Estimated total yield of tests up to 1980: 510 megatons (418 atmospheric) [2]
It's hard to find good numbers on the total yield of all nuclear tests to date, but the ballpark figure is 10% of current stockpiles. This is actually somewhat comforting. We've all heard scary stories saying that we have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world dozens of times over, but the truth is we've detonated 10% of the total current stockpile in the course of weapon testing with barely any noticeable impact. Yes, it will indeed suck much worse if nuclear bombs ever target populated areas, but the planet will likely recover and live on.
[1] http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/...
[2]http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/...
That question aside, the destructive power of a explosive does not scale linearly with yield [1]
> This relation arises from the fact that the destructive power of a bomb does not vary linearly with the yield. The volume the weapon's energy spreads into varies as the cube of the distance, but the destroyed area varies at the square of the distance.
The destructive effects of one big 5000-megaton bomb is very different than 10,000 half-megaton bombs. Or even worse, 40,000 125-kiloton bombs.
If a non-fissioning tamper is used then a relatively clean explosion happens (e.g. the Tsar-bomb) - if depleted or enriched uranium is used as a tamper then weapons will be much messier. Indeed some weapon designs explicitly came in "clean" and "messy" versions (the latter often with greater yield) e.g. the US B53:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B53_nuclear_bomb
Also there is an option of deliberately including a material in a bomb design that will be activated by the neutron flux from the secondary (e.g. cobalt or gold)- so called "salted bombs":
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/21/science/seismic-mystery-in...
> LATE on the evening of May 28, 1993, something shattered the calm of the Australian outback and radiated shock waves outward across hundreds of miles of scrub and desert. Around the same time, truck drivers crossing the region and gold prospectors camping nearby saw the dark sky illuminated by bright flashes, and they and other people heard the distant rumble of loud explosions.
[...]
> The evidence was ominous. Investigators discovered that the cult, Aum Shinrikyo, had tried to buy Russian nuclear warheads and had set up an advanced laboratory on a 500,000-acre ranch in Australia near the puzzling upheaval. At the ranch, investigators found that the sect had been mining uranium, a main material for making atomic bombs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_Test_Ban_Treaty
EDIT: China.
Wikipedia states that the most recent atmospheric test detonation was carried out by China in 1980, although the reference link appears to be broken:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests#...
“That these bombs are man’s death sentence. We don’t seem to be able to learn that.”
These must have been incredibly scary times. The first time in our modern history that we came close to our own extinction.
Improved diagnostics and improvements in fighting other diseases will lead to higher (diagnosed) cancer rates.
If you live long enough, you will get cancer. Every time a cell copies its DNA, you roll the dice to see if it becomes cancerous. You can do things to bias the dice toward or away from cancer, but it's still always a roll of the dice. As the number of dice rolls approaches infinity, the probability of them coming up snake eyes at least once approaches certainty.
However, that much radioactivity cannot be good. I understand that those were mostly detonated in safe environnements and in safe ways, but that is a lot of detonations right there. I'm not sure I can trust that all of those denotations released nothing bad in the atmosphere.
I would be curious to overlay a map of cancer rates over a map of detonations, taking wind into account.
Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety
Please flag this crap.
