Stimulated Gamma Decay Weapons 562
ExRex writes "New Scientist is reporting on a USDOD project to produce super explosives. 'An exotic kind of nuclear explosive being developed by the US Department of Defense could blur the critical distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons. The work has also raised fears that weapons based on this technology could trigger the next arms race.'"
Bad news... (Score:4, Funny)
The decay makes it perfect (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Bad news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bad news... (Score:3, Funny)
Arms race indeed. (Score:5, Funny)
The only challenge is to get them to stop smashing any tank they see.
Re:Arms race indeed. (Score:4, Funny)
I for one welcome our new Hulk over.....awww fuck it, you know how it goes.
Linked article (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Arms race indeed. (Score:4, Funny)
I, for one, welcome a new Simpsons quote to wear out.
Wow... (Score:3, Funny)
Gosh...
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Informative)
It had a "dial a yield" warhead from 10 to 250(1) Tons of TNT. The higher settings would cause almost certain death to the launch crew as the lethal radiation kill zone was much farther than the maximum range of even the biggest launcher (2 miles or so).
One of the new thingies or an old Davy Crockett might be a good device to wipe out a bunch of tanks out in a desert, but it's still a friggin huge weapon compared to the precision stuff used nowdays. (I doubt any army will be dumb enough to go head-to-head against the US Army in desert tank battle for a looonngg time. Even the Iraqis didn't try it a second time.)
Here's some links with pictures:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nucl
http://www.guntruck.com/DavyCrockett.html [guntruck.com]
GASERs.... (Score:3, Insightful)
So we're building gamma-ray shooting guns... Like lasers, but higher energy, and thus, with more chances of cell mutation & general badness. I'll call 'em nuclear weapons for now, and maybe later, only inhumane.
Re:GASERs.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:GASERs.... (Score:2)
And given that they have multi-year fallout effects within the target area, I'd definitely classify them as much "nuclear" weapons as dirty bombs -- in short, any weapon with non-trivial radioactive fallout.
Xentax
Re:GRASERs.... (Score:3, Informative)
A graser, like any "?aser" device works by stimulating energized electrons to transition to a lower shell immediately (instead of at a random time) by smacking another photon into it, causing the atom emit a photon (always of a certain frequency) in the same direction that the original photon was moving. The gamma decay device works by stimulating the nucleus is a very similar way with X-rays until
Re:GRASERs.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:GASERs.... (Score:3, Interesting)
err.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because you know, it's not how many people died, it's the weapons used!
Gosh.
Re:err.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because you know, it's not how many people died, it's the weapons used!
No, it's whether the collateral damage makes the battlefield useless afterwards. Little chunks of gamma emitters with a 31 year half life lying all over the place means whoever is left around has to deal with the consequences of a fight they may have had no part in, or may not even remember what the conflict was all about to begin with.
It seems that it will be the case that the ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Chinese etc. left beautiful ruins and philosophy, and Anglo-American civilization will leave little poison pills for future archeologists to uncover.
Re:err.. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:err.. (Score:4, Interesting)
You mean like the beautiful ruins the Romans left us in Carthage? Oh, wait...
The ability for an army to raze a city is not something unique to the past century. Or the past millenium, for that matter. The "beautiful ruins and philosophy" you speak of are only there because they were built by the winning side. Note that you said:
- "Greeks" instead of "Iranians"
- "Romans" instead of "Lybians"
- "Egyptians" instead of "Sudanese"
And the only reason I can't think of somebody the Middle Kingdom raped/pillaged/slaughtered off of the top of my head is that the schools I attended had a "Western" bias.Re:err.. (Score:3, Informative)
Somewhat, and no I wouldn't consider most of it worthwhile but as far as practical guidance goes Cicero and Seneca are far more worthwhile than Plato.
This being Slashdot I was writing in a very imprecise manner, hence equating the achievements of all civilizations in all the areas mentioned. Of course some civilations were better than others in the areas of building, philosophy, art etc.
Re:err.. (Score:5, Interesting)
The apocryphal nuclear suitcase bomb [enviroweb.org] notwithstanding, it is very difficult to make nuclear weapons small enough for tactical use. To save you from greater chance of carpal tunnel syndrome, I am aware of nuclear artillery shells, but they only fit the largest of howitzers [wikipedia.org]. On the other hand, weapons based on this technology could conceivably be deployed at the squad level in a manner similar to an RPG or bazooka. It makes it much harder to control its use when deployed in such fashion. With standing armies of hundreds of thousands of soldiers the fallout from such a weapon used in combat would probably litter the countryside in a manner similar to land mines in such now forgotten conflicts (by most in the Western world) as the Namibian war for independence from South Africa [oneworld.org].
