The Ultimate Heresy: Technology Can't Fix What's Broken

[ronwagn + 6,290]

https://science.howstuffworks.com/e-bomb3.htm Non nuclear EMP weapons. 

 

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

31 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

Very impressive explosions, I assume it was a military depot. Expensive fireworks! 

I am no engineer but I would think that a satellite equipped with the right electronic pulse weapons, properly directed, could do immense damage very quickly. More satellites or high altitude aircraft the better. (worse damage)

Yes, a recurring event. This particular depot blew up twice, in 2017 and 2019. I think it is something like the 3rd largest conventional explosion anybody ever bothered to film. The 2nd largest was a Houti arms depot in Yemen, also producing the "whiteout" effect usually attributed to "neutron bombs" That gave rise to a conspiracy of it being an Israeli tactical nuke.

Neutron emissions are best, I am telling you. Very useful to excite fissionable materials remotely. Civilian reactors running on low enrichment fuel would go into meltdown. Military reactors running on high enrichment, like what USN carriers and SSBN use, would turn into actual bombs. Is only shielded by hydrogen-rich materials like water, but insignificantly so. Hiding the NORAD inside mount Cheyenne does squat to protect. Human physics already produced neutron emissions powerful enough to be detected on the other side of the globe.

[ronwagn + 6,290]

12 minutes ago, Andrei Moutchkine said:

Yes, a recurring event. This particular depot blew up twice, in 2017 and 2019. I think it is something like the 3rd largest conventional explosion anybody ever bothered to film. The 2nd largest was a Houti arms depot in Yemen, also producing the "whiteout" effect usually attributed to "neutron bombs" That gave rise to a conspiracy of it being an Israeli tactical nuke.

Neutron emissions are best, I am telling you. Very useful to excite fissionable materials remotely. Civilian reactors running on low enrichment fuel would go into meltdown. Military reactors running on high enrichment, like what USN carriers and SSBN use, would turn into actual bombs. Is only shielded by hydrogen-rich materials like water, but insignificantly so. Hiding the NORAD inside mount Cheyenne does squat to protect. Human physics already produced neutron emissions powerful enough to be detected on the other side of the globe.

Lots of information here: https://science.howstuffworks.com/e-bomb.htm

Edited November 9, 2021 by ronwagn

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

35 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

https://science.howstuffworks.com/e-bomb3.htm Non nuclear EMP weapons. 

 

This guy obviously doesn't have the slightest clue what he's talking about.

You don't really want an omnidirectional transmission like a magnetron in household microwave oven. You want to put the same energy into a tightbeam transmission instead. Expect the EIRP (equivalent isotropic radiated power to go up by some three orders of magnitude)

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

(there are online applets which will compute this for you out there)

More fun example. Say, you purchasethe most powerful Wi-Fi amplifier available to civilians (I've seen 50W for yachting) Than, you attach it to a unidirectional antenna. Say, a parabolic dish obfuscated as the spare wheel hanging on the back of your SUV. This ought to be enough to expose the pursuing police officers to condition similar to chicken wings in a microwave (because the big part of the oven's effect is the standing wave formed inside semi-permiable metal box around the magnetron)

This is the essence of a ghetto-style

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

a directed microwave weapon similar to laser. It isn't used more often because microwaves do not permeate into completely sealed metal boxes, which is where you want them. Say, tanks. Or simply cutting the engine on the perusing police car instead of harming the cops.

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

20 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

Lots of information here: https://science.howstuffworks.com/e-bomb.htm

All of which is BS. There is no "e-bomb" There is an "e-gun" which is more or less the same device as sufficiently powerful ground radar. Its mileage varies a lot depending on the target. Won't penetrate steel, but probably has better luck against thin aircraft aluminum.

The preferred US Airforce way to destroy civilian grid infrastructure is the

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

I know how to do a lot more damage to your grid than this, but have no suitable airforce at the moment. Nonetheless, what goes around comes around eventually, no matter what.

Edited November 9, 2021 by Andrei Moutchkine

[ronwagn + 6,290]

https://www.askaprepper.com/10-faraday-cages-you-can-make-at-home/

[ronwagn + 6,290]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outward Low tech ways the British attacked German electrical systems with balloons, cord, and steel wire plus some tech added. This actually had a real effect on the war. 

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

44 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

https://www.askaprepper.com/10-faraday-cages-you-can-make-at-home/

There is a wearable one. Reminds me of a fellow named Dr. Megavolt, who I've seen perform on Burning Man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fyko81WAvvQ

But sometimes, you don't really want anything to ferromagnetic properties whatsoever. For example, there is an impressive physics device called the klystron, which has been known to forcefully relocate random ferrous parts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klystron#Tuning

Only special beryllium bronze tools allowed in its vicinity.

NORAD is probably excited about the Russian announcement that their next lunar mission is going to image the Moon's subsurface down to the depth of 13km, officially looking for water. If there is any truth to your link, they seem to have forgotten who really won the arms race. They did see this device at work at least once.

You need a regulation DOE container for transfer of 1 gram of Californium-252, best known portable source of neutrons.

That stuff is capable of fully converting its mass into neutron emissions. Think controlled annihilation.

