It hardly looks like its able to level a town the size of Cedar Creek. Watch the width of the explosion on the water and the width of the town, its less then half the size of it.
Sure there wouldve been casualties and a town in ruins, but it wont be totally obliterated.
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Any last words ?
Shut the *beep* up
-Mutant Chronicles-
I agree with Steve. The BLU-82, known as the Daisy Cutter, seems to be what they were going after. As far as the bomb not being big enough, i agree with that too. I don't know of any conventional bomb that would kill every one and every thing in a whole town. What a movie though. Just saw it again for the first time in a dozen years. Surprised by how it doesn't look all that dated.
shareGBU-43 MOAB is more then powerful enough to destroy a town such as that
also the bomb they used in the movie was the daisy cutter(which is not a fuel to air bomb) but it sure would be powerful enough to destroy the town
i like how they give a destructive bomb a cute name like a 'daisy cutter'. cuts your daisies all right!
shareYeah, cuts your daisies real good...and everything else too!
My understanding (which is very limited when it comes to bombs) from the movie is that this particular Daisy Cutter was more potent than the usual variety. Instead of being a conventional bomb it was a fuel-air explosive bomb, which I think is suppose to ignite the atmosphere. Maybe someone with a little more insight could help clear some of that up but I think that's the gist of it.
As far as story purposes go of course it's enough to sterilize the town or they would attack with something else.
It ignites the atmosphere insofar as the first stage of the weapon disperses a flammable substance over a wide area and then the second stage ignites it. It's not a particularly powerful explosion in a given area, but it would burn up the air within its radius in its fire.
I honestly don't think there have actually been thermobaric/FAE bombs that big, but in the context of the film, if they had used a similar but smaller device years earlier in Africa for that purpose, it would make sense that more time would have been invested in that type of weapon technology than is the case in reality. Also, the bomb in the movie is physically smaller than actual large FAEs, so there's an indication of more investment in the technology than actually exists.
I suspect that in this application it wouldn't be as useful as incendiaries, since the fuel mostly gets burned up in the explosion.
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