why are atom bombs or nuclear Bombs detonated above certain Height clearance from ground? Why not directly detonate it on the ground?
In: Physics
As everyone has mentioned, the pressure wave is more or less line-of-sight. So if you detonate it above ground then the raw force of the shockwave is able to reach more area without being lessened by things in the way. Of course, this is also a trade-off with distance (the higher the detonation, the weaker the pressure wave is by the time it reaches the ground).
One thing I don’t think anyone’s mentioned is that air bursts can also reduce the amount of fallout generated by a nuke. Ground detonations suck a huge amount of debris and dirt into the fireball where it becomes irradiated (this is actually what causes the mushroom cloud). When this stuff falls back to earth, it’s radioactive fallout. However, if you can detonate it far enough above ground that hardly any dirt gets sucked up by the time the fission reaction ends, the only radioactive byproducts will be the vaporised bomb and remaining nuclear fuel (less than 1% of it turns into energy).
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