this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2026
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Ideas are not the same as possibilities.
Also, the Earth takes hits bigger than that. Even the Tonga eruption was about 10 megatons of energy.
The Chicxulub impact is estimated to be around 100 trillion tons of tnt equivalent. 10000x bigger than Sundial was even proposed.
Chicxulub did not shatter the Earth.
Project Sundial was 10 gigatons, so, 10,000 Tongas.
I’m t was enough to ignite all of metropolitan FRANCE if detonated at an altitude of 45km.
The earth would survive, sure, but I’m pretty sure there would be significant global effects.
Well yea, it killed off the dinosaurs, who survived on the planet tens of thousands of times longer than humans. It was catastrophic.
Still not Earth shattering, though.
Project Sundial wasn't just theoretical. We had the ability, the materials, and the technical knowledge to build it. The political will faltered and blinked.
You know how you can absolutely verify that? We built it in thousands of different bombs rather than just one big one.
If we had made a 10 gigaton device where it was supposed to be located in eastern California, or western Nevada, blowing that up would have created a massive crater that probably would have measured at least 30 miles in diameter, and all of the US would die in the first blast. Normally when talking about nuclear or fusion weapons I would call the US citizens the lucky ones, because we wouldn't have to live with the consequences. In this case, all of humanity is lucky, and basically no one survives the blast shockwave. The shockwave would circle the globe multiple dozens of times. No one that isn't in a fortified bunker will survive the 1000 mph winds that would cause. Those winds would sandblast the surface almost smooth.
This is a world ending bomb. Half the planet's crust would be molten for decades if not centuries. It would probably be the first mass extinction event that kills off more than 99.9% of all species. 10 gigatons is about 1/4-1/5 the amount of energy that Theia imparted to Proto-Earth which created two moons for a very short period of time, and made the entire planet molten for another 1/4 billion years.
Oh, and I agree with Teller on this one. He, correctly in my view, assumed that the end game of fusion weapons was a way to end all life on Earth, and designed the endgame. I think we were very stupid to split that up into massive stockpiles that, "maybe we could use one or a few, but not all of them." That's far too big of a risk for normal humans. Someone will use them again if they are as small as they are.
lol no. It would not kill all of the US. At all. In any way. It would be 10000x smaller than Chicxulub. Which also did not instantly wipe off that large of an area.
It would not be great for the climate, but it is in absolutely no way a "world ending bomb".
Sure. I'm gonna believe you, a rando on the net, rather than my experience as a Navy Nuclear Power Program Electronics Technician Instructor.
Fuck off. You don't have any clue about what you are talking about.
rofl clown.
Even the most basic search results will prove you wrong by many orders of magnitude...
I can understand respecting the crazy scale of nukes. Though Earth is much bigger than your tiny brain could ever begin to fathom.