LOL. That is not a thing. At most it is a bluff. Once you get into the megaton range the destruction of nuclear weapons rapidly hits diminishing returns due to the explosion reflecting off the surface of the earth into space. The switch to MIRV warheads was not just due to a desire to penetrate anti missile systems.
LOL. That is not a thing. At most it is a bluff. Once you get into the megaton range the destruction of nuclear weapons rapidly hits diminishing returns due to the explosion reflecting off the surface of the earth into space. The switch to MIRV warheads was not just due to a desire to penetrate anti missile systems.
back in the day, before some non proliferation programs, multiple nuclear powers each had enogh nuclear bombs to completely wipe out humanity. multiple times over. even if some lands are spared direct glassing, they would experience nuclear winter.
hiroshima and nagasaki were nuclear fission weapons.
nobody was hit with nuclear fusion weapons which are more than 1000x stronger than nuclear fission bombs.
we call both nuclear weapons but there is no comparison.
Again you reaffirm your tendency to have absolutely zero clue about what are you saying, yet for some strange reason decide to reveal the sad state of your knowledge to the internet as if it was something to be proud of.
Also thermonuclear weapons were tested plenty enough, so yes, there's plenty to compare about, with a lot of that test data being public.
The biggest operational, deployable (as in able to fit on a functional bomber or missile, not test rigs) nuclear weapons deployed were 25 megaton. Almost 1200 times more powerful than the earliest nuclear bombs. But what makes the difference between people who soyjack at big numbers and people who understand things is that this translates to only about 20-35x larger effective destruction radius (provided an unlikely optimal airburst altitude, which is also a non-trivial matter with such big warheads) because fun fact, space is three dimensional so energy released in a sphere the area of which is proportional to the square of the distance, and energy has to be distributed across it, on top of the little problem of Earth being round and uneven which is a meaningful factor when we are talking 40-60km distances and nuclear airbursts.
Which is why very large warheads like this are considered inefficient and so not that common (the biggest ones retired decades ago) in nuclear arsenals without some specific, special reasons.
back in the day, before some non proliferation programs, multiple nuclear powers each had enogh nuclear bombs to completely wipe out humanity. multiple times over. even if some lands are spared direct glassing, they would experience nuclear winter.
the USA even started construction of project sundial. a fusion bomb so large that when detonated will destroy all of humanity. a final "doomsday" threat. that weapon would not be delivered but detonated directly in USA inside the facility where it was built.
before cooler heads prevailed and told them to scrap the project.
No it did not start construction. It was theorized, not in construction, and obviously no one knows how well would it have worked, nevermind if it could actually wipe the human species from the planet, you are as bad as a fucking journo.
Again you reaffirm your tendency to have absolutely zero clue about what are you saying, yet for some strange reason decide to reveal the sad state of your knowledge to the internet as if it was something to be proud of.
Also thermonuclear weapons were tested plenty enough, so yes, there's plenty to compare about, with a lot of that test data being public.
facepalm.
I didn't say that fusion weapons were never tested.
I said that nobody was hit with them. With surrounding context indicating I was referring to cities being nuked with fusion weapons.
A test is not the same as using it on a city.
We can certainly measure and calculate based on those tests.
In fact we measured it and saw the massively higher scale of the explosion.
but I was replying explicitly to the notion that hiroshima and nagasaki "recovered well from being nuked". which is faulty premise since they were nuked with fission and not fusion bombs.
The biggest operational, deployable (as in able to fit on a functional bomber or missile, not test rigs) nuclear weapons deployed were 25 megaton. Almost 1200 times more powerful than the earliest nuclear bombs. But what makes the difference between people who soyjack at big numbers and people who understand things is that this translates to only about 20-35x larger effective destruction radius (provided an unlikely optimal airburst altitude, which is also a non-trivial matter with such big warheads) because fun fact, space is three dimensional so energy released in a sphere the area of which is proportional to the square of the distance, and energy has to be distributed across it, on top of the little problem of Earth being round and uneven which is a meaningful factor when we are talking 40-60km distances and nuclear airbursts.
