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camboyaz wrote:See why doesnt the Imperium use nukes?

I'm just going to turn that question around and ask: what makes you think the Imperium doesn't use nukes?


Presumably, in a battle in which the Imperial Navy, say, nuked an enemy force from orbit, eliminating all resistance, you would not see Imperial Guard or Astartes forces deployed. Just because the battles fought in a Warhammer 40,000 game, or the battles in a particular novel, don't feature the use of nuclear weapons doesn't indicate that the Imperium doesn't use them, any more than the absence of Munitiorum clerks in a battle or novel indicates that the Imperium doesn't use clerks to manage important war materiel.

Also, the US military has nukes. We don't use them in every conflict, do we? Why not?

ComputerGeek01 wrote:I'm not %100 sure about how true this is because even during the Cold War Nuclear Weapons were never "Mass Produced" but I personally doubt that Nuclear Weapons are cost effective. Think about it after you take into account mining of the raw ore, processing, refining, enrichment to weapons grade then manufactor of the delivery system and calibration of the detonator (all of which has to be done by a techpriest in 40K on a planet with a solid infrastructure and Imperial presence), then all you're left with a weapon that is scaled to one specific payload and cannot be fired in close proximity to your troops or established structures. Or if it is scalible some how then you've wasted a good amount of its potential energy since the area of affect on an explosive is a log of its energy output (the actual formula is escaping me and driving me up the wall right now). Compare that with conventional explosives which can more or less be manufactored in a "Cottage Industry" (when was the last time you heard THAT term? ).

It then makes sense that you would have Nuclear Weapons on ships because the large scale of the battle would be a great place to use that energy. However as with any explosives most of the damage comes from the change in AIR PRESSURE which would not be the case in outter space.

EDIT: I'm not saying the Nuclear Weapons would be useless in space but you would not get nearly as much output as you do in an atmosphere.

RE-EDIT: I am a jack- for not remembering this, anyway: DYNAMIC PREASSURE = 1/2*fluid_density*fluid_velocity^2; AREA OF EFFECT = Cubed_Root(Payload);

a Nuclear torpedo would have quite a reasonable effect on a Space bound target(Why do you think people are kicking around the idea of Nuclear missiles to kill Meteorites and Asteroids that threaten Earth?)

it won't have the Pressure damage, but there is still the intense heat(Melting the ships hull, radiating things inside) and the force of the explosion(naturally Impact detonation will be used as opposed to airburst used in atmosphere) will cause intense vibrations inside the target(sound and vibrations have no options, but to bounce around inside the target for a very loooong time)


Radiation is, aside from the immiediate vicinity, a low concern, Space bound vessels will be protected from the Intense Solar Radiation by thick hulls meant to keep that very thing out.

Fission and Fusion based weaponry is actually more practical then any explosive based weapon. the A-Bomb itself creates a burst of energy while other weapons won't work unless they detonate inside the target. Nuclear based weapons will do damage if they detonate outside or close to the target.


Also, the IoM has millions of worlds. making thousands of Nuclear bombs is well within their means. if they can build Millions of Lemun Russ tanks and arm Billions of guardsmen with Lasguns, flak armour, and maintain Thousands of Titans armed with giant lasercannons then Thousands of Nuclear bombs are easy peasy.


nuclear bombs are fairly simple weapons. your are hurling one chunk of Uranium at another chunk of Uranium with what is essentially a small cannon. i would wager that an Abrams tank is more complex then that.

mining is fairly straight forward and the refinement process wouldn't have changed in 10,000 years so no problems there.

The Imperium does use nuclear ordinance. Just not to the extent you'd expect, because there are usually better specialized ammunitions for each job.

Remember how cool it was, reading Dune, when you began to figure fear kept the houses from nuking each other to the Stone Age? This is Warhammer 40.000. It's grimmer than a million reapers. It's so cool it's outrageous, and it's so outrageous it's cool. That means nukes are for people who used to have their lunch money stolen. Real men moved up on the genocide meter...



Life-Eater virus or any other form of chemical agents, for clearing out all life while leaving a planet relatively clean.

Cyclonic torpedoes, to reduce a celestial body to dust and chunks of rock.

Lance and rail batteries to blow up ships from a hundred miles away...

Warhound titans to level a city, with the added benefit of not leaving that much of a radioactive mess behind.