To join in with the amoral, technophilic point of view preferred in this forum. From a technical point of view the problem with fallout seems to be related to the rate at which the halfnium explodes compared to the rate at which its volume is exposed to an x-ray source. Thus it seems that forming the halfnium in a thin shell around, and surrounded by, an x-ray source should mitigate fallout. However, I can't think to too many switchable x-ray sources other than a fission reaction which off course will cause its own problems...
Re: NO (Score:5, Funny)
> Anyone still asking where you really have to search if you want to find WMD? Small hint: not in the middle east...
Current theory is that Saddam's dog ate them.
Re:NO (Score:3, Insightful)
Israel probably has some.
Re:NO (Score:3, Insightful)
"Israel Known to have nuclear weapons capability, but has never declared it or tested. It has an estimated arsenal of 100 warheads and a missile range of 940 miles."
They've had 'em for a long time, since the late 70s IIRC.
realityshunt
Re:NO (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, not quite. While good figures for Chem/Bio are a bit harder to find, at least where it comes to Nukes the Russians are well ahead of the US, at least according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists [thebulletin.org]. We've built more in total, but dismantled many as they became obselete.
Re:NO (Score:3, Insightful)
Who cares how big the blast is? If you drop 100 small bombs or one big bomb, you're still dropping bombs. You should always be concerned when bombs are falling on people (even if you think its the right thing to do), and not care if the explosion is produced with a chemical or nuclear release of energy.
Re:NO (Score:3, Insightful)
When the Army introduced the successor of the daisy cutter you often heard that it's "as powerful as a small nuclear weapon", well this conventional bomb - the largest you'll find by far - has an explosive power of perhaps 50tons (it weighs thirty and I'm assuming they use something more effective than TNT). 100 of these bombs have an explosive power of 5kt, half of the Hiroshima bomb and at the lower end of what you'd expect in a nuclear artille
Re:NO (Score:3, Informative)
It's not a conspiracy, it's just not advertised. FYI the anthrax that was getting mailed to democrats and liberals (did no one in the mainstream media make this connection?) previously was made in a military facility located in Utah.
We have large
Re:NO (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, and the U.S. is known for following international law.
Re:NO (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you been on sabbatical since '89? (Score:3, Insightful)
*cough*
Watch any news lately?
*cough* USA invades Iraq TWICE in 12 years *cough*
No, we'd never do so for oil. No, never!
[/sarcasm]
Re:Have you been on sabbatical since '89? (Score:3, Funny)
*cough*
Watch any news lately?
*cough* USA invades Iraq TWICE in 12 years *cough*
No, we'd never do so for oil. No, never!
[/sarcasm]
Iraq? Neighbor?
Seen any maps lately?
And you really should see someoune about that cough^H^H^H^H^H liberal bias.
Re:Quite true, it is not a war for oil (Score:3, Funny)
True. Because "No Blood for Extension of American Neo-Colonial Hegemony!" was both difficult to chant and explain. Handing out annotated copies of 1984 was also prohibitive.
However, once you aim even a whiff of intellectual penetration at it, the "it is a war for oil" claims vanish in a puff of illogic.
Of course. It is just the simplest explanation once you've eliminated the a
Re:NO (Score:3, Informative)
During routine maintenance, a filter was removed from part of the plant and not replaced. The shift changed, the missing filter was not noticed and evaporators which dried anthrax into spores were switched on.
A cloud of anthrax was blown across the city, dozens of people died. The Soviet government panicked (it should not have been manufacturing
Gamma Radiation makes the Hulk mad! (Score:2)
Arrgh!! Hulk hate gamma decay makes hulk look old and grey!
US military pioneers death ray bomb... (Score:5, Funny)
However, this will soon be appearing in an online marketplace near you: http://www.villainsupply.com/superweapons.html
Home Despot vs. VillainSupply.com (Score:3, Insightful)
But seriously, folks... I did *not* expect villainsupply.com [villainsupply.com] to be a real link! Too cool... in an evil sort of way, that is. Wonder if Amazon.com knows about their "Evil Amazon.com" link?
