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January 17, 2009

Comments

Fellow Traveller

If it totally vapourizes the bodies of those caught within the lethal zone, it has the added advantage of making an accurate count of casualties nigh impossible and endlessly disputable.

Tim  Worstall

Reading this I thought, why in hell would anyone use Tungsten to do this? It will reduce the effective area of the explosion....not what most people are trying to do with an explosion. Biggest bang thrown the furthest is the usual aim.

Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dense_Inert_Metal_Explosive

"It is intended to limit the distance at which the explosion causes damage, to avoid collateral damage in warfare."

If we're going to have wars then that doesn't sound like a bad idea per se.

ajay

that doesn't sound like a bad idea per se

I read that comment and thought "I'm sure that's completely wrong. After all, it's Worstall."

And sure enough, if you read further down the article, there's the news that the tungsten powder causes cancer, and that DIME shrapnel wounds are basically inoperable because the fragments are so small. (A bit like the old X-ray-transparent flechettes.) Nice.

He's also wrong (of course) when he says that using tungsten will reduce the effective area of the explosion. It won't. The blast radius is small because the splinters are so small that they get slowed and stopped by air resistance. A tungsten-cased conventional bomb wouldn't have a significantly smaller radius of effect than a steel-cased bomb.

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