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[Bauglir]

I read the Last Question nearly a decade ago, and it's a great story, but poor science. I'm not interested in torturing analogies, and so I think we've probably reached the limits of what we can agree on. But it seems to me that you're conflating the superhuman with the divine. Being more capable than us does not confer omnipotence, least of all the sort that can challenge physical law and mathematical proof.

[ChairmanPoo]

1). Acquire Nuclear Assets and a rudimentary space program.

2). Launch Nuclear Assets at the Moon.

3). Hold Moon hostage, lest world not give you the power you deserve.



Profit.

Kim Jong Un and two other people like this

[BFEL]

I am disappoint by the lack of MAGMA CANNONS in this thread.

[Bumber]

Encapsulate seed mixtures in balls of clay/soil.

Spread seed balls everywhere.

Fruits and vegetables growing everywhere mean people don't have to rely on grocery stores to get all of their food.

Phase II: Plant weeds everywhere so everyone is too busy weeding to oppose you or get anything done.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Phase II b: Plant weed everywhere so everyone is too busy getting stoned to oppose you or get anything done.

[MoonyTheHuman]

I say we reverse the machanism that brought us into df built in boatmurderee so it teles dwarves to real life...

[TheBiggerFish]

Heh.  Oh that would be WEIRD.

[Shadowlord]

I leave this here without comment:

The Supersonic Low Altitude Missile or SLAM was a U.S. Air Force nuclear weapons project conceived around 1955, and cancelled in 1964. SLAMs were conceived of as unmanned nuclear-powered ramjets capable of delivering thermonuclear warheads deep into enemy territory. The development of ICBMs in the 1950s rendered the concept of SLAMs obsolete. Advances in defensive ground radar also made the stratagem of low-altitude evasion ineffective. Although it never proceeded beyond the initial design and testing phase before being declared obsolete, the design contained several radical innovations as a nuclear delivery system.

The SLAM was designed to complement the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, and as a possible replacement for, or augment to, the Strategic Air Command system. In the event of nuclear war it was intended to fly below the cover of enemy radar at supersonic speeds, and deliver thermonuclear warheads to roughly 16 targets.

The use of a nuclear engine in the airframe promised to give the missile staggering and unprecedented low-altitude range, estimated to be roughly 113,000 miles (182,000 km) (over four and a half times the equatorial circumference of the earth). The engine also acted as a secondary weapon for the missile: direct neutron radiation from the virtually unshielded reactor would sicken, injure, or kill living things beneath the flight path; the stream of fallout left in its wake would poison enemy territory; and its strategically selected crash site would receive intense radioactive contamination. In addition, the sonic waves given off by its passage would damage ground installations.

Another revolutionary aspect of the SLAM was its reliance on automation. It would have the mission of a long-range bomber, but would be completely unmanned: accepting radioed commands up to its failsafe point, whereafter it would rely on a terrain contour matching (TERCOM) radar system to navigate to preprogrammed targets.

[Amperzand]

Fallout nukes seem, by and large, to be salted fission bombs. Anything terribly high yield, and the cities the recent games like so much probably wouldn't exist.

[chaotic skies]

I never understood the whole 'nukes to claim land' idea that some people have. The point of nukes is to destroy the area around it, and make it impossible to live there for thousands of years. Or atleast that's what they do, whether you want them to or not, and that's leaving out dirty bombs. It would be better to fire bomb an area you want to take over-unless you want infrastructure. All buildings are close to gone if you manage to create a fire storm, and anything not destroyed is heavily damaged, and you can burn anything you don't need anyway. There are no bodies to get rid of-only ashes that blow away, and you don't need to worry about that. Any efforts to save the area can be blocked with yet more fire, and eventually it is impossible to stop the fire without removing the air or-more likely-the fuel.

[Jimmy]

You really don't need to detonate the nuke at ground level to effect near total societal collapse. The EMP from a high-altitude nuclear detonation could cripple target infrastructure through destroying anything using unshielded electronics (which is pretty much everything) without leaving one speck of radiation fallout.

Bullet point results would be:

• Near total destruction of transportation, including aviation and road vehicles
• Destruction of all electricity supply grids
• Severe restriction in water supply unable to be fed through gravity alone
• Effectively zero emergency services

With one or two high-altitude EMP strikes, you could take out a significant chunk of one continent. Within two to three weeks, modern civilization would have collapsed, and fatalities in the total population would likely reach well above 50%, probably closer to 80% since the majority of large cities simply cannot support their population without powered water supply.

There's some great survival fiction centred around this idea, one of my favourites being One Second After by William R. Forstchen. Unlike a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction, his work is remarkably well researched and does its best to provide a realistic scenario of the effects an EMP could have on a modern town.

[Bauglir]

Nah, a nuclear bomb probably won't render an area uninhabitable for thousands of years. Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki are bustling cities, and have been for decades. Don't believe everything entertainment tells you. I'm skeptical that a non-dirty bomb would render an area uninhabitable for more than a few decades* by radiation, even at the highest yields - especially since it's only a problem with the fission stage. Where you get problems is repeated detonations in a small area (testing sites) or reactor leaks (power plants).

*Wikipedia says weeks, but it's with a [Citation Needed]. I believe it, but I'll tack on some orders of magnitude in the interest of fairness.

[TheBiggerFish]

Chernobyl?

[Amperzand]

Well, a standard nuke is only going to render the area uninhabitable for a short period, extended considerably if it detonated on the ground. On the other hand, if you encase it in, say, large amounts of Cobalt-59, you get a pretty big area covered in something radioactive enough to pose a threat to anybody near it, with a long enough half-life to remain dangerous for decades.

Nukes designed to enhance fallout can produce things that leave someplace very inhospitable for a very long time, a-la Fallout, but conventional nuclear weapons are usually designed to avoid that, so they just leave a pile of low-level stuff, interspersed with a few immensely unfriendly things that decay to harmlessness within weeks.

Again, lots of things change if they detonate on the ground. Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were airbursts, with the majority of the neutron pulse not interacting with anything other than the bomb casing. If that pulse messes with a large mass of stuff, you have major problems with isotope-ified materials for a long time, and produce massive quantities of fallout.

Edit: Nuclear meltdowns, like Chernobyl, are something of a middle ground, with quantities of radioactive materials produced being far higher than airburst nukes, but less than a ground-burst. Usually nastier sorts of waste, though.

[chaotic skies]

Yeah, good point. I forgot about the whole groundburst v. airburst thing, although most nukes not created/launched by a government will most likely be ground-based, as I can't imagine someone climbing a building to drop a nuke to gurantee it's a airburst instead of groundburst. Although there is always the possibility of billionaires funding the revolution/war. Which makes my entire system of logic obsolete, but whatever.

[Culise]

While it's not directly comparable to a proper nuclear attack as Amperzand noted, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is also inhabitable, as long as you're willing to accept slight-to-moderate increases in cancer rates.  I don't believe there's been a thorough study of the samosely (illegal inhabitants of the region, either who ignored the evacuation or entered after) to determine the medical effects, however, in part likely because the people living there don't want to be found for fear of being forced out by the government which has largely adopted a live-and-let-live attitude in recent years, but was much more zealous in enforcing the Exclusion Zone in the past.