Nuclear Equestria

by Bronyboah

Chapter 2

"Hey, guys, I think you better take a look at this," said Derpy in an unusually serious tone.

Rarity, Applejack, and Pinkie Pie walk over to where Derpy was standing. The four were currently at a party hosted in Canterlot, while Twilight, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy had stayed behind. Twilight had to study more than usual (if that's even possible), Rainbow Dash figured out that the Wonderbolts had gone to perform in Manehattan and lost interest, and Fluttershy had to go to a big talent show that starred some of her pets on the same day.

"We are flying just outside of what used to be a town called Ponyville, which was just recently attacked by a suspected nuclear ICBM," the news reporters were hovering outside of the blast area in a helicopter fitted for all kinds of high-tech recording equipment. "The footage you are seeing is real. Thousands of ponies were killed in the explosion, and we've only heard of three survivors. Nopony has heard from Celestia on this--" the TV screen went black as Applejack smashes the on/off button on the remote. Tears streamed down her face. Derpy walked over and hugged her, whispering comforting things in her ear. Pinkie Pie's hair had straightened out, and she began to mutter hateful things under her breath. Rarity was even whiter than usual, and sat down on the sofa, trying to catch her breath.

Derpy seemed to be the only stable pony in the room, and called attention to herself.

"Guys, I know you're scared for your friends, but we need to keep it together and try to figure out what's going on; crying won't help them," Derpy said in a voice nopony had ever heard from her before.

"She's right," Applejack replied, "We should find out some more information on what's happenin' down there." She winced as she decided to turn the TV back on, which sparks to life, continuing the report.

"This mysterious attack threat has had nopony to blame, leaving even Celestia herself baffled," the breaking news report had interrupted every channel, forcing people to see the disturbing video captured in Ponyville. "People of Equestria, please do not panic! We are working on finding out who did this, and we will fight back with all of our strength," Princess Celestia's serious face appeared on every Television screen in Equestria. "Safe havens have been set up in every city, and soon you will see military officers in the streets. Please follow their orders, it will only aid in your safety.

