Cobalt Bombs: The Bombs to End the World

I always liked the scenario description of two people up to their necks in gasoline arguing over who was more powerful by the amount of matches they have.

Simon realized he has an hour free on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and every other Sunday. Stressed with all this free time, he created another channel.

I’m 99% sure that “salting the earth” wasn’t about “cursing” the city so much as it was about preventing food being grown there in the future thus preventing any larger settlements forming from the displaced survivors

Here's a terrifying fact about Cobalt-60: If you ever see a rod of the stuff, it will likely have a warning printed on it. That warning will literally tell you to drop the rod, run away, and notify authorities.

Eventually Simon will create a channel that covers his other channels.

Way back in 1994 I was writing my high-school graduation dissertation on the topic of "Nuclear Energy". It was divided in 2 parts, one about nuclear plants and another about nuclear weapons. The final weapon I covered was the so-called "K-bomb". According to source material, this would ideally be a combination of a high-yield fusion device mostly consisting of Deuterium and Tritium used in "neutron bombs" and a large envelope of stable Cobalt (approx. 1 ton). According to the source material, detonating 10 to 100 such devices would be enough to produce and distribute enough Cobalt-60 to kill all life on land within its half-life. It wouldn't make any difference where on Earth you set it off, as long as it was detonated at high enough altitude where it would be carried around the globe by atmospheric winds. Thanks for a trip down memory lane.

Cobalt 60 is the radioactive deadly form of Cobalt. It is formed when Cobalt 59 (non radioactive form, the salt) absorbs a neutron from a fission of fusion . It has the following decays: Beta .317 MeV decay, Gamma 1.1732 MeV decay, Gamma 1.3325 MeV. These gammas are extremely high energy. I worked at Crystal River Nuclear Plant for 25 years. Our FSAR did not allow the use of alloys containing Cobalt 59 or Nickel 60 in the reactor building. It was explained to me by our health physics department that cobalt 60 is the 1,000,000 volt power line of gammas.

Minor correction at 3:50: you wouldn't use Gold-198, Tantalum-182, Zinc-65 or Cobalt-60 in the bomb, but rather it's what you're aiming to create in the explosion. You would use Gold-197, Tantalum-181, Zinc-64 or Cobalt-59 in the bomb. Though, you do self-correct later in the video in the case of cobalt.

"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity" An author I've sadly forgotten....

Always a pleasure to hear about the possibilities of our doom.

I used to weld Tantalum. There’s no forgiveness like in other non-ferrous metals (titanium, zirconium, inconel, etc.). You mess up the bead, you throw the piece out. This was often used in heat exchangers that would be in an extremely corrosive environment. If the environment was too corrosive, we would apply platinum dots as a sacrificial; meaning the product would attack the platinum first, before eventually attacking the Tantalum.

Ah, so this is how the Fallout Video Game scenario starts to make sense with 200 years passing since the bomb.

"This has never come even remotely close to happening" 2022: "Sounds like you're being a lil' cheeky..."

This is a paraphrased quote from the Sci-Fi novel “Neverness” by David Zindell: “We walk the brink of racial destruction because we are smart enough to build Nuclear weapons and stupid enough to use them”. A very good book if anyone fancies reading it!!

"...and it would probably only ever be used as a last resort" Comforting.

I was a advanced reader for my age when I read on the beach for the first time when I was nine. I'm a cold war child and still remember duck and cover drills. I just couldn't fathom mutual assured destruction and nobody wants t discuss a topic like this with a child. Even now I could go home and I remember where every fallout shelter is.

God I made the mistake of blinking and Simon has a new channel.

I think it was Oppenheimer who listed size and type of weapons with their delivery systems. For a very large salted bomb he just put “backyard”… he realised that it didn’t matter where on the planet it was detonated. The end result would be the same.

"On The Beach" was such a good book that when I joined the U.S. Navy I sited it as one of the things that influenced me to volunteer to become a NUC submariner.

In early 1960s a friend who i loved like a Dad before passing from cancer told of the cobslt bomb. That it could destroy the world. It was beyond my comprehension RIP MR BROWNING.