How many megatons

[myron21]

After watching a documentary on Hiroshima, I was just wondering what are the destructive capabilities of the largest Nuclear weapons in the world today, i.e whats is the largest area that could be completely and uttterly destroyed at the epicentre making it absolutely impossible to survive, and also in theory what is the largest capacity weapon that could be made?

[kempie]

Hiroshima 6 August 1945 8:15 AM
Little Boy bomb, dropped by the U.S. B-29 Enola Gay, explodes with the force of 15 kilotons of explosive.

Nagasaki 9 August 1945 11:02 AM
Fatman bomb, dropped by the U.S. B-29 Bock's Car, explodes with the force of 22 kilotons of explosive.

The highest yield US deployed bomb at 25 megatons was the Mk. 41. (1960)

The highest yield USSR tested bomb at 50 megatons was the "Tsar Bomba". This design could theoretically produce a yield of 150 megatons. (1961)

The nuclear powers moved away from single large bombs to delivery systems carrying multiple smaller warheads.

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/index.html

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/multimeg.html

[myron21]

Thanks for that Kempie

[Dacetine]

The maximum size of an A-bomb (fission bomb) is limited by how fast you can bring together enough fissile material to overcome the critical threshold and make it explode in a chain-reaction. If you do this too slowly the bomb will blow itself apart but not explode violently. Little Boy achieved this by firing two halves of a uranium bomb together using howitzers. Fat Man used an implosion caused by conventional explosives to increase the density of plutonium beyond this threshold.

There is no theoretical limit to size of an H-bomb (apart from constraints on obtaining raw materials). In effect the sun is a perpetual H-bomb sustained by gravity, so I guess the maximum H-bomb is the size of the biggest possible stars... around 100-200 solar masses!

[chris-n-vick]

found this old but nevertheless informative film clip of one of the original atomic bomb tests using what is probably described in the post above mine (a howitzer??)

http://media.ebaumsworld.com/index.php?e=atomicbomb.wmv

[chris-n-vick]

i meant to describe "informative" as......

showing what even a small nuclear blast is capable of.