Nuclear Holocaust...would it be possible for cars, trucks to be blown 30,000 ft in the air?

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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Nuclear Holocaust...would it be possible for cars, trucks to be blown 30,000 ft in the air?

Posted: 1/2/2006 2:05:22 PM EDT

I'm reading this book Swan Song by Robert McCammon in the late 80's. Its sort of a "WWIII meets The Stand". In the first part of the book during the nuclear exchange the President is aboard a "Looking Glass" type plane and he looks out the window to see cars, buses, and houses being blown skyward by the mushroom clouds..I didn't take it too seriously until:

SPOILER
The President's own plane is shot down by a Greyhound bus with charred corpses hanging out of it that was blown skyward by the blasts!!...Needless to say it was a jaw dropper of a read but I always got the impression that everything would be blown flat.

Posted: 1/2/2006 2:10:15 PM EDT

[#1]

So THAT's how the freon 12 got up there and ruined the ozone hole !

Posted: 1/2/2006 2:19:22 PM EDT

[#2]

Hehe be one AWESOME ride, that's for sure.

Posted: 1/2/2006 2:20:34 PM EDT

[#3]

If the nuke was at ground level, things would be flying across the ground at deadly speed, but not into the air.
If the nuke was in the air, things would be pounded into the ground at deadly speed and across the ground at more oblique angles.
If the nuke was under the bus, the bus would be vaporized. The vaporized matter that formerly formed a bus would then be shot up at damn high speed, but I wouldn't worry about flying buses at that elevation.

Posted: 1/2/2006 2:23:57 PM EDT

[#4]

Sounds more like a WWIII meets the beginning of "The Wizzard of Oz" book

Posted: 1/2/2006 2:33:00 PM EDT

[#5]

The force needed to send debris that high would rip a greyhound bus asunder.

Posted: 1/2/2006 3:39:54 PM EDT

[#6]

The only remote possibility I can imagine is a ground-penetrating nuke that put enough earth between it and the surface that the houses/busses/etc were spared the instantaneous flash and blast, but were still accelerated upward with great force.

I have doubts that anything reasonable would be able to maintain structural integrity if it were on the surface when such a sub-surface blast took place.

Jim

Posted: 1/2/2006 3:44:05 PM EDT

[#7]

Hopefully we'll never know for sure.

Posted: 1/2/2006 3:50:00 PM EDT

[#8]

sounds like the author is an idiot.

Posted: 1/2/2006 3:58:51 PM EDT

[#9]

Even volcanoes don't throw greyhound sized rockes that high. Large objects can be blown to 30,000 feet but it'd take more energy and ideal launching conditions.

Let's not forget that the temperatures at the core of a nuclear explosion are around 10 million degrees, and although it cools rapidly as the fireball expands, inside the blast area temps would still be too high and the bus would simply vaporize. In other words, you can launch a bus to 30,000 feet, but not with nuclear propellant.

Posted: 1/2/2006 4:04:14 PM EDT

[#10]

Quoted:
sounds like the author is an idiot.

+1 big time

Posted: 1/2/2006 4:07:35 PM EDT

[#11]

I'd be more worried about someone getting his hands on a .50 cal. Nothing is safe from them.

Posted: 1/2/2006 4:11:37 PM EDT

[#12]

What happens when you put about 20lbs under a small toyota?

It blows it to shit really doesnt go to high. How would a greyhound stay in on peice when its has that kind of force pushing on it.

Posted: 1/2/2006 4:18:42 PM EDT

[#13]

Auntie Em!

Posted: 1/2/2006 4:19:43 PM EDT

[#14]

I went back and reread the section...he attributed this "phenomenon" to a combination of shock waves and "super tormado" force winds...I want some of what he's on

Posted: 1/2/2006 7:28:17 PM EDT

[#15]

Quoted:
I went back and reread the section...he attributed this "phenomenon" to a combination of shock waves and "super tormado" force winds...I want some of what he's on

You say tormado... I say tomato.

Posted: 1/2/2006 7:56:15 PM EDT

[#16]

Posted: 1/2/2006 8:19:56 PM EDT

[#17]

It's actually a very good read - I just finished it two weeks ago.

The author obviously does no research at all - the survivalists on these forums would pick it apart till there's nothing left, but it's a decent book, and it's entertaining, which is what matters.

Posted: 1/2/2006 10:16:53 PM EDT

[#18]

It would take a far bigger boom than we are capable of. But remember "fallout" gets that high. Blast creates big "bubble" if the bottom of that bubble reaches ground and then the bubble collapses things get sucked into that vacumn. Dust and dirt and rocks, etc. Anything big enough to suck up big objects isn't going to leave anything flying for way too many bunches of miles for it to be hit by anything sucked up.

Remember a willing suspension of believe is necessary for most popular reading these days. It's called fiction on purpose.

Posted: 1/3/2006 4:20:52 AM EDT

[#19]

Quoted:
It's actually a very good read - I just finished it two weeks ago.

