How does nuclear explosion affect the underwater wildlife?

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How does nuclear explosion affect the underwater wildlife?

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Imagine the tsar bomba was detonated at the seabed 11km underwater. The pressure at these depths are extremely high, over 11,000psi. However, nuclear explosions generate over tens of millions of psi which overcomes the water pressure.

The fireball (which expands at over 300km/s but slows down the larger it gets), generates a shockwave that travels through the water, creating a hydrostatic shock hundreds of thousands of psi in the vicinity of the explosion, destroying marine life by rupturing organs.

While the heat is nowhere near what can be achieved if the bomb was detonated in air (not hundreds of millions of degrees celcius), since water has a high specific heat capacity, the temperatures nearby still rise to well over a couple hundred degrees, killing all marine life. Many millions of tons of water will be vaporised in the process.

In the end you’ll get a large region of hot radioactive water that rises to the ocean surface.

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