The effects of an ordinary or conventional bomb, whatever its size, are to produce a blast after it explodes and, in the immediate vicinity, to wound and kill people and to damage and destroy property.The effects of nuclear bombs are far more extensive. On August 6, 1945 at 8:16 am, an atomic bomb was detonated about 1900 feet above the central section of Hiroshima, Japan. In that instant, tens of thousands of people were burned, blasted, and crushed to death. Other tens of thousands suffered injuries of every description or were doomed to die of radiation sickness. The center of the city was flattened, and every part of the city was damaged. Half an hour after the blast, fires set by the thermal pulse and by the collapse of the buildings began to coalesce into a firestorm that lasted for six hours. Starting about 9 am and lasting until late in the afternoon a "black rain" generated by the bomb fell on the western portions of the city, carrying radioactive fallout from the blast to the ground. For four hours at midday, a violent whirlwind, born of the strange meteorological conditions produced by the explosion, further devastated the city. The number of people who were killed outright or who died of their injuries over the next three months is estimated to be 130,000. Over the next five years it is estimated that another 140,000 died who had suffered burns, nausea, vomiting, bloody discharges, overall weakness, hair loss and disfiguring scar tissue. And decades after the Hiroshima attack survivors suffer higher rates of cancer than those not exposed to the bombing and many of the approximately 4,000 who were fetuses and are still alive were born mentally retarded and with smaller heads. A medium-sized nuclear bomb today has an explosive yield of one megaton (a million tons of TNT), or 80 times that of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. A one megaton bomb would, like a conventional bomb, wound and kill people and destroy property, though much more extensively.In addition to those effects, it would: • produce a fireball with temperatures exceeding 27 million degrees Fahrenheit, vaporizing everything within 1.5 miles of ground zero. • kill unprotected human beings in an area of some six square miles with "initial nuclear radiation." • produce radioactive fallout--dust and debris created by the blast and thrown up into the atmosphere--which exposes people still alive to various fatal radiation illnesses. • release radioactive elements that remain for many thousands of years, produce cancers, leukemia and mutagenic effects and make a city and the area around it uninhabitable. • create a thermal pulse--a wave of blinding light and intense heat--that causes second degree burns in exposed human beings nine and one-half miles from the center of the explosion. • produce such strange meteorological conditions as those experienced at Hiroshima--radioactive black rain and violent winds that hurl debris at 600 mph • generate an electromagnetic pulse that knocks out electrical equipment over a wide area.If many nuclear bombs were exploded around the world in a full-scale nuclear war, scientists predict that at least three additional global effects would occur: • worldwide fallout contaminating the whole surface of the earth. • general cooling of the earth's surface resulting from millions of tons of dust blocking the sun's rays (sometimes referred to as "nuclear winter"). • partial destruction of the ozone layer that protects living beings from radiation.
WATCH: Nuke vids on the MS shared drive
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- How Nukes Work
- Nukes vs Regular Bombs (taken from http://www.teachablemoment.org/high/easiernukes.html)
The effects of an ordinary or conventional bomb, whatever its size, are to produce a blast after it explodes and, in the immediate vicinity, to wound and kill people and to damage and destroy property.The effects of nuclear bombs are far more extensive. On August 6, 1945 at 8:16 am, an atomic bomb was detonated about 1900 feet above the central section of Hiroshima, Japan. In that instant, tens of thousands of people were burned, blasted, and crushed to death. Other tens of thousands suffered injuries of every description or were doomed to die of radiation sickness. The center of the city was flattened, and every part of the city was damaged. Half an hour after the blast, fires set by the thermal pulse and by the collapse of the buildings began to coalesce into a firestorm that lasted for six hours. Starting about 9 am and lasting until late in the afternoon a "black rain" generated by the bomb fell on the western portions of the city, carrying radioactive fallout from the blast to the ground. For four hours at midday, a violent whirlwind, born of the strange meteorological conditions produced by the explosion, further devastated the city. The number of people who were killed outright or who died of their injuries over the next three months is estimated to be 130,000. Over the next five years it is estimated that another 140,000 died who had suffered burns, nausea, vomiting, bloody discharges, overall weakness, hair loss and disfiguring scar tissue. And decades after the Hiroshima attack survivors suffer higher rates of cancer than those not exposed to the bombing and many of the approximately 4,000 who were fetuses and are still alive were born mentally retarded and with smaller heads. A medium-sized nuclear bomb today has an explosive yield of one megaton (a million tons of TNT), or 80 times that of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. A one megaton bomb would, like a conventional bomb, wound and kill people and destroy property, though much more extensively.In addition to those effects, it would: • produce a fireball with temperatures exceeding 27 million degrees Fahrenheit, vaporizing everything within 1.5 miles of ground zero. • kill unprotected human beings in an area of some six square miles with "initial nuclear radiation." • produce radioactive fallout--dust and debris created by the blast and thrown up into the atmosphere--which exposes people still alive to various fatal radiation illnesses. • release radioactive elements that remain for many thousands of years, produce cancers, leukemia and mutagenic effects and make a city and the area around it uninhabitable. • create a thermal pulse--a wave of blinding light and intense heat--that causes second degree burns in exposed human beings nine and one-half miles from the center of the explosion. • produce such strange meteorological conditions as those experienced at Hiroshima--radioactive black rain and violent winds that hurl debris at 600 mph • generate an electromagnetic pulse that knocks out electrical equipment over a wide area.If many nuclear bombs were exploded around the world in a full-scale nuclear war, scientists predict that at least three additional global effects would occur: • worldwide fallout contaminating the whole surface of the earth. • general cooling of the earth's surface resulting from millions of tons of dust blocking the sun's rays (sometimes referred to as "nuclear winter"). • partial destruction of the ozone layer that protects living beings from radiation.QUESTIONS