The ponies were simply flabbergasted by the reality of what was going on. Nopony paid any attention to the knocking on the door. It quickly turned into banging, and soon the door was kicked in. Rarity screamed, and was dragged out along with Pinkie Pie, who shouted obscenities at the officers. Applejack and Derpy were lucky to remain sane, and followed the armed stallions in urban camo out the door.

~~~~~

Twilight was in heaven, gaping at all the gadgets inside the vehicle, giddy with excitement. The pilot was the complete opposite. Twilight was asking questions here and there, driving him insane.

"Alright, that's enough for now," said the agitated pilot, hoping it would be for the rest of the trip. He was wearing a tight-fitting urban camouflage suit, with a high-tech headset on.

She clearly has no respect for what happened this morning...

It was already dusk, and the glow of the multicolored lights outside the helicopter appeared very sleep-inducing for the two mares, while Spike had already dozed off.

Twilight finally decided to get some rest, and leaned on Rainbow Dash while she started to fall asleep. This made Rainbow Dash forget her irritation with her. She then smiled and cuddled up to her, wrapping her wing around Twilight's warm, fuzzy, body, and quickly falling asleep.

The passengers were awakened abruptly when the helicopter made a sudden lurch.

"Sorry guys, looks like we're going to have some minor turbulence," the pilot said, unfazed by the rocking and shaking while the inexperienced passengers gripped the sides of the seats nervously.

Dark storm clouds swooped in around the chopper, quickly enveloping the machine in a caliginous mist.

"What the heck?" said Rainbow Dash and the pilot at the same time.

"Hawkeye, this is black bear actual," the pilot began, speaking into his headset.

"Black bear actual this is hawkeye, we read ya loud and clear," the radio sputtered out.

"We're about fifteen clicks outside target destination and we've run into some unexpected weather out here. You got any updates on suspicious activity in the area?" the pilot asked.

"That's a negative, sir," the operator replied. "Our radar's not picking anything up."

There was a violent shudder throughout the vehicle, eliciting surprised yelps from the passengers.

"Well there's definitely something going on here!" said the pilot, raising his voice.

"I'm so—" the radio began to cut out. "—We can't s—" static had taken over as the dark clouds swirled faster around them.

"No, no, NO!" The pilot was furious at the chaos beginning to unveil.

Just then, a pegasus hit the side of the chopper with a loud THUD. Twilight screamed, and blood streaked down the window from the center of impact.

"What the hell is going on?!" Rainbow Dash yelled over the ruckus.

Another pegasus flashed by outside, and disappeared back into the fog.

"I've lost my bearings!" the pilot was panicking, and had a good reason to, for every one of his monitors had gone haywire.

A terrible THWACK was heard from outside, and blood splattered all over the windshield, along with a few bloody body parts ricocheting off the sides of the helicopter. If they weren't before, everypony was screaming now. The blades collapsed from the impact, and every siren in the vehicle went off. They was falling out of the sky, and fast. The pilot was trying to control the descent of the aircraft, but his efforts were futile, as the chopper fell faster. The rest of the blades flew off, some ripping burning holes in the sides of the helicopter.

Why isn't my magic working?!

A patch of trees were barely visible outside as the chopper descended even faster. Everypony onboard said their prayers as the last few feet between them and the ground depleted. Branches hit the front of the helicopter, and the front of the fuselage caved in, while they continued to fall diagonally through the thick forest canopy.

The helicopter lurched forward with incredible force, making Twilight faint, and sending Spike flying through the windshield.

The hunk of metal finally came to a halt, hanging in a tree about twenty feet off the ground, and leaking fuel.

Rainbow Dash released her grip on the seat as she realized she was still alive. She took her seatbelt off and carefully climbed over to Twilight, since the fuselage was turned almost completely perpendicular to the ground.

"Twilight?" she nudged her purple friend while she felt a drop of blood drip out of her nose.

This again…

She shook her awake, and helped her with her seatbelt. Twilight fell forward, into the back of the pilot's seat. She stood on it, regaining her balance, before she peeked over the edge to find the pilot's body. He had been crushed between the seat and the front of the helicopter when it caved in on impact. He was laying on the control panel while blood seeped out of his mouth, dripping into a growing pool beneath him. Bones were also visible, penetrating the flesh, and protruding out of his legs.

"Come on Twilight, we have to go find Spike," Rainbow Dash said, putting a hoof on her shoulder.

"Alright," Twilight said, following Rainbow Dash to the exit.

Rainbow Dash gave the door a tug, and when it didn't budge, she took the fire extinguisher and broke the glass in the door. She climbs through first, flapping her wings to steady herself when she gets through. She then hovers outside the window while helping Twilight through.

What's that...?

She notices the leaking fuel, and panics.

"Come on Twilight," she said as she quickly pulled the rest of her body through the window. She then flew down and left Twilight on the ground, while heading back up to find Spike.

