#Minor Spoiler# Mark IX explosive capability?

[waykins]

Does anyone have any facts about the explosive capability of the Naquadria bomb that they used in BeachHead, seeing how it can destroy everything in a hundred mile radius I theorize that is has to be somewhere in the gigaton range but that's just my head thinking

[bbal4163]

"Great. In that case, we have in our possession a Mark IX naquadria enhanced nuclear warhead, which was designed solely for the purpose of vaporizing Stargates and anything else in a one-hundred mile radius. If you attempt to disable this warhead, physically, electronically, or otherwise, it will result in an immediate detonation. Now, we have a number of these god-awful things at our disposal, and we will not hesitate to use them if necessary. If you do not disengage the Stargate within thirty of our"

[ray245]

the yield is somewhere between high gigaton to low teratons

[Three PhDs]

the yield is somewhere between high gigaton to low teratons

Teratons, are you serious?

[Giantevilhead]

Probably 10 gigaton, maybe less because the naquadah from the gate probably enhances the explosion.

[vonbismarck]

the yield is somewhere between high gigaton to low teratons

In "beachhead" Carter says that is a a multi-gigaton bomb so I don't think it would be in the teratons. Don't even really think that it would be in the high gigatons but no real number has been given (at least to my knowledge).

[Mister Oragahn]

Teratons, are you serious?

Yep, the expansion of the fireball can definitely support low teraton numbers, and that's with the shield possibly absorbing the energy and a whole deal of this said energy also gong through the stargate.
It's not out of question and doesn't necessarily contradict Carter, as gigaton level weapons have been described as multi-megaton.
As long as it's in the very low end of the superior ball park, they just prefer keeping the lower magnitude and add another zero.

[dosed150]

i thought it was 1.3 gigatons im sure it was mentioned

[helio9]

I would be very surprised if it was not in the range of 1 to 10 gigatons.

[Avatar28]

Me too. I thiink that people don't realize how truly godawful big that explosion would be. I refer you to this wikipedia page on the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated. It had "only" a 50 megaton yield.

The fireball was approximately 10 km high (was detonated at 4 km) and was seen 1000 km away and was hot enough to cause 3rd degree burns at 100 km. The mushroom cloud reached up to 60km high and 30-40km wide. For the fraction of a second the explosion too, the bomb produced about 1% of the total energy output of the sun (about 39 nanoseconds). Anything much larger would be fairly useless as it the mushroom cloud would literally push up to space and the weapon would radiate much of it's energy into space.

The blast radius scales with the yield via a cube root law. (in other words increasing the bomb's power by 8 times gives you a doubling of the blast radius.
(Incidentally, this sharp drop in yield is why you don't see many big bombs these days. Since we can place them more accurately, very seldom would a large multi-megaton explosion be needed. They were primarily designed for the days when bombs had to be delivered by bomber and weren't especially accurate and so you wanted to make sure you had the target covered.))

I'm not sure exactly how big the explosion was but I can throw this out there. Since the yield was given as multi-gigaton, we can try to get some extrapolation. We know the 50 megaton bomb had a fireball with a radius of probably around 6 km or so. I'm going to pull a couple of easy numbers to illustrate (not going to worry about proper precision and such, this is just back of the envelope type stuff).

50 MT = 6km radius fireball
3200 MT = 64 times larger = 4 times increase in fireball radius = 24 km radius fireball.
6250 MT = 125 times larger = 5 times increase in radius = 30 km radius (at this point the explosion would produce about 25% MORE energy than the sun for the length of the explosion, assuming the time scales are similar and they probably should be)
10,800 MT = 216 times larger = 6 times increase in radius = 36 km radius fireball.
And for those who thought it might be in the teraton range,
1,097,600 MT = 21952 times larger = 28 times increase in radius = 168 km radius fireball.

I'm sure you can see how the returns diminish and it's probably going to be hard to estimate the size with any accuracy from what we see, even assuming it to be self-consistent. But we can use that information to at least get a rough idea. And I'm pretty sure we can eliminate teraton range stuff since I doubt the fireball was THAT big.

[SmallTimePerson]

wow
the biggest nuclear explosive ever detonated was only 50 megatons. Any1 know how big the MOAB is?
EDIT
Found the answer to my question, I believe it is just under 10t, pretty small

[Avatar28]

Actually I guarantee you it's nowhere NEAR 10 megatons. More like 10 tons actually (being that it weighs 21,000 lbs or 10.5 tons and not all of it will be explosive but what is there is probably slightly stronger than TNT so we'll call it a wash at 10 tons). The smallest nuclear device ever created was the Davy Crockett recoiless rifle shell and it had a yield at the low end of 10 tons (.01 kilotons). The difference being that where the MOAB weighs 21,000 lbs, the Davy Crockett shell weighed 76 (and the warhead is just 51 lbs). (oh yeah, and there's the whole lethal radiation and extreme heat of the nuclear device too).

[ray245]

Mitchell said a hundred mile radius, which would mean that it is around a teraton or more. Also carter only said muti-gigaton, since we know that carter use 1200 megaton to describe the naquada tipped missile against apophis ships instead of 1.2 gigaton, we are safe to assume that it can be teratons

[Three PhDs]

Yep, the expansion of the fireball can definitely support low teraton numbers, and that's with the shield possibly absorbing the energy and a whole deal of this said energy also gong through the stargate.
It's not out of question and doesn't necessarily contradict Carter, as gigaton level weapons have been described as multi-megaton.
As long as it's in the very low end of the superior ball park, they just prefer keeping the lower magnitude and add another zero.

Heh, if they're into teratons... man, I wish they'd think for a bit before plucking figures these writers.

[Mister Oragahn]

Like often.
Now we just need to build battlecruisers entirely dedicated to act as missile platforms and have those missiles actually move fast enough to not be intercepted.
Small hyperspace jumps are possible with vessels the size of a F-302.
Just basically remove anything that is useless, put the enhanced charge, put big thrusters and the computer for the jump and voilà. That's probably a big missile, but for sure nothing is going to stop it reintegrating normal space inside spaceships anytime soon.

I'm already surprised that the writers used the idea of beaming nukes inside ships. Maybe they could think about the ultimate medium/short range missile now?