Chapter 600 - 588 Overspending

"Battle stations!"

"Target locked!"

"Two intercept missiles, fire!"

As the Iskander was already in the re-entry phase, the 173rd ship Xiangcheng locked onto the terminal warhead at an altitude of 250 kilometers and, a few seconds later, launched two HQ9B surface-to-air missiles.

Without a doubt, this was yet another anti-missile exercise, aimed at the medium-range Iskander. All the surrounding warships were likely doing the exact same thing, having just practiced trying to shoot down their own East Wind 15C.

However, such exercises were doomed to provide little in the way of results; other than being able to estimate the interception probability for their own missiles based on past experience, the greater significance for the other two powers lay in gathering data up close.

But the expressions of the officers and sailors aboard the 173rd were a bit subtle, considering the HQ9B was a copy of Russia’s S300, and its use against the Iskander was a bit like crossing swords.

Nevertheless, the anti-missile capabilities of the HQ9B and HQ16 aboard the 173rd weren’t exactly strong—they could only be considered "available." The focus of domestic anti-missile efforts was always on the mainland, and they presumably had already completed their interception drills.

By the time the captain could see with his own eyes the burning meteor swiftly approaching the clouds, the exercise ended on schedule.

Just as he was about to put on his sunglasses, he suddenly saw a flash before his eyes, as if a faint green light had just skimmed past.

He naturally attributed the source of this to the warhead, which was shining with intense light, merely feeling that his age was showing and his eyes were too sensitive.

What he didn’t realize was that above his head, Thousand-Jun Stick No. 1 was also locking onto a rapidly moving target.

...

"Countdown, 10 seconds!"

Inside Cabin 2220, Xiao Okada paid no mind to the countdown blaring over the intercom, his eyes were fixated on the nuclear power station through the porthole.

As the meteor streaking across the sky approached the ground, he turned his head, closed his eyes, and silently counted to five before reopening them.

The cabin was engulfed in a blinding white scene, as if the saturation on a computer monitor had been turned up to the point of distortion, obliterating everything inside to a faint outline.

The open porthole had become a source of piercing light, forcing him to close his eyes once more, and then he counted another five seconds.

Everything was still blanketed in white, but it was a tad more transparent. At the same time, the cabin, which had been filled with noise, became very quiet, and he experienced a ringing in his ears.

Xiao Okada closed his eyes for the third time, counting to ten. The colors that the cabin had lost finally returned, along with the cacophony of mechanical noise that had ceased momentarily.

He turned back toward the porthole, and what he saw was a massive fireball, almost covering all the visible terrain, nearly filling the entire sky. It was red-hot like the sun viewed up close, with a tumultuous surface boiling over like the sun’s corona.

"The sun goddess has descended."

He muttered unconsciously in his native tongue, and his whole body seemed to warm under the blaze, breaking out in goosebumps.

"Holy shit!"

The pilot next to him blurted out an expletive and then cursed unreservedly:

"Dammit, if that yield was a million tons less, I’d be blind—Pilot, speed the hell up!

Holy fuck, goddamn Russians, get moving!"

In truth, there was no need for the outburst from the pilot; the pilot, already trained for such scenarios, had judged the yield from the duration of the white light—it was at least a million tons!

He had already pushed the throttle to its limit, running wildly to the outside, disregarding his own safety.

"Everyone, brace for impact, the shockwave is coming!"

The words had barely left his mouth when he felt a strong push against his back, uncontrollably leaning backward, then the airplane began to buck wildly up and down as if out of control, and there was a powerful left-turning force.

Pressed against the cabin wall, Xiao Okada felt the airplane’s crazed vibrations that nearly deformed the skin on his face; had it not been for the four-point safety belts securely fastened, he would have been thrown out of his seat.

The atmospheric wave lasted a whole 30 seconds before it stopped, leaving the entire cockpit filled with alarm sounds from the instruments.

Drenched in cold sweat, the four aircrew members quickly carried out checks and, finding no major issues, finally breathed a sigh of relief.

The pilot who had just been cursing squeezed up to the porthole and strained to look back, only to see the mushroom cloud had far exceeded their flight altitude—at least by 20 kilometers, and it was even possible it surged up to 40 kilometers!

This conclusion also left Xiao Okada extremely frightened; he could feel his back soaked with sweat.

"700,000 tons, this is 1.7 million tons, isn’t it!"

"Such a huge fireball, damn, I need to urgently contact 2210!"

"The radio is completely useless, we can’t reach anyone right now, the electromagnetic environment is a mess!"

"Russia must have swallowed fake medicine, isn’t the margin for 700,000 tons a bit too large."

"We should have used a bigger one, what a loss!"

The cabin was abuzz with noise, but eventually, everyone’s gaze turned unanimously to an old man with graying hair—the only real nuclear expert on the plane.

"Between 1.1 and 1.4 million tons, it might be due to the first explosion crater causing an increased yield leakage, or the yield might just have been larger than planned, but it definitely was more than 700,000 tons.

However, I remember their yield for this type of warhead was supposed to be for a three-stage device, but they probably wouldn’t use a three-stage. It must be a newly modified warhead with potential miscalculation issues regarding the yield control."

The elderly expert’s tone was relatively calm, and upon hearing his analysis, the others also temporarily calmed down before someone said:

"What you mean is... they redesigned or rather modified a new warhead, and it should be the latter possibility, that they didn’t properly control the calculation of the yield?

Indeed, this is a possibility."

Everyone quickly came to realization that although countries had stopped nuclear testing, it didn’t mean that there were no new warhead designs; however, these were usually based on previous experiences and would not involve live detonations.

Past experiences could ensure a hydrogen bomb would detonate, but control over the yield could not be very precise, especially if Russia decided on a temporary modification.

The design of a hydrogen bomb is a complex matter, placing a lump of lithium deuteride next to an atomic bomb. There’s a chance that the lithium deuteride would vaporize due to the explosion and scatter everywhere, or it might be compressed to trigger a fusion reaction, though the proportion of the reaction is difficult to specify.

With the "Little Boy," the first atomic bomb, out of 54 kilograms of uranium, less than a kilogram underwent fission, and the first hydrogen bomb, which weighed tens of tons, was later compressed to just one or two tons, all related to the issue of efficiency.

No one doubted Russia’s accumulated experience, but the reliability of simulations from supercomputers... that’s another story.

The East Wind 15C was modern equipment that had undergone underground testing of the nuclear trigger last century; its yield was naturally accurate.

"But we needn’t worry about the cleanup issue now. As long as it’s not a three-stage bomb, we can definitely handle the cleanup effectively."

The old expert squinted at the mushroom cloud that now reached the sky and added one more thing:

"Fukushima Power Station is by the sea, and we’re almost close to blasting away the coastline. This time, I reckon several kilometers of land have been blasted away, and in the future, there’ll only be a bay there."