How powerful is 1 gigaton of TNT?

Its weight to energy yield ratio is more than 1:1000. Potential gigaton yield devices are "doomsday bombs." One detonated about 16 kilometers up would start fires over an area of more than 700,000 square kilometers.

How powerful is a 1 gigaton bomb?

A USAF document mentions that a gigaton-yield nuclear weapon detonated in space at 150km altitude could deliver a thermal pulse to the ground sufficient to set 28,500 km^2 on fire (18x London's area), without further radiation or fallout.

How much is 1 gigaton of TNT?

Technically speaking, a gigaton is a metric unit of mass, equal to 1 billion metric tons, 1 trillion kilograms, or 1 quadrillion grams.

What would a 10 gigaton bomb do?

A single 10-megaton bomb, though, could destroy entire metro areas, subjecting over a thousand square miles to a crushing blast wave and searing heat, easily producing casualties in the millions. The radioactivity produced would also be multiplied many hundreds of times, creating the possibility of vast contamination.

Is there a 1 gigaton bomb?

There is no theoretical upper limit for a nuke, though it gets much more difficult to build nukes once they get above a certain size, say, perhaps 100 -200 megatons. The biggest nuke ever built was the Russian Tsar Bomba, with a yield estimated of between 50–57 megatons.

Crazy Cold War Concepts #3 Gigaton Bomb

What would a 1 gigaton nuke do?

What would a 1 gigaton nuke do? Its weight to energy yield ratio is more than 1:1000. Potential gigaton yield devices are "doomsday bombs." One detonated about 16 kilometers up would start fires over an area of more than 700,000 square kilometers.

Does a 100mt bomb exist?

The initial three-stage design of Tsar Bomba was capable of yielding approximately 100 Mt through fast fission (3,000 times the power of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs); however, it was thought that this would have resulted in too much nuclear fallout, and the aircraft delivering the bomb would not have had enough ...

Can Tsar Bomba destroy Earth?

But assuming every warhead had a megatonne rating, the energy released by their simultaneous detonation wouldn't destroy the Earth. It would, however, make a crater around 10km across and 2km deep. The huge volume of debris injected into the atmosphere would have far more widespread effects.

What bomb is big enough to destroy Earth?

Tsar Bomba was primarily designed to cause the world to sit up and take notice of the Soviet Union as an equal,” says Coyle. The original design – a three layered bomb, with uranium layers separating each stage – would have had a yield of 100 megatons – 3,000 times the size of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.

What can a 50 megaton nuke do?

The world's largest nuclear device ever to be set off, the 50 megaton Soviet “Tsar Bomba” – detonated in a remote arctic test site in 1961, creating the most powerful man-made explosion in history – would kill an estimated 5.8 million people if it were dropped on London, according to Nukemap.

What would 1 ton of TNT do?

The explosion of one ton of TNT releases approximatly 4.2 × 10 ¹² joules of energy; for comparison, it takes almost 6.0 ×10 ⁴ joules to warm up a cup of coffee. The Trinity test, a plutonium fueled bomb had an estimated yield of 21 kilotons, and left a crater 2.9 meters deep and 335 meters wide.

How many tons of TNT was Tsar Bomba?

With a yield of 50 megatons of TNT, Tsar Bomba was the culmination of a number of hydrogen bomb tests conducted throughout this time by both the Soviet Union and the United States.

How many tons of TNT is a nuke?

The Nature of an Atomic Explosion. The most striking difference between the explosion of an atomic bomb and that of an ordinary T.N.T. bomb is of course in magnitude; as the President announced after the Hiroshima attack, the explosive energy of each of the atomic bombs was equivalent to about 20,000 tons of T.N.T.

What would a 10000 megaton bomb do?

It has been estimated that a 10,000-megaton war with half the weapons exploding at ground level would tear up some 25 billion cubic meters of rock and soil, injecting a substantial amount of fine dust and particles into the stratosphere.

How much damage would the Tsar Bomba do?

At 40 miles high, it penetrated the stratosphere. Everything within three dozen miles of the impact was vaporized, but severe damage extended to 150 miles radius—enough to entirely annihilate any modern major city, including suburbs. Windows in faraway Norway and Finland were shattered by the force of the blast.

How strong are Russian nukes?

Standard ones can have yields of 500 kilotons, 800 kilotons and even 1 megaton — equivalent to 1 million tons of TNT. Russia holds the record for the most powerful weapon ever exploded: In 1961, it tested a bomb of at least 50 megatons, nicknamed “Tsar Bomba” — or the ruler of all bombs.

Would one nuke end the world?

Could a massive bomb do that all by itself? According to Toon, the answer is no. One large bomb wouldn't be enough to cause a nuclear winter. He says in order for a nuclear winter to occur, you'd need to have dozens of bombs going off in cities around the world around the same time.

Can 1 nuke destroy the world?

A single nuclear weapon can destroy a city and kill most of its people. Several nuclear explosions over modern cities would kill tens of millions of people. Casualties from a major nuclear war between the US and Russia would reach hundreds of millions.

How many nukes would it take to make Earth uninhabitable?

A declassified document shared by nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein gives the verdict that scientists at the Los Alamos laboratory and test site reached in 1945. They found that "it would require only in the neighborhood of 10 to 100 Supers of this type" to put the human race in peril.

What is worse than Tsar Bomba?

The Tsar Bomba is the most powerful thermonuclear weapon ever detonated, as no other bomb as strong has ever been tested.

How many nukes would destroy the world?

As of 2019, there are 15,000 nuclear weapons on planet Earth. It would take just three nuclear warheads to destroy one of the 4,500 cities on Earth, meaning 13,500 bombs in total, which would leave 1,500 left.

What countries would survive a nuclear war?

The study published in the journal Risk Analysis describes Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu as the island countries most capable of producing enough food for their populations after an “abrupt sunlight‐reducing catastrophe” such as a nuclear war, super volcano or asteroid strike.

What is the heaviest bomb ever made?

On the morning of October 30, 1961, the Soviet Union carried out the Tsar Bomba test, a hydrogen bomb that was the most powerful nuclear weapon ever created and tested. The Tsar Bomba packed a punch of over 50 megatons, which is the equivalent of 50 million tons of conventional explosives.

How big would a 1000 megaton bomb do?

It continues: “The corresponding radius of effect for a 1000 megaton bomb would be 100 miles, that is to say, an area of about 30,000 square miles would be affected and in clear weather would have an even more devastating effect.

How big is a gigaton nuke?

A gigaton would have 4.184 exajoules. That 10¹⁸ or quintillions. According to the same wikipedia page this number represents about 1/7th of the worlds nuclear arsenal and about twice the amount of nuclear weapons we've ever detonated. The largest explosive we've ever set off was 50 megatons.