SPOILER: Go4 Discussions after AoS and IHA defeats

Don

I've hung off on this because I've posted it before elsewhere, but how do we know that whatever is below the Temple isn't the only way to switch OFF the Orbital Bombardment System? If they go and blow up the only computer with the access protocols and 'passwords' to stand the OBS down, say, then the situation could be truly messed up. Always a good idea to know what you are blowing up before you do it, don't you think?

Good point.

Randomiser wrote:Don

I've hung off on this because I've posted it before elsewhere, but how do we know that whatever is below the Temple isn't the only way to switch OFF the Orbital Bombardment System? If they go and blow up the only computer with the access protocols and 'passwords' to stand the OBS down, say, then the situation could be truly messed up. Always a good idea to know what you are blowing up before you do it, don't you think?

All the talk about shielding for a bomb uses lead to shield for gamma rays, but all fissionable material that I know of decays by alpha emission which can be shielded with a piece of paper.
The problems with the detection of electric detonation are solvable by using a small battery to supply the juice for the detonation and a mechanical timer to close the circuit. No circuit, no current flow so no EM field.

All that said, while doable, I do not believe that this is the way RFC will go. He has surprised me in the past, several times per book in fact.

n7axw wrote:Interesting post, Matt. How big do you think that Pei Kauyung's vest pocket nuke was? Now obviously you are not going to slip something the mass of a truck in strapped under some priest's cassock.

So how big does it have to be? We are not talking about something the size of the one that was dropped on Hiroshima. All we want to do is thoroughly trash the inside of the temple including the basement and we are working on the presumption that the inside of the temple is not nearly so strong as the shell.

Or would something other than a nuke work better? I'm no genius at this stuff. But it does seem to me that there are two constraints here. The first has to do with electricity. Electricity transmits magnetic waves along the wire carrying the juice, but that can in large measure be minimized by good shielding around the center wire carrying the juice. So a small current carried in coaxical cable would only transmit very weakly, perhaps weakly enough to get lost in the hash from the stuff the temple already has going. That at much seems straight forward, although I don't know how weak the current would need to be. But the better the shielding, the less gets transmitted for a sensor to pick up. Or, perhaps one avoids juice altogether and uses a spring wind up timer that releases a pin onto primer that explodes on impact which is how I was visualizing in my previous post.

The second issue you mentioned in your post. That of radiation from the nuclear material. But that brings us back to my original question...how big? Something the size of a pineapple enclosed in a lead encased box would seem doable, sealed up so that only the timer would be visible outside the box. Taking your figure of one half inch casing would make it a bit heavy, but probably not unmanageable. But then on the other hand, I'm not sure just how heavy our so called pineapple would be!

To conclude my musings, it is obvious that the only persons in the Safehold universe who could construct such a thing would be Nimue and Merlin. They would do it in the cave using materials that you and I have never heard of so all of this speculating is probably pretty much off the mark! Oh well, it was fun anyway!

Don

They are the size of a large rucksack, and weight between 50 and 100 pounds.

See - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitcase_nuke.

To put two incehes around that is going to result in a mass of a couple of hundred (at least) kg......

iranuke wrote:All the talk about shielding for a bomb uses lead to shield for gamma rays, but all fissionable material that I know of decays by alpha emission which can be shielded with a piece of paper.
The problems with the detection of electric detonation are solvable by using a small battery to supply the juice for the detonation and a mechanical timer to close the circuit. No circuit, no current flow so no EM field.

All that said, while doable, I do not believe that this is the way RFC will go. He has surprised me in the past, several times per book in fact.

G'Day iranuke,

You are right in that uranium decays by alpha particles, but if there has been any fissioning going on, then there will also be daughter products - and they decay by beta and gamma.

The beta can be stopped by a thin coating of plastic (which is what we use at work) - but the gamma requires a dense material (i.e. lead) to act as a sheild.

Randomiser wrote:Don

I've hung off on this because I've posted it before elsewhere, but how do we know that whatever is below the Temple isn't the only way to switch OFF the Orbital Bombardment System? If they go and blow up the only computer with the access protocols and 'passwords' to stand the OBS down, say, then the situation could be truly messed up. Always a good idea to know what you are blowing up before you do it, don't you think?

A very valid point. I admit that I was focused more on prempting the return of the archangels which at this point pretty much have to be AIs in some form, perhaps PICAs than upon the OBS. but let's consider the OBS for a bit.

It seems to me that there are at least two possibilities here, perhaps more. First the OBS with the exception of the defensive system operates only with a command from the temple. That seems a bit unlikely, but think about the introduction of steam power. That was in violation of the proscriptions. Remember Father Paityr's conversation with Howsmyn when he rationalized is way to an attestation. So they build the thing. Nothing happens. Why? Probably because the Temple computer issued no command.

The second possibility is that it opertes on some sort of automatic system that it trigured when some sort of threshhold is crossed. I firmly doubt that such a system would have been set up that couldn't be turned off by the system in the basement. But still, with this possibility it is on automatics, the qualifier being the question as to why it did not respond to Merlin's tests.

A third possibility is that the OBS might not be fully functional. Goodness knows computers aren't perfect and can be corrupted and a thousand years seems like a long time for one to operate without any glitches at all, even given the apparent functionality of the computers in Merlin's cave. SOMETHING could have gone wrong.

