First H-bomb explodedIn 1952, in the first United States test of a thermonuclear device, a hydrogen bomb dubbed “Mike,” was exploded at Eniwetok Atholl in the Pacific, 3,000 miles west of Hawaii. It exploded with a blinding white fireball more than three miles across, completely obliterating Elugelab, leaving an underwater crater a 6240-ft wide and 164-ft deep in the atoll where an island had once been. Eighty million tons of soil were lifted into the air by the blast. The yield was several million tons of TNT. It was a thousand times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, a blast greater than all the explosives used during WW II. The mushroom cloud rose to top out in 5 mins at 135,000 ft (the top of the stratosphere) and eventually spread to 1000 miles wide. Within nine months, Russia tested their own H-bomb. |
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