When the Heavens Open (730 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.58 on 18 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by <rurumon> (View user info) at 2005-03-10 13:12:46 EST
At 16,000 feet the heavens open.
The darkness is shattered with a mechanical whine as the grip of gravity takes hold and pulls the nose of the twelve foot cylinder from its supersonic coffin. As it begins its descent at the cusp of the sound barrier, its solid ogive-shaped nose turns earthward towards its destination. The air heats the steel nose as this black demon slips through the air, a 2400-pound reminder of how thin the barrier is between physics and reality. In this ton, numbers lose their meaning as the demon locked within the fabric of matter begs release. With a pop, air no longer has to futilely push against the slender nose of the cylinder, as three 4-foot pilot chutes drag out a 46 foot monstrosity of a parachute. The 60 Kevlar suspension lines strain as the one-ton device is slowed from near supersonic speeds to 44 miles per hour in a few seconds.
Below, a vast metropolis seethes with mechanical life. Trains flow through their concrete tubes as thousands of vehicles criss-cross overhead. In this small square of land, half a million people live. A small pittance for the events of great import that pervade the various stoic marble buildings that litter downtown on their perfectly manicured plots of green. Beyond this, suburbia stretches as far as the sprawl filled eye can see. Once a deciduous forest, the population of suburban Virginia has stretched to 7 million, having doubled its population in a scant fifty years. Numbers this large have little meaning to the average person. A room at a party filled with a hundred people seems staggering; to imagine millions being within a twenty minute drive isn't conceivable. So removed, we assume no one lives beyond the studded walls of the beltway.
Above, the demonic cylinder knows exactly how many people live, and at approximately 4000 feet several high explosive lenses arranged spherically around a plutonium pit encased in a beryllium reflector detonate. The spherical lenses provide a nice smooth shock wave that compresses the core with the force of 400,000 atmospheres. In that one microsecond it takes the plutonium fuel to compress to a quarter its original size, the plutonium achieves super criticality, and the process begins.
The ball of plutonium instantly turns into a 50 million degree furnace, and expands down a polystyrene radiation channel towards stage two; a cylinder of Lithium deuteride with a plutonium spark plug in its center. At these energy levels, X-rays constitute 80% of the explosions energy, and are currently expanding 2 million miles per hour faster than the actual heat of the blast. The pressure created by the expanding radiation compresses the stage two cylinder to 1/30th of its original diameter, increasing its density one thousand fold. Ironically enough, after just a density increase of four fold, stage two reaches critical mass. 300 million degrees and 10 nanoseconds later, the process repeats to stage three.
In a couple microseconds, a small sphere of heat exists at four thousand feet. In this frozen snapshot, a cabbie is racing to get the good fares at Reagan National when a commuter bus swerves in front of him. The cabbies eyes widen a split second before impact and his mind is suddenly filled with the odd thought of where he will eat for lunch that day. 25 miles away in Manassas a heaping pile of children begrudgingly exit the warm confines of their bus to walk the calm fields. Finally exhausted from false summit after false summit, a young couple finally arrives at the rocky outcrop of Old Rag Mountain. The breathtaking view reveals itself as they gaze upon the Shenandoah. Far off the haze of Washington DC area some 85 miles away serves as a grim reminder of how they both have to return to work the next day.
This ball of energy sits four thousand feet above the pentagon, only a couple feet in diameter, glimmering with energy eager to expand and wither. Within its confines it possesses approximately one percent the power output of the sun.
At 4000 feet the heavens open.
The fireball expands as time progresses, gradually losing its millions of pounds of pressure and millions of degrees of temperature as it goes. At some point, around 0.15 milliseconds the expansion of the fireball slows, and an expanding shock wave overtakes the heat wave. The ever-expanding sphere of destruction continues to its maximum size of nearly three and a half miles. Within this distance, there is so much heat and pressure; steel is instantly turned into gas. Before the fireball reaches its full size, the shock wave rebounds off the ground like a wave running into the side of a ship. This reaction wave combines with the continuing wave heading towards the ground at area called the mach point. This one wall expands radially over ground zero carrying the force of two shock waves.
The Pentagon is turned into gas, three miles away the Washington monument receives a blast of 30 pounds per square inch, which loads the surface of the monument with nearly 1000 tons of force. Being that the monument weighs nearly 100 times that, its giant stone base sways slightly, but remains untouched. A quarter of a second later, the monument is engulfed by the hungry fire of the expanding fireball turning a century of stone into dust.
The cabbies eyes that widened the instant before collision is blown in his cab end over end down a run way as it passes through where national airport used to be, propelled by 2000 mile per hour winds.
The children unloading from their bus 25 miles away are blinded by a brilliant white glow thousands of times brighter than the sun. They stumble around in a daze trying to figure out what is going on, when nothing gives them a clue while they are bathed in an all-encompassing field of white, drenched in absolute silence. Less than 10 seconds later, the fire comes. 25 miles away, the bomb has lost its ability to vaporize all matter it encounters into photons and constituent atoms. Instead, the heat sears everything black, the bus is melted into thick crag of metal before being blown across Bull Run, as a leaf would be caught in a gentle breeze. The children are gone, shadows remain.
