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Would Nuclear Weapons be as destructive in ship to ship space combat, as they are on the ground in an atmosphere? (self.nostupidquestions)

submitted 11 months ago by A_Random_Idiot to c/nostupidquestions

74 comments fedilink hide all child comments

As far as I know, the big damage from Nuclear Weapons planetside is the massive blastwave that can pretty much scour the earth, with radiation and thermal damage bringing up the rear.

But in space there is no atmosphere to create a huge concussive and scouring blast wave, which means a nuclear weapon would have to rely on its all-directional thermal and radiation to do damage.. but is that enough to actually be usful as a weapon in space, considering ships in space would be designed to handle radiation and extreme thermals due to the lack of any insulative atmosphere?

I know a lot of this might be supposition based on imaginary future tech and assumptions made about materials science and starship creation, but surely at least some rough guess could be made with regards to a thernonuclear detonation without the focusing effects of an atmosphere?

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[–] General_Shenanigans 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

The massive EMPs that blasted the Pacific back in the day were generated with upper-atmospheric testing. The way it interacted with the upper atmosphere was special. If you set off the charge higher in space with no atmosphere, the EMP effect is lessened.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Thank you!

[–] mojofrododojo 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

the EMP effect is lessened.

on the ground. without a medium to dissipate the pulse, it still carries a tremendous amount of risk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime

Yeah that's my biggest note - radiation is a threat to people long term, but EMP destroying their spacecraft's computers are the larger threat at longer range. ISS and other spacecraft routinely harden many systems for the increased radiation present outside the magnetosphere, but this kind of attack could easily overload those protections. Honestly this aspect terrifies me because it only takes a few EMP blasts in LEO to start a kessler syndrome situation of debris and dead orbital vehicles whizzing around at orbital speeds. That's how we 'lose' space.

the EMP effect is lessened.