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Gamma Ray Weapons

Oh boy just what we need, more WOMD.

Sounds pretty nasty even by the standards of what we have already, I'm presuming the victim dies of radiation poisoning? That's probably a grosser and more lingering end than most banned chemical agents would afford.

Marie
 
I'm guessing that the weapon would operate primarily as an explosive. (At least that seems to be the intended use.) I don't think that this is intended to be another "neutron bomb". The gamma rays would just dump their substantial energy into the casing and nearby materials causing rapid heating and explosion.

Still, I'm happy to say that I'm no expert on these kinds of things so I'm willing (and possibly expecting) to stand corrected. :)
 
This is all just too depressing for words. I like my nuclear weapons large, no, not just large but huge. I want my nuclear weapons to be in the 25-megaton range, weapons so unpleasant that even a gung-ho, functional illiterate like George Bush would have to think twice before wheeling them out.

The last thing I want is some word-smith-lawyer stating that they are “not strictly nuclear” before destroying eight city blocks with them. Fuel-air devices (daisy cutters) are pretty nasty if used in built up areas against soft targets (civilians like you and me), but what they are describing here are weapons in the 100-5000 tons of TNT range, just the type of thing that generals are desperate to get a hold of. A whole new world of destruction and tactics has just become available to the type of people who should not be given scissors let alone mini-nukes.

Not a very scientific contribution to the debate, but, I am just very anti-war/George Bush/Sadam Hussein/Tony Blair right now.

The article does mention that breathing in the Hafnium after the explosion may be harmful, I would not have thought it would be any more toxic than breathing in depleted Uranium dust from armour piercing shells.
 
Dark Detective said:
According to the developer of the neutron bomb, the Gamma bomb is "a very moral weapon."
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I don't need to read this becase in any objective terms it must be bullsh*t.
EDIT: Read it: What a shock i'm right. By this argument any new weapon that kills soldiers faster (hence giving them no chance to surrender) is more moral (whatever that bloody means). Utter crap. Clearly not an ethicist, or even a man with effecitive use of a brain. :mad:
 
Picture this. You absorb a high dose of gamma, it kills all your red blood cell producing bone marrow. You feel shit for a couple of days and then feel better again. You have 2 or 3 weeks untill all the red blood cells in your body die, remember they are not being produced by your bone marrow any more. You get very anemic and die horribly.
Now immagine the cleaners who were paid large ammounts of money to go and clean up Chernoble the week after it got hot, not knowing they had 3 weeks to live.
Don't forget all the depleted uranium shells that UK and the US have been using, knowing the horrible implications on human health, as long as its not left in their country. The radioactive dust particles in the lungs just to start with.
Why do people thrive on all this death and destruction? Tax dollars and jobs for the boys!
Im going for a cup of tea
 
The Hafnium bomb - very much theoretical and not avaliable soon. There's something of an ongoing controversy as several labs have tried to replicate the results and failed miserably to get within several orders of magnitude of the reported yield. It's starting to look like dodgey experimental practise.
There's also the fact that on-one knows how to make the isiotope in the quantities required, at the moment the experiments are being carried out on microgramme quantities. I think this whole idea is gonna sink slowly from view.
 
Fenris Said:
Don't forget all the depleted uranium shells that UK and the US have been using, knowing the horrible implications on human health, as long as its not left in their country. The radioactive dust particles in the lungs just to start with.
Click to expand...

The problems with depleted Uranium is not the fact that you are inhaling/ingesting radioactive material (depleted Uranium is not all that radioactive). The problem is that it is poisonous. It kills using a similar mechanism to Arsenic, although it is not as poisonous as Arsenic.

[Tongue in CheeK] If you want to poison someone with an element, I always recommend Plutonium, very toxic and very radioactive. The cure for Plutonium poisoning is also much worse than dying, so you win in all directions. If you want to move away from elemental poisons it has to be Ricin, it is hard to deliver, but well worth the effort. [/Tongue in CheeK]

I have to agree that there is an element of “This depleted Uranium was very expensive, is there anything we could do with it?" attitude of the Western Governments. Personally I would give it to Iran or anyone else with a lot of desert to bury it in. It is called depleted as you can’t extract any more weapons grade Uranium from it, it’s toxic and radioactive so it is pretty useless stuff.

It gets used to tip shells as it is very high density, I suggest tipping all AP shells with Gold. It is just as dense and is probably cheaper in $ per kilo, but can you imagine the public outcry in the UK given the current state of our education and health services if the army started using gold tipped shells.
 
It also gets used elsewhere as ballast, e.g. the keels of boats, and balancing the wings of aircraft.
 
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