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Time for another fallout 3 discussion

Bester

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Jesus Christ, this guy...

The Soviets solved it by skipping the tutorial and moving directly to implosion trigger :).
Can't you just admit that you were wrong and talked about a topic you did not know ?
RDS-1 and RDS-2 were developed in parallel, the former using plutonium, the latter uranium. Unlike Little Boy, where one piece of Uranium was stationary, RDS-2 shot two pieces of Uranium towards each other. RDS-2 / S-2 / Izdelie 601 was constructed and tested without the fuel, but the project was scrapped in 1948, due to lack of U-235 in the country.
Another bomb called RDS-2 was later produced in 1951 and was based on plutonium. But it was an entirely different beast that used the same name.

With plutonium, you don't have the velocity problem
Yeah, you do. Plutonium is much more reactive, its alpha radioactivity is 200000 times higher than U-235, and its critical mass is much smaller, it can be the size of an egg. So understandably it was much more appealing to use. The question was how to get it to explode? If you use the same technique of approaching two pieces together as with Uranium, it requires an astounding velocity of 10-12 km/s, which is not achievable with any explosives.
So in the end, another method had to be devised, because the velocity problem just couldn't be solved.
 
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Cael

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Discussing the mechanics of atom bombs in the game that has HANDHELD BALLISTAE WHICH THROW LITTLE ATOM BOMBS.
As I said: Don't bother wasting time arguing with a wikipedia enthusiast. You waste your time ;)
 

ValeVelKal

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RDS-1 and RDS-2 were developed in parallel, the former using plutonium, the latter uranium. Unlike Little Boy, where one piece of Uranium was stationary, RDS-2 shot two pieces of Uranium towards each other. RDS-2 / S-2 / Izdelie 601 was constructed and tested without the fuel, but the project was scrapped in 1948, due to lack of U-235 in the country.
Another bomb called RDS-2 was later produced in 1951 and was based on plutonium. But it was an entirely different beast that used the same name.
I did not know about the first version of RDS-2, interesting. That's Cael's "design".
Still, that's an unique case and not the standard gun-type design.

Yeah, you do. Plutonium is much more reactive, its alpha radioactivity is 200000 times higher than U-235, and its critical mass is much smaller, it can be the size of an egg. So understandably it was much more appealing to use. The question was how to get it to explode? If you use the same technique of approaching two pieces together as with Uranium, it requires an astounding velocity of 10-12 km/s, which is not achievable with any explosives.
So in the end, another method was had to be devised, because the velocity problem just couldn't be solved.
Gerboise bleue disagrees that the velocity problem cannot be solved for Plutonium. As I understand the Gerboise blanche test, they did not even have to play with the shape for a specific small mass of Plutonium (though they played with the materials in which the target was encased).
 
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Bester

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Gerboise bleue disagrees that the velocity problem cannot be solved for Plutonium. As I understand the Gerboise blanche test, they did not even have to play with the shape for a specific small mass of Plutonium (though they played with the materials in which the target was encased).
Don't know what gave you that idea, google it up, it's an implosion type bomb.
The most powerful explosives provide you with a shock wave that travels at 5-6 km/s. But to transfer this velocity to a solid mass is not something that we found how to do yet.

Still, that's an unique case and not the standard gun-type design.
Would've been the standard soviet design had they had enough uranium for mass production.

Going back to the original point you got triggered by, let me put it into context. I think it's a perfectly fine artistic license to imagine that USSR dropped a Uranium type bomb in Fallout. A Uranium bomb is less complicated, easier to explode for the protagonist, so I was just trying to give the writers a break. Had it been a Pu-239 type bomb, forget about it. But still, even if it was an early RDS-2, to imagine that it can go off after a fall, a malfunction and a hundred years of lying there, it's not artistic license, nor is it a rule of cool. It's just fucking retarded.
 
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ValeVelKal

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Don't know what gave you that idea, google it up, it's an implosion type bomb.
The most powerful explosives provide you with a shock wave that travels at 5-6 km/s. But to transfer this velocity to a solid mass is not something that we found how to do yet.
I did not check Google I did from memory. After you message I googled, and then assumed that the little information on Internet that went against what I remembered on this topic was as well.

