Badger Badger Badger Badger Explosion! Explosion! (Mushroom Clouds and Explosions)

[Flashlight237]

If you get the joke in the title, chances are you're old. That said, I have thought about this after looking over @Oiguana2701 's calc on an old Youtube parody video: https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:Oiguana2701/Matt_Storer:_Boom

When it comes to our explosion calcs, we have provisions for them in this article: https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Explosion_Yield_Calculations

Thing is, these provisions are made for explosions that are spheres/hemispheres. In case you haven't noticed... This isn't either of those things:

This isn't the first time I had to deal with weirdly-shaped explosions. With an explosion I did that was an elongated ovaloid, I did the math to compare it to an equivalently-sized hemisphere: https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:Flashlight237/Debby_the_Corsifa:_A_Couple_More_Booms

But mushroom clouds? There's nothing in the wiki that says how we should handle those. At best, NUKEMAP provides measurements for a mushroom cloud, although it's kinda buggy, and the guy who made NUKEMAP told me he was too busy to fix the bug.: https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

I'm not sure if this is in @DontTalkDT 's turf, but either way, there should be a way to account for this mushroom cloud stuff... But how?

 

[Qurbonboev]

Snip

For starters: NUKEMAP uses data from "The effects of nuclear weapons, here. Relevant part here.
Graph from it (results are for maximum height of clouds).

I would say that for yields lesser than 100 kilotons, relationship is pretty clear: top cloud height increases by 2 times for each x10 times increase of yield.
H = 10000 * Y^(log(2))
Where H is height in feets, and Y is yield in kilotons.
Simplifying, and converting to meters, formula is
H = 3048 * Y^(0.30103)

But I don't think this formula is applicable for explosions weaker than 1 kiloton. It predicts 381 meters cloud for 1 ton explosion for example

 

[Flashlight237]

For starters: NUKEMAP uses data from "The effects of nuclear weapons, here. Relevant part here.
Graph from it (results are for maximum height of clouds).

I would say that for yields lesser than 100 kilotons, relationship is pretty clear: top cloud height increases by 2 times for each x10 times increase of yield.
H = 10000 * Y^(log(2))
Where H is height in feets, and Y is yield in kilotons.
Simplifying, and converting to meters, formula is
H = 3048 * Y^(0.30103)

But I don't think this formula is applicable for explosions weaker than 1 kiloton. It predicts 381 meters cloud for 1 ton explosion for example

Thanks. This could potentially be helpful.

 

[Apex_Predator_GX]

The mushroom cloud shouldn’t really be used to determine the explosion yield. It forms after the initial blast due to rising hot gases, so its height or length doesn’t represent the explosion’s size. It would be more accurate to use the visible fireball or initial blast radius instead.

 

[Flashlight237]

The mushroom cloud shouldn’t really be used to determine the explosion yield. It forms after the initial blast due to rising hot gases, so its height or length doesn’t represent the explosion’s size. It would be more accurate to use the visible fireball or initial blast radius instead.

Somehow didn't stop Nukemap from trying (which is odd since smoke, you know, expands)

 

[Apex_Predator_GX]

Somehow didn't stop Nukemap from trying (which is odd since smoke, you know, expands)

Yeah, that’s true. Smoke expands and spreads with the atmosphere, so its shape and size wouldn’t really reflect the actual energy of the explosion anyway.

 

[Qurbonboev]

The mushroom cloud shouldn’t really be used to determine the explosion yield. It forms after the initial blast due to rising hot gases, so its height or length doesn’t represent the explosion’s size. It would be more accurate to use the visible fireball or initial blast radius instead.

Somehow didn't stop Nukemap from trying (which is odd since smoke, you know, expands)

Fireball or blast radius obviously should be preferred.
But mushroom clouds do have max altitude, that depends on their yield. At least, according to "the effects of nuclear weapons" which is the most authoritative source on nukes.
So if you don't have anything else to calculate nuclear weapon yield, max height of mushroom clouds would be useful

 

[Flashlight237]

Bump