Has a hydrogen bomb ever been used in war?
A hydrogen bomb has never been used in battle by any country, but experts say it has the power to wipe out entire cities and kill significantly more people than the already powerful atomic bomb, which the U.S. dropped in Japan during World War II, killing tens of thousands of people.
Has a nuclear bomb ever been used in war?
During the final stages of World War II in 1945, the United States conducted atomic raids on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the first on August 6, 1945, and the second on August 9, 1945. These two events were the only times nuclear weapons have been used in combat.
What is worse nuclear or thermonuclear?
The yield of a thermonuclear bomb can be hundreds to thousands of times more powerful than the atomic bomb. The explosive power of an atomic bomb is often measured in kilotons, or one thousand tons of TNT, while thermonuclear bombs are generally measured in megatons, or one million tons of TNT.
What would happen in a full scale nuclear war?
Besides the immediate destruction of cities by nuclear blasts, the potential aftermath of a nuclear war could involve firestorms, a nuclear winter, widespread radiation sickness from fallout, and/or the temporary (if not permanent) loss of much modern technology due to electromagnetic pulses.
Why was the H-bomb created?
The explosion of a Soviet atomic device in 1949, in fact, gave major impetus to the US hydrogen bomb project. A decision on whether to proceed with a thermonuclear bomb required the US to push the envelope of nuclear technology while memory of the atomic bomb attacks that ended World War II was still fresh.
What does the word thermonuclear mean?
Definition of thermonuclear 1 : of, relating to, or employing transformations in the nuclei of atoms of low atomic weight (such as hydrogen) that require a very high temperature for their inception (as in the hydrogen bomb or in the sun) thermonuclear reaction thermonuclear weapon.