Have you ever wondered what a nuclear bomb exploding would sound like firsthand?

I have, but truthfully, I never wish to receive the answer to this curiosity of mine, as the cost of such a spectacular experience will probably be my life.

Throughout history humans have always been scared of the end of times in one form or another, they’ve called it armageddon, the judgment day, by various other names at different times in different cultures, assuming such powers in the hand of a being or beings beyond our mortal realm. However, it hasn’t been that long since we have gotten our hands on a power that might very well become the reason for our doom.

Getting straight to the main of this discussion, which is the image below and what it represents. This is the total number of nuclear warheads, that every country in the world has had throughout the years, along with the total number of these warheads in the world combined.

This would be a great visualization of what a nuclear stockpile if actually stockpiled, would look like. Given the number of total warheads in the world at the peak of the curve, the total figure reaching a little over 70,000, one could easily let their imagination run wild, building a small nuclear hill.

The energy yield of a nuclear explosion is measured in tons of TNT. The yield of an average nuclear warhead can be anywhere from a few Kilotons to several Megatons. To bring this into perspective, the estimated yield of the 2020 Beirut explosion was between 0.3 to 1.1 Kilotons, the ‘Little Boy’ dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of around 15 Kilotons, and the following ‘Fat Man’ dropped on Nagasaki had an energy output of around 21 Kilotons.

Such yields were enough to wipe out a population of over a hundred thousand (combined) instantly, and another hundred thousand in the aftermath which followed. Not only were these many lives wiped out in an instant and reduced to stats, but that land which was the epicenter of these explosions was left unhabitable for decades.

The scary thing is that these bombs would come on the very lower ends of what the modern nuclear warheads are capable of.

Tsar bomba, the largest nuclear warhead ever detonated had a yield of over 50 Megatons, by rough estimates the explosion was considered to be 1500 times more powerful than both Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. These are just the immediate destructive capabilities of these weapons, we haven’t even discussed the nuclear fallout that follows.

One could easily imagine what 70,000 of such monstrosities are capable of. Even though this number has been reduced significantly. Not that a number of over 12,000 of these things still existing would give one any sense of relief.

References

Max Roser, Bastian Herre and Joe Hasell (2013) - “Nuclear Weapons” Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: ‘https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-weapons’ [Online Resource]

Liam Toney, David Fee, Brandon Schmandt, Jordan W. Bishop, Examining Infrasound Propagation at High Spatial Resolution Using a Nodal Seismic Array, Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 10.1029/2023JB027314, 128, 11, (2023).