Nuclear weapons to become illegal

[goodoldboy]

I think you’re right.

We’re clearly poised at the edge of the stupid event horizon

He's from Brighton...

 

[gaijin]

Yes, that's exactly the kind of approach the Russians will use. No high-tech stuff - just apply elementary principles. Such as, for example, digging up lots of dirt with a shovel, and piling it up on one side of the concrete sliding lid of the silo tube. This will jam up the sliding lid, and stop it opening properly. Thereby preventing a missile launch.

Up until this point I thought that you were being serious. Dim witted, a touch misguided, but serious. Now I realise that this is just a comedy sock.

 

[kalliste]

Missile silos are opened with a powerful explosion, the silo cover will be thrown hundreds of yards. You would not block the opening by parking a truck on top or a pile of dirt. They were designed to still function in spite of a nearby nuclear detonation which indeed might cover them with tons of rubble. Towards the end of this documentary the guy is at a silo site and it's explained to him:

The Man Who Saved the World (2014) - IMDb

Directed by Peter Anthony. With Stanislav Petrov, Kevin Costner, Sergey Shnyryov, Nataliya Vdovina. Retired Soviet Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov, who saved the world from WW3, talks about his life as retiree and shares his opinions on the Cold War with actor Kevin Costner in this melancholic...

www.imdb.com

 

[bob_the_bomb]

Lads, we’ve all been worried about the suit case nuke...I give you the pencil case nuke

 

[Steamboat]

Missile silos are opened with a powerful explosion, the silo cover will be thrown hundreds of yards. You would not block the opening by parking a truck on top or a pile of dirt. They were designed to still function in spite of a nearby nuclear detonation which indeed might cover them with tons of rubble. Towards the end of this documentary the guy is at a silo site and it's explained to him:

The Man Who Saved the World (2014) - IMDb

Directed by Peter Anthony. With Stanislav Petrov, Kevin Costner, Sergey Shnyryov, Nataliya Vdovina. Retired Soviet Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov, who saved the world from WW3, talks about his life as retiree and shares his opinions on the Cold War with actor Kevin Costner in this melancholic...

www.imdb.com

Not to quibble, but the silo doors are opened with hydraulic motors. You don’t want to blow up your door every time you need to yank a missile out of the silo. Periodically missiles are randomly selected and tricked out to VBurg to be fired to make sure they work.

 

[Mattb]

No they won't. The US will not launch missiles in response to a mere seeming attack detected on a radar screen.
US policy is to wait for the missiles to actually explode on US territory. Thus establishing beyond doubt that a nuclear attack has occurred.

The US will then retaliate, with whatever land-based based ICBMs and bombers have survived the attack.
Plus, most especially, the submarine SLBM force, which will be completely, or nearly completely, intact.

This has been official US policy for over 40 years. For bleeding obvious reasons. You don't want to start a nuclear war just because your radar screens show blips which might only be a shower of meteorites.

The Soviet Union never officially declared a similar policy, but in practice acted on the same lines.

Given that the US doesn't even have a no-first-use policy, I suspect that this particular fact comes from the same place as the 1000-sleeper-agent clay pigeon shoot anti-ICBM force.

You and photex should start a think-tank.

 

[gaijin]

Not to quibble, but the silo doors are opened with hydraulic motors. You don’t want to blow up your door every time you need to yank a missile out of the silo. Periodically missiles are randomly selected and tricked out to VBurg to be fired to make sure they work.

This is true when they are not being fired in anger. In the event that they are the doors are opened as described by @kalliste

 

[kalliste]

Not to quibble, but the silo doors are opened with hydraulic motors. You don’t want to blow up your door every time you need to yank a missile out of the silo. Periodically missiles are randomly selected and tricked out to VBurg to be fired to make sure they work.

If they were launched in a war scenario the explosive method would be used. The silo is is one shot deal in those circumstances. The silos are designed to function while nuclear missiles are raining down on them.

 

[smartascarrots]

Lads, we’ve all been worried about the suit case nuke...I give you the pencil case nuke

Presumably you could use them to brass up a Catholic religious service.

