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San Diego Wastelands

G

Granite

Member
I just got finished watching "The Sum of All Fears" (a very good movie) and got thinking about suitcase bombs and B5.

I have a problem with the San Diego wastelands. The date of the bomb is 2157 (according to a "Universe Today" article), but the wastelands still exist in "Spider in the Web" (season 2), nearly 100 years later.

My problem is, if the bomb used was a bomb from the soviet union (stated by Garibaldi), the bomb would likely be small yeild - a suitcase bomb. Given that Hiroshima, Japan has retuned to a habitable state in less than 50 years, with a bomb that was larger...

Why is San Diego abandonded?
 
Either the bomb was tweaked to make more powerful, or perhaps the PsiCorps somehow politically manipulated it so the government would leave San Diego abandoned longer since the PsiCorps did use it as a hidden base and all that.
 
We do see a newspaper headline in "And the Sky Full of Stars" that says San Diego was "still considered too radioactive for occupancy". Tweaked bomb or Psi-Corps moving behind the scenes are the best suggestions.
 
Yeah, perhaps the initial blast was only a certain level, but the PsiCorps saw that they could use the area for a secret base, and because of putting that base there have over the years released enough radiation into the area to keep it being unsafe levels whenever the government goes there to test for radiation levels.
 
My problem is, if the bomb used was a bomb from the soviet union (stated by Garibaldi), the bomb would likely be small yeild - a suitcase bomb.
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The Hiroshima bomb was physically large, but fairly small in terms of yield - around 15 kilotons (of TNT.) A suitcase bomb might produce a yield of 10 to 20 tons, not kilotons. But I'm not sure why you're assuming that any nuke lost by the Soviet Union would be a "suitcase" or similar man-portable device (like the 3 to 5 kiloton "backpack bomb") Such things would be extremely rare, and very difficult and expensive to make. Far more numerous would be standard MIRV-able nuclear warheads, easily transportable by truck, boat or medium size aircraft. The Soviet Union actively tested a wide range of such devices up through the mid-80s, ranging from about 10 kilotons up to 1,000 kilotons (1 megaton). The majority of these were in the 50 to 100 kiloton range, several times that of the Hiroshima bomb.

Given that Hiroshima, Japan has retuned to a habitable state in less than 50 years, with a bomb that was larger...
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AFAIK Hiroshima was never not in a habitable enough state for people to live there. I don't think they ever completely evacuated the city, and I think it has been continuously inhabited since the bomb dropped. (The city center was devastated but a few miles out things were relatively normal.)

One difference between the two events is that Hiroshima (and Nagasaki) were air-bursts. The bombs were detonated hundreds of feet above the ground. Airburst produce enormous heat, radiation and blast effects, but less long-term contamination than ground bursts. "Fall-out" is so-called precisely because it "fall out" of the sky after the explosion. Airbursts produce less in the way of fall-out. Ground explosions (which the San Diego nuke presumably produced) generate enormous amounts of fall-out because they pulverize material, irradiate everything including dirt and sand, and blow it all high into the atmosphere. This contaminated material then gradually floats down to the ground, still highly radioactive, and it gets into everything - the grass that animals eat, their flesh and their milk, which we then eat and drink, etc.

If the San Diego terrorists got hold of a 100 kiloton Soviet nuke and set it off at or near ground level, modified or not it would contaminate the whole area and it could remain clicking hot for a long time to come.

So I don't find this terribly implausible.

Regards,

Joe
 
The Hiroshima bomb was physically large, but fairly small in terms of yield - around 15 kilotons (of TNT.) A suitcase bomb might produce a yield of 10 to 20 tons, not kilotons. But I'm not sure why you're assuming that any nuke lost by the Soviet Union would be a "suitcase" or similar man-portable device (like the 3 to 5 kiloton "backpack bomb") Such things would be extremely rare, and very difficult and expensive to make. Far more numerous would be standard MIRV-able nuclear warheads, easily transportable by truck, boat or medium size aircraft. The Soviet Union actively tested a wide range of such devices up through the mid-80s, ranging from about 10 kilotons up to 1,000 kilotons (1 megaton). The majority of these were in the 50 to 100 kiloton range, several times that of the Hiroshima bomb.

