On Sun, 12 Sep 2004, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
At 12:01 AM 9/12/04 -0500, J.A. Terranson wrote:
"No big deal"? Who are they kidding?
JAT, any large explosion will create a mushroom cloud. Its the blast wave reflecting off the ground that lifts the thing, plus the buoyancy of the hot gasses.
Yes, I understand all this - mushroom cloud != nuclear explosion.
If it *were* a nuke, it would be easy to detect --from Vera gamma-ray satellites staring at the earth to optical sensors (there's a characteristic nonlinear time-course of optical emissions) to fallout monitors, ground and plane based.
Which _I_ do not have access to ;-)
Time will tell,
Exactly.
and it certainly could have been a nuke (they have the SNMs), but if you do it, you talk about it, much like the Indi/Pakis did.
If I were in Jong's slippers, I would not discuss it - I would just do it, and let everyone draw their own [obvious] conclusion. Remember, his pattern has been to only discuss things (even when already obvious to everyone else) only when _he_ felt like it.
And you can't hide a surface burst, or even a large belowground test
This conflicts somewhat with a previously expressed opinion (Shaddack?). I was under the impression that underground tests, unless performed with very tiny nukes at very great depth, produced visible clouds from the blast waves.
--and an underground test that vents to the atmosphere doesn't make such a big cloud.
Nukepunk
-- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF "...justice is a duty towards those whom you love and those whom you do not. And people's rights will not be harmed if the opponent speaks out about them." Osama Bin Laden - - - "There aught to be limits to freedom!" George Bush - - - Which one scares you more?