Renamon 0 Posted June 6, 2009 Adding to the nuke discussion. The energy released form the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII could have instead baked one big cake or nearly 7 million cakes. That's as many as 700000 tens. And that's terrible. ------ Cakes That's 31.7 cakes for each person killed in the blasts, not counting deaths from radiation. And if a cake is 5-6 lbs on average, that's around 160-190lbs of cake for each person. So you could either kill a human adult or cook his equivalent in cake. If an average cake is 9" in diameter, then 7000000 cakes translates into a 0.36 mile wide cake. We could have literally covered a entire city in cake. and it would weighy 38,500,000 pounds (I stopped scaling up when the cakes became an orange block. This is as far as I got) Japanese cities were made of rice paper and popsicle sticks which is why they burned so well when the US firebombed them. Cakes dropped from 10000 feet would have easily killed many occupants and if they were baked mid-flight could very well have burnt the buildings down. The land area of Japan is 145783 square miles. 70 persons per square mile. Let's say 3 people = 1 house, assuming houses are spread out evenly. 70 x 145,783 = 10204810 / 3 = 3,401,603 houses houses in Japan. Japan is 145783 square miles, so .36 of that is 52482 square miles, roughly. 70 x 52482 = 3673732, roughly. divided by 3 = 1224577. This 38,500,000 pound cake would hit 1224577 houses The cake would be going at 57.9650352 m/s, terminal velocity. That's a pressure of 590kg/m^2 on anything the cake covers. Anyone covered by the cake would be crushed or at least asphyxiate and die, and that times 3, assuming 3 people per house, is 3,673,732 people dead, roughly. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs combined only killed 220,000 people. Therefore, cake is a more devastating armament than nuclear warheads. Average total floor area of a Japanese house in 2007 was 94.85 square meters. I don't know how many floors that covers, but let's say 2. That's a roof area of 47.425m^2 average on every house. Thus, 28 039kg, or 28 metric tonnes of cake hits the roof of every single house in a half-mile circle. To clarify, that's like dropping about 20 cars on a house. Nothing will withstand that Anyone in the Hiroshima CBD is a dead man. But that much cake would have fed the rest of the nation and probably led them to victory. The cost of making the bomb is the same because you'd cook the cake in midair using the energy from the explosion. ------ Cost The average cost of a nuclear bomb is $20,000,000,000 The Manahtten Project WWII $14,000,000,000 Estimated construction costs for more than 1,000 ICBM launch pads and silos, and support facilities, from 1957-1964 Here are the ingredients for one average white cake 1 cup white sugar 1/2 cup butter 2 eggs 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 cup milk For 7 million cakes: 7,000,000 Cups of Sugar 14,000,000 Eggs 3,500,000 Cups of Milk 10,500,000 Tablespoons of Cocoa 700,000,000gm melted Butter 7,000,000 teaspoons of Baking Soda 7,000,000 teaspoons Vanilla Essence 7,000,000 Pinches of Salt 10,500,000 Cups of Flour 10,500,000 teaspoons of Baking Powder 7,000,000 Cups of Sugar = 896 000 kilograms 14,000,000 Eggs 3,500,000 Cups of Milk = 787 500 litres 10,500,000 Tablespoons of Cocoa = 157 500 kilograms 700,000,000gm melted Butter = 700,000 kilograms 7,000,000 teaspoons of Baking Soda = 35 000kg 7,000,000 teaspoons Vanilla Essence = 35 000 litres 7,000,000 Pinches of Salt = 7 000 kg 10,500,000 Cups of Flour = 952 000 kilograms 10,500,000 teaspoons of Baking Powder = 35 000kg Consumer Price Index 1945 was 18.100 versus 211.143 in January 2009. Thus inflation between then and now is 1067%. For inflation, $1 in 1945 was worth the same as $7.56 in 1991. 42,000,000 dollars for eggs in todays market. falls to $4mil in 1945 prices. 3270400000 dollars for the sugar 3,270,400,000/1067% = $306 504 217 in 1945. 896,875 for milk in todays market. Falls to 90k in 1945 prices. 256,410 for the cocoa in todays market 3,354,838 bucks for the baking soda in todays market. 420,000 for the flour in todays market The butter would be $4,317,180 in today's market, which is $404,609 in 1945 prices, bringing the total to $311,309,185 in 1945 prices. For eggs, milk, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, sugar, butter, and flour, it comes to $1,046,041,649. I think that anything remaining is negligible and we can call it $1.1 billion. We've passed 5% of the cost of the bombs. ------ Transport According to Wikipedia, the C-46 Commando had a maximum payload of 40,000lbs, and around 3,000 were built, which is enough to carry 120,000,000 lbs, while the ingredients are a little less than 40,000,000 lbs, so that ship could have been used and enough had been manufactured. I remember correctly, the most internal combustion efficient engines in the world get 30-40% energy efficiency, so using that figure, to move 38.5mil lbs = 17.5kg to 8,000m altitude in C-46 Commandos, you'd need 1.373e12 Joules of energy (from potentual energy = mass*9.8*height). According to Wikipedia, jet fuel has energy content around 25 MJ per liter, so you'd need around 54,880,000 liters of gasoline to get all that stuff that high. Assuming 35% efficiency, you'd need 156,800,000 liters of jet fuel. The C-46 Commando engine was 1,500 kW, and had a climbing rate of 6.6 m/s, so to climb to 8000 meters it would take 1212 seconds, or 1,818,181 Joules for one plane, and considering we'd need around 2200 planes according to Wiki stats, that would be 4,000,000,400 Joules of energy, and at 25 MJ/liter in jet fuel, that would be 160,000,000 liters of 100% efficiently used jet fuel, call it 25% efficiency and you get around 460million liters of fuel. It cost 25 cents per gallon in 1945. 