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The first nuclear explosive devices provided the basic building blocks of future weapons. Pictured is the Gadget device being prepared for the Trinity nuclear test.. Nuclear weapons design are physical, chemical, and engineering arrangements that cause the physics package [1] of a nuclear weapon to detonate.
A nuclear explosion is an explosion that occurs as a result of the rapid release of energy from a high-speed nuclear reaction.The driving reaction may be nuclear fission or nuclear fusion or a multi-stage cascading combination of the two, though to date all fusion-based weapons have used a fission device to initiate fusion, and a pure fusion weapon remains a hypothetical device.
With miniaturization, nuclear bombs can be delivered by both strategic bombers and tactical fighter-bombers. This method is the primary means of nuclear weapons delivery; the majority of US nuclear warheads, for example, are free-fall gravity bombs, namely the B61, which is being improved upon to this day. [11] [29]
National leaders debated the impact of nuclear weapons on domestic and foreign policy. Also involved in the debate about nuclear weapons policy was the scientific community, through professional associations such as the Federation of Atomic Scientists and the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs. [58]
Neutron bombs would have been used if the REFORGER conventional response of NATO to the invasion was too slow or ineffective. [4] [36] Neutron bombs are purposely designed with explosive yields lower than other nuclear weapons. Since neutrons are scattered and absorbed by air, [2] neutron radiation effects drop off rapidly with distance in air.
The single-most important thing to remember if a nuclear bomb is supposed to explode, he says, is to shelter in place. "There were survivors in Hiroshima within 300 meters of the epicenter ...
In 1942, there was speculation among the scientists developing the first nuclear weapons in the Manhattan Project that a sufficiently large nuclear explosion might ignite the Earth's atmosphere: heat from the explosion might fuse pairs of atmospheric nitrogen atoms, forming carbon and oxygen while releasing further energy which would sustain ...
Near a peak of the Zagros Mountains in central Iran, workers are building a nuclear facility so deep in the earth that it is likely beyond the range of a last-ditch U.S. weapon designed to destroy ...