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Nuclear bombs. The most powerful and closely guarded weapons ever created.

Here are fifteen of the strangest things you never knew about the nuclear bomb.

#15. A Costly Miss

You remember as a kid when you had the perfect water balloon to sock your brother in the face

on a hot summer day? You carefully took aim…and whiffed. The balloon popped on the ground,

he got splashed at most, and then next thing you know, you’re getting whaled on. Well,

at least you didn’t miss on something much bigger like the team at Bikini Atoll did.

It was not long after the first two bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

and the US team wanted to learn more about the bombs’ capabilities without nuking another city.

So they chose a small island chain to test out their new toy.

Part of the Marshall Islands chain,

Bikini Atoll was under US control and close enough to a military base.

With only 167 people that would need to be relocated - whether they agreed or not - it was

deemed an ideal location for a nuclear test. It was February 1946 when the island was evacuated,

and in July 1946, the first payload was delivered. It was designed to be dropped

from a bomber near a collection of ships loaded with lab animals so that scientists

could study the long-term effects of radiation. The ships were in place…

And then somehow, everything went wrong.

A B-29 bomber did drop its payload - but somehow it dropped it almost two

thousand feet from the target! That was close enough that it sank several of

the ships and killed more than a third of the lab animals from residual radiation,

but it was far from the full-on test they wanted. What went wrong, exactly? No one knows, but the

next time you screw up at work at least you can say you aren’t the guy who misfired an atom bomb.

And the military wasn’t done with Bikini Atoll just yet.

#14. Rough Beach Weather

So the military missed with their first test at the Bikini Atoll. It happens. They shrugged

that off and bounced back with a second test only a few weeks later. While the first bomb

was dropped and exploded above ground, this one would be timed to explode underwater to

test the effect of the radiation and blast on the water. They knew the results would be

unpredictable - and that’s exactly what they got. This first underwater test of a nuclear weapon

didn’t just prove how powerful the bombs were - it proved that their power was highly unpredictable.

And it may have led to more caution in the future.

Test Baker was launched on July 25th, 1946, and the bomb was successfully

dropped and exploded ninety feet under the water That’s when things started getting

crazy. The interaction of the bomb with the water created a massive bubble of hot

gas under the water that quickly expanded - both downward, and upward at the same time.

Nothing in its path was any match for it - and that included the shores of Bikini Atoll.

It would take a while for the full effects of the bomb to be known - but some were clear right away.

Those who were nearby reported the energy from the bomb created a massive geyser-like plume of

water that soon turned into a mile-high dome. This whipped up a tsunami with a wave topping

ninety-four feet, long enough to lift a 27,000-ton ship into the air. When the chaos cleared,

the military was able to observe a massive crater two thousand feet wide carved into the sea

floor - and many of the ships that were nearby were covered in radioactive energy. That is,

except for the eight that were sunk. They’re keeping their secrets at the bottom of the ocean.

But for some people, the effects of these tests lasted long after they were done.

#13. The Longest Vacation

When the residents of Bikini Atoll were told they had to evacuate, they were told it would

be a temporary evacuation for the tests. It was needed for the security of the country,

and they were assured they would be back home soon. They were taken to temporary housing and

assured that they would be returned when it was safe. So they waited…and waited,

and waited some more. Eventually, they were moved from their barracks - to another island

in the Marshall Islands, and the promise of home seemed more remote than ever.

But then, in the late 1960s, there seemed to be hope.

The US Atomic Energy Commission declared the islands safe for return,

and some residents went back to their homes for the first time in twenty

years. The government kept close tabs on their health - and then in the late 1970s,

they discovered something disturbing. Everyone who had returned and eaten the

food on the island had alarmingly high rates of Cesium-137 in their blood. The radioactive

energy might have hidden well, but it was definitely still present on Bikini Atoll.

And so history soon repeated itself.

