Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn’t, but other detonations did, like Castle Bravo.
In: Chemistry
Castle Bravo was an oopsie
To maximize their effect you want to detonate a nuclear weapon in the air over the target so more of its energy goes to smashing buildings and very little goes to digging a hole. Fat Man detonated about 500 meters above ground level so it didn’t really spend much energy digging a hole
During nuclear testing though, sometimes weapons were placed on towers but if they didn’t completely vaporize their tower it would require cleanup like in Upshot-Knothole Ruth. The Operation Castle series was all done at ground level or on a relatively short structure, the tallest was a 4 meter tall barge.
Sooo why did Castle Bravo dig a big hole that wasn’t particularly expected? Because it was wayyy stronger than expected!
Castle Bravo was expected to be 6 MT and leave a crater similar to the 11 MT Ivy Mike test at Enewetak which left a crater roughly 1 mile wide, but ended up leaving a 1.5 mile diameter crater when it turned out to be 15 MT and not just 6 because it turns out Lithium-7 is a very potent fusion fuel
A lot of later tests were done on barges or at sea to avoid vaporizing test islands and because land tests got boring
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