Strength of Today's Nukes?

I have googled on this but to no avail.
Perhaps some of you science types can tell me how much stronger the nuclear weapons we have today compared to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki ones.
Any information greatly appreciated..IMO, it must be much greater, no?

nuclearweaponarchive.org...

www.fas.org...

A simple googling of "nuclear weapon strength" yeilded me with this:

Nuclear weapon yield

i cant find much either, but here is footage of the most powerful one ever tested... pretty intense.

big nuke test

that depends on what type of nuke.

fision bomb
fusio bomb

first were used in ww2
second are hydrogene bombs.

the most powerfull nuke is never tested in real life only in a supercomputer simulation program and it is many times powerfull than the most powerfull tested in real life.

Originally posted by MarkLuitzen
that depends on what type of nuke.

fision bomb
fusio bomb

first were used in ww2
second are hydrogene bombs.

the most powerfull nuke is never tested in real life only in a supercomputer simulation program and it is many times powerfull than the most powerfull tested in real life.

Thank you for that important information.
I have always thought we HAD NEVER tested any REAL nukes....
Know the WW2 ones were not that powerful...

Originally posted by siriuslyone
Thank you for that important information.
I have always thought we HAD NEVER tested any REAL nukes....
Know the WW2 ones were not that powerful...

As I had said in your other thread on a similar topic, a fission bomb and a fusion bomb are both nuclear weapons. No, the ones in WWII were not as powerful, but they were still nuclear explosives.

Also, we've tested both kinds, more extensively the fusion bombs though, since it's easier to make them more potent.

Here's something my history teacher in high school showed me while we were studying the Cold War. It was a page divided into a couple hundred squares, that he displayed on an overhead. One individual square had a bunch of dots in it, each dot representing X nukes. One square represented enough nukes to destroy all human life on the planet, and there were a few hundred of those squares.

That's a lot of nuke power.

I do know that the current hydrogen bombs are MUCH more powerful than the old atomic bombs used on Japan. A hydrogen bomb actually uses the energy from a fission reaction to ignite it's own explosion.

From Wikipedia:

Hiroshima's "Little Boy" gravity bomb: 12-15 kt — gun type uranium-235 fission bomb (the first of the two nuclear weapons that have been used in warfare).

Nagasaki's "Fat Man" gravity bomb: 20-22 kt — implosion type plutonium-239 fission bomb (the second of the two nuclear weapons used in warfare).

Castle Bravo device: 15 Mt — most powerful US test.

In other words, the Castle Bravo device mentioned above is 1000 times more powerful than 'Little Boy' was and about 700 times more powerful than 'Fat Man'.

Thread in general: As far as i know the data is actually not easy to find and when you find numbers it's projections and estimations and not as much hard fact as is commonly supposed. When it comes to weapon effect that is even more suspect imo...

Stellar

Originally posted by deafence#
i cant find much either, but here is footage of the most powerful one ever tested... pretty intense.

big nuke test

I remember watching that on trinity the nuclear weopns movie. It's insane what that would do to london when they illustrate it. truly scary.

Just out of curiosity,how long after a nuclear explosion is the land uninhabitable?

Originally posted by thecry
Just out of curiosity,how long after a nuclear explosion is the land uninhabitable?

On a ground blast? Years and years, then some more years. In an air blast, I'm not sure. I know you're not supposed to go outside at all for three to five days after the blast, then after that you can go outside for 30 minutes a day for the next ten to fifteen days. So maybe after 20 days things are slightly better.

I'm not terribly sure though, so don't take my word on that.

It takes 5000 years for heavily irradiated area in a ground blast i believe to finally become habitable. There's a pile of research done on this already. I think the air blast is a bit more complicated though than being able to go outside for a certain amount of time. If It rains reasonably soon after the blast it can literally kill everything that the rain hits and then theres the matter of radioactive ashes and dust(not nice stuff).

The largest Nuclear weapon currently in the US stockpile is I think the Mk/B-53 9MT Nuclear weapon. Though their role has been mainly taken over by the smaller ground penetrating nuclear weapons.

I think Russia still has alot of its large city busting nukes in the 20MT range.

In general nukes have been getting smaller and smaller since the accuracy of them has gotten so much better. Instead of one large bomb you use many smaller independant warheads from the same missile for much greater total effect.

[edit on 21-1-2006 by ShadowXIX]

Originally posted by deafence#
i cant find much either, but here is footage of the most powerful one ever tested... pretty intense.

big nuke test

My God ... I didn't know such destruction was ever performed . How come I never heard about that before ? 180 km of complete obliteration . That's pretty amazing , and scary to know that are nations with all this power !

There's no way "duck and cover" will save you from that

[edit on 21-1-2006 by Fanatic]

That bomb the "Tsar Bomba " was only detonated at half strength it was designed as a 100MT bomb but only detonated at 50MT.

Not very practical though hard to deliever and

Fallout from a low altitude or surface burst in central England could produce lethal exposures extending into the Warsaw Pact nations; a similar explosion in West Germany could create lethal fallout as far as the Soviet border

nuclearweaponarchive.org...

Nukes are irrelevant, google for thermonuclear warheads/bombs. There is also the hiddeously powerful, yet unporven to exist,bombs the Russian have which use red mercury.

In fact here is a link to red mercury which has a link to 'neutron bomb': en.wikipedia.org...

i was reading this page the othr day, cant remember where it was though.

was saying about how the stuff about fallout and every thing is really over rated, and its not that bad at all.

just as a simple example have a look at hiroshima and nagasaki.

they arnt uninhabitable for 5000 years.

Nukes will be like firecrackers when the USAF finishes it's Anti-matter bomb project.

the anti matter thing has been totally bashed to death but hey who know it maybe that someone has figured it out and how to produce a viable solution to the problems.
How big was the nuke in the video in kt or mt compared to this super nuke you just mentioned shadow?