This Is How A Nuclear Bomb Works

Since their first devastating use in 1945,

nuclear

weapons have been a huge source of anxiety and fear around the world for almost a century. We have now lived knowing that our world leaders could plunge us into

nuclear

war with destruction on a scale never seen before. seen before in history, but how likely is

this

scenario really? What was the largest nuclear weapon ever launched and how does a nuclear

bomb

work? Put on your hazmat suit and brace yourself for impact because you're about to be hit with a major knowledge

bomb

. Let's start with a little history and ask why nuclear bombs were developed in the first place in 1938, just a year before the world was plunged into war.

German scientist Otto Han was working in a laboratory in Berlin when he discovered something incredible: nuclear energy. By splitting the nucleus of an atom, the smallest unit of matter in the known universe, they realized that a monumental amount of energy was released after word spread about their findings. American President Franklin D. Roosevelt was worried that the Germans would use

this

newly discovered energy to develop a super weapon, so he asked us scientists to develop one first when the United States joined World War II in December 1941. These efforts were duplicated and Roosevelt established the Manhattan Project with headquarters in Manhattan, New York.

The project was a joint effort by the military and several hundred scientists to weaponize it. nuclear energy only four years after its formation its objective was met on July 16, 1945 the United States carried out the first test of a nuclear bomb called the trinity test the bomb that contains one kiloton of destructive power which is the same than one thousand tons of conventional explosives were dropped from an airplane over Socorro, New Mexico. The resulting explosion surprised the US military and left the bomb site so irradiated that even today the area contains more than 10 times the normal level of background radiation.

In other words, it was a resounding success. More than a month later, the United States would put this terrifying new technology to horrible use when the war was almost over, but Japan refused to surrender. Newly installed President Harry Truman ordered the atomic bombing of the city of Hiroshima when the bomb called Little Boy was dropped, everything changed. The aircraft chosen for the mission, a B-29 super fortress bomber named Enola Gay, arrived in Hiroshima at 9:14 a.m. m. local time on August 6, 1945. Bomber Thomas Farabe dropped the nearly ten thousand pound bomb and then pilot Paul Tibbetts swerved. and drove away from the city as fast as he could 43 seconds later the boy exploded with the force of over 16,500 tons of TNT the nuclear explosion instantly vaporized anyone in its center burned the ground around him to temperatures over 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit and sent out a shock wave that shattered buildings and leveled land for miles around, it was hell on earth, a massive mushroom cloud rose into the air 20,000 feet above the city, blocking the sunlight for those below, but even so the Japanese Emperor Hirohito refused to back down, surprised but The imperturbable Truman ordered the dropping of a second bomb, this time on the city of Nagasaki.

This bomb called Fat Man was even larger and more powerful than its predecessor just three days after the bombing of Hiroshima. Fat Man fell from an American plane and exploded over Nagasaki, destroying more than two and a half square miles of the city, a second mushroom cloud rose into the air and radioactive fallout burned anyone unlucky enough to be there. having survived the initial explosion. Yes, it would have been better to vaporize than to be a little further away. When the bomb went off, those not in the immediate explosion suffered all sorts of unpleasant illnesses such as burns, internal injuries, and blindness, and many succumbed to them.

Emperor Hirohito, seeing such destruction, finally announced the country's surrender at the cost of over 200,000 innocent lives that the Allies had taken. the war was won perhaps unsurprisingly the newly formed united nations made one of its first acts to call for the elimination of atomic weapons and even less surprisingly this was completely ignored in the years after the war the united states continued to test atomic bombs In the Soviet Union under the communist regime they ruled and firmly against the American way of life accelerated their own nuclear program in 1949 the Soviet Union became the second nation to successfully detonate a nuclear bomb the Cold War had officially begun two nations with tremendously contradictory belief systems and both housed the most powerful weapons humanity had ever had.

Have you ever seen what could go wrong. You know where you can't go wrong, but hit the Like and Subscribe buttons below to get awesome recommendations and content like this on your homepage almost every day. Anyway, back to blowing things up. 1952, three years after the Soviet Union's first successful nuclear test and with Cold War tensions escalating, the United States took nuclear weaponry to a whole new level by detonating the first hydrogen bomb. Can you guess how much more powerful this hydrogen bomb was than the og one? atomic bombs 10 times 100 times no, it was 1000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima or when destroying an entire city is simply not enough when the bomb exploded over a remote Pacific island it did so with the monumental force of 10.4 megatons of TNT, that's more than 10 million tons of the substance, the colossal explosion created a fireball at least four miles wide that, according to expert estimates, was brighter than a thousand suns and the heat was felt by observers who They were up to 30 miles away, but the Soviets were hot. behind us and if you thought what you just saw was big, fasten your seatbelts because you haven't seen anything yet, let's put things in perspective for a moment, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 15 kilotons, the first hydrogen bomb was of 10 megatons, but nine years.

