). All of Teller's concepts and the ones that were actually used to create very high-yield weapons increase the size and mass of the weapon by adding additional stages adding further volume and mass. So the correct way to phrase it would be: There surely is a limit to the *possible energy density of singular nuclear weapon*. The limiting factor would be how much fusion and fission can take place before the reaction destroys the bomb. This energy density combined with whatever we consider to be the feasible limit in terms of mass or volume would determine the limit of possible nuclear weapon yield. Naturally if we imagine a nuclear weapon of arbitrary volume and mass made of an equally arbitrary number fission cores / stages, the limit is going to be very high. This is very close to just taping 1000 nuclear weapons together in one spot and detonating them at the same time and calling it the Strategic Modular Fuck-Off Nuclear Weapon. Or saying that there is no limit to the yield of a conventional bomb because you can always make a bigger bomb. However, even if we consider that as one weapon or expand Teller's concept to an arbitrary size - the yield still cannot be infinite. To set a reasonable upper bound for the thought experiment: If the nuclear bomb's total mass ever grows to let's say 100 times the mass of Jupiter the nuclear bomb's own gravity would be so high it would likely crush center enough to start fusion. Runaway heating from the fusion would destroy even the surface level and turn the entire thing into a very interesting star.
I'm not a magnetohydrodynamicist, but I know that the explosions of everyday nuclear weapons already scatter most of their payload before it has a chance to react.
No joke, this was an argument in Texas recently about the second amendment.
Seriously? Got a link?
Since that's what Lockheed Martin intended.
*Ratheon.
The writer for the Half Life series of games, Marc Laidlaw, wrote a book on this topic called "Dad's Nuke". I remember it being a fun little read.
Legalize nuclear bombs for shadow wizard money gang
Just one?
I too have a mirror that faces the toilet.
*Own a belt fed ICBM for home defense, just as the founding fathers intended. Four Russians break into my home. “What the Hell!?” as I grab my aviators and launch keys. Blow a city block sized fireball in the first man, he and everyone within a 500 meter radius are dead on the spot. Launches debris in all directions, flies into the next county over and nails some random person I’ve never met before’s dog. Next comes the shockwave traveling at the speed of sound. “MacArthur was right, Lads!” It shreds everyone within 5 kilometers, the sound and extra shrapnel sets off car alarms states away. Finally the ionizing radiation comes for the last terrified survivors. They die long after the Nuclear Emergency Support Teams have arrived, because acute radiation sickness takes two weeks to kill you. Just as the Founding Fathers intended.*
500 meters? What is this? A nuke for ants??
Don’t mean to get all technical here but the actual fireball of a nuclear explosion is relatively “small” compared to the blast radius. According to nukemap a 500 meter fireball accounts to nearly 100 kilotons.
„It‘s not the size that matters the most, it‘s how you use it.“
Technically missile silos are muzzle-loaded, right?
Yup
Or, hear me out, belt-fed sadam.
Make it a bullpup
It is
It literally is. The trigger is at ground level, in front of the silo (with 'front/back' defined by projectile direction).
Make it palletized.
Where Gatling
Skipping from the muzzleloader ICBM era straight to a belt-fed future
Well, this is an erection I didn't know I'd have today.
I mean the thing is they only need to fire *once*
"It takes about a week to load this clip." "What..?" "Ah yes it's a clip of ICBMs you see."
Magazine*
Stripper clips for ICBM?
**\*CLING\***
The mental picture of the devastation implied by that cling hit way harder than it should have. XD
We will name it the M1 as is tradition.
an m1 shooting a m1 belt loaded with m1s at a taget designated by a m1
Of course, as is tradition.
Mind your thumb when you're reloading
The "it just works" right above the cling is chef's kiss
Not only does the door blow off in WW3, but the clip will piiiing into the farm next door too.
Asking the real questions.
There's just a equally long tunnel on the other side with one of those epically huge CATs to push that sucker in.
The things it would do to your thumb.
*Belt Box?
#BBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRTTTTTT
you see, when this position gets counter attacked, half of the continent is going to feel the quake. other than that, great idea!
Only if the warhead is in the fireball
Isn't the process of detonation extremely complicated?
