Cleverly build bunkers can resist any conventional bomb. Only a
nuclear bomb can destroy them.
This is annoying for democracy. I've heard some dictatures are
building factories inside mountains to produce chemical weapons.
They do not fear the destroying of their dead toy because it is
rugged against conventional weapons. They are protected by the
taboo against the use of nuclear weapons.
What's more, this increases our dependence upon our secret
services. They are the sole able to protect us because they
can attack those factories from the inside, or slow down
their building by special actions and information gathering.
As any dutiful secret
agent will tell you: too much secret service is bad
for democracy. Not to speak with all those unscrupulous
politicians that will make us vote for them by using the
fear those chemical dictatures inspire us.
I think there is a way to get with conventional bombs the same
destruction power as a little atom bomb:
Let a fleet of bombers drop a large quantity of bombs above
the bunker. The bombs should not explode, but they
should penetrate as deep as possible into the ground.
When the dropping is finished, all the bombs are triggered
to explode at
the same time. The shock wave hitting the bunker will be the
sum of all the shock waves of all the bombs.
The atom bomb Fat Boy had the power of about thousand tons of TNT. A big
bomber can carry about 10 ton of TNT. Thus 100 bombers can carry and drop about one thousand tons of TNT. That's feasible.
A few remarks:
This system requires high technology. Making shock waves
arrive at a given place all together, given that they travel at
about 1km/s, requires a precision and synchronization amongst
the bombs of at least 1/1000 of a second.
The bombs should not explode exactly at the same
time: what really matters is that the shock waves arrive
on the target at the same time. So, the farther a bomb fell
from the target, the earliest it must explode, in order to make
its shockwave arrive on the target at the same time as that
of a bomb fallen nearer. This does not matter if the bombs are close together.
The nature of the soil matters. Before igniting the bombs
an approximate geological analysis of the soil surrounding
the target can be done. With a few little preliminary explosions and
automatic seismographs build into fake bombs, a 3D view of
the soil may be obtained. That way the best timing for each
bomb can be calculated. Again, this does not matter if the bombs are close together. Unless special effects are to be obtained.
It may be necessary to use more than one salvo of
bombs: to compress soft grounds or destroy successive
layers of protection. If the target is protected with huge
layers of highly compressible and elastic materials, it may
even be necessary to use successive concentrated salvo of bombs
to dig a way into the ground towards the target, destroying a
portion of the elastic material on the way.
It is not fully honest to
compare directly the amount of energy contained in an atom
bomb and the amount of energy contained in a heap of
chemical explosives. An atom bomb, with the same energy,
will be much more destructive than chemical explosives because
of the suddenness of the explosion. But if one takes in
account the fact chemical explosives can probably penetrate
deeper in the ground before exploding (they are less fragile), and
the fact the suddenness of the nuclear explosion is no more
effective after a certain distance, I think the idea is worth
thinking about. What matters is the destruction of
the bunker.
If that doesn't do the job, then use an Energya rocket to
launch a steel arrow of a few tons vertically up, further than
the geostationary
orbit, then let it
fall on the bunker at a speed of 9 km/s. An Energya
rocket, as well as a Saturn V or a Space Shuttle on
the launch pad contains
the same amount of
energy as a littel A bomb. About 10% of that energy will be
transferred into the steel arrow.
(This trick of using several bombs can also be used inside
one bomb or block of explosives: a net of detonators
will speed up the explosion and increase the
destruction power, or will allow to obtain special
explosion patterns.)
If a swarm of bombs is dropped around the bunker,
rather far from the bunker, only a small part of the
shockwave of each bomb will hit the bunker. All the
shockwaves hit the bunker at the same time, yet the total
energy on the bunker will be a very little part of the
energy contained inside each bomb. It is possible to
make an important part of the explosion hit the bunker.
The way the explosive is placed around the bunker
must obey a few mathematical rules : the explosive must
be a continuous object around the bunker (at least, the distance between
two bombs must be less than half the wavelength of the shockwave),
that object
must have a size comparable to the distance from the bunker
and the explosion of each part of the object must
occur at a moment so all the parts of the shockwave hit the
bunker at the same time. Such an object could be an explosive
fuse placed around the bunker with one of its ends a little closer to
the bunker. (The
associated wavelength for a classic explosive fuse exploding in the air
is about
10 meters, which means the shockwave can be aimed roughly at best
at a 10 meters wide surface and it is unnecessary to place the fuse
with a precision better than a few meters.)
Bellow is an
animated .gif sequence of the two-dimensional simulation of such an explosion.
The red point in the center shows the target position.
The blue hemicircle
shows the explosives position. The gray shade shows
the height of the ground. Whiter shade means the ground is
higher, darker shade means the ground is lower. In this
theoretical simulation
nearly 50% of the explosion energy concentrates on the target. Only the transversal waves are taken into account.
In this simulation all of the explosive is supposed to explode at once. If a very long explosive fuse is used and it is lit at one end, then the other side must be a little closer to the target. In order for the shockwave to be aimed at the target. This can be applied to numerous other domains, even
politics or economics, in three or more dimensions.
The explosives can be placed in several concentric circles around
the target. Provided each circle explodes at the right moment,
in order to add its shock wave to the shock wave converging
towards the target. They can also be spread on a continuous
surface around the target, sort of a sheet of explosives. Such a
sheet allows to aim the shockwave tridimentionnaly. For example
towards a bunker buried deep below the surface.