Later, in 1961, the Soviets tested a hydrogen bomb that had an incredible 57 megatons, or 3,800 times the power of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The most gigantic weapon was called the Tsar Bomba and was 26 feet long and weighed 27 metric tons, about six times the weight of a small child and more than twice the length, the monstrous super weapon was so big it couldn't even fit inside of a plane and had to be carried underneath, instead you get a sense of the poor pilot who and his crew were only given a 50 50 chance of surviving the test on October 30, 1961 the plane carrying the bomb took off and flew towards the test site an island in the arctic ocean called girlfriend zemlia once over the island the crew released the payload and got out of there as fast as they could to give them more time.

The huge explosive had been fitted with a parachute to slow its descent, yet when it detonated, the explosion was so powerful that its shock wave slammed into the plane and caused it to plummet. at over 3,000 feet, fortunately the pilot regained control, but the explosion annihilated everything within a 22-mile radius and created a massive mushroom cloud over 37 miles high. The bomber crew was still moving away as fast as they could and watched as the beautiful, terrifying plume streaked across the sky where they had actually been. In reality, just moments before, the proof was nothing more than Soviet Premier Nikita Karushkev showing his military force to show us who was boss, but the bomb itself, while undoubtedly impressive, was impractical and not as effective as dropping several smaller bombs, so there was no attempt. on both sides was ever done to make a bigger one, even today the tsar bomb remains the largest nuclear weapon ever created and used, although I came pretty close to surpassing it after last night's curry despite none bomb equaled the power of the Tsar's bomb between 1945 and 1980.

A combined total of 510 megatons of explosives were detonated worldwide in nuclear tests, representing 170 times more explosive power than that used in the entire Second World War and Although they were easily the two biggest culprits, it was not just the United States and the Soviet Union that were responsible for the barrage of explosions in 1980, the United Kingdom, France and China had entered the fray with their own tests, although in a much smaller scale, with five nations sweeping daylight across any barren terrain they could find. We expect there to be some environmental consequences, well we can't be sure how much radioactive material has been dumped into the atmosphere over decades of testing, but we know it's very close and what goes up must come down.

During the Cold War, one of the Soviets' favorite nuclear test sites was a piece of land in Semipalatins Kazakhstan called the Polygon, even today this area is one of the most radioactive places in the entire world. It has been hit by around 450 nuclear explosions and with each one of them. Masses of radioactive dust and dirt were spewed into the air and transported to neighboring communities as toxic rain. A test in 1956 resulted in more than 600 residents of the American city of Kamenagorsk being rushed to hospital with radiation illnesses and were now 400 kilometers away. Trust me, you don't want to get radiation sick if you are ever subjected to a heavy dose of radiation, the symptoms can be severe and come on quickly as the invisible rays penetrate your body, damaging not only your skin but your insides as well. the cells that cause your hair to die causing you to lose it your disease-fighting white blood cells die too much paralyzing your immune system even your very DNA is attacked causing it to break down and mutate you will feel sick, weak and disoriented even if you survive the initial dose of radiation years later, you are more likely to develop life-threatening diseases such as leukemia or cancer, that is exactly what happened to many residents of Kamenigoursk, but the tests did not affect only one generation of people due to DNA mutations. are often transmitted to pregnant women at that time were more likely to give birth to children with learning difficulties or physical disabilities in general, it is estimated that colon testing in semi-politics has affected more than 350,000 people over over three generations, but what is that really? makes these monstrous weapons so ridiculously powerful how did we go from conventional bombs to colossal weapons of mass destruction in the space of just a few years only to find out that we have to go back to our German scientist Otto Han in 1938?

