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A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs , a more compact size, a lower mass, or a combination of these benefits.
Some researchers have examined the use of antimatter [3] as an alternative fusion trigger, mainly in the context of antimatter-catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion but also nuclear weapons. [4] [5] [6] Such a system, in a weapons context, would have many of the desired properties of a pure fusion weapon. The technical barriers to producing and ...
The United States was the first nation to develop the hydrogen bomb, testing an experimental prototype in 1952 ("Ivy Mike") and a deployable weapon in 1954 ("Castle Bravo"). Throughout the Cold War it continued to modernize and enlarge its nuclear arsenal, but from 1992 on has been involved primarily in a program of stockpile stewardship.
Many hypothetical doomsday devices are based on salted hydrogen bombs creating large amounts of nuclear fallout.. A doomsday device is a hypothetical construction — usually a weapon or weapons system — which could destroy all life on a planet, particularly Earth, or destroy the planet itself, bringing "doomsday", a term used for the end of planet Earth.
The Mod 2 nomenclature indicates the hardened version of the weapon designed to survive laydown delivery; earlier Mod 0 and Mod 1 weapons could not survive the forces involved. [13] The Y1 nomenclature indicates a W28 warhead with a yield of 1.1 megatonnes of TNT (4,600 TJ).
The other basic type of nuclear weapon produces a large proportion of its energy in nuclear fusion reactions. Such fusion weapons are generally referred to as thermonuclear weapons or more colloquially as hydrogen bombs (abbreviated as H-bombs), as they rely on fusion reactions between isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium). All such ...
The aircraft, a B-52G, was based at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, and part of the Strategic Air Command's airborne alert mission known as "Cover All" (a predecessor to Operation Chrome Dome), which involved a continuous flow of staggered, nuclear-armed bombers on a "ladder" route into the Canadian Arctic and back.
The "normal" sequence of fuzing for a Mark 39 Mod 2 bomb detonating as a contact burst. The Mark 39 Mod 2 was initially pursued with the goal of providing the Mod 1 with a low-level release capability, where the weapon would "detonate some time after the weapon struck the target and came to rest". Work was initially done on creating a new ...