Russian President Vladimir Putin has suffered an emabarassing setback as his feared Satan 2 nuclear arsenal failed four out of five missile tests, according to arms experts and satellite imagery from the launch site.
High-resolution satellite images of the launch pad at Russia’s Plesetsk test site, where the RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile exploded, shows extensive damage.
A crater approximately 60 meters wide at the launch silo at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia, along with visible damage in the surrounding area that was not present in images taken earlier in the month.
It only needs to work once.
Not so sure. What if these 4/5 nukes explode on the launch pad? Even if this is in a remote area you’ll cause some damage to your own country.
Based on the little bit I know about both Russian military history and the stuff they do now, I suspect they’d be okay with that.
They aren’t even shooting Ukraine nuclear plants afraid of retaliation from NATO, nuclear is even worse
Most nukes are designed such that they only create a nuclear blast when detonated electronically.
We’ve had nukes fall out of airplanes and explode, or nuclear-tipped missiles explode in the silo, without a nuclear blast.
All of those happened before the modern safeguards were adopted by the US. We’re lucky none of them went super-critical. We just don’t know for sure if the Soviet leftovers Russia has were upgraded to the same atandards.
Which modern safeguards are you talking about? There’s been ~32 official broken arrow incidents between 1950 and 1980, and multiple safeguards were tried during that period. Modern 2 point detonation safety goes back to the early 60s
We do know the soviets had their own share of accidents. I wasn’t able to find any info on soviet nuclear weapon design safety mechanisms, but I feel like we’d have seen at least one nuclear blast if they didn’t have them.
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Yeah, this is the wildest headline. “Don’t fear it, it only works 20% of the time!” Both the US and Russia have somewhere around 1700 known deployed nuclear warheads able to be launched from air, land, and sea. 20% is still 340 nuclear bombs, all of which are substantially larger than the ones dropped in Japan.
The fucking audacity to downplay nuclear war.
Nobody is going to put radioactive material on the top of something that explodes in the home country. Pelting that much hazardous material into the atmosphere will be a very bad outcome.
Check the username, he’s an ml.
He just wants you to understand we have no hope of standing against the might of a resurgent Russia and China and should surrender for better terms before his tankie friends can come in and make an example of you.
I signed up on ml because lemmy.world gave me an infinite spinner when I tried to post and ml was the second one I saw and figured it didn’t matter. I think living in Russia or China would be awful and think Ukraine is a victim of Russia’s terrible aggression. That doesn’t mean I can’t be anti nuclear war.
And last year you could have also said “nobody is going to threaten nuclear escalation with all of NATO at once” and I’d have believed it, but look where we are
Most nukes are designed such that they only create a nuclear explosion if they’re detonated electrically.
The US has reported dropping or misplacing like a dozen nukes before they stopped reporting them. Typically they’d just send people out to see if they can find the core, and if not, just say “guess if we can’t, nobody else will find it”
If the rocket explosion can create a 60 meters wide crater, my guess is it can still at least crack open the fission part and spill the material in the atmosphere.
American nukes… We’re talking Russian engineering here. I don’t want to give them any benefit of doubt considering some of the janky shit they have tried rolling out in this war.
I’m talking of an effect like a dirty bomb, not thermonuclear detonation.