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points by lazide 6 hours ago | 0 comments

It was also a failure of imagination. A ship sized tsar bomba at the time would still be quite interesting - armor the ship like a Iowa class (or more), and give it an automated navigator (very doable at the time, plus or minus a mile or two), and it’s a war ender.

[–] gonzalohm 6 hours ago

And sail the ship into Berlin?

[–] lazide 6 hours ago

Wait until the wind is right, add some of the right contaminants, and you wouldn’t need to do so to poison all of Germany for at least a generation.

Also, Tokyo Bay.

For the Axis powers, it would be an even easier sell of course.

At least if any of them could believe - or even imagine - that it actually could exist or be as devastating as it was of course. And frankly, unless you saw the footage of an actual Tsar Bomba, how could anyone?

[–] defrost 6 hours ago

Footage of the actual Tsar Bomba has no scale, detonating as it did high up in the atmosphere - for anyone watching it might have been a really big or really small explosion.

For the first bomb ever made to immediately jump to Tsar Bomba size, or for it to utilise an understanding of fallout and contaminants that didn't exist prior to the Castle Bravo tests seems ... unlikely.