With my first possibility, the obvious solution is to blow the temple and prempt the archangels. Goodness knows, an AI programed by the likes of Langhorne could well use the OBS in some very unpleasant ways. That would be very dangerous. With the second possibility, Randomizer's very valid concern comes into play. Having the system on automatics with the control center destroyed could indeed be a very bad thing. But another equally bad question occurs to me. What happens when the Temple is over run and the good guys gain control? That also could awaken something with very unpleasant results.

So... I don't know. I find myself wondering if Owl couldn't infiltrate the temple computer and insert a corrupting element such as a worm to gum up the works. Or Maybe Merlin should try to find the threshhold by going back to those islands and building a rather obvious electrical power plant. Nothing happened with steam, maybe juice would turn out the same. I don't know.

Don

MWadwell wrote:

n7axw wrote:Interesting post, Matt. How big do you think that Pei Kauyung's vest pocket nuke was? Now obviously you are not going to slip something the mass of a truck in strapped under some priest's cassock.

So how big does it have to be? We are not talking about something the size of the one that was dropped on Hiroshima. All we want to do is thoroughly trash the inside of the temple including the basement and we are working on the presumption that the inside of the temple is not nearly so strong as the shell.

Or would something other than a nuke work better? I'm no genius at this stuff. But it does seem to me that there are two constraints here. The first has to do with electricity. Electricity transmits magnetic waves along the wire carrying the juice, but that can in large measure be minimized by good shielding around the center wire carrying the juice. So a small current carried in coaxical cable would only transmit very weakly, perhaps weakly enough to get lost in the hash from the stuff the temple already has going. That at much seems straight forward, although I don't know how weak the current would need to be. But the better the shielding, the less gets transmitted for a sensor to pick up. Or, perhaps one avoids juice altogether and uses a spring wind up timer that releases a pin onto primer that explodes on impact which is how I was visualizing in my previous post.

The second issue you mentioned in your post. That of radiation from the nuclear material. But that brings us back to my original question...how big? Something the size of a pineapple enclosed in a lead encased box would seem doable, sealed up so that only the timer would be visible outside the box. Taking your figure of one half inch casing would make it a bit heavy, but probably not unmanageable. But then on the other hand, I'm not sure just how heavy our so called pineapple would be!

To conclude my musings, it is obvious that the only persons in the Safehold universe who could construct such a thing would be Nimue and Merlin. They would do it in the cave using materials that you and I have never heard of so all of this speculating is probably pretty much off the mark! Oh well, it was fun anyway!

Don

They are the size of a large rucksack, and weight between 50 and 100 pounds.

See - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitcase_nuke.

To put two incehes around that is going to result in a mass of a couple of hundred (at least) kg......

Thanks, Matt for the link. That was an interesting summation of the subject.

Don

We know for a fact that they had vest pocket nuclear devices, because one was used to morally elevate Langhorne and company.

The design problem is also solved, namely all you need to do is change the fissionable and use 60 year old from now technology.

The atomic bullet for the 0.45 pistol. It fits easily in a vest pocket.

Pure Californium. You need to be sure you hit a hard target to compress the hollow. Getting the material is not currently possible, but this was a solved technical problem during the Eisenhower administration.

And the very localized fission suppressor ray keeps it from detonating too early.

phillies wrote:We know for a fact that they had vest pocket nuclear devices, because one was used to morally elevate Langhorne and company.

The design problem is also solved, namely all you need to do is change the fissionable and use 60 year old from now technology.

The atomic bullet for the 0.45 pistol. It fits easily in a vest pocket.

Pure Californium. You need to be sure you hit a hard target to compress the hollow. Getting the material is not currently possible, but this was a solved technical problem during the Eisenhower administration.

And the very localized fission suppressor ray keeps it from detonating too early.

G'Day phillies,

You've forgotten about the minimum critical mass requirement.

The smallest weapon around requires at least 5 kilograms - http://www.atomicarchive.com/Fission/Fission3.shtml and this is with a neutron reflector.

Without it, you are talking about doubling the size requirements. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass#Critical_mass_of_a_bare_sphere

So sorry, but there is no such thing as a "atomic bullet for the 0.45 pistol" - even with californicum.....

Good day Matt. You're quoting the critical mass for Uranium and Plutonium. Your source says so in so many words; see the last few sentences of your source. Your numbers are irrelevant to my remark.

The critical mass for Californium (element 96) is much much smaller that the critical mass for U or Pu, and for curium (element 98) is smaller yet.

You're also ignoring the text ev, namely that Pei *had* a vest pocket device, with no worry that anyone would notice it.

MWadwell wrote:

phillies wrote:We know for a fact that they had vest pocket nuclear devices, because one was used to morally elevate Langhorne and company.

The design problem is also solved, namely all you need to do is change the fissionable and use 60 year old from now technology.

The atomic bullet for the 0.45 pistol. It fits easily in a vest pocket.

Pure Californium. You need to be sure you hit a hard target to compress the hollow. Getting the material is not currently possible, but this was a solved technical problem during the Eisenhower administration.

And the very localized fission suppressor ray keeps it from detonating too early.

G'Day phillies,

You've forgotten about the minimum critical mass requirement.

The smallest weapon around requires at least 5 kilograms - http://www.atomicarchive.com/Fission/Fission3.shtml and this is with a neutron reflector.

Without it, you are talking about doubling the size requirements. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass#Critical_mass_of_a_bare_sphere

So sorry, but there is no such thing as a "atomic bullet for the 0.45 pistol" - even with californicum.....