If the most powerful nuclear bomb exploded in Space…
Imagine if we detonated a nuclear bomb in space. Actually, we don’t have to imagine it, we can see it for ourself. “Starfish Prime” is the highest altitude nuclear test in history. In 1962, the US government launched a 1.4 megaton bomb from Johnson Island and detonated it 400 KM above the Pacific, about as high as where the International Space Station orbits today.
The detonation generated a giant fireball and created a burst of energy called an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP that expanded for over 1,000 km. EMP can cause a power surge damaging electronic equipment in the process, and this one was no different. Across Hawaii, street lights went dark, telephones went down, and navigation and radar system went out. Six satellites orbiting failed. And all this came from a 1.4 megaton bomb: Starfish Prime. Tsar bomb, which is the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated, was of 50 megatons. What if we detonated that over any place on earth ?
Primarily, there’s no atmosphere in the space, so there would not be any mushroom shaped clouds, no subsequent blast wave, and no mass destruction after detonation. Instead, we can see a blinding fireball four times the size of Starfish Prime’s fireball. If we looked directly at it within the first 10 seconds we could permanently damage our eyes. Artificial satellites won’t be safe, either. Radiation from the explosion would completely destroy the circuits of hundreds of instruments in low Earth orbit, including communication satellites, military spy satellites, and even scientific instruments like the Hubble telescope. Astronauts on board the International Space Station might be at risk of radiation poisoning. On the ground, however, we’d probably be fine.
The detonation point would be far enough away, that the high energy radiation wouldn’t reach to us, but it doesn’t mean that we are completely safe, so don’t get too comfortable. EMP from the Tsar bomb explosion would cover a vast area from the point of its detonation, which can bring down regional power grids and electronics as fast as a lighting strike. Millions of people would be out of power for days. The radiation would also interact with the oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere and create a spectacular aurora near the detonation site which would last for days.
This would probably never happen: thermonuclear devices like the Tsar bomb no longer exist. Even if they did, the Tsar bomb weighed 27,000 kg: there are only a couple of operational rockets in the world that can manage to lift something that heavy into space, so at least we’re probably safe from that.
