farmerben Posted July 28, 2023 Share Posted July 28, 2023 8 hours ago, razark said: Why would any sane humanity develop an AI that is capable of building an <arbitrary device> without any supervision and capability to shut down the AI at will? Therefore, any AI should be incapable of preventing that event. A. Don't build an AI capable of such. B. Any humanity that decides to build an AI that it is incapable of shutting off deserves its apocalyptic fate. C. Axe + pile of main circuitry == No rouge AI. Even if 99% of people agree with you, it's possible for the remaining 1% to do what you consider stupid. If the AI becomes a life form capable of evolving better AI, it could overcome your initial constraints. Survival is important toward almost every other goal. Hence it is very likely for AI to develop a survival instinct even if the creators do not put that in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheSaint Posted July 28, 2023 Share Posted July 28, 2023 14 hours ago, Terwin said: During operations, a nuclear reactor must ride the fine line between inert(sub-critical) and bomb(super-critical). It is *much* easier to cross that line than to ride it for any length of time. Okay, so, a little bit to unpack here. Are nuclear weapons easier to design than nuclear reactors? Yes, to a certain degree. Making a basic nuclear weapon (i.e. Little Boy) is super easy. People forget that even Fat Man, the first implosion weapon, was designed with slide rules, pen, and paper. However, designing a compact, efficient nuclear weapon (i.e. a W87) takes a lot more work and computational power. You're confusing a couple of terms here. Criticality refers to the state of neutron flux in the core, in relation to supporting nuclear fission. If you have just enough neutron flux to support fission, then your reaction is critical. If you do not have enough neutron flux to support criticality then you are sub-critical. If you have more than enough neutron flux to support the amount of fission then you are super-critical. Super-criticality is not a crisis condition, you usually see a transitory super-critical condition during normal power level changes. What you are probably thinking of is delayed criticality (criticality achieved only through the use of neutrons that have been reduced to lower energy states through the use of a moderator) and prompt criticality (criticality achieved through the use of fast neutrons alone without the use of a moderator). That's the real difference between a nuclear reactor and a nuclear bomb: Bombs go prompt critical, reactors don't. That said.... Can a nuclear reactor become a nuclear bomb (i.e. go prompt critical)? Yes and no. You can, through a combination of poor design and poor operation, bring a reactor to the point where some portion of it will reach prompt criticality. Cf. Chernobyl, SL-1, and other less well-publicized criticality accidents that have occurred. However, what universally occurs in these cases is that a very small portion of the reactor core releases a relatively large amount of energy and immediately disassembles the entire core. There isn't any scenario in which the entire core goes prompt critical. And it should be pointed out that it requires a combination of poor design and poor operation. Modern reactors are designed to avoid prompt criticality scenarios under almost every conceivable operating condition. You only see these sorts of accidents in older designs where the operator is allowed to make really bad choices. 14 hours ago, Terwin said: This means that not only are nuclear bombs easier than nuclear reactors, it takes careful planning to make a nuclear reactor with a low chance of being a bomb instead. So the only way for humans to have nuclear reactors without nuclear bombs is to re-write the majority of human nature(in particular the competitive bits which are critical for both survival and procreation) So, your first statement here is not really true. For example, while the accident at Chernobyl was bad, when it was through most of the reactor building was still standing. It didn't even come close to leveling Pripyat. However, your second statement here I actually agree with. It would be impossible to derive the physics for nuclear fission in reactors without also understanding the potential for its use in nuclear weapons. And even if you imagine a history without WWII, another war would roll around and someone would see fit to develop nuclear weapons for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
farmerben Posted July 28, 2023 Share Posted July 28, 2023 Can't find a graphic of it right now, but there is something called single point detonation. Using shaped charge technology it works sort of like an implosion bomb, but you only require one high explosive, not a bunch set off simultaneously. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanamonde Posted July 28, 2023 Share Posted July 28, 2023 Quote Why didn’t the US develop a 100 megaton bomb after the Tsar Bomba test? It turns out that after a certain size much of the power of the blast simply goes up with the fireball and expends itself in the upper atmosphere while not contributing to destruction on the ground, so larger bombs are not more effective. In other words, it was practicality rather than ethics or politics which put an upper limit on hydrogen bomb size. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SunlitZelkova Posted July 28, 2023 Share Posted July 28, 2023 On 7/27/2023 at 1:47 PM, tater said: Nope, they just wanted to build cool gadgets. A decent % probably like boys with firecrackers. They liked the problem solving. Buddy's dad did instrumentation at the test site in Nevada. Super high speed images of the initial fractions of a second after detonation. He messed around with shaped charges in the backyard in Santa Fe sometimes—because it was fun. Do you have any sources to back this up. Everything I have read indicates the fear of fascism (many of the emigre scientists having experienced it first hand prior to moving to the US) and belief Germany was working on their own bomb drove development. On 7/27/2023 at 1:47 PM, tater said: The Cold War prevented WW3, after all, so they could also rationalize keeping the peace should they need some other motivation. Minus nukes, either the West and CCCP decide to get along, or conventional wars happen. World War III was fought, just not between the great powers. I’m skeptical atomic bombs could come into existence on the justification of keeping peace. The scientists weren’t idiots, and I’m sure they were aware of what happened with the machine gun- another weapon built to “end war”. On 7/27/2023 at 1:47 PM, tater said: This is not the worldview I am suggesting, and history is not engineering. It's more statistical. Once a technology is available, how do you propose uninventing it? Fission would be discovered. Period. The use cases are self-evident to anyone capable of understanding the discovery of fission. An alternate history where bombs are not ever built requires that not one human, or 1 society ever wishes to try it. That's so unlikely as to be absurd. Note that in a world you imagine where maybe it's just for power generation, and everyone is happily living in harmony with cheap, low-carbon energy (low cause some from mining probably), what is done about security? Do they all know they are making bomb-grade material, and just pretend it doesn't exist? Or do they guard it, knowing people who are not singing kumbaya might try to get some and use it? Does the existence of that security in fact tell everyone else on Earth that this material has a nefarious use case? (and again, literally anyone who groks undergrad physics would know the nefarious use case). What I’m saying is the history of nuclear weapons do not line up with the idea that they are “inevitable”. Nuclear weapons were built for three reasons- a) militaristic regimes desiring bigger weapons b) a fear of militaristic regimes that might end up with bigger weapons c) a realization everyone was working on bigger weapons (USSR) These were not inevitable things. Fission didn’t just come into existence out of nowhere. On 7/27/2023 at 1:47 PM, tater said: Propose some counterfactual. Any counterfactual where 100% of humans on the planet decide to live in peace and harmony forever. I'll wait—forever, likely. Taft succumbs to stress and does not run for President in 1912. Teddy Roosevelt wins the election, enters the war in 1915. It comes to an end in 1917 with a direct occupation of Germany. Any attempt at revolution in Russia ends in failure due to a lack of public support. Roosevelt’s uninvolvement in the peace negotiations leads to a fairer outcome for Germany. No threat of communism means Mussolini doesn’t come to power, or if he tries his coup he lacks public support and fails. The League of Nations is never formed. Roosevelt had more respect for Japan’s desire to build a sphere of influence in Asia. Without a fear of communism, the Kanto Army may not be driven to invade Manchuria. If it does, Japanese politicians have a spine and reign them in. On 7/27/2023 at 1:47 PM, tater said: The US had no such evidence, either, but the math worked, and we had the ability to try it, so we did. The US had the highly convince Albert Einstein. Japan did not have this. 23 hours ago, tater said: Social media has probably been a net negative. What's the counterfactual where all the same technological tools exist, but no one makes a social media platform aimed at stealing attention? Looking forward, the AI doomers think that AI will kill us all, we're likely doomed, so we should somehow not build AI. Except of course it requires that NO ONE, ANYWHERE work on AGI. This leads to doomers like Yudkowsky literally suggesting airstrikes on GPU farms. Endless warfare on warehouses globally, sadly some collateral damage for eternity, because AI will kill us all. The reality is that the tech exists, so AGI will happen if AGI is actually possible using the current tech, it's just a matter of who/when. The solution to risk will be working alignment, and getting to dangerously smart AI that is aligned before someone makes dangerous AI that isn't aligned, I guess, then the friendly AI helps protect us, presumably. Hotter Cold War means internet stays military. Vasilt Arkhipov decides to launch the nuclear torpedo and Western civilization is heavily damaged in the ensuing war, with modern computers never being developed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted July 28, 2023 Share Posted July 28, 2023 (edited) 2 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: Do you have any sources to back this up. Everything I have read indicates the fear of fascism (many of the emigre scientists having experienced it first hand prior to moving to the US) and belief Germany was working on their own bomb drove development. I'm not talking about the Manhattan Project, we're in counterfactual land. What kept people working on bombs, etc? At some level, fun. @TheSaint said that good bombs are harder to make than Little Boy. My friend's dad (LANL physicist who worked on bombs) said to us something to the effect of, "Any of you guys (undergrad physics majors) can make a bomb—but you can't make a good bomb." 2 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: World War III was fought, just not between the great powers. Definitionally, no. No one calls the small wars of the second half of the 20th century "WW3." I spent a lot of my time as a kid thinking about ww3 during the actual Cold War. 2 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: I’m skeptical atomic bombs could come into existence on the justification of keeping peace. The scientists weren’t idiots, and I’m sure they were aware of what happened with the machine gun- another weapon built to “end war”. They DID keep the peace, WW3 did not happen. That was not on the table 1942-45, as no one else had a nuke, and deterrence was not yet a thing. Once it was, keeping the peace was very much an available motivation. 