Talk:Air-sol moyenne portée

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 02:07, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Removed reference to the killing power of the warhead, which was patently incorrect to anyone with a rudimentary grasp of weapons physics.

A previous version of this article stated that, because the declared yield of the warhead was 300 kt, its killing power was 20 times that of the bomb used on Hiroshima, hence it was capable of killing 5 million persons (250,000 x 20) and annihilating a city like Paris. This is incorrect. Explosions, like all emissions of energy from a single point, are subject to the inverse-square rule (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law). To quote the article on the rule: "a specified physical quantity or intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source of that physical quantity". Hence the damage caused by an explosion, and the area affected, does not increase in proportion with the weapon's yield.

A good illustration of the damage caused by a 300 kt device, detonated at optimal airburst height, can be found at http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=300&lat=48.8583&lng=2.2945&hob_ft=0&casualties=1&zm=11. Although this calculator cannot assumed to be entirely accurate, the blast effects of nuclear weapons are well known and well recorded from years of U.S. civil defense material. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.209.98.189 (talk) 20:51, 24 February 2016 (UTC)