![]() The fission bombs dropped on Japan created local fallout, according to "Nuclear Choices for the Twenty-First Century," but modern thermonuclear weapons blast radioactive material high into the stratosphere (the middle layer of Earth's atmosphere), allowing for global fallout. ![]() Radiation is the secondary, and much more insidious, consequence of a nuclear blast. (Image credit: Pictures from History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) Image taken from a tower on Bikini Island. ![]() The underwater Baker nuclear explosion on July 25, 1946, created a huge mushroom-shaped cloud that spread radiation far and wide. Department of Energy, engulfing 4.4 square miles (11.4 square kilometers). Such a firestorm occurred in Hiroshima, according to the U.S. Death could also come by firestorm, the book says depending on the terrain of the blast zone, fires caused by the initial blast can combine and create their own, self-fueling wind. Most would likely suffer thermal burns from the initial thermal blast, according to the book " Nuclear Choices for the Twenty-First Century: A Citizen's Guide" (MIT Press, 2021). Survivors would carry radioactive dust and would need to be decontaminated. With roads and train tracks destroyed, hospitals leveled, and doctors, nurses and first responders in the blast zone dead or injured, there would be few options for bringing in supplies or people to help, especially given the high levels of radiation following a detonation. There would be little help for survivors near the detonation area, however, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). government website advises that anyone with prior warning - either from official communications or from seeing a flash from a nearby detonation - move to a basement or the center of a large building and stay there for at least 24 hours to avoid the worst radioactive fallout. Some of these people would be injured by pressure from the explosion, while most would be exposed to injuries from collapsed buildings or from flying shrapnel most buildings in a 0.5-mile (0.8 km) radius of the detonation would be knocked down or heavily damaged. (An air detonation would have a wider blast radius, according to the nonproliferation organization ICAN.) Those deaths would be caused by fires, intense radiation exposure and other fatal injuries. For instance, a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon, equivalent to the size of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, would immediately kill about 50%t of the people within a 2-mile (3.2 km) radius of ground detonation, according to a 2007 report from a Preventive Defense Project workshop. Needless to say, being at ground zero of such an explosion means instant death. Thermonuclear bombs have been tested, but never used in combat. The result, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, is a fireball with temperatures that match the heat of the center of the sun. This fusion reaction kicks off yet more neutrons, which create more fission, which create more fusion, and on and on. ![]() Thermonuclear, or hydrogen, bombs use the power of the initial fission reaction to fuse hydrogen atoms within the weapon. Many modern weapons, though, have the potential to do even worse damage. The resulting fission explosion is devastating: It was fission bombs, sometimes known as atomic bombs or A-bombs, that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, with the force of between 15 kilotons and 20 kilotons of TNT. ![]()
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