The terrifying effects of modern nuclear weapons.

There is no more terrible weapon in the world than nuclear weapons, the creators of which were Robert Oppenheimer and Igor Kurchatov. One nuclear explosion can lead to earthquakes, tsunamis, climate change, irradiation of air, soil, water and all living things, making the territory uninhabitable. But there is another very important question. Is a nuclear bomb capable of burning the Earth's atmosphere? Putting an end to all life on the planet, is this even possible? And if so, then a number of other questions arise, for example, will the wavefront of the burning atmosphere move slowly enough for people, say, in Bangladesh, to have time to hide somewhere with the hope of survival, at least for more than a few days? Would the atmosphere disappear or just turn into something completely different? Would any life on Earth survive? We will try to answer these and other questions, but first we need to understand what we are dealing with. And for this, we will go back a little into the past. Initially, in the early days of the Manhattan Project, there was a brief panic, based on some calculations by Edward Teller, that an atomic bomb would ignite the atmosphere of the entire planet. But the famous physicist Arthur Compton believed that hydrogen nuclei are unstable and can combine into helium nuclei with a large release of energy, as happens in the Sun. And to start such a reaction, a very high temperature would be needed. But wasn't the extremely high temperature of the atomic bomb necessary for the explosion of hydrogen? Moreover, there was an opinion that the same thing could happen in the oceans. And that's not all Oppenheimer was afraid of. Nitrogen in the air is also unstable, although to a lesser extent. Then it would be a complete catastrophe. Later, they redid the calculations and came to the conclusion that the probability was very small, something like 1 in 3 million. However, it is not zero. On the other hand, during the tests, Kurchatov became convinced that the proliferation of nuclear weapons cannot be allowed. The atom must be a worker, not a soldier, he said. The scientist initiated and supported the beginning of a dialogue between the USSR and the USA on suspending nuclear tests and directed his own work towards the use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes. And yet, the world's first test of nuclear weapons technology took place on July 16, 1945 in New Mexico. During the test, an implosion-tape plutonium bomb was tested. The explosion of the bomb was equivalent to approximately 21 kilotons of TNT. The fiery glow of 1-600-0 degrees at the site of the explosion, quartz and feldspar fused into a light green mineral called trinitite, some of which is in private collections. The first test of the Soviet atomic bomb took place on August 29, 1949. The bomb was called RDS-1, the power of which was estimated at 22 kilotons. The test was conducted at the Semipalatinsk test site, at a distance of 1 kilometer from the center, and then every 500 meters, 10 cars were installed. All 10 cars burned. At a distance of 800 meters, two residential three-story buildings, urban pink houses, were completely destroyed within a radius of 5 kilometers. The damage was mainly caused by the shockwave. The railway and highway bridges within a radius of 1 kilometer were mangled and thrown from their place. The carriages and cars located on the bridges, half burnt, were scattered across the steppe at a distance of 100 meters. Tanks and guns were overturned and mangled. Animals died. The series of tests were incredibly powerful and became the beginning of the nuclear era, and then the power only increased. For comparison, the height of the mushrooms in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was 6 kilometers in Hiroshima and 8 kilometers in Nagasaki. The height of the nuclear mushroom from the French thermonuclear test of the bomb called Lacan was 18 kilometers. The height of the nuclear mushroom from Castle Bravo, the most powerful thermonuclear test of the USA, was 40 kilometers. Added to that the fallen gallery and the wreckage, but the Tsar Bomba, with a capacity of 58.6 megatons, created a nuclear mushroom 64 kilometers high. The Tsar Bomba was a one-off, and there were no carriers, rockets, or fast long-range bombers for a bomb such dimensions. Therefore, a special aircraft was created to accommodate it. Then the blast waves circled the earth three times. Thousands of animals and birds died or were blinded by the flash, and windows were blown out in houses 900 kilometers away. However, people did not stop there and continued to measure the explosions of atomic bombs, including far in the sky, practically in space, which increased the chances of a global catastrophe. The first nuclear bomb at high altitude was detonated by the Americans. A warhead with a capacity of 1.7 kilotons in TNT equivalent was detonated at an altitude of 170 kilometers above the earth's surface. A few days later, two more explosions were carried out at altitudes of 310 and 724 kilometers. The experiment was given the code name Argus. Four years later, in the summer of 1962, another test of the starfish project took place, with a yield of 1,450 kilotons detonated at an altitude of 400 kilometers, approximately the same altitude at which the International Space Station rotates today. The almost complete absence of air at such an altitude did not lead to the formation of the usual nuclear mushroom cloud. However, other interesting effects were observed during this high-altitude nuclear explosion. For example, a bright white flash pierced the clouds, quickly turning into an expanding green ball of radiation disappearing into the clear sky. In Hawaii, at a distance of 1,500 kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion, 300 street lamps and traffic lights went out under the influence of an electromagnetic pulse, alarms went off, televisions, radios, and other electronics failed. A glow could be seen in the sky for several minutes, for three minutes after the explosion. The moon was in the center of the sky, partly blood-red, partly pink. The clouds appeared as dark silhouettes against the illuminated sky. It was only by a stroke of luck that no aircraft flying over the South Atlantic that night crashed into the water from a power surge. Hundreds of people saw a celestial aurora, neither pulsating nor flickering, taking the shape of a giant V, and changing in hue from yellow to dull red, then to icy blue, and finally to white. The aurora could be seen as far away as New Zealand. It looked as if a new sun had flared up in the sky, briefly, but long enough to set the sky ablaze. People said that all times preceding extremes of distress marked numerous variants, like depression and anxiety and death. But there were other consequences. The most