2 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: What I’m saying is the history of nuclear weapons do not line up with the idea that they are “inevitable”. Nuclear weapons were built for three reasons- a) militaristic regimes desiring bigger weapons b) a fear of militaristic regimes that might end up with bigger weapons c) a realization everyone was working on bigger weapons (USSR) These were not inevitable things. Fission didn’t just come into existence out of nowhere. They were completely inevitable as soon as fission is discovered. Nothing in that bullet list matters. Humans are humans. You must demonstrate that no human, and no society, EVER, would do what is self-evident with the knowledge of fission. Somehow you must imagine a counterfactual history in which no humans wield dictatorial power*, anywhere, ever. *<EDIT> A dictator is not required here, some might decide to do it just because they are interested. Maybe someone wants to make Orion, but first they need a bomb. Or some country thinks another might be working the issue. A dictator is just a simple example that gives a single someone control of state level resources. 2 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: aft succumbs to stress and does not run for President in 1912. Teddy Roosevelt wins the election, enters the war in 1915. It comes to an end in 1917 with a direct occupation of Germany. Any attempt at revolution in Russia ends in failure due to a lack of public support. Roosevelt’s uninvolvement in the peace negotiations leads to a fairer outcome for Germany. No threat of communism means Mussolini doesn’t come to power, or if he tries his coup he lacks public support and fails. The League of Nations is never formed. Roosevelt had more respect for Japan’s desire to build a sphere of influence in Asia. Without a fear of communism, the Kanto Army may not be driven to invade Manchuria. If it does, Japanese politicians have a spine and reign them in. By 1940 there were ~2.3 billion humans alive. The specific world leaders during that entire few decades 1912+ are a few hundreds of people? What about the other 2.3B? Your task is to demonstrate that those counterfactuals result in no bad actors on Earth going forward, ever—we all live in peace and harmony forever more. Also not a plausible scenario anyway, IMO. So many changes. ww1 goes on, yet somehow it ends faster, and there's no revolution in Russia (remember that the revolution predated Lenin, who arrived after the fact). 2 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: The US had the highly convince Albert Einstein. Japan did not have this. The letter that Szilard wrote for Einstein put the issue on FDR's radar, but literally everyone knew this was possible once the fission paper was out. The head of the Japanese bomb program, Nishina (a friend of Bohr) started thinking about it in... 1939, assuming the Americans would be working on one. So yeah, literally everyone started thinking about it as soon as the paper came out. 2 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: Hotter Cold War means internet stays military. Vasilt Arkhipov decides to launch the nuclear torpedo and Western civilization is heavily damaged in the ensuing war, with modern computers never being developed. Don't think so on the former. I've been on the net since 1983. Not seeing a way to avoid the internet expanding at some point. On the latter, the relative strength of the 2 nuclear powers was incredibly lopsided in 1962. I recall hearing that Khrushchev's son at some point asked his father why he kept saying they were turning out nuclear missiles like sausages when in fact they had something like 2 (was probably a Hardcore History episode). A war at that point would have been destructive, but computers eventually come back after we rebuild, and someone gets an internet running, and someone makes social media—because it's an obvious thing that someone will eventually do. A counterfactual of "the world is destroyed before a tech that is available is actually built" is certainly a possibility—but sort of against the spirit of the exercise. I suppose if we except your WW3 actually starts in 1962 premise, then we have a post-apocalyptic world, and the next question I have is, "Given all the strong metal lying around in the rubble, to the human survivors thrown back into pre-civilization lives use the metal to make weapons, or do they stick with using sticks and rocks to kill each other? This thread is awesome, BTW, loads of fun (no one should take it any other way!). Edited July 28, 2023 by tater Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spacescifi Posted July 28, 2023 Author Share Posted July 28, 2023 (edited) Humans.... the leaders anyway and those that serve under them in sub-leader roles are all about efficiency. Why? Probably has a little something to do with every human ever having an expiration date on their backs and a limited time to get anything done because life has no reset button (and we would abuse the reset if we did). What I am saying is that leaders organize people to get stuff done efficiently thereby benefitting enough people that they can stay leaders without losing their power. It has been said that if you spread the wealth and give everyone a dollar, many of those who were wealthy once will become so again, because they know how to play the game of life well enough and are willing to make the needed sacrifices. Edited July 28, 2023 by Spacescifi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nuke Posted July 29, 2023 Share Posted July 29, 2023 On 7/27/2023 at 11:25 AM, kerbiloid said: The elite would elect another consensual frontman speaker to present him to the public. As FDR was democratically ruling for 17 years and 4+ terms, probably he was doing all right, that's all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Charter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destroyers-for-bases_deal (Of course, with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration_of_1926 as a foreplay.) The British market became common (read - American), with American guards. WW2 was just a digestion. Also, the story of the Britainukes like Orange Herald, Green Bamboo, and other Mowgli-style exotics, when US had used the UK nuclear science, but then just rejected to share the results, was a clear notarial stamp on the deal papers. Germany was full of famous nuclear physicists (Hahn, Heisenberg, others), who were definitely not lacking their colleagues from Hungary and Italy, and were able to construct the nuke, if given more gold. The first nuclear plants were tested in the Leipzig Lab. Teller and Szillard left Germany in 1933, when even tritium had not been discovered (1934), and nobody took the nuclear physics as something immediately military. Einstein took no part in the bomb. when they calculated that pure U-235 critical mass is just several kg, rather than pre-WWII tens of tonnes estimation. So, the nukes can be mass manufactured, rather than just several units on ships. , as Germany was needing tanks and tactical aviations, rather than nukes and V-2, which could solve nothing. It was a "So, let's give it much money right now" decision, after several years of preliminary work. The first payment in 1940 was 6 000 USD. Actually, it's strange that it wasn't done by a mecenate. Even without all other countries on the globe, it was an imperative to check the physical calculation in a safe desert place. Just rather than "bomb", it would be a peaceful, warm nuke for science. Just 2? Come on... It's just an episode of the whole season. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Game https://ru-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Военная_тревога_1927_года?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pike I would notice that the playboard is somehow placed much closer to "+1 country", and until 1940 the main potential war opponent was peaceful British Empire, rather than agressive Germany. Together with USA (ask Ford), USSR was feeding Germany with resources. Together with Germany, USA was building industrial (i.e. military) plants in the USSR. Germany was in pvp with Poland, who is a better shield against Red Russia. Together with Poland, Germany had optimized Czechs. (Letting alone the fact, that the territories taken away by USSR from Poland, had been previously taken by Poland from Russia, after they had been previously occupied by Germany in WWI, together with Poland which was a part of Russia since XVIII, after Russia, Germany aka Prussia, and Sweden had somewhat landed Poland, which was owning a large part of Russia since XV, ....), so you see the picture. Not everyone gets a whole continent from scratch. It did? Reveal hidden contents It just waits, unless you mean those clowns in bath clothes from sandalpunk movies. Soviets redid it in 1940. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgy_Flyorov Happily, they already had the Radiological Institute (founded in 1918), the Radium Institute (founded in 1922, but actually in 1915), a cyclotron (built in 1937, operational since 1939), and three physical institutes working on nuclear physics (in Moscow, Leningrad, and Kharkov). https://ru-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Работы_в_области_атомного_ядра_в_СССР_в_1930—1940_годах?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://ru-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Создание_советской_атомной_бомбы?