In article ,
says...
It is only 'more deadly' because of the half-life of Co60. I think it
would kill the same number as a similarly sized bomb without the
cobalt as long as people avoided the contaminated areas thereafter.
The difference is that using a cobalt jacket (not case) leads to
longer lived fallout and so makes areas uninhabitable for every long
periods of time, where a 'normal' weapon with an HEU jacket produces
fallout that decays to relatively safe levels very quickly.

Why do you not get this?

A pattern of cobalt bombs could render a vast area uninhabitable,
say for example the size of France, so that it might be impossible
for most of the people to escape the contaminated areas; therefore
tens of millions of people might die from the Cobalt 60 -- would
that be a correct assessment?

Yes, it's the fallout that renders the area uninhabitable. But, it's
not the "single bomb that can destroy the world" that urban legend seems
to indicate. I've heard the urban legend version too, that one has
never been tested because even the test would "destroy the world". It's
simply not true.

Jeff
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