 

[RTU'd]

The have in the London Borough of Brent since Bernie Grant outlawed them in the 1980's.

 

[Steamboat]

If they were launched in a war scenario the explosive method would be used. The silo is is one shot deal in those circumstances. The silos are designed to function while nuclear missiles are raining down on them.

I don’t think we are tracking, the force of an explosion will damage said missile. God forbid it gets pelted with any form of shrapnel. A wrench will KO a missile.


Here is a video of the maintainers in action and you can see inside the silo.

 

[kalliste]

"... explosive gas discharge, the cover would be thrown ... 400 feet"
These silos were designed to function under nuclear bombardment.

 

[Steamboat]

"... explosive gas discharge, the cover would be thrown ... 400 feet"
These silos were designed to function under nuclear bombardment.

Think about this for a moment. The doors are hydraulic. They weigh about 90 tons give or take, you would need one hell of a charge to remove it from the silo and find a way to not damage the missile itself.

 

[Steamboat]

"... explosive gas discharge, the cover would be thrown ... 400 feet"
These silos were designed to function under nuclear bombardment.

Minuteman Missile Site Coordinates

 

[gaijin]

US land based missile silos have a reinforced concrete door that slides over the silo. It is on rails.

For routine maintenance where the silo door needs to be opened for access to the missile, the door is cranked slowly along the rails via hydraulic motors to open the 90 ton door.

For emergency, aka “nuclear war”, the door is opened via a high pressure gas generator. This generator produces enough pressure to shove the door very rapidly along the rails to get the silo open to the sky as quickly as possible.

Quickly as in “the gas generator will hurl the 90 ton door sideways like a frisbee in a couple seconds flat clear out of the fenced in enclosure”. If you go on YouTube and look for video of some test launches from Vandenberg AFB, you’ll find a video of a silo being blasted open in about two seconds followed by the launch.

You’ll note that the door is sliding into a bunch of collision absorption barriers like water barrels on the highway. This is for test launches so the door doesn’t go flying as the Vandenberg silos are meant to be reused and recovering a 90 ton door from the ground 100 feet away that has gone off the rails, literally, is a royal pain in the ass.

In a real world emergency, door recovery is not a factor. The silos are single use and you won’t need the door anymore. So the gas generator sending the door into the field beyond is not a concern to anyone.

Our missile silos hatches slide to either side to open. Can they be blown off in an emergency? - Quora

I have actually seen a video of this but I am buggered if I can find it

 

[gaijin]

The Missile Silo stretches 80 ft. below ground, is about 12 ft. in diameter, and made of 14-inch-thick reinforced cement walls. The silo is capped by a 90-ton blast door, which would be blown off during a launch with an explosive charge.

https://www.nps.gov/mimi/planyourvisit/upload/d-09-site-bulletin.pdf

 

[gaijin]

watch from 2:30 and see how far the hatch goes. It is designed to plow through debris in the event that there is any blockage from an explosion or otherwise. Not direct hit obv.

 

[Legs]

W54 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

"The W54 is small enough to be deployed as a SADM (Special Atomic Demolition Munition), or so-called "Backpack Nuke". It was the closest thing the U.S. is known to have developed to a so-called "suitcase bomb". "

Are Suitcase Bombs Possible?

"It is quite likely, that should the suitcase bombs described by Lebed actually exist, that they would use this technology. It is clear that any of the 155 mm artillery shells, if shortened by omitting the non-essential conical ogive and fuze would fit diagonally in the package that Lebed describes, and the Swift device would fit easily. If the yield is as much as 10 kilotons, then the device would have to be fusion boosted."

I found this quite interesting regarding SADMs

 

[Sam The Bam]

Personally I would just put a large net attached to the ground with bungee cords over the top of each of the silos. Then when the missiles tried to come out the bungee cords would bounce them back in again where they would blow up. That's probably a lot more practical than trying to stand outside the silo with an SMG and shoot through the flames and smoke at a missile.

That's a very cunning plan you Baldrick walt.

 

[CutLunchCommando]

watch from 2:30 and see how far the hatch goes. It is designed to plow through debris in the event that there is any blockage from an explosion or otherwise. Not direct hit obv.

Watch what?