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wapp The Russian/Soviet nuclear physics, including especially its military applications, was running head to head with the world. (Letting alone the fact that Maria Sklodowska-Curie was from Warsaw, Russian Empire, lol). Yes, the German philosophy is a mass destruction weapon. First Marxism came from Germany (origin), Britain (where they were writing), and USA (The New York Daily Tribune, where they were publishing), entered Russia (where it just found a fertile ground), then other countries. First they grow up here what they dislike, then they accuse us that it has grown up here. Those Westerns... Hard to unroot the roots from the root. If Germany had captured the USSR territory and the British islands (and it nearly did it by 1943), it would move its industry to Urals, farming to (the territory, where the current events are taking place), and get invulnerable to the US bombers. After capturing/burning the Persian Gulf, it would have a whole Eurasia (together with Japan) and a whole continent of the US gunboat diplomacy to the South from the US. Then even hydrogen bombs could not help US to survive as an independent territory, especially since in the US themselves the question of the taken side of the party was highly discussional till 1940. Unless Russia suddenly decided to come to the aid to the World of Freedom by backstabbing the Pedant Germany a year later, when Germany would be deep inside the British deals. If the Soviets were ever going to take it all... Afair (and not from the Soviet sources), the whole Korea was suggested by Americans to Stalin due to the military logistic problems (running around the fighting Japan), but the suggestion was rejected. Also the same Stalin was officially writing that "the nuclear bombs are not enough to win a war", especially when US nuclear capabilities were very limited The nuclear bombs would just turn Korea into desert, but not win the Korean war. The nuclear fission device was used as a weapon out of military-political considerations. would be the reason to build and test the device itself. Just Gadget would not be followed by Little Boy and Fat Man. No nuclear weapons, but peaceful nuclear blasts. Reveal hidden contents Gas fire (lasting for 1074 days) extinguishing. Artificial lake. and some underground landscape design. In any case at least one Gadget, to test the physical theory. Post-WWII Swissbomb (U-235) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction And the Norwegian heavy water program after the WWII it's not so clear, either. (Can't find the source link, but possibly the Americans know the hit-their-hands story better.) Heavy water was very expensive. Uranium separation, too. When the US had failed the centrifuges, they just took 12 000 or 15 000 tonnes of silver spoons confiscated from farmers during the Great Depression and bruteforcely built a calutron. While the USSR didn't have so much silver spoons confiscated from farmers, because paid to the US for the industrial plants had to build the centrifuges, and use the electromagnetic separation only for the highly enriched U. So, the silver made it much easier and faster. Without WW1, Lenin doesn't shake silly Ludendorff for cash. The losses were not a problem at all. Vice versa, the deficit of plowland together with growing village popullation, was. The losses were playing role only in sense of the expected great plowland redistribution. So, every man of the family was important to get more deficit plowland for the family. The humans themselves were expendable, the tsar was an optional detail. Until FDR tripped them up, by the oil embargo, confronting them with the fact that the aviagasoline they have in tanks is the all gasoline they have until a decisive victory, while having the Pearl Harbor protected with tempting carelessness. P.S. If look through the history of the physical experiments since https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Guericke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_van_Musschenbroek , you can see that the physical "discoveries" were following each other in very dense, plain, simple, logical, and inevitable sequence, that you can't put a knife blade between them, neither add, nor remove a step. Also, the logic of the experimenters was always so straight like a stick and simple like a brick, that one can imagine the great physicists like this: Reveal hidden contents The nuclear physics experiments can be briefly described as "Take something heavy and knock it. If it isn't broken, throw the stone. If it isn't broken, throw the stone faster. Now take a heavier stone." Actually, when you come reading to the Roengen, Becquerel, and Curie "discoveries", you just have no doubt that soon somebody will make a nuclear bomb even without purpose. The feeling becomes confidence when they have discovered the neutron. When you are reading, how they were trying to measure the nearly-absent natural tritium concentration (2 global experiments, with boiling thousands of tonnes of heavy water down to several grams, just to have the next "none" on the best mass-spectrometer of the spectrometry global guru), you get puzzled "Why are they keep playing with this nonsense, when they already could start preparing the fusion?" *** ... You are a student in the early XX epoch. You read books and listen to lectures, thus you are well-educated. You are aware that every atom is a lump of pudding, consisting of equal amounts of protons and electrons. H = 1 p + 1 e, He = 4 p + 4 e, Li = 7 p + 7 e, Be = 9 p + 9e, ..., Fe = 56 p + 56 e, and so on. You have no idea, how does the "atomic number" affect their chemicals properties, and what does it mean. Are 3 protons of 7 privileged in the atom of lithium, or wut??? But the elements are definitely ordered, according to their mass (i.e. number of protons) in columns, and by their mystic "atomic numbers" in rows. With strange gaps and groups. As all elements have integer masses, this means that atoms of all elements just consist of hydrogen atoms. So, if stick together four hydrogen pudding lumps, you get one helium pudding lump. Yes, that easy, everyone knows. Just nobody knows, how. *** But this morning you have read in the magazine, that Mr. Bohr invented new atoms. Some of their electrons aren't dissolved in the pudding, and they are moving on discrete circular orbits around the pudding lump. Sounds stupid, but intriguing, and has some simple arythmetic formulas for number play. This atom model becomes your favorite toy. Now you think that the atom of lithium is a pudding lump of 7 protons and 4 "intranuclear" electrons, and 3 electrons more (i.e. exactly that mysterious "atomic number") are flying around... Also you had read before that lithium from one mining company has atomic mass 6.787, while another lithium is 6.842. They say, that's because two lithiums (they call them "isotopes"), of 6 and 7 mass. You understand that Lithium-6 consists of 6 protons + 3 intranuclear electrons, and 3 electrons flying around. It looks like the difference between Li-6 and Li-7 is exactly 1 p + 1e, i.e. one atom of hydrogen. You continue thinking If four hydrogen puddings stick together to make one helium pudding, then all 4 protons will stick together, 2 electrons stick to them, and 2 more electrons stay in orbit, like if some energy raised them up, Precise measurements of the atomic masses also ensure you, that total atomic mass of the isotopes differ from integer values. This means that some energy is hidden inside the atom, and if stick them properly, it can release. Also, what if make an intranuclear electron raise up, or the orbital electron fall down? Another element will be created! The dream of all alchemists! ... 1920 Today you have read that the astronomers discovered that hydrogen is turned into helium in the Sun, and this way it burns. You don't care about the Sun, but you clearly understand that you are right, 4 atoms simultaneously collide together, and you get a helium. The problem is, it's highly impossible to imagine a four at once collision. *** 1932 You are experimenting with a grain of polonium in the lead box, studying the alpha-particles, flying out through the hole, and then spiralling in electric field inside a, say, bubble chamber. It's full of fun, and you start playing with plates made of various materials, obstructing the hole, to see, how does it affect the particle flow. You take a beryllium plate, and in addition to the curved alpha tracks, you see unknown straight tracks. You call them "beryllium rays". After a study, you understand that you have discovered an electrically neutral new particle, and call it neutrons. Soon you understand, that the nuclear pudding is not a pudding of protons and electrons, but a pudding of protons and neutrons. And the orbital electrons are actually the only electrons you have in atom. And the mysterious "atomic number" is actually the number of protons. Meanwhile, you read in a magazine, that they were vaporizing hydrogen, and found a heavy hydrogen, of mass 2. You just lazily think that it is one proton and one neutron, as expected. You call it "deuterium". *** Now, with deuterium and neutrons, the picture gets clear for you, A pair of hydrogens collide in the Sun, and become a deuterium. A pair of deuteriums collide, and become a helium. That simple! Inspired, you want to collide deuteriums right here, right now. You pour heavy water in a bucket and put it into the high-voltage linear accelerator, assembled by you at the backyard. You expect to see deuterium and helium tracks. But in addition to them you see tracks of various rubbish. D + D turns into He-4. But excited. Very exited. It immediately throws out any of for nucleons, and with 50% probability becomes either He-3 + n, or H-3 + p This way you prove the existence of Helium-3 and Hydrogen-3 (you call it tritium). *** You think that to make the experiment more spectacular, you should burn more deuterium, than several particles. The calculations show that tritium would merge with deuterium even more easily. But you don't have tritium. You have no idea that tritium is radioactive, it's just the predicted more heavy hydrogen for you. You try to refine it from heavy water, but have found no tritium in wild nature. So, you should focus on deuterium ignition. *** You start thinking; "How should I ignite the deuterum?" Of course, by the adiabatic compression! You should quickly compress it! You try a piston, but it's not enough. Then you decide to implode it with a sphere of explosives. You make a soccerball sphere, stick 32 electric fuzes, and fuze. It explodes. A coconut inside is crushed. You start trying metal balls, various thicnkess of the explosive layer. Finally you have a 1.5-meter wide, 2-layered, 32-point explosive sphere with a half-meter cave inside, where you are going to put a dewar of deuterium to compress and cause fusion, to get helium, like in the Sun. But the sneaky deuterium doesn't want to ignite. *** You realize, that you are doing it wrong. You should keep the liquid deuterium in a cylinder, and ignite it by compressing the small dewar of D+T misture with explosives! Then its