During the past decades, the world has witnessed many devastating consequences of the use of nuclear bombs and atomic explosions, the most famous of which are the infamous Hiroshima and Nagasaki attack, and the Chernobyl accident.
Today, nuclear tests, explosions, and accidents have become an inevitable part of our lives. For this reason, we have collected several interesting facts about nuclear explosions.
9-Interesting and shocking facts about nuclear bombs
1-The Tsar Bomb, the most powerful nuclear bomb ever
2-villa accident
The United States launched a number of "Villa" satellites to detect nuclear explosions in space and the atmosphere.
On October 22, 1979, one of these satellites detected an unknown nuclear explosion in the Indian Ocean in the form of a flash of light.
At first, researchers doubted the possibility of conducting a nuclear test and considered it just a technical glitch. However, three years after the explosion, political considerations and additional evidence led to further examination of the nuclear test theory. Renowned scientists concluded that the flash was most likely a nuclear explosion.
To this day, there are disputes about the identity of the bombers and the nature of the event. This mysterious event is called the "Villa Incident".
3-Kyshtym nuclear disaster
The disaster occurred on September 29, 1957 at the plutonium processing plant in the Chelyabinsk Territory, near Kishtim.
The identified cause of the accident was the failure to repair a malfunctioning cooling system in a buried tank. The tank contained reactor effluent and exploded.
After the accident was revealed, the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale rated the accident at level 6. Other nuclear disasters such as Chernobyl had the highest severity rating at level 7.
The Western press reported the incident a year later, but the stories did not catch the public's attention. Even after the incident became widely known, it was not until 1989 that the Soviet Union admitted its wrongdoing.
The locals who live there have suffered from an increased incidence of cancer, malformations and other major health problems.
4-Orion Nuclear Warship - The most terrifying nuclear weapon
In the 1960s, the US Air Force planned to develop a 4,000-ton nuclear space battleship called the battleship Orion.
Nuclear explosions would have propelled it, and the warship housed 500 nuclear missiles. The designers also planned the battleship to be dominant in an interplanetary war. They have equipped it with enough bombs to destroy an entire planet.
Everything was possible with modern technology, but President Kennedy freaked out about the idea and scrapped it.
5-Nuclear bombs that almost wiped out North Carolina!
In 1961, a US airliner dropped two nuclear bombs on North Carolina after they crashed in mid-air.
The destructive power of the two bombs was 250 times greater than that dropped on Hiroshima. The blast could create a 100% kill zone in an 8.5 mile radius, but fortunately, the bombs didn't explode!
6-Moon bombing plan!
When the Cold War was at its height, the US Air Force developed a top-secret nuclear explosion plan.
They were going to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon to show their military might. It was expected that the explosion would create a mushroom cloud so large that it could be seen from the ground.
The top-secret project name was A119 and was part of the "Study of Research Voyages to the Moon".
7-The suicide mission to reduce the power of the Chernobyl reactor explosion
During the Chernobyl nuclear accident, three volunteered in 1986 on a suicide mission. A very important task was to open the pond valves at the Chernobyl plant.
The task of these heroes was to dive into a pool of radioactive waste to close the valves, and the task was successfully accomplished.
If they had not succeeded, the explosion would have wiped out half the population of Europe. Furthermore, the place would have been uninhabitable for the next 500,000 years.
Alex Anadarko, a mechanical engineer, and Valery Bespalov were alive and working in the same industry until 2015.
Unfortunately, the third member of the crew, supervisor Boris Baranov, died of a heart attack in 2005.
8-The Ariel-1 satellite was destroyed by an American nuclear bomb
Britain designed and built the platforms for Ariel-1, and NASA helped launch it into orbit.
The purpose of launching this particular satellite was to study the ionosphere and its relationship to the sun. It was launched by NASA on April 26, 1962 and began effectively serving its target by July of the same year.
As part of Project Fish Bowl, the United States tested the detonation of a 1.4 megaton nuclear weapon called the Starfish-Prime.
A wave of radiation destroyed Ariel-1 by causing complete malfunction. Besides this satellite, a third of the other satellites in low Earth orbit at that time also stopped working.
9-The atomic lake formed by the atomic bomb
A 140-kiloton nuclear device exploded in a 584-foot-deep hole in the middle of the dry Chagan River at the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan.
The eruption caused a crater to fill the river during the period of high flow. The result of the experiment was a crater 1,312 feet wide and 328 feet deep, with a lip height of 65 to 125 feet.
The Soviets were pleased with the results. Moreover, local livestock feed in the radioactively contaminated atomic lake.
The Soviets ran politics until 1989, and the Chagan test was the first and largest of the other nuclear explosions.