Frankly, the only thing nukes would really be useful for is taking out void shields on capital scale targets in orbit or on the ground.

because they have deathstrikes

If we assume that the imperium dose not use nuclear bombs(that we would recognize as such) it would be because they have better weapons to fill it's roll:

Tactical nukes are outdone by Vortex Grenades, Quake Cannons, and suchlike, while strategic nukes are outdone by lance strikes and other orbital bombardments.

i thought nukes were forbidden after the krieg incident

In one of the Gaunt's Ghosts novels, one hive city attacks another through use of a nuclear bombardment before their ground forces arrived.

S_P

sluggaslugga wrote:because they have deathstrikes

this.

they use nucleonics which i imagine is somthing similar

ShineBoss wrote:If we assume that the imperium dose not use nuclear bombs(that we would recognize as such) it would be because they have better weapons to fill it's roll:

Tactical nukes are outdone by Vortex Grenades, Quake Cannons, and suchlike, while strategic nukes are outdone by lance strikes and other orbital bombardments.

Vortex Grenades are smaller and are infinitly more complex technology then a Nuke.

Quake cannons are just big cannons.


lance Strikes are precision weapons. they have a totally different use then a A-bomb. you use them to kill bunkers and armoured columns. Nukes kill everything in a 5 mile radius.

Orbital ombardments are used to lay waste to an area and you will be advancing through it later. similer, but stil fairly precise.

Space_Potato wrote:In one of the Gaunt's Ghosts novels, one hive city attacks another through use of a nuclear bombardment before their ground forces arrived.

S_P

Actually they just completely vaporize a hive and don't even bother sending ground forces.

Nah, they disabled the void shield and blew out a large portion of the hive wall, and sent in an army to clean up.

As part of the main force, there was that giant pyramid thing and those giant crab doo-hickeys

S_P

IIRC there was 3 hives. One went traitor, nuked the second one and then attacked Vervunhive which is what the book is about. I read Necropolis when it originally came though so its been a while.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:IIRC there was 3 hives. One went traitor, nuked the second one and then attacked Vervunhive which is what the book is about. I read Necropolis when it originally came though so its been a while.

pretty much correct except the second was infiltrated and they smuggled the inside. they tried to do it to vervunhive but they couldnt find a way in until near the end of the book and by then most of thir infantry was already inside the wall so it would have been pointless

Neutron bombs are the answer to the Imperium's problems, not hydrogen or nuclear bombs.

Though the Galactic Lord Xenu with all his might still used hydrogen bombs.

except that Neutrons are easy to defend against.

a Sheet of paper will stop them and any type of body armour will simply shrug it off.

Local Heat wave notwithstanding

i have to agree with computergeek01 with the cost effectiveness part and would like to add to that by saying that most Nuclear Weapons have a shelf life dictated by the halflife of either the highly enriched Uranium or Plutonium used to manufacture them. As such seeing as the Imperium stockpiles weapons for centuries then most of these weapons would become useless long before they were ever used.

Cost Effectivness?

the Impierium has 1,000,000 planets. many of them dedicated to producing Ordinance. Nuclear Bombs would be very easy to produce in desired amounts.

Plasma bombs and warheads are really Fusion weapons so the Impierium DOES use weapons based upon the instantanious conversion of Mass to Energy.


Nuclear weapons may have a half-life, but if it is the Conventional Warhead for one of the most common longranged space bound weaponry then it won't be an issue.

it is even less of an issue when you know how long that Half-life is.

the half-life of Plutonium 239(the weaponised kind) is around 24,000 years while Uranium has a half-life of 4.47 Billion years. The current Plutonium based Nuclear Arsenal of the U.S in the year 2,000 A.D would become unusable sometime during the Dark Age of Technology. Uranium Warheads would still be very much alive during the age of the impierium.

Centuries of Storage making the A-bombs useless Try Billions of Years of storage for Uranium weapons, 20,000+ years for Plutonium 239 and then we will talk.


I can assure you that refining Radioactive Substances will be no big deal for the Imperium either.

they could quite easily put the nukes in stasis to stop them decomposing

Because a nuke is pathetically weak compared to the other weaponry used by the imperium.

@Grey Templar: You're doing a pretty good job defending the Nukes, I salute you sir!

To answer your question though, HOLLYWOOD is kicking around the idea of DESTROYING meteors in outerspace with Nuclear Weapons because Micheal Bay has one idea about every 10 years and adapts it to whatever projects he works on in that time.

