Bombs, stutters, and the Demonization of the Dead

[Bob Norton]

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>For the Obscure Apocalypic Fact File: the high-explosive implosion in the 
>Fat-Man-style bombs had two purposes. One, fairly obviously, to compress
the >solid urranium or plutonium, literally bringing its atoms closer
together and >thus reducing the amount needed for critical mass. The
second, less obvious, >is that if the fissile atoms have *inward* momentum
when the chain reaction >starts, you gain an extra few microseconds before
the fission energy can start >to push them *outward* -- 
>and that adds several generations to the total chain reaction, greatly
>increasing the blast. It's counterintuitive, because the fission energy is
so >much greater, but it happens at the instant when every little bit counts.
>


This is similar to the reason that modern thermonuclear (as in H-bomb)
devices are also wrapped in fissile "blankets". The neutrons from the
fusion process cause a chain reaction in the blanket that further
compresses the fusion reaction (started itself by a fission device seperate
from the blanket. If you remove the blanket, the neutrons leave the blast
unimpeded and you have a neutron bomb with markedly less explosive force.

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>[a-and]  Is this two syllables, staccato, Jimmy Stewart sincere, or is
>it one long sly elided "Outstanding! A-and... they are mild" entree to
>otherness?
 
I've always read this as staccato. The other possibility never occurred to
me and sounds wrong when I auralize it.

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>Now that's worth knowing -- thanks.  It shows the continuation of a long 
>tradition in law enforcement: she got shot by the lawmen, so she must 
>have been a dangerous criminal....
>

Not just the lawmen, I'm afraid; it's government-wide. When I was in Nam
all civilian casualties (that we caused) were reclassified from civilian to
Viet Cong. Then we'd turn their names over to the ARVNs or the QC ("white
mice": National Police, the South Vietnamese Gestapo) who would round up
their families, torture them, steal their posessions and then throw them
into prison in places like Con Sanh island. 

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