Which is why very large warheads like this are considered inefficient and so not that common (the biggest ones retired decades ago) in nuclear arsenals without some specific, special reasons.
You are assuming I wasn't already aware that 1000x explosion != 1000x diameter of blast.
I was well aware of it and it was not my point.
All I said is that the current weapons are very different technology which is massively more powerful and causes immensely more destruction in the context of rebuilding a city after a bombing as well as amount of ground covered.
Take for example new york. It had 8.26 million people living there in 2021 (unclear what it is now in 2025).
Now compare littleboy to the 25 MT bomb you yourself referenced. (not the largest one, but as you said the largest bombs are not practical to put on a plane. realistically it would probably be a 1 to 5 MT bomb not a 25 MT).
Like you said between 20 to 35x stronger
Above is a side by side of new york taking a little boy vs taking a 25MT device.
Both zoomed out to the same 10km scale as per top right
now zoom out to 100km scale and you can see how much of a state this blast covers
NUKEMAP is a website for visualizing the effects of nuclear detonations.
nuclearsecrecy.com
New york's 8.26 m people ability to recover from 0.263 m dead and 0.512 m injured is significantly better than their ability to recover from 6.39897m dead and 4.0904 m injured.
At this point, its everyone in new york is dead or injured, and some people in surrounding cities are also injured.
It is also far easier to "paint the map" with fusion bombs compared to fission bombs.
covering all of connecticut takes only 2x fusion bombs of 25 MT. covering all of RI takes 1. Covering all of Massechusets takes 3. covering all of fermont 3.5 ish.
GA looks to take roughly 16ish. texas will take a lot.
However, this does not all take into account the fallout.
this is the falloutfrom the USA 15MT castle bravo fusion bomb
Note how the actual explosion is barely there compared to the massive plume of fallout.
I mean, the vast majority of the radius is small scale damage that majority if buildings would survive and people inside would as well, if not he better off then outside.
Add in the biggest yields currently in use is 5 MT.
Also we can see what Nuclesr bombs of the more modern kind being tested looked based off the Siberian cities in which where hit.
I mean, the vast majority of the radius is small scale damage that majority if buildings would survive and people inside would as well, if not he better off then outside.
People are more of a concern than buildings. Turns out we are more fragile than concrete.
Third degree burns are bad.
And the more people are injured, the more overwhelmed medical services are and the more people will die from lack of treatment.
Also. you are forgetting the fallout.
its not just the initial blast that kills or maims you. there is a massive fallout plume for each and every blast that poisons people downwind of it. and the more bombs detonate at once. the more poison there is.
People are more of a concern than buildings. Turns out we are more fragile than concrete.
Third degree burns are bad.
And the more people are injured, the more overwhelmed medical services are and the more people will die from lack of treatment.
Also. you are forgetting the fallout.
its not just the initial blast that kills or maims you. there is a massive fallout plume for each and every blast that poisons people downwind of it. and the more bombs detonate at once. the more poison there is.
The people inside the buildings wouldn't get burns. Those are only from the initial flash. So you get, at worst, some minor glass and hearing damage(about on par with a lightning strike, not pleasant but something you can recover from) for people inside buildings.
Add to that, you only get a radiation bloom like that from ground bursts which nukemap tells you on the right side, which would have a smaller blast radius.
The people inside the buildings wouldn't get burns. Those are only from the initial flash. So you get, at worst, some minor glass and hearing damage(about on par with a lightning strike, not pleasant but something you can recover from) for people inside buildings.
1. buildings have windows through which the light passes and burns you.
2. there are certainly distances at which this becomes on par with a lightning strike. Those distances are not even circled. For example, there is not even a circle for 2nd degree burns and 1st degree burns. there is only a circle for 3rd degree burns.