He just discovered nuclear energy, he discovered something called nuclear fission and it's the only reason we are now capable of our own Armageddon. Well, here is the situation. Everything in the universe is made of atoms. You, me, the chair you're sitting in, even your grandparents. False teeth are so small that you can't even see them with a microscope, but they are everywhere. Within each atom there is a nucleus that contains a charge of protons that are positively charged and neutrons that have no charge. These are firmly attached to the core which requires a large amount of energy to hold together because naturally things that have the same charge repel each other, think about magnets, if you try to push two magnets together from positive to positive, there is resistance, if you let go of those magnets they would jump back releasing kinetic energy as they did so, it's the same principle here the protons are held together by a powerful force but if that force is broken all the energy contained in it is released this process is called nuclear fission and is the principle behind Hiroshima. and Nagasaki atomic bombs to instigate fission a neutron is fired into the nucleus of an atom when it hits the nucleus it breaks it forming two smaller nuclei and releasing energy in the form of heat at the same time some neutrons are completely ejected from the nucleus and it continues hitting other atoms, splitting their nuclei and creating a chain reaction.

In this way, a massive amount of thermal energy is produced that increases exponentially in just a fraction of a second and it all depends on reactions in the nuclear core, understand. the basic process that powers all nuclear weapons and most nuclear power plants use it to generate electricity as well, however just to put a damper on things there is another way to create nuclear energy called nuclear fusion which is much more powerful than fission and is used for Hydrogen bombs are used here, instead of splitting atoms, they fuse. Fusion only

works

with small atoms like hydrogen, whose nucleus contains only one proton.Naturally, two hydrogen atoms repel each other because they are both positively charged, but if the force repels them. is overcome and they are driven to fuse with each other creating a larger atom and releasing a large amount of energy in the process.

So how do you overcome the powerful force that repels atoms and they fuse? Well, it is necessary to compress them into the smallest. as much space as you can so they are more likely to collide and blast them with an absolute ton of heat. This way, not only are they closer to each other but the heat makes them move faster and when I say a ton of heat I mean at least 180 million degrees Fahrenheit, oh spicy, in comparison it's almost seven times as hot hotter than the Sun, which also results from nuclear fusion due to the immense gravitational pressures in the core of the Sun, approximately 200 billion times greater than the atmospheric pressure here on Earth. squashed so close together that it doesn't need to be that hot for fusion to occur on Earth, however, we have to compensate for the lack of pressure by increasing the heat and you know, which generates a lot of heat, yes, nuclear fission, for example. therefore, hydrogen.

Bombs also known as thermonuclear weapons explode using the heat of a fission reaction to initiate a more powerful fusion reaction; In other words, when a hydrogen bomb explodes, it burns seven times hotter than the sun, okay, if you're with me so far, give yourself a pat on the back. Now we know the basic reaction that drives bombs, but how do they work? really the bombs? Let's start with the fuel inside them, which is uranium-235 or plutonium-239. They are both radioactive metals, which means their atoms have unstable nuclei. An unstable nucleus has too many neutrons or protons inside and will eject them to try to stabilize.

This is called radioactive decay and produces energy in the form of radiation. Atoms with unstable nuclei are also easier to split with nuclear energy. fission, that is why they are used in nuclear weapons now the child's design was very simple the bomb had two separate pieces of uranium 235 inside the cap and the target when detonated several thousand pounds of conventional explosive were detonated inside the projectile that fired He plugs in a barrel and, over the target, the two chunks of uranium crash into each other, squeezing the atoms close enough to instigate a fission reaction that grew in power exponentially until it exploded out of the bomb's shell in a fearsome explosion. ball of fire.

All nuclear weapons produce this fireball and it expands so quickly that in a one megaton hydrogen bomb, which is much more powerful than a small child's, it can reach 440 feet across in less than a millisecond. You see, the little boy was actually pretty inefficient, which is why no one ever made larger, more powerful versions of The Fat Man gun that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki was a very different design instead of uranium-235. Fat Man was powered by plutonium-239. However, the plutonium-239 used had traces of plutonium-240. This is a different type of plutonium called a plutonium-240 isotope.

It has a higher fission rate than plutonium-239, meaning that if the same weapon design had been used as the boy, it would have started fission before If the two masses of plutonium had been brought together, this would have made it so inefficient that it would not have been worth using, so another design for Fat Man was thought of. A sphere of plutonium was held in the center of the bomb. A layer of uranium was placed around this. This layer of uranium held the plutonium in place and helped reflect the neutrons back to The core that improved the efficiency of the fission reaction blocks of conventional explosives was precisely placed around it to produce a symmetrical implosion when activated, which would compress the plutonium sphere.

