Does Russia Have an Underwater 'Doomsday' Nuke? (design, engineering)

[C C]

https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2...day-weapon

EXCERPT: . . . Status-6 looks like a giant torpedo about a third the length of a big Russian submarine. According to the slide, it is nuclear-powered, meaning it can roam for months and possibly even years beneath the ocean without surfacing. Its payload is a nuclear warhead "many tens of megatons in yield," Geist says. That is thousands of times more powerful than the bombs dropped at the end of World War II and more powerful than anything currently in the U.S. and Russian arsenals.

[...] "The only possible U.S. targets are large port cities," says Mark Schneider, a senior analyst with the National Institute for Public Policy, wrote in an e-mail. "The detonation of Status-6 in any of them would essentially wipe out their population into the far suburbs." [...] Pavel Podvig, an arms control expert [...] believes the weapon could potentially bathe the entire Northeast Corridor in radioactive soot. Status-6 would probably be used as a "third-strike" weapon of last resort. If Russia fell under attack from the U.S. and couldn't retaliate with its missiles, it might trigger Status-6: a doomsday machine. Or at least a doomsday-ish machine.

Then again, the whole thing might be a fake. Geist says that the "leak" of Status-6 was deliberate. Russia worries that U.S. missile defenses might be able to shoot down its missiles in a nuclear war. By showing a plan for Status-6, Russia is warning the U.S. that if it continues to build such defensive systems, then Russia will find another way to strike, with a missile that can't be intercepted. [...] Podvig agrees that the leak of Status-6 is probably just a warning shot. But the fact that it appeared in the Pentagon's newest report on nuclear weapons shows that some war planners are taking the idea seriously....

MORE: https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2...day-weapon

[Yazata]

The talk is that this thing is supposed to to create a giant tsunami that would destroy American coastal cities. Whether tsunami bombs are even possible is questionable.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/article...07709.html

It sounds a lot less efficient than using nuclear weapons the old fashioned way, by launching them at targets.

[Syne]

Might have been useful for a covert attack, in a time before we could detect a nuclear explosion anywhere.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswitha...b0fc81a041

[RainbowUnicorn]

The talk is that this thing is supposed to to create a giant tsunami that would destroy American coastal cities. Whether tsunami bombs are even possible is questionable.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/article...07709.html

It sounds a lot less efficient than using nuclear weapons the old fashioned way, by launching them at targets.

just a theory... sci-fi ...

a single drone torpedo armed with 2 dozen miniaturised hydrogen cobalt bombs that is completely autonomous and un trackable could fire from close range off the coast and defeat all the anti-missile defensive systems striking every single majour US city on one coast.

this type of theorised drone could be 1 of a dozen that might be currently roaming on auto pilot.

Rendering all the nato missile defense posturing to be a small child playing in a sand pit with toy trucks & diggers.


even something smaller and only striking the electrical grid would unveil the USA lack of social culture driving the society into its natural lawless state of civil war & seperatism.
Huricane Katrina taught the world how the US leadership care for their citizens & how they manifest their social culture through law & order.

with miniaturised cobalt bombs on every power station and sub station ... no electricity for a week for 65% of the country ... the capitalist animal starts to eat its own young.
(no country has the ability to defend against that type of attack)

why modern people would willingly vote for genghis khan type leaders in todays world i really do not understand unles they are suicidal.