Eli5: what happens to the areas where nuclear bombs are tested?
In: 3652
If you ever played Halo and heard the word “glassed” as in they glassed the planet Reach that is pretty much what happens just in a big circular area instead of a beam like the Covenant uses.
If it’s a ground/near-ground detonation, that is. It’ll also leave a circular crater from the dust that was sucked up into the mushroom cloud and there will be a layer of glass formed from rapidly superheated sand and other minerals that all melt together.
[The resulting mineral is called Trinitite](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinitite)
It’s more akin to volcanic glass than the glass you’re used to seeing in windows and glasses, in that its not usually clear as much as brittle and smooth in appearance.
The area itself is often irradiated, though not as much as you might expect (still very radioactive right after), depending on where the bomb was detonated relative to the ground (way above/sky, below, near ground, or on the ground). Most of the radiation is residual from dust that is exposed to the initial blast as that is when most of the energy is given off, from that chain reaction. Hence why Hiroshima/Nagasaki are liveable today, they were above ground blasts that were designed to annihilate buildings and civilians, not upheave the Earth and ruin the soil permanently (though I know arguably it did, I just mean it could be much, much worse)
There’s a lot more issues from the residual radiation nowadays such as the Bikini Atoll residents who suffer much much higher cancer rates and I believe it was declared uninhabitable. The radioactive particles got in the water and fish and whole ecosystem. Not an easy way if any to fix that.
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