Heh. Not quite as planned, no.

No? I thought it did work properly. I'll have to re-read on that.

Edit: Oh right I get it. But the nuke itself works. Doesn't it?

I think its in Shadows of North America that one shadow post claims that the SAIM activists disabled the Lone Eagle's warhead because they never intended to nuke anyone, just bluff the US.

The Cermak Blast did not go exactly as planned. It occured inside the partially prepared magical barriers of an Insect Spirit hive which it seems confined the blast. The center of the explosion retained lethal levels of radiation but about fifty meters away it was safe to walk around without protection.

The Winternight bombs, according to the fluff text in System Failure, didn't have a problem detonating but they weren't as powerfull as they should have been (similar in that sense to the Cermak Blast).

As for bad stuff with nuclear power, there are also several reactors that have partially or fully exploded in SR history. The Cattenoom reactor meltdown that created the SOX, Glow City in Seattle, the Dunreay reactor explosion which was responsible for the Scottish Irradiated Zone and the Yarrow Reactor meltdown that created the Northern Irradiated Zone in England.

The only incident of successfull use of a Nuke that I can think of is the one Isreal dropped on Libya, however that occured in 2004, well before the Awakening.

Is it consistent? Not too sure. There are other reactors operating in the SR world that haven't blown up (although earlier fiction says they are Fusion reactors rather than Fission reactors, which might make a difference) and I don't know of any other nuclear exchanges that have taken place in SR history.

Why the problem, they can get fusion reactors working, so maybe the return of magic does affect quantum and sub atomic physics some.

It might be helpful for those interested to peruse the relevant sections of System Failure for more on nukes not working.

As far as it goes, sufficiently advanced magic can disable nukes. Example: Secrets of Power Trilogy Book III, Find Your Own Truth.

What entirely magic devoid zones are there? I believe canon is largely silent, and correct me if I'm wrong, on the ramificatons of targeting into or across the location of a mana warp form outside of it. No, the big problem with conscious magic is the near-omnipotence required.

The second of a natural breakthrough from physical to astral suffers from neither.

You are aware that you could theoretically cast spells on the Z-O if you could survive the drain? I believe it has been postulated on this board that what's-his-name vampire with his Essense Focus could potentially pull it off.

Totally lost in the background noise.

That's kinda what I was thinking, since the ozone already blocks so much solar radiation. But what if it was say low Earth orbit? How far would the blast carry in space? Does it require oxygen to go nuclear? That sort of thing.

When did that change?

Definately not for the fussion part. Nor the initiating explosive I would imagine. If the warhead was outside of the ICBM housing it might require, ironically, some specialized shielding from radiation protection for it's electronics. Other than that it would be good to go.

But still once you are that high it's not likely to amount to much. If it's inside

The ozone layer itself is really only about blocking UV, which is the least of the problems. The real reason the blast wouldn't be of much consiquence is by the time it reached anything we care about the radiation will become extremely disperse because area affected is the square of distance.

Yeah, that's pretty much what they thought we wanted to do too.

One of the things we've learned since the end of the Cold War is that most of the higher-ups in both the US and USSR found it inconceivable that the opposition could seriously think they would strike first, and fervently believed that it was possible that said opposition would strike first.

Mmm, humanity.

~J

I'm pretty sure that EMP effect actually occurs at a much lower altitude, around 20 miles up. Even though the detonation of the bomb is much higher atmosphere, but still inside the atmosphere envelope. Maybe with a big enough bang you could have that occur from an explosion in space proper? Not sure about that.

Incidentally the "Space" Shuttle actually orbits inside the atmosphere, near the bottom of LEO. LEO is usually given as a range from somthing like 250km to 2,000km. The atmosphere peters out around 600km or so.

Not to mention that the Soviets thought that we Americans were lying through our teeth about the extent of our nuke arsenal, (just as they were), where we took them somewhat seriously and assumed we were missing 9/10th of their weapons somehow.

The altitude number I seem to remember was 75 miles, but that seemed off to me. Faulty memories and all. And I believe thay spefically said over Kansas.

And supposedly the Soviets had a couple other nuke ideas. One involved artificial islands anchored in international waters off the coast of America filled with nuke missiles. And the lovely Doomsday ship. Supposedly it was a ship filled with tons of radioactive waste and wired to blow up if the radiation levels in the area got to a certain level. Their supposed theory was if America nuked them first and they were wipped out the radiation levels in the atmosphere would set off this Doom ship and put so much radioactive waste in the air everyone would die from poisoning.

AMerica had as many silly nuke weapons also. Like atomic annie. An artillery gun that fired nuke projctiles, and rumored nuclear short range rockets.

Ah yes. Throw range, 50 meters. Blast range, 5 miles.

http://mediatheek.thinkquest.nl/~ll125/en/...n/fullatmos.htm

..."But what good is a doomsday device if you keep it a secret, eh?"

-Dr. Strangelove

...I actually saw footage of Annie being fired back in the days when we still did above ground testing. Pretty damn scary at the time.

Source - Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang

Excellent documentary that dealt with the effects of the early above ground tests on troops who were basically there as human Guinea Pigs.

What was even scarier was the clip from an Army training film where a chaplain was attempting to calm a young GI who was about to take part in bomb test by using religious metaphors to describe what the blast would be like.

Everybody, Duck & Cover...

This comes from here in the nuclear section of the Federation of American Scientists website. I've no idea how good or bad they are, but it seems like at least some people think the EMP effect of even a small nuclear weapon detonated in the atmosphere could be quite serious.

There's probably more interesting information on the effect of high-altitude detonations here which as well as supporting the notion of a widepsread EMP being a serious problem, adds a prediction that it would pump the Van Allen belt full of electrons which would linger for up to a year severely damaging unhardened satellites.

All in all, it sounds like anyone possessing even one smallish nuclear weapon with the capability of getting it a couple of hundred miles up, could wreak incredible havoc across a wide area.

Ah, I see you took my request for people to back up their comments... seriously.

Actually, I was more directing it at those who were casually dismissing the effect of high-altitude nuclear detonations, but it's always good to have a few references listed. Your reference is 23MB whereas mine were about 5KB. So I guess you win.

Actually no.

The ranges of the Winternight nuclear devices were appropriate to the kilotonnage (that has to do with using low-yield tactical/suitcase micronukes, rather than the warheads in the original Threats which Winternight deployed at the fault lines), as were the effects of low-altitude airbursts in terms of basic EMP, irradiation and fallout (or lack thereof thanks). Ranges of ground-effect shockwaves were only reduced in about 25% (and attributed to a direct magical conversion of energy to the electromagnetic pulse).

As far as I'm concerned I could have written them without the magic factor and their effects would be largely unchanged. The magic element was just a throwback continuity reference to the Winternight material as originally printed in Threats and has little to no impact in the way things playout. In game terms it translated to a higher than appropriate EM output for the size of the device involved and that's it.

For the record, the fault-line nukes so many people have problems with, are extrapolated from real life studies on tectonic "resonance triggers" conducted by the US and USSR (the latter actually had several different research programs on seismic inducing weaponry including non-nuclear means) during the 1970 thru 80s, and are one of the reasons tectonic weapons are specifically cited in several international weapon limitation accords, several USSR Cold War documents published by Pravda and later Der Speigel, at least one bill put forward by the US Congress, and were directly referenced by a former US Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen at a NATO conference - if the research wasn't particularly credible and the results uninspiring that's probably not going to deter wacko Asartu cultists bent on world destruction to release the Gods from their lethargy and stupor and ignite Ragnarok... especially not when they've got Fate and Prophecy on their side.