A genuine question.
We attacked a nuke storage site with conventional munitions. Most likely bunker buster or BrahMos and we hit the entrance of the bunker that the Pakis have built into the tunnel.
Meaning post the door breach all that explosive and kinetic energy has been transferred inside.
How tolerant are nukes of external shocks before they go up in sympathetic detonation.?
I see 2 possibilities.
1. There was a sympathetic detonation which kicked off a sizeable chain detonation inside the facility that has been cut into the mountains.
Problems with this argument are,
a. How big of a detonation does it have to be to create that earthquake we saw?
b. How can we confirm this? Or alternatively what will we see on the ground in the near,mid term and Long term future at this site if this has come to pass?
2. Because of the explosive shock and kinetic energy, some or atleast one warhead stored there has leaked radioactive material inside the storage facility and the entire facility is contaminated. The implications are massive as this would take out a large chunk of paki nukes with minimal risk to us .
All that money that pakis have invested into the nukes is gone just like that. It will be quite a large sum as nukes are crazy expensive to build and maintain.
I am not saying this is what happened. This is just my speculation based on available information.
All if you please feel free to poke holes in this theory as the sudden entry of the yanks after some ' intelligence ' is really suspicious.
Re upping my post made after the abrupt ceasefire.
Based on the latest developments and the chatter surrounding the nuclear radiation detection planes of US DAE landing in Pakistan and along with the call between our MEA and Egypt FM, speculated to be about supply of Boron, what can we gleam from these developments?
The Nuclear material leakage is strongly rumored but there is absolutely no official word about this, some handles that peddle Gora GAE POV like that Derek Grossman fellow tweeted confirmation.
What you say is impossible. You can drop 1000 tonnes of TNT on a nuclear bomb, it wont go nuclear - it will just catch on fire and become a dirty bomb.
Let me explain the difference between a chain reaction ( that which happens normally to radioactive fuel inside a nuclear power plant) and an uncontrolled chain reaction (that is a nuclear bomb exploding).
Uranium is radioactive, meaning it is undergoing natural decay, where unstable u-235 atoms are breaking down, emitting neutrons and smaller elements(like caesium). These neutrons go strike another U-235 and it splits...chain reaction. normally, 2 outta 3 neutrons emitted by a broken u-235 atom doesnt hit anything- they are travelling too fast ( its called neutron flux in nuclear physics) and we actually need to slow down the neutrons to make sure it hits other atoms. Thats where a moderator comes in, like graphite.
Long story short, to make a nuclear bomb go 'boom', you need another piece of enriched uranium ( the trigger) that is encased in the moderator- graphite- and some reflective stuff like aluminium casing ( facing inwards, so you reflect the heat and energy back into the system) to go slam into your bomb core, while being encased in said aluminum shielding and graphite.
Then, every single neutron emitted is absorbed by another u-235 particle, radioactivity instantly increases exponentially, aka BOOM.
This is a very very specific detonation sequence for a radioactive material, aka nuclear bomb. It needs many things to go right, in specific sequence, for the bomb to go boom. FYI, it took manhattan project people six months to design the trigger after making the bomb itself.
So long story short, if you drop a bunker-buster bomb directly on top of a nuke.....it doesnt meet specific trigger conditions for uncontrolled chain reaction. So it wont go big bada boom mushroom cloud.
What you will do, is vaporize the uranium and set it on fire, its like making a dirty bomb.
