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Xanthro
A 100-megaton bomb is 5,000 times more powerful than the 20-kiloton bomb that took out Hiroshima, a medium-size city.
1. No such device has ever actually been built or test.
2. No, it has 5,000 times the yield. It is not 5,000 times more powerful. There is a huge difference. Again, the largest actually built and tested device had a 50mt yield, it's fireball radius was 23 times that of FatMan.
Bombs smaller than 100 megatons were tested by the US in the Pacific, and the mushroon clouds could be seen in California 4,000 miles away. They were so huge the generals themselves were appalled.
All devices tested by any country were less than 100mt, because no device larger than 50mt has even been tested. Just how dense are you?
Millions of people can see the moon at night, it doesn't kill them. Just being able to see a mushroom cloud doesn't mean it's deadly.
BTW, the cloud shape is the result of the tropopause, the boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere. There is a strong temperature deferential at this boundary, which inhibits mixing of the the two layers of the atmosphere. The raising cloud has cooled to much by the time it reaches the tropopause, and lacks the energy to overcome this boundary, this cause the expansion to move horizontally, producing the mushroom effect.
Any large explosion, even conventional, can create a mushroom cloud, but very few can actually reach the tropopause to create the classic shape ingrained in most people's minds.
But I get your propaganda game. Like Rumsfeld, you want people to think that nukes aren't a big deal in order to make them 'acceptable'. Rumsfeld's wanted to nuke Russia for forty years under the theory than 80,000,000 US casualties in the counterstrike would be worth it.
Counteracting your misconceptions about nuclear devices, and your ignorance of nuclear technology, does not mean I advocate that nuclear weapons aren't dangerous.
They just aren't what you are stating they are.
You and Rumsfeld should be sharing Hannibal Lecter's old cell. You're a danger to civilization.
-- Godot..
Typical, you can't actually defend your positions, and hope to tie opponents to someone unpopular, or have them in jail.
It's an admission that you internally feel defeated.