Father of Neutron Bomb, “The Most Moral Weapon,” Dies
blogs.discovermagazine.com
blogs.discovermagazine.com
> Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev called the neutron bomb the
> ultimate capitalist weapon, built “to kill a man in such a way that his
> suit will not be stained with blood, in order to appropriate the suit.”
If I had a magic wand, I'd have all countries have military technology no more advanced than the Romans. I understand that there are situations that call for war. But when that time comes, the people should KNOW they are at war, and have to make the sacrifices in lives to engage in that war.
The neutron bomb makes it a bit too attractive to engage in and win a war from afar.
I think Cohen may have had the right idea in mind, though. Lots of people seem to think the idea of the neutron bomb is "we can kill all of them and then move into their houses!", but what was the last war the USA fought with the serious goal of attaining land? The Spanish-American war? I think Cohen honestly believed that in a war it would be better to just quickly kill all the people who would inevitably die anyway, hopefully quickly ending the war. Then the survivors could get on with rebuilding, and if their infrastructure required less rebuilding, well, even better. Obviously not waging a nuclear war at all was the best option, but who in the 1960's really thought we'd make it to 2010 without a nuclear exchange?
One thing Cohen probably didn't consider in his "moral weapon" argument, although in hindsight it's another bonus, is that a nuclear war waged through low-yield weapons would cause less dust to be kicked up and smaller fires, ultimately preventing the "nuclear winter" that others predict from a full-scale nuclear war. So if the USA and USSR blew themselves up, nations elsewhere (esp. southern hemisphere nations) would experience significantly less environmental damage.
Contrasting this, some weapons are intended to be detonated at an angle & closer to ground level. These combine to increase the physical effects of the explosive shockwave: overturning armored vehicles, weakening defensive structures, destroying rail & roadways, and knocking down cover.
If you mean that the resulting shockwave will be closer to vertical when it reaches given distance from ground zero, then that's just a function of geometry/height, not of any 'angle' during the detonation.
Back in the day, lots of smart guys were working on ways to make nuclear explosions do interesting things. One of these things was to shape the explosion into something useful. Check out how they were doing it for project Orion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsi...
So yeah, that's what he meant.
Sorry for the confusion.
"Although neutron bombs are commonly believed to "leave the infrastructure intact", current designs have explosive yields in the kiloton range,[13] the detonation of which would cause heavy destruction through blast and heat effects."
I agree the intention of the weapon is to leave infrastructure intact... I just don't think that was ever really achieved.
Perhaps I didn't state my point appropriately, but my argument was more directed at statements like the one by Kruschev that kwantam quoted.
That aside, the point of the bomb was not simply to keep land livable for the victors to homestead, but to preserve the infrastructure during a conflict, including large numbers of the civil population not located directly on top of an unfortunately tactical spot. Gotta have someone left to work those still standing oil rigs...
Or, in other words, you have a mental model of the purposes of the war which predicts certain actions, and then, when that model is falsified by virtue of your predictions failing, it's not that your model is wrong, it's that the leaders who were successful up to that point (despite, quite likely, your model not permitting that either) suddenly becoming stupid.
You've gone unfalsifiable.
(I'm calling this out because it's a pretty popular position. I'm not claiming the stated ends are necessarily exactly the true ends, either, but, actions speak louder than words. Putative motivations need to explain what actually happened, not what could have happened in a parallel universe.)
You may considering starting with the history of Europe, especially around the time of the domination of the Church. Most people are pretty dispassionate about it now, so we can actually have decent discussions without too much interference from modern political fads, we have a lot of information about it, and it provides clear examples of both the religious and secular authorities claiming their actions are about one thing (the will of God or the various rights of the secular authorities) when in fact the correct way to understand the situation is as a power struggle between the two with almost no real ethical concerns about their stated goals from either side. Without that understanding the period makes no sense and I can see why you'd claim history is some sort of weird nonsensical mess, but it really isn't that complicated, just immensely full of details. Actions, actions, actions.
To make any useful sense of history, or politics, or nearly any "soft" process, humans apply a variety of heuristics, some based on experience, and others on evolution, that frankly no one really understands. At least in the sense of a testable or prediction making model.
If someone makes a statement, or tells me a story, I have to examine the context and the past narrative of events in order to make a judgement about its veracity. The details of how that judgement come to pass are as unknown as the nature of natural language, and I suspect they are related.
In other words, my process doesn't get "bad" results, it gets no results. But I do get a heuristic that is somehow useful. Sometimes. Trying to argue about events like this, outside of the limited terms of those heuristics is pointless. How many angels _can_ dance on the head of a pin.
Instead, as in a courtroom drama (another story!), we look for means, motive, and opportunity. And then like any good jury, we apply our various and variable heuristics and come up with our own story.
Which is a guess.
Whether or not you believe the story I told, within the context of rather different discussion, is irrelevant, just as how you feel about the innocence of today's murder de jour is irrelevant. Unless you are on the jury. And the jury of history on this isn't born yet. Instead we are Rashomon like witnesses to contemporary events.
And speaking of irrelevant, this discussion has strayed from from its roots. While it's been fun, I'm done. Good day...