powerful thermonuclear explosion in history in near-Earth orbit not only failed to reduce the radioactivity of the Earth's belt, but also created several new ones. One of them remained in orbit for almost 10 years. The explosion caused the shutdown of devices not only on Earth, but also in space. A third of the 24 satellites in orbit failed. Among others, Explorer 14, TRAC, Transit 4B, and the Soviet satellite Cosmos 5 stopped responding. There are several scientific papers that claim that the consequences of these tests are still being observed today in the form of electrical discharges in the ionosphere and a sharp increase in background radiation in the upper layers of the atmosphere. In these places, an increase in the concentration of cadmium, which was used in bombs, is also recorded. Another similar explosion was planned, but at an altitude of 1,000 kilometers, but in order to avoid major problems with the satellites, this project, called Uraka-Uraka, was cancelled. The next successful nuclear explosion of the USA was called Checkmate. It was a smaller charge, only 7 kilotons. It was detonated on October 23, 1962, at an altitude of 147 kilometers, and two days later, on October 22, 1962, the third explosion took place under the Soviet program Operation K, and it was the most powerful in the USSR. The peculiarity of this explosion was its implementation over the Steppe region of Kazakhstan. In order to avoid eye burns to local residents, the explosion was decided to be carried out in daytime and in cloudy weather. The flash was noticeable even through the clouds, but no visual examination was carried out. They just wanted to blow something up. Although the power of the bomb was less than in the American experiment of high-altitude bombs, due to the location of the explosion, there was more damage from the test. Short circuits occurred in devices with ceramic insulators on overhead power lines. There was no communication at a distance of 1,000 K. The same explosion, but at twice the altitude, was carried out on October 28, 1963, at 8 a.m. The last explosion that could be called cosmic at a stretch occurred on November 1.1. It had a yield of 410 kilotons and was called Kingfish. It was conducted at the edge of the atmosphere, at an altitude of 97 kilometers. There have been no nuclear tests since then, but their consequences are sometimes recorded even now. We must remember history in order to use the power of the atomic nucleus wisely, but not as a weapon, but as an engine of progress. So, the answer is obvious. Despite people's attempts, nuclear weapons cannot burn the atmosphere, otherwise we would hardly have watched the program about it. The Earth's atmosphere does not ignite from an atomic explosion for several reasons. There is not enough oxygen for global combustion. In order for the atmosphere to start burning, combustible substances, for example hydrocarbons, or at least oxygen in large quantities, must be present. Yes, a huge amount of heat is released in an atomic explosion, but there is not enough oxygen in the atmosphere to cause a global combustion. Combustion in the atmosphere requires special conditions that are not present in ordinary air. So, despite the high temperature of an atomic explosion, its impact does not cause a global combustion of the atmosphere. But what if we lived in a universe where this incredibly tragic event occurred, and another atomic bomb test did ignite the atmosphere in the way that Teller predicted? If that happened, the entire world would be on fire. It would be a nuclear explosion that would, at a minimum, be self-sustaining. It would grow exponentially, both in the rhetorical sense of rapidly, and in the mathematical sense of doubling in size many times over a constant time, until it ran out of fuel. In either case, there would be no survival of life at all. At its most minimal, it would be more like a permanent fire than an explosion. But even that would eventually convert all the nitrogen in the air into oxygen, leaving nothing for plant life. In a more extreme case, given how quickly nuclear chain reactions tend to double in volume, all the oceans would first boil, then ionize, then all the hydrogen would drain away, leaving no water on the planet. If this happened fast enough, as Stephen Hawking put it in A Brief History of Time, the planet might even become a black hole due to the force of the explosion. These conditions could be created in a very large hydrogen bomb. The physicist John Wheeler once calculated that if you took all the heavy water from all the oceans in the world, you could build a hydrogen bomb that would compress the matter at the center so much that you would create a black hole. Of course, there would be no one left to observe it. In any case, long-term survival after any event that could be described as the atmosphere ignited would require at a minimum either a Biosphere 2 type facility, only in a bunker for a while, or a nuclear submarine. But, back to reality. And while the Earth's atmosphere would not burn up, the existence of nuclear weapons has a profound impact on the environment. A nuclear war would disrupt the climate with devastating consequences. The world would be plunged into a nuclear winter, subject to deadly global famine and exacerbate the effects of climate change. The socio-economic consequences would also be dire, with developing countries and marginalized groups suffering the most. Nuclear weapons also create a vacuum for financial support in their development, maintenance, and dismantling. This is money that could be better spent funding assets such as green technologies and medical facilities. Even a single nuclear explosion in a modern city would deplete existing disaster response resources. A nuclear war would overwhelm any aid system we might have built in advance. But who's asking us? However, even despite the obvious, some influential people can behave like a monkey with a grenade, which got something that was not intended for it. Involuntarily or not, the monkey becomes involved in something that it is completely untrained to deal with. And as a result, the result can be unpredictable, and an individual who is especially unwilling to part with his current status further aggravates the situation. At a moment, the state is protected from unacceptable personality traits by previous physical defects. But the problem is that such monkeys are becoming more and more every year. And all this can sooner or later turn into a zoo of howls. For this, it is not necessary to set the atmosphere on fire. Carl Sagan, the great popularizer of science and astronomer, once said, elementary planetary hygiene is to rid the world of nuclear weapons. But can we eliminate them without serious consequences? What risks might such elimination entail? Now, this is another problem that man has created for himself.