Shellshocked House Republicans got warnings from leaders past and present Tuesday: Your party’s message isn’t good enough to prevent disaster in November, and neither is the NRCC’s money.

Originally Posted by Ene Uran

Why would the US and Russia have over 10,000 nuclear warheads if just a few would do?

Originally Posted by Ene Uran

It's just another scare story. Why would the US and Russia have over 10,000 nuclear warheads if just a few would do?

The Tsar Bomba was the culmination of a series of high-yield thermonuclear weapons designed by the USSR and U.S. during the 1950s (examples include the Mark-17 and B41). Such bombs were designed because:

• The nuclear bombs of the day were large and heavy, regardless of yield, and could only be delivered by strategic bombers. Hence yield was subject to dramatic economies of scale;
• It was feared that many bombers would fail to reach their targets because their size and low speed made detection and interception easy. Hence maximizing the firepower carried by any single bomber was vital;
• Prior to satellite intelligence, each side lacked precise knowledge of the location of the other side's military and industrial facilities;
• A bomb dropped without benefit of advanced inertial navigation systems could easily miss its intended target by six kilometres or more. Parachute retardation would only worsen the bomb's accuracy.

Thus certain bombs were designed to destroy an entire large city even if dropped five to ten kilometers from its centre. This objective meant that yield and effectiveness were positively correlated, at least up to a point. However, the advent of ICBMs accurate to 500 meters or better made such a design philosophy obsolete. Subsequent nuclear weapon design in the 1960s and 1970s focused primarily on increased accuracy, miniaturization, and safety. The standard practice for many years has been to employ multiple smaller warheads (MIRVs) to "carpet" an area. This is believed to result in greater ground damage.

Originally Posted by Ene Uran

George Bush's Hurricane Katrina debacle has provided helpful lessons to the Chinese leadership on how not to do disasters. China's leaders will doubtless have noticed the extent to which, as in Bush's case, fumbling at the top at a time of national crisis can destroy political reputation and legitimacy.