..
[Discussing uses for the bomb that don't involve killing millions of civilians.]
Or pumping of one-shot gamma lasers. (What you want to use them for is on you, though.)
Weren't there some proposals for using very low-fallout bombs to break up dangerous hurricanes that were forming? (I just don't have the background in meteorology to have any intuition about whether or not this is plausible; I know hurricanes have a whole lot of energy tied up in temperature and humidity differences in different masses of air, so maybe it could work.) A lot of these struck me as desparate attempts by the bomb designers to find *something* useful to do with the damned things besides pray that they sit in their silos, rusting, and are never, never used.
I guess the other side of this is maximally evil uses of bombs. Imagine someone setting up a set of fallout-enhanced bombs in their own country, with the warning that if anyone invades them, millions of people downwind will be dying of cancer in the next decade or two. Or someone trying to use current climate models to allow them to threaten a global catastrophe if they're crossed--like trying to screw up ocean currents, or setting off a bomb in the calthrate beds under the ocean to try to trigger runaway global warming. (The big problem there is that if the best available models change enough over time, as they are subject to do, your deterrent might lose all its value very quickly. And yes, I stole this idea from John Barnes.)
MANY more uses.
Yep. Though honestly, I think fissionables are a lot more valuable when you're using them to generate power in a mass-efficient way (e.g., bring plenty to Mars with you, so you can distill out CO2 from the atmosphere and crack out the oxygen with power from your reactor). Most of the time when you're not trying to blow something to bits, you really get more value out of continuous power output for a long time. At least, you do if you don't have to compete with cheaply available natural gas or oil, and if you don't have to comply with insanely expensive and complex regulations.
--John Kelsey, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
