What is the radius of an atomic bomb detonation?

Question

How far out does the shock-wave reach?

Answer 1

anywhere from several hundred yards for a small tactical atomic artillery shell to 20+ miles for a strategic thermonuclear weapon.

Answer 2

Well, some theories state that once a wave of any kind is created, it emanates to infinity, but at an ever diminishing strength....( chaos theories ect...) But if I am not mistaken, the soviets at one point in the cold war claimed to have the ability to build and deliver a " 300 MEGATON THERMONUCLEAR, (H-Bomb) DEVICE !!! "
Explosive Blast
Much of the damage inflicted by a nuclear explosion is the result of its shock wave. There are two components to a blast's shock wave. First, there's the wall of pressure that expands outward from the explosion. It is this pressure, measured in psi (pounds per square inch), that blows away the walls from buildings. A typical two-story house subjected to 5 psi would feel the force of 180 tons on the side facing the blast. (Download the Quicktime movie entitled house to see an example of a building subjected to this type of pressure.) Additionally, the blast creates a 160 mile-an-hour wind. And that's only at 5 psi. The wind speed following a 20 psi blast would be 500 mph!

In July of 1945, President Harry Truman met Joseph Stalin at Potsdam, Germany. "I casually mentioned to Stalin that we had a new weapon of unusual destructive force," Truman wrote later. "The Russian Premier showed no special interest." But Stalin was already aware of the atomic bomb thanks to Soviet spies lodged at the heart of the American bomb project in Los Alamos. Soviet scientists were scrambling to catch up.

The new weapon was revealed to the world a few weeks later when a single atomic bomb destroyed the city of Hiroshima. Stalin's reaction was immediate. "Speed things up," he reportedly ordered.

As an unpredictable Cold War settled in, several U.S. scientists argued for an all-out effort to build an even more powerful weapon: a hydrogen bomb. Edward Teller, an émigré physicist, pushed for a program to build what he called "the Super"-- a hydrogen fusion bomb. "If the Russians demonstrate a Super before we possess one," said Teller, "our situation will be hopeless."

Andrei Sakharov, a brilliant young Russian physicist, had also been given the task of designing a fusion bomb for the Soviet Union. Thanks to the Soviet spy Klaus Fuchs, Sakharov was familiar with Teller's design, but he soon decided on a different approach.

By 1952 the Super was ready for its first test. The fireball of the first H-bomb grew to a diameter of three miles and vaporized an entire island in the Pacific atoll of Eniwetok. The H-bomb's yield was ten megatons, a thousand times greater than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Eighteen months later, Sakharov and his team exploded the first Soviet H-bomb. The nuclear arms race had begun.

Answer 3

The shockwave will go on and on, it will circle the globe a couple of times. The radius of damage is determined by how fat above the ground the bomb was detonated. The further up, the less surface damage.

Answer 4

As per news media we were told 45miles, and the shock waves are really sound waves that can be picked up seismically all around the globe.
The actual radius was scientifically measured during a detonation by a scientist expert in measurement and the exact results were...........(well he was brave).

Answer 5

50 miles

Answer 6

depends on the power of the bomb.

Answer 7

Depends on the size.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions

Answer 8

depends on the size and type of bomb


and also if burst in the air or on the ground