The residents of the island were once again evacuated, this time to the more remote Kili

Island, as scientists began investigating the residual impact of the bombs on Bikini Atoll

more thoroughly. Their conclusion? It wasn’t safe for its residents to return - and it

might never be. Anyone living consistently on an island where nuclear tests had been

conducted would be subject to potentially dangerous levels of radiation - and the

island would need a more thorough cleaning if anyone was to return. But it may not happen,

as the island is now classified as a UNESCO World Heritage site and a key cautionary tale.

But today, people are more worried about who has them, not how they’re tested.

#12. All Around the World

So who’s a member of the nuclear club? That depends on who you ask. During World War II,

it was believed that the United States and Germany were in a rush to beat each

other to the bomb and use it, but that’s now considered to be false - as it was discovered

to mainly be a one man race. The US got the bomb first, Germany really wasn’t close,

and the rest was history. But once the US got the bomb, other powers were quick to follow

suit. The USSR was the second to get the bomb, only four years later,

and they were followed by the United Kingdom in 1952, France in 1960, and China in 1964.

And the world powers said “That’s enough”.

With two Soviet-aligned powers with nukes and three western powers having them,

both sides were worried about things spiraling out of control - especially after several close

calls with World War III. So they passed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,

which took effect in 1970. All five existing nuclear powers were grandfathered in,

but no new nuclear powers were allowed - and it lasted for a while. That is,

until India and Pakistan, neither of which had signed the treaty, developed their own nuclear

programs. The neighbors are often in conflict, and that’s made the neighborhood a lot more tense.

But it’s not the only flashpoint.

Under the always-chaotic Kim dynasty, the Hermit Kingdom of North Korea rarely abided by treaties.

So it was alarming, if not surprising, when they conducted their first nuclear test in

2006. They’re now believed to have up to twenty warheads, which has made stopping many of their

aggressive activities much trickier. But that’s nowhere near as complicated as what’s going on

with signatory Israel - which has never revealed any details about its nuclear

arsenal. Insiders say the country may have at least ninety nuclear weapons - but what

makes enforcing the NPT trickier is that they may have had them since the 1960s,

which means they would have been covered under the initial treaty’s exceptions. At least,

they would be if they admitted to having a nuclear arsenal.

But who has the biggest, um, missiles? #11. The Big Guns

So who has the most powerful nuclear arsenal in the world? That’s hard to gauge, because

it depends on both the number of nuclear weapons and how they can be delivered - as well as their

condition. North Korea has the smallest number of weapons and only land-and-sea based delivery

systems, which means it would be easier to target their batteries and stop the missiles from taking

off - although they’re developing faster and faster weapons as we speak. Pakistan and India,

which have around 160 bombs each, also lack an air-based delivery system - likely

because their systems are designed for close-quarters delivery to their neighbor.

But what about the superpowers?

The United Kingdom has 225 nuclear weapons, but only a sea-based delivery system. As an

island nation, their surrounding waters are the key to their national defense - but it’s also

been a very long time since they had to worry about using them. France’s sea-and-air-based

systems are suitable for their 290 weapons, but barring a full-on war with Russia,

they’re not expecting any attacks on their soil any time soon. Israel isn’t

talking - as usual - but it’s believed they have a three-pronged nuclear triad. What they might lack,

though, is long-range missiles as they’re more concerned with their neighbors attacking again.

And so we come to the big guns.

China is only believed to have 350 nuclear missiles, but almost all of them are attached

to high-level delivery systems that might be able to hit anywhere on the

planet. That makes them a formidable threat that might not be able to win a third world

war - but certainly could scare others off from fighting it. However, they only have a

tenth of the arsenal of the United States and Russia, with 5,400 and just under

6,000 missiles respectively. This comes from their constant standoff during the Cold War,

with both having a powerful nuclear triad able to reach across the world in minutes. So does

Russia’s numbers edge give it the win? Probably not - while they have more bombs, most are

believed to be in poor condition, so their actual usable arsenal may be only half that number.