Back home, I checked in books I haven't opened in years and dang it Internet // you are correct, and I am wrong. I should have quit while I was ahead, at post #197.

Though where my mistake comes from is pretty obvious. The initial design of Gerboise Bleue was gun-type with plutonium indeed, with the particularity that the "gun" (called "tampoir" - "hitter") was around the "target" (called "implosoir"). But in 1959, the French procured alpha measurement from US tests (actually provided to them as "examples" by an American company producing high-speed oscilloscopes necessary to theorical studies - the best spying is when the other side gives you top-secret information by not realizing they are top-secret) and realized that the measurement was not within bounds of what was possible with gun-type, and from that realized that the Americans were doing it another way.
Problem : the test was planned for Q1 1960, there was little time to start from scratch. The scientists realized they could actually transform their gun-type bomb into an implosion bomb by, roughly, removing fissile material and plugging the non-nuclear explosive a bit differently. Hence, the bomb kept its "tampoir" and "implosoir" parts, and became implosion-type.
Funnily enough, the next French test, Gerboise Blanche, was done 100% with the parts "saved" from Gerboise Bleue.

So I guess just like your initial RDS-2 design, it is possible to do Plutonium trigger-type and as of 1959 that was the Gerboise Bleue design, but at this point you are one small step away from doing a better implosion type :).

So well, we were both sometimes right and sometimes wrong in this discussion, and you are clearly better than me at the physics of it, so let's remain at that final mistake from me on Gerboise Bleue.

In another life, almost 15 years ago, I worked (junior obviously) on weapon proliferation and though I started on non-WMD, circumstances (in particular the activity at that time of a specific country located between Turkey and Pakistan :)) suddenly saw me being allocated to support the nuclear proliferation team. I was mostly working on the delivery systems, but I picked quite a few things on the way on the production process (much less on the physics of it), and from there some knowledge of the "early days of the nuclear age" which granted was not really actionable.
 
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Why was FO4's "find your son" so much more hated than FO3's "find your father"?
Could it have been a reaction to the voiced protagonist?
 

Ol' Willy

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Why was FO4's "find your son" so much more hated than FO3's "find your father"?
Could it have been a reaction to the voiced protagonist?
Fagout 3 was played by the fans of the series and RPG aficionados alike; being grotesquely horrendous it taught these people a valuable lesson - not to await anything decent from Shittesda. Thus, many of these people skipped Fagout 4 - I did so, for example. This left mentally malformed mouthbreathers as the main audience of Fagout 4 and for them writing of such abysmal quality is perfectly fine.
 

Butter

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Why was FO4's "find your son" so much more hated than FO3's "find your father"?
Could it have been a reaction to the voiced protagonist?
You also aren't allowed to sequence-break past any of the "WHERE'S SHAUN?!" outbursts, whereas Fallout 3 allows you to skip any or all steps of the "finding your dad" quest.
 

purupuru

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Why was FO4's "find your son" so much more hated than FO3's "find your father"?
Could it have been a reaction to the voiced protagonist?
I'd wager any character would have a father, while being a prewar married lawyer/war veteran with a son is far more restricting.
 
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Bester

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At least it was better than Fallout 4.
How'd you know, did you play it? For real? If you played Fallout 4, Todd might as well don the wife beater and give you a smack that you deserve.
 
Unwanted

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How'd you know, did you play it? For real? If you played Fallout 4, Todd might as well don the wife beater and give you a smack that you deserve.
Yeah I played it for like 30 hours.
 

ValeVelKal

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Why was FO4's "find your son" so much more hated than FO3's "find your father"?
Could it have been a reaction to the voiced protagonist?
Bethesda as always be about making your character what you want (and in general it means "do-gooder that is everything at the same time")
Everyone has a father, but having a son (and caring about him) already tells a lot about who your character is. Also, I assume that if you are a teenager or an early-20, or even a late-20, it is easier project in a MC that looks for his father than one that looks from his son.

I say that having never played Fallout 4 :).
 

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