Why is it whenever an Old Hippy wants to make a point, they always have to compare it to something using toys, or flowers, or rabbits or something equally mundane? Can’t they just produce numbers?

Well, they would, if they knew what the hell they were talking about.

Ben says one BB is the equivalent of 15 Hiroshima-sized bombs. I’m assuming he’s talking about kilotons, not the actualy size of Little Boy. The estimated yield of the Hiroshima bomb, a simple fission bomb, is 15 to 16 kt. So, by simple math, 15 x 15 is 225 kt. (We have bigger bombs, but Ben’s using this example, so let’s go with that.)

What is the destructive potential of a 225 warhead? Well, to this nifty web-calculator, at optimum burst height, you have a blast radius where most building are destroyed or damaged of 4.4 km (5 psi pressure wave). Outside of that radius, the ionizing radiation is low, but most people will suffer third or second dregree burns around 6-10 km from the blast. With fallout, the lethal zone is likely 3-4 times the area of the blast from radioactive element contamination, so we’ll give a “destroyed” radius of 40 km for ol’ Ben. For those with a high-school education, the area of destruction would be 5026 km^2, or 1809 miles^2.

Now, if you had 6 of those weapons deployed with no overlap, we’re talking about the destruction of 10857 square miles, or 30156 square km. Those are big numbers, but remember, that’s area destroyed.

Now, how big is Russia? According to a quick Google search, we’re looking at 17 million square km. Or 6,563,706 SQ miles. So, assuming no overlap, and the United States wanted to drop a geometrically perfect annhilating strike on Russia with 225 kt weapons, it would require 3628 warheads to get the job done.

Not 6. Nowhere CLOSE to 6. In fact, we’re nearly 4 orders of magnitude away from 6.

So, Ben is full of crap. Which is too bad, because their ice cream is really good.