And today’s nuclear bombs are a lot more powerful than they used to be.

#10. Kaboom

The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were powerful - powerful enough to devastate both

cities and kill nerly 200,000 people. And yet, soon enough they looked like little firecrackers

compared to what was coming. The original nuclear bombs were soon replaced with far more powerful

and unpredictable hydrogen bombs. In 1954, when the US military returned to Bikini Atoll for

another test. This time they would be conducting the Bravo Test of a 23,500-pound hydrogen bomb.

And it didn’t disappoint.

They were expecting a five-megaton blast - and instead they were taken aback when the

islands were hit with a fifteen-megaton blast. It ripped through the atoll, destroying three

nearby islands, and ripped a mile-wide crater in the central lagoon. A scientist later estimated

that the amount of debris hurled in the air was the equivalent of over two hundred skyscrapers.

But the damage didn’t stay where it was supposed to.

Eighty miles away, a Japanese fishing vessel was reeling in

the day’s catch when they were bombarded by radioactive debris from the explosion.

Several other populated atolls were hit by radiation as well,

and soon one crew member of the boat died of a mysterious illness. Was it radiation sickness,

as Japanese scientists concluded? It’s not clear, but one thing was - nuclear scientists

knew they needed to get better at estimating the sizes of the blasts created by these

weapons before they deployed them. Especially if they intended to use the bombs in combat.

But it wasn’t the largest nuclear bomb ever tested.

#9. Drop the Bomb

That honor went to the Soviets in 1961. It had the impressive name of Tsar Bomba - or

King Bomb - and it lived up to the hype. It had a yield of over fifty megatons,

which made it over three thousand times more powerful than the ones

that hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The yield was equivalent to fifty million tons of TNT,

which would be more than enough to atomize any major city around the world.

So how did we even know about this bomb?

The Soviets were notoriously secretive about the nuclear program - just like any nation is. But

if you knew where to look, it was impossible to avoid finding out about it. The Tsar Bomba was

dropped on October 30th, 1961, on Novaya Zemlya, an archipelago in the northern part of Russia.

For such a valuable asset, it was dropped using a surprisingly low-tech method - they strapped it

to a parachute and pushed it out of a plane before detonating it around 13,000 feet above the ground.

And it was a roaring success.

The United States had picked up information about the detonation from sources and sent

a US reconnaissance aircraft to spy on the detonation. They got a close-up view - but

the heat from the bomb was so intense that it burned the outside of the aircraft and

the plane. The only reason the plane didn’t go down was because of its

anti–radiation paint that barely held up. While the explosion was massive,

it’s actually considered one of the cleanest nuclear bombs ever detonated - with 97% of its

tield coming from a thermonuclear fusion reaction, it burned hard and fast with minimal fallout.

But would you believe that nuclear bombs can also be…gifts?

#8. Do Not Open

Only nine countries are believed to have developed their own nuclear weapons programs - but that

doesn’t mean they’re the only ones that have them on their soil. The United States is part of NATO,

and has committed to the collective defense of all of Europe against any threat. To that end,

they’ve lent out some of their nuclear weapons to be deployed in countries including Germany,

Italy, Turkey, the Netherlands, and Belgium. But these weapons can’t be

launched by the host country - they’re still under US control

and can only be deployed by the US in the event of an invasion against NATO.

But the US wasn’t the only country who did this.

The United States could lend out its nukes as a deterrent - but so could the Soviet Union.

In fact, that may have led to the world’s closest brush with nuclear war when the Soviets decided to

deploy nuclear missiles in newly-communist Cuba in the 1960s - only miles from Florida’s shore! The

standoff nearly led to a hot war, and the Soviet Union did ultimately back down. Today, while no

countries are actually giving away their nuclear weapons, many people are concerned that China and

Pakistan may aid Iran as the country tries to become the tenth member of the nuclear club.

But did you know that the US nearly nuked…itself?