"Spike? Where are you?!" Rainbow Dash called out around the wreckage. She saw a dragon tail on the ground behind some bushes. She bolted over to him, finding him on the laying down with a steel bar sticking out of his abdomen. He had been impaled when he fell onto it, puncturing his kidney, and the pool of blood suggested he was not long from bleeding out. He moved his head in her direction, and she began to feel sick as she knew what was to happen to him.

"You'll have to go on without me," he said in an overly dramatic tone.

"Don't make me laugh now," Rainbow Dash said, feeling bad for the poor dragon.

"No, but really, I'm dying, and you need t—" his voice was cut off by a terrible cough, and blood trickled out of his mouth. "Just go, you know what happens when jet fuel spontaneously combusts."

Rainbow Dash looked back at the wrecked helicopter, still dripping fuel.

"I just..." Rainbow started when the helicopter suddenly shifted.

Shit...

"I'm so sorry," she said as she started to fly back towards Twilight, and Spike's head rolled to the side. The fuselage shifted again and branches snapped under its weight, beginning to fall to the ground.

"Let's get out of here!" Twilight yelled at Rainbow Dash.

Rainbow Dash flew at top speed and picked up Twilight. Just then, the helicopter had met the ground with a loud crash of breaking glass and crumpled steel. A huge explosion followed, separating the two mares, and sending them flying into the bushes. The ball of flame shot up about thirty feet in the air, setting the trees ablaze, and turning into a small mushroom cloud.

Author's Note:

Woah, woah, woah, I know what you're thinking. Where the heck did Derpy come from?? She's doesn't fit in with the rest! Well, I love Derpy, and i feel she has a right to be more than a background pony. So, she IS going to be in this story, punks!!

Comments

[eclyptic moon]

derpy is awesome I luz her third best

[Bronyboah]

Sorry if anything looks weird, I've been stressing out over finals, which is this week. So yeah, may not be able to work on this for a while.

[Monochromatic Rainbow]

You may want to consider a scientific editor of sorts. I understand if stuff is necessary to the plot. But with the type of content in this story, getting the scientific aspects correct is important as well.

My humble apologies if I come across as rude.

[Bronyboah]

2628568 oh no, I'll take any suggestions, thanks! I obviously don't know much about nuclear bombs, I just wanted to make an interesting story. So, if you want to help me, please do!

[Monochromatic Rainbow]

2629103 Sure! I don't get enough chance to use the scientific part of my brain sadly.

I'm no phd, but I'm happy to help with anything you might need!

[shalrath]

2629103
2629189

The hardest part about making a bomb would be the refinement of the fissile materials. The two isotopes of use for weapons grade bombs would be Uranium 235, and Plutonium 239.

For every 500 lbs of uranium ore, you can expect to extract about one pound of uranium. Of that, about 99% is U238, with less than 1% being U235. In the 1940's, one of the methods used to produce U235 was by accelerating uranium atoms through a magnetic cyclotron, and shooting it through a curved trajectory. The heavier U238 ions wouldn't curve as sharply as the lighter (lighter by 3 neutrons) U235. This process is called electromagnetic isotope separation, and it isn't terribly efficient.

12,300 tons of silver were procured from the US treasury to build the electromagnetic coils that powered the electromagnetic calutrons at Oak Ridge. The initial request was met with a bit of disbelief, as the Treasury measured silver in terms of troy ounces, rather than tons.

Oak ridge produced enough U235 to produce the Little Boy device (64 kilograms of U235). The detonation of the Little Boy device was achieved by ballistic de-separation of two subcritical U235 components into a critical configuration. The use of neutron reflectors around the component enabled greater efficiency of mass to energy conversion, and reduced the mass requirements of the U235 components.

The Trinity and Fat Man devices, on the other hand, used plutonium implosion. That is to say, a subcritical sphere of weapons grade plutonium was compressed by a series of concentric explosive lenses, which crushed the plutonium sphere (about 6 Kg) into a critical configuration, surrounded by a shell of U238 as a tamper / neutron reflector.

Of this 6 Kg of P239, approximately 16-17% actually underwent fission. Of the portion that underwent fission, the resultant products weighed approximately one gram less than the initial component.

One gram of the Fat Man bomb was converted into energy. If you recall that E = MC^2, you can do the math to show how one gram of matter produced the equivalent of 22 Kilotons of TNT.

Plutonium 239 is not found naturally. We had to produce it in a reactor.

Plutonium 239 and Plutonium 240 are created when Uranium 238 absorbs one or two additional neutrons. The decay chain from Uranium 239 converts one neutron to one proton, thus producing Neptunium 239. Specific moderators are used to slow neutrons, thus allowing them to be captured by U238 rather than initiating fission. Neptunium 239 has a half life of several days, after which it may decay into Plutonium 239.

The specifics of generating P239 through slow neutron capture are outside the scope of this discussion.

Now, a word on half-lives.