Once compressed, a device was crushed inside the plutonium and neutrons were injected into the radioactive metal, setting in motion the fission reaction and activation of the nuclear bomb, but there is one more thing that had to be considered for both bombs: how they were would trigger the detonation in the first place, impact with the ground would have worked, but the ground would also have absorbed much of the nuclear energy. explosion and limited its radius to obtain maximum destructive potential, the bombs had to be detonated in the air to do this, both were equipped with specialized circuits that could detect their height from the ground and detonate at the right moment, as well as affecting more area and The aerial explosion sends a shockwave that crashes to the ground, rebounds, and then combines with the initial explosion to form an even larger shockwave, so the crews of the planes dropping the bombs actually had to run fast, since in the modern world we don't do it.

We no longer have to launch these deadly destroyers from airplanes. We can shoot them directly into the air with automated missiles. Ballistic missiles are about 20 times faster than traditional bombers and can carry hydrogen-powered nuclear warheads far deadlier than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. We also have some pretty nifty missile defense systems, so we can't be 100 sure of the exact numbers, but as of 2021, which countries have nuclear weapons today? It is estimated that Russia has the most nuclear weapons with the world ending at 6,255. Hot on their heels in second place we have the United States with a considerable and 5,550.

The other seven nuclear capable nations have much less and North Korea possesses the smaller quantity, between forty-five. While fifty-forty nuclear weapons doesn't seem like a lot compared to more than 6,000, it's still enough firepower to completely wipe New York City off the map and then some, which makes me wonder: what would it be like if something happened? unthinkable and the world really? descended into full-blown nuclear war as a global community, we currently have over 13,000 nuclear warheads; However, this figure is a bit misleading due to disarmament efforts, only between three thousand and four thousand are actually active and the rest are dismantled. relatively low compared to 1986, when the total number of active warheads reached a whopping seventy thousand three hundred, of course, four thousand nuclear missiles could still cause a fairly considerable amount of damage if even a tenth of them found their target in the loss of human life. life would be catastrophic and not just because of the explosions and radiation from huge fire storms also yes, as if nuclear weapons weren't bad enough in Hiroshima, all the individual fires caused by the explosion merged into one terrible tempest of flames, the hot air rose and created a burning hurricane.

The force of the wind turned inward toward the fire and fanned it, causing it to rage even more, destroying everything in its path for nearly four and a half square miles before finally extinguishing itself. An apocalyptic theory called nuclear winter claims that if enough bombs explode, thousands of these raging firestorms would make their way across the world, kicking up hundreds of millions of tons of smoke and ash as they did so, this would form a thick belt of particles that would surround northern atmosphere, plunging our world into darkness, the lack of sunlight would cause dramatic drops in temperatures. and destroy much of the earth's vegetation and animal life, with crops failing, animals dying, and cities and infrastructure destroyed, surviving humans would be left in a cold irradiated wasteland and dark clouds could linger for an entire decade;

In other words, it wouldn't be much fun. But before you go and spend your life savings on a fallout shelter and a thousand cans of beans, you should know that we're probably not headed toward Armageddon many times soon; humanity has possessed the power to destroy itself since the end. of World War II. Despite this, no nuclear weapon has ever been used outside of a test since 1945, so why does nuclear war benefit no one? If one country launches a nuclear attack on another, the defending country would likely launch a counternuclear attack in response and both sides would be sent to their doom, we call this mutually assured destruction and it is not ideal.

This worked quite well during the Cold War, but today it's a bit more complex with countries around the world developing blazingly fast hypersonic missiles. Conventional defense systems are simply not enough. Hypersonic missiles not only fly faster than a mile per second, but they are also more maneuverable than their ballistic counterparts, making them extremely difficult to defend against, even if mutual assured destruction still applies, US, Russia and China are developing the technology along with a number of other countries because of this, ironically, an attack is much less likely than if only one country had the power. Well, I know that's not the most comforting thing to hear, but hey, weapons of mass destruction aren't very comforting.

I guess that's why it's never seen. Whatever nuclear stuffed animals in children's stores anyway, the modern world is much more focused on using nuclear energy for constructive uses than for destructive ones; In fact, about 10 percent of the world's electricity is now nuclear and that's good, it doesn't pollute the atmosphere and is about 10 million times more efficient than burning fossil fuels. Nuclear research has also helped doctors in the fight against cancer, allowing them to predict the amount of radiation needed to kill tumors without harming healthy cells. We even use radiation to kill harmful bacteria in our food.

It's not all doom and gloom and thanks to nuclear technology we are actually taking some steps to create a better world. Let's just hope we don't tear that world to pieces before we get there. So what do you think of all this? We would be better off if we had never discovered nuclear power or if the threat of nuclear weaponry had actually prevented another conflict on a global scale, let me know in the comments below and thanks for watching.