![]() ![]() ![]() Surface buildings damaged in the cascade and/or fighting might fail. Now something that would do some major damage would the shock wave of the blast being transmitted though rock. With much of the force of the blast going up, it’s not going horizontally and most other area's of Black Mesa would be spared the direct effects of the explosion. But even that short distance should be enough to focus much of the force upward. The fireball for the nuke should reach the surface as the warhead is only about 20 or so feet underground. Much of the force of the blast would have likely gone out the roof of the car park as it’s the path of least resistance. So what would the nuke have done to Black Mesa? The car parking area where is was set off would have been vaporized along with the Otis and Barney that were nearby. Black Mesa was clearly built to take some punishment. ![]() Black Mesa is also sectioned off by many blast doors, some of them are extremely thick and these would do much to keep the effects of a nuclear detonation out of the underground area’s if not directly exposed to the blast. Structures in and around Black Mesa are mostly built of reinforced concrete and other sturdy materials. First of all, the facility mostly underground and cut into solid rock. This is an important thing to remember because it totally changes the type of damage and the area of effect. When a nuke is airburst it spreads the damage over a much greater area than if it was detonated on the surface or underground. But keep in mind, that was an airburst weapon. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was between 13 and 16 kilotons and look how much damage was caused. The Osprey Shepard and the G-Man where traveling in would have been destroyed by such a weapon (thermal, radiation or shockwave. These types of devices would vaporize the entire mesa and a portion of the surrounding area. The yield for both these weapons is over 1 Megaton (1000 kilotons). In this case the warhead could be a W-56 or W-59. There is the possibility that the missile we see in Opposing Force is actually just the upper portion of a Minuteman ICBM. But the Mark IV RV is for a Poseidon class missile and they look nothing like the missile we see in Opposing Force. But Mark IV can all so refer to the Reentry Vehicle (RV) for the warhead as well. As a note, the “Mark IV” designation seen on the bomb belongs to a nuclear (free fall) bomb that had ceased to be used after 1954. So let’s call this “Mark IV” a 25 kiloton warhead. So based on it’s size and shape, it does not have a real strong resemblance to anything real other than the outer shell for a RV (reentry vehicle) like those used on the Minuteman ICBM’s. I could see a few people moving a 350 pound warhead, but not a 800+ pound one. The W-85 has a weight of about 880 pounds. ![]() The problem with warhead we see in game is that it’s way to small to be a W-85. The Pershing 2 used a warhead (designation W-85) that had a variable yield between 5 and 50 kilotons. So what was Black Mesa doing with an operational theater range missile something like ten years later? Sounds like a treaty violation to me. This is odd, because the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, all Pershings (all theater Class nuclear missiles actually) where destroyed by 1991. The missile the warhead it removed from is clearly a theater class ballistic missile that bears some resemblance to a Pershing 2. This is a look at the circumstances and events surrounding the declared destruction of the Black Mesa Research Facility by a nuclear weapon in the Opposing Force expansion for Half Life 1 by Gearbox.įirst, let’s look at the nuke the G-Man activated in Opposing Force. ![]()
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