this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2025
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That's not how it works. You can tell the difference between radiation from a nuclear weapon and a conventional bomb used on radioactive materials. If they used nukes they won't be able to cover it up for very long.
There's different isotopes in the fallout, different radio spectrometry or whatever, but I think they could lie and say that the reason it looks like a conventional nuclear weapon is because Iran was hiding a nuke and they blew it up.
A nuclear detonation is a very delicate and precisely controlled process. It doesn't just happen because a bomb goes off near the nuke. So sure, they can say anything, but there will be obvious evidence.
Speaking of saying anything, I'm going to look for reliable confirmation that this even happened. I'm not taking Trump's fucking tweet for it.
What gives you the idea that Trump gives any fucks about lying?
What gives you the idea that I have any such idea? I find that quite puzzling.
Sure, in fantasyland
What's so fantastical about the US using a tactical nuke and then lying about it?
Looks like that didn't happen here, but I see no reason that it couldn't.
Because nuclear detonations are very different to conventional ones, and every major power has satellites monitoring for them. They can’t be hidden. Hell, any university or weather service within 3,000 miles would be able to detect it.
Even conventional detonations on top of nuclear reactors or nuclear stockpiles?
Yes. Only in fantasy land. As Logi above said, nuclear detonation is an extremely precise, controlled process that has very specific conditions to achieve successfully. Even an actual fission bomb only manages to consume a fraction of the radioactive material.
The only thing someone would achieve by denotating a conventional explosive near a reactor or nuclear stockpile is spreading highly radioactive dust around. That does not nor will ever look like uncontrolled nuclear fission, let alone a detonation from a thermonuclear warhead.
Yes. Different blast pattern, different fallout pattern, different isotopes, different seismic signature, different sound wave pattern…
The US doesn't have small enough nuclear penetrators to even try hiding something anyway, they can use tactical warheads as bunker busters but they can't be meaningfully hidden. Meanwhile all these Iranian installations have been built with conventional bunker busters in mind so the existing American GBUs that must have been used may not have caused much real damage after all even if they double tapped the exact same spot.