The Politics Thread 4

[Alvin Flummux]

What would happen if a 150kt bomb was dropped on London?



Estimates predict that there would be approximately 334,290 casualties as a result of the blast, along with 1,088,503 injuries. The results don't take into account the effects of nuclear fallout, nor the fact that the city is more heavily populated at certain times of day.

The innermost orange circle is the most severe, with a fireball radius of 450m. Within this area, a nuclear fireball would obliterate the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey and a decent chunk of Whitehall. There would be no survivors. The green ring, with a radiation radius of 1km, represents the area within which we can expect a 50-90% mortality rate, and the blue ring, air blast radius 3.74km, represents the area within which the resulting pressure would cause most residential buildings to collapse, with widespread fatalities. The outermost ring, a thermal radiation radius of 5.26km, would still result in third degree burns causing severe scarring and disablement.

The UK's nuclear command chain dictates that if the sitting prime minister were to authorise a retaliatory nuclear strike, the order will go to the person below the prime minister on a dual-track basis (meaning two persons are required to authenticate at each stage of the process), until it eventually reaches our nuclear submarine fleet. The fleet will carry out a strike on the coordinates given, though they will not necessarily know what the target is.

A strike that completely wiped out Westminster and the prime minister means that there would have to be an alternative means of response. To cover for such an eventuality, every prime minister will have written a letter of last resort upon taking office, seen by their eyes only, and stored securely within the safes of each of the UK's four nuclear submarines. The letter instructs the submarine commander of what action to take should Her Majesty's Government be completely wiped out. Before following through with the orders, the commander will have to assess whether the government has fallen, by trying to make contact with Naval Command and infamously checking if BBC Radio 4 is still broadcasting. The aforementioned letters are destroyed unopened whenever a new prime minister takes office, and while nobody knows for sure what options have been tabled, there are thought to be four key responses: launch a retaliatory nuclear strike, don't launch a retaliatory nuclear strike, allow the commander to use their own judgement, or offer the fleet to the United States and Australian Navies.

Good to know.

What’s interesting about the last bit is specifically the US and Australia. I thought one of the option was sail to an allied port. Personally if I was captain of a sub I would be going to Australia.

What about Russia's super powerful nukes. I thought they had stuff that could totally destroy the UK?

Just a handful of their most powerful would render the whole of the uk uninhabitable. The one used in that illustration is tiny by comparison.

You know the Tsar Bomba was never put into mass production, right?

I wasn't talking about the Tsar they have a new system called Satan 2.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/1 ... out-uk-fr/

Oh. Great.

[Return_of_the_STAR]

Just a handful of their most powerful would render the whole of the uk uninhabitable. The one used in that illustration is tiny by comparison.

If a 50 Mt nuclear bomb hit the centre of London, you'd have a completely uninhabitable zone out until Stratford. Then the regions out to the radius of Dartford would look a bit like Fallout 3. Finally, people who happened to be outside would suffer very bad burns from the blast of hot air until around Chatham. The worst of the fallout would be in a long thin cloud that might stretch to Bristol if we're unlucky. Folks on the Isle of Sheppey would be fine (or at least no worse-off than they started).

Fallout and blast burns would be avoidable for anyone lucky enough to be (& smart enough to stay) indoors. Realistically I think you're looking at a 5 mile radius of nuclear hellscape and a 15 mile radius of post-apoc horror, with a steady drop-off in fatalities up until about 40 miles, plus some fatalities from radiation sickness down-wind.

This would be a nightmare, millions would die on the day, and doubtless millions more in the chaos that followed. But it doesn't really make the UK uninhabitable. I think if that's your goal you'd need one for every city and large town in the country.

And remember, 50 Mt is the cutting edge in huge nukes. Most nukes are nowhere near that size.

When i said handful i meant 5 or more. Ultimately if anyone is going to fire a nuke at us then it wont just be one and we are all strawberry floated. If you survive because you live somewhere remote that's not near anything of importance, baring in mind that a number of military installations are in remote areas then you are probably going to starve to death anyway. Even if only a small amount of small nukes were dropped on the country then i can imagine the country would completely grind to a halt, the infrastructure wouldn't work and we wouldn't be able to feed the country.