460,000,000 liters would be 121,519,144 gallons. All the fuel ends up costing only $41,233,417 in 1945 prices. Add in some slight overhead and the total is still $360mil not including navy costs to transport everything to Japan, though it does include the cost of getting everything into the air to drop it. So now we basically have to do what we did with planes, but with boats. From where in the US to, say, a small island near Japan? I suggest shipping the ingredients to Seogwipo. The city in the little spit of land directly West of the bottom of Japan, and under South Korea. I don't see the total price going over $500 million in 1945 prices (considering $315mil in ingredient costs, $32mil in jet fuel costs, and whatever the navy's fuel costs would be). ------ End We could have destroyed roughly 1,224,577 houses, killed about 3.5 million Japanese with a 0.36 mile diameter, 38,500,000 pound cake cooked with the energy from the atom bombs in WW2, and it would have cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 million . Versus the 4 billion the warheads cost. Since the cake method only cost less than 1/8th of the nuclear bombs, we can produce seven more cakes with 0.36 diameters while still staying below budget. So much energy that could've been used for powers of good... ;_; We missed an opportunity here. ------ It's misleading to compare the energy totals directly. A nuclear bomb relies on a massive sudden release of energy, while baking relies on a minute trickle. It would have been fairly difficult to convert the energy produced by the bombs into baking energy; either much of the energy would be lost, or the process would be too slow to be realistic. Therefore the true number of cakes squandered is likely to have been significantly lower (albeit still large). HOWEVER, The numbers weren't calculated to suggest that we could have used the bombs to directly cook cakes, such as covering them in cake batter and detonating them to make CAKES RAIN FROM THE SKY HOLY F*** THAT'S AWESOME I AM AWESOME FOR THINKING OF ALL THIS Share this post Link to post
Nmenth 289 Posted June 6, 2009 (edited) I was going to make a picture for 2200 C-46 Commandos, but it became unidentifiable around only 96 of them. Gives new meaning to the phrase 'Let them eat cake.' Oh well, we all know the giant 38,500,000 pound cake is a lie. Edited June 7, 2009 by Nmenth Share this post Link to post
Nmenth 289 Posted June 7, 2009 Ice cream cake would melt, be realistic here. Share this post Link to post
Nmenth 289 Posted June 8, 2009 Excuse me, but the MOAB was equal to 44 tonnes of TNT? Do I count 50 blocks? Share this post Link to post
Nmenth 289 Posted June 8, 2009 (edited) Excuse me, but the MOAB was equal to 44 tonnes of TNT? Do I count 50 blocks? Ok, I don't know which evil mod is impersonating me here, but you are partially correct. I did miscount my 44 TNT blocks with 52, I'll fix that shortly. However, the MOAB only has the blast potential of 11, that is the FOAB with 44. If you're going to steal my identity, at least get it right. Edit: fixed. Edited June 9, 2009 by Nmenth Share this post Link to post
Guest Stevie_K Posted June 8, 2009 This 38,500,000 pound cake would hit 1224577 houses Yeah! that's pwnage compared to blood rain! ,. The blood rain didn't even have DNA , loser rain! I prefer Cake Rain Of Severe Doom! Share this post Link to post
Nmenth 289 Posted June 9, 2009 The blood rain didn't even have DNA , loser rain! It did have amino acids though, which DNA is made out of. I theorize the lab guys that tested it for DNA inadvertently killed the DNA first, then declared it had none. Share this post Link to post
Guest Stevie_K Posted June 9, 2009 True. Those scientists must feel stupid about all their "Xfiles" talk by now. Share this post Link to post
Doctor Destiny 40 Posted June 9, 2009 You forget one thing. The cake is, most definitely, a lie. kekeke Share this post Link to post
Nmenth 289 Posted June 10, 2009 You forget one thing. The cake is, most definitely, a lie. I didn't... Oh well, we all know the giant 38,500,000 pound cake is a lie. Share this post Link to post
Wildshield 0 Posted June 10, 2009 I saw something more powerful than a nuke on the news. Some superlaser which pretty much acts like the death star from starwars. They harness a bunch of them to create this superbeam which can pretty much do the samething. Still, it looked funny and I have no idea if this is even true. Share this post Link to post
Nmenth 289 Posted June 10, 2009 I saw something more powerful than a nuke on the news. Some superlaser which pretty much acts like the death star from starwars. TV news or internet news? If you could provide more details on this, I'd like to research it. I'm familiar with quite a few real and theoretical super lasers, but I've never heard of any of them being considered more powerful than a nuke. Share this post Link to post
Renamon 0 Posted June 10, 2009 (edited) no please Edited June 24, 2011 by Renamon Share this post Link to post
Wildshield 0 Posted June 11, 2009 source was from the cable show "cobert report" last week i think. It was on a segment called "The craziest $#%*ing thing I've ever heard". Where they got their info I dont know. Share this post Link to post
Nmenth 289 Posted June 11, 2009 It sounds like it was most likely referring to the lasers designed to initiate nuclear fusion... but those would not be usable as a weapon. Share this post Link to post
BioBen 3 Posted June 11, 2009 "cobert report" A reliable source of information then Share this post Link to post
Nmenth 289 Posted June 16, 2009 (edited) source was from the cable show "cobert report" last week i think. It was on a segment called "The craziest $#%*ing thing I've ever heard". Where they got their info I dont know. I think I managed to dig it up, Wed, Jun 3's episode. Likened the lasers to the Death Star, but it wasn't a part of the 'Craziest F#?king Thing I've Ever Heard' segment. It comes from this. Edited June 16, 2009 by Nmenth Share this post Link to post
Wildshield 0 Posted June 16, 2009 Ah yes... That would be it. Good old steve. Share this post Link to post