Learn what first-, second-, and third-degree burns look like, how to treat them, and when to seek medical care.
www.verywellhealth.com
Third-Degree Burns
Third-degree burns, which reach the layers of fat and other structures under the skin, can be life-threatening. If someone has a severe burn with skin that looks charred or white, call 911 or seek medical care immediately.
Treatment for third-degree burns will depend on the severity of the burn, which is determined by the amount of body surface area that has been affected.5 Be sure to take these steps in the meantime:
Do not soak the burn with water.
Do not apply any ointment, butter, grease, or spray.
Do not remove clothing that is stuck to the area.
Cover the area with a sterile bandage or a clean loose cloth.
Third-degree burns need emergency medical care. Treatment requires hospital care to stabilize the patient and prevent infection. The damaged tissue may be surgically removed and replaced by skin grafts (replacing damaged skin with healthy skin from elsewhere on the body).5
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Third-degree burns.
People may feel pain, fatigue, and itching as the wound heals. Scars from the grafts may fade over time. People often benefit from physical and occupational therapy to recover function and movement after a third-degree burn. Third-degree burns heal slowly and may require skin grafts or other special treatments. The length of recovery varies greatly according to the size and severity of the burn, but these burns are far less fatal than in the past.
realistically. if you were in the 3rd degree burn area and stood next to a window. you are most likely going to die in agony. because there are not enough skin grafts and hospitals in the world to treat all the 3rd degree burn victims produced by a fusion bomb. there are simply too many of them.
also, you will have massive fires. worse than the california fires we recently saw.
It's been a moment but fusion warheads have been detonated, yes, there is a limit to just how much boom gets you as the thickness of the atmosphere and the very curvature of the Earth itself eventually become factors, generally no one has anything we know about where that is a concern, dirty fallout comes primarily from ash/debris thrown up by a ground/near ground blast or by inefficiently consuming the fissile materials (a "dirty" bomb).
Pakistan and and India likely have at best refined fission nuclear warheads and if they go nuclear hot that will piss off China more than anyone else in the neighborhood but is more of a them problem. The folks with the big warheads like the US and Russia also have intercontinental delivery systems which China graduated into this century but India and Pakistan have not, but there is also some question all around of readiness and reliability.
As for the human factor, we have extensively studied the two real-world events of fission detonations on inhabited cities and they are individually very destructive but yes, firebombings can be more extensive and lethal. I would not want to be in the primary or secondary radius of a blast in any event but really the problem with The War was always the collapse of order and logistics more than the loss of life and materiel. The collapse of the the State and civilization as you know it due to the fact that the populace even in an ignored city doesn't have energy or food more than a day or two once the supplies stop coming in and then it just gets worse from there. Hiroshima and Nagaski were hit on different dates and are different places and the rest of mainland Japan was still functional and could respond to these disasters. In the classic MAD situation, the US or Russia is crippled by mass near simultaneous strikes leaving what parts that were not hit disconnected from the support and control of the rest of the national body and the cities just collapse after that. Could Pakistan and/or India do that to the other? Maybe. It would be a disaster if they did, and a great loss of life and destruction in an ancient and heavily populated part of the world but so would any such large scale conflict - war does not live at The Front anymore.
Bottom line is, nobody sane wants to see two groups of religious extremists start a nuclear war. It doesn't matter how bad you think it would be, it def wouldn't be a good thing.
Well, unless you're so psychotic that you just want to see chaos and death. But in that case you're crazy.
Pakistan and and India likely have at best refined fission nuclear warheads and if they go nuclear hot that will piss off China more than anyone else in the neighborhood but is more of a them problem. The folks with the big warheads like the US and Russia also have intercontinental delivery systems which China graduated into this century but India and Pakistan have not, but there is also some question all around of readiness and reliability.
The argument was litearlly that USA, China, and Russia might end up nuking each other as a final "fuck you" as the nuclear bombs spread and expand and more and more countries get nuked.
You are repeating a strawman that was already debunked.