Is this realy a good idea? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Is this really a good idea? (Score:2, Insightful)
The thing that needs to happen (in order for the human race to become truly e
Re:Detection and control. (Score:5, Informative)
Read the story here [eurekalert.org]
Excerpts from the story:
Re:Detection and control. (Score:3, Interesting)
controversy [utdallas.edu]
Controversy is usually a good thing in science. It often means that there is an effect we don't entirely understand. In other words: There is a cool new effect, we don't entirely understand!!!
Judging from the difference in results coming from sources of differing bandwidth, it would appear that is an important factor. Which makes sense since this is essentially a resonance process.
...It starts with an earthquake, (Score:5, Funny)
um...
gamma weapons blow us away?
Everybody sing: "It's the end of the world as we know it..."
Neat (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Neat (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that if you have super fast battles (read: anti tank missles against a house, or carpet bombing) people end up forgetting that there are real people on the other side. The slower it is (and the more they see), the more people remember that war is dumb. Things are only getting faster, unfourtunately.
Re:Neat (Score:4, Informative)
The History Channel had a documentary about one Christmas day during World War One, where the German and Allied soldiers started singing carols and eventually met each other for a one-day Christmas cease fire (they even held soccer matches with eachother). After that day, they had trouble gathering the motivation to kill eachother, and the military leaders basically had to force the war to continue.
Any war relies on de-humanizing the enemy, which is most often a large collection of ordinary people under different circumstances and under the leadership of a psychopath (Adolph Hitler, Osama bin Laden, etc.).
Re:Neat (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Neat (Score:3, Insightful)
And the developers of chemical weapons, and biological weapons, and the bomber, and the battleship, and nuclear weapons...
I'm beginning to suspect they might all have been wrong.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Wars end faster, but fighting lingers longer (Score:3, Interesting)
Now it seems that we (at least the US) can put an armored force of 200,000 anywhere it wants within a couple of months and win the war in 90 days..but the low-grade fighting just doesn't stop. The Israelis took the west bank in '67
Potential Power Source! (Score:3, Insightful)
This interesting technology could potentially lead to some better new-age energy sources. I'm not sure why we always focus on warfare, when there are other ways to use the explosive power of new military technology.
Re:Potential Power Source! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Potential Power Source! (Score:2)
I agree. In reading the article, I couldn't help but wonder what kind of side effects come from the reaction. It did mention the following:
Could these undetonated isomers be "recycled" in a controlled reactor? In other words, are there any byproduc
One problem with the power source idea (Score:2)
Re:Potential Power Source! (Score:5, Informative)
Energy density != Energy efficiency.
You want the former for weapons, the latter for commercial energy production.
(Although in the case of fuel substitutes for cars, both are actually quite important. No matter how much you improve the efficiency and cost of hydrogen or fuel cells, its hard to beat oil's energy density.)
Anyway, based on that article, it appears to me that it takes a heck of a lot of energy to make and "energize" the halfnium with protons (or eventually photons). A lot more than you get out when you eventually shoot the X-Ray in and get that 60-fold increase out. That 60-fold increase is just releasing energy you put in the substance gradually earlier. So it isn't necessarily energy efficient, just energy-dense. Of course, as they make the substance cheaper, that is a sign that they're improving the energy efficiency of the manufacturing process, so who knows how good they'll get at that. Clearly they have a long way to go in any case. Particle accelerators aren't cheap, either dollar-wise or energy-wise.
Re:Potential Power Source! (Score:5, Informative)
Well, it's a way to store energy, perhaps, but it can't act as a source in and of itself. Excited-state nuclei aren't just lying around in the ground--they tend to have short half-lives, from decades down to the tiniest fractions of a second. To create these metastable nuclei, you have to put in at least as much energy as you're taking out.
Mind, these metastable isotopes already have nonmilitary uses. Technetium-99m has long been used as a radioactive tracer in medicine. It is produced from the decay of molybdenum-99, and has a half-life of about six hours.
Next Arms Race (Score:5, Insightful)
New warfare technology has ALWAYS triggered a new "arms race", starting with the first human being who ever beat another to death with a rock.
Imagine their terror when the first knives, attlatls, and later bows & arrows started to be used in combat?
This is simply the latest iteration of an age-old phenomenon.
We actually DID use our nuclear arsenal... (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe they weren't used in the way they were designed to be, but they were indeed used. The only thing deterring the Soviet Union was the understanding that if they went to war with the U.S., they would be utterly destroyed. I would submit that our nuclear stockpiling is the sole reason why the Soviets didn't take over the world.