[Alvin Flummux]

Gee whizz fellas, I sure am feeling great about the future right now.

Imagine attaching a large warhead to a hypersonic missile, which seems to be Russia's goal. Ain't nobody gonna be able to reach a fallout shelter in time, unless they're coincidentally already in one.

[Death's Head]

There isn't going to be a nuclear war as a result of this. As I understand it, no one has been killed as a result of this strike and it seems like a bit of showboating. Due to the publicity, something had to be done to save face (and regardless of face saving, something did need to be done to show the use of chemical weapons isn't tolerated).

[Moggy]

The worst of the fallout would be in a long thin cloud that might stretch to Bristol

That’s it, I’m moving to the west coast of Wales.

[Return_of_the_STAR]

Yeah i'm not expecting it to escalate at present.

[Lex-Man]

The worst of the fallout would be in a long thin cloud that might stretch to Bristol

That’s it, I’m moving to the west coast of Wales.

Karl's got a safe house up there. There's a PM list about moving some of us up there in the case of an attack. You should see if you can get on the list.

[Moggy]

The worst of the fallout would be in a long thin cloud that might stretch to Bristol

That’s it, I’m moving to the west coast of Wales.

Karl's got a safe house up there. There's a PM list about moving some of us up there in the case of an attack. You should see if you can get on the list.

I’d rather die of radiation poisoning than live in the same house as Karl.

[Squinty]

What would happen if a 150kt bomb was dropped on London?



Estimates predict that there would be approximately 334,290 casualties as a result of the blast, along with 1,088,503 injuries. The results don't take into account the effects of nuclear fallout, nor the fact that the city is more heavily populated at certain times of day.

The innermost orange circle is the most severe, with a fireball radius of 450m. Within this area, a nuclear fireball would obliterate the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey and a decent chunk of Whitehall. There would be no survivors. The green ring, with a radiation radius of 1km, represents the area within which we can expect a 50-90% mortality rate, and the blue ring, air blast radius 3.74km, represents the area within which the resulting pressure would cause most residential buildings to collapse, with widespread fatalities. The outermost ring, a thermal radiation radius of 5.26km, would still result in third degree burns causing severe scarring and disablement.

The UK's nuclear command chain dictates that if the sitting prime minister were to authorise a retaliatory nuclear strike, the order will go to the person below the prime minister on a dual-track basis (meaning two persons are required to authenticate at each stage of the process), until it eventually reaches our nuclear submarine fleet. The fleet will carry out a strike on the coordinates given, though they will not necessarily know what the target is.

A strike that completely wiped out Westminster and the prime minister means that there would have to be an alternative means of response. To cover for such an eventuality, every prime minister will have written a letter of last resort upon taking office, seen by their eyes only, and stored securely within the safes of each of the UK's four nuclear submarines. The letter instructs the submarine commander of what action to take should Her Majesty's Government be completely wiped out. Before following through with the orders, the commander will have to assess whether the government has fallen, by trying to make contact with Naval Command and infamously checking if BBC Radio 4 is still broadcasting. The aforementioned letters are destroyed unopened whenever a new prime minister takes office, and while nobody knows for sure what options have been tabled, there are thought to be four key responses: launch a retaliatory nuclear strike, don't launch a retaliatory nuclear strike, allow the commander to use their own judgement, or offer the fleet to the United States and Australian Navies.

Good to know.

What’s interesting about the last bit is specifically the US and Australia. I thought one of the option was sail to an allied port. Personally if I was captain of a sub I would be going to Australia.

What about Russia's super powerful nukes. I thought they had stuff that could totally destroy the UK?

Just a handful of their most powerful would render the whole of the uk uninhabitable. The one used in that illustration is tiny by comparison.

You know the Tsar Bomba was never put into mass production, right?

I wasn't talking about the Tsar they have a new system called Satan 2.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/1 ... out-uk-fr/

Oh. Great.

You know it's going to be bigger, because it's the sequel.

