Sinister Security: Nuclear Bombs

Here's What Could Happen If North Korea Sets Off a Huge Nuclear Explosion in the Pacific Ocean

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North Korea may be planning one of the most powerful nuclear explosions in history. Ring Yong Ho, the foreign minister of the isolated nation, reportedly told journalists that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is considering such a test blast.

“It could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific,” Ri told reporters at the United Nations in New York on Thursday, according to astory by South Korea's Yonhap News Agency. “We have no idea about what actions could be taken as it will be ordered by leader Kim Jong Un."

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The suggestion came in response to bellicose rhetoric exchanged between US President Donald Trump and Jong Un. In a speech before the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump called Jong Un a suicidal “rocket man” and threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea if the US is “forced to defend itself or its allies”.

Jong Un allegedly responded with a written statement, in which he called Trump a “mentally deranged US dotard” and said that “a frightened dog barks louder”. Many experts have denounced Trump's speech, suggesting his words could provoke Jong Un to take dramatic action.

“Trump is basically creating audience costs for Kim to back down,” Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, told Vox. “If you dare Kim, it creates pressure for him to respond with his own provocation.”

North Korea has set off several powerful nuclear test blasts in recent years, but they all occurred deep inside a mountain. A nuclear explosion in the air, on the ground, underwater, or in space has not happened in decades. If the nation sets off an above-ground nuclear explosion - and the most powerful ever detonated in the Pacific - the Cold War's rich history of test blasts suggests what might happen.

Why atmospheric nuclear tests are dangerous

The US, Russia, China, and other countries have set off more than 2,000 nuclear test blasts since 1945. More than 500 of these explosions occurred on soil, in space, on barges, or underwater. But most of these happened early in the Cold War - before the risks to innocent people and the environment were well-understood. (Nearly all countries now ban nuclear testing.)

The problem with nuclear test explosions is that they create radioactive fallout. Space detonations come with their own risks, including a more widespread electromagnetic pulse. Only a fraction of a nuclear weapon's core is turned into energy during an explosion; the rest is irradiated, melted, and turned into fine particles. This creates a small amount of fallout that can be lofted into the atmosphere and spread around.

But the risk of fallout vastly increases close to the ground or water. There, a nuclear explosion can suck up dirt, debris, water, and other materials, creating many tons of radioactive fallout - and this material rises high into the atmosphere, where it drifts for hundreds of miles.

This kind of Cold War-era fallout killed scores of innocent people in the Pacific, including Japanese fishermen, and is still causing cancer and health problemsaround the world today.

Where and how big?

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Ri did not specify where or how high its hypothetical Pacific "H-bomb" test might occur. However, the foreign minister did reportedly suggest it could be the most powerful ever detonated in the Pacific. If this is not a matter of imprecise wording, it would mean the hypothetical blast would exceed the US' strongest nuclear test ever.

On March 1, 1954, the US military set off the "Shrimp" thermonuclear device on a platform in the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands (about 2,300 miles (3,700 km) southeast of Japan and 2,700 miles (4,350 km) southwest of Hawaii). This was part of the US military's Castle Bravo test series, and the blast was equivalent to exploding 15 million tons of TNT, or roughly 1,000 times as powerful the US attack on Hiroshima that inflicted some 150,000 casualties.

While the military considered Shrimp and Bravo a success, its repercussions were disastrous. Researchers underestimated the device's explosive power by nearly three-fold - and many were nearly killed when an artificial earthquake shook their concrete observation bunker 20 miles away.

Author and film producer Eric Schlosser, writing in his book Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, captures the raw power of the blast through the perspective of scientist Bernard O'Keefe:

“About ten seconds after Shrimp exploded, the underground bunker seemed to be moving. But that didn't make any sense. The concrete bunker was anchored to the island, and the walls were three feet thick. 'Is this building moving or am I getting dizzy?' another scientist asked. 'My God, it is,' O'Keefe said. 'It's moving!' “O'Keefe began to feel nauseated, as though he were seasick, and held on to a workbench as objects slid around the room. The bunker was rolling and shaking, he later recalled, 'like it was resting on a bowl of jelly.' The shock wave from the explosion, travelling through the ground, had reached them faster than the blast wave passing through the air.”

The scientists ultimately escaped alive, but Marshall Islanders located 100 miles from the blast were not so lucky.

Shrimp's four-mile-wide fireball vaporised about 200 billion tons of Bikini Atoll coral reef, turning much of it into radioactive fallout that spread all over the world. The worst of it sprinkled over atolls to the east, killing many people from radiation sickness. Today, the 250-foot-deep (76 metre deep), 1-mile-wide (1.6 km wide) crater left by the blast is visible from space. If North Korea decides to blow up a hydrogen or thermonuclear device - and the most powerful in the Pacific - we could only hope it is not close to the ground.

Missile or no missile?

All of these scenarios assume North Korea sets off a thermonuclear device in a controlled way - via aeroplane, barge, balloon, or some kind of stationary platform. But the risk to people also largely depends on whether or not North Korea launches a nuclear warhead on an intercontinental ballistic missile or a shorter-range rocket, such as one launched from a submarine.

If successful, such a missile test would show North Korea has miniaturised its weapons. And if the blast appears to be caused by a hydrogen bomb, it would show North Korea could pull off a devastating thermonuclear strike on US soil. But missiles are prone to failure in multiple ways, especially those in early development. A North Korean ICBM tipped with a nuclear warhead might miss its target by a significant distance, or explode en route.

