reply to post by urmomma158
Let me give you the answer. The most powerful nuclear bomb ever built and detonated was manufactured by the Soviet Union in 1961 and was dropped
from a plane in the middle of the night on the large island north of the Soviet Union. The bomb's yield was 57 megatons. That is well over 4,000
times the power of the bomb dropped upon Hiroshima in 1945.
Let me give you an idea of the effect of this bomb. Suppose Russia were to build a duplicate of this bomb and send it to New York, carried by an
ICBM. [Inter-continental ballistic missle.] Suppose the bomb arrived in the middle of the night. The flash of light could be seen from Phoenix,
Arizona. Given the curvature of the earth, this means that the flash would be so brilliant that it would light up the heavens about 400 miles above
above the earth's surface. That is correct; this bomb would be the real deal.
Now suppose that the missle arrived during daylight hours and detonated over Midtown, Manhatten during the work day. Everything within 16
miles in every direction of ground zero would be eliminated. Fires would be burning as far out as 32 miles. New York would disappear, and the
suberbs would be trashed or eliminated.
Suppose you were standing in an open field 65 miles away. The flash of light would overwhelm you even as the heat would make you wince in pain.
After you got back up on your feet, you would begin to see the mushroom cloud rising over New York. You would stand there in complete silence and
solitude watching this fascinating sight. You would watch for more than 5 minutes, thinking that you were gladly spared from the disaster. At just
over 5 minutes, the shock wave would reach you -- at the same moment as the overpowering sound wave. You would be lifted off the ground and tossed
around almost as if by a small tornado, but you would not be badly harmed. The awesome roar of the bomb would consume your whole being as you began
to understand the true magnitude of the bomb and its overall power and effects.
The shock wave would blow out windows in Trenton, New Jersey, and the entire northern half of the state would experience this effect. People
would be knocked off their feet in open fields near Philadelphia. Anyone who looked at the bomb's light from 200 miles away would lose their sight.
Motorists on north-bound lanes of interstate highways coming out of Washington and Baltimore would be blinded. Some would slam on brakes while others
continued onward; there would be many thousands of rear-ends, with many deaths and injuries. Likewise on incoming highways from New England and New
York State. The pilots of about 300 incoming planes would be blinded, and these planes would come down in forests, fields, towns, and the ocean as
far away as 1,000 miles.
As the shock wave petered itself out at about 100 miles, the sound wave would continue onward. Over a period of 2 hours, the great roar of the
bomb would radiate outward all over New England and would be faintly heard in Phoenix, Arizona by the end of 2 hours. It may go even further. The
most powerful blast in human history was the volcano Krakatoa, which could be heard at 3,000 miles distant. Krakatoa was several times more powerful
than the bomb, but its erupting went on for a half hour, whereas the bomb would be a single blast all in a split second, followed by a gradually
dimishing roar. Perhaps that one blast, a single "report," could be heard at 3,000 miles, depending on wind direction and acoustics.
The heat of the bomb would vaporize the center of Manhatten Island, leaving a huge crater into which would flow the waters of the Hudson and East
Rivers. Manhatten would have become two separate islands with a lake of water between them.
You asked, and now you have the answer.