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You clear your throat, you had been thinking on ways to help cope with the numbers disadvantage your group seemed to consistently face when dealing with major objectives. One of the more absurd yet surprisingly appealing ideas that crossed your mind was gathering several Fission Batteries together and rigging them to cascade into a nuclear detonation much like a mini-nuke, but instead as either a timed explosive or a sort of.... nuclear landmine.
If there was anyone you knew that was the right breed of crazy, intelligent and stupid to actually see this project through it was Jacob.
You start, "Actually I had an idea for a nuclear land mine..."
Jacob adjusts himself in his seat, "Hold up Ford. Run that by me again?"
You smile you had his attention, "A nuclear land mine."
He nods, "Right ok that's what it sounded like, I thought I was the one that took a blow to the head, that sounds absolutely insane... continue." he says leaning forwards.
You lean forwards as well to conspire with your friend and subordinate, "We'll need to get either a pressure detonator from a land mine, or a remote detonator, and several fission batteries. The idea is trigger a nuclear detonation with the fissile material from the batteries."
Jacob leaned back and breathed through his teeth, before swiveling his chair back to the table grabbing a sheet of paper and a pencil and starting to run some math, "How much fissile material do you figure they have in those batteries? I mean enough to have a miniature nuclear reactor right? But a cascade meltdown in that reactor won't go boom, it'd just be really radioactive..... however if we could induce supercriticality into the material at will and then have the detonator fire the initial neutron to kickstart the reaction..."
He scratched a few numbers, "Well it'd be a pretty fucking big landmine, but.... I reckon for a prototype I'd need 6 fission batteries, a neutron gun, a detonator, and some tungsten carbide. Probably a diamond tipped drill to gonna need a small hole in that tungsten carbide sphere for the neutron gun... Oh and a shit load of lead, I mean a lot of lead, this shit might give us all cancer if I get it wrong."
You scratch your chin, the fission batteries, detonator and the diamond tipped drill probably won't be that hard to get, a neutron gun and tungsten carbide would be more difficult.
It's possible that you could deconstruct a mini-nuke to see what it's firing mechanism is and if it has one that'd be work.
Tungsten Carbide though?
"Where would we get Tungsten Carbide?" you ask Jacob.
He shrugs, "No clue, it's possible that some nuclear research facilities might have some, alternatively we can just scrap for tungsten carbonize it through good old metallurgy and chemistry. Though that'll take longer..." he scratches his chin, "Why don't we just use a big as spike, pressure plate and a mininuke?"
You shake your head, "Easier to make sure, but also in shorter supply."
[continue]
