ever since the first nuclear weapons
test in the deserts of New Mexico and
the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
nuclear weapons have become
significantly more powerful since the
first test in New Mexico by the United
States in 1945 2,475 nuclear weapons
have been detonated across the globe
over 85% of those detonations have come
from only two countries however in the
United States and the former Soviet
Union only two of those thousands of
detonations were ever used in a war the
ones drop on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
during World War two by the United
States but those bombs were very small
compared to modern weaponry the
Hiroshima bomb produced an explosion of
15 kilotons for 15,000 tons worth of TNT
the bomb dropped on Nagasaki had an
explosion of 21 kilotons but how much
bigger can you clear weapons possibly
get the answer is terrifyingly much much
bigger the largest nuclear weapon
currently in the United States Arsenal
is the b83
which can produce a blast of 1.2
megatons to understand the scale from
here out one Megaton is equal to 1
million tons of TNT and that is equal to
1,000 kilotons remember that the
hiroshima blast was just 15 kilotons so
that means that the b83 produces a blast
80 times more powerful than that what
I've been showing on this scale is only
the size of the mushroom cloud that the
bombs produced so to further add to the
scale we're going to place the size of
Mount Everest here and the average
altitude of a commercial airliner that
you would normally fly on here so the
castle Bravo bomb is the largest nuclear
weapon ever tested by the United States
it produced a blast of 15 megatons or
about 1,000 times the scale of her
Oshima
but even that pales in comparison to the
largest nuclear weapon ever detonated in
October 1961 the Soviet Union created
the largest man-made explosion ever in
human history when they detonated this
device known as the tsar bomba here over
this territory known as Novaya Zemlya
the bomb detonated with an astounding
force of 50 megatons or about 3333
hiroshima blasts it was so powerful that
it almost destroyed the plane that
dropped it shattered windows as far away
as Norway and Finland and the shockwaves
created by the bomb circled
the entire earth three times but this
test was actually just a scaled-down
version of what was theoretically
possible although never tested the
Soviets did have plans to create a bomb
that would be twice as powerful as even
the Tsar Bomba a bomb so powerful that
it would have produced a mind-boggling
100 Megaton blast or about 6666
Hiroshima blasts all together to get
another sense of scale let's imagine
that Times Square in New York City would
be the epicenter of these blasts you can
test this stuff out yourself on the
website nuke map after watching this
video I'll provide a link for it after
the end but let's see the results first
first off we're going to show the size
of this detonation which was caused by
the recent North Korean test in 2013
following this here's the size of the
Hiroshima detonation which isn't really
that much bigger but let's move on to
the b83 bomb that we were talking about
as you can see it would affect a much
larger area than the Hiroshima bomb but
moving on past that to the Castle Bravo
test we can see how it truly dwarfs
everything before it but even that blast
is incredibly tiny when we move on
towards the Tsar Bomba
as seen here and then finally for our
scale we move on to how large the blast
from the theoretical 100-megaton version
of the Tsar Bomba would be the blast
would be so powerful this is what the
blast radius would look like if you were
observing it from the international
space station so the question then
becomes should any of this really worry
you how many nuclear weapons exist today
anyway well in total there are estimated
to be around fifteen thousand six
hundred nuclear weapons in the world
currently enough to destroy the entire
planet dozens of times over but only
nine countries control that stockpile
and 92 percent of those weapons are
controlled by only the United States and
Russia the other eight percent of the
global nuclear arsenal is controlled in
descending order of numbers by France
China the United Kingdom Pakistan India
Israel and North Korea Israel is however
highly secretive about its nuclear
program and has never publicly confirmed
nor denied the existence of their news
it's just one of those things where
everybody knows that they have them but
nobody really comes out and says so
unless your name happens to be Mordechai
Vanunu a man who did reveal details
about Israel's nuclear program and spent
18 years in prison including over 11
years in solitary
Fineman also interesting to note South
Africa used to be in possession of six
nuclear weapons because the past
apartheid regime was afraid of the 79
percent of the population that could in
vote in communists trying to overthrow
their government but they eventually
agreed to dismantle all of them which
make South Africa the only country to
ever acquire nuclear weapons and then
voluntarily get rid of them well unless
you don't count Ukraine Belarus or
Kazakhstan which all had nuclear weapons
for a brief amount of time after they
declared their independence from the
Soviet Union in 1991 Ukraine is
particularly awkward because after their
independence they found themselves in
possession of over 5,000 nuclear weapons
which would make Ukraine for a brief
period the world's third largest nuclear
power and probably one of the most
powerful countries on earth as a result
they agreed to hand them all over to
Russia in exchange for a super serious
promise that nobody would violate their
territory or borders in the future and
we all know how that turned out as a
result of that happening it's doubtful
that other countries would be thrilled
to ever give up their nuclear weapons in
the future but leave your thoughts and
comments below about how you feel one
way or the other I'd also like if you
posted any questions that you have to
ask about me personally my channel
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left as always everybody thank you all
for watching and we'll see you all next
time