The couple that recently ascended the tall peak are gazing to the south when the heavens open, so they are not as intensely blinded. When they do turn around they see a gigantic yellow sun nearly four miles in diameter raging above metro Washington. They can see the land before them becoming singed, turning to black as the plague of pressure and heat races towards them, cancerous, from this yellow center. Being nearly 90 miles away, they have a moment to reflect, unlike the 7 million that have instantly perished. The husbands hand instinctively reaches over to feel his wife's, they stand facing the glowing demon that is now rising into the sky, creating a vast vacuum that is now sucking debris from miles away into its rising yellow furnace. The shock wave arrives in a couple minutes, ending the stark silence.
Hours later, the debris sucked into the rising fireball will ascend into the upper levels of the atmosphere. Caught by the gentle breezes of the jet stream, the cloud will travel east over the Atlantic, scattering radiation for thousands of miles. Most of the casualties are cause by blast and heat, a common misconception of exceptionally large thermonuclear devices. All instances of local radiation deaths are quickly discounted because of the large blast wave that immediately follows it. Instead, the radiation passes on to the ocean, to poison with its strontium-90 cocktail.
I wish I could tell you this dream scenario would never occur. That no one possesses the technology, means, or ability to deliver this horrifying image. But it has happened. On October 23 1961, the Soviet Union dropped a 57-megaton nuclear bomb over Siberia as an insult to the world after Khrushchev promised a moratorium on nuclear testing.
The bomb increased world fission fallout from all testing by 25%
The force of this bomb means nothing to us. I could tell you that everything within the beltway will be turned to vapor and glass and you would be amazed, but it will have no meaning to understand how much power is released by 57 million tons of TNT.
Five and a half pounds of TNT can blow a 25-foot boat in half.
Eight pounds can turn an M1 Abrahams into slag.
Either way, when the heavens open, no one is spared.
User Reviews
Submitted by LadyPlural (user info) at 2005-03-11 09:53:30 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I know precicely shit all about nuclear weapons, but this was a pretty fucking cool explaination. Good job.
Submitted by jumpinjellyfish (user info) at 2005-03-10 16:24:02 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
pyro
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2005-03-10 15:39:49 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
pretty cool.
Submitted by Istaros (user info) at 2005-03-10 15:24:51 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
and yes that was kind of retarded and redundant
Submitted by Istaros (user info) at 2005-03-10 15:24:24 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
"The penetrator of a maverick is moving supersonic, so when 300lbs of hardened steel in the shape of a dildo hits armor moving that fast, it pokes a nice hole right through the tank. The explosives have a delay on them and detonate once they are in the interior.
You think thats hot? I think I'll do shaped charges next. Those things are nuts"
NO NO DO THE A-10'S URANIUM ROUNDS
Submitted by rurumon (user info) at 2005-03-10 15:09:00 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
The penetrator of a maverick is moving supersonic, so when 300lbs of hardened steel in the shape of a dildo hits armor moving that fast, it pokes a nice hole right through the tank. The explosives have a delay on them and detonate once they are in the interior.
You think thats hot? I think I'll do shaped charges next. Those things are nuts.
Submitted by Sassmasterr (user info) at 2005-03-10 15:01:30 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
"the ass-end of a 300 lb penetrator"
since military hardware isn't really my specialty (i'm fascinated by it, just not too educated about it), i'll leave that one alone
<chuckles>
Submitted by rurumon (user info) at 2005-03-10 14:28:15 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
To all those about the 8lbs M1 thing, I was referring to the charge in the Maverick AGM which is 80 lbs. My bad, I lost track of some of the numbers. The 80lbs is attached to the ass-end of a 300 lb penetrator, so it goes a long way since it detonates from the inside.
Indoninja- I work at Indian Head.
Submitted by indoninja (user info) at 2005-03-10 14:00:29 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I just looked at your older posts, and I already asked you that. From your writing working at Pax is a lot more exciting, but unfortunately there isn't much to do here on the weekends. So on the odd weekends I am here, I get blind drunk and pray nobody in my neighborhood knows where the potatos are coming from.
Submitted by Sassmasterr (user info) at 2005-03-10 14:00:24 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
nice. i got bugged by the word "demon" being peppered throughout the story. but real nice.
Submitted by Recalcitrant (user info) at 2005-03-10 13:39:35 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
The paragraphs were annoying, but didn't detract much from an excellent narrative.
Submitted by indoninja (user info) at 2005-03-10 13:30:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
What base do you work on?
Submitted by Jeanneee (user info) at 2005-03-10 13:29:06 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
BOOM, you're all dead. Hahahahahahahaha
Submitted by indoninja (user info) at 2005-03-10 13:26:11 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
The tank thing is off, but the step by step reactions of the bomb were awesome.
Submitted by foodman (user info) at 2005-03-10 13:18:15 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Ok..This would have been alright, but there were two main problems with it...
1) Space the paragraphs apart a little, shit.
2) "Eight pounds can turn an M1 Abrahams into slag"...Bullshit. I work with demo and eight pounds would only (maybe) blow a hole through the side. An anti-tank mine is somewhere around 40 pounds of comp-b and only has the ability to blow through and totally scramble everything inside. The main ody of the tank remains intact.
/demo nerd.
Submitted by BLITZKREIG_BOB (user info) at 2005-03-10 13:17:25 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
"Eight pounds can turn an M1 Abrahams into slag."
I guess so if you place it in the fuel tank, but that isn't the TNT exploding then.
8 lbs of TNT set off in the open (on dirt) would make a crater 1.6' deep at the bottom.
Submitted by rurumon (user info) at 2005-03-10 13:14:45 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
Oh fucking christ. the paragraphs. sorry people.
Submitted by funk_boy (user info) at 2005-03-10 13:14:45 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
amazing picture