why splitting a tiny particle can cause such a devastating blast
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On its own, a single split atom releases a lot of energy and subatomic particles. Not enough to cause a massive explosion on its own.
The massive explosion is because splitting that atom causes a chain reaction where the subatomic particles released from the first split atom start splitting a lot of the surrounding atoms, cascading so quickly it might as well be instantaneous. This chain reaction of releasing energy when applied to a large enough amount of unstable material releases far more energy in an explosive manner than typical explosives which rely on chemical reactions.
An analogy: imagine the size of an explosion is measured in money. Say we want an explosion of $1000. Using conventional explosives, the best you can do is 10c pieces. So to make it up to $1000, it’ll take a lot. But the energy released from a nuclear explosive device is like using $10 notes, or even $100 notes, so to make the same explosion takes a lot less material due to the massively greater energy released.
Also of note that typical nuclear explosives are in two stages, which was the whole point of the Manhattan project to figure out.
The nuclear bomb design is essentially an egg. A central core of heavy, unstable material such as uranium or other radioactive materials, because they are already breaking down naturally and only need a little push to accelerate the process. Surrounded by a shell of conventional explosives. At detonation, the shell detonates and compresses the core, giving it energy and pressing the atoms close to each other and beginning the chain reaction at the atomic level that starts them splitting, releasing massive amounts of energy. Some of that energy will be heat and light (typical explosion) and some of it will be other types of energy (xrays, gamma, etc) or particle radtion (alpha, beta, etc).
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