Explosive Yield facts

While investigating facts about Explosive Yield Calculator and Explosive Yield Of Antimatter, I found out little known, but curios details like:

There are 'dial-a-yield' nuclear bombs that can be set to different levels of explosive power before dropping by simply turning a dial.

how to calculate explosive yield?

The U.S. has installed a device on its spy satellites called a "Bhangmeter" which is used to detect and measure the yields of nuclear explosions. The name derives from "bhang", a type of marijuana grown in India.

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across. Here are 12 of the best facts about Explosive Yield Of Hiroshima Bomb and Explosive Yield Of A Tomahawk Missile I managed to collect.

what is a high yield explosive?

1. The Bhangmeter is a device to detect atmospheric nuclear explosions and measure yield ("bang") by sensing the distinctive bright double pulse of visible light. The name is from the Hindi "bhang"(cannabis).The joke was that one would have to be on drugs to believe it would work properly.

2. The 24th Bond film, Spectre, has the largest film stunt explosion ever. The blast had a total yield of 68.47 tonnes of TNT equivalent, was the result of detonating 8,418 litres of kerosene with 33 kg of powder explosives and lasted 7.5 seconds.

3. In 1961, two nuclear bombs were ejected from a B-52 that broke apart mid-flight over North Carolina. Upon recovery of one of the bombs, it was discovered that 5 of 6 safety devices to prevent accidental detonation had failed. Such an explosion had a potential yield of 20,000,000 tons of TNT.

4. About the USS Scorpion, a nuclear submarine that mysteriously sank with two nuclear torpedoes aboard, submerging a combined yield of 22 kilotons of explosive power, and its location remains unknown to this day..

5. Ivy Mike, the code name of the first test of a full-scale thermonuclear weapon, had part of the explosive yield come from nuclear fusion, making it one of the first fusion weapons successfully detonated

6. Engineers and scientists were planning on flooding the Qattara Depression with seawater from the Mediterranean Sea by digging a large canal with 213 1.5-megaton nuclear explosive charges. Each has an explosive yield 100 times that of Hiroshima.

7. In 1961, Russia detonated a 50Mt nuclear device with an explosive power equivalent to 3'800 Hiroshima atomic bombs. Its 100Mt actual yield was cut in half to reduce radioactive dust.

8. The Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated, had the equivalent yield of 3,333 - 3866 Hiroshima bombs, or 10 times the explosives used in WW2, yet still had just 1/4 the blast yield of the 1883 eruption of Krakatau.

9. The US military had devloped and deployed a recoiless rifle launched nuclear warhead called the Davey Crockett. It had a yield of 10-20 tons of TNT and could produce lethal doses of radiation at up to a quarter mile from the explosion.

10. The K/T extinction impact, had an estimated explosive yield of 100 teratons of TNT. The most powerful nuclear weapon mankind has ever detonated was "only" 57 MT. That's about 1/2,000,000 of the power.