Greatest Misconception 2: Nukes can destroy Earth

False! Our total nuclear arsenal is not capable of destroying the planet. We'd be lucky if they can destroy an asteroid in fact. Maybe the intention is that nukes can destroy humanity or all life on the planet, which is entirely possible, but the giant chunk of rock we call Earth will endure long after we are all dead.

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[TheDzOasis]

you dont no shit you dont go behind countries and count how may nuclear bombs they got you facts are wrong there over 60000 warheads in the world as well as hydrogen bombs as well

[EnigmaHood]

@TheDzOasis No you stupid idiot. Even estimates were GENEROUS and assumed every single one had a 50 megaton yield, which they do not even come close to. Even then, it would not be close to being enough to blow up the planet. You are an idiot.

[hzuiel]

military armaments these days are different than they used to be. A lot of the force of an explosion goes out in all directions, off of the hard surface it strikes. That's why they have things like shaped charges, high velocity depleted uranium sabots, bunker busters that penetrate through solid material so far BEFORE they detonate. If our goal was to blow up the planet, maybe, just maybe, the results would be different if we dug holes around the planet and buried all our nukes.

[EnigmaHood]

@hzuiel No, it's still not enough, not even close. To blow apart the planet you need 25,000,000,000,000 tonnes of antimatter, which has to be annihilated (completely) with an equal amount of normal matter.

[unclefixer]

NO, nuclear weapons do not have the power to physical destroy the earth, but can wipe out all life and make earth poisonous. So by destroying the world, they mean the civilization and all life, not the actual planet. Now the earth will eventually be destroyed by nuclear fire, the sun will go super nova and earth will be gone, when it blows.

[EnigmaHood]

@FeelingFeline Then why are you watching them

[hzuiel]

I didn't know it was a misconception that our nukes could physically blow the earth up. I've only ever heard people fret about us annihilating ourselves, which we could. I couldn't begin to claim I know all the physics behind it, but something to consider however is the way the force of a conventional nuke is delivered. They explode in midair, and the force comes down and spreads out, to wipe out people at the surface. This doesn't impart much force to the surface of the earth. This is why

[busletic]

@unclefixer Ehmm... sorry, but I need to correct you a little bit. Our Sun is not big enough to explode in to supernova. It will swell and engulf and destroy Mercury and Venus (red giant stage) but only scorch the Earth but it will not destroy it completely. Later it will blow most of outer layers in to space and create planetary nebula and become whitw dwarf, just to clear things. No intention of insulting your intelligence.

[EnigmaHood]

So if you take a 1 gram mass and compress it into a black hole it will then almost immediately decay, and this manifests as an explosion that is equal to a 24 kiloton nuclear explosion. So now on to your last question, is this plausible? Yes, it's certainly plausible, but it's not practical with current technology. We have a hard enough time compressing fusion fuel enough to allow it to fuse, compression into a black hole would require magnitudes more energy.

[EnigmaHood]

@Xwannagod That's not quite correct. Take any mass and compress it enough, and eventually it will turn into a black hole. However due to hawking radiation, it will evaporate into gamma rays. The smaller the black hole, the faster it will evaporate, for example a 228ton mass will evaporate in 1 second. Now this mass can be anything, it doesn't have to be fissionable, it could be cat shit for all it mattered. So when it evaporates, it releases its mass equivalent in gamma rays....

[Xwannagod]

supernova to form. Supernova, if its mass is large enough, could possibly become a "black hole". Many believe this weapon is possible.  Ignoring the impracticalities of making a weapon as such with enough mass. What is your opinion on if this would be plausible? (Supernova point blank, and black hole) {stupid letter limits!}

[Xwannagod]

hmmm... maybe a Novabomb could (extremely low probability though) for any of you jacknobs out there that don't know what a novabomb is, let me explain. The nova bomb is a (theorized) massive nuclear weapon. It is multiple smaller nuclear warheads (roughly the size of, if not greater than, the Tzar Bomba) that suround a much larger "stockpile" of fissionable material. The surroundin nukes explode similtaniously crushing the stockpile into a super-dense, err nuke. Causing a ...