- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Posted by: DeathscytheV2
or place one of those several hundred kilometers bleow the crust.
This wouldn't blow the planet up either - it probably wouldn't even create global extinction event. Most likely it would be more of a mass extinction event (similar to the K-T event that killed the dinosaurs).
The main effect of the nova bomb or most any weapons that are on a planet killing level is the trillions of tons of ballistic ejecta that is hurled skyward in a hypervelocity plume that heats up the atmosphere beyond 1500K - which, in itself will cause total sterilization. Of course, once this ejecta (some of it which has even exited the atmosphere and gone into space) reenters the atmosphere, this will cause massive global firestorms.
With an underground detonation, the ballistic ejecta is minimized - this is why the U.S. resorted to underground detonations towards the end of their testing.
You would actually need 50 million Nova bombs to completely blow a planet up and even then it's expansion would be extremely slow...
[Edited on 7/16/2004 6:28:43 AM]