| When President Kennedy was killed in 1963, our Nike Hercs were refitted with nuclear warheads and we got a little heads up on what we were fiddling with every day. The Hercules was designed to climb above a formation of bombers and then arc down into the middle of the formation before being detonated. Even today, a lot of the information is still classified as to what would happen to a Tu-95 Bear loaded with nukes. When a nuclear explosion occurs close to anything electronic, the EMP is enough to overload and disable most electronic devices.
When a nuclear device detonates, we had 40Kt on the Hercs, there is a white hot, blinding flash that will melt human flesh as well as metal fuselages. Then the shockwave hits with the force of a hurricane and pulverizes what hasn't been burned. Any distortion of the mechanical structure in a bomb will render it unable to arm for the all important fission or fusion to occur. The components of older nukes had to be aligned at perfect angles and distances from each other.
When the material goes supercritical, most of the fissile material is converted to heat and blast so the chance of the radiation emission from one bomb setting up a chain reaction in a nearby critical mass is nil.
__________________  “War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.” —John Stuart Mill |