Armageddon meaning; conclusive battle between the forces of good and evil.
As young soldier with the Royal Engineers
during are basic training we spent a week involved and learning about biological and nuclear warfare.
On exercise we had to dig a deep two man trench and place what was called a kip sheet( simple water proof rectangular sheet) over the top and back fill it with earth.
We wore “all in one” biological nuclear carbon suits and had our gas masks always at the ready.
Two mess tins banged together and shouting out of “Gas Gas Gas” was the warning to put you gas masks on and immediately get into your nuclear protected trenches. How effected these would of been with a tactical nuclear explosion above you, “god only knows”?
The utter devastation of the two Japanese cities at end of world war 2 was the Armageddon.
How and why did the first nuclear weapons programme begin? The agencies leading up to the Manhattan Project were first formed in 1939 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, after U.S. intelligence operatives reported that scientists working for Adolf Hitler were already working on a nuclear weapon.
At first, Roosevelt set up the Advisory Committee on Uranium, a team of scientists and military officials tasked with researching uranium’s potential role as a weapon.
Based on the committee’s findings, the U.S. government started funding research by Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard at Columbia University, which was focused on radioactive isotope separation (also known as uranium enrichment) and nuclear chain reactions.
The Advisory Committee on Uranium’s name was changed in 1940 to the National Defense Research Committee, before finally being renamed the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) in 1941 and adding Fermi to its list of members.
Corps of Engineers joined the OSRD in 1942 with President Roosevelt’s approval, and the project officially morphed into a military initiative, with scientists serving in a supporting role.
The OSRD formed the Manhattan Engineer District in 1942, and based it in the New York City borough of the same name. U.S. Army Colonel Leslie R. Groves was appointed to lead the project.
Fermi and Szilard were still engaged in research on nuclear chain reactions, the process by which atoms separate and interact, now at the University of Chicago, and successfully enriching uranium to produce uranium-235.
Meanwhile, scientists like Glenn Seaborg were producing microscopic samples of pure plutonium, and Canadian government and military officials were working on nuclear research at several sites in Canada.
On December 28, 1942, President Roosevelt authorized the formation of the Manhattan Project to combine these various research efforts with the goal of weaponizing nuclear energy.
Facilities were set up in remote locations in New Mexico, Tennessee and Washington, as well as sites in Canada, for this research and related atomic tests to be performed.
Theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was already working on the concept of nuclear fission (along with Edward Teller and others) when he was named director of the Los Alamos Laboratory in northern New Mexico in 1943.
Los Alamos Laboratory—the creation of which was known as Project Y—was formally established on January 1, 1943. The complex is where the first Manhattan Project bombs were built and tested.
On July 16, 1945, in a remote desert location near Alamogordo, New Mexico, the first atomic bomb was successfully detonated—the Trinity Test—creating an enormous mushroom cloud some 40,000 feet high and ushering in the Atomic Age.
Scientists working under Oppenheimer had developed two distinct types of bombs: a uranium-based design called “the Little Boy” and a plutonium-based weapon called “the Fat Man.” With both designs in the works at Los Alamos, they became an important part of U.S. strategy aimed at bringing an end to World War II.
Meanwhile, the military leaders of the Manhattan Project had identified Hiroshima, Japan, as an ideal target for an atomic bomb, given its size and the fact that there were no known American prisoners of war in the area.
A forceful demonstration of the technology developed in New Mexico was deemed necessary to encourage the Japanese to surrender.
With no surrender agreement in place, on August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay bomber plane dropped the as-yet untested “Little Boy” bomb some 1,900 feet above Hiroshima, causing unprecedented destruction and death over an area of five square miles.
Three days later, with still no surrender declared, on August 9th, the “Fat Man” bomb was dropped over Nagasaki, site of a torpedo-building plant, destroying more than three square miles of the city.
The two bombs combined killed more than 100,000 people and leveled the two Japanese cities to the ground.
The Japanese informed Washington, which following Roosevelt’s death was under the new leadership President Harry Truman, of their intention to surrender on August 10th, and formally surrendered on August 14, 1945.
After the surrender of the Japanese nation this started the nuclear testing and arms race.
The nuclear arms race was perhaps the most alarming feature of the Cold War competition between the United States and Soviet Union. Over the decades, the two sides signed various arms control agreements as a means to manage their rivalry and limit the risk of nuclear war.
However, deep fissures have reemerged in the U.S.-Russia relationship in recent years, raising once again the specter of a nuclear arms race.
Today we still have the remnants of the nuclear arms race with a number of nuclear armed nations who have various ballistic and tactical nuclear weapons in their armouries.
Who did the nuclear arms race escalate between US and the old Soviet Union? Two opposing ideologies of democratically elected leaders or authoritarian dictatorships like the Federation states of Russia.
Ukraine under an earlier nuclear treaty removed nuclear weapons from its arsenal. Now Russia and Ukraine are at war and Russia’s losing what now if Russia was beaten on the battle field will Putin revert to tactical nuclear weapons?
What are tactical nuclear weapons anyway? Tactical nuclear weapons, sometimes called battlefield or nonstrategic nuclear weapons, were designed to be used on the battlefield – for example, to counter overwhelming conventional forces like large formations of infantry and armor.
They are smaller than strategic nuclear weapons like the warheads carried on intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Tactical nuclear weapons vary in yields from fractions of 1 kiloton to about 50 kilotons, compared with strategic nuclear weapons, which have yields that range from about 100 kilotons to over a megaton, though much more powerful warheads were developed during the Cold War
For reference, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 15 kilotons, so some tactical nuclear weapons are capable of causing widespread destruction.
Russia has retained more tactical nuclear weapons, estimated to be around 2,000, and relied more heavily on them in its nuclear strategy than the U.S. has, mostly due to Russia’s less advanced conventional weaponry and capabilities.
Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons can be deployed by ships, planes and ground forces. Most are deployed on air-to-surface missiles, short-range ballistic missiles, gravity bombs and depth charges delivered by medium-range and tactical bombers, or naval anti-ship and anti-submarine torpedoes. These missiles are mostly held in reserve in central depots in Russia.
Tactical nuclear weapons are substantially more destructive than their conventional counterparts even at the same explosive energy. Nuclear explosions are more powerful by factors of 10 million to 100 million than chemical explosions, and leave deadly radiation fallout that would contaminate air, soil, water and food supplies, similar to the disastrous Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown in 1986.
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736?i=1000581902064
What Are Tactical Nuclear Weapons
What would happen during a tactical nuclear bomb explosion, including the three stages of ignition, blast and radioactive fallout – and how one might be able to survive this.
Ignition
You see a sudden flash in the sky, as bright as (or even brighter than) the sun. You quickly turn your face away and run for cover.
The brightness suddenly vanishes, but returns again a short while later and continues – the distinctive double flash caused by competition between the fireball and shock wave.
It gets incredibly hot and bright, and you shield your eyes to avoid retina burns.
The intense thermal radiation also causes skin burns, possibly through your clothing. Wearing pale-coloured clothing or being indoors will help.
You’ve also received substantial doses of invisible nuclear radiation: gamma rays, X-rays and neutrons. You find cover to shield the worst of the heat and radiation.
The blast wave
Next will come the blast wave. This consists of an overpressure shock wave followed by an outward blast wind, often with reverse winds returning to ground zero.
This will destroy or damage all built structures within a certain radius from the epicentre, depending on the yield and height of the burst.
For example, a 15 kiloton bomb would have a fireball radius of about 100 metres and cause complete destruction up to 1.6 kilometres around the epicentre.
A one kiloton bomb – similar to the 2020 ammonium nitrate explosion in the Lebanese capital Beirut – would have a fireball radius of about 50 metres, with severe damage to about 400 metres.
The shock wave travels faster than the speed of sound (about 343 metres per second). So if you’re one kilometre away from the epicentre, you have less than three seconds to find cover. If you’re five kilometres away, you have less than 15 seconds.
You’ll need to shield yourself from the thermal and nuclear radiation, as you could die if exposed. However, you must find somewhere safe – you don’t want to be crushed in a building destroyed by the blast wave.
Get indoors, and preferably into a reinforced bunker or basement.
If you’re in a brick or concrete house with no basement, find a strong part of the building. This would be a small bathroom at ground level, or a laundry with brick walls.
The incoming shock wave will reflect off the internal walls, superimposing with the original to double the pressure.
Avoid the explosion side of the building and make sure to lie down rather than stand.
If there is no reinforced room, you can lie under a sturdy table or next to (not under) a bed or sofa. You may be crushed under a bed or sofa if a concrete slab crashes down.
Keep away from doors, tall furniture and windows, as they will probably shatter. If the walls come down, you’ll have a chance of surviving in a pocket in the rubble.
If you’re in an apartment building, run to the fire staircase in the structural core of the building.
Avoid timber, fibre cement or prefabricated structures which these probably won’t survive. And open your jaw as the blast comes through, so your eardrums get the pressure wave on both sides.
Radioactive fallout
The third stage is the fallout: a cloud of toxic radioactive particles from the bomb will be uplifted during the blast and deposited by the wind, contaminating everything in its path.
This will continue for hours after the explosion, or possibly days.
In comparable British-Australian bomb tests at Maralinga, the fallout was clearly preserved in the desert along one kilometre-wide tracks, extending 5–25 kilometres out from ground zero.
You must protect yourself from the fallout or you’ll have a short life.
If you’re in a stable structure such as a basement or fire staircase, you can shelter in place for a few days, if necessary. If your building is destroyed, you’ll need to move to a nearby intact structure.
Block all the doors, windows and air gaps. You can drink water from intact pipes and eat from sealed cans.
For outdoor movement, any PPE available should be used – especially a P2 mask, or even a dust mask. While tactical nukes are designed to destroy personnel or infrastructure, they still allow troop movement under cover of the blast.
The radiological hazard is significant, but should be survivable.
A radiological weapon, on the other hand, will deliberately increase the radiation dose to the point of it being lethal.
Once you’ve found shelter, you’ll need to decontaminate. This will require a thorough scrub of the skin, nails and hair, and a change into clean clothing. But any severe burns should be tended to first.
Hopefully by now the national authorities will have stepped in for rescue and medical treatment.
It’s a terrible indictment on man when in 2022 after the first atomic nuclear weapons were used in Japan nearly 70 years ago we’re in the process of seriously realising that nuclear weapons might be used again between the east and the west. Terrible thought.
In reality what are nuclear arsenals for? In it’s most simplest terms the club of prehistoric man. The bigger the club the bigger the threat it’s real and its perceived threat.
It’s a big blunt instrument to smash your head in bang! But we all remember the biblical tale of David and Goliath. The Phoenicians of the Mediterranean used the slingers of the Balearic Islands as deadly ballistic shooters. Like a sniper laid up and hidden picking off the enemy one buy one.
How did third world country such as Vietnam beat both the French western colonial power and like wise a sophisticated technically superior occupiers as the American military.
The Vietnamese wanted rid of occupiers of their lands the Vietnamese would carry on until the last man died. The American’s were in a strange land of hostile peoples who hated them and their military machine and financial corruption.
Ukrainians want rid of the Russian occupying forces they have the “bit between the teeth”. Meaning; to start doing something in a very determined way. The Russians will lose this war! Nuclear weapons or not. It’s the big club and the parable of David & Goliath!