Comments
breckenridgeback t1_ja6ea4q wrote
Or, more simply put: the world is very, very big.
Xyrus2000 t1_ja6fai8 wrote
There was a fairly recent study on the impact of nuclear weapons on the ozone layer. It turns out it only takes a remarkably small number of nuclear detonations to do serious damage to the ozone layer.
So strictly from an explosive force impact nuclear weapons would not be able to destroy everything on the planet, but fire a few here and there across the world and you wouldn't need to. The UV radiation from the sun would effectively wind up sterilizing the surface of the planet.
Brover_Cleveland t1_ja6h9aj wrote
The Tsar Bomba was also more of a pissing contest winner than anything. The Soviets wanted to have a bigger bomb than the US so they built something completely impractical. It was way too heavy and they had to drop its power so the pilot actually had a chance of escaping the blast after he dropped it.
dungisdangit t1_ja6cfmg wrote
Earth big rock. Puny human still make just small poof with big boom. Human think human big but human small
klaagmeaan t1_ja6jtwo wrote
Human think he very special. But human just big ape.
GeekyTricky t1_ja6attn wrote
As far as the blast radius, not really. The earthquakes, tsunamis and radioactive fallout will affect the rest of the world. But living in a 3D world means that a 1000x stronger bomb only reaches 10x as far.
And that's without counting on mountains, air resistance, and seas blocking the blast and radiation.
However there are other ways to end the world.
The meteor that killed the dinosaurs had an impact strong enough to create the Gulf of Mexico, yet its worst effect was lifting up enough dust to cover the sky for months.
Sargatanus t1_ja6gi2k wrote
The Chicxulub crater is 110 miles (180 kilometers) across. That’s hardly the entire Gulf of Mexico.
phiwong t1_ja6dlj6 wrote
We tend to underestimate the size of the world and overestimate (due to fear etc) the capability of humans.
The atomic bombs dropped on Japan were powerful FOR THEIR TIME. But it didn't even destroy a single (not very large) city. It certainly did not kill the entire population of that city, not even close. The immediate blast radius was something in the region of a few miles.
Even a bomb a thousand times more powerful (today) would not be capable of destroying a large city. Things work exponentially so we could perhaps get a blast radius of ten miles (depending on how it was exploded) with some of the larger hydrogen bombs of today.
The earth has a circumference of 25,000 miles (give or take). As a point of reference, a major volcanic eruption or earthquake releases far more energy than even our largest bombs.
These weapons are massively destructive but are no where close to where a few of them could wipe out a small region.
Fred2718 t1_ja6h87t wrote
Hurricanes, for instance, are estimated (by U.S. NOAA) to release energy roughly equivalent to a 10 megaton nuke going off. EVERY 20 MINUTES. FOR DAYS AND DAYS.
Fred2718 t1_ja6edvc wrote
Bombs dropped on Japan were in the 10-20 kiloton range. Very Big cold war era H-bombs were up.to about 20 megatons, so about 1000 X. Contemporary missile carried MIRV bombs run around 150 kilotons, about 10 X. Militarily speaking, more, smaller bombs are more useful.than a few big bombs.
In about 1975 I saw an estimate that about 400 medium size bombs would be required to completely destroy everything and everyone in the Soviet Union. (This estimate only considered "prompt" deaths and destruction. No consideration was given to long-term radioactive damage or starvation. Yes, it was a fun time to grow up, why do you ask?)
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Number80085 t1_ja6e0bp wrote
There is something called the inverse square law. Basically, at least for rhe radiation and the energy, double the distance = one quarter the dose. So the effects even a very large explosion disipate very quickly with distance.
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attorneyatslaw t1_ja6h0vs wrote
The nuclear weapons that the US and Russia would use in a nuclear exchange are not 100s or 1000s of times the size of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombs so the premise of this question is off to begin with. More are 20-50 times bigger.
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JerseyWiseguy t1_ja6betl wrote
The atomic bombs dropped on Japan were powerful, but they didn't even completely destroy the cities. Even people fairly close to the center of the blasts managed to survive (though some died shortly thereafter). Thus, a nuclear blast 100 times as powerful is likely to virtually destroy a large city, like New York, but it certainly wouldn't destroy the entire state of New York, let alone the world.
The largest nuclear bomb ever used, the Russian Tsar Bomba, was about 3,800 times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima. Yet, the shockwave only managed to damage some buildings about 100 miles away--far from enough to destroy the entire world.