# How much damage can the US nuclear bombs actually do? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 1, 2017, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-can-the-us-nuclear-bombs-actually-do/785671 "2017-05-01T22:38:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Barack\_Obama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/dc4da7/32.png) [@Barack\_Obama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barack_Obama)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-can-the-us-nuclear-bombs-actually-do/785671/1 "2017-05-01T22:38:05Z")
If we droppd our strongest bomb somewhere on the world, how much damage would it do? I’ve heard we could destroy the world 3x over but I find that hard to believe. Do we actually have the capability to destroy all the matter in earth? Aside from the aftermath, how much physical damage could be done with our strongest nuclear bomb? A crator? The size of japan? Anyone got any idea the scale of earth destroyed in the strongest US nuclear bomb? ---
**Author:** ![Okrahoma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90db22/32.png) [@Okrahoma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Okrahoma)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-can-the-us-nuclear-bombs-actually-do/785671/2 "2017-05-01T22:49:11Z")
> **[NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/)** > > NUKEMAP is a mapping mash-up that calculates the effects of the detonation of a nuclear bomb. Try it with the biggest nuclear weapon ever detonated - 50MT (that’s 50,000 KT for the input in the above link). (Biggest US nuclear weapon, AFAIK, was around 25MT). In 2007 US total megatonnage deployed was estimated to be 1,430 MT (at around 10,000 warheads). So each warhead is quite a bit less than 50MT. But combining this data with the above link will give you an idea. The “damage” though is not the immediate, direct, damage. It is the total effect - on health, on weather, on essential infrastructure, on morale. Which will be many, many times more damaging, in the aggregate, than the initial blasts. ---
**Author:** ![Atomic\_Alex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atomic_alex/32/175_2.png) [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-can-the-us-nuclear-bombs-actually-do/785671/3 "2017-05-01T22:53:58Z")
Well Castle Bravo was the largest US nuclear explosion: > **[Castle Bravo: The Largest U.S. Nuclear Explosion](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2014/02/27/castle-bravo-the-largest-u-s-nuclear-explosion/)** > > March 1 marks the 60th anniversary of Castle Bravo, the largest thermonuclear device ever detonated by the United States. Ariana Rowberry writes that although the test advanced thermonuclear weapons design, miscalculations about the yield resulted in... _‘The crater left behind has a diameter of 6,510 feet and a depth of 250 feet.’_ The Russians tested larger devices but they still aren’t _that_ powerful. There is an awful lot of misunderstanding and misinformation about nuclear weapons out there, coincedentally I was just earlier reading a webpage on unusual nuclear weapons delivery methods, an otherwise interesting subject ruined by the snark and lack of knowledge of the author. At one point he states that the US used nuclear torpedo’s which was absolutely insane because the yield was 11 kiloton and maximum range before detonation was eight miles so using them was basically committing suicide…ummmm…no… Actually just found it: [The Five Most Insane Nuclear Delivery Systems](http://jalopnik.com/the-five-most-insane-nuclear-delivery-systems-768180979) The logical flaw in his description of the AIR-2 Genie missile is left as an exercise to the reader. Speaking purely as an interested layperson 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-can-the-us-nuclear-bombs-actually-do/785671/4 "2017-05-01T22:59:43Z")
Here, go play with this - [NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/) Then consider that there are roughly 15,000 nuclear weapons on the planet with US/Russia holding about 14,000. [30 years ago, in the 90s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_nuclear_weapons_stockpiles_and_nuclear_tests_by_country#/media/File:US_and_USSR_nuclear_stockpiles.svg), the US held ~22,000 and the USSR held ~33,000. [Now Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_by_population) has a list of cities over 1,000,000 people and it clocks in at ~500. So given 50,000 weapons and 500 cities you could hit each with 100 1 Mt devices. It’s a bad day all around. If a 1Mt device delivers 3rd degree burns with it’s thermal radiation radius and that winds up being ~450 km[sup]2[/sup] you could extrapolate that to a current coverage of a square with 2500 km on a side. The 50,000 devices would give you a square with sides ~4700 km. ---
**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-can-the-us-nuclear-bombs-actually-do/785671/5 "2017-05-01T23:09:29Z")
> [@Barack\_Obama](#): > > Do we actually have the capability to destroy all the matter in earth? It’s worth noting that bombs (whether nuclear or conventional) don’t _destroy_ matter so much as blast it into tiny little pieces. In any case, the answer is “not even close”. When people talk about nuclear war “destroying the world”, they mean us critters on the surface, not the whole ball of metal, rock, and dirt. Even if we _could_ build a nuclear arsenal great enough to destroy the planet in its entirety, what would we gain from doing so? That goes way beyond Mutually Assured Destruction, unless we’re trying to assure the destruction of the Mole People. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-can-the-us-nuclear-bombs-actually-do/785671/6 "2017-05-01T23:12:59Z")