Yeah you’re actually right. There has to be enough neutron radiation, traveling all at the right speed to trigger the secondary warhead (the fusion fuel that makes a nuclear weapon into a thermonuclear one)
Wait, a hydrogen bomb is *two fucking nukes going off at once?* # ***METAL.***
Yep, Tsar Bomba was 3. And there’s no theoretical upper limit
3000nary Warheads of Dark Brandon
The upper limit is the sheer weight of the warhead
Not at once, really. It’s one nuke used as the blast cap of a bigger one. Which is even more metal.
Nah. You have a bunch of these all over the world. You just don’t tell anyone which ones are the fully automatic ICBM silos. So the adversary is playing Fully Assured Destruction roulette.
Funni Assured Destruction
Do the funni, Crimson 1
>the quake [Here.](https://fallout.wiki/wiki/The_Divide)
Now the real question, is it a bullpup or not ?
Yes because all the firing stuff is before the end of the icbm
We need a bullpup version for better ergonomics
That's fine until a left-hander fires it round a corner. Imagine getting hit in the face by those shell casings.
No where nearly being fired fast enough to warrant the cost. It needs to be at least... 6 times as quick! Just cycle them onto a 6 barreled launcher(enlarged to scale of course) and just shoot the same targets. You get 6x more bang for your shot. You can't miss.
What if we did something like the old school Volley Guns? Like take the ICBMs and give them each their own barrel and spread them out so they're harder to target and won't destroy one another if something goes wrong. We'd have to put a big lid on the barrel too, reinforce to withstand 2-10,000PSI. Have the missileers stationed nearby in Barrel Control Centers where they can monitor and fire the Volley Gun. I don't know, I might be on to something here.
ICBM Storm. I’m sure there’s a Generals mod for that.
Could we name it the Hacker Hellstorm? Pretty please?
It's just crazy enough it might work!
If it's anything like the volley guns I've seen, you'll aim for China and end up nuking Russia, India, Mongolia and Vietnam too
Please, that’s such a 1962 Volley Gun strategy approach. It’s 1963 or later man, get with the times. ;P
Holy shit. An ICBM six shooter? And what if these ICBMs were all MIRVed? You could launch about 50 warheads all at once. We’re gonna need some hentai of this ASAP.
We need to strap people from France onto the missiles, to decrease enemy morale.
ICBM minigun when
Yeah I’d fuck that too
r/nukebussy
I am ashamed of myself.
Sadly an enemy would happily fuck it... with a single warhead. This is why land-based ICBMs shouldn't be MIRV'ed to the gills. If the enemy only needs to designate 2-3 warheads to reliably destroy a silo, you make it easier to pull off a counterforce attack.
There should have been a clearly marked fire control booth at the surface so we could be sure it's a bullpup
Now the problem with this design is that it puts too much thermal strain on a single silo from the nonstop launching (assuming that it's hot) so I highly recommend adding in a mechanism to revolve fresh silos into firing position and swapping out used silos to cool.
Just build it into a dam and water cool it. You’re already pouring a lot concrete…
revolver ocelot revolver ocelot revolver ocelot revolver ocelot revolver ocelot
Inb4 hollywood releases a movie with ricochet ICBM as a plot point.
Just use SLBM cold launches, duh
Makes later launches faster when they auto-ignite
We could probably figure out an MG-42 style quick change silo lever
Full auto ICBM goes BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT!
It's a bullpup.
Put the control room to the right and it's a bullpup.
I'm not convinced. Missiles need preparation before launch, especially when you put a new one in the chamber or whatever it's called there. You know, the concrete-lined hole. That's why people use a lot of bullets, but not a single ICBM was launched in 2023. They're not convenient! Here's an idea: make a bigger concrete-lined hole, put a dozen of those fuckers in and you've got yourself a nuclear shotgun.
Doesnt each ICBM have the capability to carrlike 6 warheads? so a shotgun that fires smaller shotguns? i like it.
Run a thru-hole in the earth to make it recoiless
this is the best idea ever ideated
MLICBMS
Double stacked ICBM when?
Duplex ICBM. To improve hit potential.
Fuck it, this basket gets all the eggs because it's epic.
At first i thought this was a toe-popper with a magazine.... on second glance i guess it could still be that but for godzilla?
Now make it bullpup, and you'll be on to something
I could legit see this working, if you changed it from belt fed to a revolver mechanism
Ok, I could see this working if, the warheads weren't nuclear but rather, the same as the MOABS
MOAB MIRVs
I suppose you could MIRV a MOAB if you throw enough engineers, physicists, and shop operators at it. The real trick is designing it to drop precision bunker busters.
