• Member Since 20th Apr, 2013
  • offline last seen Apr 5th, 2014

Bronyboah


T

Twilight, Rainbow Dash, and Spike find themselves in quite a bit of trouble when a nuclear explosion goes off in Ponyville. What will they encounter while trying to escape? The world may never know... until you read of course!

Chapters (2)
Comments ( 35 )

An interesting concept We must admit. We do not like the idea of helicopters as they do not fit but we enjoy everything else. Have other pegasi survived out of blast range? We will follow thy scroll with interest.

i am interested to see what happens next

Really good so far

2591225 thanks! I felt like nuclear warfare was out of the ordinary, so helicopters seemed to fit in for me.. I'm more of a violent person, which you may find true in the next few chapters.

What does "HASMAT" stand for?

2593029 HAZardous MATerial doe.

sounds good, but you would really need to know what a nuclear radiation zone is like.:applejackunsure:

2594008 yeah, that's what was worrying me when I posted this, but I didn't really feel the need to do research for my first story. Thanks for all your help guys, i'll be making a second chapter soon.

Yo I need more I like it so much ;3

Quite a captivating begining, I love post-apocaliptic themed stories! There was only one thing that bothered me though. I just felt that Twi and Dash didn't react entirely nataturally. I feel like in this situation one would be stricken and horrified. While Twi did physically portray her disgust, the effect was ruined by her fascination with helicopters and Rainbow's passively checking her out (speaking of;

Is it wrong to think that she’s cute when she pukes?

:rainbowderp::rainbowhuh::rainbowlaugh: Yes... vary.)
When writing a story one has to have specific feeling that they want to portray through the story. It might just be me but I simply didn't feel enough 'Oh mah gawd, PonyVill's been nuked and most of the ponies are probably dead!!! Waaaaiii?!'
Anywho, I happily await the second chapter!

Ok, with gamma radiation, the whole "Seeing your bones" thing is just nonsense. Gamma radiation damages your DNA, that's how it kills you. And even if there was enough to x-ray Twilight, she would pretty much have been vaporized- the library would have offered about as much protection as a house of cards in a hurricane. Also, as to the guards wearing HAS-MAT suits, unless these guards are actually wearing like a foot of lead with something underneath that to protect against Beta particles as well... then your guards will have to swallow enough iodine to kill somepony, and will like be able to stay for periods of about five minutes, not five minutes then back into the radiation.

Sorry for my nerdiness...

If you need help with the science I offer my services!

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Wow, thanks for pointing out my mistakes:(
Oh well, I'll remember that for the rest, we'll just have to pretend like it isn't nonsense, and twilight and dash love each other so much that they don't care about anyone else. XD

Gamma radiation would pretty much only come from the initial burst, and the radius whereby gamma radiation would be lethal is well inside the area where heat and overpressure would kill you.

After the blast though, the original core of fissile material is now spread out over a very large area. These fissile fragments are the 'fallout' from a nuclear blast. They are strong alpha and beta emitters.

Alpha radiation is essentially a bare helium nucleus (2p2n) that is ejected at high velocity from the nucleus of a much larger isotope. This is an effect of electromagnetic repulsion overcoming the strong nuclear force. Alpha radiation can be blocked by a sheet of paper, and has an effective range of several centimeters through the air.

Beta radiation is an electron or positron that is emitted when a neutron decays into a proton, or a proton decays into a neutron, respectively. It is a very energetic lepton, mind you, and it will travel several meters through the air before being absorbed. Thick clothing can block most beta radiation.

Now, despite the relatively short range of alpha/beta radiation - they are extremely dangerous if inhaled. There's no sheets of paper to block alpha radiation from blowing holes in your lungs ephilial cells. Also, as the fissile fragments (fallout) collect on the ground, they can reach very unsafe concentrations. Also, animals that eat plants will effectively concentrate this fallout inside their bodies, making them partially unsafe to eat as well.

also, HASMAT is spelled HAZMAT.

derpy is awesome I luz her third best

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.

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.

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!

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!

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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.

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.

2630291 :rainbowderp: :derpyderp1: that was pretty interesting, but a little much... :moustache: yeah my brain hurts

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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.

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

2630872 Ok, now you're just showing off :twilightblush:. 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.)

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'.

2630809

speaking of making your brain hurt.

Derpy's Bubbles

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

2631574

good awful or bad awful?

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

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.

Finally, school is over:pinkiehappy:, 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!:raritywink:

So you gonna finish this?

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

Twilight instinctively threw her hooves in front of her eyes as gamma radiation penetrated her body, letting her see the bones in her front legs.

... really? I don't see a Comedy tag... (gamma radiation isn't within the visible spectrum - so there wouldn't be a "shadow" no matter how much went through her - this shit belongs in cartoons or stories tagged 'Comedy')

Also, if her eyes got burned out - through hooves - shouldn't her brain be medium-rare too? If you're close enough to GZ of a blast to see remains with burnt flesh on them, and you saw the blast (meaning there was nothing between you and it)... you're a dead pony, no matter how much magic you have.

And if not, your 'goose' is quite literally cooked - it even has a timer and everything. Unless Twilight takes the time to flush the excess energy from her body and then heal it afterwards, she's dead within days.

Also, there's this:

Twilight barely had time to stagger off to the side of the street before she began to retch.

Is it just because of the unicorn? Is it? Because if I didn't know better, I'd say you're looking at acute radiation exposure sickness.


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Also, animals that eat plants will effectively concentrate this fallout inside their bodies, making them partially unsafe to eat as well.

Which is, basically, ponies.

Well, nobody said to eat ponies, mind. Still. ;]

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