Supercomputing and small tac nukes (Score:2)
Re:Supercomputing and small tac nukes (Score:4, Informative)
--Mike--
Scary fact for those who didn't read the article (Score:3, Insightful)
That's just scary. Way scary.
Misleading title? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:scary? Is that an intelligent thing to say? (Score:2)
Given that there are hoards of people that would love to use this to hurt, maim, and kill others is just plain scary.
Wiki (Score:2)
Weapons of mass destruction (Score:3, Funny)
Iran Sends Weapons Inspectors to US to Search for Weapons of Mass Destruction
The human race will never change (Score:2, Insightful)
Cool! (Score:2, Insightful)
What is this country so fucking afraid of?
- A.P.
Re:What is this country so afraid of? (Score:4, Insightful)
Neither did Germany in 1920.
Super Batteries (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm suprised that the potential for batteries wasn't discussed. What if this technique allowed better energy storage than we have now? What if we could store electricity when and where we produce it, and move it to where and when we want to use it? I guess what I'm asking is: when can I run my laptop off of one, and will it cause "flipper-babies?"
Exactly what we need (ironic) (Score:4, Interesting)
How dirty is this new "dirty bomb"? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm wondering how big a problem this "dirty bomb characteristics" issue is. How much of the isomer really doesn't detonate (and why?) Is this a 1% of the substance doesn't detonate (decay suddenly when hit with an X-ray) problem or a 50% doesn't detonate? And if the amount of the material is small enough (e.g. a gram), perhaps this falls below injurious-in-practice threshholds? I.e. how close to conventional low-yield nuclear really is it?
--LP
Arms race? What arms race? (Score:3, Flamebait)
Riight... Like the U.S. would let anyone else even participate in a race. Any country going in that direction will first be nudged lightly with reminders of economic sanctions, and if that doesn't stop them, nudged lightly with a sledgehammer.
The race is over, the U.S. won, but they seem to go on racing on their own. (No poetry intended)Yeah! (Score:3, Interesting)
While we're on that subject (Since I'm gonna get modded down now anyway) did anyone read between the lines with the recent Liberia situation? I could just see Bush talking about how we were considering sending troops (Translation: "I asked for an oil report on the country, and if it looks good I might d
Legal? (Score:2)
Regards,
--
*Art
All your hafnium are belong to us. (Score:3, Funny)
In fifty years, we'll be defending our right to bare hafnium tipped bullets. God Bless America.
Other than useful mass (Score:4, Interesting)
and means of detonation, this isn't much different than neutron bombs. You could produce a small yield neutron bomb and do the same thing and be less dirty with the radioactive material.
As a military member myself, I cannot say that this weapon is "attractive" to me. As a commander, I wouldn't want to use it as a matter of course any more than I would want to use a nuke. I WOULD use a nuke or this weapon, however, in a dire emergency, which appears to be precisely what this weapon is NOT intended for. It is seen as something with general use potential...to some in DOD halls where everything is clean theory but not to me, a line guy.
As far as I am concerned, use of such a weapon would barely be a step up from use of a dirty bomb, which would rightly be seen as illegal and an act of terror. Not me, no thanks.
Re:Other than useful mass (Score:5, Informative)
Huh? A small-yield neutron bomb?
A neutron bomb is a fusion warhead. As such, it requires a fission warhead to set it off. A 'small yield' fission warhead is, at the very least, going to be equivalent to anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand tons of TNT, and the second stage fusion warhead, which releases the neutrons, is going to add to that. "Small-yield fusion bomb" is something of an oxymoron.
And neutron bombs are rather dirty, indeed. In addition to the fallout from the fission primary, the intense neutron flux transmutes many substances, notably metals, in the surrounding area into radioisotopes. Some of those will have rather long half-lives.
Re:Wake Up! (Score:3, Insightful)
You forget the key lynchpin to tie the WMD lie to swift action: Iraqi ties to Al Queda and, by extension, that Saddam would give WMD of whatever type to his "buds" in Al Queda. He did a double lie: imminent threat from use and dispersion of massive amounts of WMD including nukes (that mushroom cloud fear-raker statement) and ties to the much-hated Al Queda.
