How Cold War nuclear testing once made orbit unsafe for Apollo

[rdtsc]

The Soviet Union K project was responsible for quite a bit of EMP damage to civilian infrastructure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_K_Project

Here is the more detailed report on K-3 test (source link form the above wiki page)

http://www.futurescience.com/emp/test184.html

Some of the effects were seen at 1000km range from the detonation site (which makes sense since it is the altitude is so high).

I guess in the case of an all out nuclear war, a handful of high altitude nuclear EMP devices will be enough to cover any continent.

[steve19]

In the case of an all out nuclear war, a handful of high altitude nuclear EMP devices will be the least of our problems!

[cloudwalking]

Can anybody reconcile these two statements?

  > At 15 rads, blood count starts to change. At 150 rads,
  > death becomes inevitable without treatment.

  > The maximum operation dose-limit for Apollo astronauts
  > was 400 rads on skin, which is equivalent to an x-ray.

[cadab]

I was a bit confused as well, would it be that the skin is a good barrier to the radiation, so most would be deflected away, meaning you would only 'absorb' a very small amount?

[gnu8]

Anyone who ever thought detonating a nuclear warhead in space was a good idea was a moron, plain and simple. It doesn't matter how good of an engineer or general they were, they were of low intelligence and low morals.

[rdl]

Personally, I'd far prefer a small, relatively weak state attacked by a larger state respond with a single weapon detonated at high altitude, causing an EMP, as both a show of force and a way to cripple the higher tech aggressor, rather than with a countervalue strike against population, or even a non-nuclear strike against population.

Destroying communications and military infrastructure at the cost of very few lives (maybe some people in aircraft?) seems a lot more moral than incidental deaths of hundreds of thousands or millions of civilians in a counterforce strike, or intentional deaths tens or hundreds of millions in a countervalue strike.

(Similarly, I think assassination of foreign leaders is by far more moral than conventional warfare. The only problem is that decapitation strikes as a policy compress decision time and encourage postures like "launch on warning" or "launch on we're pretty fucking scared and think you might launch", which increases the overall odds of a nuclear exchange.)

[elnate]

They needed to know what would happen. I don't see a better way to test it. The cold war was a different time and the threat was real; our view on events is shaded by hindsight.

[Volpe]

Is that better or worse than dropping it on a city (or two)?

I'm not sure where your position comes from.

[Dylan16807]

Why? Don't just come here and be an ass, explain yourself.

[i386]

I'm not sure why this received so many down votes. Give me one reason that nuclear explosions in the atmosphere are a good idea (one that preferably isn't "the russians").