[Return_of_the_STAR]

twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/985130802668294144

It's over Trump declared that we won!!!

[Alvin Flummux]

I think actually negatively impacting the Assad war machine would have been a better result, but idk.

[Ironhide]

Should've bombed Assads presidential palace too.

[Cuttooth]

twitter.com/DavidJeffery_/status/985189355777032192

[Lex-Man]

twitter.com/DavidJeffery_/status/985189355777032192

When I lived in Streatham they sent a leaflet around saying Labour can't win here with an unlabeled graph showing the lib dems just behind the tories. My local MP at the time was Chuka Umunna. He managed to defend his seat.

[Squinty]

Watching this, about half way through it. It's strawberry floating great so far.

[Grumpy David]

So Corbyn after seeing the evidence that implicates Russia to the Skripals that several dozen governments across the world have seen still refuses to blame Russia for it. No wonder he always loses in the polls asking "Who would make a better prime minister".

[still]

So Corbyn after seeing the evidence that implicates Russia to the Skripals that several dozen governments across the world have seen still refuses to blame Russia for it. No wonder he always loses in the polls asking "Who would make a better prime minister".

Lol Corbyn.



(Utterly useless.)

[satriales]

So Corbyn after seeing the evidence that implicates Russia to the Skripals that several dozen governments across the world have seen still refuses to blame Russia for it. No wonder he always loses in the polls asking "Who would make a better prime minister".

He's asking for proof and there hasn't been any. He's made it clear that he believes Russia are behind this, but without proof they can deny it, say they were setup, and generally make things difficult.
Not rushing to accusations and instead staying level-headed and looking at the facts makes for a much better leader IMO. But then on the other side you've got the Foreign secretary lying about the evidence, and Theresa May's pantomime reaction to get Russia where it hurts the least.

[Grumpy David]

So Corbyn after seeing the evidence that implicates Russia to the Skripals that several dozen governments across the world have seen still refuses to blame Russia for it. No wonder he always loses in the polls asking "Who would make a better prime minister".

He's asking for proof and there hasn't been any. He's made it clear that he believes Russia are behind this, but without proof they can deny it and make things difficult.
Not rushing to accusations and instead staying level-headed and looking at the facts makes for a much better leader IMO, but then May's reaction was all pantomime anyway.

He's been shown evidence that we've not seen. He wasn't originally shown this but saw it over the weekend. The proof exists, you and I just haven't been shown it but we can figure out means, motive and opportunity and reach the conclusion that Russia is almost certainly responsible. You have to be a conspiracy theorist to think otherwise.

He was on Andrew Marr Show this morning and refused to blame Russia for it.

This is the same evidence that was shown to dozens of countries who decided to kick out Russian diplomats. Corbyn is a man who got 2 E's in O Levels. He isn't an intellectual heavyweight. Every country that's been shown it has reached the same conclusion. Russia did it.

[satriales]

He's been shown evidence that we've not seen. He wasn't originally shown this but saw it over the weekend. The proof exists, you and I just haven't been shown it but we can figure out means, motive and opportunity and reach the conclusion that Russia is almost certainly responsible. You have to be a conspiracy theorist to think otherwise.

He was on Andrew Marr Show this morning and refused to blame Russia for it.

This is the same evidence that was shown to dozens of countries who decided to kick out Russian diplomats. Corbyn is a man who got 2 E's in O Levels. He isn't an intellectual heavyweight. Every country that's been shown it has reached the same conclusion. Russia did it.

There isn't any proof, there is evidence that Russia had the means and the motive, but nothing that says they definitely did it.

I saw the Andrew Marr interview, and he said that it looks Russia was behind this but you need to be able to produce proof to back it up.

We all 'know' they did it, but we just need to be able to say "this person put it on the door", or "this is how it got into the country". All we have at the moment is that Russia could have done it and would have benefitted from doing it, but that leaves open the possibility of someone else making it look like Russia did it.

Edit: And I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I believe Russia did this too. Just I don't think it's a weakness for the opposition leader to want proof, especially when the government has lied in the past.