Nuclear bombs can have a wide range of yields, with hydrogen bombs being more energetic than atomic bombs. The smallest nuclear explosions are “fizzles,” with the smallest recorded yield being 55 tons. Nuclear explosions with yields of a few tens of tons are still larger than almost all conventional weapon explosions. The largest nuclear explosion, the Tsar Bomba, had a yield of 50 megatons, equivalent to ten times the explosives used in World War II combined.
By fine-tuning the design and operating mechanism of a nuclear bomb, the yield can be modified to be over a very wide range. For example, hydrogen bombs, which fuse atomic nuclei to produce nuclear explosions, tend to be more energetic than atomic bombs, which instead break atomic nuclei apart for nuclear explosions.
The smallest nuclear explosions are “fizzles,” such as the North Korean test on October 9, 2006, which yielded about a kiloton of TNT, and the earliest tests of small tactical nuclear weapons, such as Operation Plumbbob in 1957 in the United States. Some of the nuclear explosions in Operation Plumbbob were very small, such as Pascal-A, the world’s first underground nuclear explosion, which had a yield of just 55 tons (its yield was officially referred to as “light”, although the yield of every other test in Operation Plumbbob has been made public).
Pascal-B, another test, had a yield of about 500 tons. The Lassen and Wheeler balloon shots had yields of less than half a kiloton. A surface hit, Franklin, vanished, producing a yield of approximately 140 tons, while Coulomb-A, a safety test, had an assumed yield of zero. It is not known how small the smallest theoretically possible nuclear explosion would be, but 55 tons is the smallest of which there is a record and could be approaching the lower limit.
Nuclear explosions with yields of a few tens of tons are considered extremely small, but still larger than almost all conventional weapon explosions. The Oklahoma City bombing, which destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, produced just two tons of TNT, killing 168 and injuring over 800. Largest confirmed conventional bomb, GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast, has a yield equivalent to approximately 11 tons of TNT, with a blast radius of 450 feet (137 m). Its shock wave is said to be enough to destroy nine city blocks.
If Pascal-A is one of the smallest nuclear explosions of all time with a yield of 55 tons, then the largest nuclear explosion, a Soviet test called the Tsar Bomba, was about a million times larger, with a yield of 50 megatons. . By comparison, Hiroshima’s Little Boy bomb had a yield of only 14 kilotons, but it essentially destroyed an entire city. A “typical” nuclear weapon in the arsenals of the United States and Russia today is about a couple of megatons. The Tsar Bomba was so large that its yield was roughly equivalent to ten times the explosives used in World War II combined. It may have caused third-degree burns at a range of 58 km (36 mi). The radius of the fireball was approximately 2.5 km (1.5 mi) and lasted for 26 seconds. This nuclear weapon was so powerful that it boggles the mind.
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