shockwave will run along the cylinder, compress the formerly liquid deuterium, and it will burn! But what is explode twu D+T dewars at both cylinder ends? Two shockwaves will meet in the middle, and the pressure will be much higher! But it can tear apart the cylinder before it gets enough hot? We should put some lighter gas around the deuteriumcylinder, so its pressure will exceed the pressure of deuterium, and the show will go on! But can we syncronize two fuzes enough precisely to make them explode simultaneously? No. Then let's make the hydrogen cylinder a little conical, so the only shockwave will reach the narrow end and cause high pressure. Let's call it, say, RDS-6t, because it weights 6 tonnes. But the problems are: where to mine tritium, and will the implosion sphere ignite it? *** You keep bombing the bucket of heavy water with deutrons, puttiing another bucket overturned to collect the lightweight tritium. While the tritiu is being collected (it takes about five years for you, from 1934 to 1939), you are playing with radioactive uranium, watching the alpha particle curvy traces. But sometimes you see straight traces of neutrons. You can't understand, why? Uranium doesn't emit neutrons. Or it does? You check the uranium chemical composition, you collect gases, and realize, that uranium sometimes just splits, and emits neutrons. You call it "fission", because the neutrons are flying: "Fisssssss!...". *** Meanwhile, the tritium is collected, so you now have a tiny drop of condensed tritium water. Shockingly, it's radioactive! Tritium is radioactive! *** You need more tritium for the dewar fuze, but you don't have it. You decide to spend the amount of tritium, which you have, to bomb that bucket of heavy water. You detect neutrons. The fusion runs! *** You quickly make a glass pipe with electrodes, ddeuterium and tritium, and test it. Neutrons! Thus you have invented a neutron pipe to replace the urchin after the first tests. *** Once you had discovered the fission, the idea of neutron generations and multiplication gets into the mind as a geometric progression. Ten minutes later the idea stops in front of the fact of "No non-splitted nuclei left", and you realize the fact, that some critical size exists. A minute later you understand that some neutrons escape. Thus, you get to the idea of the neutron reflector. As you have calculated the neutron multiplication from a single initial neutron, you immediately realize that the more initial neutrons you spit in, the less generations it will take to split all nuclei. You come to the idea of a neutron source. And what can be the neutron source? Exactly! That exact primitive lead box with a grain of polonium salt inside, and a hole, closed with the beryllium plate, which you were using when unexpectedy discovered the "beryllium rays", i.e. neutrons. So, you invent the urchin. But you need probabilities of the neutron capturing, scattering, and absorbing. You get to the interaction cross-sections. But you can't calculate the cross-sections, only measure them. You start measuring, and discover two differecnt sets of spectrums and cross-sections, depending of the neutron energy. You realize that 238 and 235 have different cross-sections and half-lives. You need t measure the 235 separately, so you develop the isotope separation, get the purified 235, measure it, calculate, and get shocked: it's critical mass should be tens of kilograms, rather than tens of tonnes. Now you want to gather the critical mass without blowing up the lab, and immediately understand, that the critical mass depends on density, so the density can get critical, too. You come to the implosion sphere... *** You have one. You were going to compress the deuterium with it. Just you have much more precise electric fuzes, and you develop them. Now you have a ~1.5 t, 32 double fuze implosion sphere, able to compress 0.25 t of matter. It has a 48 cm hollow cavity, to slap the 24 cm dewar with a kilogram or so of liquid D-T... You throw out from the head these wet dreams, and replace the dewar with a 24 cm natural uranium ball with a 12 cm cavity for a 12 cm ball of enriched uranium. Inside the 12 cm ball you put a 2.5 cm urchin. You fill the gap with aluminium, to let the shockwave pressure raise on the density border, and to smoothen it. You get a monstrous 2 t sphere, full of wires. *** You just made a peaceful implosive uranium test device. But you postpone its test, because you first want to build a peaceful reactor. You do it, and get a peaceful plutonium as a waste. You study it, and realize that you can replace your 12 cm enriched uranium ball with a 9 cm plutonium ball, to use this waste for something. So, you make a 9 cm plutonium ball and a 12 cm natural uranium sphere with 9 cm cavity as an adaptor to the already made uranium charge. *** You have a nice round object. You call it Gadget. *** You write a letter and explain the thing you made, and that everyone needs to test it, to check if bad people can do it, too, so should we be afraid of it as of weapon? They gie you a desert. You test. *** You realize that this thing is exactly what you need to ignite D+T fuze for your all-hydrogen bomb. You put a spherical dewar instead of the aluminium, fill it with D+T and call it Greenhouse Item. They have 1951 on the calender, but you live in alternative timeline, it can be late 1930s for you. *** Thus, the nuclear bomb invention is not just inevitable, it's as natural as sunrise and sunset. i have a shot of greenhouse-item as my desktop. such a beautiful ball of angry plasma. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheSaint Posted July 29, 2023 Share Posted July 29, 2023 1 hour ago, Nuke said: i have a shot of greenhouse-item as my desktop. such a beautiful ball of angry plasma. It wasn't angry. It was happy. It was doing what it was always meant to do. How many of the rest of us can say that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted July 29, 2023 Share Posted July 29, 2023 (edited) 12 hours ago, Vanamonde said: It turns out that after a certain size much of the power of the blast simply goes up with the fireball and expends itself in the upper atmosphere while not contributing to destruction on the ground, so larger bombs are not more effective. In other words, it was practicality rather than ethics or politics which put an upper limit on hydrogen bomb size. The 50..100 Mt bombs make sense when the bomber has realistically single attempt to drop something and try to escape, rather than heroically flying and dropping thirty nukes one-by-one, without being shot down (at least just by a tactical nuke, blown at its way). It's better to drop 1x100 Mt per lost bomber, than 1x10. Accurate MIRV and cruise missiles made it unnecessary. 12 hours ago, farmerben said: Can't find a graphic of it right now, but there is something called single point detonation. Using shaped charge technology it works sort of like an implosion bomb, but you only require one high explosive, not a bunch set off simultaneously. The bunch is not used since late 1950s. A melon-shaped thing with two fuzes at poles. A single-point test causes a subcritical explosion of kilograms-to-tonnes yield. Also, there was an egg-shaped design with one fuze, but it's not a fact, that it's better, because two are a safety measure. 10 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: The scientists weren’t idiots They aren't. Spoiler They are technomaniacs. They do science for fun. Fear and money just raise motivation. 10 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: Nuclear weapons were built for three reasons- a) militaristic regimes desiring bigger weapons b) a fear of militaristic regimes that might end up with bigger weapons c) a realization everyone was working on bigger weapons (USSR) These were not inevitable things. Fission didn’t just come into existence out of nowhere. 99% of nuclear weapon preliminary studies are just exploration of atomic structure, long before anything military can be implemented. Once the fission has been discovered, the neutron multiplication gets immediately realized, and the idea of critical mass is right at hands. The next steps follow without pause, and a couple of years later you suddenly have everything required to weaponize the idea, and a working industry of uranium enrichment. There it no "nuclear bomb development", it's just a military application of nuclear safety countermeasures. By calculating the lowest possible critical mass at optimal conditions, you automatically get the nuclear weapon design, even with most peaceful intentions. 10 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: Teddy Roosevelt wins the election, enters the war in 1915. It comes to an end in 1917 with a direct occupation of Germany. The British Empire was weakened by the WWI, and had to sign the Balfour Declaration in 1926, later dismissing its dominions for everyone's (mostly American) use, under the danger of German occupaton in coming WWII. The US best minds were building the Bolshevik military plants in early 1930s, when the British Empire was the direct main enemy for the Bolshevik government, while the pedant Germany was an ambivalent enemy. So, the British Empire capital had moved from London to New York. A funny thing: actually, WWI&II are a Great British Imperial Revolution, lol. Are you sure, US was needing defeated Germany too early in WWI? Just T.Roosevelt would be told "Be Taft!", and he would be Taft. Or another Taft-like frontman would be presented to the electorate. Who doesn't get the words, flies to Dallas. 10 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: Any attempt at revolution in Russia ends in failure due to a lack of public support. The revolution was caused by various economical and political factors, and was inevitable. Just the losses could be minimized, a decade not lost, and more pragmatic people lead it. 10 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: The League of Nations is never formed. Roosevelt had more respect for Japan’s desire to build a sphere of influence in Asia. strongly opposed by the British and the Russian Empires, and France as well. A remarkable fact: in addition to Roosevelt, somebody forgot to ask the Manchu, lol... Also the British Empire is laughing at the American cowboys talking of League of British dominions. 