Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In general, surrounding a bomb with denser media, such as water, absorbs more energy and creates more powerful shock waves while at the same time limiting the area of its effect. When a nuclear weapon is surrounded only by air, lethal blast and thermal effects proportionally scale much more rapidly than lethal radiation effects as explosive ...
The same effect above the top of the cloud, where the expansion of the rising cloud pushes a layer of warm, humid, low-altitude air upwards into cold, high-altitude air, first causes the condensation of water vapour out of the air and then causes the resulting droplets to freeze, forming ice caps (or icecaps), similar in both appearance and ...
In general, nuclear effects in space (or very high altitudes) have a qualitatively different display. While an atmospheric nuclear explosion has a characteristic mushroom-shaped cloud , high-altitude and space explosions tend to manifest a spherical 'cloud' until distorted by Earth's magnetic field .
When a nuclear weapon or high explosive is detonated in sufficiently humid air, the "negative phase" of the shock wave causes a rarefaction of the air surrounding the explosion but not of the air contained within it. The rarefied air is temporarily cooled, which causes condensation of some of the water vapor within the rarefied air. When the ...
A nuclear weapon detonated in the air, called an air burst, produces less fallout than a comparable explosion near the ground. A nuclear explosion in which the fireball touches the ground pulls soil and other materials into the cloud and neutron activates it before it falls back to the ground.
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.
The medical effects of the atomic bomb upon humans can be put into the four categories below, with the effects of larger thermonuclear weapons producing blast and thermal effects so large that there would be a negligible number of survivors close enough to the center of the blast who would experience prompt/acute radiation effects, which were observed after the 16 kiloton yield Hiroshima bomb ...
Effect on buildings and people within 1 (6.9; 0.069) Window glass shatters; Light injuries from fragments occur; 2 (14; 0.14) Moderate damage to houses (windows and doors blown out and severe damage to roofs) People injured by flying glass and debris; 3 (21; 0.21) Residential structures collapse; Serious injuries are common, fatalities may occur