Features

Nerd · #1

http://www.vulgarian.net/boom/nuke.htm

Sethomas · #2

Now, you're probably thinking that this sounds WAY too easy, especially since national governments spend billions of dollars trying to build their own nuclear weapons and only a few succeed. But it really IS this easy. If you don't believe me, ask any nuclear physicist.

In short, no, it would not work. Dumbass.

Cap'n Crunch · #3

Perndog · #4

Quote:

The problem is extracting the U-235 from the U-238.

Actually, this is why every stinky, pissed-off terrorist in the world doesn't have a nuke stashed in his closet. When the scientists working on the Manhattan Project realized they needed a shitload of U-235 to make a bomb, they almost abandoned the whole project. Mainly because sucking the U-235 out of a pile of U-238 is so hard.

In short, it would work. Dumbass. The complicated technology's not in making the bomb, it's in refining the materials. Incidentally, there is another web page out there somewhere that has a (dangerous, extremely touchy) method of getting the U-235 out along with a way to make a decent bomb casing as well. It's been too long since I read it; I don't know how accurate it was.

Spooky · #5

i just like making small explosives from the jolly rodger book, or whatever it's called.

Skulhedface · #6

The FBI will be after all of you very shortly.

Immortal Goat · #7

Don't say "jelly"...

Sethomas · #8

In short, it would work. Dumbass. The complicated technology's not in making the bomb, it's in refining the materials.

There's nothing complicated about an isotope centrifuge. It's just really expensive. If you think it would work, you obviously haven't looked into Heisenberg's contribution to the development of the bomb. He miscalculated the critical core radius by a power of ten in the 1940s, an error without which Germany almost certainly would have won the war.

If you struck a uranium hammer onto a uranium anvil, what would happen is both surfaces would smear out. Heavy metals are generally quite malleable, so they would prefer to reshape towards an open direction rather than undergo fision. That's why nuclear cores have to be perfectly spherical and apply uniform pressure at the time of detonation.

Hence, it would almost be possible to create the kind of bomb described in that page if the anvil were a spheroid encased in a berylium shell, but the necessary force of impact would still be well above the threshold of human strength.

Dumbass.

Anonymous · #9

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sethomas

There's nothing complicated about an isotope centrifuge.

Does anyone else see something wrong with this statement?

Perndog · #10

Actually, there is a kind of uranium nuke that shoots a uranium slug into a mass rather than uniformly compressing it. But that's not important.

I guess I wasn't ambiguous enough; I meant to be. I know a person couldn't do it himself, especially with that kind of setup, and the dude was a little off in his thinking. But the page didn't say how hard you had to hit it - correct me if I'm wrong, but if you have enough force (more than a human could muster on his own) and large enough chunks of U-235 (say, a lot more than critical mass so it's okay if some of it isn't adequately compressed), won't smashing them together be enough to start a chain reaction, even accounting for smearing?

Anyway, I know what you're talking about. My question now is, if separating the isotopes is not so difficult, and all that's required is the materials and uniform explosive force (I can't imagine everyone's sixty years behind the US in conventional explosive technology, and I'd think you could just cover it with C4 and space out a bunch of fuses on the surface), why is it such an issue whether a country "has nuclear technology" or not? What's the extra step that I'm missing that makes it so difficult?