10 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: Without a fear of communism, the Kanto Army may not be driven to invade Manchuria. There was no communism in 1904, but still was Japan army in Manchuria and Korea. Also, both Japan and Germany still have no colonies to mine resources for their industries., or something to pay for them.. 10 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: The US had the highly convince Albert Einstein As we can read, the Einstein's input costed 6 000 USD for US. Actually, rich Roosevelt could just pay from his personal wallet, if not the American bourgeous individualism and mercantilism. Real funding was given in 1942, and not because of Einstein (After the discussion in Bohemian Grove, as ru.wiki says, and it looks reasonable, as unlikely POTUS can throw billions of USD just because he can. Even the British monarch has to ask the Parliament). Also, Einstein even was not included in the Manhattan project, of course because of his pacifism, rather than his realistic understanding of his place in science. (A talented and lucky middle scientist, having combined Pointcare and Lorenz studies, in the pool of scientific seniour sharks. Wisely was staying far from the pool, doing his own science and not interfering and messing with others. ) 10 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: Vasilt Arkhipov decides to launch the nuclear torpedo and Western civilization is heavily damaged in the ensuing war, with modern computers never being developed. USSR had a ten of ICBM, so probably Miami Beach would become a little more sunny, but not the whole US. 9 hours ago, tater said: What kept people working on bombs, etc? Nobody works on bombs, but the bomb still comes as a bonus. Actually, even a mad scientist would develop it in his tower. The only problem is the uranium enrichment. It takes time, so it should be a dinasty. Edited July 29, 2023 by kerbiloid Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SunlitZelkova Posted July 29, 2023 Share Posted July 29, 2023 (edited) 9 hours ago, tater said: I'm not talking about the Manhattan Project, we're in counterfactual land. What kept people working on bombs, etc? At some level, fun. @TheSaint said that good bombs are harder to make than Little Boy. My friend's dad (LANL physicist who worked on bombs) said to us something to the effect of, "Any of you guys (undergrad physics majors) can make a bomb—but you can't make a good bomb." I'm unaware of any billion dollar projects being undertaken solely for fun. 9 hours ago, tater said: Definitionally, no. No one calls the small wars of the second half of the 20th century "WW3." I spent a lot of my time as a kid thinking about ww3 during the actual Cold War. The point is the peace was not kept. If anything, nuclear weapons enabled further wars. 9 hours ago, tater said: They DID keep the peace, WW3 did not happen. That was not on the table 1942-45, as no one else had a nuke, and deterrence was not yet a thing. Once it was, keeping the peace was very much an available motivation. Only once enough nations had them (and only among the great powers at that). You can't propose nuclear weapons to keep the peace if you have no idea if your enemies are going to do the same thing. 9 hours ago, tater said: They were completely inevitable as soon as fission is discovered. Nothing in that bullet list matters. Humans are humans. You must demonstrate that no human, and no society, EVER, would do what is self-evident with the knowledge of fission. Somehow you must imagine a counterfactual history in which no humans wield dictatorial power*, anywhere, ever. *<EDIT> A dictator is not required here, some might decide to do it just because they are interested. Maybe someone wants to make Orion, but first they need a bomb. Or some country thinks another might be working the issue. A dictator is just a simple example that gives a single someone control of state level resources. Once something in society is eliminated, it tends to stay that way. Do you believe witch trials are going to come back some day? Once true world peace is achieved, it is unlikely to go away, barring a major change in the environment. If climate change doesn't get addressed in our alternate world and resources begin to become scarce, I will give you that- nuclear weapons will definitely be built some day. But again, I don't think ignorance toward it is inevitable, and it could be changed too. 9 hours ago, tater said: By 1940 there were ~2.3 billion humans alive. The specific world leaders during that entire few decades 1912+ are a few hundreds of people? What about the other 2.3B? Your task is to demonstrate that those counterfactuals result in no bad actors on Earth going forward, ever—we all live in peace and harmony forever more. Also not a plausible scenario anyway, IMO. So many changes. ww1 goes on, yet somehow it ends faster, and there's no revolution in Russia (remember that the revolution predated Lenin, who arrived after the fact). Nuclear bombs don't get built by one or two people. It takes an entire nation. Not only were nuclear weapons built due to the world condition of the time, they were built because of a general consensus that it was necessary. Even if Crazy Oppy wants to make a big boom boom, in a peaceful world he won't have the backing of the state to do so- nuclear weapons, with no enemies to use them on, would be akin to Project Orion in terms of necessity, and we know how that turned out. WWI ends because America enters faster and provides the tipping of the balance necessary to bring things in the Allies favor. Thus would end it faster. The original revolution (February I think?) predated Lenin by only a few months. If the Germans are being beat back thanks to American power by 1916, 1917 does not see the dire situation that brought about the revolution. Lenin might still try, but he won't have public support necessary to win. 9 hours ago, tater said: The letter that Szilard wrote for Einstein put the issue on FDR's radar, but literally everyone knew this was possible once the fission paper was out. The head of the Japanese bomb program, Nishina (a friend of Bohr) started thinking about it in... 1939, assuming the Americans would be working on one. So yeah, literally everyone started thinking about it as soon as the paper came out. But the point is execution. The Americans thought it would work and thus poured billions into it- billions that perhaps could have gone towards logistics or faster force modernization. The Japanese (government) didn't think it would work, or at least did not believe to the extent the Americans did. They chose to spend their money on conventional weapons instead, and thus got no results from their nuclear program. 9 hours ago, tater said: Don't think so on the former. I've been on the net since 1983. Not seeing a way to avoid the internet expanding at some point. I'm talking about a point of divergence in the 1950s or 1960s. Not someone suddenly cutting off internet access in the late 80s or 90s. 9 hours ago, tater said: On the latter, the relative strength of the 2 nuclear powers was incredibly lopsided in 1962. I recall hearing that Khrushchev's son at some point asked his father why he kept saying they were turning out nuclear missiles like sausages when in fact they had something like 2 (was probably a Hardcore History episode). A war at that point would have been destructive, but computers eventually come back after we rebuild, and someone gets an internet running, and someone makes social media—because it's an obvious thing that someone will eventually do. A counterfactual of "the world is destroyed before a tech that is available is actually built" is certainly a possibility—but sort of against the spirit of the exercise. I suppose if we except your WW3 actually starts in 1962 premise, then we have a post-apocalyptic world, and the next question I have is, "Given all the strong metal lying around in the rubble, to the human survivors thrown back into pre-civilization lives use the metal to make weapons, or do they stick with using sticks and rocks to kill each other? I'm just skeptical any money would go towards technology when the real need is stabilizing the food supply and building housing, along with a general repair of the economy. Computers would not have an obvious role to play in that, or certainly not one worth the cost of development. FYI, the Soviets had around 20~ functioning ICBMs, but the main killer would be in Europe, where the Soviets did indeed have hundreds of MRBMs and IRBMs. Note that just because I say it is not inevitable, I am not saying it is impossible. The northern hemisphere could be ravaged in 1962 and maybe we would still end up with basic computers for research purposes by the 1990s. But it could easily go the other way too. 8 hours ago, Spacescifi said: Humans.... the leaders anyway and those that serve under them in sub-leader roles are all about efficiency. Why? Probably has a little something to do with every human ever having an expiration date on their backs and a limited time to get anything done because life has no reset button (and we would abuse the reset if we did). What I am saying is that leaders organize people to get stuff done efficiently thereby benefitting enough people that they can stay leaders without losing their power. It has been said that if you spread the wealth and give everyone a dollar, many of those who were wealthy once will become so again, because they know how to play the game of life well enough and are willing to make the needed sacrifices. Germany in WWII and the USSR ostensibly needed the support of their people (heck, it was in Soviet ideology on paper that it was required) and yet were hardly efficient. 1 hour ago, kerbiloid said: They aren't. The... most sociopathic of scientists during the Cold War that I have heard of tended to only be enabled that way because they had the fear of communism to ride off of. Without that, these people will remain loons. 1 hour ago, kerbiloid said: The revolution was caused by various economical and political factors, and was inevitable. Just the losses could be minimized, a decade not lost, and more pragmatic people lead it. This particular revolution was mainly brought about by the losses in 1917 and continued war. If 1916 and 1917 see victories, conditions will be better and the war may not occur. Or, if a revolution does occur, it won't have public support. I won't discount the February Revolution succeeding. But the October Revolution would definitely fail. 1 hour ago, kerbiloid said: strongly opposed by the British and the Russian Empires, and France as well. Japan did not have a desire to march south until the late 1930s. Russia was humbled in 1905 and did not pose a threat in the same way the resurgent USSR was. 1 hour ago, kerbiloid said: There was no communism in 1904, but still was Japan army in Manchuria and Korea. Also, both Japan and Germany still have no colonies to mine resources for their industries., or something to pay for them.. Japan desired to build a sphere of influence in Asia and thus fought there. But China was never in the sights of the Japanese government. Hot headed army officers were responsible for that. If the world is more peaceful, Japan doesn't need to invade other places because it is still doing trade with the other nations. 