Its not about size, its density. Besides London is nearly twice that, its about 35-40 sq miles.
Map of United Kingdom | Multimap.com Ive got a mate from Watford and he calls himself a Londoner so.... I got 7-8 bombs from an article in The Sunday Times a few years ago when blair had to re-write what would happen if nuclear war occured and government fell, Queen on a boat all that crap. They published the old plans (back dated a little of course!) when the new were written. Blair wrote it by hand n eveything. The idea if government get vapourized and no-one is in charge anymore is that our nuclear subs were to fire on BOTH military and population centres of the enemy then travel to either the US or Australia and put themselves under
military command of either of the allies.
Ive dug it to see for sure....
It didnt state much from recent history but in the 60's and 70's it was expected the Soviet Union would drop 10 1 megaton bombs on London. So OK maybe they wern't the biggest but Hiroshima was a 12500 ton bomb and a megaton is a million ton. London has population of 7m and they estimated the Soviet Union could kill 12m Brits overall in an attack. Apparently we could return fire to the effect of 8m Soviet lives before we were crushed. We were no match whatsoever to the Soviet Union then, different league on a different planet in them days!. It also said (in todays terms) that a 1 megaton bomb dropped slap bang in the middle of London would create a crater 3/4 mile wide and 150ft deep! The "fireball" or blast zone would stretch 2.5 miles in diameter, thats 1.25 miles from the epicentre.
Glasgow, Birmingham and Liverpool were expected to get 4 1 megaton bombs and 2 1/2 megatone bombs. 17 other UK cities were expected to get 2 1 megaton bombs. Selby wasnt on the list of probable targets. So thats 51 nukes dropped on the UK in the first day of being attcked. What would they send to America, and France? Frances cities generally have a higher population density than the UK so would need more per city. America has shit loads of cities! Baring in mind France is solely powered by nuclear reactors it goes to show they love the idea and were probably as big a threat to the Soviet Union as we were.
Your talking hundreds of nukes in one attack!
As for the UK and the US having 20 nukes put together!!!!!
Our Trident subs hold 16 Trident 2 missiles. Each missile holds 12 warheads (for dropping on 12 targets in an area) Thats 192 nukes on one sub. We have 4 of these subs.(thats from the Royal Navy website
Ballistic Subs (SSBN) : Submarine Service : Operations and Support : Royal Navy )
Wiki says Americas 14 trident subs (or as they name them; Ohio class) each hold 24 missiles, albeit Trident 1 or 2 variants, each hold 8 warheads (different warheads persumably). So thats 3456 nukes on (well Americas) our subs alone. Wiki also says these 2688 nukes onbaord their subs is around half the arsenal. Its not the best place for info like this but its a number to compare to 20 to though!!!
Then theres the air force too. Im not saying we have over 3.5 thousand nukes for sure but why have the capability (ie all those subs) if you aren't going to warrant them useful.Suppose its better than putting all your eggs in one basket though if we have got less. At $30 a missile its not hard to fill em though with whatever America spends on the military. I reckon they probably last a while.
It puts N Koreas and Irans gripes into perspective, we wont let them even create fuel grade uranium which is far far less pure than wepaons grade. I dont remember the
exact difference but your talking like 5% of the way there if you have fuel grade.
In fact wow, wiki does have some content. It reckons wepons grade is 85% 235U isotopes and fuel grade is 3-5% 235U isotopes.So my guess was good! You are 3.5-5.9% of the way there. It the difference of years of research. Or like I said earlier you can buy a build itself kit which you replicate over and over from a Pakistani scientist. He includes shipping n everything.
Have you not watched the news lately, our Ballistic subs are at the end of service and everyone is kicking Blair for wanting to renew them with no questions asked. They want a vote in parliment!!! Blair should give em all the V!!
Makes chinas 2000 look a little small really! But China never have spent loads on technology because they've got silly numbers of available troops. Maybe thats why they have old soviet guns and tanks etc.
Just noticed at the end the article was an extract from a book, The Secret State by Peter Hennessy.