Weapons

Doomsday devices, we used to hear a lot about them. Wikipedia describes a Doomsday Machine, or device, as a hypothetical construction, usually a weapon, which could destroy all life on Earth, or destroy the Earth itself. I guess it wouldn't be called Doomsday if it wasn't thought to be at least capable of destroying all life, would it? Every time we make advances in technology, some people claim that we have a doomsday machine. I know that we possess nuclear weapons, but could they eliminate all life on Earth if we got into a nuclear war? Many experts believe that there is no way that ALL life on Earth could be destroyed, but most agree that it would be much easier to destroy all civilization. When we mention this fact it has to make us think about all those traces of radiation from ancient times that have been found, because it is suspected by some that past nuclear wars have taken place on Earth and the human race was forced to start over and it may have happened more than once.

During the Cold War it was said many times that the USSR had a weapon of last resort, a doomsday weapon that would automatically fire if nukes hit the Soviet Union. Ironically an American nuclear scientist, Leo Szilard spelled out the essentials of such a device. Could the US have had one? It almost seems pointless. If the US or Soviet Union had a Doomsday weapon it would be purely for revenge. Actually the best of all worlds would be for someone to think you had one, because that might give them pause in attacking you with nukes. That probably would not be the case today even if there was one, if religious fanatics had a nuke and decided to use it. A Soviet Doomsday machine was featured in the movie Dr. Strangelove. It consisted of about 50 cobalt-jacketed hydrogen bombs. They were not all in one place, but placed strategically all around for greater effect. Supposedly the machine was created in such a way that humans were incapable of controlling it.

Soviet 50 Megaton Hydrogen Czar Bomb
Photo Source: GNU Free Documentation License,Version 1.2 or any later verson published by the Free Software Foundation

Some people say that every country in the world is using a Doomsday machine and isn't even aware of it. How can this be and what are they talking about? They are talking about refineries that convert oil fuel into fuel which then spews out out the tailpipes of automobiles in the form of carbon dioxide, which in turn is heating up our atmosphere. I am not sure I would think of refineries that way, but I certainly get the point. If we are creating our own Doomsday, and many people think that we are, it is a very slow way of doing it. Guess what? Some people believe that the new supercollider is a Doomsday Machine. What makes them think this? I guess that the biggest reason is that some scientists have stated publicly that the machine might produce tiny black holes. Admittedly they also said that they would only last a fraction of a second, but remember the scientists that said that man would never fly?

I was wondering if there would be another reason that someone would fear that the supercollider would become a Doomsday machine and I found out that something else can be produced by this machine and it is called a strangelet. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about strangelets, “A strangelet is a hypothetical particle consisting of a bound state of roughly equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks. Its size would be a minimum of a few femtometers across (with the mass of a light nucleus). Once the size becomes macroscopic (on the order of meters across), such an object is usually called a quark star or "strange star" rather than a strangelet. An equivalent description is that a strangelet is a small fragment of strange matter. “ Supposedly a strangelet coming into contact with ordinary matter will turn it into strange matter. The bottom line is that some people fear a sort of chain reaction that will ultimately destroy all normal matter. It is felt that if strangelets are larger than the critical value of their surface tension then they become more stable as they get bigger.

Hiroshima After The Bomb
Photo Source: DOD

Doomsday weapons have been spoken about for years in science fiction. One of the most popular types is the one that destroys a star, thus destroying the planets around it. There are others that have also been suggested, such as the one used in Babylon 5 that released a slow poisoning disease around the planet Earth from satellites, thus causing destruction 5 years down the road and forcing Earth to go into quarantine. The last Star Trek movie showed an enemy using something called red matter, that when sent to the core of a planet forced it to collapse and become a black hole. Are any of these things a possibility? As of today, probably not, but the closest to our technology would be releasing a disease form orbiting satellites. That is a gruesome thought.

If the technology ever presents itself, will any country decide to build an automated Doomsday weapon? I guess it certainly could happen. If a country like North Korea or Iran felt threatened by the US, it just might decide to create such a device. An even worse scenario would be for one of these countries to announce that it had a Doomsday device and for us not to believe it and attack and have the device go off. While I sort of doubt that anyone wants to build this device, devices that can destroy entire countries are quite possible and we could even make one now. A one hundred megaton nuclear bomb would take out a European country and maybe even parts of other ones as well. The resulting fallout would cover much of the world with deadly radiation.

The Soviets were going to test a 100 megaton nuclear weapon in the early 1960s, but decided against it. They felt that the fallout out would be too horrific, so they tested a 50 megaton nuclear bomb instead. It was tested on October 30, 1961 in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. This bomb blast was equivalent to ten times all the explosives used in World War II. This figure included the two nukes that we dropped on Japan.