What would happen if a nuclear bomb went off?

Answer 1

• A blinding flash of light.
• A thermal pulse that chars almost anything nearby and is capable of causing fourth degree burns on human flesh (i.e., all the way to the bone).
• A near field radiation pulse. (most people here won't have to worry about radiation, as fire or blast will kill them first)
• Powerful blast wave.
• Firestorm.
• Outside blast radius, winds still strong enough to shatter windows and propel broken glass and other debris hundreds of yards from source, causing cuts and other trauma injury.
• Minutes to hours later fallout begins descending from cap of cloud. This may cause many cases of severe radiation poisoning in otherwise uninjured people.
• etc.

Exact details may vary from above, depending on:

• Yield
• Burst height/depth
• Burst slant distance
• Weather
• Terrain
• If burst is subsurface, media around burst (e.g. dirt, water, rock, concrete)
• Construction of buildings
• etc.

Answer 2

Large quantities of heat and light are released, mechanical blast at greater than Mach1, and a sleet of sub-atomic particles. The main long-run dangers to humans appear to lie with Iodine-131, and in leukemias.

Answer 3

Life as it is known changes when an atom bomb explodes. The very structure of the atom is altered, producing multitudes of radioactive isotopes which rain down upon the land as fallout. Photons are unleashed at various wavelengths, producing alpha, beta, gamma and x-ray radiation which are so powerful that anything it touches, if not killed by the blast force, will die of acute radiation poisoning within a short period of time. The inside of a nuclear fireball is measured in the tens of millions of degrees, which is hotter than the sun, and vaporizes anything it touches.

The largest nuclear bomb ever detonated, nicknamed 'Tsar Bomba', was detonated below the optimum burst height in order to give the bomber crew enough time to fly far enough away and barely escape injury. At it's burst altitude of 13000 feet, it was able to cause 1psi overpressure flying-glass injury as far away as 60km (37.28mi), and cause thermal radiation burns comparable to bad sunburn as far away as 100km (62.13mi). Even at the high altitude of the detonation, it's fireball would have touched the ground except that the shock wave reflected off the ground right back up to meet the fireball, distorting the fireball's shape. The force of the explosion flattened the ground, turning the rock in to glass, and the shockwave circled the earth three times before dissipating. (can someone confirm - was it the seismic shockwave, or was it the atmospheric shockwave?).

So those are the physical effects, to answer 'what changes' should perhaps also include 'the political climate'. Any government or organization responsible for detonating a nuclear weapon would face very fierce opposition from other nuclear nations, and you would have the beginnings of World War III.

Answer 4

The Hydrogen or Thermouclear bomb. When this bomb explodes all forms of biological life will turn into dust. Like the laser beams in War of The Worlds.

Answer 5

By nuclear fission and/or fusion in various combinations depending on details of the design.

Answer 6

It was a sad thing to look at Mostly because of the civilian casualties, the illness it brought and the devastation.

Answer 7

the Vagina (nuclear bomb) will expand

Answer 8

There is a huge explosion.