Top 10 Scariest Nuclear Bombs

It was in a remote location in New Mexico that the world experienced its first nuclear explosion. Eager to try out their then-new design in an effort to end the Second World War, the U.S. Army began assembling “The Gadget” (as the bomb was nicknamed) in a ranch house on July 13, 1945. They hoisted it onto a 100-foot firing tower, from which they dropped it at 5:30 a.m. on July 16th. The tower vaporized, the desert shook under a searing blast wave, and a mushroom cloud formed. Though a simple test, it was that bomb that triggered the Nuclear Age, which was a period characterized by suspicion, paranoia, and fear.

Also known as the Mk-41, this bomb was called the most efficient weapon ever built at the time of its creation - when comparing its weight to its yield, or the amount of energy it emits at detonation. In fact, with a maximum yield of 25 megatons, this bomb has the ability to release the same destructive power as 25 million tons of TNT. Had it been detonated, it would have produced a fireball almost 4 miles wide, burned people to the third degree about 32 miles away and annihilated most structures within 15 miles. Although never used in actual warfare, the B-41 remains the most powerful nuclear bomb ever created by the United States.

With a yield of simply 3.8 megatons, this bomb was far from the biggest to be dropped by the United States at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Detonated during the military’s Operation Redwing, which saw 17 nuclear test discharges in 1956, Cherokee was, however, the country’s first hydrogen, or thermonuclear, bomb to be delivered and dropped by air. What made this weapon even more terrifying was the navigation error that landed it almost 4 miles off its target, raising the ironic question of how safe nuclear bomb tests really are, even when performed by trained personnel.

For America’s first deployment of a nuclear bomb underwater, the weapon was detonated at a depth of 90 feet on July 25, 1946 as part of the Baker test, somewhere near Bikini Atoll. Despite the underwater detonation, the effects of Helen of Bikini were just as destructive - the target naval ship vaporized and a total of 10 ships were sunk, including a damaged heavy cruiser that sank 5 months after the test - as a result of irreparable hull damage. Despite plans to test another bomb named Charlie in the area, severe decontamination problems brought the project to a halt 16 days after the blast, as the bomb had covered an unprecedented area with a catastrophic amount of radiation.

Although this nuclear detonation at Yucca Flat, Nevada, was supposedly performed to measure its effectiveness for mining and other peaceful, practical purposes... it didn’t do much more than cause a lot of damage. Buried over 600 feet below the earth and exploded on July 6, 1962, the bomb removed 11 million tons of dirt and created the biggest man-made crater in the country. For perspective… it’s visible from outer space. The bomb caused the greatest radionuclide activity our atmosphere had ever experienced and contaminated more American civilians with radiation than any other nuclear test in history. Its failure ultimately helped spur the development of the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban treaty.

It was in the midst of the Cold War, that, despite a moratorium on atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union and the United States resumed the testing of nuclear weapons. On July 9, 1962, the American military detonated a nuclear warhead some 250 miles over the ground, as part of their Operation Fishbowl. Although scientists had expected an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, after the explosion, the sheer power of the ensuing EMP was shocking. One third of all active satellites were damaged by the pulse, and about 900 miles away in Hawaii, hundreds of streetlights, telephones, alarms, and radios blew, causing outages and blackouts.

Set off on March 1, 1954, this lithium-deuteride-fueled hydrogen bomb exceeded the military’s expectations and ended up becoming the most powerful thermonuclear weapon ever dropped by the United States. To give you an idea of just how destructive the SHRIMP was, its blast was about 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War. Although a significant radioactive fallout was expected, due to an error made by designers, the yield of 15 megatons of TNT (much higher than the expected 5-6 megatons) caused enormous environmental contamination for years to come, as well as deaths and illness in over 1000 of the locals.

It was the second, and thankfully, last nuclear weapon ever used in warfare, and it was dropped over the city of Nagasaki in Japan on August 9, 1945 during the Second World War. Between 35-40,000 people died instantly during the explosion, while an estimated 80,000 died in total as a result of leukemia, radiation poisoning, and burn injuries. The vast majority of these casualties were civilians and industrial workers. Much of the industrial production in the city took months and even years to repair. But in the end, it was just 6 days after this bomb was dropped that Japan announced its surrender.

It’s codename sounds innocent, but this bomb was anything but, as it was the first of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war – and the most destructive in terms of human casualties. Coming less than a month after the Trinity test, Little Boy was dropped over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Although a less powerful bomb than its successor, with a yield of 15-16 kilotons, the flat terrain of the city and the firestorm that ensued ultimately resulted in more deaths, with 66,000 people dying in the initial blast, and tens of thousands more perishing in the aftermath due to illness. Though these two bombs arguably ended the war… they came with an unfathomable cost.

Some of the most powerful nuclear detonations in history have been from the Soviet Union; and this is the biggest of them all. Detonated shortly after Nikita Khrushchev's promise to show the United States what they’ve got, Tsar Bomba (also nicknamed Vanya and Big Ivan) was dropped on October 30, 1961, north of the Arctic Circle over the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. The yield of the bomb was over 50 megatons, or 50 million tons of TNT. The mushroom cloud grew to a height of seven Mount Everests, and the blast was so strong it broke windows 560 miles away. The Tsar Bomba showed, more than anything else, the capacity of humankind’s destructiveness.