There are two main types of nuclear weapons. The fission bomb, like the ones we dropped on Japan. These have a yeild of a best just a few megatons. These are the easiest to build, and are probably what Iran is working twoard.
The type advanced countries have are fusion bombs, hydrogen bombs. They use a fission bomb to initiate fusion of hydrogen atoms, and have a much greater yeild, typically 5 - 40 megatons for modern strategic weapons, but some tactical weapons may yeild less than a megaton. One of our land based ICBM's may have 10 20 megaton warheads that can strike different targets.
There are also many things you can do with HOW a nuke blows up, as with the so called, "neutron bomb". This is a bomb that has less blast, but produces massive release of neutrons which kill living things. So, with this variant, the RE is left pretty much intact, but all the people and animals are killed. I like to think of it as a very "Republican" bomb!
Another thing you can do is make an especially "dirty" nuclear bomb, that produces LOTS of radioactive elements with extremely long half-lifes, so where ever it is set off will be uninhabitable for maybe 10,000 years! Bombs can also be made very "clean" radioactively. Lots of nastiness available.
Certainly designs for nukes have improved greatly. The height of "yeild" was probably achieved by the Soviets in the worst of the cold war, with a nuke yeild of 120 megatons (if I remember correctly) - but actually this was just an undeliverable experiment exploded to intimidate the west. It was so large, it was undeliverable practically, and had to be built where it was detonated.
I know this stuff because, being born at the beginning of the cold war, I was sure that I would die in a nuclear holocaust. I've paid attention to every bit of information about nukes. They are truly horrible weapons, and we should all work to eliminate them. So far, they have never been used because NO ONE wins a nuclear war. |
