Nuclear World
Nuclear World If a nuclear bomb was dropped on your city, how would you survive? The blast from the fission bomb on Hiroshima, which weighed 30 kilotons, was equivalent to 12,500 tons of TNT. Now, if this was dropped right outside your house, there would be no way of survival. But, one megaton hydrogen bomb is said to have 80 times the explosive intensity of the fission bomb detonated in 1945. The destructive force of the hydrogen bomb is near unimaginable. But first, let’s take a look into what a nuclear bomb really is. An atom is made up of three subatomic particles -- protons, neutrons and electrons. The center of an atom, which is called the nucleus, is composed of both protons and neutrons. Protons are positively charged, neutrons have no charge at all, and electrons are negatively charged. The proton-to-electron ratio is always one to one, so the atom as a whole has a neutral charge. But an atom’s properties can change a lot based on how many of each particle it has. If you change the number of protons, you create an entirely different element. If you change the number of neutrons in an atom, you wind up with an isotope. If you change the number of protons and neutrons too much you make something unstable and it will emit radiation. If you split this unstable atom into two smaller fragments with a neutron, it creates an explosion. This releases massive power. You can’t survive the blast at the center of the explosion, but what about a few miles away? Close to the center of the explosion with the radius of 1.7 miles, everything is destroyed. Almost nothing remains but soil and debris that are saturated with radiation. Only around 2% of people survive at this proximity of the initial explosion and only the very strongest buildings made reinforced, poured concrete still stand. At the distance of 2.7 miles all single-family residences are completely gone and only bare structural skeletons of multi-story buildings remain. 40% of people in this