Future Timeline

A thread to marvel at the raw power of nuclear and nuclear-scale explosions.

Any explosion with yield of over 100 tons/TNT can go here with an obvious preference for nuclear ones.

The Beirut blast is a source of endless fascination for me


It's the closest thing to a nuclear explosion happening in a major metropolitan city that anyone's ever seen, barring those in Hiroshima and Nagasaki 76 years ago who were unfortunate enough to see the real thing.

A kiloton-blast in an urban center looks surreal to us because we have little to no reference of such a thing outside of movies and artwork. It looks too horrible to be believed, from the Wilson cloud to the shockwave. Even the aftermath— the country's now on the brink of total collapse, just as one would expect after a nuclear war (even if it's for more reasons than just the explosion).

Not to mention that engineering students have benefited greatly from this copious footage. So many angles, so many points of view.

I do hope this is the last time we'll ever see such a thing. Explosions will continue to happen in cities, but I hope history says this is the biggest one ever caught on camera.

Thermonuclear weapon

A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation atomic bombs, a more compact size, a lower mass or a combination of these benefits. Characteristics of nuclear fusion reactions make possible the use of non-fissile depleted uranium as the weapon's main fuel, thus allowing more efficient use of scarce fissile material such as uranium-235 (235U) or plutonium-239 (239Pu).

Modern fusion weapons consist essentially of two main components: a nuclear fission primary stage (fueled by 235U or 239Pu) and a separate nuclear fusion secondary stage containing thermonuclear fuel: the heavy hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, or in modern weapons lithium deuteride. For this reason, thermonuclear weapons are often colloquially called hydrogen bombs or H-bombs.

A fusion explosion begins with the detonation of the fission primary stage. Its temperature soars past approximately 100 million Kelvin, causing it to glow intensely with thermal X-radiation. These X-rays flood the void (the "radiation channel" often filled with polystyrene foam) between the primary and secondary assemblies placed within an enclosure called a radiation case, which confines the X-ray energy and resists its outward pressure. The distance separating the two assemblies ensures that debris fragments from the fission primary (which move much slower than X-ray photons) cannot disassemble the secondary before the fusion explosion runs to completion.

The secondary fusion stage—consisting of outer pusher/tamper, fusion fuel filler and central plutonium spark plug—is imploded by the X-ray energy impinging on its pusher/tamper. This compresses the entire secondary stage and drives up the density of the plutonium spark plug. The density of the plutonium fuel rises to such an extent that the spark plug is driven into a supercritical state, and it begins a nuclear fission chain reaction. The fission products of this chain reaction heat the highly compressed, and thus super dense, thermonuclear fuel surrounding the spark plug to around 300 million Kelvin, igniting fusion reactions between fusion fuel nuclei. In modern weapons fueled by lithium deuteride, the fissioning plutonium spark plug also emits free neutrons which collide with lithium nuclei and supply the tritium component of the thermonuclear fuel.

The secondary's relatively massive tamper (which resists outward expansion as the explosion proceeds) also serves as a thermal barrier to keep the fusion fuel filler from becoming too hot, which would spoil the compression. If made of uranium, enriched uranium or plutonium, the tamper captures fast fusion neutrons and undergoes fission itself, increasing the overall explosive yield. Additionally, in most designs the radiation case is also constructed of a fissile material that undergoes fission driven by fast thermonuclear neutrons. Such bombs are classified as three stage weapons, and most current Teller–Ulam designs are such fission-fusion-fission weapons. Fast fission of the tamper and radiation case is the main contribution to the total yield and is the dominant process that produces radioactive fission product fallout.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon

Starfish Prime

Starfish Prime was a high-altitude nuclear test conducted by the United States, a joint effort of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the Defense Atomic Support Agency. It was launched from Johnston Atoll on July 9, 1962, and was the largest nuclear test conducted in outer space, and one of five conducted by the US in space.