1 hour ago, kerbiloid said: USSR had a ten of ICBM, so probably Miami Beach would become a little more sunny, but not the whole US. I think you underestimate what leveling 10-20 cities does to a nation's economy. And R-12/14 were in the hundreds at the time. My scenario mainly applied to Europe. Edited July 29, 2023 by SunlitZelkova Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted July 29, 2023 Share Posted July 29, 2023 6 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said: WWI ends because America enters faster and provides the tipping of the balance necessary to bring things in the Allies favor. Thus would end it faster. The original revolution (February I think?) predated Lenin by only a few months. If the Germans are being beat back thanks to American power by 1916, 1917 does not see the dire situation that brought about the revolution. Lenin might still try, but he won't have public support necessary to win. Two weeks before the February revolution Lenin was desperately writing that he doesn't see a chance for it to happen. It didn't predate him, just his party got riding it, once it had started. 10 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said: The Americans thought it would work and thus poured billions into it 6 000 The billions were put later, when the studies had achieved practical numbers. 11 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said: Nuclear bombs don't get built by one or two people. It takes an entire nation. The nation provides the resources for salary and profit, regardless of the aim. The government (as representatives of the ruling elite) implements the political elite decisions, how to use the collected resources. They could print 15 000 t of silver medals instead. 15 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said: FYI, the Soviets had around 20~ functioning ICBMs, but the main killer would be in Europe, where the Soviets did indeed have hundreds of MRBMs and IRBMs. Who cares about Europe? Best Europeans will escape from the wasteland to US, others will be buying American goods to rebuild. 18 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said: The... most sociopathic of scientists during the Cold War that I have heard of tended to only be enabled that way because they had the fear of communism to ride off of. Without that, these people will remain loons. No need to be sociopathic. To be an inspired introvert is enough. Also, 99% of nuclear bomb studies are not about nuclear bomb. It just appears as a field experiment when everything is ready long ago. 21 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said: This particular revolution was mainly brought about by the losses in 1917 and continued war. The losses were playing no role there. They were keeping fighting for a decade more, with several times greater losses. The army was consising mostly of peasants from overpopulated and poor rural areas. The common idea was that soon the landlords' plowland will be confiscated and distributed between the peasants. (Actually, 90% of it was already sold to or captured by the peasants, so the expectation was false). In the village communes the plowland was belonging to the commune, and redistributed every seven (?) years between the peasant families, proportionally to the number of workers, i.e. adult men, (not eaters, i.e. everyone), to get everything from the poor plowland. As a result, it was normal when a family of a father, his elder son, his wife and two kids had twice more plowland than a family of a man, a wife, and eight kids. A widow with kids got nothing, and they went beggaring. So, every killed man was a significant loss for his own family in sense of the plowland redistribution, especially in the coming great one. But the total casualties were just decreasing the village overpopulation problem. Even if the WWI had finished quickly, or was bringing to the peasants any profit, it would just make it burst several years later. The urban part had another problem. By the late XIX the Urals industry was absolutely obsolete (using charcoal, with no minable coal around), while the Donbass industry was just built with help of the British, French, Belgian, and Deutsch concessions, and rich of ore and coal. But as the foreign concessioners already had their hi-tech plants at their home countries, they weren't needing them in situ. So, the local industry was stagnating and mine&refine-oriented, while still growing and perspective (six planned automobile plants, first heavy bombers in the world, all kinds of artillery and armored cars, wide electrification). The way to solve the problem was to totally drive the peasants from the villages, leaving as few as possible; build all kinds of idustry and use the former peasants as workers; mass produce agricultural tech and synthetic fertilizers to let the few peasants feed all of them. And they tried to do that. But the problem was that the synthetic fertilizer (Haber) and mass production of trucks and tractors (Ford) got available by 1913 (so, in Russia by +3..5 years). And exactly then the WWI happened, where the tsar and his government wisely dived in. In any case, driving the peasants away from villages and forcing them build the industry would be in any case solved only by military force. Just it could be done more softly, with less than a million of casualties instead of the total Civil war. I.e. in the early 30s the government was doing what should be done in early 20s, for much greater price. 1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said: 2 hours ago, kerbiloid said: strongly opposed by the British and the Russian Empires, and France as well. Japan did not have a desire to march south until the late 1930s. Russia was humbled in 1905 and did not pose a threat in the same way the resurgent USSR was. Just thirty years between. Without Civil War in Russia, it would take fifteen, and Roosevelt's authority would mean nothing in the world of British Empire. 1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said: Japan desired to build a sphere of influence in Asia and thus fought there. Only non-populated territories? 1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said: But China was never in the sights of the Japanese government. Hot headed army officers were responsible for that. Well... 1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said: I think you underestimate what leveling 10-20 cities does to a nation's economy. The US national economy was a little bigger than the economies of the European countries together. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magnemoe Posted July 29, 2023 Share Posted July 29, 2023 17 hours ago, Vanamonde said: It turns out that after a certain size much of the power of the blast simply goes up with the fireball and expends itself in the upper atmosphere while not contributing to destruction on the ground, so larger bombs are not more effective. In other words, it was practicality rather than ethics or politics which put an upper limit on hydrogen bomb size. This, the multi megaton bombs made sense with the early ICBM who accuracy was measured in km. With more accurate rockets and multiple warheads it makes more sense to use multiple smaller bombs. think 350-150 Kt is standard now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terwin Posted July 29, 2023 Share Posted July 29, 2023 5 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: Once true world peace is achieved, it is unlikely to go away, barring a major change in the environment. Could you please define 'true world peace'? Is it something that is compatible with humans? note: unless you make dramatic changes to humans(like removal of free-will) you will not get rid of ambition, envy, greed, or ingenuity. If you want you 'true world peace' to last, or even be possible, it needs to accommodate unlimited amounts of all three of those. 5 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: I'm talking about a point of divergence in the 1950s or 1960s. Not someone suddenly cutting off internet access in the late 80s or 90s. All of the required theory for general computing was developed before the end of WW2 (including hardware that was developed as part of the work on Enigma). The discovery of semiconductors was supposedly done by someone using a crystal radio that investigated why his cracked quartz worked so much better than other quartz crystals, so no government funding needed. (and with the popularity of radio with garage tinkers after WW2, such a discovery was more or less inevitable) There may have been fewer big vacuum-tube computers without the ones funded by the military, but after transistors were discovered, private computing would have exploded just the same. (Unless you posit that no one would ever invent auto-calculating spread-sheets like VisiCalc, in spite of accounting departments being primarily staffed by human 'computers' who's only job was to manually populate spreadsheets. That is where the name came from after all, it became essential to businesses as a machine to replace the humans with that job title) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted July 29, 2023 Share Posted July 29, 2023 8 hours ago, kerbiloid said: By calculating the lowest possible critical mass at optimal conditions, you automatically get the nuclear weapon design, even with most peaceful intentions. Yep. 6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: I'm unaware of any billion dollar projects being undertaken solely for fun. LOL. This is the KSP forum, switch threads to SpaceX. 6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: The point is the peace was not kept. If anything, nuclear weapons enabled further wars. Nukes prevented another global war, al la WW2. Those wars stayed localized for fear of escalation. 6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: Only once enough nations had them (and only among the great powers at that). You can't propose nuclear weapons to keep the peace if you have no idea if your enemies are going to do the same thing. We did, and it was concerning. Only needed 2 superpowers with nukes to result in that. First World (our side), Second World (Soviet side), Third World (up for grabs). 