One difference between the two events is that Hiroshima (and Nagasaki) were air-bursts. The bombs were detonated hundreds of feet above the ground. Airburst produce enormous heat, radiation and blast effects, but less long-term contamination than ground bursts. "Fall-out" is so-called precisely because it "fall out" of the sky after the explosion. Airbursts produce less in the way of fall-out. Ground explosions (which the San Diego nuke presumably produced) generate enormous amounts of fall-out because they pulverize material, irradiate everything including dirt and sand, and blow it all high into the atmosphere. This contaminated material then gradually floats down to the ground, still highly radioactive, and it gets into everything - the grass that animals eat, their flesh and their milk, which we then eat and drink, etc.

If the San Diego terrorists got hold of a 100 kiloton Soviet nuke and set it off at or near ground level, modified or not it would contaminate the whole area and it could remain clicking hot for a long time to come.

So I don't find this terribly implausible.

Regards,

Joe
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VERY good explanation. Some notes though:

(1) I assume a low yield nuclear bomb due to the ease of smuggling it back and forth. Low-yield tends to be harder to detect. Does a MIRV count as low-yield?

(2) I had forgotten that airbusts were associated with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A ground explosion for the terrorist bomb would also create a ground shockwave similar to a S-wave in an earthquake. This may explain better the shots of the ruined bulidings in SD.

(2a) Added to this it would intensely saturate the ground with radiation. Airbust fallout would just "sit" on the surface. This intense saturation would explain the universe today article stating the high radiation still present in San Diego.

(3) However, there's lot's of sububrbs to San Diego. While it is a purely speculative theory, the idea that psi-corps operates in San Diego through manipulation of the area (i.e. "faking" radiation), does have merit. While the prevaling winds would have pushed the airborne fallout into the suburbs (i.e. Chula Vista, others...), because it degrades faster, Psi-corps could have setup shop there. As stated by DeMartino, downtown SD would still be very hot.
 
I have to say that reading you guys talking about science of nuclear explosions makes me even more aware of the lack of understanding of an extreme vast quantity of science that I have. What you say is interesting, to say the least.
 
Of on a slight tangent, but were the San Diego wastelands actually a minature model that was used in Captain Power?
 
JMS used to live and work in San Diego. He did not like it.
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That's not what he's said at all. For instance:
I lived in San Diego a few times, the last being from about 1974 to 1981. I
actually rather enjoyed living there (I went to and graduated from San Diego
State during that time). I cut my teeth as a journalist there, and got my
first stage credits. I felt that the town was a little too provincial, and
still is a bit, but would've stayed if what I wanted to do could be done there,
but living in LA is necessary to work in TV. Figures that they'd upgrade the
place just after I left....
Click to expand...

Just to keep the record straight.
Jan
 
JMS was also the victim of a near-fatal mugging in San Diego, so his feelings about the place are understandably mixed. He nuked it out of a genuine affection for the place (as we will tease and insult close friends and family in a way we would never do with strangers or mere acquaintances) and a primal urge to symbolically avenge his beating. He's written about all of this in a number of internet posts and discussed it in at least one of the DVD commentaries.

Regards,

Joe
 
In the very first "Psi Corps" novel, Kevin Vacit and his French ho spend time in San Diego working on a case only a year or two (or three) before the nuking occurs.
 
Just a by-the-way:
The attack on San Diego wasn't an isolated terrorist attack. Look at the scene where John and Delenn are looking for a pattern to the shadow attacks in And the rock cried out, no hiding place . San Diego was an area left un-damaged, causing people to flee there before it was hit with something big. Which means that the surrounding cities were being threatened or hit with attacks. Who was behind such a widespread terrorist campaign?
 
The explosive power of a bomb is not necessarilly directly proportional to its radioactivity, or the persistance of that radioactivity. It could have been some special design dirty bomb, meant to produce contamination for a long period. Bombs of an opposite nature were designed by the US and the USSR, but few were produced, because their effects were considered immoral! These were neutron bombs, designed to have low blast, but very intense, but not persistant, radiation. The idea was that only the people would be killed, with little physical damage to property, and, the area would be inhabitable a fairly short time later. I'm not a nuclear engineer, so I don't know what a dirty bomb, designed to contaminate for a long time, would use, but I'd bet one was possible, given that the half-lives of lots of radioactive products are measured in thousands of years.
 
Dirty bombs tend to go with a cobalt sheathing around the warhead, that upon detonation and the subsequent bombardment with neutrons turns to cobalt 60. Needless to say its a very nasty, very long lived isotope.
 
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