Nuclear Weapons

The mushroom cloud of the highest yield nuclear explosion (i.e. the 51 megaton Soviet Tsar Bomba in 1961) was about 40 miles tall.

Lower yield explosions will have mushroom clouds that are not that tall. The bombs used in World War 2 had mushroom clouds roughly 6 miles tall. Very low yields can have mushroom clouds less than a thousand feet tall.

Conventional nuclear power plants use critical mass in a way that is similar to how a fission bomb uses it, in a chain reaction. There are some very important differences, however.

In a nuclear power plant, the reaction is controlled by a set of systems that moderate the amount and speed of neutrons, the temperature of the fuel, and so on. These prevent the reactor from getting too hot and melting down. This is not easy, but also not terribly hard.

In the bomb, there is no provision for ongoing control of the chain reaction. Instead, there is a design that causes the critical mass to undergo the chain reaction while staying at critical mass for the process. This is really hard to do because as soon as the whole heats up a bit, it wants to fly apart, destroying the integrity of the critical mass. The design problems associated with maintaining critical mass were difficult enough that they were secret for a long time.

In other words, in order for a critical mass to blow up as a bomb, it really has to be designed to be a bomb. And though a nuclear reactor can melt down and be very destructive in the process, and though the waste storage can be breached and be very destructive as a result, the nuclear explosion of a nuclear reactor is quite likely impossible. Explosions and meltdowns have happened, but the explosions are from steam or chemicals, rather than nuclear critical mass.

Yes it did. The US forced Russia to turn their ships back rather than test Kennedy whom they may have feared.

Atom Bomb - film - was created in 1964.

After the Bay of Pigs, Cuba needed protection and turned to the USSR. The USSR agreed to place nuclear missiles in Cuba and buy Cuba's sugar which America stopped buying due to the trade embargo. It wanted to place missiles in Cuba as it was only 90 miles away from American soil and the USA had missiles around 90 miles away in Turkey aimed at the USSR.

The number would be classified and not in the public domain.

Yamaguchi worked in Nagasaki but he left for Hiroshima on business. The day he was to leave back the bomb was dropped, being close to the harbor he suffered burns and was blinded was a brief period time as well his hearing was afflicted. Upon return to Nagasaki he was telling his boss how the new weapon was and soon he lived it again and survived.

the US army headed a secret team of scientists called the Manhattan project - they did the science, developed the ideas and worked with engineers to make the first atomic bomb on 1944-1945.

The fusion bomb is theoretically unlimited in yield, just keep adding stages. Edward Teller once proposed building a 10 gigaton fusion bomb. The largest ever exploded was just over 50 megatons, built by the USSR.

How large do you want the blast to be?

The development of the atomic bomb was not only the most ambitious scientific enterprie in history, it was also the best-kept secret of the war.

Either highly enriched uranium-235 or reactor produced plutonium.

Canteens were used during WW II pretty much the same way they are still used, to carry water.

The last live B53 munition began diasassembly in Texas today, 23 October 2011. This was the largest nuclear weapon in the US Arsenal at 9 megatons. The following is a quote from the Wikipedia article on the B53. The yield is projected- not all nuclear weapons were live tested in the open-

Effects

Assuming a detonation at optimum height, a 9 megaton blast would result in a fireball some 4 to 5 kilometers (2.5 to 3 miles) in diameter.[10] The radiated heat would be sufficient to cause lethal burns to any unprotected person within a 28.7 kilometers (17.8 mi) radius (995 square miles (2,580 km2)). Blast effects would be sufficient to collapse most residential and industrial structures within a 14.9-kilometer (9.3 mi) radius (300 square miles (780 km2)); within 5.7 kilometers (3.5 mi) virtually all above-ground structures would be destroyed and blast effects would inflict near 100% fatalities. Within 4.7 kilometers (2.9 mi) a 500 rem dose of ionizing radiation would be received by the average person, sufficient to cause a 50% to 90% casualty rate independent of thermal or blast effects at this distance.

Uranium is used in atomic bombs - bombs with uranium 235 (enriched more than 20%, with 92% or 93% being typical weapons grade uranium, also called orealloy for Oak Ridge Alloy).

Maybe. They would have had to think of all the possible side effects but the chance of this happening is tiny.

There are two explosions in a hydrogen bomb: a fission reaction of uranium or plutonium. This then creates the heat and pressure in the centre of the explosion to initiate the fusion reaction and explosion. The chances of the fission reaction causing a chain reaction in the water is very small as it needs large unstable nuclei to react like U235 but there is none in the sea. The chances of the fusion reaction creating a chain reaction is even less because the fusing elements need to be at millions of degrees and the sea is not a million degrees.

During the Cold War many thousands of nuclear weapons were built by the two opposing camps of the US and the USSR. The purpose of these weapons was not to use them, thereby destroying the human race and making the entire world too radioactive for any person to survive, but rather, it was just a threat. This was formally described as the MAD doctrine, Mutual Assured Destruction. If war were to break out between the US and the USSR, the amount of nuclear weapons involved would be so great that we would be assured that both nations, along with all other nations, would be destroyed. Although this seems like a crazy basis of defense policy, it actually did work. The US and the USSR never attacked each other directly, although they constantly maneuvered for greater international influence, up until the final collapse of the USSR, from its own internal weakness.

The America, more specifically the USA. North Korea has just recently begun developing nukes, and they are very primitive so far. the USA, on the other hand, has been developing and upgrading their nukes since World War II. Throughout the years, the USA has gained 5113 active and inactive nuclear warheads, which includes 1968 strategic warheads, approximately 500 operational tactical weapons, and approximately 2645 inactive warheads, compared to the very few that North Korea has currently.

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Weapons of mass destruction have never been used against the US. In fact, the US is the only country that has ever used an atomic bomb against another country and that was Japan during the second World War.

US: 1945. USSR: 1949

Organization of American States (OAS)

LTBT

At the time the American program began there was a serious chance that the Germans might conquer England too in the very near future. The British not only transferred their atomic bomb work, but also their RADAR work, and several other important military research projects to America. That way even if Germany conquered England, the work on those projects would continue for the Allies and the Germans would not be able to capture the labs, scientists, engineers, and documents from them to use against the Allies.