Uranium 238 holds the distinction of having a very long half-life. It's not the longest, as Bismuth 209 is estimated to have a half-life of 1.9E19 years, which is about a billion times longer than the current age of the universe. Also, there is Tellerium 128, which is estimated to have a half-life of approximately 2.2E24, (2.2 septillion) years, which is over 115,000 times longer than Bismuth 209.

However, Uranium has the highest atomic mass of any long-lived naturally occurring isotopes. 92 protons, compared to Bismuth's 83, and Tellerium's 52, respectively.

Uranium 238's half life is approximately 4.6 billion years. Coincidentally, this is roughly the age of the Earth. Therefore, when the Earth was first formed, there was about twice as much U238 available. Every element heavier than lead, but lighter than uranium, that can be found on the Earth at this present time, came from U238 decay. All isotopes in this range that did NOT come from U238 decay, have since decayed into lead, or something lighter.

Every atom of U238 in existence was produced via R process neutron capture. The "R" stands for rapid, to set it apart from the S process, which stands for "slow".

The S process takes place in the last ten thousand years of a star's life cycle. This involves slow neutron capture by iron atoms which decay into heavier elements. The S process can only produce atoms up to Bismuth. This process is responsible for the total mass of about half of all elements heavier than iron.

The R process takes place in the last seconds/minutes of a star's life. Not just any star, mind you - but only one heavy enough to end up as supernovae. It is functionally like the S-process, except with a ridiculously higher neutron flux (1E22 neutrons / cm^2 / sec). This creates all elements heavier than Bismuth (atomic mass 83), and subsequently spreads them throughout the galaxy where someday these gas clouds will form new stars and planets.

All Uranium was born racing away from a neutron star or a black hole. Some of it ended up here, when our solar system was being formed.

[Monochromatic Rainbow]

2630291 I freely admit, thou knows more than I. If you want to be the scientific expert in place of me then it falls down to what the author prefers. I'm not the nuclear engineer of the two of us, I will say that.

[Bronyboah]

2630291 that was pretty interesting, but a little much... yeah my brain hurts

[shalrath]

2630600>>2630809

Come to think of it, you could make a rather interesting story about the Calutron Girls (they monitored and operated the machines that separated U235 from U238 - but due to operational security, they had zero knowledge of what they were doing, and for what purpose. All they knew was to operate the machine and keep the needles pointed to the right spot on the dials)

Or, perhaps, a disaster like SL-1, where a control rod was removed several feet instead of several inches (ambiguous unit conversion strikes again), which caused a positive void coefficient in the reactor (whereby a pocket of steam does not moderate neutrons, allowing a runaway chain reaction)

Within 4 milliseconds, the SL-1 reactor produced 20 Gigawatts of power. This caused all of the water within the reactor vessel to flash into steam, and the pressure caused all control rods to shoot out of the top of the reactor.

Unfortunately, one technician was standing above the reactor when this happened. His body was discovered several days later, pinned to the roof of the containment building by a 9ft long reactor control rod.

It was six days later when they were able to safely remove his remains.

His hands were buried seperately, as they were considered high level radioactive waste, and had to be disposed of as such. His body, as well as the two others, were interred within lead lined caskets.

[Bronyboah]

2630872 wow, thats pretty neat... I've always been interested in science and especially chemistry

[Monochromatic Rainbow]

2630872 Ok, now you're just showing off . But, I don't think that's quite the kind of story Bronyboah is intending to write. (Also, I know what voids in a reactor are, thankfully for my ego.)

[shalrath]

Obligatory nuclear cannon

An interesting thing to note. I believe that about 45 of these 280 millimeter cannons were produced. There were a lot of interesting delivery methods for fissile devices before the ICBM became the de-facto standard.

Another interesting thing about Shot Grable (depicted in the video). Despite the relatively low yield of 15 KT, the bomb was able to produce an extremely strong shock wave known as a precursor front caused by the low altitude burst. The force of that dynamic overpressure is responsible for flattening houses, crushing vehicles, and turning all sorts of 'structurally sound' buildings into 'structurally temporary'.

[shalrath]

2630809

speaking of making your brain hurt.

Derpy's Bubbles

[Bronyboah]

2631502 wow... I had to stop less than halfway through, that was just awful.

[shalrath]

2631574

good awful or bad awful?

[Bronyboah]

2631592 good awful

[Monochromatic Rainbow]

2631502 That was certainly something. My brain now officially hurts, I was able to at least partially understand that though.

[Xaldon Ajide]

bit to modern for my tastes, also A bit fast paced with OOC problems sorry, I can't follow. but it is good as is, just not my style or forte.

[Bronyboah]

Finally, school is over, so I will now be producing ideas at FULL SPEED. Not really, but I will have more time to write, so be ready for chapter three!

[Shores2510]

So you gonna finish this?

[Shores2510]

Btw, you killed Spike. WHYYYYYY?!?!???