Hydrogen bombs are more than 1000 times more powerful than the very common atomic bomb. The explosion is from nuclear fusion which is when hydrogen nuclei (plural of nucleus) are joined to form helium nuclei, releasing great destructive energy and radioactive fallout. When the nuclei combine there is a split second where there is nothing and then there is the explosion. An atomic bomb is the trigger or the smaller bomb of what sets off the hydrogen bomb. We have to be careful with the hydrogen bomb because, if used, it will cause a major catastrophe far greater than the damage done by the atomic bomb.
On the first day of November in 1952, president Harry S. Truman tested the very first H-bomb on a remote island located in the Pacific Ocean. Common people were not supposed to know, but the information about the detonation were released more than 14 days later. After the atomic bombs were dropped in Japan, our government did not continue the idea of the creation of the hydrogen bomb until the Soviet Union was able to successfully explode their atomic bomb in 1949. President Truman demanded the invention of the hydrogen bomb (1). A famous scientist,
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Ivy Mike, the first thermonuclear bomb, evaluated in 1952 on the Marshall islands was equivalent to 22,928,077,120 pounds of explosive trinitrotoluene (TNT) (1). The hydrogen bomb is said to be 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb (1). ‘Ivy King was the largest atomic bomb exploded by the United States, dropped from a bomber plane at Runit Island in the Enewetak Atoll, on November 16, 1952, resulting in a 1,000,000,000 pound blast (2). However, when the hydrogen bombs, nicknamed the ‘Tsar Bomba’ was dropped by Russia at a bay in the Arctic Circle on October 30, 1961, it was declared the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated, at 110,231,131,092.5 pounds of explosive trinitrotoluene or TNT