A Thor rocket carrying a W49 thermonuclear warhead (designed by Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory) and a Mk. 2 reentry vehicle was launched from Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, about 900 miles (1,450 km) west-southwest of Hawaii. The explosion took place at an altitude of 250 miles (400 km), above a point 19 miles (31 km) southwest of Johnston Atoll. It had a yield of 1.4 Mt (5.9 PJ). The explosion was about 10° above the horizon as seen from Hawaii, at 11 pm Hawaii time.

Photograph of the Starfish Prime high-altitude nuclear test explosion in course of Operation Dominic on July 9, 1962. Yield 1450 kilotons.
The debris fireball stretching along Earth's magnetic field with air-glow aurora as seen at 3 minutes from a surveillance aircraft.

It's like a little supernova, right down to the coalescing material at the center. If it was about 10²³ more powerful, it would've become a black hole.

Soldiers watch an atomic explosion during Exercise Desert Rock VIII at the Nevada Test Site in 1957

And this one just looks A E S T H E T I C
Chinese Nuclear Test (possibly Test 596)

ｎｕｋｅｗａｖｅ　輝く太陽

Yuli Ban wrote: ↑Mon Aug 23, 2021 6:22 am ｎｕｋｅｗａｖｅ　輝く太陽

𝐀 𝐓 𝐎 𝐌 𝐖 𝐀 𝐕 𝐄　核子波

Seriously impressive visualisation and commentary.

An Unearthly Spectacle
by Alex Wellerstein
October 21, 2021

https://thebulletin.org/2021/10/the-unt ... lear-bomb/

Introduction:

(Bulletin of Atomic Scientists) In the early hours of October 30, 1961, a bomber took off from an airstrip in northern Russia and began its flight through cloudy skies over the frigid Arctic island of Novaya Zemlya. Slung below the plane’s belly was a nuclear bomb the size of a small school bus—the largest and most powerful bomb ever created.

At 11:32 a.m., the bombardier released the weapon. As the bomb fell, an enormous parachute unfurled to slow its descent, giving the pilot time to retreat to a safe distance. A minute or so later, the bomb detonated. A cameraman watching from the island recalled:

• A fire-red ball of enormous size rose and grew. It grew larger and larger, and when it reached enormous size, it went up. Behind it, like a funnel, the whole earth seemed to be drawn in. The sight was fantastic, unreal, and the fireball looked like some other planet. It was an unearthly spectacle![1]

The flash alone lasted more than a minute. The fireball expanded to nearly six miles in diameter—large enough to include the entire urban core of Washington or San Francisco, or all of midtown and downtown Manhattan. Over several minutes it rose and mushroomed into a massive cloud. Within ten minutes, it had reached a height of 42 miles and a diameter of some 60 miles. One civilian witness remarked that it was “as if the Earth was killed.” Decades later, the weapon would be given the name it is most commonly known by today: Tsar Bomba, meaning “emperor bomb.”

Designed to have a maximum explosive yield of 100 million tons (or 100 megatons) of TNT equivalent, the 60,000-pound monster bomb was detonated at only half its strength. Still, at 50 megatons, it was more than 3,300 times as powerful as the atomic bomb that killed at least 70,000 people in Hiroshima, and more than 40 times as powerful as the largest nuclear bomb in the US arsenal today. Its single test represents about one tenth of the total yield of all nuclear weapons ever tested by all nations.

[1] Vladimir Afanasyev, quoted in Vladimir Suvorov, Strana Limoniya (Soviet Russia Press, 1989), 124-125.



A still frame from a once-secret Soviet documentary of the Tsar Bomba nuclear test, released by Rosatom in August 2020. (See the last post on the previous page of this thread for an untranslated You Tube version of this documentary).

Pseudo-nuke, because obviously if it was the real thing, we'd have heard about it by now, but this is pretty much how I imagine a strike in Kyiv to go— some strange flash that's remarked upon, followed by another explosion.

Yuli Ban wrote: ↑Sun Mar 13, 2022 5:21 pm

It is still as relevant as it was when it first released.

Though not as effective as Threads, The Day After is still a fantastic and horrifying film