Salted bomb
A salted bomb is a
No intentionally salted bomb has ever been atmospherically tested, and as far as is publicly known, none has ever been built.
A salted bomb should not be confused with a "dirty bomb", which is an ordinary explosive bomb containing radioactive material which is spread over the area when the bomb explodes. A salted bomb is capable of megatons of explosive force, which can contaminate a far larger area with far more radioactive material than even the largest practicable dirty bomb.
Design
Salted versions of both
The radioactive isotope used for the fallout material would be a high-intensity gamma ray emitter, with a half-life long enough that it remains lethal for an extended period. It would also have to have a chemistry that causes it to return to earth as fallout, rather than stay in the atmosphere after being vaporized in the explosion. Another consideration is biological: radioactive isotopes of elements normally taken up by plants and animals as nutrition would pose a special threat to organisms that absorbed them, as their radiation would be delivered from within the body of the organism.
Radioactive isotopes that have been suggested for salted bombs include
A
In popular culture
- In Nevil Shute's novel On the Beach (1957), cobalt bombs are mentioned as the cause of the lethal radioactivity that is approaching Australia. The cobalt bomb was a symbol of man's hubris.[13]
- In San Quentin State Prisonsteals a canister of cobalt-60, thinking it contains drugs. He flees to Los Angeles to pawn it, not knowing it could kill him and possibly contaminate the city.
- In the dark comedy Dead Hand mechanism, by the Soviet Union as a 'doomsday device' nuclear deterrent: if the system detects any nuclear attack, the doomsday device will be automatically unleashed. With unfortunate timing, a deranged American general mutinies and orders an attack on the USSR before the Soviet secret device, already activated, could be unveiled to the world. One American bomber piloted by a hapless and unknowing crew gets through to their target; the Dead Hand mechanism works as designed and initiates a worldwide nuclear holocaust. In the film, the Soviet Ambassador says, "If you take, say, fifty H-bombs in the hundred megaton range and jacket them with Cobalt-Thorium G, when they are exploded they will produce a doomsday shroud. A lethal cloud of radioactivity which will encircle the earth for ninety-three years!"[14]
- In the James Bond film Goldfinger (1964), the title character informs Bond he intends to set off a "particularly dirty" atomic device using "cobalt and iodine"[15] in the U.S. Bullion Depository at Fort Knox as part of Operation Grand Slam, a scheme intended to contaminate the gold at Fort Knox to increase value of the gold he has been stockpiling.
- In Roger Zelazny's 1965 Hugo Award–winning novel This Immortal, Earth has suffered a nuclear war many decades ago and some areas still suffer high radiation levels from cobalt bombs, leading to drastic mutations and ecological changes.
- In the fourth act of the classic Star Trek episode "Obsession" (1967), Ensign Garrovick refers to 10,000 cobalt bombs not equaling the power of less than one ounce of antimatter.
- In Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) the main character, upon seeing that an underground mutant community worship a doomsday bomb, comments "They finally built one with a cobalt casing" in reference to a cobalt bomb that could wipe out the world. After astronauts Brent and Taylor are shot by an invading army of apes, Taylor's dying act is to detonate the doomsday bomb, obliterating all life on fortieth century Earth.
- In Tom Clancy's novel The Sum of All Fears (1991) it is noted that Israeli Air Force tactical nuclear bombs can optionally be fitted with cobalt jackets "to poison a landscape to all kinds of life for years to come".[16]
- In the video game Metro Exodus (2019), the player visits the Russian city of Novosibirsk which was hit with at least one cobalt warhead during a worldwide nuclear war in the year 2013, resulting in catastrophic levels of radiation, and is the most irradiated area visited in the three Metro games.
- In the video game Detroit: Become Human (2018), the player has the option of detonating an improvised cobalt bomb during certain endings of the game. The detonation of the bomb results in humans evacuating the now-irradiated city of Detroit and the area 50 miles around, though promising to retake it from the androids in the future. Depending on the player's actions, the city is left empty or the androids claim it for their own.
- In a two-part episode of the TV show The Bionic Woman, "Doomsday Is Tomorrow", a cobalt bomb, dubbed by its creator as "the most diabolical instrument of destruction ever conceived by man," is used as a trigger for a more powerful weapon that can render the world lifeless.
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e f Sublette, Carey (May 1, 1998). "Types of Nuclear Weapons – Cobalt Bombs and Other Salted Bombs". Nuclear Weapons Archive Frequently Asked Questions. Archived from the original on September 28, 2019. Retrieved January 7, 2020.
- ^ Sublette, Carey (August 23, 2007). "British Nuclear Testing". Nuclear Weapons Archive. Archived from the original on May 18, 2019. Retrieved January 7, 2020.
- PMID 21524834.
- PMID 22541991.
- ^ "Science: fy for Doomsday". Time. November 24, 1961. Archived from the original on March 14, 2016.
- .
- ^ .
- .
- ^ a b c "Science: fy for Doomsday". Time. November 24, 1961. Archived from the original on March 14, 2016.
- ISBN 9780684190112.
- ^ .
- .
- ^ Smith, P. D. (25 September 2008). "Doomsday Men: The Real Dr Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon". Penguin UK.
- ISBN 9781441149565.
- ^ "No Mr Bond, I don't know about anything radioactivity". Science by degrees. 2018-02-21. Retrieved 2019-06-11.
- ^ "Excerpt from The Sum of All Fears". Penguin Random House Canada. Retrieved 2019-06-11.