Once upon a time, I had the please of meeting real Glen Seaborg at the Berkeley Faculty Club, who must've been like 150 years old at the time, and shake his hand. I said, "thanks for the element, Glenn" He simply chuckled in response, so I don't know what he thought. But I reckon, it's got to be either Californium-252 or Seaborgium (what a bunch of brown-nosers

[ronwagn + 6,290]

The klystron seems like a forerunner of a ray gun that could be scaled up or down as needed. It could possibly sweep a battlefield or re computer directed from a high point, or aircraft. I am sure that all "advanced" countries are working on every possibility. 

How would that compare to laser technology in practical use for weapons or peaceful use. Preferably peaceful!

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

31 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outward Low tech ways the British attacked German electrical systems with balloons, cord, and steel wire plus some tech added. This actually had a real effect on the war. 

Stories of Hogwarts yet again. How exactly would you get an H2 balloon to have just enough buoyancy to hover just over surface without crashing or pulling way high up without a modern computersed controller? Flying that low would also make the balloon way vulnerable to any odd small arms fire.

I have a better idea, inspired by existence of the

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

(a ball of prehistoric lard they keep finding in the British sewers. The record sized one weights in at 130t, a good match for Antonov 124)

So, what you need to do is to make balls about that size made out of epoxy resin that acquires electrical conductivity as it dries. It will also glue itself to whatever it drops onto and will be very difficult to remove quick enough, given its immense size.

My Antonov gunship would be at least as difficult to take out by means of fighter aircraft as a naval destroyer, because I can populate it with robotic CIWS for defense.

Once the network of electric fatbergs is dense enough, they will form an alternate grid of sustained electrical arches that will suck all energy out of their regular grid. Possibly inspired by an old computer game called

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

where you have to lay a bunch of bomb and that try to avoid becoming the collateral damage of them all setting each other off at once.

Edited November 9, 2021 by Andrei Moutchkine

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

17 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

The klystron seems like a forerunner of a ray gun that could be scaled up or down as needed. It could possibly sweep a battlefield or re computer directed from a high point, or aircraft. I am sure that all "advanced" countries are working on every possibility. 

How would that compare to laser technology in practical use for weapons or peaceful use. Preferably peaceful!

The klystron is not a gun, but an immensely powerful "vacuum tube" (strange name). It simply picks up a random metallic object and relocates it elsewhere. They don't have a very good understanding of how to target it.

Regular lasers lasers? They tend to suck as weapons, even at megawatt class. Here is the US effort

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1

it being chemical, it used up 2.3t of fuel per shot. The equivalent Soviet effort goes as far back as 1977 and is was most likely nuclear powered. They made two of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beriev_A-60

and one, in 1987, of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyus_(spacecraft)

Still a dubious device. Result are dependent on the atmospheric conditions and surface coloring of the target way too much. Somewhere approaching terrawatt, lasers start forming a conductive plasma path trough the atmosphere, giving raise to  a more useful weapon called

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

There are much cheaper ways to achieve the same thing, some of which we already discussed.

Does Turkey count as advanced? They are the ones with the best shot so far, taking out a fancy Chinese-made recon drone (similar to your Raptor/Reaper) in Libya

https://ahvalnews.com/turkish-military/turkish-laser-shoots-down-enemy-drone-libya-making-military-history

The device was a homegrown 100kw product that is not really portable. (The portable one the Turks are pimping on the defense shows now is the 50kw version)

The best American device I liked was a combination of a 50kw laser and a whole pack of laser-guided Mavericks or Hellfires mounted onto a sawed-off Stryker in the manner of a Soviet MLRS. Now, this sorry excuses for an energy weapon and a SAM have actually turned out quite effective as a combo.

My favorite "beam weapon" waiting to be productized is the

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

It will cut armor like butter from sufficiently close range and is actually man-portable (Uses only a few liters of water per hour due to the orifice being so small) Peoples have already demonstrated a conversion of crap $100 pressure cleaner to this. They cheated a bit though, by appropriating the working bit from an industrial machine costing a hundred grand. That part costs $300 and made out of corundum or industrial diamond.

For somebody with a bit more budget, there is something called the

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-gas_gun

(a device that uses the fact that hydrogen is not an "ideal gas", i.e. there is no limit to how fast you can accelerate it) From the above article, hier is the impact of Lexan toothpick with a cast aluminum block at about Mach 20

Like they teach you in Shaolin, speed is the better part of kinetic energy!

Could be potentially portable enough for a technical?

So, maybe there is something good to come out of the "hydrogen economy" BS, after all? There is an even smaller related device called the

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

which you can think of as next level shaped charge. USA allegedly uses it to initiate fusion nukes without fission primer. I strongly suspect that Russians used it for their smaller antiship missiles, too. Otherwise, I have no explanation as to why the US Harpoon missile makes a fairly manageable hole in US decommissioned frigate, wheres the Russian Kh-35, a missile pretty much identical in shape and size (and supposedly Harpoon's clone) tears a Russian decommissioned frigate into two halves.  (Having said that, a US decommissioned frigate tends to be nearly twice the displacement of a Russian decommissioned frigate, but don't think it is that much of a factor)