25 Impressive Bomb Facts That Are Fairly Explosive

The first nuclear test blast in New Mexico was so bright that a blind woman named Georgia Green allegedly asked her brother what the bright flash was. They were 50 miles away.

Following the World Wars, millions of bombs and warheads are lying at the bottoms of the oceans because authorities have not found a way to dispose of them.

Bomb disposal experts don’t usually get killed by shrapnel as the bomb suits are nearly impenetrable. It is the shockwave that is dangerous.

Blast-Induced Barotrauma is when the shockwave of a bomb causes pressure changes that lead to internal organs exploding.

One way to detect art forgeries is to test for various isotopes that didn’t exist in nature until the first nuclear bombs exploded in the mid 20th century.

In 1769, the city of Brescia, Italy was hit by lightning. Unfortunately, the strike hit an area that was storing gunpowder. The resulting blast killed nearly 3,000 people.

During the ’70s, engineers considered using nuclear explosions to help with construction projects.

Doug Wood was getting ready to photograph an early test of the atomic bomb. He ripped his protective glasses off too early and had to shield his eyes with his hand. He said he could see the blood running through his arm. After Doug removed his arm, he saw something even crazier…the person in front of him was a skeleton (he could almost see straight through him).

The United States and Russia account for 93% of the world‘s nuclear weapons.

This isn’t the only bomb accidentally lodged in the ground somewhere. Wait until you see number 11!

In 1947, the British military used nearly 7,000 tons of leftover explosives from World War II to blow up Heligoland, a small German island in the North Sea. The explosion is still one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions on record.

In the past 60 years, there have been over 2,000 nuclear test explosions. Only one of them came from an unknown nationality. This unknown explosion has been called the Vela Incident, and it occurred in 1979 when a 3 kiloton nuclear bomb exploded in the Indian Ocean.

The US and Russia have a combined 2581 nuclear warheads on high alert. This means they are capable of launching in less than 30 minutes (the approximate flight time of a missile between the US and Russia).

In 1961, a nuclear bomber crashed over North Carolina. The first of its two nukes deployed its parachute and 5 out of 6 safety devices activated, just barely avoiding a detonation. The second bomb, however, failed to deploy its parachute. It slammed into the ground and dug deep into the Earth. Fortunately, it didn’t explode either. It is still there today.

The largest bomb ever detonated was the Tsar Bomba. It was tested by the Soviet Union and had a yield of 50 megatons. That is 1,570 times the power of both nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

The US Air Force once looked into developing a “gay bomb” that involved using pheromones to make the enemy attracted to each other.

One modern US stealth bomber is capable of carrying 16 nukes (B83). Each one of those bombs is 75 times as powerful as the one dropped on Hiroshima.

On September 16, 1920, a bomb in the back of a horse wagon exploded in Wall Street. That was the deadliest catastrophe in New York City until 9/11.

In Bristol, UK, the bomb squad once blew up a box that was reported to be suspicious. Apparently, the box contained instructional handouts on what to do in case you come across a suspicious box.

Lazy dogs are small, unguided, and nonexplosive bombs that are dropped on enemy battlefields from airplanes. Basically, they are bullets that reign down from above.

In 1998, the IRA made a bomb threat to a courthouse in Northern Ireland. The police ended up evacuating people outside…which is where the bomb actually was. Hundreds of people were injured and 29 people died.

According to some estimates, it would take Vietnam almost 300 years to clear its territory of bombs and mines. It would also cost nearly $10 billion.

In 1916, during the Battle of the Somme in World War I, a sixty thousand pound charge of explosives was detonated. The explosion was so huge that it was heard all the way in London.

During World War II, the US developed something called bat bombs. These bombs would open above cities and release bats that held even smaller time bombs. Those small time bombs were actually incendiary, which means they were meant to start fires.