The author obviously does no research at all - the survivalists on these forums would pick it apart till there's nothing left, but it's a decent book, and it's entertaining, which is what matters.

Yeah its a fun read...I would have overlooked it but then he turned it into a major part of the story when a bus is hurled 30,000 ft at the plane the President is on..I'm usually not a nitpick but c'mon..

Posted: 1/3/2006 7:03:06 AM EDT

[#20]

Quoted:
The President's own plane is shot down by a Greyhound bus with charred corpses hanging out of it that was blown skyward by the blasts!!...Needless to say it was a jaw dropper of a read but I always got the impression that everything would be blown flat.

Let's see. A Greyhound bus was blown high enough that it hit an airplane flying at altitude but the shock wave that brought it didn't have any effect on the plane. I guess the bus must have been sitting directly on top of the weapon, but didn't get vaporized or torn apart while it was being thrown 30,000 feet in the air.

Remind me again. Why did I give up reading fiction?

Posted: 1/3/2006 7:58:15 AM EDT

[#21]

Never heard of that book, and I collect all the doomsday type books. They don't write 'em like they did in the late 70s and 80s.Now all TEOTWAWKI books are about some timeshift or some other non-war disaster..not that those aren't fun to read,but you can certainly look over several decades woth of disaster books and see how the politics of the day affected the fictional literature. The stuff from the 50s with all of its blind patriotism is particularly amusing to read in retrospect.

Posted: 1/3/2006 8:00:03 AM EDT

[#22]

Quoted:
www.intriguing.com/mp/_pictures/grail/large/HolyGrail061.jpg

Fetchez la vache!

Posted: 1/3/2006 8:03:39 AM EDT

[#23]

Wow, an anti-aircraft bus. Now I've heard everything.

Sounds like this guy is friends with Ian Slater of the "WWIII" series fame. You know, the one with SAM missiles having 10,000-pound warheads and radar-guided torpedoes.

That series would have been pretty good if butthead had bothered to do a little basic research first.

Posted: 1/3/2006 8:25:30 AM EDT

[#24]

Everyone is so caught up in dealing with the structural integrity of the bus allowing it to be blasted 30,000 feet that we forgot about the INTACT charred bodies hanging out the windows that the president looks out the window and see's.

Posted: 1/3/2006 8:43:15 AM EDT

[#25]

Quoted:
Wow, an anti-aircraft bus. Now I've heard everything.

Sounds like this guy is friends with Ian Slater of the "WWIII" series fame. You know, the one with SAM missiles having 10,000-pound warheads and radar-guided torpedoes.

That series would have been pretty good if butthead had bothered to do a little basic research first.

Is that the series where an armored unit in Siberia withdrew until the Russian armored equipment's oil froze at -something degrees? The unit lost some vehicles until the bulk of the Soviet forces froze up?

I remeber reading some god awful series a few years ago. I hated it for the gross innacuracies (I was reading Clancy about the same time) but the love of all things good in life I could not stop reading the series!!!!! I still don't know why I read that crap. Maybe for the laugh my ass-off factor!?!?!?

Posted: 1/3/2006 8:54:26 AM EDT

[#26]

I read that book "Swan Song" earlier this year and liked a lot. Couldn't put it down.

The bus and the dead people I think were there just to give the pres a huge guilt trip before he dies and give the reader a sense of poetic justice.

I don't think a bus could be launched in the air even it the bus was going up a steep incline and the bomb detonated below it. The shock wave could theoretically push it up the hill launching it into the atmosphere but then again a lot of crap should theoretically work.

Hold my beer and watch this!!!

Posted: 1/3/2006 9:45:50 AM EDT

[#27]

I always though a nuke's "blast" was just the result of the super-heating taking place (and the resulting change in pressure due to the rapid and intense heating of air in a massive radius).

Posted: 1/3/2006 10:18:49 AM EDT

[#28]

Quoted:
Quoted:
Wow, an anti-aircraft bus. Now I've heard everything.

Sounds like this guy is friends with Ian Slater of the "WWIII" series fame. You know, the one with SAM missiles having 10,000-pound warheads and radar-guided torpedoes.

That series would have been pretty good if butthead had bothered to do a little basic research first.

Is that the series where an armored unit in Siberia withdrew until the Russian armored equipment's oil froze at -something degrees? The unit lost some vehicles until the bulk of the Soviet forces froze up?

I remeber reading some god awful series a few years ago. I hated it for the gross innacuracies (I was reading Clancy about the same time) but the love of all things good in life I could not stop reading the series!!!!! I still don't know why I read that crap. Maybe for the laugh my ass-off factor!?!?!?

I don't know, but it sounds like it might have been. I stopped reading at "World In Flames", and his next book was in Siberia, but by then I was so turned off I just didn't bother.

It was awful. The guy didn't have a clue.

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Nuclear Holocaust...would it be possible for cars, trucks to be blown 30,000 ft in the air?

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