nuclear Armageddon for years it haunted
the daily lives of millions of Americans
and Russians only to be all but
forgotten at the end of the Cold War but
with hostilities mounting once more
between the US and Russia and the
announcement of a possible pullout from
a strategic arms treaty by the u.s. the
old specter of nuclear war is once more
looming over a new generation but how
much do you really know about nuclear
weapons hello and welcome to another
episode of the infographics show today
we're taking a look at 50 terrifying
facts about nuclear weapons 50 the
largest nuclear weapon in the u.s.
stockpile has a yield of 1.2 megatons or
1 million two hundred thousand tons of
TNT 49 compare that with a 15 kilo ton
or 15 thousand tons of TNT equivalent
of little boy dropped on Hiroshima
during World War two 48 most of the
uranium used in the little boy in fat
man nuclear bombs came from a single
mine in what is today the Democratic
Republic of the Congo shipped to the US
by a Belgium mining firm 47 three
different manufacturing plants were used
in developing the fat man and little boy
nuclear weapons so that no one plant
would have the complete designs 46
because of exposed to water the uranium
components of the first nuclear bombs
would release huge amounts of
radioactive contamination pilots were
strictly warned that in emergencies they
must crash their planes on land and not
the sea 45 in the little boy bomb less
than a kilogram of the 64 kilograms of
enriched uranium actually underwent
nuclear fission and of that mass only
0.6 grams were transformed into kinetic
and heat energy and radiation 44 a timer
on the first nuclear bombs ensured that
they would not detonate until at least
15 seconds after release giving the
aircraft's time to get to a relatively
safe distance 43 the chain reaction of
nuclear material leading to a nuclear
detonation lasts less than one
microsecond 42 disobeying orders the
weaponeer of the Enola Gay was concerned
that little boy could detonate
accidentally if the Enola Gay crashed on
takeoff and thus removed the
conventional explosives to help the
uranium achieve critical mass from the
weapon he only replaced them once the
aircraft was safely up in the
an honor way to hiroshima 41 at 8:15
a.m. on the 6th of august 1945 the Enola
Gay dropped the first nuclear weapon
ever used in war on Hiroshima killing
66,000 people 20,000 of which were
Imperial Japanese Army soldiers 40
claims to have been used to avert a more
catastrophic invasion of Japan it's
widely thought Japan would have
surrendered to the US soon anyways as it
faced a massive Soviet fleet preparing
to invade just across the Sea of Japan
senior Japanese officials all knew it
would be better to surrender to the US
than the Soviet Union 39 Hiroshima was
selected as a target for nuclear bombing
in April 1945 and spared the
conventional bombing that Japan suffered
throughout the rest of the countryside
this was so that the effects of a
nuclear bomb on an undamaged city could
be fully observed 38 a second plane
escorted the Enola Gay and dropped the
suite of instruments by parachute at the
same time that the little boy atomic
bomb was dropped these instruments
relayed via radio data to help engineers
determine the total yield and
effectiveness of the bomb 37 the fiery
blast from a nuclear bomb is the result
of local air being superheated by x-rays
and sending out a pressure wave in all
directions 36 the fireball from the
Hiroshima bombing was 1200 feet in
diameter and had a surface temperature
of 10,000 830 degrees Fahrenheit that's
hotter than the surface temperature of
the Sun 35 shadows from people near the
epicenter of the blast at Hiroshima were
permanently burned into the sides of
buildings and the pavement 34 the
Hiroshima bombing created a firestorm
two miles in diameter at Nagasaki
a southwest wind pushed fires away from
the city and didn't let them become so
severe 33 the true death count of
victims at Nagasaki and Hiroshima were
impossible to calculate as many victims
in all evidence they had ever lived were
immediately vaporized or cremated by the
fires 32 surprisingly there was little
radioactive fallout from either the
Nagasaki or Hiroshima blasts follow it
is typically created from dust and ash
from a bomb crater that is contaminated
with radioactive products from the bomb
but because both bombs were air bursts
there was no
bomb crater and little radioactive
fallout 31 when a nuclear bomb is air
bursted over a target the vast majority
of the radioactive products rise into
the stratosphere and dissipate into the
global environment 30 despite there
being little if any local fallout an
intense burst of Neutron and gamma
radiation was emitted by the little boy
in Hiroshima bombs with a lethal radius
of about 0.8 miles
29 to date no radiation related evidence
of heritable diseases has been observed
amongst the survivors of the Hiroshima
and Nagasaki bombings 28 the Smithsonian
Institution displayed a complete
little-boy nuclear bomb - the enriched
uranium until 1986 when the Department
of Energy took the weapon from the
museum to remove its inner components so
that it couldn't be stolen and detonated
with fissile materials inside it its
outer casing was later returned for
display 27 the first detonation of a
nuclear weapon in history was at 5:29
a.m. on July 16 1945 in New Mexico 26
producing the fissile isotopes
uranium-235 and plutonium 239 for use in
just a few bombs was so difficult that
it took up 80% of the entire Manhattan
projects budget 25 without the
technological breakthroughs of the
Manhattan Project producing just one
gram of enriched uranium would have
taken 27 thousand years maybe it would
have been best if they had failed 24 the
security detail at the Trinity test site
where the first atomic bomb was tested
originally brought horses to help patrol
the fast desert but the distances proved
too great and instead resorted to jeeps
the horses were kept so the soldiers
could play polo when off duty 23 the
base camp at the Trinity test site was
