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.

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 can 1 nuclear bomb destroy?

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.

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.

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.

Crazy Cold War Concepts #3 Gigaton Bomb

What would a 100 megaton bomb do?

It was decided that a full 100 Mt detonation would create a nuclear fallout that was unacceptable in terms of pollution from a single test, as well as a near-certainty that the release plane and crew would be destroyed before it could escape the blast radius.

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.

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 is the biggest nuke?

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.

Is there a 100 megaton nuke?

Meant to be a show of Soviet strength, the three-stage bomb was unparalleled in power. It had a 100-megaton capacity, though the resulting fallout from such a blast was considered too dangerous for a test situation.

Can the US shoot down nukes?

The United States deploys two systems that can shoot down incoming missiles in the midcourse phase of flight: The Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system and. The Aegis defense system.

Where in the US would a nuclear bomb hit?

Irwin Redlener at Columbia University specialises in disaster preparedness and notes that there are six cities in the US that are more likely to be targeted in a nuclear attack – New York, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington DC.

What would happen if 100 nuclear bombs went off?

The ash cloud it would create would envelop the planet and prevent sunlight from reaching the surface and creating a global winter which would drop temperatures below freezing for decades. All life on Earth would be extinct. Even the International Space Station would be destroyed thanks to the debris.

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.

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.

What is the US biggest nuke called?

March 1 marks the 60th anniversary of Castle Bravo, the largest thermonuclear device ever detonated by the United States.

Could Tsar Bomba destroy the US?

If such a weapon exploded in a large American city such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco, or Washington, D.C., their metropolitan areas plus large portions of their surrounding suburbs would be completely destroyed and nearly devoid of all life.

What is the US most powerful nuke?

In the United States' current nuclear arsenal, the most powerful bomb is the B83, which has a maximum yield of 1.2 megatons, making it 60 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945.

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.

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.

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 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 powerful is 1 ton of TNT?

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 big is a 50 megaton nuke?

The Tsar Bomba's yield was 50 megatons: ten times more powerful than all of the ordnance exploded during the whole of World War II. The mushroom cloud was 25 miles wide at its base and almost 60 miles wide at its top. At 40 miles high, it penetrated the stratosphere.