Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related What if the military really had detonated nukes for Nightfall?

Just wondering what bad things might have happened if the military had used nukes in an attempt to deal with Nightfall. In my admittedly small knowledge, here are some things that might have happened:

1) Fallout - would this spread all over the Northern Hemisphere as they said on the show? Wouldn't that depend on the altitude at which the bomb was detonated?

2) Electromagnetic pulse - wouldn't the bomb explosion take out communications satellites? And, since Nan just wrote a fic about Luthor's evil plans involving multiple EMP's (I've forgotten the name of the fic, darn it, but she posted it not too long ago), wouldn't the EMP damage just about everything electronic on the Earth's surface, too?

3) Atmospheric effects - don't radio waves bounce off the atmosphere? Would a nuke going off in the upper atmosphere cause turbulence and mess up the bounce-off layer? (And yes, I am totally ignorant of the fine points of radio reception and transmission, so if anyone can correct my misconceptions, please do so.)

4) If people were looking at the blast when it happened, wouldn't they go blind? It happened at Hiroshima.

I guess that a lot of effects might be attenuated by distance, but isn't there a problem with control of the missile when it gets out of Earth orbit and far away?

What else might happen?

Oh, and another question, if Superman was flying to stop Asgard, how far away from the explosion would he have to have been to not be radioactive? And/Or a danger to his friends at the Planet?

I'm not an expert but I am a science freak, so please take this with a grain of salt.

1. Fallout—The bomb could kick up contaminated debris from the asteroid that could be spread over any amount of the Earth, it would depend on how far away the bomb went off and how near the asteroid’s path came. The debris would be spreading out in a cone shape and more would fall the longer Earth was within the cone.

2. EMP—There wouldn’t be much purpose in using an EMP type bomb on Nightfall unless it had a higher tonnage yield. IIRC there’s a difference if the bomb is within the atmosphere or not. Also, there is an inverse square relationship between distance from the explosion and the amount of energy received. That is, twice the distance is 1/(2*2) = 1/4th the energy, three times is 1/9th and so on. It doesn’t take a huge distance to make a huge difference in the effect. In the dark you can read using a candle close up but not 10 feet away—same effect.

3. Nukes do disrupt radio transmissions and the ionosphere.

Look up “Operation Dominic”, HANE (High Altitude Nuclear Explosion) and “Starfish Prime” about the H-bomb set off 250 miles up in 1962. There are really good descriptions of what these things can do out there. I’m amazed we survived.

4. From space I don’t think blindness would be a problem unless you were looking at it through a telescope or binoculars due to the inverse square thing. The Hiroshima people were much, much closer than anything you would set off for Nightfall.

Actually, control of the missile gets easier once you’re out of the atmosphere since there’s nothing to interfere. Out past the air, gravity is the only thing to worry about and it’s relatively easy to calculate. You could still have a malfunction if you needed one for the story. Hey, we lost a Mars probe because someone didn’t convert pounds to kilograms!

Hope this helps,

1) The fallout should cause the kind of deaths that the above ground tests did in the 50s-60s. Maybe a dozen or so from cancer over the next forty years.

2) A large EMP pulse is caused when the bomb goes off just outside the atmosphere, Starfish was 250 miles up. It is the interaction as the blast goes from space to atmosphere that causes a large pulse. To deflect the asteroid you need to be a lot farther out. I forget if they gave a distance in the episode but a realistic one would be millions of miles away, a semibelievable is 100s of thousands. Several hundred miles is hitting the brakes while moving at 100 miles an hour when 10 feet from a wall.

3) and 4) Same scale problem, if it close enough to be a problem it is useless. I you were looking at the right spot you'd see a bright flash.

How many knew that the Reeve Superman series had a episode called Panic in the Sky where he tried to stop a asteroid and gave himself amnesia?

Interesting! - thanks for that link.

c.

The most important variable in all this is distance. How far away would the nuclear intercept take place?

For an intercept to be effective, I would think it would have to be on the order of 1/2 the distance to the moon or greater to achieve any real chance to introduce a deflection large enough to do any good.

If we assume that a nuclear intercept took place at that distance or greater, then most of the issues here would be negligible.

1. Radiation: If the initial explosion were >100,000 miles above the atmosphere, then there would be no measurable effect from the initial release. Then, anything that did reach Earth would be so dispersed as to be harmless. The only real potential for danger would be from any piece of the asteroid that reached the ground as a meteorite. I guess it is possible that one or more of these meteorites could be highly radioactive, but people could be warned away. So I don't see this as being much of a real issue.

2. EMP: The effect decreases by the square of the distance. It is a non-issue for any realistic intercept distance.

3. Atmospheric effects: Again, not if the intercept is at a realistic distance.

4. Bright flash effects: Well, brightness follows the same rule as EMP and decreases by the square of the distance. I haven't calculated the intensity but I doubt that there would be a problem.

Anyway, I guess it's clear that in my judgment none of these is a valid reason for not using a nuclear intercept. The real problems are:
1. How will the asteroid react to the explosion? Will it deflect or break up?
2. Can you deliver enough energy to do any good. The directional energy involved in an multi-mile wide asteroid is far, FAR greater than a nuclear weapon.
3. Can you get the weapon there? As I said, the intercept distance must be large enough so that the energy applied can do some good. This is a very solvable problem if there is enough time.

Anyway, just some musings from someone that gave a LOT of thought to this issue a few years ago.

Bob

Fairly recent studies have shown that many asteroids are not solid but are rubble. A nuke will break them up not alter the course the way it would a solid object.

To move a large asteroid enough to miss Earth with a nuke you need to do it months or years before it hit when a small change means that the course by the time it reaches Earth has changed a lot.

Hollywood so often gets the scale of things wrong.

Speaking of wrong scales, in the show we first become aware of the asteroid because it passes between the Earth and the Sun, thus causing an eclipse over Metropolis. Given that the asteroid is presumably much smaller than the moon, wouldn't it have to be awfully close to Earth to cause an eclipse?

A second question: what kind of damage could an asteroid do short of an extinction-level event? Would it do more damage in one piece or as several smaller pieces? How might civilization be disrupted (or not)? IOW, if you wanted to disrupt civilization temporarily (a matter or months) but not irreparably, could you feasibly use an asteroid as the plot means to do so?

And it was well thought out! I thoroughly enjoyed Bob's "When The Sky Falls" which can be found on the Archive. No fuzzy science here!

Speaking of which. Bob are you still planning on a sequel to that?

I am. I've actually started the sequel three different times. Unfortunately I've also gotten stuck three different times. It doesn't help that I haven't been on such good terms with my muse lately.

But I think it may be time to go looking for him again.

Bob

Stopping Armageddon shows some of the ideas scientists are exploring to avoid a meteor impact.

If you don't find him we'll send an army of point stick guys to hunt him up.