What If We Detonated All Nuclear Bombs at Once?

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Many of our viewers have asked us a very serious question
What if we made a big pile of bombs and exploded every nuclear weapon in the world all at once?
Strangely enough, we couldn't find a good source to answer this question to our satisfaction
So, we gathered together a few scientists to calculate what would happen and find an answer to this
extremely important scientific problem once and for all
currently there are
15,000 nuclear weapons on earth the US and Russia both have around 7,000
Well, France China the UK Pakistan India, Israel and North Korea own around 1,000 between them
But how much destructive power is this? Really? Let's try to put these numbers into perspective
On earth there are about
4,500 cities or urban areas with at least 100,000 inhabitants
Some are bigger than others. So we'll assume that on average. We need three nuclear bombs to completely wipe out one city
This means we could destroy every single city on planet earth without nuclear
arsenal killing more than three billion people roughly half of humanity in an instant and we'd still have
1,500 nuclear weapons left now
That's what an expert would call overkill
So we can say with confidence that we had a lot of nuclear weapons and they can do a lot of damage
But what if we make a huge pile of all 15,000 bombs and pull the trigger?
Let's drop our nuclear pile in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. Just a show nature. Who's boss
our warheads piled haphazardly fit into a small warehouse a
Typical US warhead has the power of two hundred thousand tons of TNT
So fifteen thousand warheads would be the equivalent of three billion tons of TNT for scale
This is enough to rebuild the whole island of Manhattan with every building and skyscraper using stacks of TNT
The closest thing we can compare to the energy gathered here is a volcano
The deadliest volcanic eruptions in recorded history took place in 1883 on the island of Krakatoa
The eruption was so powerful that 70% of the island and the surrounding archipelago was destroyed killing tens of thousands of people
Its effects were felt around the world four days after the event
Our nuclear pile contains 15 times the energy of the Krakatoa volcanic eruption. So let's finally push the button
three
two
one
in a second a fireball 50 kilometers across
Vaporizes everything in its way and creates a blast wave that flattens 3000 square kilometres of forest
Every living thing within 250 kilometers will start to burn
The explosion will be heard literally around the world as the pressure wave circles the earth tens of times over the next few weeks
Millions of tons of incinerated material are catapulted into the atmosphere
The mushroom cloud reaches the outer reaches of the stratosphere pushing up against space itself
after things have calmed down a small crater about ten kilometers across is left in the center of the worst world fires the planets has
Seen in millenia spreading throughout South America burning down forests and cities alike. And now the unpleasant part begins
extremely radioactive material will kill living things very quickly and a large area several kilometers around the crater is now
Uninhabitable as is everywhere for hundreds of kilometers downwind
Much of the fallout is carried high into the atmosphere by the mushroom cloud and carried around the planet
The amount of radioactive material in the environment doubles worldwide which still isn't civilization ending
but we may see more cancer for a while a
Portion of the particles will flow to the edge of space for years and cause a nuclear winter that could lower global
temperatures by a few degrees for a few years
This explosion was pretty bad. If you're in South America and especially Brazil the Amazon rainforest is pretty much history
Which is not great, but human life will go on
Okay, but what if we explode more nuclear weapons?
Let's suppose humanity decided to mine every bit of uranium on earth and build as many nuclear bombs as possible
at current usage
It's estimated that there are around 35 million tons of uranium in Earth's crust
Enough to power human civilization for over 2,000 years or to build millions of nuclear warheads
For the sake of argument. Let's say we create a pile with the yield of 10 billion Hiroshima bombs
Which makes up a cube three kilometers high that contains roughly the energy of the asteroid impact that ended the age of the dinosaurs
65 million years ago
Except it's also nuclear
three to
one
How pile explodes in a fireball?
Stretching so high into the sky that it's visible from half of South America with so much power that the ground just splashes like water
forming a crater 100 kilometers across
bedrock on the scale of whole mountain ranges is
Vaporized in an instant while thousands of tons of material is catapulted away with such speed that it's ejected into space
Some leaves earth forever while most of it comes raining down as hot burning debris that heats up the atmosphere to oven-like
Temperatures killing most big animals and causing fire storms all over the world
The Earth's crust rings like a bell struck by global earthquakes stronger than anything in recorded history
Decimating cities around the world while hurricane-force winds flatten every single tree in South America and wildfires consume the continents
The abundance of hydrocarbons in the Amazon burn to form ash are cast into the atmosphere
Darting the sky and keeping sunlight from reaching the surface dropping temperatures to near freezing worldwide
The ensuing global winter may last for decades and results in the extinction of every large animal species humans included
We could also mention that every corner of the planet is covered with radioactive fallout, but at this point it doesn't matter that much anymore
This is humanity's extinction event. The
Astronauts aboard the international space station get to enjoy a great view for a while
But it's not unlikely that the spray of rocks blast into orbit will destroy the station
Those lucky enough to be in bunkers or in submarines deep below the ocean surface may survive the longest
Before they exhaust their food supplies and have to venture out for more
They'll find the world a charred freezing radioactive wasteland
The planet itself doesn't care at all after just a few million years the wounds of the explosions have healed and life is thriving
arguably even more so than when humans were around if
Intelligent life emerges again. It might be able to work out what happened when they study geology
They'll find a bizarre and very thin layer of rock covering the entire world
Enriched in radioactive elements like uranium and the other nasty things it decay sooo mixed with rare earth metals and plastics that humans used
They would probably be very very confused
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What If We Detonated All Nuclear Bombs at Once?

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