We Americans wanted payback, we wanted the bastards that did 9/11 and Bush flat-out LIED to make people believe that Saddam and the 9/11 perps were i
teehee (Score:5, Funny)
Who cares about Bombs, what about Reactors? (Score:2)
Does anyone know the answers to these questions? I know its difficult to manufacture now, so don't flame me on that. Anyone know anything about the containment of hafnium?
Re:Who cares about Bombs, what about Reactors? (Score:3)
Short half life = reduced proliferation risk? (Score:5, Insightful)
They said that the Halfnium component has a 31 year half life. I bet the weapon becomes non-viable long before that.
In one sense that is good. Proliferation of this weapon might not be as much of a long term threat. When the support infrastructure is removed, the weapon might decay rapidly enough to mitigate proliferation issues when compared to Plutonium and Uranium.
Next stop Pluto? (Score:4, Interesting)
Next rocket fuel? (Score:3, Interesting)
Lawrence Livermore Coverup (Score:4, Interesting)
My conspiracy theory is that Lawrence Livermore or Area 51 or some such government run hush hush spot may have a weapon based on this on the drawing board, or even in development. When the dudes published the idea in 2000, Lawrence livermore published fake negative results to keep the other countries of the world from working on the idea, and then secretly have been working on it ever since. Now that mini-nukes are back in style since 9/11, they can even say they're working on it in public and don't have to hide their research.
What about non military uses? (Score:3, Insightful)
The experiment released 60 times as much energy as was put in, and in theory a much greater energy release could be achieved.
Is this counting the energy put into "loading" the isotope? Whith the kind of energy they are talking about, this could be huge for us. Think "Nuclear Fusion" without the Nuclear part!! cleaner power, and no hippy anti-nuke types protesting.. I'm trying to remember my old science classes here, aren't the "Gama" radiation bits realitively easy to block?.. A room with lead walls, a bit of this chemical, and X-ray generator, and a large vat of water to make steam... How many years have we spent trying to get Nuclear Fusion to produce more power than went in to making the reaction?! and this is 60 times the engery with a few x-rays!! Why does science always have to deal with weapons first? can't we just pretend that our planet as a whole is growing up and thinking about peace?
not very plausible (Score:5, Informative)
The article says they're planning to make this isomer in gram quantities by shooting gamma rays into a sample of ground-state 178Hf, which is the reverse of the decay process. The problem is that the cross-section is going to be very low, for exactly the same reason: it's hard to get a photon to carry many units of angular momentum into or out of a nucleus. People have discussed making small (microgram) quantities of it for use as a high-spin target in reactor experiments, but nobody could figure out any reasonable way to do it.
You also have to realize that although the half-life of 31 years is long compared to most isomeric states, it's still relatively short compared to, say, 235U, which lives for gazillions of years. The relatively short half-life means that even if you could get a gram of this stuff, it'd be virtually impossible to handle safely. It would be much more radioactive than a subcritical mass of weapons-grade fissionables.
There's a long history of impractical ideas like this, going back to the Reagan-era idea of a gamma-ray laser. Luckily we're still only faced with the same basic bomb threats that've been around since the Kennedy administration, but that's bad enough. The real thing to worry about, IMO, is the nuclear cauldron that's shaping up in Asia: Iran, Afghanistan, India, and North Korea.
OT: Are other people finding Slashdot extremely slow and unresonsive recently? I can hardle even access it anymore.
Timeline (Score:5, Informative)
Certainly, for a project such as this, it is completely unbelievable that one of the key entities in the weapon development would give anyone and everyone a remotely precise estimate as to when larger scale production (and real weapon production) could possibly begin.
The true timeline must be years away from that. In one of the two directions possible... Which poses an interesting question: are real weapons based on this technology available today already, and did they agree to participate in the story simply to "prepare" the general public for real-world testing which will happen in the following year or two? Or do they know that others are working on this technology as well, and therefore need to tell their nation that "they're right on it", when some other country launches their tests within the next year or two?
That's speculation. Time will show.
What will be interesting to see, too, is how the real testing will commence. Currently they are working on three possibly viable materials. Most likely they will have different characteristics, and their exact effects in a real-world scenario will be impossible to simulate.
In 1945, there were two materials available for fission weapons - uranium and plutonium. One bomb was made with each, and the two bombs were dropped on each their civilian target. Hiroshima got Uranium, Nagasaki got Plutonium.
Which three cities will this new weapon be tested on? And to raise the bar, which city will get Hafnium, which one will get Thorium, and which one will get Niobium?
