

Tunguska Event - a blast from the past [ Meteroite hit on Siberia 1908] - pwrfid
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/11/the-tunguska-event-a-1908-explosion-estimated-at-1000-times-more-powerful-than-the-atomic-bomb-dropped-on-hiroshima/

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lutusp
A quote: "Today I found out about the Tunguska Event, which was a 1908
explosion estimated to have been nearly 1000 times more powerful than the
atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 and about 1/3 as powerful as the
largest ever detonated atomic bomb, the Tsar Bomba."

The Tsar Bomba was not an atomic bomb, it was a hydrogen bomb with an fission
trigger.

A quote: "The U.S. had originally planned a series of much larger nuclear
strikes that would happen in quick succession after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki
bombs, wiping out most of the major cities in Japan, had the Japanese at that
point not agreed to surrender."

Yes, except that this ("quick succession") wasn't possible -- after Nagasaki
we could assemble just one more bomb:

Source: <http://www.warbirdforum.com/third.htm> : "The Third Bomb"

Quote: "Timing was important, Tibbets said: 'It was vital that [the Japanese]
believed we had an unlimited supply of atomic bombs and that we would continue
to use them. Of course, the truth was that we only had one more bomb on
Tinian. Delivery of the third bomb was several weeks away.'"

The problem was the plutonium supply -- breeder reactors in Hanford,
Washington were being used to generate the plutonium, and they could only
produce so much material per month.

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glurgh
"atomic bomb" is often used generically as a stand-in for 'nuclear weapon'.

<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/atomic%20bomb>

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lutusp
Yes, in dictionaries, but as explained here --

<http://arachnoid.com/wrong/index.html#Dictionary>

\-- dictionaries don't define words, they only report how people choose to use
words, however irrational those uses might be. Consider the word "literally",
which dictionaries define as meaning in accordance with reality, or the
opposite, depending on who is speaking:

<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally>

But among educated speakers, an atomic bomb is a fission weapon, and a
thermonuclear bomb is a fusion weapon -- opposite physical processes to
convert energy from one form to another.

Source: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon>

Quote: "The first fission ("atomic") bomb test released the same amount of
energy as approximately 20,000 tons of TNT. The first thermonuclear
("hydrogen") bomb test released the same amount of energy as approximately
10,000,000 tons of TNT."

Clearly distinct meanings.

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glurgh
'Atomic bomb' for any kind of nuclear weapon is historically inaccurate but
it's a (relatively harmless) generalization - after all, in a more technical
context one can still avail oneself of 'fission' and 'thermonuclear' and
'implosion device' and 'Teller-Ulam design' and so forth, to the desired level
of detail.

I understand your point about dictionaries but they do also describe what
passes for acceptable usage. In other words, a dictionary can also be viewed
as a record of a definition and usage battles lost. 'Atomic bomb' seems to
belong on the same pile as 'literally' and 'begs the question'.

I'm completely with you on holding the line at 'less' and 'fewer', though,
futile as that likely is, over the long term!