From the sounds of it they must be expensive and difficult to maintain though due to the half life of tritium (12 years) so hopefully there aren't many around.
I don't see how they can ever be called a moral weapon, if for this reason alone (wikipedia):
One significant drawback of the weapon is that not all targeted troops will die or be incapacitated immediately. After a brief bout of nausea, many of those hit with about 5–50 Sv of radiation will experience a temporary recovery (the latent or "walking ghost phase") lasting days to weeks.
My understanding was that the high-energy neutrons interacted with the hydrogen nuclei (singular protons) in the body, due to the extremely similar mass; conversely, ionising radiation, well, ionises molecules, that is to say, interacts with the electrons.
(moral weapon my ass)
The point of the article was that, from a tactical viewpoint, such a weapon could be as dangerous to the user as the target.
Of course if your use case is simply to clear out a bunch of civilians from their land of milk and honey and move in, then, well sure. YMMV. Cows and bees weren't immune to neutrons that last time I checked.
As to the morality of the weapon, well, let's just say that I'm glad that, for now, it doesn't seem to have many advocates.
Not really.
Not for the middle east anyway.
Although I see your point about having nuclear weapons resulting in less wars. The USA and USSR never actually got in a direct war.
OTOH, if just one reckless leader decides to use nukes, just for once, it will probably start an endless nuclear war.
It's a double edged sword.
Wonder what would happen if every country in the middle east had them, or say, major countries (Turkey, and some Arab country).
http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hharchive/Show-33---(BLITZ...
An interesting look at "Belgium should not be a country" meaning, pre-1950's, Belgium would be snapped up by an expanding imperialistic country.
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/demowar.htm Lists of Democracies going to war..though I would differentiate this between "capitalistic" countries and war.
Points and counter-points: http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/205/01/20060806nb_cheap_wars_tikk...
Economic expansion built upon cheap resources for the industries of large powers and obedient world markets. I.e in war, coups, protectorates, old-style and new-style colonization.
And, when everything else fails, war between major powers themselves.
The same fallacies ("economic expansion will replace war") were uttered in late 19th century, we saw how that turned out. Btw, the market was no less global then.
Not by a wide margin. The US for example is at war every single year of its existence. Now, it might be peaceful in Chicago or Pensacola, but the same was true for those living in Rome when the romans wages wars worldwide.
From an evidence-based standpoint, guns, bows and the like make it far more attractive.
I'd also point out that civilization with Roman-era technology is impossible without slavery on a massive scale, slavery that must be fueled by war.
But the plus side is significant. An agrarian population is a population that can be cowed by force. History is clear on this. When the bulk of the population are tied to farms they can be easily dominated by any militant group with weapons and a will to subjugate.
Keep in mind, the horrific practices of, say, the Nazis or the Fascists or the Stalinists or the Maoists were de rigueur in ancient times. This is not something I want to return to, no matter how imperfect modern times are.
ethical stupidity = (damage) x (probability of usage)
regular nukes: (ludicrous damage) x (even in the event of a tank invasion of Europe only an idiot would think this was a good idea)
neutron: (a little less ludicrous damage) x (somebody will do it)
The reason the "better dead than red" crowd thought they were a great idea was because they thought using regular nukes was a fine idea too.
The point of the neutron bomb - which actually would do quite a lot of damage to a city (it's still a Hiroshima size nuke) - is to kill tanks. Tanks are inherently rather bang poof,so to destroy an army of 10,000s Russian tanks spread across France and Germany you have to drop rather a lot of large thermonuclear weapons - which makes rather a mess - because anybody in a tank a couple of miles from the blast of a small nuke isn't going to care.
The problem with reducing your allies' country to a radioactive sheet of glass is that it's rather hard to sell politically, which means they are likely to either surrender or nuke you in retaliation or - in the case of France - both.
The idea of the neutron bomb was that you could use a relatively small nuke and kill tank crews 10miles away while making considerably less mess, thus persuading the Russians you might do it, thus suggesting to them that a quick Blitzkreig attack wouldn't go succeed.
The plan was that they sweep into Germany in overwelming tank force, your only option is to drop serious megatonnage on them to try and melt all the tanks. They assume you don't want to totally destroy western europe and kill 100million people.
The neutron bomb allows you to (in theory) destroy large numbers of their tanks without totally devastating your allies. So you are more likely to use it - and it still keeps things tactical rather than strategic. They are not going to nuke New York because you used a tactical device on their army.
The Russian response was to wrap hydrogen rich armour (aka diesel fuel) around their tank crew spaces which would provide enough sheilding that you are back to having to use silly amounts of megatonnage to achieve anything.
I surely hope that "the most moral weapon" is an ironic joke.
When neutrons scatter off iron they bounce. It is a random walk, but they keep up their speed. Tank armour is mostly iron. It isn't much good against neutrons, even though it is great against the blast and heat of ordinary nuclear weapons.
The obvious tactic is to have your infantry cower in muddy trenches while your neutron bombs inflict disproportionate casualties on invading enemy tanks. That is where neutron bombs fitted into the cold war.
Compared to Napoleonic-era wars, probably. But if you go back to the ancients, you'll find you're sparing the women and children in the enemy cities only so you can sell them as slaves after you've defeated the men in battle.