Oh, and don't tell me war has gone soft and that the weapon would not be tested on civilian targets this time... A gamma discharge weapon has many of the properties of a neutron weapon - it is extremely useful mostly against people (and electronics - it will kill you *and* your Aibo, oh the wonders of modern civilization
On a second note... Did anyone notice how there is no longer anything called a "neutron bomb"? It is, today, called a "low yield" bomb. In the media at least. Because it's blast and heat isn't as great as "real" fusion weapons. Neutron weapons are now almost politically correct - at least, the public wouldn't raise an eye if they were told a low-yield bomb was dropped to stop riots in some third-world city.
Now, to go find lead coating for my tinfoil hat.
Re:Oh shit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Give it a rest.
The military is (and rightfully should be) interested in weaponry that focuses on several key factors, in roughly prioritized order from most to least important:
1) Damage potential (military reasons)
2) Minimizing risk to friendly forces and the delivery systems (political reasons)
3) Accuracy and Precision (cost and political/humane reasons)
4) Cost
This new weapon is a breakthrough in the #1 department, and may be a better technology in every category except for the "accuracy" category, due to the fallout factor. If they can figure out how to maximize the energy release (analagous to how complete the combustion is in a conventional fuel-air combustion), they may be able to bring this factor down to levels that equate it with (for example) using depleted uranium ammunition and armor.
Xentax
Re:Oh shit. (Score:3)
Unfortunately, the weakness in our system of checks and balances is that it assumes that the civilian leadership is capable of performing its oversight role. One of the duties of every president is
War-mongerer, no, 9/11 yes. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh shit. (Score:3, Troll)
I shared your PoV before 9-11.
Re:Oh shit. (Score:3, Insightful)
What good is education and health care if extremists can come in and unravel it all?
Re:Oh shit. (Score:3, Insightful)
In each of those cases, one takes precautionary steps. You inadvertantly helped NG make his point.
Re:Oh shit. (Score:3, Insightful)
Karma burn in process. I have some to spare. Bite me.
Absolutly correct. We should have turned our backs on nuclear technology and hoped nobody would build any. After all, if we can keep it secret it won't ever be discovered.
To bring it down to your level, do you like security through obscurity (Microsoft) or letting everyone know what is going on (Linux).
If you let the cat out of the bag people know that it is possible AND that you are going to be the first one on the block to have it.
Re:Oh shit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh shit. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: employing soldiers (Score:3, Insightful)
Meanwhile, though, anyone who's smart enough *not* to join the imperial guard gets put into 'weapons design'. That's what pisses me off. We have more advanced wea
Re:Oh shit. (Score:4, Interesting)
Wrong on both counts. The goal of both weapons was to make warfare easier, quicker, and less bloody. Dr. Gatling's concern was the number of men needed in formation to achieve X rate of fire, and his reasoning was that reducing that number of men while achieving the same rate of fire would reduce the need for men to even be there to begin with. As for nuclear weapons, peruse the internet a little and take a look at what Eisenhower's philosophy was on them (nutshell: use them early and often to reduce the need to send in actual soldiers).
"but we know how that turned out."
It's a little to soon to say how nukes have turned out, but in many ways Dr. Gatling was successful. Automatic and semi-automatic weapons have lowered the number of men needed to take and hold an objective, which works to lessen collateral damage. For all the carnage that happened in places like Stalingrad and Berlin during the Second World War, think about how much worse it would have been if all the troops had to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in formation.
"Meanwhile, this thing seems to be purely for killing:"
However, nuclear weapons (and this new concept) are different from the other two classifications of WMD in that they actually have valid military uses. Chemical and biological weapons are all but useless against a moderately prepared force, and their only real use is against civillian populations. However, there are times when you really need a powerful explosive to take out a military target (such as underground bunkers). Yes, it's meant to kill people, but it's only intended to kill certain people in certain places, not "everybody in the downtown area." The fallout is a side-effect that even the DOD wants to eliminate because it hampers the weapon's usefullness in a tactical situation (it's better to take and hold an objective than to deny its use to everybody).
"Why am I paying for the development of a whole new type of weapon when I can't afford school because of the resession?"
DOD = federal
education = state
"and massive defense spending is what caused this deficit mess we're in now..."
FY 2001
Medicaid: 7%
Medicare: 12%
Defense: 16%
Social Security: 23%
Source [gpo.gov]
Personally, I think you're barking up the wrong tree.
Re:A view from the [slashdot] minority (Score:3, Funny)