Nobody said fusion bombs were never detonated.
I said no city was hit by a fusion bomb.
EXPLICITLY in response to the claim that "hiroshima and nagasaki were nuked and it wasn't that bad".
This resulted in Marduk making a strawman argument that falsely asserted that I claimed no fusion bomb has ever been tested.
The argument was litearlly that USA, China, and Russia might end up nuking each other as a final "fuck you" as the nuclear bombs spread and expand and more and more countries get nuked.
Third degree burns are bad.
And the more people are injured, the more overwhelmed medical services are and the more people will die from lack of treatment.
Also. you are forgetting the fallout.
its not just the initial blast that kills or maims you. there is a massive fallout plume for each and every blast that poisons people downwind of it. and the more bombs detonate at once. the more poison there is.
facepalm.
I didn't say that fusion weapons were never tested.
I said that nobody was hit with them. With surrounding context indicating I was referring to cities being nuked with fusion weapons.
A test is not the same as using it on a city.
We can certainly measure and calculate based on those tests.
In fact we measured it and saw the massively higher scale of the explosion.
but I was replying explicitly to the notion that hiroshima and nagasaki "recovered well from being nuked". which is faulty premise since they were nuked with fission and not fusion bombs.
You are assuming I wasn't already aware that 1000x explosion != 1000x diameter of blast.
I was well aware of it and it was not my point.
All I said is that the current weapons are very different technology which is massively more powerful and causes immensely more destruction in the context of rebuilding a city after a bombing as well as amount of ground covered.
Take for example new york. It had 8.26 million people living there in 2021 (unclear what it is now in 2025).
Now compare littleboy to the 25 MT bomb you yourself referenced. (not the largest one, but as you said the largest bombs are not practical to put on a plane. realistically it would probably be a 1 to 5 MT bomb not a 25 MT).
Like you said between 20 to 35x stronger
Above is a side by side of new york taking a little boy vs taking a 25MT device.
Both zoomed out to the same 10km scale as per top right
now zoom out to 100km scale and you can see how much of a state this blast covers
NUKEMAP is a website for visualizing the effects of nuclear detonations.
nuclearsecrecy.com
New york's 8.26 m people ability to recover from 0.263 m dead and 0.512 m injured is significantly better than their ability to recover from 6.39897m dead and 4.0904 m injured.
At this point, its everyone in new york is dead or injured, and some people in surrounding cities are also injured.
It is also far easier to "paint the map" with fusion bombs compared to fission bombs.
covering all of connecticut takes only 2x fusion bombs of 25 MT. covering all of RI takes 1. Covering all of Massechusets takes 3. covering all of fermont 3.5 ish.
GA looks to take roughly 16ish. texas will take a lot.
Stopstopstop....
Big strike on your part for random assumption that everyone in the thermal radiation cutoff would actually get third degree burns, which is plain wrong. It depends on a lot of variables like geographic features, buildings, cover etc. Even blinds can stop thermal radiation outside of the immediate blast wave damage radius. Anyone in a building with covered windows or just oriented to wrong direction from the nuke or with the nuke obstructed by other buildings would not get hit by it.
You are using a ground test result for a unrealistic for a war scenario where someone groundbursted a 15 megaton device, just fucking why...
A device can either be airbursted or groundbursted, it's impossible to have the damage area of airburst with fallout of groundburst. A groundburst has far smaller area of destruction, except outside of soyjack scaremongering for idiots, because there is no military purpose for groundbursting such a big and expensive device to waste most of its power in making a crater.
The only reason for a ground burst is to kill either an unfired silo or hit a command and control bunker. Otherwise wide spread destruction is best done by an airburst because you have this thing called terrain that will get in the way and make your ground blast less than effective.
Bomb goes off in the air, then the shit hiding behind hills and other natural features is open and exposed. Goes off behind a hill? The blast wave travels up the hill and keeps going. The hill providing a shadow for the stuff behind it.
nuclearsecrecy.com
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