This could lead to detonation in an unintended place and altitude. This is especially true if the missile has no self-destruct capability - ICBMs maintained by the US don't. In that case, only hacking the missile's software in mid-air, or destroying it with another weapon, could stop the launch.

“The stakes and heat in this conflict have not been this high since the Korean War,” Tristan Webb, a senior analyst for NK News, said in a story published by the outlet on Friday. “Kim Jong Un said in July that the … showdown was entering its final phase. He appears psychologically prepared for conflict.”

This article was originally published by Business Insider.

If A Nuclear Bomb Explodes Nearby, Here's Why You Should Never, Ever Get In a Car

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The first thing you'd see if a nuclear bomb exploded nearby is a flood of light so bright, you may think the sun blew up.

Wincing from temporary blindness, you'd scan the horizon and see an orange fireball. The gurgling flames would rise and darken into a purple-hued column of black smoke, which would turn in on itself. As a toadstool-like mushroom took shape, the deafening shock front of the blast would rip through the area — and possibly knock you off your feet.

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Congratulations! In this hypothetical scenario, you've just survived a nuclear blast with an energy output of about 10 kilotons (20 million pounds) of TNT. That's about 66% of the energy released by either atomic bomb dropped on Japan in 1945.

This scenario may sound far-fetched, but more than 14,900 nuclear weapons exist in the world, and kiloton-class nukes, like the one just described, are proliferating in weapons stockpiles. In fact, a nuclear detonation of 10 kilotons or less by a terrorist is one of 15 disaster scenarios for which the US government has planned.

No one could fault you for panicking after the sight and roar of a nuclear blast. But there is one thing you should never do, according to Brooke Buddemeier, a health physicist and radiation expert at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

"Don't get in your car," he told Business Insider.

Don't try to drive, and don't assume that the glass and metal of a vehicle can protect you.

Why vehicles and nuclear survival don't mix

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Avoiding driving after a nuclear blast is wise because streets would probably be full of erratic drivers, accidents, and debris. But Buddemeier says there's another important reason to ditch the car: a fearsome aftereffect of nuclear blasts called fallout.

Fallout is a complex mixture of fission products, or radioisotopes, created by splitting atoms. Many of the fission products decay rapidly and emit gamma radiation, an invisible yet highly energetic form of light. Exposure to too much of this radiation in a short time can damage the body's cells and its ability to fix itself — a condition called acute radiation sickness.

"It also affects the immune system and your ability to fight infections," Buddemeier said.

Only very dense and thick materials, like many feet of dirt or inches of lead, can reliably stop the fallout.

"The fireball from a 10-kiloton explosion is so hot, it actually shoots up into the atmosphere at over 100 miles per hour," Buddemeier said. "These fission products mix in with the dirt and debris that's drawn up into the atmosphere from the fireball."

Trapped in sand, dirt, cement, metal, and anything else in the immediate blast area, the gamma-shooting fission products can fly more than five miles into the air. The larger pieces drop back down, while lighter particles can be carried by the wind before raining over distant areas.

A simulation of nuclear fallout conditions over Washington, DC, at different times of the year.Bruce Buddemeier/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

"Close into the [blast] site, they may be a bit larger than golf-ball-size, but really what we're talking about are things like salt- or sand-size particles," Buddemeier said. "It's the penetrating gamma radiation coming off of those particles that's the hazard."

That brings us back to why a car would be a terrible place to take shelter.

"Modern vehicles are made of glass and very light metals, and they offer almost no protection," he says. "You're just going to sit on a road someplace" and be exposed.

Buddemeier said he asked people what their knee-jerk response to a nuclear blast might be, and it wasn't comforting.

"There was actually a lot of folks who had this notion — and it may be a Hollywood notion — of 'Oh, jump in the car and try to skedaddle out of town if you see a mushroom cloud. However, fallout is carried by high-altitude winds that are "often booking along at 100 miles per hour," he said, and "often not going in the same direction as the ground-level winds. So your ability to know where the fallout's gonna go, and outrun it, are — well, it's very unlikely," he said.

What you should do instead of driving

The protection factor that various buildings, and locations within them, offer from the radioactive fallout of a nuclear blast. The higher the number, the greater the protection.Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Your best shot at survival after a nuclear disaster is to get into some sort of "robust structure" as quickly as possible and stay there, Buddemeier said. He's a fan of the mantra "go in, stay in, tune in."

"Get inside ... and get to the center of that building. If you happen to have access to below-ground areas, getting below ground is great," he said. "Stay in 12 to 24 hours."

The reason to wait is that levels of gamma and other radiation fall off exponentially after a nuclear blast as "hot" radioisotopes decay into more stable atoms and pose less of a danger. This slowly shrinks the dangerous fallout zone — the area where high-altitude winds have dropped fission products.

(Instead of staying put, however, a recent study also suggested that moving to a stronger shelter or basement may not be a bad idea if you had ducked into a flimsy one.)

The dangerous fallout zone (dark purple) shrinks quickly, while the much less dangerous hot zone (faint purple) grows for about 24 hours before shrinking back.Bruce Buddemeier/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Finally, tune in.

"Try to use whatever communication tools you have," Buddemeier said, adding that a hand-cranked radio is a good object to keep at work and home, since emergency providers would be broadcasting instructions, tracking the fallout cloud, and identifying where any safe corridors for escape could be.

There is one exception to the "no cars" rule, Buddemeier says: If you're in a parking garage with your car, the concrete might act as a shield. In that case, you could stay there and listen to a radio inside your car.

If everyone were to follow these guidelines after a nuclear blast, he says, hundreds of thousands of lives could be saved.

nuclear explosion fallout radiation danger zones decay bruce buddemeier llnl

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