> [@Barack\_Obama](#): > > If we droppd our strongest bomb somewhere on the world, how much damage would it do? > > I’ve heard we could destroy the world 3x over but I find that hard to believe. Do we actually have the capability to destroy all the matter in earth? No, but that’s not what people mean when they say we can “destroy the Earth” several times over with out nuclear arsenal. We can’t obliterate the planet like the Death Star blowing up Alderaan. What we could potentially do is cover enough of the surface of the Earth with nuclear fire, and the rest with nuclear fallout, that effectively nothing could live on the planet. It’d still be here, physically, but it would be a lifeless rock. Occasionally it’s used to describe a scenario where just most larger life forms (including humans) are killed by nuclear war and the ensuing suite of ecological catastrophes, leaving the world in the hands of cockroaches and slime molds. But either way, the phrase refers to how much of the surface of the earth we could blanket with radioactive fireballs, not how completely we could shatter the entire globe. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-can-the-us-nuclear-bombs-actually-do/785671/7 "2017-05-01T23:14:14Z")
> [@Barack\_Obama](#): > > Do we actually have the capability to destroy all the matter in earth? Absolutely not; we wouldn’t destroy even 0.00001% of it. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-can-the-us-nuclear-bombs-actually-do/785671/8 "2017-05-01T23:20:49Z")
> [@Atomic\_Alex](#): > > Actually just found it: [The Five Most Insane Nuclear Delivery Systems](http://jalopnik.com/the-five-most-insane-nuclear-delivery-systems-768180979) > > The logical flaw in his description of the AIR-2 Genie missile is left as an exercise to the reader. Actually we discussed something similar in [another thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=824631) just recently and as long as the device detonated 6 miles straight up, you’d be fine. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-can-the-us-nuclear-bombs-actually-do/785671/9 "2017-05-01T23:38:42Z")
I don’t think we could wipe out every human being, even if we tried, but we could probably kill a significant minority in fairly short order, and make life pretty brutal and miserable for those we didn’t kill. Humans are pretty good at adapting. Some would survive. ---
**Author:** ![Atomic\_Alex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atomic_alex/32/175_2.png) [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-can-the-us-nuclear-bombs-actually-do/785671/10 "2017-05-01T23:43:36Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > Actually we discussed something similar in [another thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=824631) just recently and as long as the device detonated 6 miles straight up, you’d be fine. I had a look at the ‘Operation Plumbbob’ wikipedia entry and it states the weapon was detonated at ‘between 18,500 and 20,000 feet altitude’ _(3.5 to 3.8 miles)_. I assume there was quite a bit of margin for error regarding the observers on the ground which makes me wonder how low could it have safely been detonated? Anyway the Jalopnik article is still full of it 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Weisshund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ba8739/32.png) [@Weisshund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weisshund)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-can-the-us-nuclear-bombs-actually-do/785671/11 "2017-05-02T00:28:46Z")
> [@Barack\_Obama](#): > > If we droppd our strongest bomb somewhere on the world, how much damage would it do? > > I’ve heard we could destroy the world 3x over but I find that hard to believe. Do we actually have the capability to destroy all the matter in earth? Aside from the aftermath, how much physical damage could be done with our strongest nuclear bomb? A crator? The size of japan? Anyone got any idea the scale of earth destroyed in the strongest US nuclear bomb? If you play with nukemap, you will see that your best bang for the buck it to use a bunch of small nukes, as they go bigger the returns diminish greatly, just the cost and delivery issues increase. A 100MT device does a hell of a lot less damage than lobbing 10 10MT devices. You can not destroy the earth, take out humanity perhaps, and a lot of innocent non human fluffy things too, but you will not kill all life, many things will live. Roaches will definitely live ☹ Also, you can not destroy the matter in the earth, not with a nuclear bomb. Even the bombs matter is not destroyed i do not think, not what i would consider destroyed, just broken down into smaller parts, if i break an atom, it does not go away per say, i just have these now disassociated sub atomic pieces. Well except fusion actually mashes stuff together into a new heavier thing, but that’s just matter changing form, it still exists. I assume by destroy you mean make no longer existing in any form? Crater is going to be underwhelming If you want to kill people in large quantities, you don’t lay your bomb on the ground (ala Castle Bravo). So you wont get as good a crater, and Japan is well over 400 miles long, which would be a massive crater, and a massive waste of destructive power. You better get an asteroid. ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Scrappy\_Hero\_Pup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ea5d25/32.png) [@Happy\_Scrappy\_Hero\_Pup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Scrappy_Hero_Pup)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-can-the-us-nuclear-bombs-actually-do/785671/12 "2017-05-02T01:13:48Z")