#7. Whoops

When transporting nuclear bombs, it stands to reason that you should be pretty careful. But

that doesn’t mean things can’t go wrong - very wrong. That’s what happened near Goldsboro,

North Carolina in 1961. A Boeing B-52 Stratofortress was flying overhead when

it suddenly sprung a nasty fuel leak. It tried to maintain a holding pattern until

it could be fixed, but it lost fuel too much fuel and was about to crash. It was ordered

to head back to base and land - because it was carrying precious cargo that couldn’t be lost.

Namely, two nuclear bombs.

But as it made its descent, things went south in a hurry - literally. The pilots lost control,

and had no choice but to abandon the aircraft. Only five of the men survived,

with two dying in the crash and one being fatally injured in a failed parachute

landing. But the plane, carrying its deadly cargo, made a crash landing near Goldsboro,

spreading debris over a two-square-mile area of farmland. And everyone in the

know wondered - was the United States about to accidentally nuke itself?

Surprisingly, the answer was no.

Nuclear bombs are hardy for good reason, and neither bomb detonated upon impact.

The bombs were recovered - with one of them found hanging on a tree by its parachute!

The other bomb was found in a muddy field, and when it was discovered that it was partially

armed but stable, it was decided to leave it there. They removed the explosive part

but left the plutonium core at the base of a now-secure location. It wasn’t until

years later that it was revealed that the other hanging bomb had gone three-fourths

of the way to fully arming itself in the fall - which means we nearly lost North Carolina.

It wasn’t the only hair-raising nuclear bomb incident for the US.

#6. Pay Up

Things can go wrong when you have multiple large aircraft flying through the air,

even more so if some are carrying nuclear weapons. In 1966, a B-52G bomber was refueling in mid-air

over the Mediterranean sea when a collision occurred. The refueling aircraft crashed when

its fuel tank ignited, killing everyone on board, while the bomber went down and lost three of its

seven crew members - as well as its cargo of four hydrogen bombs! Had they all sunk to the

bottom of the Mediterranean? The government found three of them in small Spanish village,

where they had contaminated a two-kilometer area with radiation but didn’t fully detonate.

But what about the fourth?

That’s one of the strangest stories in Cold War history. The fourth bomb seemed to have

disappeared into thin air, and an exhaustive search by the military turned up nothing. But

then they received a tip - from a local fisherman named Francisco Simo Orts, who claimed to have

seen the bomb hit the water. The military wanted to hire him - but he knew his worth, and later

demanded a payment of twenty million dollars. The bomb was supposedly worth a billion dollars,

and maritime law says he’s entitled to one percent of that. The Air Force did ultimately make him an

offer, and the bomb was safely recovered. It’s not clear if Simo Orts did ever receive his payment.

The US seems to lose nuclear bombs in all sorts of places - but this has to top them all.

#5. The Air Up There

If a nuclear bomb got detonated in space, you’d probably either assume it was a horrible mishap

or a space war just started- but in 1962, the US actually detonated a thermonuclear warhead

in the sky on purpose! The test was titled Starfish Prime, and it was one of the only

nuclear tests ever conducted in outer space - at a whopping altitude of two hundred and fifty miles.

A Thor missile was launched into the sky and then remotely detonated from a safe distance,

and the world would see exactly how powerful these weapons were.

It worked brilliantly - maybe a little too well.

The bomb created a massive fireball in the sky,

as the nuclear debris created a massive aurora that could be seen from hundreds of miles away.

In Honolulu, Hawaii, the aurora burst through the thin clouds and created

a massive flash of light. Radioactive debris fell on the nearby Johnson Atoll.

Three satellites in low Earth orbit were disabled by the radioactive waves, and man-made radiation

belts were formed that wreaked havoc with satellites for months to come. The government

wanted to know what detonating a nuke in space would do, and the answer was - quite a lot.

In fact, nuclear bombs might be so powerful that they created their own element.

#4. What Is Trinitite?