accidentally bombed twice because of its
proximity to a bombing range and its
secrecy but with no casualties 22 the
scientists at the Trinity test site
worked out of a ranch house that had
been bought by the government when it
acquired the land the master bedroom of
the house was then turned into a clean
room for assembly of the core of the
first nuclear bomb in that bedroom at
least is literally where the boom-boom
happened 21 160 men in their vehicles
were on standby outside the first atomic
test in order to evacuate
the surrounding region of civilians
should disaster happen the soldiers had
enough food and supplies to last the
civilian population two days and the
governor of New Mexico was warned that
martial law may have to be declared
though he wasn't told why 20 the men at
the test site were ordered to lie on the
ground with their backs turned to the
bomb during the test but scientist
Edward Teller ignored this and were
sunglasses under his welding goggles and
brought suntan lotion to share with a
few others who also insisted on
observing the tests directly nineteen
scientists and Rico Fermi offered to
take wagers among the military and
scientists on whether the test would
ignite the atmosphere and if it did
whether it would destroy only the state
or incinerate the entire planet this was
a joke but calculations indicated there
was a tiny chance that such a scenario
could happen and for a long time it
seriously concerned all the scientists
involved 18 the Trinity test bomb melted
desert sand around it into a mildly
radioactive light-green glass which
would be named Trinitite 17 Keith
Bainbridge one of the scientists of the
Manhattan Project said just after the
successful test now we are all sons of
[ __ ]
robert Oppenheimer head of the project
said that he thought of a verse from the
Hindu holy book the Bhagavad Gita now I
am become death the destroyer of worlds
16 a pilot flying a u.s. Navy transport
to the west coast and just north of the
test site thought for a moment that the
Sun was rising in the south when the
bomb detonated he had no idea what he
had just seen and when he reported the
explosion over the radio he was simply
warned not to fly south 15 the
government covered up the Trinity test
by telling civilians in the vicinity
that what they had witnessed was just a
Depot full of explosives and
pyrotechnics accidentally exploding 14
the results of the Trinity test were
relayed in code immediately to President
Truman who was at the Potsdam Conference
in Germany with the message reading
operated on this morning diagnosis not
yet complete but results seemed
satisfactory and already exceed
expectations local press release
necessary as interest extends great
distance 13 in August of 1945 the Kodak
company discovered spotting and fogging
on their film caused by exposure to
radioactive elements the problem was
tracked
the cardboard used in the containers
which came from a paper mill in Indiana
and a hot spot of fallout that had
contaminated the river water the mill
used 12 in 1951 the US government gave
Kodak and other photographic companies
maps and forecasts of potential
contamination along with expected
fallout distributions so they could
purchase uncontaminated materials for
their boxes and protect their stocks of
film 11 in 1961 a US Air Force b-52
broke up in midair over Goldsboro North
Carolina and released two hydrogen bombs
neither detonated upon hitting the
ground but if they had each one would
have had 260 times the destructive power
of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima 10
Colorado Montana Nebraska North Dakota
and Wyoming are home to the us's
entire ICBM fleet which lie in missile
fields that span several square miles
each nine in the 1950s the u.s.
developed a tactical nuclear weapon
which weighed 51 pounds it could be
fired from the back of a Jeep it was
named the Davy Crockett and was meant to
be used against Soviet tank forces in
Germany eight just eight kilograms of
plutonium are needed for a nuclear
weapon something many intelligence and
security agencies around the world fear
is well within the reach of major terror
groups
7:11 nuclear bombs have been lost by the
US and accidents and never recovered all
of them in the ocean six if under
nuclear attack the US president would
have just 12 minutes to order a counter
attack before incoming missiles
destroyed the bulk of US forces five at
any one time twelve ohio-class ballistic
missiles are actively patrolling the
world's oceans ready to unleash their
nuclear arsenals in the case of war for
the United States protects 31 nations
with its nuclear umbrella all of NATO
Japan South Korea and Australia a
nuclear attack against any of these
nations will elicit an immediate
response by the u.s. 3 the u.s.
maintains 200 b61 nuclear gravity bombs
deployed at forward bases in Europe for
use by US and NATO air forces - during
the Cold War the u.s. maintained up to
950 nuclear weapons in South Korea one
since 1945 there have been 520
atmospheric nuclear explosions with
eight of them being underwater for a
total yield of 545 megatons and 1352
underground explosions for a total yield
of 90 megatons many of us have been
lucky enough to grow up without Cold War
fears of a nuclear holocaust happening
at any moment and though the
International climate today is far
better than it was back then
simmering hostilities are threatening to
boil over to add to our problems the
advancement of technology and the
proliferation of enrichment technology
around the world has made it easier than
ever for a terrorist group or criminal
organization to simply build their own
nuclear weapon though full nuclear war
may be avoided the risk of nuclear
terrorism is at an all-time high
prompting a famous reply from the US
intelligence community that it's a
wonder it hasn't happened yet do you
think the world will see another nuclear
attack either in war or by terrorists
let us know in the comments and as
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