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Proliferation Press

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Happy Birthday Hydrogen Bomb!!!
A Short Note on Today's Earthshaking Anniversary

s8603256_4662Today marks the fifty-fourth anniversary of the thermonuclear (or hydrogen) bomb. While it wasn't deployable until 1954, the U.S. exploded the first hydrogen bomb in 1952 at Enewetak in the U.S. Marshall Islands.

It is hard to believe that these weapons dwarf their atomic counterparts that devastated Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

A typical fission-based atomic bomb packs a punch of 500,000 tons of TNT. But a Soviet hydrogen bomb test pushed this yield through the roof: reaching 50 million tons of TNT.

So roughly, 1 hydrogen bomb = 100 atomic bombs

Numbers like that can sure blow you away!

And what about the number of countries with these weapons?

So far the number stands at six or seven: the United States, Russia, Great Britain, France, China and (maybe) India and Israel.

PBS.org offers an extremely well-designed and informative web-site on the U.S.-Soviet Hydrogen bomb race.

From the Cold War to today's North Korean and Iranian crises, one finds the hydrogen bomb one of those gifts that just keeps on giving.

So Happy Birthday Hydrogen Bomb! Sorry if I don't make the party--I know it has been on hold for a while now.

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