Non-Nuclear

[merovingian_backup]

The Russian government just built and tested the biggest bomb ever.

It is very weird that this is not front page news. Or in mainstream American news at all.

I spoke with my parallel history twin, and he says that in his timeline, everyone is in fallout shelters now because of this. Of course, he's also got a terrible, terrible haircut and seems to think it's the best thing ever. And don't even get me started about the zeppelins. Why does every parallel timeline have so many zeppelins?

Comments

[zunger.livejournal.com]

It's not really that impressive a bomb. It's a big thermobaric gizmo, which basically sprays an aluminum-based explosive into a big cloud, and then lights it on fire. The explosion is sort of like what happens if you light up a big balloon of hydrogen; the detonation wave spreads almost instantly throughout the cloud, and then the whole thing makes a single big and really loud "bang!". Large explosion but it's very spread out, so it isn't very penetrating. And the bomb is bulky (weighs about 8 tons, needs modified bombers) and has an equivalent yield of 44T.

But since it doesn't really penetrate anything, it's no good against hardened targets; pretty much the only thing this is good for is bombing cities. So basically, tey have a new way of blowing up cities, that involves bulky devices that are hard to work with but sound really impressive on the news when they boast about The Biggest Non-Nuclear Bomb Ever.

A very Russian bit of PR.

Your friend in the parallel timeline is right to be more worried, though -- thermobaric explosions are absolute murder on lighter-than-air craft, especially if they get caught up in the explosive cloud itself. It could be that the Russians just borrowed this hardware from that timeline and thought it would be impressive-sounding over here.

Damned trans-universal arms dealers...