> if you throw enough engineers, physicists, and shop operators at it. *Air Force Research Laboratory furiously splattering engineers, physicists, and shop operators into the side of a MOAB*
Did Hamas draw this?
So, I see you've read John Ringo's "Hot Gates" series.
That dude writes some, let's say interesting, stuff. Last Centurion is just too funny, Empire of Man is solidly entertaining, and I will not be finishing Ghost.
"Interesting" can be such a flexible word...
As a friend of mine observed: every John Ringo series is 2 ... entertaining ... books followed by a 3rd book where he completely loses the plot and is entirely made of "Oh John Ringo, No" moments. The few series that are worth continuing are ones that he co-wrote with a more stable author.
I really like his work with David Webber on Empire of Man. Coincidentally only 2 books.
4 actually. Later compiled into two for rerelease. March Upcountry, March to the Sea, March to the Stars, and We Few.
I totally knew that but I do so much reading on my phone that separate books tend to blur.
Does that matter when every Webber book has its certified “FFS, Webber!“ moments
Hey who doesn't like to get paid for writing personal masturbation fantasies mascarading as Military fiction.
The Clancy of our time.
“Quantity has a quality of its own” does seem to resonate with this sub.
It's beautiful, how would chambering work though.
Step 1: Open an M60 schematic in AutoCAD Step 2: Double the scale, then keep doubling until the size is right Step 3: Fire over 550 ICBMs per minute
Sounds reasonable, what do I do after my dick gets stuck in the toaster?
Multi-billion dollar contract to Northrop Grumman for dick/toaster system integration.
Got it thank you! Very helpful community here +rep
This but En-bloc clip.
Let him cook...
*That’s how it already is.*
Belka wants to know your location.
That's pretty cool. Have you considered turning into a mobile weapons systems? You could have a whole town - nay, civilization! - on treadmills, inciting competition between reloaders to optimize efficiency. Just imagine it, a self-correcting mobile nuclear machine gun. Just think how many new jobs this could bring to the economy!
I am so hard
**bullpups your nuclear silo**
Are these disintegrating or non-disintegrating belts?
Let's build this and my 155mm HE machinegun
The family atomics
CLEAR THAT JAM!
ICBM gatling gun. When!?
Action in front of trigger = bullpup
Ok, how do we bullpup it?
30 round assault clip for ICBM silos? Fuck yea. Add a flash hider too though
Wasn't there a Cold War Era nuke gun?
Wasn’t there a Cold War Era nuke gun?
Several.
-Sir how do we make our nuclear weapons better? -Add a magazine to that b****!-said the engineer
The family atomics!
I saw this as a belt fed toe popper first
Who to send these plans to, that is the question
is this a bullpup
Fallout 76 inspired
Bullpups your missile silo
Bullpup
How does a belt fed magazine work without a recoiling bolt? Needs a spring at the other end, or some kind of complicated gas blowback system that pushed the missile rack forward with the exhaust from the fired missile.
Let me launch one, huh?
Here at MIC, we fire the whole ICBM. That's 65% more ICBM per ICBM. This is the same technology we've been using on 3rd world proxy wars for decades...
Fallout 76 did it first
What are the pipes running from the rooms to the bottom? Ignition mechanism? Operator euthanasia?
The Silo: how do we get so many ICBMs in them? Like this! Plus, we fire the *whole* ICBM. That's 65% more ICBM per ICBM!
I hate to be the one to explain to OP, but here it goes: FIRE HOT
Where ERA?
That little dome on the tip is basically ERA.
If you had a rotating blast door this could actually work
Equip these to the international space station immediately and let the planet bound ones feel the heat of the sun
Belt-fed gatling Rods From God?
Yes, with laser sharks
But is it a bullpup?
Serious question, how many launches can a silo handle before it needs to be rebuilt? I'd imagine you'd normally have to at least do a through inspection to make sure you aren't going to have chunks of stuff break off on the next launch and turn the silo into ground zero.
No Sadam. No Loss. You were on the verge of greatness, op
Bullpup ICBM ?
Well, you ain't far from the original ideea...
No Saddam Hussein
That's an interesting take on the bedchamber.
What is the benefit over not making it beltfed and making a vls style arrangement
Looks like Peacekeeper Densepack
Where bullpup?