The Trinity nuclear test in New Mexico in July 1945 was one of the most important

moments in human history - paving the way for the dropping of the first two bombs and

Japan’s unconditional surrender not long after. The test was a massive success and

proof of concept for the entire weapons program - and it left a lot of destruction in its wake.

After scientists were able to explore the area safely, they found something weird - pieces of

glassy residue that were unlike anything found in nature, mixed in the sand on the desert floor.

What did the bomb create?

Pieces of this strange new substance kept being found around the desert,

most a light green color but some in odd colors like red and black. They

were given the nickname Trinitite, after the test that created them - but it wasn’t

a whole new element or anything unusual. They were the product of what happens when

sand and other minerals meet the intense heat of a nuclear blast. They were fused together

in a dense glass-like structure, and there are countless pieces of it now on display.

But this wasn’t the only nuclear test with a mixed legacy.

#3. Anyone Up for a Swim?

Ah, Lake Chagan. A lovely place to swim in Khazakhstan - with a strange history. Because

this isn’t a natural lake. In 1965, when Kazakhstan was a part of the Soviet Union,

the Russians decided to conduct a nuclear test in the Chagan river. They placed a 140-kiloton

device in a hole they had dug in the river - almost six hundred feet deep - and detonated it,

creating a massive crater. When the dust settled, the crater started to fill up with water,

creating a new artificial lake, with the rim of the crater holding the water in place.

So what is this lake like today, over fifty-five years later?

Surprisingly, it’s not a nuclear wasteland at all! The radiation levels in the lake

have decreased to the point where exposure isn’t really a risk, and locals regularly swim in it.

The authorities in the now-independent country warn that they can’t guarantee

anyone’s safety - but that hasn’t stopped daring locals from fishing in it and eating

their potentially radioactive catch. No word on anyone fishing out any three-eyed fish yet,

and so far there are no reports of ill effects - which led New Zealand documentarian David

Farrier to visit the lake for lunch with a local fisherman for his Netflix series Dark Tourist.

And nuclear tests even provide a way to solve crime.

#2. Time and Time Again

The world of art forgery is one of the most complicated to crack. There

are highly skilled craftsmen who can duplicate some of the most famous artworks in the world,

stealing the original and selling it on the black market while leaving a modern clone in its wake.

Testing for art forgeries is difficult as well, since dating the painting can be difficult and

risks damaging it. But recently, scientists have developed a way to test with maximum reliability

without damaging the painting. There’s one clear giveaway that a painting is newer than 1945.

And it all started with Trinity.

Finding a painting’s exact date is often impossible, but what if someone is claiming

a painting was made by an artist from the 1800s? You test it - and it tests positive for trace

amounts of cesium-137 and strontium-90. On go the cuffs, and the art forger is sent

away to the big house. That’s because these isotopes were only created by nuclear weapons,

and if a painting tests positive for them, then they had to have been created after 1945!

But there’s one nuclear mystery that’s stranger than any other.

#1. The Vela Incident

The year was 1979, and somewhere between Antarctica and the southern tip of Africa,

something unusual was going on.

Near the South African territory of Prince Edward Islands, there’s an unidentified

flash of light - followed by another. It’s detected by two American Vela satellites,

which were designed to detect nuclear explosions in violation of the ban on

nuclear tests. This matched all the signs of an unauthorized test, but there was one problem.

No one knew who conducted it - and we still don’t.

Both India and Pakistan were testing nuclear bombs at the time, but neither

one was considered a likely suspect. France also had territory nearby in the Kerguelen Islands,

and could have been testing a small neutron bomb. No one knew exactly where Israel was testing its

top-secret nuclear weapons, since their small territory left them very little room to play with,

and the most common theory is that it may have been a joint Israel-South Africa nuclear

test. But even today, there is no proof of who was behind this mysterious explosion,

and nuclear historians would love some answers. But no one’s talking.

Check out “What Happens to Nuclear Waste” for most information on

how this incredible power is dealt with, or watch this video instead!