Rods From God
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The "rods from god" idea was a bundle of telephone-pole-size (20 feet long, 1 foot in diameter) tungsten rods, dropped from orbit, reaching a speed of up to 10 times the speed of sound.
The rod itself would penetrate hundreds of feet into the Earth, destroying any potential hardened bunkers or secret underground sites. More than that, when the rod hits, the explosion would be on par with the magnitude of a ground-penetrating nuclear weapon— but with no fallout.
Such a weapon could destroy a target with 15 minutes' notice.
Imagine that. Holding the high ground is a tactical advantage?
Brand new idea.
His arguments against them are invalid for a number of reasons.
Asteroid mining comes to mind.
GIGATONS of tungsten...already up there. Weight is not an issue.
one more thing.
He's got the 'lazy dog' thing all wrong.
Don't ask me how I know this.
How are the rods guided?
As far as 'lazy dog'...
Thank you.
How are the rods guided?
Guided?
Ready fire aim.
Like an arrow.
welll...I guess a 'guidance package' might be used.
kinda like a smart bomb.
what were the lazy dogs for?
to drop on peoples heads.
a 'lazy dog' was about the size of a .45 cal bullet but it had fins and was made from solid steel.
thus it was a ballistic shape.
When dropped from 40k ft that 32ft/sec^2 added up rilly quick.
when it impacted it would go thru an engine block..
imagine what it would do to a person's head.
..
They were dropped in CBU canisters.. about the size of a 750lb hard bomb.
When they fell away from the B52 they split open.
THOUSANDS of them fell to the ground.
'bring the rain..the steel rain'.
(the picture in the video was a 2.5in flechette rocket. not the same thing.)
There is a lot to be said for dumb weapons, dropped in quantity; from a great height!
Inexpensive, and deadly.
:'(In my Ragnarok Conspiracy story I had a weapon called Highly-Elongated-Orbit Projectile-Swarm (HEOPS) destroying all of the world's communication satellites and creating the so-called debrisphere. It was a dumb swarm of small dice sized solid aluminum squares in a long elliptical orbit around the Earth, reaching huge speads when it came at the lower altitudes where communication satelites were pressent.. Great heights gets a whole different meaning when taking into account elliptical orbit dynamics.
Nice, they would slingshot in L.E.O. to several times their original speed! :)
can't get any dumber.
at one time I had a handfull of them on my dresser.
I like the one the Brits dropped behind the German lines for D-Day. It looked like a jax with 4 tines.
They dropped a lot of them, and they all landed on three points, with one point pointing, straight up!
See, if you have a Black Powder shotgun, some of those might end up as a load, LOL!
:)I don't think so.
each one is larger than a powerline pole.
You don't know how big my shotgun is....I was talking about the 'lazy dog'you listed, LOL! But the poles would be a great cannon load!
But if you drop in six OO buckshot, followed by a 1/2 inch ball bearing, then another six OO; with a paper cap top and bottom, you have a NICE load! :)
:D :)your dresser must be huge!
indeed, I was wondering why the ones in the video were clearly labeled as flechettes. Those seem like the perfect thing for space based secret assassinations.