More than likely, you’re aware of some nuclear weapon facts. You probably know about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You might even know that nuclear weapons have gotten significantly more advanced since then. There have been failed tests, space tests, explosions in the arctic, and explosions in the ocean. However, the bombs that are created today are completely more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And although those were the only two nuclear warheads ever dropped during war time, there is plenty of reason to worry about the future of any potential atomic conflicts. Nuclear warheads are dangerous for numerous reasons. Not only do they create an insanely large blast but they emit radiation that damages the environment and can even change the climate. Were there to be a nuclear war today, life as we know it would most likely come to an end. As Albert Einstein once said “I do not know with what sort of weapons World War 3 will be fought, but I know that World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones”. And that is what is at stake. These weapons are capable of changing everything and many times we have come closer to nuclear war than you might hope to think. These are 25 insane things you probably didn’t know about nuclear weapons.
Horishima and Nagasaki are no longer radioactive because the bombs detonated above the ground
Source: zidbits.com, Image: wikipedia Tsutomu Yamaguchi was a Japanese man who survived both bombings
Source: wikipedia, Image: wikipedia Shigeki Tanaka, another survivor, won the Boston Marathon in 1951
Source: wikipedia, Image: wikipedia The two bombs dropped on Japan were code named Fat Man and Little Boy
Source: wikipedia, Image: wikipedia The bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki was supposed to be dropped on the city of Kokura, Japan but a cloud blocked the munitions plant that was the original target. The bomber was supposed to drop only on visual identification.
Source: nytimes.com, Image: wikipedia A bonsai tree that was planted in 1626 survived the blast at Hiroshima and is now kept in a museum in the United States
Source: bonsai-nbf.org, Image: wikipedia A tsunami hit the city of Hiroshima one month after the bombing and killed another 2,000 people
Source: pcf.city.hiroshima.jp, Image: wikipedia 10% of electricity in the United States is generated from dismantled nuclear bombs
Source: nytimes.com, Image: wikipedia In 1962, the United States detonated a bomb that was 100 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Japan. Don't worry though, the bomb was detonated in space, nearly 400 km (250 miles) above the Pacific Ocean
Source: npr.org, Image: wikipedia Until 1988 the US government stored $2 billion at its Mount Pony facility in case of a nuclear war
Source: wikipedia, Image: pixabay During the 1950s atomic bomb tests were actually a major tourist attraction in Las Vegas
Source: pbs.org, Image: wikipedia The United States actually considered dropping a nuclear bomb on the moon during the Cold War just to show off its power
Source: wikipedia, Image: wikipedia The matter that sparked the explosion in Hiroshima was no bigger than a paperclip
Source: dailymail.co.uk, Image: wikipedia Russia has the most nuclear weapons of any nation at 8,400, then comes the United States at 7,650. After that it drops off. France has 300, the UK has 225, and China has 240.
Source: edition.cnn.com, Image: wikipedia 11 American nuclear bombs have been lost in accidents and never recovered
Source: wikipedia Dr Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, envisioned one of its non-combat uses could be to create another Panama Canal with a series of well placed explosives
Source: wikipedia, Image: wikipedia Somewhere off the coast of Georgia, United States there is a nuclear bomb that was lost by the US Air Force in 1958
Source: wikipedia, Image: wikipedia A CT body scan exposes patients to the same amount of radiation as standing within 1.5 miles of the blast at Hiroshima
Source: news.bbc.co.uk, Image: wikipedia In New Mexico there is an atomic bomb museum where the first nuclear bombs were detonated. It is open only 12 hours per year (If you look it up it is called Trinity Site, not the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History)
Source: wikipedia, Image: wikipedia Neutron bombs are atomic bombs that are designed specifically to not create a large blast. Instead, they just spew out a ton of radiation.
Source: wikipedia, Image: pixabay Tsar Bomb, the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated was so big that it created seismic waves measurable even on their third passage around the world
Source: tsarbomba.org, Image: wikipedia Under NATO weapons sharing, American nuclear warheads are kept in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and Turkey
Source: wikipedia, Image: wikipedia One way of testing for art forgeries is to detect cesium-137 and strontium-90. These isotopes did not exist in nature before the first use of nuclear weapons in 1945
Source: wikipedia, Image: wikipedia In 1961 the US Air Force accidentally dropped 2 nuclear bombs over North Carolina but amazingly neither of them exploded
Source: history.com, Image: wikipedia Known as the Vela Incident, out of more than 2,000 nuclear tests only 1 has had an unknown nationality. It was a 3 kiloton bomb detonated in the Indian Ocean in 1979
Source: wikipedia, Image: wikipedia Lists Going Viral Right Now
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