Actually, when I did my calculations my appreciation of Szilard increased. He was playing a very clever game.
Basically, in order to make a cobalt bomb you need 50 tons of neutrons absorbed into cobalt. The only way of doing that requires a humongous hydrogen bomb. Note when Szilard did his talk: before the official announcement of the hydrogen bomb. The people who could point out the problem with the design would be revealing quite sensitive nuclear secrets if they said anything—the neutron yield of hydrogen bombs was very closely guarded, and was only eventually reverse-engineered by studies of fallout isotopes (to the great annoyance of the US, apparently).
Szilard knew that 1) he was not revealing anything secret, 2) criticising his idea required revealing secrets, and 3) the bomb was impractical, so even if somebody tried they would not get a superweapon thanks to his speech.
I think cobalt bombs can be done; but you need an Orion drive to launch them into the stratosphere. The fallout will not be even, leaving significant gaps. And due to rapid gamma absorption in sea water the oceans will be semi-safe. Just wash your fishing boat so fallout does not build up, and you have a good chance of survival.
Basically, if you want to cause an xrisk by poisoning the biosphere, you need to focus on breaking a key link rather than generic poisoning. Nukes for deliberate nuclear winter or weapons that poison the oxygen-production of the oceans are likely more effective than any fallout-bomb.
I think that you need not to move the bomb to stratospere. Smith in Doomsday men gave estimate that doomsday cobalt bomb should weight near the weight of lincor Missuri that is 70 000 tonn. So you could detonate it on spot—and the enegry of explosion will bring isotopes to upper atmosphere.
Also, if we go in technical details about global radiological contamonation, I think it would be better to use not only cobalt but other isotopes. Gold was discussed as another one. But the best could be some kind of heavy gas like radon because it is does not (as I think) solve in the see but tend to stay in lower atmosphere. It is not a fact but just my opinion about making nuclear doomsday divice more efective, and while I think this partilur opinion is wrong, some one who really wants to make such device could find the ways to make it much more effective , taking different isotopes as blanket of the bomb.
Actually, when I did my calculations my appreciation of Szilard increased. He was playing a very clever game.
Basically, in order to make a cobalt bomb you need 50 tons of neutrons absorbed into cobalt. The only way of doing that requires a humongous hydrogen bomb. Note when Szilard did his talk: before the official announcement of the hydrogen bomb. The people who could point out the problem with the design would be revealing quite sensitive nuclear secrets if they said anything—the neutron yield of hydrogen bombs was very closely guarded, and was only eventually reverse-engineered by studies of fallout isotopes (to the great annoyance of the US, apparently).
Szilard knew that 1) he was not revealing anything secret, 2) criticising his idea required revealing secrets, and 3) the bomb was impractical, so even if somebody tried they would not get a superweapon thanks to his speech.
I think cobalt bombs can be done; but you need an Orion drive to launch them into the stratosphere. The fallout will not be even, leaving significant gaps. And due to rapid gamma absorption in sea water the oceans will be semi-safe. Just wash your fishing boat so fallout does not build up, and you have a good chance of survival.
Basically, if you want to cause an xrisk by poisoning the biosphere, you need to focus on breaking a key link rather than generic poisoning. Nukes for deliberate nuclear winter or weapons that poison the oxygen-production of the oceans are likely more effective than any fallout-bomb.
Thank you for clarification of your position.
I think that you need not to move the bomb to stratospere. Smith in Doomsday men gave estimate that doomsday cobalt bomb should weight near the weight of lincor Missuri that is 70 000 tonn. So you could detonate it on spot—and the enegry of explosion will bring isotopes to upper atmosphere.
Also, if we go in technical details about global radiological contamonation, I think it would be better to use not only cobalt but other isotopes. Gold was discussed as another one. But the best could be some kind of heavy gas like radon because it is does not (as I think) solve in the see but tend to stay in lower atmosphere. It is not a fact but just my opinion about making nuclear doomsday divice more efective, and while I think this partilur opinion is wrong, some one who really wants to make such device could find the ways to make it much more effective , taking different isotopes as blanket of the bomb.