Without the shock wave in space you would have more damage from thermal shock (The relative differance in temperature in space compared to that of the blast) then you would get from any other component of the blast of a Nuclear Bomb. Which is why Plasma and melta bombs make more sense, as others have said these are better alternatives.

The argument for conventional explosives was supposed to apply to why Nukes aren't used planetside. Otherwise I agree conventional explosives in space aren't very handy.

The problem with maufactoring isn't that the idea is difficult. It's the execution of it. Simutanious ignition is a for anything; but getting multipule shock waves to compress at the same point (Yes your argument that the neutron gun ignition is simpler holds true but it isn't as effective at using its fuel) and compress an element to where it explodes at the atomic level is something that might be beyond the steam-punk fanasy genere. I'm not even getting into the refinment process which requires precision parts to be made into precision machines (see centerfuge for one example). This is why I made the argument that the Mechancicus would HAVE to be involved, assuming that they could do it, a tech-priest would have to be present to oversee the entire process. Where more economical alternatives are avalible I don't see anyreason for the IoM to be building Nuclear Weapons.

EDIT: @Baconfat: I for one got the referance and appreciated the joke, I would expand on it but I don't want to attract attention for being a troll

Ooh... a debate on nukes! Coooool!!!
(just wanted my profile pic on this thread. Y'know, words AND pictures an' all that!)

You guys are overthinking the practicality of nukes. Imperium doesn't use/make anything for practical reasons. They use what they have. In other words they use what they have the STC for. Are there Forge Words that have STCs for nukes? Of Course. But it would seem there are many many more that make Cyclonic warheads and Nova Cannon. Cost/effectiveness aren't considered when Forge World 5489 makes melta torpedoes (and have for 13,000 years) then that's what they gonna make. Take 'em or leave 'em.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
btw anyone actually know what a cyclonic warhead does?

Basically, as far as ordinance goes, the Empire has some amazing high powered pin point strike weaponry, so they can get the same kind of damage a nuke can do, but to a single target from space.

When it comes to mass destruction, they have weapons that are more of the... "Holy gak! You just blew off a chunk of the fething planet! I mean, that's like an entire fething continent right there... vapourized! What the feth man!?" ...kind of magnitude.

So nukes are kind of stuck between the two. They're too big for localized bombardments, and too small for OH MY GOD WHAT THE feth HAVE YOU DONE bombardments.

That is still a useful niche.

say you have a small Continent that has been overrun by orks.

all infrastructure has been destroyed and would likely take centuries to rebuild, even if you could destroy all the orks.

you want to kill the orks, but massed orbital bombardment is impractical or unavaliable and you don't want to use Virus Bombs.

drop a bunch of nukes on areas of concentrated ork activity and mop up those that survive in uneffected areas with ground troops.

If orks land on a planet, it's unlikely that just a single continent will be infected. Orkz spread incredibly fast, and spores can easily be carried by wind and water. Assuming an ork dies in an ocean, his spores could be carried all over the world.

Grey Templar wrote:except that Neutrons are easy to defend against.

a Sheet of paper will stop them and any type of body armour will simply shrug it off.

Local Heat wave notwithstanding

Sorry, I have to correct you there. You might be thinking of Alphas? Neutrons are non-ionizing, and so can penetrate matter quite easily. High-energy neutron flux is one of the reasons nuclear reactors have all of that sheilding.

Devastator wrote:why are computers forbitten too?
we dont know

They aren't.

"Cogitators" = computers. There are even "personal cogitators" and what effectively amount to laptops, as well as "emplaced cogitators" which are huge mainframes used for calculating data on a planetary scale. Frequently used by the Arbites and Inquisition.

Ruckdog wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:except that Neutrons are easy to defend against.

a Sheet of paper will stop them and any type of body armour will simply shrug it off.

Local Heat wave notwithstanding

Sorry, I have to correct you there. You might be thinking of Alphas? Neutrons are non-ionizing, and so can penetrate matter quite easily. High-energy neutron flux is one of the reasons nuclear reactors have all of that sheilding.

yes, thats what i was thinking of. got a little mixed up.

Theduke07 wrote:I believe 'atomics' are mentioned in couple of the ultramarine and blood angels novels.

What, do they drop the nukes, then cut themselves?