> [@tim314](#): > > Even if we _could_ build a nuclear arsenal great enough to destroy the planet in its entirety, what would we gain from doing so? That goes way beyond Mutually Assured Destruction, unless we’re trying to assure the destruction of the Mole People. You gotta watch out for those fuckin’ Mole People, man. Don’t sleep on 'em. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-can-the-us-nuclear-bombs-actually-do/785671/13 "2017-05-02T01:42:11Z")
> [@Weisshund](#): > > Even the bombs matter is not destroyed i do not think, not what i would consider destroyed, just broken down into smaller parts, if i break an atom, it does not go away per say, i just have these now disassociated sub atomic pieces. _Part_ of the matter of the bomb is “destroyed” (i.e. converted directly into energy), but it’s less than 1% of the core of the weapon. That’s also true for any release of energy, so put together enough TNT as powerful as a nuke and it will have the same _raw_ amount of “missing” matter at the end, just that it will be a lot less of a percentage because the conventional bomb would be so big. ---
**Author:** ![Barack\_Obama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/dc4da7/32.png) [@Barack\_Obama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barack_Obama)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-can-the-us-nuclear-bombs-actually-do/785671/14 "2017-05-02T01:48:42Z")
> [@tim314](#): > > It’s worth noting that bombs (whether nuclear or conventional) don’t _destroy_ matter so much as blast it into tiny little pieces. In any case, the answer is “not even close”. When people talk about nuclear war “destroying the world”, they mean us critters on the surface, not the whole ball of metal, rock, and dirt. > > Even if we _could_ build a nuclear arsenal great enough to destroy the planet in its entirety, what would we gain from doing so? That goes way beyond Mutually Assured Destruction, unless we’re trying to assure the destruction of the Mole People. So we can’t destroy matter? Totally different topic but I thought we destroyed matter, not just move it around. Edit: post above me answered what I was wondering. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-can-the-us-nuclear-bombs-actually-do/785671/15 "2017-05-02T01:50:46Z")
We might, if we really made it a priority, be able to kill the majority of the people on the planet. It’s a bit easier if you count the people who die in the aftermath (not just fallout, but things like starvation from food that would be transported over now-destroyed roads, and the like). To even get that, we’d have to make some rather peculiar targeting decisions (why would either the US or Russia bother to bomb India, for instance?), but we could do it. Absolutely all humans? Not a chance. There are too many of us, we’re too spread out across the planet, and we’re too adaptable. And all life, period? Fuhgettaboutit. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-can-the-us-nuclear-bombs-actually-do/785671/16 "2017-05-02T02:51:03Z")
The largest weapons in the US nuclear arsenal are the 475 kt W87 and W88 warheads, used on the Minuteman III ICBMs and Trident-II SLBMs. If you were to detonate one at ground level at the Washington Monument in Washington DC, the fireball would reach to the White House on one side, the Jefferson Memorial on another side, about 3/4 the way down the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, and to about 9th street toward the Capitol. The lethal radiation radius (500 REM) stretches to about the Capitol. The 5 psi overpressure radius stretches past the Pentagon, all of Ft. McNair, and as far as the Tom of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington. The 3rd degree radius extends considerably farther - 7.73 km past ground zero- as far out as the DC/Maryland border in the southeast. So there you go… ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-can-the-us-nuclear-bombs-actually-do/785671/17 "2017-05-02T03:14:03Z")
Destroying the Earth is [actually quite difficult](https://qntm.org/destroy). The best we could do would be to destroy the ecosphere, and even that wold be a stretch. Destroying civilization is likely the best we could realistically accomplish. ---
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-can-the-us-nuclear-bombs-actually-do/785671/18 "2017-05-02T03:25:31Z")
> [@bump](#): > > The largest weapons in the US nuclear arsenal are the 475 kt W87 and W88 warheads, used on the Minuteman III ICBMs and Trident-II SLBMs. The B83 has a 1.2Mt yield. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-can-the-us-nuclear-bombs-actually-do/785671/19 "2017-05-02T03:48:21Z")
Geez, Barack. Didn’t they brief you on this stuff? ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-can-the-us-nuclear-bombs-actually-do/785671/20 "2017-05-02T05:05:23Z")
> [@Barack\_Obama](#): > > So we can’t destroy matter? Totally different topic but I thought we destroyed matter, not just move it around. > > Edit: post above me answered what I was wondering. First Law of Thermodynamics: matter and energy cannot destroyed, they can only be converted from one to the other. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-damage-can-the-us-nuclear-bombs-actually-do/785671.md?page=2)