US's Most Powerful Nuclear Bomb Being Dismantled

SpuriousLogic sends this excerpt from an AP report: "The last of the nation's most powerful nuclear bombs — a weapon hundreds of times stronger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima — is being disassembled nearly half a century after it was put into service at the height of the Cold War. The final components of the B53 bomb will be broken down Tuesday at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, the nation's only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility. ... The weapon is considered dismantled when the roughly 300 pounds of high explosives inside are separated from the special nuclear material, known as the pit. The uranium pits from bombs dismantled at Pantex will be stored on an interim basis at the plant, Cunningham said. The material and components are then processed, which includes sanitizing, recycling and disposal, the National Nuclear Security Administration said last fall when it announced the Texas plant's role in the B53 dismantling."

Good

[afidel]

This is a good thing, the B53 was a last ditch weapon intended to take out the hardened bunkers of the Soviet leadership, except it was air burst which is a highly, highly ineffective was to take out a bunker. The replacement is a much smaller, much less dirty penetrator weapon, the B61 Mod 11.

Re:9 megatons

[Lev13than]

Interesting that it pales in comparison to the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated, the 50 megaton Tsar Bomba [wikipedia.org]. However, the Soviets only made one of those while the Americans has 50 B53s, so what they lacked in tonnage they made up for in volume.

Re:Notable part of American history here.

[couchslug]

"I was a child when the Cold War ended but even a decade and a half later it seems so pointless."

Moderate nuclear wars were and remain quite practical. That was proven by atmospheric testing. Militaries on both sides developed procedures for continuing the fight near areas which had been nuked, including driving through them buttoned up in APCs and tanks.

Given the context of Total War which was fought in WWII, destroying enemy nations was a very reasonable option to have in the toolbox. Japan and Germany had, LITERALLY, tried to destroy many of the Allies. This wasn't some game of Risk, it was real. In that context, being able to obliterate similar threats was flawlessly RATIONAL.

Had Imperial Japan refused to surrender, it was reasonable to keep striking it until there were no more Japanese. The entire population was a weapon. The current geek weaboo view of Japan has nothing to do with the reality of what Imperial Japanese Army did to much of Asia. Japan worked long and hard to deserve every casualty it sustained, and don't forget it. The Japanese people pretend differently, but their victim neighbors are under no such delusions.

Nuclear weapons finished WWII, and deterred nuclear war thereafter.
That's a pretty good record. Don't use current PC fashion to judge history. Learn the details of why things came to be that you might better understand. Because the Cold War was fought "well enough", you enjoy tasty freedom and so does much of the former Soviet Union. Detente worked (praise be to Nixon!) and China is far freer than under Mao.

Willingness to kill billions coupled with restraint and diplomacy over time worked. Apart from a few minor scuffles the Cold War was quite peaceful. Thank atomic weapons in the hands of RATIONAL, not "insane" actors.

Without the power to kill, diplomacy means nothing because enemy power can dictate terms.

Re:Notable part of American history here.

[khallow]

First, read couchslug's reply [slashdot.org]. If you think the US's nuclear arsenal was "insane", then you don't understand what was going on.

Will people then truly understand the insanity that led a democracy to create war machines powerful enough to end all life on this planet?

Why this focus on the US? Where's the USSR in your narrative? Will people then truly understand the insanity that led to the USSR? The subjugation of perhaps a quarter of the world's population to a brutal and soulless ideology? The creation of an even larger nuclear force than the US had in the late 70s and early 80s in terms of raw destructive power?

The history of the USSR is one of conquest and expansion from the end of the Russian Civil War in 1923 through to the end of 1945. After the demonstration of the US atomic bombs and the end of the Second World War, the USSR switched to a strategy of war via proxies. They managed to install communist governments in China, various places in south Asia, and a number of other places. The nuclear bomb forced them to cut back on their approach to global conquest and may have saved hundreds of millions of peoples' lives and billions of people from slavery in the process.

I think there's a good chance that the world of 50 to 100 years from now may well envy the stability and peace of the Cold War era. The current proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East (by Pakistan and Iran) may well cause arms races not just in the Middle East, but in Africa, Europe, and South America as well. We might start seeing nuclear weapons in the hands of small groups.

And we may see a new Cold War start between China and the US. The future may not just understand us, but go through the same thing we went through a few decades ago.