Name: The effects of nuclear weapons
ISBN: 9780160020360

What Hacker News says

sklarghJul 2023

Yeah for those who wish to go deeper Stumpf’s Minuteman and Titan histories are good resources as well. There is also the Effects of Nuclear Weapons.

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arethuzaAug 2020

Worth noting that US estimates of the effects of them attacking with nuclear weapons in the early 1960s was 600 million dead - a lot in Western Europe and elsewhere.

This was known to be an underestimate as US planning did not take into effect the thermal effects of nuclear weapons due to a degree of variability from cloud cover etc. So probably about a billion would have died - then there is the effect of Soviet weapons...

I can recommend Daniel Ellsberg's book on the topic:

https://www.historytoday.com/reviews/confessions-nuclear-war...

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leonidasrupSep 2026

The author of the article "M. V. Ramana" is long-time opponent of nuclear energy , mostly because of nuclear weapon proliferation concerns.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._V._Ramana

See for example:

"Bombing Bombay? Effects of Nuclear Weapons and a Case Study of a Hypothetical Explosion", 1999 International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW)

https://www.ippnw.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Bombing-Bom...

"Costing plutonium: economics of reprocessing in India", M.V. Ramana, J.Y. Suchitra, 2007

https://www.geocities.ws/m_v_ramana/nucleararticles/IJGEI_Vo...

"India, Pakistan and the Bomb", Scientific American, 2001

https://nci.org/01/12/07-08.pdf

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giardiniJul 2026

Thanks for the history corrections and clarifications. Now I'll never forget that Mme. curie isolated polonium (another nearly-useless factoid). History is important but not as important as science. Still you're looking more and more like Frank Drebin: "Nothing to see here, folks, move along!"

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=google....

ben_w: "You're taking a comic book plot device as evidence?"

I was telling a story about my early life! Get a grip! It was a lead-in to a)the Soviet doomsday device which may have been real and may still be around and b)to my early fright at the nasty side-effects of nuclear weapons.

ben_wL "The former easily wipes out a city; the latter messes up a building."

Indeed an understatement! The Chernobyl reactor is an accidental "dirty bomb". It FUed quite a large area: people don't do much picnicking in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_exclusion_zone.

Spare me talking about how large the Chernobyl reactor and how heavy its fuel rods are, etc. Fissionable material and fission by-products are generally toxic: spreading it around is devastating and difficult to correct. And the Iranians have lots of that kind of crap.

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acidburnNSAFeb 2025

Thought this would be "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons" by Samuel Glasstone, 1964, a full 768-pg textbook on the topic, available here:

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31822013222641&se...

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dmitriidSep 2022

This is pure brilliance. The depth of reasearch they went to for some of the units is mind-boggling

--- start quote ---

    /*  From Department of the Army's authoritative study: "Effects of
        Nuclear Weapons", footnote 3 to section 1.45, available at:
        http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/effects/

       "The majority of the experimental and theoretical values of the
       explosive energy released by TNT range from 900 to 1,100 calories per
       gram.  At one time, there was some uncertainty as to whether the term
       "kiloton" of TNT referred to a short kiloton (2 x 10^6 pounds), a
       metric kiloton (2.205 x 10^6 pounds), or a long kiloton (2.24 x 10^6
       pounds).  In order to avoid ambiguity, it was agreed that the term
       "kiloton" would refer to the release of 10^12 calories of explosive
       energy.  This is equivalent to 1 short kiloton of TNT if the energy
       release is 1,102 calories per gram or to 1 long kiloton if the energy
       is 984 calories per gram of TNT."

       So, evidently they don't quite specify which ton is required...

--- end quote ---

And it goes on

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