#nuclear weapon

Between August 6th and August 9th, 1945, the United States dropped two atomic bombs, named Little Boy and Fat Man, on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. Two Boeing B-29 Superfortresses, named Enola Gay and Bockscar, would be assigned to the task of dropping the bombs on those two cities leading to the total deaths of 150,000–246,000 lives. Weeks later on September 2nd, the Japanese government signed a surrender treaty aboard the USS Missouri thus ending WWII.

These horrific events remain as the only times of the usage of a nuclear weapon in an armed conflict. In the months afterwards, many people have died from the effects of burns, radiation sickness, and other injuries, followed up by illness and malnutrition. Since then, there has been much debate regarding ethical and legal justification for the bombings as some say it was necessary while others say it wasn't.

The Tsar Bomba, also known by the alphanumerical designation "AN602", was a thermonuclear aerial bomb, and the most powerful nuclear weapon ever created and tested. Overall, the Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov oversaw the project at Arzamas-16, while the main work of design was by Sakharov, Viktor Adamsky, Yuri Babayev, Yuri Smirnov, and Yuri Trutnev. The project was ordered by Nikita Khrushchev in July 1961 as part of the Soviet resumption of nuclear testing after the Test Ban Moratorium, with the detonation timed to coincide with the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The explosion of Tsar Bomba, according to the classification of nuclear explosions, was an ultra-high-power low-air nuclear explosion. The mushroom cloud of Tsar Bomba seen from a distance of 161 km (100 mi). The crown of the cloud is 65 km (40 mi) high at the time of the picture. (source: Rosatom State Corporation Communications Department 20-08-2020)

The flare was visible at a distance of more than 1,000 km (620 mi). It was observed in Norway, Greenland and Alaska.

The explosion's nuclear mushroom rose to a height of 67 km (42 mi). The shape of the "hat" was two-tiered; the diameter of the upper tier was estimated at 95 km (59 mi), the lower tier at 70 km (43 mi). The cloud was observed 800 km (500 mi) from the explosion site.

The blast wave circled the globe three times, with the first one taking 36 hours and 27 minutes.

A seismic wave in the earth's crust, generated by the shock wave of the explosion, circled the globe three times.

The atmospheric pressure wave resulting from the explosion was recorded three times in New Zealand: the station in Wellington recorded an increase in pressure at 21:57, on October 30, coming from the north-west, at 07:17 on October 31, from the southeast, and at 09:16, on November 1, from the northwest (all GMT time), with amplitudes of 0.6 mbar (0.60 hPa), 0.4 mbar (0.40 hPa), and 0.2 mbar (0.20 hPa). Respectively, the average wave speed is estimated at 303 m/s (990 ft/s), or 9.9 degrees of the great circle per hour.

Glass shattered in windows 780 km (480 mi) from the explosion in a village on Dikson Island.

The sound wave generated by the explosion reached Dikson Island, but there are no reports of destruction or damage to structures even in the urban-type settlement of Amderma, which is much closer (280 km (170 mi)) to the landfall.

Ionization of the atmosphere caused interference to radio communications even hundreds of kilometers from the test site for about 40 minutes.

Radioactive contamination of the experimental field with a radius of 2–3 km (1.2–1.9 mi) in the epicenter area was no more than 1 milliroentgen / hour. The testers appeared at the explosion site 2 hours later; radioactive contamination posed practically no danger to the test participants.

Ad Astra (2019, James Gray)

Now that he sees the accelerating success of the Indivisible protests, he will play his ace: becoming a wartime president. This would make it far easier to grant himself emergency powers and shut down dissent in a way that will make the past week look mild.

In other news, somebody made the schematic to make the Nerf Nuke an actual real thing.