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View submission: Ask Anything Wednesday - Physics, Astronomy, Earth and Planetary Science
What would happen if a nuke - not Tsar Bomba but a more common device - exploded inside its bomber? I know detonation elevation affects destructive power but that is close to the ground. Would an explosion at 50,000 feet cause massive damage on the ground or would it be a blinding flash of light and maybe a heat blast and not much more?
Comment by Indemnity4 at 21/07/2022 at 00:27 UTC*
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
It's going to depend on the size of the explosion. Somewhere, there are calculators you can input the explosion size and it will give you answers on the damage at certain distances.
For a 1 megatonne bomb (bigger than Hiroshima, smaller than modern weapons), people up to 21 km (13 miles) away would experience flash blindness on a clear day, and people up to 85 km (52.8 miles) away would be temporarily blinded on a clear night.
Heat is an issue for those closer to the blast. Mild, first-degree burns can occur up to 11 km (6.8 miles) away, and third-degree burns – the kind that destroy and blister skin tissue – could affect anyone up to 8 km (5 miles) away.
Mostly, we have a good idea of the due to *atmospheric nuclear testing* and *exoatmospheric testing*.
Wikipedia has a list of high-altitude nuclear tests[1].
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_nuclear_explosion
The worst effects of a Soviet high-altitude test occurred on 22 October 1962, in the Soviet Project K nuclear tests (ABM System A proof tests) when a 300 kt missile-warhead detonated near Dzhezkazgan at 290-km altitude. The EMP fused 570 km of overhead telephone line with a measured current of 2,500 A, started a fire that burned down the Karaganda power plant, and shut down 1,000 km of shallow-buried power cables between Tselinograd and Alma-Ata.