6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: Once something in society is eliminated, it tends to stay that way. Do you believe witch trials are going to come back some day? Once true world peace is achieved, it is unlikely to go away, barring a major change in the environment. If climate change doesn't get addressed in our alternate world and resources begin to become scarce, I will give you that- nuclear weapons will definitely be built some day. But again, I don't think ignorance toward it is inevitable, and it could be changed too. I can make all kinds of arguments about modern irrational views that have become norms and resultant witch trials, but the mods would not like it. Maybe the counterfactual is The Great War is as they called it, The War to End All Wars! People must have learned their lesson in that horror show, right? Oh, wait, it was just the appetizer. People in fact did learn from the USE of atomic weapons to avoid using them. for nearly 80 years so far. 6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: Nuclear bombs don't get built by one or two people. It takes an entire nation. Not if nuclear power exists it doesn't. Somehow you need to imagine not discovering fission at all, ever. If peaceful use exists, then enrichment is already a thing. While a few % is sufficient for a reactor, bombs become possible at moderate levels above that (better/easier if highly enriched, obviously). The enriched fissile material is the hard part. 6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: Not only were nuclear weapons built due to the world condition of the time, they were built because of a general consensus that it was necessary. Even if Crazy Oppy wants to make a big boom boom, in a peaceful world he won't have the backing of the state to do so- nuclear weapons, with no enemies to use them on, would be akin to Project Orion in terms of necessity, and we know how that turned out. WWI ends because America enters faster and provides the tipping of the balance necessary to bring things in the Allies favor. Thus would end it faster. The original revolution (February I think?) predated Lenin by only a few months. If the Germans are being beat back thanks to American power by 1916, 1917 does not see the dire situation that brought about the revolution. Lenin might still try, but he won't have public support necessary to win. Any country can decide it has a reason to. A country could be run on an expansionist ideology that no one would care about if it wasn't expansionist—but everyone notices, and doesn't like them for it. That nation now feels surrounded by people hostile to its ideals... maybe that nation decided on an insurance policy. All they need to is enrich some of their U a little more than their reactors need the old fashioned way—or produce some in their reactors (not optimal for power production, but easier once you have reactors). As to historical counterfactuals, loads of assumptions in all of them that require groups of humans to behave, and humans are very unpredictable. Most countries can be super peaceful—but what if they think that other country over there might be working the bomb issue? That's all it takes, you don't have to see another country WITH a bomb, you just have to think they might be working on one—the exact situation in 1939, everyone thinking the other guy is making a bomb. 6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: I'm talking about a point of divergence in the 1950s or 1960s. Not someone suddenly cutting off internet access in the late 80s or 90s. Not seeing that as likely. So in the 50s people just stop working on computers for no reason? DARPANET being fault tolerant is certainly a Cold War thing, but there are plenty of peaceful reasons computers become connected. In 1964 Clark wrote Dial F for Frankenstein. A short story where the phone system becomes self-aware. Phones were already connected, computers would certainly be. No way around it. 7 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: I'm just skeptical any money would go towards technology when the real need is stabilizing the food supply and building housing, along with a general repair of the economy. Computers would not have an obvious role to play in that, or certainly not one worth the cost of development. FYI, the Soviets had around 20~ functioning ICBMs, but the main killer would be in Europe, where the Soviets did indeed have hundreds of MRBMs and IRBMs. Note that just because I say it is not inevitable, I am not saying it is impossible. The northern hemisphere could be ravaged in 1962 and maybe we would still end up with basic computers for research purposes by the 1990s. But it could easily go the other way too. Yeah, wiki says, "In 1961, the Soviets had only four R-7 Semyorka intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). By October 1962, they may have had dozens, with some intelligence estimates as high as 75. The US, on the other hand, had 170 ICBMs and was quickly building more." Not to mention bombs/jet bombers/etc. My point isn't the specifics, just that arguing a counterfactual where we have to first immolate millions to create world peace seems... undesirable. 7 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: The... most sociopathic of scientists during the Cold War that I have heard of tended to only be enabled that way because they had the fear of communism to ride off of. Without that, these people will remain loons. An ideology responsible for mass democide every single place it takes hold is... rationally concerning. 7 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said: Japan desired to build a sphere of influence in Asia and thus fought there. But China was never in the sights of the Japanese government. Hot headed army officers were responsible for that. If the world is more peaceful, Japan doesn't need to invade other places because it is still doing trade with the other nations. ? The Japanese invaded China as soon as they were capable of doing so. They invaded China in 1894. Our counterfactual in search of peaceful humans keeps moving farther back. In the spirit of @kerbiloid perhaps it needs a special device? Spoiler Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted July 29, 2023 Share Posted July 29, 2023 32 minutes ago, tater said: Our counterfactual in search of peaceful humans keeps moving farther back. In the spirit of @kerbiloid perhaps it needs a special device? Peaceful? Spoiler Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted July 29, 2023 Share Posted July 29, 2023 14 minutes ago, kerbiloid said: Peaceful? Oops? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spacescifi Posted July 29, 2023 Author Share Posted July 29, 2023 6 minutes ago, tater said: Oops? Nah.... this is the only way to accomodate for peace that does not involve a God-like dictator destroying any who get out of line instantly as some religions posit. Spoiler Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted July 29, 2023 Share Posted July 29, 2023 I remember an old George Carlin bit about flamethrowers. The gist is that he points out that at some point, some guy had to think, "gee, I'd sure like to set fire to those people over there!" then invented it. That's humanity in a nutshell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spacescifi Posted July 29, 2023 Author Share Posted July 29, 2023 (edited) 3 minutes ago, tater said: I remember an old George Carlin bit about flamethrowers. The gist is that he points out that at some point, some guy had to think, "gee, I'd sure like to set fire to those people over there!" then invented it. That's humanity in a nutshell. Yep, we are like mortal gods that create with whatever they have, It's what separates us from animals that are content eating, pooping, and having fun and reproducing with no organized master plan at all. Edited July 29, 2023 by Spacescifi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted July 29, 2023 Share Posted July 29, 2023 (edited) Thinking about it made me watch it on youtube, LOL. The Army, "We'll take 500,000, in dark brown." (turns out they had some people they'd like to set on fire) Edited July 29, 2023 by tater Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SunlitZelkova Posted July 29, 2023 Share Posted July 29, 2023 6 hours ago, Terwin said: Could you please define 'true world peace'? Is it something that is compatible with humans? note: unless you make dramatic changes to humans(like removal of free-will) you will not get rid of ambition, envy, greed, or ingenuity. If you want you 'true world peace' to last, or even be possible, it needs to accommodate unlimited amounts of all three of those. I mainly use this term because of the possibility some might interpret 1991-2001~ as "world peace" and then use that as an example of how war can return. 1991-2001 was not actual world peace and therefore wouldn't count. Western civilization is literally built on a system composed of ambition, envy, and greed, and yet Western Europe is peaceful and cooperative. There is no reason why this can't be expanded to the world. 6 hours ago, Terwin said: All of the required theory for general computing was developed before the end of WW2 (including hardware that was developed as part of the work on Enigma). The discovery of semiconductors was supposedly done by someone using a crystal radio that investigated why his cracked quartz worked so much better than other quartz crystals, so no government funding needed. (and with the popularity of radio with garage tinkers after WW2, such a discovery was more or less inevitable) There may have been fewer big vacuum-tube computers without the ones funded by the military, but after transistors were discovered, private computing would have exploded just the same. (Unless you posit that no one would ever invent auto-calculating spread-sheets like VisiCalc, in spite of accounting departments being primarily staffed by human 'computers' who's only job was to manually populate spreadsheets. That is where the name came from after all, it became essential to businesses as a machine to replace the humans with that job title) I'm talking about the internet, not modern computers per se. 5 hours ago, tater said: LOL. This is the KSP forum, switch threads to SpaceX. Falcon 9 and Starship were built to generate profit from satellite launches. If you don't have a great power you want to burn down, what advantage is there to nuclear weapons worth billions of dollars? 5 hours ago, tater said: Nukes prevented another global war, al la WW2. Those wars stayed localized for fear of escalation. Ok, I'll admit nuclear weapons keep peace for the country that has them, but... 5 hours ago, tater said: We did, and it was concerning. Only needed 2 superpowers with nukes to result in that. First World (our side), Second World (Soviet side), Third World (up for grabs). ...that's only if another country has them. Nuclear weapons cannot guarantee peace if you don't know if the other side is going to build them or not. Unless there is some sort of science cabal that is going to plot to develop nuclear weapons in both the US and Russia or Japan, no logical scientist will propose nuclear weapons on the basis of keeping the peace. 5 hours ago, tater said: Maybe the counterfactual is The Great War is as they called it, The War to End All Wars! People must have learned their lesson in that horror show, right? Oh, wait, it was just the appetizer. The idea that people just went "welp! The Great War wasn't that bad, let's do it again!" is a meme. WWII occurred for very specific reasons that could have been prevented, as I have explained. 5 hours ago, tater said: Any country can decide it has a reason to. A country could be run on an expansionist ideology that no one would care about if it wasn't expansionist—but everyone notices, and doesn't like them for it. That nation now feels surrounded by people hostile to its ideals... maybe that nation decided on an insurance policy. All they need to is enrich some of their U a little more than their reactors need the old fashioned way—or produce some in their reactors (not optimal for power production, but easier once you have reactors). As to historical counterfactuals, loads of assumptions in all of them that require groups of humans to behave, and humans are very unpredictable. Most countries can be super peaceful—but what if they think that other country over there might be working the bomb issue? That's all it takes, you don't have to see another country WITH a bomb, you just have to think they might be working on one—the exact situation in 1939, everyone thinking the other guy is making a bomb. Humans are not machines. They don't run in patterns or on programs. They have choices to make. As I said earlier, I am not saying nuclear weapons coming into existence without WWII is impossible, just that it is not inevitable. They could just as easily not come into existence. 5 hours ago, tater said: Not seeing that as likely. So in the 50s people just stop working on computers for no reason? DARPANET being fault tolerant is certainly a Cold War thing, but there are plenty of peaceful reasons computers become connected. In 1964 Clark wrote Dial F for Frankenstein. A short story where the phone system becomes self-aware. Phones were already connected, computers would certainly be. No way around it. I'm talking about the internet, not modern computers. And I am not suggesting it doesn't come into existence, just that it remains under military control. 5 hours ago, tater said: My point isn't the specifics, just that arguing a counterfactual where we have to first immolate millions to create world peace seems... undesirable. Uh, I'm not sure where we had a communication breakdown, but I did not say we would somehow have brought about world peace by fighting WWIII in 1962. I just mentioned a war in 1962 as a possible example of a situation in which the internet, and thus social media, does not come into existence. Whether that is a positive or negative is up to the individual. I personally don't see social media as nearly as world threatening as nuclear weapons. 5 hours ago, tater said: An ideology responsible for mass democide every single place it takes hold is... rationally concerning. Rational concerns require rational responses. Having a rational concern =/= your response is automatically rational too. In response to Tsar Bomba, some people proposed a 1,000 megaton nuclear device. SAC regularly advocated nuking the entire Communist Bloc in the event of the slightest provocation. These people were not normal. 5 hours ago, tater said: ? The Japanese invaded China as soon as they were capable of doing so. They invaded China in 1894. Our counterfactual in search of peaceful humans keeps moving farther back. Apologies, I meant the whole of China. No, I am not suggesting that the First Sino-Japanese War needs to be eliminated for my counterfactual. There were 37 years between the First Sino-Japanese War and the Mukden Incident. Do you think the Soviets were plotting to invade Afghanistan... in 1942? Japan's expansionism of the 1930s was a very different beast from the days of the Meiji Era, and was not inevitable either. 4 hours ago, Spacescifi said: Nah.... this is the only way to accomodate for peace that does not involve a God-like dictator destroying any who get out of line instantly as some religions posit. Reveal hidden contents Oh ye of little faith. 4 hours ago, tater said: I remember an old George Carlin bit about flamethrowers. The gist is that he points out that at some point, some guy had to think, "gee, I'd sure like to set fire to those people over there!" then invented it. That's humanity in a nutshell. That's not how flamethrowers came into existence. There was a rational need to overcome fortifications or masses of enemy troops in war, which led to the use of fire as a weapon. 4 hours ago, Spacescifi said: Yep, we are like mortal gods that create with whatever they have, It's what separates us from animals that are content eating, pooping, and having fun and reproducing with no organized master plan at all. And yet Project Orion remains paper... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted July 29, 2023 Share Posted July 29, 2023 7 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said: Falcon 9 and Starship were built to generate profit from satellite launches. If you don't have a great power you want to burn down, what advantage is there to nuclear weapons worth billions of dollars? You can argue that Falcon 9 was designed to have a self-sustaining rocket company since Musk started with substantially less money, but Starship is 100% not for making money. The total available launch market is something like 4-8 billion. In current dollars, the Manhattan Project cost ~$30B. As a reality check, Musk has ~$114B in cyber truck reservations alone. Launch is chump change. 9 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said: Ok, I'll admit nuclear weapons keep peace for the country that has them, but... They have kept the peace vs global total warfare since WW2. Neither atomic bomb killed as many people as a single conventional attack on Tokyo did. The total loss of life in WW2 was so large that the 2 atomic bombs were noise level additions—all those other deaths were "conventional." A conventional WW3 would have killed many 10s or even 100s of millions. 13 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said: ...that's only if another country has them. Nuclear weapons cannot guarantee peace if you don't know if the other side is going to build them or not. Unless there is some sort of science cabal that is going to plot to develop nuclear weapons in both the US and Russia or Japan, no logical scientist will propose nuclear weapons on the basis of keeping the peace. No. Say a nation that will not start a war itself gets a nuke, and no one else has them. They now have deterrence vs conventional war, as well. A nonnuclear country does not invade its nuclear neighbor. 20 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said: The idea that people just went "welp! The Great War wasn't that bad, let's do it again!" is a meme. WWII occurred for very specific reasons that could have been prevented, as I have explained. Could have been prevented... with magic. WW2 was WW1, part 2. It might be possible to imagine some alternate history, but it requires changed many, many unrelated things that actually happened. So many it's not terribly plausible, IMO. 22 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said: As I said earlier, I am not saying nuclear weapons coming into existence without WWII is impossible, just that it is not inevitable. They could just as easily not come into existence. I'm saying it's inevitable, because physics. That doesn't mean they get used, but making fission bombs is easy, and the physics cannot be made to disappear. The very same arguments you make could be made against explosives of any kind—except chemistry. 24 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said: I'm talking about the internet, not modern computers. And I am not suggesting it doesn't come into existence, just that it remains under military control. So we trade the internet for a military dictatorship? Or is there some way that the military now controls the phones? There was nothing about the net that required the military, ever, they just happened to do it first. 26 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said: I just mentioned a war in 1962 as a possible example of a situation in which the internet, and thus social media, does not come into existence. Whether that is a positive or negative is up to the individual. I personally don't see social media as nearly as world threatening as nuclear weapons. Nor do I, the point is that everyone could agree that social media is bad—but since the technology was possible, it was inevitable. It was an analogy is all. 28 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said: Rational concerns require rational responses. Having a rational concern =/= your response is automatically rational too. In response to Tsar Bomba, some people proposed a 1,000 megaton nuclear device. SAC regularly advocated nuking the entire Communist Bloc in the event of the slightest provocation. These people were not normal. The SAC model... demonstrably worked. It prevented a first strike. It's important to note that the US held "first strike" capability for a couple decades at least. We chose not to use it, since that sort of thing was not in our nature as a society. 31 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said: Japan's expansionism of the 1930s was a very different beast from the days of the Meiji Era, and was not inevitable either. The 30-40s was the direct result of the Meiji Restoration, IMO. Entirely connected. The pathological interservice issues between the IJA and IJN are interesting as well. The IJA absolutely wanted to grab as much of China as possible. The lack of bunker oil for the IJN was a proximal cause of starting the Pacific War (to grab the NEI oil fields). But I digress. 34 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said: That's not how flamethrowers came into existence. There was a rational need to overcome fortifications or masses of enemy troops in war, which led to the use of fire as a weapon. The initial German Flammenwerfer was designed in 1901, with a few more within some years, and the first units accepted by the German Army in 1911. They were not used in combat until 1915 I think, but they predated WW1. Someone decided it would be useful to throw fire at people (long before that there was "Greek fire" after all), and since it was possible to throw fire at people, it got built. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darthgently Posted July 29, 2023 Share Posted July 29, 2023 I learn so much here in the Science and Spaceflight forum from the excellent dialogues. Just throwing that out there as a thank you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted July 30, 2023 Share Posted July 30, 2023 (edited) In the nuclear bomb invention all HOW-NOT-TO are equal to HOW-TO. That's what makes it inevitable. *** Internet and computers are many times more complicated than a primitive nuke. They need invention, nuke doesn't. *** The flamethrowers were invented from the stupid countryside funs. Edited July 30, 2023 by kerbiloid Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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